Golf Etail Blog

It’s football season, all right. We can tell because that’s all our Facebook friends are talking about!

But what about golf? The DealTeam’s favorite pastime is getting the shaft as fall takes hold of sports fans’ attention spans.

Never fear! Golf.com has come up with a way to marry the best of both worlds with its new weekly series that profiles a college football town with tips on where to play golf, eat and drink while you’re there.

This week’s spotlight is on Eugene, Ore., where the Oregon Ducks will face off against the Utah Utes, undefeated champions of the 2009 Allstate Sugar Bowl.

If you just happen to be in the area, here’s what Golf.com suggests you do.

If you’re not in the area, no worries. They’ll profile a different game location each week of the season.

I might be a fierce contender on the links, but I still have a soft side. Which is probably why this story from golf writer Gary Van Sickle made my heart melt!

Gary’s son Mike will make his PGA Tour debut, playing as an amateur in the John Deere Classic (through July 12), and Gary will be right there beside him – as his caddie.

This isn’t the first time Gary’s served as Mike’s looper – as he details in his story on Golf.com – but it is his first time assisting his son in the big leagues. What a milestone! Pops must be so proud.

I have a feeling my fellow DealTeam member Brassie Spooner is envious…

Ever the sportsman, top-ranked Tiger Woods says he voted for fellow golfer Padraig Harrington for PGA Tour Player of the Year, according to GOLF.com.

“It was nice to see Paddy play as well as he has,” Woods was quoted as saying in the article. “It was just a matter of – as I said, a matter of time. The confidence you get from winning one, and then two just proves it to you that one wasn’t a fluke, and it gives you all that confidence in the world. And look how he did it; he shot 32 on the back nine on both of them.”

Woods’ vote, notes reporter Michael Walker Jr., is particularly significant because the World No. 1 has voted for himself in the past.

On a semi-related note, we had no idea that Utah’s Healthsouth Medical Center – where Woods had arthroscopic surgery performed – served humble pie to its patients.

According to this GOLF.com article, a survey published in a recent issue of Street & Smith’s SportBusiness Journal revealed that a meager 30% of avid golfers (described as “someone who looks up Tour scores several times a week, watches at least 11 tournaments per year and has a favorite player”) are aware that mail carrier FedEx is the title sponsor of the PGA Tour’s season-long points race and four-tournament playoff series.

To make matters worse, 4% of respondents named Nike as the Tour’s playoff sponsor while 3.5% percent claimed that Coca-Cola held the title.

Unfortunate news for FedEx, right? It’s all relative.

The mail carrier is “enjoying higher awareness levels than many of the Tour’s other partners,” the paper said, including MasterCard, which was correctly identified as the Tour’s official credit card by only 17% of avid fans. Adding insult to injury, 35% of those surveyed thought American Express, which has no ties to the Tour, was the official card.

Joining AMEX on the list of would-be sponsors getting something for nothing: AT&T. Thirty-six percent of avid fans think the telecom giant is the official wireless carrier of the Tour – despite the fact that the Tour has no wireless partner.