While you were playing GOLF... Your Brand was being hijacked

Todays marketing tips centers on the Search Engine and URLS. BP recently purchased many domain names, and consequently caught a great deal of heat on the popular media, having to do with "GULF," "OIL SPILL", etc... Regardless of what you think of BPs other corporate communications (or lack thereof) during this period, the buying of URLs that "tell your message" (or almost as important, keep your competitors or adversaries from telling theirs) works, plain and simple.

Take the time today. Explore your business terms that are important to your brand and market perceptions---do you control these? Do you control the search terms if people head to GOOGLE or Bing and do a search?

If you need help in doing this, we can help. Define and dominate your search terms!

Todd Hunnicutt

REAL INTERNET SALES

THE SEO EXPERTS

Ultimate springtime golf fitness tips for "real" golfers

By Tim McDonald,
National Golf Editor

For those of you unfortunate enough to live in the North, you must be salivating at the thought of the spring golf season.

Hold on, Tiger. You ain't the man you used to be. You can't just jump up and go straight to the golf course after a long winter of sloth and mold.

Now, you will find any number of charlatans willing to sell you their total golf fitness regimens. These sleazoids always assume you're a golfer interested in a cleaner, healthier way of living and golfing. I've seen you out on the course, and I know that's not the sort of thing you're "into."

So here is my total golf fitness regimen for the "real" golfer:

• For God's sake, you have to strengthen your core! This involves eating really hard food, like jawbreakers. Eat a bag of those and have your neighbor punch you in the gut to see if your core is all it can be.

Options: Month-old fudge, Purina Dog Chow, pine bark.

• You also have to really work your obliques, I mean really work the hell out of them. Here's the perfect exercise for that. Lie flat on your back with knees bent slightly wider than your hips. If you have really fat hips, you're either going to have to really stretch your knees like in a cartoon, like The Elastic Man from India, or just skip this exercise. In fact, if you have really fat hips, just skip playing golf, nobody wants to see you out on the course.

Now, you slim-hipped people reach your hands to the ceiling like you're crying out for the Lord Jesus Christ to spare you from your miserable existence. You can hold light hand-weights, or not. What do I care? Lift your head and chest toward the ceiling and rotate to reach both hands just outside of your fat, right knee. Repeat on the left side. Now, take a breather. Ask Christ for forgiveness.

• Breathing exercises: Breathing properly and deeply is critical, especially for those tense moments on the course when normally you would start crying.
This deep-breathing exercise involves attending your local adult movie house, or calling up one of those sites on your Internet browser. Follow your instincts. It's either that or follow mine, and then you're looking at jail time.
• Horizontal abduction/adduction: I can't give you much help here, because I always get "horizontal" confused with "vertical," and I have no idea what adduction is. Who came up with that word, anyway? It's a stupid word and should be eliminated from the English language, if it's even English.

• Standing hip rotation: Don't do this. It makes you look like a girl.

• Alcohol fitness: How many times have you lost $2 Nassaus because while you were getting hamboned, your playing partners were just holding up that bottle of Jack Black pretending to drink?

Well, no need to waste good liquor. You can still drink and maintain your competitive edge. You just need to build up a tolerance. Stand upright in a dark closet, with a wide stance, and suck it down. Keep drinking until your wife leaves you.

• Aerobics: Ha! Don't make me laugh. This is golf!

• Putting: Don't bother to practice putting. Putting in golf is overrated. I play golf maybe 200 times a year and I've yet to meet anyone who can putt. You either make it or you don't. If you miss, just keep putting until the ball goes in the hole. Simple.

• Seniors: As we age, our bodies react differently, so seniors must prepare for golf differently than young punks. An important thing to remember is that there is an inverse relationship of increased ear hair to laughably short drives off the tee.

So keep those ear hairs trim and neat. If you're proud of your thick mane of ear hair, don't sweat it. If you're short off the tee, you're probably small in other areas, and I think you know what I'm talking about.

• Excuses: A healthy psychological outlook is a must for Better Golf. If you can convince yourself that the snap hook you hit into the weeds over there is not your doing at all, you'll retain the confidence needed to excel in the game.

The first time you smack one of your all-too-typical lousy shots, turn to your playing partner and snarl," "Will you stop that!" Look at him, looking all hurt and everything. Who would have thought golf fitness could be so much fun?

• Torque development in the downswing: This is so important, I can barely contain myself. This is vital to any golfer who has ever wanted to improve his score. You could even say it is absolutely critical in terms of reaching your full potential as a golfer and knowing what it is to be truly human.

• Alignment and posture: Face the target squarely and stand erect, with your rump jutting out slightly. Feels a little silly, doesn't it? Can you think of another situation in life where you would position yourself in such an odd manner? I can't.

Masters Amateurs Follow Woods With Crow's Nest View at Augusta

April 7 (Bloomberg) -- Trip Kuehne has lodging reservations at the Masters Tournament that even Augusta National Golf Club members can't get.

Kuehne, who runs the venture-capital firm Double Eagle Capital Management in Irving, Texas, won the 2007 Mid-Amateur Championship to earn his second berth in the Masters and an invitation to stay in the ``Crow's Nest,'' the space atop the clubhouse at Augusta National Golf Club. He roomed with Tiger Woods the first time he was there, in 1995.

The 30- by 40-foot area (9 by 12 meters), with white walls and a Masters green carpet, has housed amateurs who became champions, including Jack Nicklaus, Ben Crenshaw and Woods. Its occupants are within earshot of roaring crowds and steps from rubbing shoulders with the game's elite. Kuehne finished second behind Woods in the 1994 U.S. Amateur Championship to earn his first reservation there.

``I'm going to stay there a couple of nights and soak in some more of the history,'' Kuehne said in a telephone interview. ``The history I have there and the guy that I have it with, being Tiger Woods, is pretty phenomenal.''

Five amateurs are invited to play in the Masters. Kuehne will be joined in the Crow's Nest for this year's April 10-13 tournament by Michael Thompson, the U.S. Amateur runner-up, and Drew Weaver, the British Amateur winner. Colt Knost, winner of the 2007 U.S. Amateur and Public Links titles, forfeited his Masters entry by turning professional.

Above Champions

The quarters sit at the top of a narrow staircase just above a locker room reserved for Masters champions. Modest bedrooms are set around a living area. The walls are lined with photos of the game's greats, from club founder Bobby Jones to two-time winner Byron Nelson. The space is topped by an 11-foot square cupola that once was accessible by ladder, offering 360- degree views of the Georgia course.

``That was pretty amazing, just the whole experience of my first Masters there in the Crow's Nest,'' Woods, who was 19 years old at the time, told reporters last month. ``Say you played and you're resting, you still hear all the roars out there.''

Woods, who said his memories included getting up early to see honorary starters Gene Sarazen and Nelson tee off just yards from where he slept, made the 1995 cut with two even-par rounds. He finished tied for 41st at 5-over.

`Giggling Like Girls'

Woods and Kuehne also sneaked into the champions locker room, which left them ``giggling like girls,'' Kuehne said.

``You want to be in that locker room somehow one day,'' said Woods, now a four-time Masters winner. ``We were talking about that; wouldn't it be cool if one of us won this week? Obviously, we weren't even close.''

Soaking in the Masters history from such a perch can also be overwhelming, players say, often taking a toll on their scorecards.

``By the time Thursday rolled around, I was mentally and physically exhausted and hadn't even teed off in the tournament yet,'' said Kuehne, who shot a 79 and a 76 to miss the cut.

After two nights in the Crow's Nest this time, he'll join friends and family tomorrow at rented homes away from the course.

Thompson, a University of Alabama senior who plans to turn pro after the U.S. Open, said he'll stay in the Crow's Nest all week.

``It's an opportunity I've got to take advantage of,'' he said in an interview. ``I've heard that one of the best times is going out at 6 or 6:30 at night and going to the putting green, talking with the pros, and having a good time, so I'm looking forward to doing that sort of stuff.''

Worth the Trouble

Weaver, a college junior in Blacksburg, Virginia, said any inconveniences of the Crow's Nest will be worth the experience.

``It's definitely pretty tight quarters up there, so it will be pretty similar to my dorm room life, but not quite the same,'' he said in an interview.

The tournament organizers provide bathrobes for the Crow's Nest guests. Ear plugs and sleep masks are their own responsibility.

U.S. PGA Tour veteran Scott Verplank said he ``highly recommends'' that amateurs take the opportunity to stay there, while warning of the distractions.

``When the sun comes up, it's bright and the kitchen is right below the thing,'' Verplank, a 1985 guest, said in an interview. ``Once they start cooking breakfast for everybody, it gets pretty noisy.''

Verplank shot a 78 and 74, missing the cut that year.

The Masters has a special place for amateur golfers because Jones, a lifelong amateur, created the event with Clifford Roberts. The week's low-scoring amateur who makes the cut is honored in a ceremony inside the course's Butler Cabin, just before the champion dons the traditional green jacket.

``The ultimate way to go out would be for Tiger to win the tournament and me to be sitting in Butler Cabin as the low amateur,'' said Kuehne, who will retire from competitive golf at the end of this week to focus on his financial career.

To contact the reporters on this story: Mason Levinson in Augusta, Georgia, at mlevinson@bloomberg.net; Michael Buteau in Augusta, Georgia, at mbuteau@bloomberg.net.

Mount Vintage addition praised

Tom Jackson has designed dozens of golf courses in a career that spans more than four decades.

So when he ranks his latest effort, the Independent nine at Mount Vintage Plantation and Golf Club, among his five favorites, it must be pretty special.

"The end result was very good. I'm well pleased with the effort," Jackson said Tuesday.

"It was our goal to try to maintain same character in the third nine that we had in the other two nines."

Jackson designed the original 18 at Mount Vintage, which opened in 2000. The latest nine opened Saturday to rave reviews from the club's members.

The Independent nine features several unique holes, and water comes into play on six of them.

Jackon's favorite stretch begins with the par-4 fifth hole, which can play 472 yards from the back tee. It features a dogleg left that "almost has the same character as (No.) 13 at Augusta (National Golf Club)," Jackson said. "The green is set in there very nicely."

The sixth hole, a par 4 of 460 yards from the tips, is another dogleg left that features a large pond in the corner of the dogleg.

The signature hole for the Independent nine is the par-3 eighth. A waterfall cascades from the back tee area all the way down the hole into a large pond that guards the green.

"There's a lot of water, and a lot of elevation," Jackson said. "You're really going to be enjoying that part of the golf course."

The new nine has five sets of tees and plays to a par of 36. It measures 2,634 yards from the senior tees to 3,614 from the back tees. For women, the course plays 2,335 yards.

The Independent nine features the same kind of stonework on bridges and around water that is found on the original 18.

Jackson said the project cost a little more than $4 million. But he said it was well worth it.

"I think it's going to be the most beautiful nine we have," he said. "The owners were very gracious and didn't keep us from spending the money we needed to make it right."

Reach John Boyette at (706) 823-3337 or john.boyette@augustachronicle.com.

TOP FIVE

Architect Tom Jackson's top five courses that he has designed:

- Arrowhead Country Club.........Myrtle Beach, S.C.

- Carolina Country Club......... Spartanburg, S.C.

- The Cliffs at Glassy.........Landrum, S.C.

- Links O'Tryon.........Campobello, S.C.

- Mount Vintage Plantation.........Edgefield, S.C.