Early each new year, members of the golf media begin watching the mail. The PGA Tour media guides - one for the PGA Tour, one for the Champions Tour, one for the Nationwide Tour - will be arriving soon. The books are crammed full of information on every player and every event. Now, fans of those tours can get their own version of the media guides: the 2005 Official PGA Tour Fan Guide.
"For years, the golf media has utilized our media guides as their primary resource for covering all three tours," said Bob Combs, Senior Vice President of Public Relations and Communications for the PGA Tour. "What Tehabi Sports (the publisher) has done is enhance this year's guide to become more engaging for the golf fan while maintaining a wealth of information that will inform and educate the reader."
Did somebody say "a wealth of information"? The Fan Guide includes profiles and stats for more than 450 golfers on the three tours; it includes profiles and stats on every tournament on each tour's schedule, including lists of past champions. It even includes recordbooks for the three tours.
Also interspersed throughout the Fan Guide are snapshots gleaned from the Shot Link system. These are some of the most interesting nuggets in the book, things such as the toughest and easiest holes on the PGA Tour in 2004.
But you can open the Fan Guide to almost any page and find great, interesting stuff. Here, let's give it a try. OK, we just flipped open our copy and landed on the section for the Byron Nelson Classic. What can we find?
How about this: the winners of the tournament, the first three years it was held (when it was called the Dallas Open), were Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead. Not a bad way for a tournament to get started, eh?
The 2005 Official PGA Tour Fan Guide is a great book for any golf fan, good for browsing throughout the year and for quick reference.
