The Pepper Mill

LAST WEEK in Houston, the Tour put mikes on certain caddies, and there's been talk about doing it every week. It's not the first time such eavesdropping has been considered. Golf Channel and ESPN miked LPGA players for a short while. I never agreed to wear one because I considered it invasive and bulky. I still think it's a terrible idea. With the exception of a few player-caddie discussions the conversation is usually boilerplate stuff—yardage, wind direction, etc. The talk can also be a little, um, colorful. Nobody should have to worry about that at crunch time. Also, the mikes the caddies wear are relatively weak and sometimes pick up only one side of the conversation—the caddie's. (Also: Caddies want to be paid for wearing the mikes.) An alternative arrived last year in the form of the superpowerful Sennheiser 816 boom mikes, currently used by NBC. These have picked up lots of conversations, some of them terrific stuff. The only drawback to these mikes is that they're spotty when players are putting, since the mike operator can't go on the green. But again, do we lose anything of great value here—line, speed, grain? That's information the announcers give out. If on-course audio is necessary, then hire another 816 operator or two and let them follow key groups. Viewers may miss a few greenside chats, but they'll hear more overall, and players and caddies won't have a gripe.

DAVIS LOVE III missed qualifying for the Masters based on a top 50 World Ranking by .0454 of a point. It stinks for Davis (left) and his fans, but the larger issue is that the World Ranking needs tweaking. It's difficult to understand, hard to predict, and foreign fields are given too much credit for their strength relative to Tour events. Nothing against Rory McIlroy, but how does a guy who had been a pro for less than a year, had a single European win and had not yet played in the U.S. arrive at the Accenture Match Play ranked in the top 20? The kid is going to be tremendous, but this system for gaining entry to the best events needs to be put under a corrective microscope.

Dottie Pepper, a 17-year LPGA veteran, is an analyst for NBC and Golf Channel.