PING Kong
Many years ago I had the privilege of spending several days at PING Golf's headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona. The Solheim family, which founded PING Golf back in 1959, graciously treated me and a few other lucky golf professionals to the grand tour of their facility. We also had the pleasure of spending many hours with their golf club designers, learning about the physics of golf and golf club design, which was like eating key lime pie and grits for days on end for someone like me. In other words, it was sheer bliss.
One of the most startling revelations during the whole experience was that PING Golf, one of the most successful golf companies in the world, does not consider themselves a golf company. They consider themselves an engineering company that happens to make golf clubs. This ensures every product they make is designed first and foremost to function at the highest level without letting aesthetics get in the way. Most golf company's wouldn't even consider sacrificing flashy appearances for performance. But, as they made clear to us, PING isn't actually a golf company; they're an engineering company that happens to make golf clubs.
PING applies this same approach to helping golfers lower their scores, although there was one time when they ultimately had to bow to the irrational demands of their customers.
Karsten Solheim, the founder of PING Golf, scientifically researched how golf equipment could lower golfers' scores. One thing his research revealed was that golfers scored better when they hit the ball straight, even if they had to sacrifice some distance to do so. This led PING Golf to put very stiff steel shafts in all of their irons, regardless of a golfer's swing speed. They did this because the "whippier” the golf shaft, the more difficult it is to hit a golf ball straight, not to mention solidly. Imagine trying to play golf with a rope as a golf shaft and you'll get the picture. The downside to using a very rigid shaft is that the ball doesn't travel as far. Imagine using a golf shaft with the rigidity of a piece of rebar and you get the picture.
Everything was going along smoothly until other golf companies started promoting longer golf shots using more flexible shafts. They made sure not to mention that more flexible shafts would merely help golfers hit the ball farther into the trees, or water, or rough, or whichever wayward locale they typically found themselves. PING customers picked up on this and started demanding more flexible shafts. The company tried in vain to educate their golfers that more flexible shafts might help them hit the occasional shot further down the fairway, but that infrequent benefit would be more than offset by the increased number of mishits and wayward shots caused by highly flexible shafts. The net result of using very flexible shafts would be higher scores. But the majority of golfers didn't want to hear about lower scores; they wanted to hear about hitting the ball further, even if it did mean further into the lake or trees. In the end PING had to acquiesce to their customers' demands and offer product options that they knew would have a detrimental impact on their customers' scores.
To this day, promises of longer golf shots sell better than promises of straighter golf shots. I think that's at the heart of why golfers' average handicaps haven't changed in the last 50 years. Kinda makes you wonder.
Long Wayward Jon
The fascination with distance is also at the heart of something a friend of mine did one day on the 2nd hole at Bent Tree Golf Club, where I was the golf professional at the time.
The 2nd hole at Bent Tree Golf Club runs parallel to Highway 6. It's a tee shot that demands precision, not distance. Regardless of what the shot demanded, my friend Jon, who was enamored with distance, pulled out his driver and let loose with his characteristic haymaker golf swing. He abolutely crushed the ball, which sailed so far left that it completely flew over Highway 6 and into the corn field on the other side, which was out of bounds and thus incurred a stroke-and-distance penalty which effectively adds two strokes to your score. As Jon was watching his mammoth tee shot fly out of bounds, I dryly remarked, “Cornfields in adjacent counties are OB.” Jon turned to me, and with the pride of a Little Leaguer who'd just hit his first home run said, “Yeah, but I mashed it!”
I will admit, it was awfully fun watching Jon get so much pleasure out of a wayward golf shot. I know he never experienced that much excitement when making a boring par on a hole.
Sarah Shook and the Disarmers
Sarah Shook is rattling the entire notion of musical genres. The nearest description of her music I can come up with is to say she takes a 2 x 4 to country music rhythms and bludgeons them into something unapologetically her own.
New Ways to Fail is a great example of her brash style and truly impressive vocal command. Don't listen to her music if you prefer the soulless, carbon-copy, glam-country porridge dominating today's country radio.
PS - Other than the fact skateboarding is fraught with unique ways to fail/fall, I'm not sure how all the skateboarding in the video fits in with the song itself, but that's Sarah Shook. She constantly surprises and reinvents.
I Forgot to Remember
One year I sent out a customer satisfaction survey at Bent Tree Golf Club to see how our members rated our service. It was an anonymous survey designed to encourage honesty. Honesty, as it turns out, reveals as much about the person taking the survey as it does about who's being evaluted in the survey.
One survey came back with a very angrily worded complaint about when we closed the driving range. The clean version of the complaint read, “I can't ever remember that the driving range closes at 7:00 on Wednesday evenings so it can be mowed. I keep showing up to hit balls on Wednesday nights and it's closed! You need to do something about this! Now!”
If you read the complaint closely, it's obvious the individual who wrote it knew exactly when the range was closed; he just couldn't remember that which he remembered well-enough to actually include in the complaint.
I wasn't sure how I was supposed to help my member remember to remember what he clearly already remembered. I thought about using the mom approach: If you already know when it's closed, why don't you make a note to remind yourself? I also considered using a phrase my dad liked: Don't make your problem my problem. Then I thought about the sign that hung conspicuously in the registrar's office at USD: Lack of preparation on your part does not constitute an emergency on our part. I loved that sign, particularly when an ill-prepared student tried to register for classes without the proper paperwork. The ladies at the windows of the registrar's office would just turn and point at the sign, then turn back to the ill-prepared student holding up the line and point at the door. Off would trudge the ill-prepared student to track down the requisite paperwork to complete his enrollment for the semester. It was the walk of shame if there ever was one.
In the end, the forgetful member's problem was fixed when he made the same complaint to another member while enjoying some adult beverages in our grill. I didn't hear the complaint itself, but the member he complained to replied quite loudly, “You know when it closes but you're blaming someone else because you can't remember?”
The exchange clued me in to who made the complaint in the survey. The other member's admonishment must have worked, because we never saw the complaining member show up on Wednesday evenings again.
Free Ain't Free
One more story from my Bent Tree days.
Prior to our 2nd year of operations I managed to swing a promotional deal with one of the local network t.v. affiliates. I created an entirely free day of golf, including carts, called the Cabin Fever Open. In exchange for a few hundred t.v. commercials promoting the free day of golf, I let the t.v. station brand it as their way of saying thank you to their viewers in the Omaha/Council Bluffs market. This was the very kind of exposure a new golf course needed, so I was pretty excited about the deal I'd struck.
By the day of the event the tee sheet was booked solid from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., even though darkness would prevent the last tee times from getting in any more than a few holes of golf. But a few free holes of golf is better than none at all.
The day was humming right along until a guy without a tee time walked in the door looking to play some free golf. One of my assistants informed him there weren't any available tee times, but he could join up with a threesome that was teeing off in about 30 minutes. This upset him, so he issued his first complaint: “I've been looking forward to this for weeks. Now I have to wait 30 minutes to tee off?” My assistant dutifully informed him it would have been better for him had he scheduled a tee time.
“It's free. Why should I have to make a tee time?” he growled.
Um, because it's free, and everyone and their dog wants to play. That's what I wanted to say to him, but I held my tongue.
Seasoned golf pros sometimes develop a kind of sixth sense that enables them to identify customers who are likely to be a problem. So, once his 100% free tee time arrived and he made his way to the first tee, I made sure I was right there because I had a feeling he would be a problem.
“How long is this going to take?” he whined.
“It's a free day of golf,” I said. “So, the course is completely packed.”
“You've got to be shitting me,” he whined further. “I took a day off of work for this bullshit?"
“I apologize, sir, but free golf typically brings out a lot of golfers,” I said, maintaining my professionalism.
“This is a joke,” he bitched. “Can I get a rain check to use on a day when it's not so busy?”
This is where I spotted my opening to justifiably abandon my golf professional training and shift into my more natural smartass approach to such interactions.
“So, let me get this straight,” I said, with more than a hint of condescension. “You want me to give you a free round of golf, including cart, to use whenever you want because you failed to make a tee time to play golf today, and came to the course expecting to play a quick round of golf by yourself on a day when practically every golfer in the Omaha metro area is here to play free golf? Do I have that about right?”
Mr. Whiny Golfer was not at all impressed with how I decided to handle his “concerns.” And I could see he was more than a little pissed off and embarrassed by how I'd spoken to him. But, and this is the best part, he held his tongue, except for this parting shot before heading for the first tee to play his free round of golf: “I'll play golf today, but afterwards I'll be contacting whoever owns this course to tell them how their golf pro treated me.”
I knew my owners well-enough to know this guy would regret ever making that phone call given the circumstances, so I told him he could stop into the golf shop after his round of free golf and I would gladly provide my owners' cell numbers for him to call.
I stayed till the last golfer left that evening, but Mr. Whiny Britches never came back into the golf shop.
Unforeseen Consequences - Cannibal Rats
It appears Hy-Vee isn't the only place experiencing food shortages. As reported in The Guardian:
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned of “unusual or aggressive” behavior in American rats as a consequence of more than two months of human lockdown for city-dwelling rodents who now find themselves unable to dine out on restaurant waste, street garbage and other food sources.
Last month, according to the national health body, dumpster-diving rats were observed resorting to open warfare, cannibalism and eating their young in the wake of urban shutdowns.
Sounds like New York City's famously huge rats have been on a crash diet for several weeks now.
Be thankful you don't live in Russia, where apparently some rats are so big and agressive they attack cats. I don't think the rat in the below video will have to resort to cannibalism to survive, as it seems there's plenty of cat to go around.
Stay safe, distanced, connected and well.
Sluggo