The most grisly shuck in golf came to a delicious end today when PGA Tour officials essentially told the odious Turning Stone Casino that they are not good enough to host their own stand-alone tournament during the regular golf season. After failing to draw a major championship to their over-priced, under-designed chump-trap, and after failing to convince the Tour that they should not be either a) on the Fall Series or b) held opposite a bigger event such as a WGC event, like a spoiled child, Turning Stone picked up their toys, walked away and pouted by their lonesome, counting their money to comfort their miserable, loathsome selves.
Turning Stone Casino – as arrogant as an incumbent politician selling socialist health care – took this position to the PGA Tour, which the tour repeated to the world in a press release:
“Looking ahead, Turning Stone hopes to host more significant golf events, such as the annual Notah Begay III (NB3) Foundation Challenge, which features PGA TOUR and LPGA Tour members competing in a best-ball team format.”
More significant than what? The Tour? It’s that kind of arrogance that made every journalist ridicule them – in particular, the same attitude of entitlement that led Oneida Chief Ray Halbritter to give himself – a rank amateur and Z-list celebrity even for Utica – give himself a sponsor’s exemption into the tournament. They made a great argument for being the biggest laughing stock in golf after that stunt.
“Turning Stone has an over-inflated opinion of themselves and their course, and it made them difficult to deal with,” said one golf broadcaster, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They insisted on getting a major, which they would never get, and when that failed, they insisted on getting a stand-alone date for an event – one where there was no opposite event. but who is going to go to a mediocre casino in Utica?”
Even Turning Stone officials recognize that undisputed truth. “We’re not Vegas and we’re not Atlantic City and we’re not Foxwoods,” groused Dan Hartmann, head of PR, in one of the few truly self-aware moments the course had. Otherwise they have been renowned as one of the more egotitical, self-aggrandizing groups to deal with. They tried to make my life miserable after I gave them lousy scores in a review, low scores they richly deserved.
“They are unfriendly there,” said one golfer who only went because he and his wife wanted to play every Tour course that was open to the public. “They think who the hell they are, and think you are lucky to be paying them too much to play a course that’s good, but not special. It’s also way overpriced.”
So justice is served. Pride came, and then the fall. Only four years into a six-year deal, the garbage scow that is Turning Stone Casino sails off into the ocean to sink in lonely eminence, with no one to mourn it but a few tearful restrateers who work for them. But they’re really great! Better than Augusta National or Kiawah Island or Pinehurst or Whistling Straits! Just ask them! Why their course is all teddy bears and rainbows and Skittle-farting unicorns! $275 please! (Skittles cost extra, but they’re really GOOD Skittles! Trust them! The pros ate their unicorn-farted Skittles and loved them! Notah Begay tested, PGA Tour approved…for a while at least…)
Meanwhile, the Tour can focus again on sending event to real courses with real architecture and a sense of altruism regarding golf: not a piratical take-what-you-can-and-give-nothing-back attitude (like not paying taxes) that they espoused. And they won’t have to hide the slots come tournament week!
We can also gulp in as many deep barrel-fulls of God’s freshest forest-fragrant, dew-dripped air because we’ll no longer have to be immersed in the rancid moral and physical stench of the most intolerable, infernal and insufferable old buzzard roost in all Golfdom. May no golf course so distasteful to the righteous ever slime its way on to the PGA Tour in such a simoniacal way ever again, but don’t count on that during Timid Finchem’s watch. He’ll jump on the money like Oprah on a baked ham.
But for now, regarding Blarney Stone, perhaps a proper remembrance on their monument should read, “Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out…because we don’t want ass prints on our new door!”
Goodbye and good riddance.
