Flotsam and Jetsam™

A very slow day in the golf blogosphere, as the world (excluding, alas, the guys we most want to see) heads the hills of Tucson.  No snow reports form there yet, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time.  Just a few tidbits for this morning, so let's get this show on the road.

• Riv Reflections:  Quite the win for Forest Bubba on Sunday, considering a couple of factoids:

• Watson started his tourney on the back nine of Thursday by going double bogey, birdie, double bogey, so was +3 after three holes.  Since we pride ourselves on our math capabilities, that means he played the last 69 holes in -18.

• Watson was still so far out of it after 36 holes that he started his third round on the back nine.  I'll confess that after his Phoenix Phollies, I was quite the skeptic when he took the lead.  But despite the physical manifestations of twitchiness, the swing and especially the putting stroke held up just fine.  

• I gather that the Poobahs in Ponte Vedra have read my Moneyball post, and have revamped the pgatour.com website and now include an "Inside the Numbers" feature.  This week they provide these data points:

0 Number of bogeys Watson made on the weekend at the Northern Trust. ... Watson was the only player in the field to go bogey-free in the final two rounds (64-64) and is the first winner since 1983 to go bogey-free at the Northern Trust Open in Rounds 3 and 4. Watson also became the second player at the event to accomplish this feat dating back to Ben Crenshaw at the 1987 Northern Trust Open.

.841 Strokes gained-putting at Riviera for Watson, which ranked 21st in the field. … That’s the second-best SGP mark for Watson this year and the 15th best of his career. Not too shabby.

2nd Number of times in Watson’s career where he’s led the field in driving distance and ranked inside the top 10 in driving accuracy, which includes the Northern Trust. … Watson has led the field in driving distance 66 times in his career. He led in DD and was in the T1 in driving accuracy at the 2012 Northern Trust when he placed T13.

4.40 Strokes gained-putting for Watson in the final two rounds. … Watson outperformed the field average by nearly 4 ½ shots on the weekend, which included going a perfect 22 of 22 on putts from inside 5 feet. This season, Watson is 147 of 150 from inside 5 feet to rank 13th on TOUR, a big improvement from 2013 when he was 828 of 857 (62nd on TOUR).

• Lots of additional performance stats are available to sort through.  FWIW, Jordan Spieth led the field this week in proximity, despite his Sunday fade, which our stats Yoda Mark Broadie tells us is the most reliable marker of golf talent. 

More stellar golf photography, such as this one of the future Gretzky son-in-law from Riviera, is also appreciated at the revamped pgatour.com.

• Jason Allred's T3 was his first Top 10 on Tour.  Ever.  Shack had a nice feature on him on Monday, including this from his presser:

I did, naturally I'm a competitor, I guess everyone competes in their own way, but I wanted to hit a great shot and it felt so good to hit probably my best drive of the day, my best iron shot of the day. I wanted to make that putt but in the midst of that, I realized, this is a special moment. To get to be alongside Bubba today, we were good friends growing up, we played a lot of junior golf and college golf, and he played an amazing round of golf today. It was fun to even enjoy watching him play.

But just that moment, that scene out there, I can't imagine a more beautiful place and to get to be a part of it was really special.

Good on him for enjoying the moment and coming up big, and he seems like the kind of guy for whom you want to root.  But about that broomstick?

• Can we Regift This One?  I've admitted to being a Charles Blair Macdonald fanboy, and he famously called golf Scotland's Gift to the World.  It turns out that they've given us a second gift, the "sport" of curling, and Golfblogger has the details.  

Curling has its origins in medieval Scotland. A stone inscribed with the date 1511 was uncovered when a pond was drained in Dunblane, Scotland, and the first written reference dates to 1541. Kilsyth Curling Club was formed in 1716, and is still in existence today.

Some wise person once said that just because something is old doesn't make it a classic.  In this case just because they've been sweeping the ice for centuries doesn't make it any less curious.

And as long as we're talking about old stuff, I spent part of yesterday with my 93 year old father at a former business partner's funeral.  One of the deceased's contemporaries explained to us the four stages of human life:

• Childhood
• Mid-life
• Old Age, and finally
• You're Looking Good.

• Treegate:  Lots of discussion of the loss in the family, the most famous tree in the golf world since they cut down the Lon Hinckle Tree.  Shack posts this from Scott Michaux in the Augusta Chronicle:

Sources have claimed for years that Augusta National already has a reserve loblolly pine picked out and awaiting the call at an undisclosed location in Georgia. But whether the backup tree survived the ice storm intact is unknown, as are the club’s plans for the 17th hole.

Wouldn't surprise me a bit, as they have more money than God.   But I'm quite sure that disclosing that the undisclosed location is in Georgia will warrant a visit from men with earpieces.

John Boyette has a second piece in the Chronicle about the dear departed, and fills in some background about Ike and the tree.  Apparently when he suggested at a meeting that the tree be removed, Clifford Roberts ruled him out of order and adjourned the meeting.  I can only hope that Ike saluted the officer of higher rank.  More significantly, Boyette can only remember two instances in which the tree came into play, including when Tiger hurt his achilles hitting off the pinestraw under the tree.

Tiger playing from under the canopy of the Ike Tree in 2011.  He injured his Achilles tendon for the umpteenth time on this effort.

Jack would beg to differ, as per this:

“Over the years, it’s come into play many, many times on the 17th hole. When I stood on the 17th tee, my first thought, always, was to stay away from Ike’s Tree. Period

“I hit it so many times over the years that I don’t care to comment on the names I called myself and the names I might have called the tree. ‘Ike’s Tree’ was a kind choice.

It makes perfect sense that a man known for his left-to-right ball flight would find a tree on the left edge of the fairway to be a nuisance, but Jack is far too polite to speak ill of the deceased.

In 2001 Golf Digest unveiled a way cool interactive feature that allowed you to see the changes to all 18 holes at Augusta from 1934 to the current date.  A Luke Kerr-Dineen post at Local Knowledge included the graphic of the 17th hole, documenting the growth of a tree that is barely visible in the aerial depiction from 1934.

The hole seems like a narrow chute even without the landmark tree, but my vote would be to replace it.  After all, Faldo needs something to prattle on senselessly about...

•  Augusta on My Mind:  David Owen has a wonderful post up at his blog about the 10th hole at ANGC, in which I learned that most of what I thought I knew about the club and the Masters is wrong.  I was aware that at the first Masters the nines were reversed, but then changed to the current routing for second editions of what was the Augusta National Invitational.

Alister MacKenzie's original routing for the golf course.  I of course fixated on his use of the term "Links" above.  The good Doctor knew better.

 David corrects me as follows::

In Alister MacKenzie’s original conception of the golf course at Augusta National (shown above), the holes were numbered as they are today. MacKenzie’s thinking changed in 1931, before construction began, and he switched the nines, so that the current first hole became the tenth. Several writers have attributed the change to Bobby Jones, who contributed to the design, but contemporary documents make it clear that the idea was MacKenzie’s. His intention was probably to provide a better view of the finishing green to members who might be lounging near the big picture windows in the locker room of the planned new clubhouse, which Jones and Clifford Roberts, the club’s co-founders, intended to build as soon as they’d raised enough money to tear down the old plantation house. (Luckily, they never did. I’ll tell that story soon.)

David's caption:  Early Augusta members playing the tenth. In MacKenzie’s first drawing of the hole, there was a big fairway bunker not too far from the foreground of this photo. (See the plan at the top of this post.) When this hole became the opening hole, though, he removed the bunker, because he didn’t think a golfer should have to clear a large hazard with his first shot of the day. But when the ordering of the holes changed again the fairway bunker wasn’t put back.

The original tenth green.

Let David finish:

Moving the green was the idea of Perry Maxwell, who one year later also redesigned the seventh hole. Maxwell pointed out that moving the tenth green to higher ground would not only solve a drainage problem but also markedly strengthen the hole. The change turned a breathtaking but mediocre short hole into one of the greatest par 4s in the world.

Don't think I ever knew that Perry Maxwell was involved.  I'm getting the sense that blogging about all the things I don't know will be a full-time job.

Best part of this is that David makes clear that he's got more to share with us between now and April 10th.

• Careful What You Wish For:  Writing at GD's Local Knowledge blog, John Strege discusses the predicament of Tucson, which has had a PGA presence since 1945.  However, this strong golf community thought it had secured a permanent fixture when it landed the WGC Accenture Match Play event in 2006, and even had a new golf course built for this specific event.  It looks like this year's event will be the last, certainly in Tucson, for an event without a sponsor, venue and commitment from the game's top players.

Tucson has a storied past in PGA lore.  It's winners include the Millers, Trevinos, Watsons and Mickelsons.  It's where Johnny became the Desert Fox and where Phil won as an amateur, surviving a snowman on the back nine on Sunday.  Ironically, snowmen are still part its lore, just in a more literal manner.

Add this to counts in my indictment of Commissioner Ratched Finchem, the absence of any loyalty to sponsors and communities that have supported the Tour for decades.  Tucson belongs on the Tour calendar, and at some point the sponsors are going to rebel.  

• Olympic Fairy Tales:   As long as we're reclassifying the horrors of Communism as a "Pivotal Experiment," how about an up close and personal, soft lens profile of the di Silvestris, the heart and soul of the Dominica Olympic Team.

I'm having trouble controlling my crocodile tears for this down to earth couple, who essentially bought themselves their slots in the Olympics

Here's some background: Gary di Silvestri is a New York native who became very, very rich as a hedge-fund and asset manager. He met Angelica, who is from Italy, while studying there. They were rich enough to once own a 30,000-square-foot estate on a private island in Turks and Caicos. So they were also rich enough to essentially buy their way into the Winter Olympics.

The Caribbean island of Dominica (with a population of about 70,000) granted them citizenship, according toU-T San Diego, after they were involved in humanitarian projects there. The di Silvestris wouldn't reveal specific details about their work in Dominica. When Dominica wanted to send its first ever delegation to the Winter Olympics, they called on their fabulous pair of honorary citizens.

The Olympic movement has become depraved on a level competitive with the United Nations.  hence the awarding of the current Winter Games to the despotic Vladimir Putin, and at a summer resort no less.  What could go wrong?

The heroes of our story.  World class athletes to be sure, but they don't look Dominican to this eye.

 The rant is therapeutic in and of itself, but let's remember that our beloved game is putting its "grow the game" efforts in that hands of the same International Olympic Committee that sees fit to do business with Putin and the di Silvestris.  

 To go further, one big issue with Olympic golf is who gets to play.  Here's an explanation of the current proposed qualification:

A field of 60 players for each of the men's and women's competitions, utilizing the Official World Golf Rankings as a method of determining eligibility. The top 15 world-ranked players would be eligible, regardless of the number of players from a given country. Beyond the top 15, players would be eligible based on world ranking, with a maximum of two eligible players from each country that does not already have two or more players among the top 15.

Per the updated rankings, Bubba would have been on the outside if not for Sunday's win, and there's currently no room at the inn for guys such as The Duf, Snedeker, Simpson (the other one), Walker and Bradley.  If Dominica can field a ski team, then surely Kamchatka should be able to field its best golfers.