I have been watching the Match Play Championships today on The Golf Channel, and just saw an ad for the Big Break. And at that moment, it occurred to me that the fix for that insipid show is right under TGC’s nose.

The problem for me has always been that the interpersonal drama that the producers of The Big Break so desperately want is completely absent in the current format.  Because elimination is determined by individual skill challenges, there is no reason for any of the golfers to even talk TO each other, let alone talk about each other. They can love each other or hate each other, and it has no effect on the outcome.  That’s why, to me, the entire production seems so contrived.

What they need to do is to restructure the Big Break as a series of team events—sort of like a mini Ryder Cup each week. They could base it all on nine holes, if they wanted to speed it up and keep production costs down. The golfers would (as with Survivor) be initially divided into two squads. And each week, the losing team would be forced to vote out one of its members. Presumably, the team would vote out its weakest link. But they might also vote out someone who simply irritates the others, regardless of skill.

And that’s where, finally, the interpersonal drama would have some meaning.

If the teams were uneven because of attrition, the larger team would have someone sit out. The same person couldn’t sit out twice.

The show would be made more interesting as the show highlighted the various types of golf games available: match, twosomes, scramble. They could even come up with some original ones.

Each week would begin, however, with a skills challenge. The winner would get a “mulligan” (immunity), regardless of whether he ultimately on the winning or losing team. That would create some additional interpersonal conflict. If a player already has the mulligan, and doesn’t play up to the team’s expectations, she’d be under a lot of fire from the others. Imagine the comments: “We would have won, but she already had a mulligan and didn’t earn her share of the points. She’s a quitter and I hate her.”

At some point, the teams would be small enough that they’d be merged. Then, the players would be reassigned in different (random) pairs each week. The winning pair would get immunity. The others would be on the chopping block.

Of course, every other week, there wold be an uneven number of players. In that case, the player with the Skills Challenge mulligan would sit out. She would be immune from expulsion anyway.

When down to the last three, it would become a straight match play event.

John Huggan of The Scotsman has a Christmas wish list for golf.

I read the Scotsman’s golf clumns to get a perspective from somethere other than the United States. In this one, US golf takes a real beating. Huggan suggests a World Tour minus the US; accuses the US Open of being “tedious”; calls for a drought in the US (be careful there; we grow a substantial portion of the world’s food supply) to make our courses more interesting and tells us to ditch the golf carts.

In that last, at least, I agree with him.

I’m sure that everyone out there is SO THRILLED by The Golf Channel’s “Big Break” shows that you can’t wait for the next golf based reality show. Not to worry. It’s coming.

The Golf Channel is currently seeking participants for its newest brainchild: a reality show in which inventors will showcase their new golf products.

Actually, this sounds like it could be a whole lot better than The Big Break—a show which I find so insufferable that I cringe even when I see a commercial for it. It could be especially fun if some of the participants were zany mad scientist types.

You can get information on the new show here.

“It’s not a pleasant thing to shoot 79, but I deserved every stroke.”

- Tom Watson, after shooting a 79 on the final day of the Senior PGA Championship

I’ve speculated that The Masters would be the first tournament to go to a standardized ball, but it seems that the Ohio Golf Association will beat them to the punch.

GolfWeek is reporting that the Ohio Golf Association will use a standardized ball in the Ohio Champions Tournament this August. Golfweek reports that

Although OGA executive director Jim Popa is quick to point out that the tournament ball “is not a short ball, but rather a uniform ball,” it doesn’t take much imagination to understand what the OGA is doing.

Alan Fadel, a former PGA Tour player who has been a reinstated amateur for almost 20 years, is chairman of the OGA ball committee.

“We haven’t chosen the exact ball yet,” Fadel said, “but we are leaning to one that optimizes (distance efficiency off the tee) between 100 and 105 miles per hour (driver swing speed). The ball is not going to benefit somebody at 120 (mph) the way the current ball does. We are trying to achieve a little more equality, that’s all. The guy who swings 120 will still hit it farther than most of the other players, but not quite so far.

I have to say that I’m conflicted over this standardized ball thing. On the one hand, it does seem that the ability to fine tune the ball has given an oversized advantage to the big hitters. But on the other, I wonder if they should be penalized just because they’re good enough to take advantage of that technology.

It still seems to me that the thing to do is to narrow the fairways or let the rough grow deeper. I’ve read that four inch rough will just about force every player to try to get the ball in the fairway. The lie, otherwise, is too risky.

But this thing with the ball bears watching.

This isn’t anything like Ben Hogan’s “secret.” In fact, George Archer’s secret doesn’t have anything to do with golf.  You see, the Master’s Champion (who passed away in 2005) was unable to read. The problem went undiagnosed throughout his life, but likely was dyslexia and a non verbal learning disability.

In a heartbreaking article in Golf for Women, his wife tells of the efforts that they went through to both hide, and cope with, his problem. She read the mail and the contracts, filled out the tournament entry forms, paid all the bills, read the road maps and the local rules sheets. Archer avoided endorsemetns because he was afraid that he might have to read something; he apparently was worried that some fan would ask him to personalize an autograph.

I know a thing or two about coping with a handicap. With a “profound” hearing loss since birth, I have developed numerous defensive strategies for coping in the hearing world. Most people never realize that anything is wrong, since I have become a master lipreader (although my school-for-the-deaf-manufactured speech does apparently sound a little odd to most—but people always tell me they just thought it was a regional accent). And my life has gotten a lot easier since I’ve been married. My wife orders for me in noisy restaurants, makes phone calls and generally runs interference whenever possible.

I’m not an emotional guy (just ask my wife. It’s her biggest complaint), but the Archer story got me. You should give it a read.

I thought that reality tv was last year’s news. And I was hoping that—given how bad The Golf Channel’s “Big Break” is—that no one would try another golf reality series. But it seems that the folk at PAX television have other ideas. Starting Jan 23, PAX will be running seven episodes of a new golf reality series: The WGL Million Dollar Shootout.

In it, five teams of four golfers will compete for a million dollar prize. They’ll play in a scramble format for 72 holes, with handicaps figured in. Scoring will be kept by a point system, similar to the Stableford, in which they receive 8 points for a double eagle, 6 for Eagle, 4 for Birdie, 2 for Par 1 for bogey, 0 for double bogey, and minus 1 for a triple. Team handicaps will be determined by dividing the team total by 4.