Golf Canada has named its 2015 National and Development Team through a press release distributed to Canadian media Thursday morning at 10 a.m.
The team, now in its 9th year, will be comprised of 19 young men and women from across Canada (10 males, nine females) and will once again be coached by Tristan Mullally and Derek Ingram.
Continue reading “Golf Canada names its 2015 National and Development Team”
Many stories have been told about Brooke Henderson in 2014, but, to my knowledge, I was the only one to go and visit her in her hometown of Smiths Falls, Ont.
I watched her hit balls in a sideways rain, and long after I left, she was still hitting.
Even with a meteoric rise to fame, Henderson says she doesn’t feel pressure from anyone in town. Everyone stops to say hello to her, because to them, she’s still their “Brookie.”
“I don’t feel pressure, even though they all know who I am,” explains Henderson. “I do things for myself, and I don’t feel like I get pushed at all.”
When I wrote the story, she told me she wanted to get her University degree. This was before one of the best seasons by a Canadian amateur in recent memory (let alone a 16-year-old one. She’s 17 now).
You can read the whole story in SCOREGolf.
After round one of the RBC Canadian Open in July, it was Canadian Taylor Pendrith who was grabbing headlines. His monstrous drives and his “aw, shucks” attitude had won the crowd over. He’d go on to win Low Amateur.
Pendrith attributes his power to being a multi-sport athlete growing up, playing hockey and baseball. “I was a good hitter and I threw the ball pretty hard,” Pendrith explains. “It was really late when I figured out I could be pretty good at golf. I wanted to go to the States for baseball and get a scholarship because I was way better at baseball than I was at golf at the time.
You can read the whole story on Sportsnet’s website.
Prior to the official beginning of the 2014 PGA Merchandise Show, TaylorMade-adidas hosted an event for approximately 1,000 industry professionals where CEO Mark King, Ted Bishop (the president of the PGA of America), Joe Beditz (CEO of the National Golf Foundation) and Gary Hamel (renowned “business thinker”) made a presentation introducing a new initiative called Hack Golf.
Hack Golf is crowd-sourced platform where the general golfing public can submit their ideas on how they think the game can be improved or changed.
“Innovation stalls when the same people keep talking to each other about the same challenge over and over,” said Hamel in a press release to the media. “We need to open the conversation up to a wider audience instead of continuing to try and innovate in the same ineffective vacuum.”
In about a month since its inception, the Hack Golf movement has acquired nearly 2,000 followers on Twitter and 420 likes on Facebook. Smaller numbers than they had hoped, perhaps (TaylorMade by comparison has 161,000 followers on Twitter and 371,000 likes on Facebook), but over 750 ideas have been submitted. The most popular idea right now is a pretty good one – it’s basically a proposal of an app that allows golfers to meet up with others in their area – and I can see TaylorMade-adidas getting behind it (they are committing $5 million over the next five years towards the most popular experiments that come from the site).
The conversation has started.
But what is maybe more surprising, Hack Golf has started a trend of other golf organizations and publications asking golfers what they love about the game.
Where Hack Golf is asking what people would like to see changed, Golf Canada, ESPN and Golf Digest are asking the golfing public to speak proudly about the game as-is.
Do you love golf? Then Tweet at @TheGolfCanada using the hashtag #WhyILoveGolf
Snap a great photo of a golf course and post it to Instagram or Twitter? Golf Digest asks that you use the hashtag #WhyILoveThisGame
And hey, they’re even adding a contest element. Share your photos and you have a chance to win a trip to the 2015 AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.
ESPN just announced a new video series and campaign called “Falling For Golf” where they have (you guessed it) asked golfers to submit their stories using Twitter and the hashtag #FallingForGolf explaining how they got into the game.
These are some of the biggest organizations in golf in Canada and the U.S. And I’d argue, are a little more trustworthy to the general public than a multi-million dollar corporation.
ESPN, Golf Canada and Golf Digest are trying to become part of the conversation, while Hack Golf is trying to change it.
But maybe nothing needs to be changed?
Michael Bamberger, the long-time Sports Illustrated and GOLF Magazine writer said it best in a recent column.
“If your goal is to grow the game, you have to start with the premise that the game is great. You have to have confidence in your game, basically as it is. Should it be faster? Yes. Should it be less expensive? Yes. Should your ball be easier to find? Yes. Should shirttails come out? It doesn’t matter. Should making a par on any hole, for any golfer, anywhere, remain the challenge it has always been? Absolutely. Some will be drawn to that. Most will not. That’s our exclusivity. That’s why we are a band of golfers. We are not in the mainstream. We are different. The game is what it is.”
The game’s fun. Cool. Exciting. Frustrating. It’s a lot of different things to a lot of different people. If it needs to be changed, then there’s now a platform for your voice to be heard. But don’t change it for the sake of changing it. It’s pretty good just the way it is.
Adam Stanley 