Courtesy: ExpandingKnowledge.com
Torrey Pines, site of the 2008 U.S. Open

How do you spell gimmick?

Well, if you work at Golf Digest magazine, you spell it "U S O p e n C o n t e s t".

U.S. Open Contest. It must have been a slow day in the sales department when Golf Digest elected to pour a great deal of time and energy into this one.

After Tiger Woods claimed last year at the U.S. Open that a 10 handicapper couldn't break 100 at Oakmont, an event planner contacted the magazine with the idea to do just that but at this year's venue - Torrey Pines.

Golf Digest was intrigued (that is, the marketing guys began to drool), roped in the USGA and even landed a broadcast deal with NBC.

Yes, folks, reality TV is alive and well. Never mind that The Golf Channel has been doing this kind of thing for a number of years.

Now we have golf's version of American Idol. Except the winner is picked before the golf is played.

Golf Digest says it received more than 56 thousand "essays" from hackers around America who all argued as effectively as they could write that they could break 100 at Torrey Pines a week before the U.S. Open.

That number was whittled down to five. Don't ask me how but I figure GD hired a front end loader to take most of the "essays" to the dump and worked with a handful after that.

Anyway, long story short, we now have five candidates from around the U.S. and the rest of us are invited to vote at GD's website as often as we like during April in order to select the winner.

That guy then plays 18 with Matt Lauer, Justin Timberlake and Tony Romo. And TV cameras record every stroke.

Have you figured out the plot yet? Oh, yeah, that's right - there isn't one.

It will be mildly entertaining and it will feature the usual color commentary as if it's a really important PGA event.

But frankly, we've all seen celebrities play golf on TV before. And we've seen amateurs play on TV. Sometimes they hit good shots, sometimes they don't.

End of story. Except for one point - that whole voting thing will drive plenty of eyeballs to Golf Digest's site. And they can charge more for the advertising.

If you can think of any other reason to get excited, I'm willing to listen.

By the way, Golf Digest has sister publications all around the world and the U.S. Open tournament is as international as you can get. Yet the five chosen golfers in the contest are all American. In fact, it's an Americans-only contest.

I wonder if that means non-Americans can't vote? Hell, would they want to?