Golf’s Glitz Blitz Pulls In Buyers

Every kind of glitz imaginable, from your basic celebrity signing autographs to multi-media barrages of sight, sound and shill were used to bring buyers into booths at the PGA of America Merchandise Show in hopes of getting products into pro shop and stores.

Imagine your wildest shopping fantasy. Imagine the biggest store you’ve ever been in. Imagine that fantasy explodes and everything soars in size like Alice when she ate the pill in Wonderland. That’s sort of what the show is like.

Here’s a taste.

Need one of those things that picks up golf balls at a driving range? They had them here. Or how about a device that washes the golf balls after they are picked up. Hollrock Engineering of Hadley, Mass., has one that washes 50,000 balls an hour and weeds out the cut balls.

Imagine washing 50,000 balls in the ballwasher on the first tee at your favorite course.

The most dynamic display was the Cobra booth. It’s almost laughable to call it a booth. It was two stories high with Star Trek-like catwalks, a 20-by-20 video screen with constant images of Greg Norman, Ben Crenshaw and seemingly random celebrities appearing against a blaring backdrop of searing sound.

Bobby Jones clothing had the most tasteful display, it’s subtle fabrics framed by marvelous old photos of Jones and neat examples of the ancient clubs, balls and bags of his time. It very much had the Gatsby-like feeling of Jones’ era.

There was a tie for the tackiest between the Killer Bee, with its staffers dressed in black and yellow stripes to look like giant bumble bees, and the T. Barry Knicker Co., with its spokespeople dressed in, well, knickers.

The best name has to go to The Mud Weasel, a ball retriever by Executive Assembly Inc.

The dubious celebrity award goes to Ben Wright. The exiled CBS announcer was there for ProGear Inc.

Heard on the floor

If you could survive the sensory overload at the merchandise show you could pick up snippets of amusing conversations.

“Before you were able to afford to buy two or three drivers a year,” one bewildered observer said looking at the $500 and up price tags on titanium clubs.

“Introduce me to your sales manager,” a club pro from Ohio pleaded to a Top Flight salesman.

Tiger could make big bucks

What would 20-year-old Tiger Woods, a sophomore at Stanford, be worth if he came out of college right now and signed with an equipment company?

“The figure I’ve heard is that Woods could get an endorsement deal of between $32 million to $34 million if he turned pro right now,” said one golf official with no ties to an equipment company. Considering that a loose cannon like John Daly can get $10 million, that’s not unreasonable.

Chip shots

CBS, without Ben Wright, starts its 1996 golf season with 6 hours of coverage from the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am this weekend. CBS, in its 46th year of broadcasting golf, will have more than 110 hours this year, including the Masters, the PGA Championship, 17 PGA Tour events, two LPGA tournaments, the Presidents Cup and a Seniors event.

Actor Jack Lemmon who last year missed the cut for the 23rd consecutive time, will miss Pebble Beach entirely this year. He’s in England filming “Hamlet.’

The PGA of America announced the 1999 PGA Championship will be held at Medinah in Chicago. This year’s tournament at Valhalla in Louisville, Ky., was one of the fastest sellouts ever. The PGA will be at Winged Foot next year and at Sahalee Country Club near Seattle in 1998.

The PGA said there will be only about 1,500 to 2,000 tickets available to Americans for the 1997 Ryder Cup at Valderrama, Spain. Details on purchasing will come later.