A suburb of Indianapolis, Indiana is hoping to attract an LPGA event.
“We’ve put our toe in the water,” a city official in Lawrence told the Indianapolis Star.
The event would be played at the state-owned Fort Golf Course, a former military track that was redesigned by Pete Dye and Tim Liddy in the late 1990s. The LPGA Tour, which is eager to expand its presence in the Midwest, appears to be intrigued. “It certainly is an attractive market for us,” acknowledged a tour administrator. Before negotiations can get serious, however, the city needs to line up a title sponsor willing to make a three-year commitment, most likely at $3 million a year.
• Those neo-classic and links courses that are popping up everywhere are having an unforeseen and welcome effect on our nation’s golf operations: As walking becomes the preferred manner of play, caddies are making a comeback. Lawrence Yacht & Country Club, on Long Island, is among the U.S. golf properties that are trying to establish caddie programs, in an effort to promote the health benefits of golf, create a few jobs and develop a pipeline for new players. “Few innovations have done more damage to a game than the motorized cart has done to golf,” Bill Morris writes in the New York Times. Clearly, this is one in a series of back-to-the-future moments that golf has experienced in recent years. My question: How big a niche can caddying carve out in a business that relies so much on income from cart rentals?
• What do Donald Trump, Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito and Marc Anthony have in common? They play with custom-made, hand-crafted, gold- and platinum-plated Japanese clubs that cost $75,000 a set. They’re supposed to improve performance. But if they’re all they’re cracked up to be, why don’t the pros use them?
