The Rory McIlroy-Fest

(Photo by J.D. Cuban, for Golf Digest.) These are the clubs that new PGA Championship champion, Rory McIlroy, had in his bag as of three years ago, according to Golf Digest. With his new victory, he can probably afford quite an upgrade, and this just in time for the Ryder Cup in Medinah, where he’s clearly destined by European captain Jose Marie Olazabal to play a central role on the European squad.

The PGA Championship at Kiawah Island, South Carolina, ended with a non-climactic finish yesterday afternoon.

I was playing some golf of my own up in north Texas with my father, so I got to watch the final round of the PGA once I returned home to Austin.

And when I watch the final round of a major, I can tell you I typically watch the whole round, start to finish, which is at least four hours.

I also had to place myself in a news blackout starting around 3 PM CST.

Driving south back to Austin, I realized the radio news might give the winner away, so I turned Puccini’s “Tosca” on my iPhone and listened to it while navigating the slow southbound traffic.

Once home I warmed up the DVR and settled in, and I quickly realized the last round was about to become another Rory McIlroy-fest. If you saw what he did in the U.S. Open at Congressional last summer, you realize all Rory needs is a little winding up in those high performance gears before he starts golfing like a phenom, and that’s what happened yesterday afternoon on Kiawah Island.

Yes, Carl Petterson, and Adam Scott, and even Tiger Woods, weren’t completely out of the mix after finishing the third round and moving on to the fourth and final round in the late morning.

But Rory was like a fine BMW sedan whose upper end just needs a little punch of the gas to speed up and settle in to the highway, leaving everyone else in its dust.

Also, it wasn’t just one part of his game that was making the difference, as is often the case with a championship caliber player.

Rory’s drives were threading the waves of the Ocean Course, his mid-irons were mostly finding their targets with great precision, and when they weren’t that close, his putter was picking up the slack.

He simply looked like Tiger Woods in his hey day — and as we saw at Congressional, when he gets wound up like that, he simply can’t be stopped and is playing a whole different level of golf than we mere mortals.

For all those who’ve been watching the Olympics in London these past two weeks, and marveling at the performances of all the great athletes…well, that’s kind of how many of we golf fans feel when we watch Rory (or any great player) turning it on in a round like that.

By the way, Rory broke yet another record, one that belonged to Jack Nicklaus: The largest margin of victory in a PGA Championship (his was seven, and McIlroy’s yesterday was 8, at 13 under).

In the PGATour.com’s wrap-up, Tiger Woods summed up McIlroy’s potential as a player like this: “When he gets going, it’s pretty impressive to watch.”

Uh, yeah, ya think?  But I guess coming from the former world number one, those are still potent words.

So, congratulations, Rory.  You were a tour de force in a major once again, and if you play anywhere that well in the Ryder Cup, the U.S. has that much less of a chance in taking back the Cup.

Regardless, Medinah’s going to be some seriously compelling, but nerve-wracking golf.

Golfing For Gold

To my fellow lovers of the links: All this London Olympics fervor has been slowly sinking in, and as I watched Jim Furyk hand Keegan Bradley the keys to the WGC-Bridgestone kingdom on the 18th green this past Sunday, it reached a fever pitch: Golf is coming back to the Olympics.

A brief bit of history is in order: The last time golf was featured in a Summer Olympic Games, Henry Ford’s Model T had not yet come off a production line.

Yes, it’s been that long.  1904, in fact.

Canada’s George Lyon was the last Olympian male to take a gold medal in golf.

When golf returns to the Summer Olympics in 2016 in Rio after a 112 year hiatus, it will be a much welcomed return for golf fans around the globe.

The International Golf Federation (IGF), which is the governing body overseeing golf’s return to the Olympics, proposed a 72-hole stroke play tournament for both the men and womens’ events in 2016, with a 3-hole playoff in the event of a tie.

Eligibility for the tournament would be determined by IGF rankings, with the top 15 players being eligible regardless of country, and then the next 45 players representing countries that didn’t already have two representatives.

And if you’re curious as to the designer, and designer, for the Rio Olympics course, check out this article on 48 year-old golf architect Gil Hanse, a “traditionalist” course designer known for his work at TPC Boston and Castle Stuart in Inverness, Scotland.

***

As to the FedExCup Standings thus far, after Bridgestone, Tiger Woods is still in the lead.  The next several behind him include Zach Johnson, Jason Dufner, Hunter Mahan, and Bubba Watson, all of whom are pretty much neck in neck.  Bradley jumped up to 7th place after his victory.

This week’s PGA Championship at the Ocean Course in Kiawah Island, South Carolina, has some big stakes — and I don’t just mean the PGA Championship trophy.

The Ryder Cup is just around the corner in Medinah, and U.S. Ryder Cup captain Davis Love III will not only be playing the PGA — he’ll be scouting his captain’s picks.

PGATour.Com has Phil Mickelson “on the bubble,” and explains players like Zach Johnson, Steve Stricker, and Hunter Mahan will be right on his tail.

The PGA Championship is the season’s last official major, but with the Ryder Cup looming ahead, there’s still plenty of great golf to be enjoyed before football season takes over (and baseball winds into the playoffs).

***

Turbo recently invested in a TaylorMade “Rocketballz” driver to fill out his golf bag, and based on his experiences thus far, swears that everything they’re saying in the TV commercials thus far is true!

As for my own game, I have to admit, the Taylor Made Rocketballz driver I recently bought has been a godsend.

I played a course in Frisco, Texas, this past weekend that required some serious needle threading off the tee box. Normally, I would be paranoid about such tight drives, and would panic hit them left, right…everywhere but center.

But with a minor swing adjustment where I keep my elbows closer to my body through my swing, I hit 13 out of 14 fairways this weekend (Note: I didn’t have to use my driver on the par 3s, thankfully 🙂 ), with most going straight and long…I’d say an average of 15-25 yards longer than normal.

Straight and long, the most beautiful phrase in golf.

However, I’ve plateaued in my mid-iron game, and could also use some help around the greens, so I’ve decided to take a golf school vacation.

I’ve been thinking about it for years, but it’s time to commit. The Academy of Golf Dynamics is located right here in Austin, and despite the 100+ heat, I’m hopeful the three-day course will help me work out those few kinks that are really keeping me from consistently lowering my score.

Their Web literature indicates that most players who follow their guidance and do the follow-up work achieve a 25% reduction in their handicap.  I spoke with one of the instructors there on the phone, and he explained the summer workshops don’t quite fill up as much as the spring, so if I’m willing to beat the Texas heat, I’ll get more than my fair share of personal instruction.

I’m certainly going to give it a try.  Golf is something you can never master, but it IS certainly something you can always improve upon. And for those of you who play consistently, you know that improving and hitting those masterful shots you always knew you could hit in your mind is what keeps you coming back for more.

So, I’ll be sure to take some notes in case any of you out there are considering such an investment and let you know how it goes.

Right after the three days of the workshop, my 70 year-old, 10 handicap father (I’m a 13), is coming in to town and we’re going to take a week straight and play some of the best courses in and around Austin to see if my investment in the workshop will have paid off!

Moving forward, I’m also going to try and more consistently use an iPhone app (“Golfshot GPS”) to track my play so that I can better understand precisely where and how I’m losing the most strokes.

Business analytics on the golf course?  Hey, whatever it takes.

Google Motorola: The Razr’s Edge?

I’m back from vacation, but judging from news the last week, I should have stayed at the beach!

Actually, returning home over the weekend wasn’t all bad, as I had the opportunity to see the PGA Championship play out in real time, and the final major of the year was a golfing feast. 

Tiger Woods missed the cut (one of the rare times) on Friday, and through the weekend PGA Tour newbie Keegan Bradley outplayed Jason Duffner in a three-hole playoff to win his first PGA tournament AND major.  It was some breathtaking stuff at the Atlanta Athletic Club, the last four holes of which would terrify even the most seasoned of golfers.

There was little such drama in other sports news, as the English Premier League kicked off its season over the weekend in spite of the recent riots in London. 

Last year’s EPL winner Manchester United came out roaring with a 2-1 win over West Bromwich (with striker Wayne Rooney making the first goal of the season for Man U…but not likely his last). I’m very happy to have English football back in action, even as American football season is around the corner.

But now it’s Monday, and it’s back to business –- particularly if you’re the Google, which this morning did some headline terrorizing of its own as it announced its $12+ billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility.

We’ll get to the substance of the deal in a moment, but let’s concentrate, for a moment, shall we, on form: Google CEO Larry Page made the announcement via a blog post in “The Official Google Blog.”

That’s what I love about Google.  No big fanfare or fancy hotels. 

Just a simple blog post from the CEO: Oh yeah, by the way, we’re making the largest acquisition we’ve made to date (nearly four times as large as their acquisition of DoubleClick), and we’re making it in a blog post and on a conference call.

No need for fancy hotel conference rooms and F2F hobnobbing with the press -– I’ve got a company to run and a major deal to oversee, and other bloggers will do the job for me in getting the word out!

So, what’s the general spin thus far?

• This deal gives Google its own hardware play for the smartphone set, even as it strengthens Google’s ability to fend of patent wars by its competition by giving it control of the Motorola Android patent portfolio
• Google gains some enterprise credibility as it works to marginalize RIM and Windows Phone 7, and Microsoft is left without a hardware partner at the mobility dance (and could be compelled to outright buy Nokia)
• Google gets the added juice of Motorola’s cable TV platform, which considering the recent plight of Google TV, could be an added boost to help Google with its CATV advertising platform (although content licensing will continue to be an issue)

Questions inevitably arise as to whether or not the deal will past regulatory muster, but ReadWriteWeb’s Dan Rowinski suggests it will, mainly due to Apple’s incredibly strong position in the smartphone space. 

He writes:

There is no way that regulators can look at what Google makes from Android, the worldwide smartphone market and the juggernaut that Apple has become and say that Google’s acquisition of Motorola is in any way anti-competitive.

Will the deal be good for consumers?  In the short-term position, and strictly from a competitive standpoint, probably so.

But I sense another platform war heating up, one which is reminiscent of the OS wars of the late 1990s. 

Only this time, due to the proprietary nature of mobile smartphone and handset providers –- combined with the fact that the only viable options are iOS and Android (Windows Phone 7 and RIM QNX are way behind in smartphone share, by comparison) -– consumers may soon face a kind of Hobson’s choice, albeit with two choices as opposed to one.

In that scenario, consumers ultimately lose, because four choices would be better than two. 

But, the marketplace has spoken, and the race is on: iOS v. Android.  May the best platform win…but not by too much!