Golf writer John Paul
Newport has plenty
to celebrate, having
played some of the
best courses in the
world. He believes part
of golf’s appeal lies in
its demand.
John Paul Newport, a Wall Street Journal columnist, book author
and golfer, contemplates his angle on some of the game’s issues
A
As the golf scribe for
The Wall Street Journal,
Journal
John Paul Newport has
established himself as
one of the media’s leading
voices on the sport. Since 2006
he has written the newspaper’s weekly
Golf Journal column, which touches on a
multitude of subjects.
Newport also unabashedly tried his hand
on professional golf’s developmental circuit
for one year in an effort to qualify for the
PGA Tour, chronicled in his book The Fine
Green Line. His wife may have thought he
was crazy at the time, but she also recognized
that when a writer has a book idea, there’s no
stopping it from coming to fruition.
Newport recently spent time talking to
Virginia Golfer about a myriad of subjects
affecting the game. He delved into the
Brandel Chamblee-Tiger Woods incident,
what he would do if he was commissioner
of the PGA Tour for one week, and why he
tried his hand on mini-tours for one year.
VIRGINIA GOLFER: How would you
rate what the United States Golf
Association and the R&A have done for
golf in the last couple of years as “keepers
of the game?”
JOHN PAUL NEWPORT: I definitely
believe they are making strides in the right
direction. The USGA in particular is trying
to move away from the dandruff-covered
blue coat stodginess of the past. They’re
trying to include more public golfers in
the way they think about the world. The
36
USGA has operated as an elitist organization
through most of its history, so I give credit to
[executive director] Mike Davis and [former
executive director] David Fay before him.
They still have a ways to go, I think, in
really convincing the world that golf is not
an exclusive elitist game, and to somehow
bring all the parties together to address the
distance and sustainability issues. That is
a real knotty type of problem. I give them
credit for that. The R&A is lagging a little
bit behind, but they are working together.
VG: Recently you wrote that golf
“ought to be fun and fast, loose
and casual, not to mention a lot less
costly.” There has been a push to
make the game more accessible and
fun with programs such as Golf 20/20,
Tee It Forward and Play Nine, for
example. What are your ideas to pull all
this together?
V IRGINIA G OLFER | J ANUARY/F EBRUARY 2014
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VG: OK, Tim Finchem allows you to be
PGA Tour commissioner for one week.
What do you do?
JPN: That’s a great question. My answer
would be to make playing rapidly one of
the skills that the PGA T
our events test for
in players.
If there was some way to devise a
system—I don’t know the mechanism
exactly—where it’s not just skill and course
management, but also the ability to do that
in a limited time frame, so that it becomes
a specific part of the challenge. It would
actually become part of what it is to be a
successful golfer. It would eliminate some
golfers now. If they’re not able to do it, and
other golfers that aren’t on the PGA Tour
who can play fast would become successful
on the PGA Tour.
Most other sports have a clock. I don’t
want to see race golf. But I would figure out
a mechanism like that and the benefit to the
rest of the golfing world would be enormous
because the standard they would see on
television would be ‘fast.’
JOHN PAUL NEWPORT; ILLUSTRATION: GETTY IMAGES
The
Curious
Writer’s
Breadth
JPN: One of the fundamental issues is
whether or not golf is meant to be a sport for
everybody. And I don’t mean that in terms
of whether it is meant to be elite or for the
common people.
Everyone wants to be part of a thriving
enterprise, and they want to feel like it is
healthy. If it’s growing, you feel better about
the game and the hours you spent toiling in
the fairways. It’s fun to be part of a healthy
thing and people like it to grow, but are the
interests of those vested in seeing growth in
the game the same as those who play golf?
For me that’s a real fundamental question.
For people who want to make the game
more accessible and easier, I would say
self-correcting clubs and golf balls, as well
as bigger 8-inch diameter holes, don’t
necessarily make it more fun. At whate