The Hootie Index
March 17, 2009 By: Geoff Shackelford GolfdomEditor's note: This column will appear in the April issue of Golfdom.
It's doubtful I have to refresh your memories since most of you plaster the bathroom walls with these yearly pleas for the Lords of Augusta to stop butchering their course all because some guy shot 18-under par.
The Masters is set for April 6 through April 12. Will low scores prevail?
The club has begun the slow — and I mean slooow — process of undoing Hootie Johnson and Tom Fazio's destructive dismantling of what was once sport's greatest arena for spine-tingling thrills. This year a few tees will have added flexibility and some of the recently planted trees are gone. But inflexibility and old-guard United States Golf Association types still dominate the shallow philosophy that says a successful Masters is one with a high winning score.
There appears to be no imminent solution to the widespread and weirdly neurotic vanity fueling the fear of low scores and the resultant tendency of otherwise sensible people taking wretchedly peculiar steps to prevent 65s. This backwards behavior — only found in golf — continues to happen even though refined course maintenance is a primary culprit in producing lower scores.
But it's all about to change. Because I give you, The Hootie Index.
Working with some of golf's top scientists who understand my desperation to milk that funny name for just one more column, we have developed a warning system taking the best attributes of the Heat Index, the Richtor Scale, Hurricane Categorization, the Dow Industrial Average, the Homeland Security Advisory System and the "Feels Like" temperature formula to give you the ultimate golf course scoring barometer.
The Hootie Index is designed for implementation each day during tournament play. With a simple algebraic formula adding the par, temperature, Stimpeter rating, course record, forecasted wind and superintendent's blood pressure reading and dividing it all by his cholesterol count, we come up with a number that preconditions folks to the possibility of low scoring brought on by the superintendent doing a superlative job.
After all, no matter how much technology of which you arm today's studs and hotties, their performance ultimately hinges upon course conditions. The smoother the greens, the more consistent the fairway lies and the firmer the bunker sand, the lower they will score no matter how much rough is culled or how well the holes are tucked.
Players have known this all along, but you can't blame them for not explaining this phenomena to the committees of the world. After all, why would they want to go back to spotty lies and bumpy greens?
According to a soon-to-be-unveiled U.S. Government Accountability Office report, the basic failure to account for the widespread improvement in course manicuring has resulted in $2.9 billion in golf course renovation spending, with $2 billion of that attributed to Augusta National alone.
Now armed with the Hootie Index, courses around the country can post a daily rating to help those challenged with a lack of foresight. The index will prepare them for the simple fact that when you give the flatbellies nearly perfect conditions for scoring, they will do so and, just like Jerry and George's faux outing on "Seinfeld" so many years ago, there's nothing wrong with that.
Geoff Shackelford can be reached at geoffshac@aol.com.
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