After my move to New Orleans, one of my biggest problems is the lack of access to "The Golf Channel." When I can play in December this year (which isn't so easy back in Pittsburgh), I probably won't be too disappointed.
With limited golf programming available to me, I have turned back to golf films to fill the void. No regrets there.
Tonight, I dusted off my copy of "Caddyshack," which of course features the talents of Bill Murray, the late Rodney Dangerfield, and Chevy Chase. Now that Chevy is back in comedy (he plays a prominent role in NBC's new series "Community"), I guess I was motivated to enjoy his younger days once more.
Naturally, I loved "Caddyshack" as much as I always did, and it wasn't a bad way to spend a rainy Friday night.
An aside: this is the 798th ZealousGolfer.com post ever. We are two away from the big 800.
Last season, Hank Haney, coach of Tiger Woods, took on what was perhaps the most challenging student he ever faced: notorious hacker and basketball legend Charles Barkley. Of course, this project was chronicled on the Golf Channel.
TGC will be bringing the series back with a new celebrity face: comedian and actor Ray Romano. In case you haven't seen it, Romano's swing, unlike Barkley's, does not resemble some unnatural combination of a seizure and wood chopping. In fact, Romano's goal is to lower his 13 handicap and finally break 80.
As Paris Hilton and John McCain agreed, President-elect Barack Obama is one of this year's biggest celebrities. Like any great celeb' (politician or otherwise), his trip to Hawaii this week aroused public interest.
Obama, whose golf game has taken the backseat in the press to his interest in basketball over the past few months, was seen playing during his vacation.
Unfortunately, Obama's scorecard was not released. As an advocate of transparency, I think the public has a right to know!
For those of you curious about the state of the next President's game,
The Telegraph reports: "Although he teed off in Hawaii with a strong drive, assessments of the standard of his game are mixed. Golf Digest reported in March that his handicap was a very respectable 16 - just behind President George W. Bush, who plays off 15. But his spokesman Robert Gibbs said in June that Mr. Obama and others 'went to a golf course, and they swung golf clubs, but I don't think it was real pretty.'"
Fortunately,
the Huffington Post was able to snag an interview with the employee at the halfway shack. They state, "a snack clerk later confirmed that he purchased two hot dogs, two spam musubi, two passion orange sodas, one Powerade and one coke, for a tab of $17.75."
Hopefully more information about Obama's game will be revealed shortly.
Remember the name: Jason Hak. Hak, 14 years, 304 days old, has become the youngest player to make the cut of a professional golf tournament. He shot a 70 in two consecutive rounds at the $2.5 million Hong Kong Open.
Although Hak was born in Hong Kong, he makes his home in Orlando, FL. He said he has no immediate plans to turn pro.
GolfDigest.com recently sat down with Jerome Bettis (pictured left), former star running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers, to talk about his golf game.
Though Bettis claims to shoot around an 85, he stated that his all-time low score came at Augusta National last May after shooting an 82.
If that story is true, Bettis may deserve a spot in Golf Digest's U.S. Open celebrity foursome.
Once again, it seems that former football players are the most likely of all professional athletes to gravitate toward golf.
Two years ago, Tiger Woods claimed that a 10 handicap would not break 100 at Oakmont Country Club in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania under U.S. Open conditions. Last year, Golf Digest decided to test Tiger's claim by placing four amateur golfers under tournament conditions at San Diego's Torrey Pines.
Golf Digest will bring back this competition as four players - three celebrities and an amateur selected through an essay contest - take on Bethpage Black before the U.S. Open.
Though the celebrity players have not been officially announced yet,
GolfChannel.com reports that Michael Jordan and Justin Timberlake will join the competition.
Of course, this is the second time Jordan made national headlines this week. The
Wall Street Journal recently released a video of Jordan losing in a game of one-on-one at a basketball camp in Las Vegas to CEO John Rogers:
Perhaps Jordan should stick to golf.
The World Golf Hall of Fame in Saint Augustine, FL has a new class of six inductees today. Among golf's elite is 82 year old, Pete Dye (lifetime achievement), who has been designing world class golf courses for 50 years. He has designed more than 200 golf courses on four continents. 120 U.S. PGA Tour, LPGA Tour, Ryder Cup and Solheim Cup events have been held on Dye's courses.
This year's class also includes New Zealand's Bob Charles (veterans category), the first left-h
ander to win a major, the 1963 British Open; Denny Shute (veterans category), who won three majors in the 1930s; Carol Semple Thompson (lifetime achievement), one of only five people to win three different U.S. Golf Association individual championships; Craig Wood (PGA Tour ballot), a two- time major winner who became the first wire-to-wire winner of the Masters Tournament (pictured left) in 1941; and Herbert Warren Wind (lifetime achievement), who spent 43 years writing about golf for the New Yorker and Sports Illustrated magazines.
The New York Times answers a very interesting question about what happened to the golf ball hit by the astronaut on the moon.
Alan Shepard, who was the first American in space, hit the ball on the Apollo 14 mission of 1971 and the balls are still on the moon.
With NASA's permission, Shepard designed a club head to fit onto the handle of a device the astronauts used to scoop up dust samples. He hit two golf balls before climbing up the ladder to return to Earth.
Shepard admits he shanked the first ball and it went into a crater 40 yards away. The second ball was different. He estimates it would have gone about 30 yards on Earth. However, because there is no atmospher on the Moon, it went 200 yards.
At the time, he was quoted as saying the ball went "miles and miles and miles."
The clubhead is currently on display at the US Golf Association Hall of Fame in New Jersey.
Just like Justin Timberlake and George Lopez, Wayne Gretzky, aka THE GREAT ONE, will now host a golf tournament, The Ford Wayne Gretzky Classic. It will be played June 26 - 29 at the Georgian Bay Club and the Raven Golf Club at Lora Bay (near Toronto).
The event is part of the Nationwide Tour.
Gretzky and his wife, Janet, (whom he admits is the better golfer) recently sold their Lake Sherwood, CA home for $18.5 million. The couple and their five children had lived in the seven bedroom home with nearly seven acres. It featured a swimming pool, tennis court and two guest houses. They have a home in Arizona where he co-owns and coaches the Phoenix Coyotes.
Gretzky has also ventured into wine making with Creekside Estate Winery in Niagra Falls, Canada.
Donald Trump has to hold his breath until Tuesday to find out if Councillors in Aberdeenshire (a city planning board) will give him permission to build Trump International Golf Links Scotland.
Trump has been quoted as saying it will be "the greatest golf course in the world." That, of course, remains to be seen. He has pledged one billion pounds (equal to be about 2.03 billion American dollars) to build the resort.
Trump has taken out ads touting the support of several high profile businessmen. The support is featured on the corporate website as well. However, 150 people plan to march in protest prior to the vote. They are unhappy because part of the planned resort at Mill of Menie near Balmedie will be built on specially protected land.
One local salmon farmer, Michael Forbes, has refused to sell his 23 acres of land to Trump despite an offer of $900,000. Trump, of course, downplayed the importance of the land. He said, "We want him to be a good neighbor and maintain his property properly," Trump continued. He described Forbes' land as "not a farm, really, but a compound with rusting tractors that look like they haven't been started for years, rusting cans, and it's something that should be taken care of by him.
"It's disgusting," Trump said.
The resort, if approved, would feature two 18 hole golf courses, a 450 room, 5-story hotel, 950 vacation homes , 36 golf villas and 500 upscale homes. Trump's organization has estimated that the resort would create at least 1,000 permanent jobs and inject $47 million into the local economy every year. Locals question what type of jobs would be created, assuming that some are minimal wage positions providing various services to wealthy tourists.
Trump's late mother was from the Scottish island of Lewis.
Justin Timberlake will host a Las Vegas PGA Tour Event. It will be renamed Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals for Children Open.
It is a five year agreement that will begin in 2008. Timberlake becomes the 14th celebrity to host a golf event. The event is played in October after the FedEx Cup Challenge.
Tiger Woods will be building a home at the private golf course, Al Ruwaya, that he is designing in Dubai. His home will be more than 16,000 square feet and will include a gym, theatre, library and swimming pool.
His new home will be small, though, compared to the 22 palaces planned which feature ten to twelve bedrooms and 33,000 square feet of living space. The exclusive community will feature 287 home sites.
Bloomberg reports that "the Al Ruwaya course is the first for Tiger Woods Design, a Windermere, Florida-based company headed by Woods, who has won 61 times on the U.S. PGA Tour. Woods, who lives in Florida with his wife, Elin, and their daughter, Sam, announced plans in August to design his first U.S. course near Asheville, North Carolina, as part of a new residential community."
The Terminator, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, have announced this year's inductees to the California Hall of Fame. Among them is Tiger Woods.
The Hall of Fame honors "extraordinary Californians who embody the state's innovative spirit and have made their mark on history." The ceremony will be December 5, 2007.
Others being honored include Ansel Adams, Milton Berle, Steve Jobs, Willie Mays, Robert Mondavi, Rita Moreno, Jackie Robinson, Jonas Salk, John Steinbeck, Elizabeth Taylor, Earl Warren and John Wayne.
Given that Rita Moreno was born in Puerto Rico (and a cousin to one of my cousins), and Dr. Salk was born in New York City and developed the polio vaccine in my home city of Pittsburgh, PA, apparently the honorees just needed to have resided in California -- don't have to be born there. I guess we all have a chance!
Hank Kuehne, from Dallas, Texas, has been romantically linked to Venus Williams, who won her fourth Wimbledon Women's title this summer. Williams is looking to win her third US Open title this month.
Williams was seen supporting Kuehne at the Byron Nelson Championship where he, ultimately, missed the cut. Kuehne sat in Williams' guest box at Wimbledon.
Keuhne has played in three PGA events this year, missed the cut each time and pocketed no money. He has earned nearly $2.7 million in his career, having turned pro in 1999. In 2007, playing in three Nationwide Tour events, he has earned $8.518. Kuehne is divorced and has a one year old son.
Williams earned $1.8 million for her Wimbledon win.
A few months ago, I wrote about Jacqueline Gagne, who had an uncanny run of luck -- at that time she had had 11 holes-in-one in 2007. I ran a google check of her today to see if her luck continued.
Despite falling out of public interest for a short time, Gagne is now at
sixteen aces.
Sweet Sixteen came last week (July 13th) on the 7th hole at Cobra-Malibu Country Club. It is a 153 yard hole and she was using a 5 iron.
Gagne is 46 years old and started playing golf regularly in 2003. The odds of her achieving this are 133 sextillion to one. Every hole-in-one has been authenticated by other players. More than 50 people have been witness to her skill.
In early July, Gagne was playing at Eagle Falls Golf Course in Indio, CA. While she did not have a hole-in-one that day, she shot a women's course record of 66.
She is now writing a book to be published by summer's end called Turning up Aces.
Donald Trump certainly knows the art of the deal.
Two weeks ago, he walked away from purchasing Running Horse Golf and Country Club for $40 million. He could not agree with current owner Mick Evans on how to classify legitimate operational expenses after the property sale.
14 days later, Trump is getting the property for $30 million cash. Even better, he won't have to share the profits.
Donald Trump had announced plans for a bankrupt golf course: Running Horse Golf and Country Club in Fresno, California. However, the $40 million deal is now off.
The 464 acre gated community was to have a golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus, a 30,000 square foot clubhouse and more than 700 upscale homes.
The course was originally scheduled to host a PGA Tour event in the later part of the season, but the bankruptcy of Running Horse LLC led to the course not being completed on time.
Some of the nation's top golfers will be spending the Fourth of July at the White House, watching fireworks in the nation's capitol from the balcony of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Among those on the guest list are Tiger Woods, Fred Funk, Charles Howell III, Justin Leonard, Davis Love III and Phil Mickelson. Guests will also celebrate President George Bush's 61st birthday which takes place on July 6.
Funk came up with a terrific birthday gift for the President. His equipment maker, Taylormade, designed a tour bag with the Presidential Seal, the President's name and "43" on the side.
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After my move to New Orleans, one of my biggest problems is the lack of access to "The Golf Channel." When I can play in December this year (which isn't so easy back in Pittsburgh), I probably won't be too disappointed. 
