Tour notes: Quigley on the outside looking in

For those who think making cuts is a blueprint for success on the PGA Tour, meet Brett Quigley. He made 19 of them in 2010 and only three times in his 14-year PGA Tour career has he made more. Yet he’s on the outside looking in for 2011.

Consequently, a little writer’s cramp.

“I’ve already written to almost every tournament director,” Quigley said. “It’s just a tough thing, a weird deal, but it means I’ve got to chase it a little more.”

Photo Gallery

Brett Quigley in pictures

Veteran PGA Tour pro Brett Quigley made 19 cuts last season, but still sits at 158th on the money list

Though he missed the cut just 10 times in his 29 starts, he just never pushed into contention or put together that one or two great finishes you need. In fact, here’s the difference between getting it done and not – Quigley made 19 cuts, which was more than players who finished second (Jim Furyk, 18) and third (Ernie Els, 17) on the money list.

With just one top 10 and four top 25s, Quigley earned smaller checks than usual and thus finished 158th on the money list. While it’s the third time in the past 10 seasons Quigley has fallen outside the top 125, it’s the first time since 1999 that he’s been below 150.

The good news is, he was exempt into the second stage of Q-School. (“Then again,” he said, laughing, “I could have skipped the entire season and been exempt into second stage.”) The bad news is, he came up short, and that’s not a good thing in his business.

Fact is, it transports him to nowhere, which is why between possible sponsor exemptions, his veteran category and Monday qualifiers, he foresees getting into 15 tournaments. “But it’s more than enough if I get the results I think I should,” Quigley said.

There remains the positive side – with nearly $11 million in career money, Quigley has earned a lifestyle that will allow him this year to spend more time with his two daughters, “and that’s not such a bad thing,” he said.

“For the first time in forever, I’m not rushing out the door after Christmas to chase the West Coast swing.”

Perhaps that joy on the homefront explains why, even after missing at second stage, “I’m actually feeling good about 2011 and my game,” he said.

All he’ll need is opportunities to put those good feelings in motion.

? ? ?

Congratulations are in order for Aree Song as the onetime phenom scored medalist honors at this past weekend’s final stage of the LPGA Tour Qualifying Tournament.

Photo Gallery

Aree Song: Through the years

Take a look back at the career of former child prodigy Aree Song.

The only thing that dulls the shine is knowing Song played the week before in the LPGA Tour Championship. That’s right: One week she’s eligible for an event that is allegedly of marquee value, and the next she’s back at the starting line.

Isn’t that akin to being in graduate school, yet having to go back to finish high school classes?

Peculiar doesn’t begin to describe some of the LPGA Tour landscape during the past few months. Forget for a minute that there were some players who missed the cut at one Q-School sectional qualifier, only to turn around and make it through another sectional qualifier. How do 763 players make it into the Tour Championship?

OK, so it wasn’t 763, but it sure felt like that, given that rounds weren’t completed before darkness fell and 120 players couldn’t finish their rounds. Yes, 120, and when you consider that a player who earned $3,302 in three tournaments, Jessica Shepley, got to play, well, you’d have to agree an overhaul is in order.

Wouldn’t top 30 on the money list be a nice place to start? That way you’re not dipping down so low you’re into a group of players who made less than the minimum wage.

? ? ?

When the list of what’s new to the PGA Tour in 2011 is compiled, in addition to clubs, balls, and shafts, may we suggest including Perky Jerky.

If you’re thinking it sounds like beef jerky that provides an energy boost, well, you’ve caught on to a product developed by Brian Levin and his Performance Enhancing Meat Snack Co.

Perky Jerky is marinated in guarana, which provides the caffeine and the energy boost. Guarana is in Red Bull, which has a presence on the PGA Tour, thanks in large part to Camilo Villegas’ endorsement efforts, and now Perky Jerky will grab some billing, too. It made its debut on David Duval’s golf bag at the Shark Shootout, and it’s not hard to figure out how it came about: Duval’s caddie is Ron “Bambi” Levin, Brian’s brother and business partner.

? ? ?

Heading into the final round, there was a storyline stating Fred Funk and Kenny Perry had a chance to become the oldest winners of the Shark Shootout.

Oldest winners of the Shark Shootout? Wow. Be still, emotions.

Doesn’t quite have the Watson-almost-wins-Turnberry feel, does it?

? ? ?

Stuart Appleby won Comeback Player of the Year.

He’ll be hard-pressed to match Steve Stricker’s accomplishment of back-to-back Comeback Player of the Year honors (2006-07), however. That’s because the leading contender for this trophy in 2011 is . . . Tiger Woods.

In fact, Woods told a colleague – kiddingly, perhaps – that he’d like to be Player of the Year and Comeback Player of the Year in the same season.

? ? ?

If you’re thinking it’s silly that a guy like Stricker could be Comeback Player of the Year two straight seasons, you’re not alone. In fact, you’re probably joined by those players who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Rory McIlroy as Rookie of the Year, given that he turned professional in 2008.

McIlroy didn’t seen to mind finishing second to Rickie Fowler, telling a reporter that he didn’t consider himself a rookie.

Still, it’s a peculiar situation, because McIlroy was in his rookie year on the PGA Tour, so he was eligible, and from the Tour’s perspective, it’s hard to argue they could do it any differently.

But if you think McIlroy’s situation made for a curious ROY race, just wait until next year, because Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel, pros since 2002, will be candidates, as will Robert Karlsson, who played his first pro tournament with hickory.

OK, maybe not hickory, but certainly with 1989 being his first pro season, Karlsson is not your prototypical rookie candidate.

? ? ?

Seems to me the Nationwide Tour supporters are annually more vocal than the Q-School lobbyists, when it comes to which avenue provides the better-prepared PGA Tour member.

Maybe, maybe not, but it’s such an inexact science within the confines of the ultimate inexact sport, so shouldn’t we spare the hot air?

But before we do, here’s the scorecard from 2010:

Of the 25 players who earned PGA Tour cards via Q-School, 11 finished within the top 125. Those getting there from the Nationwide Tour were 8-for-25.

Maybe that will quiet the vocal ones.

? ? ?

New year, same story: John Daly already has been granted a sponsor exemption into the Sony Open in Hawaii.

If Daly is still a draw, that’s an indictment of our good senses. Consider what he’s done in his last 88 PGA Tour tournaments, which have taken five full seasons to play – he’s totaled $724,054 in prize money. Heck, 51-year-old Michael Allen finished 130th on the money list with more than that in 2010.

? ? ?

It was said the first week of the PGA Tour season, when players were in the heart of paradise, at the Kapalua Resort on Maui, but we’re not sure the remainder of the year included a better quote.

“It’s completely absurd, the lifestyle we live,” Geoff Ogilvy said. “For our generation, our timing is impeccable.”

Amen.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php
Five Filters featured site: So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?.

View the original article here

Influenced by national groups outside donors Arizona elections

Error in deserializing body of reply message for operation 'Translate'. The maximum string content length quota (8192) has been exceeded while reading XML data. This quota may be increased by changing the MaxStringContentLength property on the XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas object used when creating the XML reader. Line 1, position 8867.
Error in deserializing body of reply message for operation 'Translate'. The maximum string content length quota (8192) has been exceeded while reading XML data. This quota may be increased by changing the MaxStringContentLength property on the XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas object used when creating the XML reader. Line 1, position 9029.

by Ronald J. Hansen - Oct. 24, 2010 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

Among the propositions on Arizona's ballot this year is a constitutional amendment to give the Legislature exclusive authority to enact laws regulating hunting and fishing. The oversight could trump even voter initiatives.

Backing Proposition 109 is the Virginia-based National Rifle Association, which has sent donations totaling nearly $190,000 to a campaign to pass the hunting measure. Not to be outdone, the Humane Society of the United States, based in Washington, D.C., has contributed $250,000 to the campaign that opposes the measure.

Combined, the groups have kicked in nearly all of the large donations in the pro and opposition campaigns. Large donations are those of at least $10,000, and they must be reported to the state within 24 hours.

National groups and out-of-state donors are playing a major role this year in trying to woo voters in the campaigns for or against four of Arizona's 10 propositions on the Nov. 2 ballot, according to an Arizona Republic analysis of state campaign-finance records. With those propositions, anywhere from two-thirds to all of the large donations come from advocacy groups based outside the state.

The heavy presence of national groups and outside donors trying to influence state elections has become a regular, if little watched, feature of the political landscape in Arizona and elsewhere in recent decades.

In the case of the NRA, for instance, "they are a typical story of how national groups sometimes look around the states and try to find a way to make progress on their issue," said Mark Alexander, a law professor and campaign-finance expert at Seton Hall University. "You get a toehold in one place and try and build on that."

Political experts say the trend is growing, with both individuals and companies increasingly doling out money to try to shift public policy. Businesses, which have been able to contribute toward Arizona ballot measures for decades, also now can donate directly to candidates in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's January ruling in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission.

It is difficult to quantify the trend of out-of-state giving to ballot measures because of differences in states' campaign-finance reports and factors that affect donor interest, such as midterm vs. presidential election years. It's also hard to determine if outside money succeeds often in swinging an election.

Regardless, in Arizona this year, outsiders are anteing up large sums on selected issues:

-?Nearly all the major donations to efforts tied to Proposition 113, which would tighten rules on union organizing in Arizona, have come from a Nevada-based organization, Save Our Secret Ballot, according to records with the secretary of state. S.O.S. Ballot, a type of non-profit that engages in political campaigning, says its overall purpose is to protect the right to a secret ballot in government-required elections.

-?Nearly two-thirds of the major cash paying for campaigns tied to a medicinal marijuana measure in Arizona, Proposition 203, is from out of state. The biggest outside donor is the Marijuana Policy Project, a non-profit based in Washington, D.C.

-?Outsiders account for all of the big donations on both sides of Proposition 107, a state constitutional amendment that could ban affirmative action in Arizona. The largest out-of-state donor was the California-based American Civil Rights Coalition, co-founded by activist Ward Connerly.

-?All but $30,000 of the nearly $440,000 in major gifts to help pass or defeat the fishing and hunting measure has come from outside groups.

Era of outsiders

Anthony Corrado, a government professor and campaign-finance expert at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, said that in the 1980s, national groups began to see ballot measures as a less expensive way to bring about influential changes.

Since then, outside groups have pushed for passage or defeat of countless measures around the country, including bans on same-sex marriage, allowing casino gambling and medicinal marijuana, and limiting abortion rights. But they also include smaller issues affecting business, regulation, taxation and other technical matters. Historically, many of those issues had gone to legislators instead.

"These tend to be the type of issues that don't draw a lot of attention, so a small amount of money can maybe make a difference," Corrado said.

With many measures, national groups are trying to immunize states from possible changes made by courts, legislatures or even Congress. In other cases, groups may try to undo changes already imposed.

The hunting and fishing proposition in Arizona may be a mix of both.

Andrew Arulanandam, director of public affairs for the NRA, said Arizona is one of four states this year where the group is urging passage of measures establishing hunting and fishing rights. The effort is aimed at preventing measures like the one passed in Michigan in 2006 that kept mourning doves off-limits to hunters, he said.

"Rather than wait for a problem to develop," he said, "we started a proactive measure a number of years ago. We are responding to a need" to protect overall hunting rights.

Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, said his organization succeeded with four Arizona ballot measures since 1994, including bans on cockfighting and steel-jaw trapping. He believes if Proposition 109 passes, it will allow the Legislature to overturn bans already approved by voters.

NRA leaders "see that the people of Arizona favor the humane treatment of animals," Pacelle said. "They don't trust the voters to protect some of the things the NRA cares about."

Both groups cite their national memberships, 4 million in the NRA and 11 million in the HSUS, as reasons to get involved on the ballot.

Good or bad?

This year, businesses and outside organizations are investing in other state elections, as well.

Animal-rights groups, including the HSUS, are major donors in a Missouri ballot measure that would tighten restrictions on dog breeding to require better care and limit puppy mills. People and groups outside Missouri account for 91 percent of the $3 million raised by a committee urging passage, records show.

In California, oil refiners in Texas, Kansas and Ohio are largely responsible for funding support of Proposition 23, which would suspend the state's efforts to reduce global warming during times of high unemployment. Overall, nearly 70 percent of the money supporting the proposition comes from outside California.

Two years ago, Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California, passed with considerable financial help from members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, many from Utah. The same year, a unit of Colorado-based Focus on the Family led the financial fight to ban gay marriage in Arizona, committing $215,000 to that campaign, which passed easily.

As is often the case, Alexander and Corrado said it's hard to know how decisive any help in a ballot measure is.

In 1996 and 1998, three wealthy men - including two outsiders - who favored relaxing drug laws spent heavily to influence the votes on Arizona propositions. University of Phoenix founder John Sperling, New York investor George Soros and Cleveland insurance executive Peter Lewis combined to spend more than $1 million each year in support of voting to legalize medical marijuana and lighten drug penalties.

The results fell their way. After the 1996 vote, the Legislature repealed the marijuana provision, and after the 1998 vote, federal officials threatened to prosecute any doctor who prescribed the drug.

But even well-funded efforts can fail, sometimes because outside interests are vilified and in other cases because the public simply rejects the change.

In Arizona, local and national members of the payday-loan industry spent $14 million in 2008 to preserve their businesses here. Despite nearly 30 times more money than an opposition group, the measure failed handily at the ballot box.

Still, "spending money does have an influence on the ability to get a message out," Alexander said. "And if you get a message out, you have a better chance of winning."

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php
Five Filters featured article: Beyond Hiroshima - The Non-Reporting of Falluja's Cancer Catastrophe.

View the original article here