Flotsam and Jetsam

Full disclosure, I stole this post title from Jennifer Rubin, a political blogger now with the Washington Post.  Since she no longer uses it, I might as well.  As in the Ballyliffin blog, I'll use it periodically to aggregate several shorter items.  Though for those who have read my longer pieces, I'll note that short is a relative concept.

• Many in the golf world picked up on this amazing feat by Jim Kaat, the former major league pitcher for the Twins and others.  From the Golf Digest account comes the gist of it:

More proficient as a lefthander, the lefty hurler had shot his age from that side at age 70, 74 and on Nov. 24 at age 75. Because of his two-sided ability, he often found it enjoyable to grab a caddie and play a round from both sides of the ball, in essence playing a match of Righty vs. Lefty. It was in such a match on Dec. 7 that Kaat, with caddie Mike Adamson, shot a 78 lefthanded and had a 12-footer on 18 to shoot 75 righty. Knowing exactly where he stood, Kaat drained the putt, turned to Adamson and said, "Do you know what that meant? I just shot my age."

Twice, actually.

• Not the first reference I've seen to this subject, but this recent Pravda article indicates that treating sleep apnea improves golf scores.  As one dealing with apnea, I should logically be more excited than I am.  Alas, the treatment in question is the dreaded CPAP.  While it undoubtedly eliminates apnea, the damn machine also renders sleep impossible.  Baby, meet bathwater...

• I was watching the second round of the Kapalua money grab Hyundai Tournament of Champions with the volume off and suddenly several sprinklers in the fairway erupt, narrowly missing a twosome that included Jason Dufner.  I've never seen that happen at a Tour event before.  But to show how my mind works, my first thought was recognition that I could die a happy man never seeing the Duf in a wet golf shirt.  Just sayin'. 

• For the record,  the aforementioned Duf is the bride's favorite player.  Strange, I know, but what's a girl to do now that Tim Herron has lost his playing privileges.  I'm just glad her standards for husbands are, let's say, different....

•  From Geoff Shackelford's blog I learned of Pacific Gales, a new golf course planned for the spectacular bluffs of the southern coast of Oregon near Bandon Dunes.  Oh Goodie, another reason to make that difficult trek... Geoff doesn't even mention that this is potentially in addition to the 27 holes of public golf on similarly spectacular site south of the town of Bandon planned by Mike Keiser, the Bandon majordomo.  Keiser hasn't completed a land swap necessary to make that project viable, but no hurry since he's waiting for Gil Hanse to complete a minor previous commitment (the Olympic golf course outside of Rio).

• I almost missed this post by my old buddy Larry Gavritch on the Lido Golf Club.  Larry's focus is more on the current Lido, a 1948 Trent Jones design that appears in need of substantial TLC.  However, for Macdonald dweebs such as your humble blogger, the Lido is the Maltese Falcon of golf courses, the stuff of which dreams are made.  Best of all, Larry provides a link to the original Golf Illustrated piece written by C.B. himself, which I had not previously seen.  Not much more survives to help us understand the esteem in which the course was held.  For more on Lido, a recreation of which was Keiser's original idea for what morphed into Old Macdonald, I'll refer you back to my review of Old Mac at Larry's site. 

• Lastly, from STV News comes breaking news from 1848.  It turns out they've just found a document from that era, something called a precognition, that identifies the location of Old Tom Morris' first golf shop.  Read it all if golf history interests you, but I just love this stuff.  Who knew there was a three year gap in our history of Old Tom?

UPDATE:  I couldn't find it earlier on YouTube, but h/t to Shack for finding it first.