In a previous post, I ranked the various states according to their Golf Wealth—the number of courses per capita. North Dakota came out the best in that calculus, while California was the most golf poor.

A reader suggested that I also should take a look at the number of courses as compared to the size of the state: square miles divided by the number of courses. I did, and created a new statistic: Golf Mileage. In this new measure, the state with the best golf mileage is:

Massachusetts, with one course for every 20.25 square miles.

Alaska, as you might expect, fared the worst, with one course for every 23,515.12 square miles.

The rest of the table is below:

Venezuela’s madman dictator president Hugo Chavez has previously proposed the seizure of Venezuela’s golf courses in the name of the people, and has called golf a bourgeois sport. But now that Venezuela’s Jhonattan Vegas won The Hope, he’s changing his tune.

“I am happy. Let’s congratulate Jhonattan Vegas. He beat all the gringos, nice one! ... He is the pride of Venezuela. And he’s black, like (U.S. leader Barack) Obama, just a little bit plumper.”

Next thing you know, he’ll declare golf to be the national sport and compel everyone to watch.

Golf Digest has some neat photos of an Indonesian golf course that’s being threatened by Mount Merapi (literally, Fire Mountain). In December, the threat level for Mt. Merapi was lowered as activity seemed to subside for a while.

A golf vacation to the Mt. Merapi golf course would be quite the thing.

An interesting article popped up in Ad Age this past week. It says, in effect, that celebrity endorsements are a waste of time and money, and that Tiger Woods led the list of worst pitchmen. From their summary:

Over the course of last year, time and time again we observed incredibly low effectiveness scores of TV ads starring celebrities. From Tiger Woods to Donald Trump, we found that with rare exception, celebrity endorsements were largely ineffective and failed to yield the benefits popular wisdom promises.

We set out to understand whether celebrities today are really worth the significant investment that brands were making. We studied every nationally televised ad for the first 11 months of 2010 and found that celebrity ads performed either below average or merely equaled it. Specifically, our study, 2010 Celebrity Advertisements: Exposing a Myth of Advertising Effectiveness, 2010, showed that fewer than 12% of ads using celebrities exceeded a 10% lift, and one-fifth of celebrity ads had a negative impact on advertising effectiveness.

I’m not at all surprised—especially in the golf world. As I’ve written in the past, I don’t know anyone who has ever bought a club because a particular pro had it in his bag. Even casual weekenders know that pro’s clubs are not the ones consumers can buy at the store. And every so slightly more sophisticated players know that the pro’s clubs are absolutely not suited to their games. I’ll fall over backwards in a dead faint the next time I see a Tour pro pull out an off-the-shelf, game-improvement iron with a stock shaft.

In the reverse of advertiser expectations, every golfer I know bases his club selections on impressions at demo days, club fittings and recommendations of golfing buddies (I never miss a demo day and am a frequent source of feedback for my friends). We also do a lot of club swapping at the league (yes, I know it’s against the Rules, but who cares). One guy gets a new driver and twenty guys try it off the first tee; the next week, several of them have duplicates in their bags.

I’m absolutely convinced that the major golf companies would do better if their tour staff and channeled the extra money into other promotional activities. More field reps. More demo days at more courses. And more test equipment to bloggers (like me! ) 

How about this idea? Club manufacturers could set up a van at a busy local course and loan out sets for guys to try in place of their usual sticks. Put down a fully refundable deposit and take a new set on a four hour tour. Even if the player didn’t end up making a purchase, it would generate a lot of good word-of-mouth.

At PGA Tour events, company reps hover around the greens, trying to convince the pros to try their flat sticks. It’s a waste of money. Instead, I’d like to see a passel of field reps hovering around local greens with bags of putters for the players to try.

I’d like to take an informal poll here. How do YOU pick out the clubs you buy?

It’s one of the world’s most repressive regimes, the people starve and from space, North Korea is one of the few dark spots at night. But North Korea has got the resources to sponsor a amateur golf tournament. The North Korea Open debuts April 26-30, 2011 in Pyongyang.

Or does it? I’m not entirely convinced that this isn’t a joke.

It reminds me of a story from 2006 in which the North Korean propagandists claimed that their diminutive madman dictator Kim Jong Il had finished 38 under par in his first round of golf, including 5 holes in one.

ABC’s Jake Tapper reports on Obama’s Hawaiian vacation golf outing:

The president started his day as he has nearly every day this vacation with an early morning workout at the Marine Corps Base close to his Kailua rental home.

Afterward the president played another round of golf at Luana Hills country club in Kailua. His golfing companions were friends from Hawaii and Chicago, Bobby Titcomb, Mike Ramos, and Marty Nesbitt.

The president did not get in 18 holes today, due to darkness setting in at sunset, although the group played for over five hours.

Five hours and he didn’t finish? I doubt very seriously whether he was held up by the throngs of hackers that congest munis. He’s playing at a country club for heaven’s sake. If the trend on previous golf outings held, the Secret Service even cleared people out of the holes immediately in front and behind the presidential group.

Of course, the Bushs with their “speed golf” didn’t set a much better example. But all in all, much better to have fast bad golf than slow bad golf.

Nor Clinton with his cheating.

Makes me long for Eisenhower.

A few predictions for the New Year, in no particular order. Some are entirely serious. Others not so much.

1. Tiger will start winning again. Or he won’t. Either way, he’ll continue to be the biggest story in golf.
2. Tiger will return to his spot at World Number One. Even if he doesn’t break through with several wins, he’ll be close enough in enough tournaments to squeeze ahead by percentage points.
3. Sean Foley will make a fortune selling his name as Tiger’s coach.
4. Dustin Johnson will win a major.
5. There will be four different Major winners again this year. One of them won’t be Tiger. There’s just so much talent out there right now that I have a hard time seeing any one player become dominant.
6. Two of the major winners will be primarily European Tour players. That leaves me some wiggle room on the guys who play both tours.
7. UnderArmor will purchase Titleist from Fortune Brands. I have no information on this whatsoever, other than a feeling that it’s a great fit. I predicted it back when Fortune Brands first decided to spin off Titleist/Acushnet, and I stick to my guns.
8. Someone will shoot a round of 58 at a PGA Tour event. The 72-hole record (254) also will fall.
9. The PGA Tour will once again try to fix the FedEx Cup. It won’t work any better than the last few fixes
10. Tiger will get a girlfriend—the more or less permanent kind. It’ll be part of his image rehabilitation program. It won’t last.
11. Hollywood will announce its intention to remake Caddyshack. Hey, if they can remake True Grit, anything is fair game.
12. Lorena Ochoa will return to golf.
13. Julie Inkster will win a Major.
14. Phil Mickelson’s health issues will turn out to be worse than we thought. He’ll continue to struggle.
15. There will be another serious rules scandal. I just don’t think that the new generation of players has ever paid much attention to the rules. It’ll cost someone.
16. The white club fad will quickly burn out—I hope. I understand it on putters. Not so much on drivers.
17. A Tour player will start using a colored golf ball. Since Srixon is pushing the optic yellow, I think it’ll be one of their staff.
18. The next big thing in clubs will be forged game improvement irons.
19. At least one manufacturer will continue to make clubs with the now-banned grooves.
20. In a golf ball arms race, one manufacturer will offer a six layer ball.
21. The average golf score will continue to hover around 100.
22. Your friendly neighborhood Golf Blogger will break 80 twice in a single season.