The Future of Golf

In a prior post (here) I revisited Arnold Palmer's great golf swing. In the clip above, the "King" talks about the business of golf and what he sees for the future.

Thelonious Monk: If you play a note that sounds wrong, just keep playing it until it sounds right.

TCM recently aired a Clint Eastwood documentary "Thelonoius Monk: Straight No Chaser." In the clip above, Monk is working out the head with tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse. The tune is "Boo Boo's Birthday" named for Monk's daughter. The tune has an unusual harmonic structure and is 21 bars in length. Charlie is seen here making sure he understands it. Working out new material is, for me, one of the best parts of a good jazz session.

In the Mortgage Market, The Government Is The Problem

From reporting today by PBS Marketplace (here):

Bruce Marks is the CEO of NACA (the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America).

BRUCE MARKS: Every person who's here (at a loan modification convention in LA) has already tried and failed to work with their lender. So it's really incumbent upon the government to require them to do it. I used to be a regulator, I worked at the Federal Reserve Bank. The fact of the matter is, as a regulator, they can force these lenders to do it across the board.

VIGELAND: Why does it take something like this for a homeowner to be able to modify a loan? What's the difference here?

MARKS: There are two differences. We have legally binding agreements with all the major lenders and the investors covering over 90 percent of mortgages in this country where they have to do it. Secondly, there's nothing like that face-to-face interaction. Personal interaction is what gets the results, because you see families, you see the devastation firsthand, and that makes that banker that much more committed to helping the homeowner.

VIGELAND: But if that's the case, then isn't it pretty close to impossible for banks to do this for the millions of people who need a loan modification?

MARKS: Well, actually they can. But you know, you have to have the government pushing to do that. The biggest problem we have are not with Bank of America mortgages or Chase or Wells or Citi, it's with government-owned mortgages: FHA, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. So the mortgages that the government controls, those should be the ones that we can modify the easiest. They should stop the foreclosures and they should say that these bankers can never foreclose on somebody unless every effort was made to modify that mortgage and that was documented.

Trouble and Worry

One of my favorite financial commercials with music by Ray LaMontagne. Some more of the lyrics:

Trouble...
Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble
Trouble been doggin' my soul since the day I was born
Worry...
Worry, worry, worry, worry
Worry just will not seem to leave my mind alone
We'll I've been...
saved by a woman
I've been...
saved by a woman
I've been...
saved by a woman
She won't let me go
She won't let me go now
She won't let me go
She won't let me go now

Trouble...
Oh, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble
Feels like every time I get back on my feet
she come around and knock me down again
Worry...
Oh, worry, worry, worry, worry
Sometimes I swear it feels like this worry is my only friend

...

False Choices: Green vs. Green

Renewable energy projects (wind farms, large-scale solar panel installations, etc.) require a lot of land. Environmentalists want clean energy but also want to protect undeveloped land, setting up a false choice. For example, the video above describes a proposed wind farm project for the island of Lanai in Hawaii that plans to use 20,000 acres of natural, undisturbed area.

Bill Corcoran from the Sierra Club says (here) not to worry. It's a choice that we probably won't have to make that often.

BILL CORCORAN: There's plenty of available land that won't disturb the important wildlife and plants that have had conflicts with some existing projects.

What Steve Stricker Learned in the Trailer

Steve Stricker currently has the second round lead at the Memorial Golf Tournament after a hole-in-one on the 17th hole. Continued great play by Steve after loosing his tour card in 2004 and being voted PGA Tour Comeback Player of the Year in 2006 begs the questions: Just what did Steve Stricker discover that turned his game around?

Sometime between 2002 and 2004 I decided to follow Steve for an entire round at the now defunct U.S. Bank Championship in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I had heard about Steve since he was a high school player in Edgerton, WI. and I was curious to see a local player who had made it to the PGA tour. To my amazement, Steve proceeded to hit a duck hook off the first tee. I ended up following other players that day.

To break out of this slump, Steve spent the winters until his 2006 comeback in the practice trailer at the Cherokee Golf Club (friends of mine who hit balls there confirmed seeing him practice there). Just what did Steve Stricker learn in the practice trailer that turned his game around?

The common analysis of the duck hook (Steve must have been hitting a lot of these) is over-active hands in the hitting area. In the video commentary above by Wayne DeFrancesco and in a golf digest swing sequence (here) what Steve seemed to have learned was that you can hit the golf ball with enough power and with improved accuracy using a stiff-wristed action controlled by a big body turn (the swing thought might be "wrists firm, rotate"). I have tried this with mixed results (probably because I have trouble rotating without getting my hands stuck behind me). Firm wrists also seem to help putting and chipping, another area where Steve is strong.

Given Steve's continued good performance, it suggests we all try to firm up our wrist action a little and see what happens.