freddy's fairway thoughts
By Fred Seely
Moore-Myers
The Moore-Myers Children’s Fund is a private charity that promotes golf to inner city kids and they’ve been getting traction in the community. The Jacksonville Area GA has been a supporter and now the past chairmen of the PLAYERS — stretching back to its Greater Jacksonville Open days — are part of the support. The leaders chipped in to buy clubs for the kids. The 1965 GJO chair John Tucker (far right) and others joined the kids recently at the Brentwood Golf Course. Don’t know about your part of the world but ours is getting overrun by golf carts. On the course, they’re fine. But not on the streets. In the fast-growing St. Johns County in Florida (that’s where the PGA Tour is headquartered,) there were 21 golf cart crashes on open highways last year and the sheriff’s office is grumbling. “No one thinks they can get hurt in a golf cart,” said department director Scott Beaver. “They drive them a little more recklessly.” One change certainly is coming. Right now, a 14-year-old can legally drive a golf cart in Florida even though it takes a 15-year-old to get a learner’s permit to drive a car. That’s the first change and then they’ll start on what should be the basics: requiring seat belts, limiting the number of passengers and requiring car seats for kids. The Mickelson flap Not sure where this is leading and, even more so, not sure where it came from. Several thoughts: • Mickelson isn’t very popular among his peers. His nickname is Figjam, an acromym for “F**k I’m Good Just Ask Me.” • Alan Shipnuck wrote the book with the incendiary comments and he comes off as somewhat of a martyr after Mickelson claimed things were off the record. Shipnuck is a hard charger who sometimes charges too hard, and many people of importance are cautious around him. • Rory McIlroy seems to be a straight-up guy who walks the walk. He’s friendly and appreciative of others. So, when he called Mickelson’s comments “...naive, selfish, egotistical, 60
ignorant...”, it was more than a shot across the bow. • Greg Norman seems to be making sure to let everyone know he’s a big shot who called the shots. Hmmm...”naive, selfish, egotistical, ignorant” are pretty good adjectives for him, too. • PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan isn’t the big winner that he seems to be. Yes, he made a firm stand. Yes, the top players backed him. But, there’s an underlying issue here and it’s bubbling up. He’s not as firmly in control as you think. • Indeed, Mickelson shows every evidence of being greedy. That trait isn’t uncommon on the PGA Tour. Remember the tale of the Golden Goose, boys. • A personal note: Whatever issues Mickelson has with himself and others, he always has been an A-Plus guy around me. He often plays at our club in Jacksonville when he’s in town for the Players and he always spends time with members. When he won a PGA Tour Champions event at our club last year, he stayed until every autograph was signed and every photo was taken. The locker room guy got $1,000. One of his attorneys, Glenn Cohen, is a longtime pal. Glenn isn’t a jock sniffer, and he’ll defend Mickelson until you have to change the subject. Short stuff • The supply chain issues reach into golf, as any of us knows who have ordered new clubs and have to wait months because most brands have something to do with Asia. Clubs are one thing; how about range balls? A big club in our community apologized to its members because there is a Surlyn shortage, which means the new balls couldn’t be the Titleist Tour Soft brand they wanted. The alternative? Pinnacles! Yes, the old Pinochle you see for a buck a ball on the counter. • They’re trying not to make a big thing of it but the PGA Tour has told the Phoenix Open that the 16th hole is out of hand. The shower of beer cans was too much. No more, they’ve been told. A sad solution would be putting glass between the fans and the players but it may come to that. • World Woods was a big deal some 20 years ago, a multi-course Florida facility where Asian kids came to learn the game and tourists got to play neat courses. Alas, it went downhill. Many to blame but a solution is coming. The people behind Bandon Dunes — Mike Keiser and others — now have it and will rename it Cabot Citrus Farms, and will renovate the courses. Root for them to make it.
Comments? fs4569@comcast.net. Golf Central • Volume 22, Issue 11
