Weekly Q & A

This week's Sports Illustrated/Golf Magazine round-table includes special guest Dave Stockton, putting guru to the stars.  I'm guessing that Kevin na might come up, so let's dive in:

1. After Robert Garrigus played with Kevin Na on Saturday at the Valspar Championship, Garrigus’ caddie said “it ain’t fair” for his boss to have been paired with Na because Na’s slow play affected Garrigus’ rhythm. Does playing with a slow player present a competitive disadvantage? What, if anything, should the PGA Tour do to speed up play?

The Pros: They seem a tad worn down by the subject, knowing that it's a problem that no one wants to seriously address.

Best Line: Alan Shipnuck, "Oh, gawd, are we still kvetching about slow play? What’s the point?! Nothing ever gets done, so it’s really pointless to waste any more time on the subject. It now has to be considered the rub of the green, akin to a sand-filled divot, so the likes of Garrigus just have to learn to deal with it."

My Take:  Shackelford linked back to this 2010 quote from Commissioner Ratched (from a John Feinstein column):

Of course, it has been 18 years since a PGA Tour player received a stroke penalty for slow play -- and Finchem doesn't sound as though he wants to see it happen again anytime soon. 

"Slow play is a legitimate issue," he said, "but not to the point where I think we need to do something like that. The real problem isn't how long it takes to play a round but when one player makes it uncomfortable for the other player or players because of his pace. That's just bad etiquette. And it's true, we do have some players who are in denial about being slow." 

Incentives matter.  No penalty, no change in behavior.  

2. John Senden won the Valspar Championship on Sunday, the second consecutive Florida Tour stops with tough conditions and a hard course that created many bogeys. Overkill for golf fans -- and players? Or is this championship golf at its best?

The Pros: Not a lot of concern, though a couple of the scribes wouldn't want four U.S. Opens on the Florida swing.

Best Line: From Travellin' Joe, frantically seeking to reestablish his relevance, "Other than having sand and extra wind for a couple of days in common, Doral's Blue Monster and Innisbrook's Copperhead proved to be brutes for different reasons. The Monster featured firm conditions, new greens and tons of water; Copperhead chomped down with trees, rough and elevated greens where it was tough to get close to the hole with approaches."

My Take:  If I'm giving Joe Passov props (given that in my rich fantasy life I'm next in line for his plum gig), you know he's making an important point.  It's a mistake to lump the Copperhead in with the other more-typically Florida venues.  Like the Open Championship, Florida golf is at the mercy of the weather, nae wind, nae golf.  Next year it will inevitably be calm and they'll be back to -26 for the winning score.

3. John Daly shot 90 at the Valspar Championship on Friday, his worst-ever round on the PGA Tour. Should Daly still receive sponsor’s exemptions to play at PGA Tour events?

The Pros: Surprisingly to me, most advocate for giving the sponsors carte blanche, regardless of the choices they make.

Best Line: From some guy masquerading as Gary Van Sickle, "I would've cut off Daly from exemptions years ago when he refused to go to Q-school to regain his card or even try Monday qualifying. But the exemptions belong to the tournaments and they should give them to any player they think will help the tournament. That includes Michelle Wie, Annika, Michael Jordan or Bozo the Clown. You want Daly, that's fine with me, but you know what you're getting.

Our hero in atypically introspective pose.

My Take: My feelings on this are not a well-kept secret. That's a completely different attitude from Van Sickle than the piece I sliced and diced earlier, and I've no argument with the undeniable fact that it's the sponsor's quid pro quo for their investment. But the Tour is also well within its rights to suspend a player with a rap sheet the length of War and Peace. 

4. In an interview with Golf.com, Hank Haney said that Tiger Woods won so many times because he shot lower scores, not because he intimidated his opponents. Do you agree with Haney that Tiger’s “intimidation factor” is overrated?

The Pros: Hank's motion fails to carry the day, as the writer's speak both to Tiger's physical presence, mental toughness as well as the circus that was a pairing with him.

Best Line: Alan Shipnuck, "At the 2007 U.S. Open, I was on the first tee at Oakmont when Tiger strutted on to the first tee for the final round. He was wearing a skintight red shirt, and he looked like some kind of superhero. The crowd went bonkers. Aaron Baddeley’s eyes bugged out, cartoon-style, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he triple-bogeyed the first hole to kick away the lead."

My Take: As I noted when this came up last week, it's mostly a semantic argument. It seems like ancient history, but for about ten years Tiger was the best closer that our sport has ever seen. If you throw a player into the pressure cooker of a final round at a Major against a competitor he knows will not give back strokes, how do we think it's going to turn out? Is that intimidation? I'd say yes, but of a specific kind.

5. Ian Poulter kicked off his SiriusXM radio show by relating that Michael Jordan tried -- and failed -- to psych him out at the 2012 Ryder Cup at Medinah. Which event induces more pressure for the players, competing for country at the Ryder Cup or being in the hunt coming down the stretch at a major?

The Pros: Ryder Cup in a landslide.

Best Line: From Josh Sens, "Those are different kinds of pressure, and it weighs on different players in different ways. Would you wager on Ian Poulter coming down the stretch in a major? Probably not. But in the Ryder Cup? For sure."

My Take: No argument, but I think this missing ingredient is familiarity. They play stroke play tournaments 51 weeks of the year, so as daunting as a Sunday at a major can be, they've in a sense been there before. The Ryder Cup is just out of their comfort zone and stresses them in ways that are unfamiliar. But isn't that what makes it so dramatic?

6. You have one 10-foot putt to sink to save the earth from alien destruction. What player in the game today do you choose to hit that putt, and what player in history do you nominate for the job?

The Pros: Good stuff here...current players mentioned include Stricker, Tiger, Zach Johnson and Inbee Park. Historical picks include Jack, Billy Casper, Dave Stockton, Bobby Jones and, yes, Tiger.

Best Line: From Mike Bamberger, "I'm thinking of Ian Poulter, if he's in a team uniform. Maybe Inbee Park or Russ Cochran. But likely Woods, if he's not wearing red. By the way, when these aliens come in, any chance they'd spare Cypress Point?"

My Take: Not wearing red, Mike? Doesn't that rule out the Tiger at Torrey, Valhalla, etc.?

OMF with his 1957 Claret Jug. 

My historical choice is a no-brainer, South African legend Bobby Locke, who coined the phrase "Drive for show, putt for dough." Locke is not well-known in these parts because he played very little in the U.S. in his career, but perhaps a short story will explain that. In the late 1940's Locke was banned from the Tour, allegedly because of failing to honor playing commitments, though he was hardly the first foreign player to do so. According to 1948 Masters Champion Claude Harmon, "Locke was simply too good. They had to ban him."

Locke was known affectionately as "Ol' Muffin Face," and still holds the PGA Tour record for margin of victory, 16 strokes. He won four Open Championships in the 1950's, and in the U.S. finished in the top 4 in 34 of 59 events from 1947-49. I'm not alone on this, as Gary Player has called Locke the greatest putter of all time.

A current player (and I take that to mean now) is a much more difficult call, as the best pure putters (Baddeley, Chalmers, Jacobson) are not necessarily proven pressure players. Zach is as good a call as I can come up with, though I'm gonna need a Plan B for this here alien invasion.