Welcome to the new NiceBallz.

This blog was started as a fun diversion and hobby by a couple of guys who like golf but generally dislike golfers (irony!).

Kidding!  We love golfers. Most of them…some…a handful at least that are (we’re pretty sure) representative of the golfing populace. 

Anyhooo…here’s a little rundown on what this site is and isn’t in case you’re new here, or simply need a refresher.

NiceBallz is…

• A blog - which means if you’re spending time reading anything posted here (either by myself or my missing golf blog partner, or anyone else we give the keys to the NiceBallz Caddy to at times) we’re honored and appreciative. Seriously, we have been involved in the whole online world for a while and still can’t believe people read stuff we write (what?  it happens.) just because. 
• To be taken with a grain of salt – Meaning we sure as heck don’t take ourselves too seriously, try not to take anything in the game of golf too seriously and believe you shouldn’t either. If you get ticked off about something we write. Ok…that’s cool.  Tell us why. Don’t expect us to fall all over ourselves apologizing, but we would love to hear what you think.  That exchange is also what makes it fun…which leads us to…

 NiceBallz isn’t…

• About sucking up - Meaning, we’re not using this as a platform to launch our burgeoning golf/sports journalist career.  Frankly we’re probably too old and jaded to pull that off at this point anyway.  The upside of this is you don’t have to worry about reading yet another blog by golfing sycophants, nor worry if we’re blogging about something because we’re looking to pad our income. So if you’re looking for that deep, insightful piece on Keegan Bradley’s new putter grip. Don’t come here. However, if you want to know why we think Keegan is ‘…wicked smaaaht and the new messiah for gawf and tha greata Bahstahn area slappy…’ then you should come back.  But not to read about Keegan.  We hate Red Sox fans.
• Just about golf - Ok 90+% of the content here has been and will remain about golf in one form or another. But don’t be shook up if we post about something else that tickles our fancy funny bone.

So that’s about it…oh and we’re going to be on this show on Saturday I guess. Sometime around 10:30am Pacific.  I dunno, Golfwriterguy told me I have to show up and be amusing. I plan to punch him in his neck.  Hilarity will ensue!

And the Lord said, “…these Ballz are good…” and he held them up high.

It’s been a fun year.  Corey and I have learned a great deal about our own interests, skills (and sometimes a lack thereof) in writing, humor and golf. 

But more than anything else we’ve enjoyed the chance we’ve had to interact with you.  The thousands hundreds many fans, frequent readers and even the trolls who have bothered to read stuff that we come up with.

You’re the bestest.

We never started the blog with any intent other than writing what we we found amusing, annoying, interesting and most importantly, unique.  We think we’ve usually hit the mark in that regard, and plan to continue doing so for as long as it remains fun.

Look for a contest or two in the coming weeks to celebrate our first birthday, until then here’s a big ole NiceBallz hug & kiss. 

Now we’ve got to go blow out some candles.

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In case you don’t know who F.I.G.J.A.M. is, then clearly you’re not a reader of Wei Under Par.

For all two of you who don’t know, it is reportedly Phil Mickelson’s nickname bestowed upon him by some fellow tour pros. 

It stands for: F*ck I‘m Good, Just Ask Me!

Funny stuff. I respect a good nickname like anyone else. And NiceBallz is not above poking fun at Phil on occasion.

But here’s the thing that I don’t get and doubt I ever will, barring Mickelson being found with his pants around his ankles, delivering a shot out of the deep rough to his kids’ nanny while Amy is in the hospital being treated for cancer.

I don’t get when people say they ‘hate him’ or find him to be a ‘phony’ or ‘think he’s a jerk.’

Arguably many who say those things are fans. And fans, if nothing else, have an inalienable right to hate or love certain athletes if for no other reason than what color jersey they wear, or for other equally meaningless reasons.

However, there are those anonymous tour players who supposedly created the F.I.G.J.A.M. nickname, and secretly whisper into the ears of mainstream media reporters and bloggers alike about how Phil is really just a big phony and all the knuckle bumping, cap tipping and autograph signing is just for the cameras.

To that I say: Who is the real phony? 

Golf is meant to be a gentleman’s game (allegedly) and yet unnamed touring pros who have Tiger Woods to thank for the ridiculous checks they have a chance to cash every week can also thank guys like Mickelson, Vijay, Padraig, Sergio and many more who came before them for their livelihood.  These are the guys who (admittedly with Tiger leading the way) have made being a touring professional on the PGA a dream gig, even if you hover somewhere around 60th on the money list.

In fact, here’s an excerpt from the GQ article that was among the first to publicly throw out the F.I.G.J.A.M. name:

Most recently, Mickelson blew off the 2005 Tour Championship, though the PGA was in the midst of negotiating its new TV contract. One reporter says, “The Tour was trying to come up with a plan that would make the networks happy, so it wouldn’t have to give back a lot of money, and here’s the number three player in the world skipping the premier season-ending event. Other players said, ‘How about helping the rest of us who aren’t as rich?’”

Wow…‘helping the rest of us who aren’t as rich.’ Yeah, those PGA touring pros. When will they get decent healthcare and a good living wage? For God’s sake, someone think of the little future golfers of the world … think of the children!

Here’s a novel idea for that player and any other who whines about Mickelson behind his back … play better … earn more money … get more endorsements, and generally shut up.

Either Mickelson has anti-Christ like charm that results in his ability to fool half the golfing population (at least) into thinking he’s a good guy, or -wait for it - a handful of people are jealous of his incredible talent, wealth, stature, public recognition and fan adoration and they take the opportunity to anonymously piss and moan about him behind his back.

Golly. Which seems more likely?

To be clear, I’m not a Phil fanboy. Or a Tiger fanboy for that matter. I think I generally have the same attitudes about them as most rationale people do. 

Tiger is amazing, arguably the best ever and his talent combined with his results speak for themselves.

Phil is also an amazing talent who, were it not for one Eldrick Woods, probably would be considered by many as the greatest of his time. He also seems to generally be a good person, and someone who takes the time to try and make any fans interaction with him as meaningful as possible. 

But neither of them are perfect. Far from it. We’ve all seen some of Tiger’s less-than-admirable traits. Phil is probably just better at concealing his from the public.

So what? After all, how many of us would like the whole world to know what self-centered, petty and immature characters we can be at any given time? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

If some touring pro has a beef with Mickelson I’d have a great deal more respect for them if they just came out, ON THE RECORD and said: “Look, I think the guy is a jerk and here is why…” than I do for any anonymous source who is content to whine about why Mickelson isn’t doing more to help make them rich. Or why he’s really not that nice … or that he’s arrogant. 

We’re sure he has a fully-formed ego like any top athlete, so let’s not even get into the irony of one pro calling another arrogant. Puhhhlleeease.

Sports are sports and they’ll always have their share of heels and heroes. We all inherently find reasons to like or dislike certain athletes.

But for the touring pros who can’t stop themselves from acting like a catty sorority member on pledge night when it comes to their fellow professionals, maybe they should stop and just take a look at Y.E. Yang, Angel Cabrera, Lucas Glover and Stewart Cink for some perspective on what is going to get them further – gossip or goals?

Who cares.

Let me just get this out of the way early – only Rickie knows what was the right call there and I’m sure he feels he made it.  Good enough for me.

What intrigues me though is the level of disdain for golf commentators, bloggers and fans who have questioned the decision.

You can see some of it here and here, and in comments for these posts as well.  I read both of those blogs regularly and think their writing is quite good.  Ryan at WaggleRoom is even a full on member of the GWAA ya’ll.

What bothers me about the sentiment shared in the above posts, and elsewhere, is the idea that professional broadcasters and fans (or even know-it-all bloggers) should give Rickie a pass because he’s 21.  Why does that matter?

Is this just a subconscious (or maybe conscious) reaction by golf society to try and rally around the person already being considered as a possible Tiger successor?  Or at least the ‘please deliver us from this immediate Tiger mess’ savior?  It arguably embodies a stereotypical criticism of golf, the golf media and golfing community overall - it seeks to protect its own, at all costs.

In what other sport do you find star athletes that are immune to harsh criticism?  Ask Jimmy Clausen at Notre Dame if he gets some kid glove treatment from press or fans?  Ummm…not so much. 

Kids who are younger than Rickie, and don’t get paid (i.e. NCAA Division I athletes), often have as big a spotlight on them and have to sometimes deal with brutal criticism. 

Why should a 21 year old up and coming golf star, that has Puma from head to toe, be any different?  Is he mentally fragile?  Is he incapable of dealing with the spotlight?  I doubt it.  In fact, recently after seeing one of Fowler’s bot-like tweets I said this to him.  I’m not proud. 

It was knee-jerk and in reaction to his publicist driven tweets - but it was also how I felt at the time.  What ensued was some back and forth with Rickie that made me rethink (in part) my hasty judgment, and in the end I gained respect for him.   Superstar prodigy challenged…he responds…blogger gains respect for prodigy…life resumes.  Ahhh, happy endings.

Right call or wrong call at the Waste Management (snicker) Open?  Irrelevant.  Criticism of it?  That’s just sports. 

The kid will be allright, without the kid glove treatment.

CK: Myself with @waggleroomgolf. We go waaaaay back to my rookie year, such an awesome guy! SQUEEZE!

Yep that’s blogger extraordinaire Ryan Ballengee of WaggleRoom getting some hang time with Kim during the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando last week. 

Take a look at the pic though and see if you have a similar reaction as I did upon first glance…

Holy schnikes! 

I think CK can give Gene Simmons a run for longest tongue, don’t you?  We’re just totally jealous that we weren’t able to make it to the show this year.  Looks as though a lot of people in the golf blogging community had a great deal of fun. 

But I digress.  The point of this post was…damn…it sort of slipped my mind. 

Until I figure it out, here’s a topic: Long tongues…female golfers.  Please, discuss amongst yourselves.

Rumors of book and movie rights for the bloggers stories are circulating as well with a working title in place of:  “Good Wood(s): The untold story of how Tiger Woods was betrayed by pasty white bloggers.”

One thing has caught my eye a few times in reading the various blogs and news articles on Woods public relations nightmare – “What were his PR people thinking?”

It’s a fair question, but most of the speculation has centered on how those around Woods must have failed and not advised him properly.

Not so fast.

I’ve worked with a number of clients over my time in the PR industry, and spoken with even more PR people and the reality is it’s not that uncommon for someone to hire an advisor, pay them, and then disregard their counsel in whole or in part.

Why do they do this?  A few reasons:

Fear:  They’re afraid to do what their advisor is suggesting.  Maybe it involves something that feels counter-intuitive.  For example an advisor to Woods may have said something like ‘You’re in trouble, you need to rush head first into the fray and address what is being said.  Yes it will be hard.  Yes it will be painful.  But yes it is the right thing to do.’ 

Control:  There are individuals who absolutely do not feel comfortable losing control of a situation.  The sad irony is the surest way to lose any semblance of control is to not participate in your own story.  Sound like anyone you’ve heard about lately?  Also, the idea of ‘control’ is considered a dated concept by the more thoughtful communications pros today.  With social media, blogs, the internet, cable news etc etc etc…there is no control.  There is participation and engaging your audience. 

Trust:  The client may want to do the right thing, but lacks the relationship with the advisor so they can truly trust what they’re being told.  This could be for a number of reasons.  Maybe the advisor is new and the relationship is still forming when crisis hits.  Maybe there have been past issues that impact the trust, and if so then the relationship is shot and one of the two should have the courage to recognize it and move on.  Or maybe the client just has a hard time trusting anyone.  

With Woods’ resources it is unreasonable to think he doesn’t have some top notch communications talent advising him.  Ultimately though, as is the case with the root cause of this entire situation, Woods owns the final decisions and is fully accountable for how it was mismanaged.

If he was getting counsel he didn’t listen to – he owns that.  If he was getting bad counsel, then it was fairly obvious within the first 24 hours of this crisis and it still took him nearly three days to step back and say ‘No, we’re going to do this instead’ - he owns that too.  If he’s surrounded himself with yes men (or women) because he has shown an intolerance for people telling him things he doesn’t want to hear – he especially owns that.

Where were his PR people?  Probably right beside him talking into a deaf ear.

Editor’s note: I ran this post by @golferwriterguy as I often do for input/praise/’what are you nuts?’ reactions and he made what I thought was a very astute observation. 

All the things I pointed out above around fear, control and trust have contributed greatly to making Woods such a phenomenal golfer and are often cited as key to any level of player doing their best on the course.

Woods has mastered fear on the course, and routinely takes shots that would leave your average PGA pro trembling as they swung the club head away. 

He doesn’t try to steer his shots by controlling them.  Like any golfer, when you do that, things start to go sideways. 

And he has trust in himself, his judgment his game.  Another component to playing great golf – trust in your swing, your preparation, your judgment.

No real big ‘a-ha’ point with this note, just an interesting observation I thought he made upon reading.

There are a million tweets, blog postings, columns and TV stories being done right now that go into the timeline and  details. If you want that info you can find it elsewhere easily enough.  

For days now it’s been fashionable to trash ‘the media’ for invading Tiger Woods privacy. 

For days now fans and select media have worked themselves up into fits chastising anyone who dare suggest Woods speak out for his own good, and set the record straight.

So now that Woods has come clean what do our combo 20/20 hindsight and futurvision glasses tell us?

Not talking is rarely a solution: Tiger not talking to the cops?  Legally that appears to have been a sound decision.  In the court of public opinion however it added to the perception that he had something to hide with the accident, which doesn’t seem to be the case at all.  But now there will always be some lingering doubt from many around the circumstances of the accident. Plus, his lack of quick transparency helped further intertwine the Rachel Uchitel, and now Jaimee Grubbs, (the 2nd ‘e’ is for extramarital) stories with his crash.  Tiger never ‘owed’ us a response as many have been so vehemently pointing out.  Nor would have coming clean on the Grubbs involvement sooner helped him avoid the current scandal he is caught in.  But talking openly, honestly and quickly would have let him be the lead voice in this story versus deferring to TMZ, The National Enquirer and Jaimee Grubbs old voicemails.  Woods has been a master of exerting control over his image in the media.  He seemed to think that same control could be extended to a crisis like this – he was wrong.

It’s over and it isn’t: For Woods, the worst part of the public ordeal (barring something truly new and earth shattering coming out) is over.  He confessed and did so in a way that enables him to be able to deflect calls for further comment even if other women come forward claiming to have been with him – and they will.  Regardless of how true any of their claims may be there will be no shortage in people looking to cash in on Woods mistakes.  If you thought the onslaught from TMZ, The National Enquirer and other gossip rags/sites was bad before, you haven’t seen anything yet.  But Woods truly has said all that anyone can reasonably ask him to share (again barring a new bombshell that goes beyond other women coming forward).  He doesn’t need to go on TV and cry or detail out how many women, when, where or even why.  Now the public and media get to feast on the carcass of this story for the next several days or weeks or (God help us) months. 

The blame game: Woods himself clearly sought to call out, via his statement, some media (tabloid media specifically) for contributing to his current woes.  Fans continue to decry the media’s coverage, even to the point where reasoned, respectable journalists, bloggers and writers are verbally attacked for essentially not ignoring a story.  Others want to blame Jaimee Grubbs and any other women who may come forward. Feels a bit narrow minded to toss them under a bus that Woods may not be driving but certainly gassed up and started down the road.  In the end, no matter how despicable any media outlets coverage may be, or self-promoting an accusers actions may look, blame rests with Woods.  It also rests with our society where the business (and yes it is a business) of celebrity gossip sells, and sells quite well it seems.  We all feed the beast.  Now it’s eaten up a hero’s image and people act surprised.  If you want to be mad at someone, you may as well be mad at everyone because the blame game doesn’t easily tag one winner (or loser) in this situation.

I don’t feel sympathy for Tiger Woods. I also don’t revel in seeing him put through a public humiliation. He did what he did and now will deal with the consequences.  Because he is arguably the greatest golfer of all time, those consequences are significantly worse than what any average person would have to deal with.  Is that fair?  Maybe, who knows, probably not.  It doesn’t matter.

I find myself not really caring what is fair to Tiger Woods right now.  The only sympathy I can muster up is for Elin Woods and her kids.

In case you don’t recall what those were, here’s some background.

I was curious as to if the golf blogging community had made any changes, or if their own perceptions on what it would mean for bloggers to take payment in exchange for reviews/postings have changed as a result of these new regulations.

Here are some of the responses I got to a random sampling of golf bloggers:

Regarding if bloggers had made any changes on their site to add language re: their policy for accepting payments (if they do that) or anything else to get ahead of the FTC regulations:

I’ve been meaning to post a link on my side bar so FTC agents can find it easily. I better go do that right now.

The only thing I’ve done differently is to make a more explicit statement when I do certain posts, (such as) a roundup of press releases and news items I get. I updated that type of post to include a statement so people understand I’m NOT getting paid (or anything else) to run news items.

I haven’t changed anything.  I seriously doubt the FTC regards golf manufacturers and bloggers as serious threats to fair trade.

Regarding whether they have received products or payment for doing reviews on products, or would accept payment now given the new FTC regulations, bloggers said:

I do receive products and believe a true/honest review is impossible without the product in hand. Do people review shoes without wearing them, or a ball without playing it? It’s just nonsensical to me. Doing so would be irresponsible IMHO.

I have never received payment for a product review or any post that I’ve done.  None of the content is paid.

No, I wouldn’t (accept payment).  I think that would preclude me from being able to be as honest as I am about products and merchandise.

My current policy is No payment for reviews. Some companies have offered me a percentage of sales that come from my website. I have politely declined. However, I do offer advertising on my site. I do not need to review a product for a company to purchase advertising.

Regarding if they think bloggers that do accept payments can provide an unbiased opinion and their general opinion of blogs that accept payment to write reviews/posts:

I really don’t feel that is an honest way to run a website.  Given that I’m pretty cynical as it is, I would be much more cynical about a site’s reputation if I knew they were getting paid for content beyond being supplied the product.

I think it’s possible (to be unbiased), but if I were to receive payment and write a scathing review, then I doubt they would come back to me for another review.

Personally, bloggers that accept payment for a product review are walking on a fine line.  While every blogger is certainly welcome to sharing an opinion on a new piece of equipment, this “opinion” becomes a somewhat biased one when money becomes involved and should be understood as such.

It all depends on the blog and the person who writes it. If it is someone you respect, then I think it can be done.

I would worry about what the IRS thought about it, not the FTC…

For what it’s worth the FTC has said that disclosures can take many forms:

“Disclosures can be made in different ways, whether you make it outside of the text but in proximity to blog, or incorporate it into the blog discussion itself–those are the issues that bloggers will have discretion about.”

So what does it all mean?  Frankly not much for the golf world, at least not currently.  The FTC themselves have said they’re not out to levy huge fines but instead want to focus on educating bloggers…for now.

Also it’s doubtful that the FTC would look to the golf blogging sector first for infractions vs. technology or other industries.  Though that may be short sighted.  Golf is still a multi-billion dollar industry.  The idea that there aren’t bloggers in the golf sector who are willing to sell favorable coverage in their blogs is unrealistic.  The harm done by such is surely debatable. But the acts (without the proper disclosure) are no less in violation of the new guidelines than any blogger in any other industry making recommendations on products and services in exchange for money.

It’s December 1st…do you know where your FTC disclosure is?  If not, don’t worry.  It’s unlikely anyone’s going to ask you or care.

As the world holds its collective breath for Tiger to speak (you should really exhale, it’s not happening anytime soon Update: hey look he speaketh!) we here at NiceBallz have gone deep into the underbelly of the Woods saga to make up uncover a document that gives insight into what the Woods camp may be planning in the way of excuse-making for the late night crash.

To: Tiger Woods

From: Legal counsel

Subject:Explanations for ‘the incident’ on Nov. 27th

Mr. Woods – Thank you for submitting the various factors that contributed to ‘the incident’ which occurred in the early morning hours of Nov. 27th. Please see our counsel to you on these below.