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A YouTube playlist for fans of "Art of Golf" @highmuseumofart

The “Art of Golf” exhibition at the High Museum opened on Sunday (I liked the Edgerton/Jones photos best) and if you’re the kind of person who’s interested in the intersection of art and athletics, I’ve put together a playlist you might appreciate.

It contains work I’ve made in the last three years — all of it on golf, which I’ve been seriously playing for the last two and a half years. There’s a six-month gap there, when I was spending time making the videos wondering, “why am I not playing this game?”

Tags golf

This is a picture of Charlie Sifford who helped desegregate the PGA Tour. Matt Adams on the SiriusXM PGA Tour Network re-aired an interview with Sifford this morning, in honor of MLK’s birthday. The first time it aired, I was so riveted, I transcribed this exchange: Matt Adams: “We’ve talked a lot about the path you forged to open up the game to all people who had the ability to play. Do you feel as though golf still has a ways to go - have we gotten to where the game needs to be in terms of access?” Charlie Sifford: “No.” Matt Adams: “What more needs to be done?” Charlie Sifford: “First of all, you understand Afro-Americans don’t have a chance in golf, never did have a chance in golf, never will have a chance in golf. Because it’s so tough. See, when a young black kid goes to school, most likely the school he goes to doesn’t have a golf team, and if he goes to a public school, when they go to college, he don’t have too many places he can go to college where they have a golf team, and even if he goes there — when he gets out of college, he hasn’t played any golf, and he hasn’t learned anything about golf! He’s never played in the public links, or none of those tournaments that bring him up to where he thinks he can play. And then he don’t have any money. The golf manufacturers, you understand, never did sponsor — they had three blacks once.” Last year, the PGA Tour had two players of African-American descent; Tiger Woods and Joseph Bramlett. This year, there’s only one. Update: the Adams/Sifford interview is available here.

This is a picture of Charlie Sifford who helped desegregate the PGA Tour. Matt Adams on the SiriusXM PGA Tour Network re-aired an interview with Sifford this morning, in honor of MLK’s birthday. The first time it aired, I was so riveted, I transcribed this exchange:

Matt Adams: “We’ve talked a lot about the path you forged to open up the game to all people who had the ability to play. Do you feel as though golf still has a ways to go - have we gotten to where the game needs to be in terms of access?”

Charlie Sifford: “No.”

Matt Adams: “What more needs to be done?”

Charlie Sifford: “First of all, you understand Afro-Americans don’t have a chance in golf, never did have a chance in golf, never will have a chance in golf. Because it’s so tough. See, when a young black kid goes to school, most likely the school he goes to doesn’t have a golf team, and if he goes to a public school, when they go to college, he don’t have too many places he can go to college where they have a golf team, and even if he goes there — when he gets out of college, he hasn’t played any golf, and he hasn’t learned anything about golf! He’s never played in the public links, or none of those tournaments that bring him up to where he thinks he can play. And then he don’t have any money. The golf manufacturers, you understand, never did sponsor — they had three blacks once.”

Last year, the PGA Tour had two players of African-American descent; Tiger Woods and Joseph Bramlett. This year, there’s only one.

Update: the Adams/Sifford interview is available here.

Tags golf race

 Source scga.org

I’m looking for a clearer reproduction of this page from John Baldessari’s “Pure Beauty” exhibition catalog at Tate Modern in late 2009. My cell-phone took bad pictures back then. Can any of you out there help me out and send me a clearer jpg? (And yeah, this page has had so much sneaking influence on my life since, I should just buy the book already — I know! I know!) A thousand thanks!

I’m looking for a clearer reproduction of this page from John Baldessari’s “Pure Beauty” exhibition catalog at Tate Modern in late 2009. My cell-phone took bad pictures back then. Can any of you out there help me out and send me a clearer jpg?

(And yeah, this page has had so much sneaking influence on my life since, I should just buy the book already — I know! I know!)

A thousand thanks!

Tags golf fb

The Missing 11 Questions and Answers from the PGA Tour’s Official Transcript of Matt Every’s Post-Round Interview

Yesterday, after Matt Every shot 64 to take the lead at the Sony Open in Hawaii, he was interviewed by Kelly Tilghman of The Golf Channel. It was “awkward/weird”. See for yourself:

What’s strange about the exchange isn’t the insensitivity of Tilghman’s questioning, it’s how she ploddingly refers to Every’s troubles (from a year and a half ago) along the way. Tilghman seeds the interview with pedestrian references to pot-culture: she says he’s “in the zone”, that he “seems like a pretty mellow guy”, and asks if he’s “taking adavantage of some of the amenities” available in Hawaii.

Tilghman’s next move is a clumsy rhetorical pivot that doesn’t make a shred of sense, even in TV-land; she refers to the mountain behind them and how it reminds her of Every’s favorite TV show, which has the same title of how Every might have felt after having been arrested for marijuana possession in 2010, and the subsequent 3-month suspension from the PGA Tour.

Preceding this trainwreck, Every gave a traditional post-round interview in the media center. The PGA Tour just posted a transcript of this, without eleven questions and answers that refer in which Every discusses his arrest back in 2010. Fortunately, ASAP Sports posted an earlier transcript, in full, with the questions intact.

Here are the missing 11 questions and answers:

Q. Just go play?
MATT EVERY: Yeah. Just try and stay out of trouble this year.

Q. You brought up the incident at Deere. Not as much talk about what happened but how it has affected you over the remainder of that year, and obviously you only had did you have like Disney was all you had to try and keep your card?
MATT EVERY: Yeah.

Q. And then how you focused on that or what you did to kind of get that behind you.
MATT EVERY: Those three months that I was off, I did practice a lot for Disney, but I mean, how much can you really expect having a threemonth layoff trying to I think I had to finish probably top 5 or top 10 to have any kind of status for the next year. As far as putting it behind me, though, I have other stuff that is important to me. I didn’t really I was pissed for sure, like for probably a good month, but then after that, it was kind of like I didn’t write off Disney and say, I already know I’m not going to get my status. But I kind of in the back of my mind was like, okay, we’re going to have to go to Qschool this year and try and get it, but I didn’t. So then I was on the Nationwide, and once I got my card through the Nationwide last year, I kind of feel like it’s completely behind me now. I felt like my penalty for getting in trouble was not only the three months but being on the Nationwide Tour last year.

Q. Why were you upset?
MATT EVERY: A lot of reasons, man. I was upset at myself. I was upset at there’s some stuff I can’t talk about, but I was pissed at the way it was handled. I don’t know. I’m not a I don’t do drugs. It was a crappy deal, man. Wrong place, wrong time, perfect storm, and you know, I got three months out of it. It’s over with. I’m not mad at the TOUR. They did what they had to do. I totally understand it. But it’s over with.

Q. Did you have to make a lifestyle change at all because of that?
MATT EVERY: No, man, I’m married, I’ve got a kid on the way. I’m not like this party animal.

Q. I’m not suggesting that, but maybe the guys you might have hung with or something like that?
MATT EVERY: No, I still hang out with the same people. I have great friends, man. If one of my friends likes to smoke marijuana every now and then, I’m not going to say, well, you can’t be my friend anymore. Honestly, man, I know more people who smoke marijuana than who don’t smoke marijuana. I know that’s probably not the politically correct thing to say, but it’s the truth. It’s not a big deal to me. Like I don’t frown upon people doing that stuff. I don’t do it, but I don’t frown upon it.

Q. You lost for me a second when you said you were upset about the way it was handled. It got me thinking that you didn’t like the way the TOUR handled it, but then you said you’re not upset with the TOUR at all. What part of the handling things did I miss there?
MATT EVERY: Well, the I don’t think the police handled it very well. But whatever. And the TOUR, too, man, if they would have thrown a month at me instead of three, that would have been nice.

Q. Did you think the punishment fit the crime?
MATT EVERY: Probably, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. We’re all under the TOUR. I’m not bigger than the TOUR, never will be. It’s their call, and I did it, and it’s over with.

Q. Is it a stretch to say that once you got back to once you paid your penalty of Nationwide essentially, which I think is correct, that you look at this as a second start at all, this season?
MATT EVERY: Yeah, I honestly kind of feel like a rookie out here this year, because I was doing just fine until I got to Hilton Head. I broke my finger, six weeks there, then I get back and I was out for like two weeks, then get in trouble, there’s three months. My rookie year was cut I still almost kept my status and played half the tournaments that everybody else played. I feel like it was a pretty good year for me. I just didn’t get to play much.

Q. Is there any question in your mind if you hadn’t been off for those three months that you would have kept your card?
MATT EVERY: Oh, man, I would have been well, if I didn’t break my finger I think I would have kept my card, even if I got those three months, because I was playing really well. But I can’t I mean, that’s not fair for me to say. Everyone can say, oh, if I would have done this.

Q. But you felt like you were playing well enough could have kept it?
MATT EVERY: Yeah. I mean, yeah. There was plenty of tournaments left. And the tournaments I missed were New Orleans, huge purse; Charlotte; TPC; Byron Nelson; Colonial. I was in all of those. And then I got four starts last year. No offense to these tournaments, they’re great, and I’m going to play them this year, but I get Puerto Rico, Mexico. That’s not really that fair, but whatever.

Tags pgatour golf media