News of a big hole at city’s Eagle Bend Golf Course; Lawrence startup hopes to tackle video game violence, other phobias

Keep an eye out for me on the city’s Eagle Bend Golf Course. I’ll be the guy with a shovel in my bag. What’s that? You haven’t heard about the latest trend in golf? Well, it is bigger holes, and soon you may get to see it for yourself at Eagle Bend.

To get you up to speed, some golf industry leaders have determined that if golfers could play courses that had 15-inch cups as opposed to the traditional four and a quarter inch cups, the game would become easier. These leaders evidently took a a break from building rockets for NASA because clearly it would take a rocket scientist to figure that out. (Unless they want me to continue to sunbathe in the sand traps, they also may consider getting rid of those too.)

Ernie Shaw, the city’s director of parks and recreation, confirmed to me that Eagle Bend soon will start to experiment with the 15-inch cups, making it probably the first course in the region to do so. Shaw said the special cups recently have arrived at Eagle Bend, and one will be installed on the course’s practice putting green in the near future.

Shaw said the course also may host a special big cup tournament where all the greens are outfitted with the large cup for a day. Whether there will ever be a day where the course routinely has both the big cup and the standard cup on each green is tough to know currently, Shaw said.

“We’re not going to cut a big hole in every green in the beginning,” Shaw said. “But we’ll see where it goes.”

The CEO of the golf equipment firm TaylorMade is the guy behind the 15-inch cup idea. The company hosted a 15-inch cup tournament right after the Masters in April, and then started distributing the 15-inch cups to golf courses around the country. The last estimate I’ve seen is that about 100 courses currently have the oversized cup.

The idea behind the innovation is that it will cut down on the amount of time it takes to play a round of golf, and it also will reduce the frustration level of many golfers. There are estimates the cup cuts about an hour off the time of a round, and about 10 strokes off a player’s score. Time of play and frustration levels are two of the reasons golf industry leaders cite for a decline in the number of golfers. Shaw said he’s become a believer that golf needs to try new things in order to remain healthy.

“You need to let people have some success at it,” Shaw said. “It is such a hard game, you spend $40 on it, and at the end of a round you many times are beat up and wondering why you did this.”

Shaw equates the idea of a bigger cup to the idea of a shorter goal in basketball. Shorter goals are used all the time to introduce people to the game. As they progress, they can move up to the standard height. Shaw envisions the same thing with golf.

“We are a learning center out here,” Shaw said of Eagle Bend, which is the course just below the Clinton Lake dam. “That is part of our mission. If we don’t try some new things to get new golfers, then it is going to be a situation where courses are growing up in weeds because they can’t make it.”

Eagle Bend isn’t likely to grow up in weeds anytime soon. The course has big advantages over its competitors. As a city-owned facility, it doesn’t pay taxes and general tax dollars pay for the debt on the facility, which leaves the course just needing to break even from an operational standpoint. But Eagle Bend and every course in town may be facing a unique challenge. While the number of golf courses is contracting nearly everywhere else, it is poised to get larger in Lawrence. As we reported last month, the recently approved apartment development in northwest Lawrence called The Links has decided to include a nine-hole, par 3 golf course as part of its project. It will be open to the public and will compete with existing courses in town.

So it is easy to understand why area golf leaders are looking to try something different (don’t forget the idea of foot golf that has begun at the Orchards Golf Course.) But it is less clear whether traditional golfers will revolt over the idea of a 15-inch cup. I’ve already heard from some traditional golfers who think the idea is as lousy as knickers without a plaid pattern. Shaw said he expects some push-back from traditional golfers, especially if the course someday decides to place the big cups and the traditional cups on the same greens. That would create a situation where golfers may have to pick up and move their ball in order to avoid the big cup. (Moving your ball unnecessarily is a big no-no in golf, which is why it is always best to do so when your partner has his back turned to you.)

“We definitely don’t want our traditional golfers to go away,” Shaw said. “But our core group is getting older, and I just feel like we need to be willing to try some new things.”

I don’t know how it all will play out, but I can report one new piece of information. According to a golf course superintendent who tackles a bit like a linebacker, they don’t expect you to dig your own 15-inch holes. So, I guess I won’t carry the shovel after all. I’m assuming, though, I can still keep the chainsaw in my bag.

In other news and notes from around town:

• There’s a lot of talk about Lawrence becoming more of a destination for startup companies, so perhaps we should get used to more wacky stories about how a business gets started. For example: starting a business because your wife is afraid of video games that show spiders.

That’s the genesis story of one of Lawrence’s newer technology startups. Lawrence entrepreneur Andrew Rasmussen and his business partner Paul Mayfield recently launched the gaming website gamephobias.com. The website serves as a database that provides lots of details about what to expect with various online games. The video game industry already has a rating system that alerts users whether the game is best suited for mature audiences or teens, for example. But gamephobias.com goes several steps further.

The site provides information about specific types of content that may be problematic for certain users. For example, the site includes information about explosion scenes that may cause problems for veterans, alcohol scenes that may cause problems for alcoholics, and sexual assault scenes that may be disturbing for many. The site has a long list of items it “tags” for, including snakes, fire, electrocution, blood, mutilation, and even clown scenes.

But the idea that got the business started was spiders. Rasmussen’s wife had watched him play many online games, and she wanted to join in. But she is arachnophobic, and evidently lots of games have graphic depictions of spiders. (I once was afraid of ghosts, which led me to always play Pac Man blindfolded.) Rasmussen and Mayfield took the idea and created a website called doesthisgamehavespiders.com.

“Then we decided we probably could do a lot more than just spiders,” Rasmussen said.

The company has started to get some press in the gaming industry, and eventually the company hopes to reach out to the game manufacturers. At the moment, the company’s revenue stream is through online advertising on the site, and through Pay Pal donations.

• From a technology startup to a technology giant, there is news about AT&T’s Kansas operations. Lawrence resident Mike Scott has been named as the company’s president of Kansas operations. Scott has been with AT&T for 29 years, serving in positions of public relations, regulatory, and external affairs. He most recently was vice president of external and legislative affairs for AT&T Kansas.