Just for fun, I’ve decided to sort of keep track of what the two major magazines—Golf Digest and Golf—are covering over the next several months. My instinct is that it’s mostly recycled and reused. I’m getting bored with both magazines. But maybe that’s just cynical me. Anyway, here’s the April 2009 issues:

Golf Digest April 2009
“Masters Preview Issue”

Bubba Watson swing sequence
Tiger Woods on your follow through
Butch Harmon on keeping your weight forward on chips and pitches
David Leadbetter on the putting follow through
Tom Watson on a swing thoughs to keep you swinging freely
Tim Rosaforte with Tour gossip
A rules quiz
The Golf Guru on average scores and storing your golf balls.
A fitness column
David Owen humor column
An article on the Saucon Valley Golf Club’s environmental efforts
New Gear: Why Hybrids Work
New Looks: Hybrids and Drivers. On sentence summaries of the TaylorMade Rescue, Nickent 5DEX, Titleist 909H, Tour Edge Geomax 2, Tour Edge Bazooka Geomax 2, Cobra S9-1, TaylorMade R9
What’s In Geoff Ogilvy’s bag
A travel column on Birmingham, Alabama
A best golf bar column
Travel to Las Vegas
Buying pre-owned golf balls online
Tiger’s Return: 10 Reasons To Celebate
Butch Harmon and Phil Mickelson Swing Tips
Tips from several other Tour Pros
Lee Trevino offers 10 tips for shotmaking
John Updike, Golfer: Goodbye to Our Friend, with excerpts from essays in Golf Digest
US Open Challenge: How to qualify
Jim Flick on two types of downswings
Captain America: Paul Azinger Profile
Breaking 100/90/80 Swing Tips
The results of an online survey about The Masters
Dan Jenkins Hunor
Fuzzy Zoeller answers 11 questions
Tom Brokaw on The Masters
Jamie Diaz on the myth that the Masters has been ruined
Lou Holtz reminsces

Golf Magazine April 2009
“Masters Preview” Issue

A Masters Photo Essay
Fuzzy Zoeller On The Masters
Reader Rules Questions Answered
What The Pros Think About: Pros answer silly questions
Dave Pelz on the Grip
Under Cover: Surviving Cloudbursts In Style
Private Clubs Are waiving initiation fees
Cameron Morfit On Tiger Woods (lack of) leadership
An interview with Greg Martin, author of a new book called Caddie Confidential
Phil Mickelson swing sequence
Swing tips on hitting a power fade, transferring your range shots to the course, the backswing, awkward bunker shots, downhill chips, breaking putts, bunker play and getting over trees
Tiger’s Five Secrets To Lower Scores
Ben Crenshaw profile
Greg Norman profile
Danny Lee profile
Profile of Ed Bailey, who has attended EVERY Masters
Changes At Augusta National
Profile of Beau Jack, a boxer who worked at Augusta National
Steve Williams profile
The new, “No Backswing” Short Game
A look at the new Pro V1
TaylorMade R9 Deriver and Nike SQ Dymo plugs
Travel Profiles of courses in Florida, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Arizona
Private Lessons Swing Tips
David Feherty humor column

ESPN has inked an eight-year, $200 million dollar deal to broadcast the Open Championship.

Under the agreement, ESPN will pay $25 million annually to broadcast 34 hours of the live coverage over four days, including six hours of highlights that will appear on broadcast brethren ABC.

The deal begins in 2010. Turner Sports will broadcast this year’s Open Championship from Turnberry.

In addition to television rights, ESPN also has the rights for web and digital media, including broadband, mobile and video-on-demand, plus expanded television and digital media rights for ESPN International.

Not to rub it into the faces of my fanatical Red Wings loving friends, but I find it interesting that ESPN would pony up $200 million for a golf tournament, while hockey is relegated to some obscure channel called “Versus.” Versus pays the NHL $75 million annually for 54 games—perhaps 150 hours of programming. ESPN pays the Open Championship $25 million for 34 hours of broadcasting.

Of course,  poker probably gets higher ratings than either, based on the number of hours it’s on television. Is there a poker channel somewhere on cable?

As revealed in Goldfinger, James Bond’s favorite golf ball is the Penfold Heart. Now, in honor of the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, and the 100th Anniversary of Ian Fleming’s birth, the Penfold company is offering a limited-edition set of these balls.

I want a set.

Blogger. Golf Blogger.

While paying for a box of balls at the local pro shop I noticed the cover of the magazine that was sitting in a pile next to the register:

“Justin Timberlake?,” I scoffed. “What’s next? Brittany Spears?”

The clerk shook his head. “It’s sad what’s happened to those magazines. I don’t read them any more.”

I agreed that I had been reading much less of the major magazines lately, and that set him off. Matt then went on to recite a litany of complaints with Golf Magazine and Golf Digest: repetitive tips, contradictory tips, worthless tips, fluff coverage of the Tour and players, celebrity worship, and Tiger worship (I’m surprised he didn’t accuse them of Satan worship). He managed to accuse them separately of naked jingoism and an Anti-American bias (I lost track of which magazine he was referring to.) Matt accused them of essentially taking bribes from the equipment companies for good reviews of “worthless clubs,” and of writing good things about high end resorts in exchange for free vacations. He claimed that three quarters of the magazines were advertising (not true. I just counted. A recent issue had only 80 pages of advertising out of 172)

For a guy who didn’t like the magazines, Matt apparently had done quite a study of them.

After another twenty minutes of conversation, I found that we agreed on a couple of things. First, that the two “majors” have become a bit hackneyed and cliched. And second, that Golf World and Golf Week both had superior coverage of the things we cared about. He liked the stats, the lists of tournament winners and such; I liked the general freshness of the two—something that comes from their weekly publication.

I wondered how the circulations of Golf Digest and Golf Magazine have been holding up. As it turns out, circulation for both have been flat over the past eight years—at about 1.5 million each (Golf Digest is a little higher, Golf Magazine a little lower). Given the increase in population, and the supposed increase of interest in golf, I would have expected better, though. We might also note that Golf For Women magazine, and arm of Golf Digest, has gone under.

I also wonder about the legitimacy of the circulation figures. At one local pro shop, you can get an issue of either of these free with any purchase. They keep a stack next to the register. I also was able to get a free subscription by attending a local golf show last winter. In my mind, giving magazines away is not the same thing as having actual active subscribers.

As it stands now, I’ve half a mind to let my subscriptions to Golf Digest and Golf Magazine lapse when renewal time comes around. And if I see one more celebrutard cover, I will.