Flotsam And Jetsam™ - Fifth Of Four Edition

We've got a wide range of items for you today, spanning the globe to keep you informed of the most trivial of developments in the golf world.  You'll laugh, you'll cry, and you may even hurl, though I'm wondering if my audience isn't too sophisticated to know that reference.

State of Fortress Ponte Vedra - Shackelford went with a Commissioner Vincent Peale gag this morning, but I think I'll stick with my running Nurse Ratched reference.  After all, how does one improve on perfection?

In any event, the Commish gave his annual presser yesterday on all things Ponte Vedra, the place Bobby Joe Grooves (a Dan Jenkins character) famously said is the leader in the clubhouse in security gates.  There were two interesting take-aways:

• Match Play Update - None, nada, nil and zip.  That event seems nowhere, and while Finchem thought he'd have something to report before the end of May, Shackelford's ear is buzzing with reports that the difficulty in finding a sponsor is due to "the exorbitant costs associated with a WGC event."  Alas, he refused to rule out a return to Dove Mountain, proving that the death of the event may not be the worst possible outcome.

• Players Date - I preferred the March dae for this event, though reasonable people can differ.  Shackelford, for instance, thinks it "balances the schedule," which would be fine if it wasn't in Florida. Doug Ferguson furnishes these quotes:

"When you build a tournament and you're shooting for perfection -- which is what we do -- and we have some imperfections, it doesn't make it any more palatable that the players are being good about it," Finchem said. "I mean, we need to fix our greens. And we intend to take all the steps I just mentioned and some others aggressively next year. So I think we're going to be fine.

"At the end of the day, if we can't maintain consistent conditions -- and I think they will be competitively fine this week on balance -- then we may have to examine the date."

I'm not the man's biggest fan, but I'll give him credit here for acknowledging the issue that his preferred May date entails.   More details from Ferguson:

The grass was overseeded with rye when The Players was held in March, which is typical for most Florida courses. Finchem said that was easier to manage with the weather. But he said it still took 10 years "to really get it dialed in" for speed and firmness. 

The new Bermuda greens were not built until 2007, and a sand cap under the grass on greens and fairways allow the course to be firm after a rain delay.

It likely won't happen, but it's an interesting juxtaposition between the two items, as the demise  of the former would open up a calendar slot for the latter.  But we really wuld like to save the match-play, no?

Pot, Kettle -  Writing in The Scotsman, Martin Dempster provides our wisdom du jour, as Sandy Jones, Chief Executive of the Belfry-based Professional Golfers Association, warns of the effects of encroaching commercialism on the Ryder Cup:

“We've got to remember those core values of the match.The integrity, the respect, not squeezing every penny out of it. We've got to be more Augusta-like, where they do it quietly and effectively. It's not in-your-face commercialism."

Isn't that rich?  The folks that gave us The Belfry, Celtic manor and the dreadful Centennial Course at Gleneagles are worried about the integrity of the matches.  They've hung out the For Sale sign on the event, and the horse is long out of visible contact with the paddock...

Mind you, the same can be said about the PGA of America, which has given us Valhalla and Medinah.

Does This Make Him More or Less Interesting? - From GolfChannel.com:

The Most Interesting Golfer in the World has once again tied the knot.

Miguel Angel Jimenez exchanged vows on Saturday with Susanne Styblo in Torremolinos, Spain. According to a PGATour.com report, they had met in Styblo’s hometown of Vienna, Austria, where Jimenez now resides.

Now married, Jimenez, 50, had planned to take a month off from competition following the Champions Tour’s April 18-20 Greater Gwinnett Championship, which he won.

Best wishes to the happy couple, but a couple of questions.  First, The Mechanic lives in Vienna?  Who knew?

Second, how is he going to make the Euro Ryder Cup team if he takes a month off?

One Man's Terrorist - Golf.com has a fun slideshow of The Eleven Most Terrifying Things in Golf.  Ignoring the cliched (the 17th at Sawgrass and Barkley's swing) and the dated (Tiger's stare), leave us with those that made me laugh:

Ben's unfortunate Sunday golf shirts at the 1999 Ryder Cup.

Pat Perez's temper.  True that.

Playing behind Crane, Na or Furyk.  Actually, I think playing with Na is far worse than being behind him.

Since we're on this subject, Alex Myers has a good post on five tee shots at TPC scarier than No. 17.  here's one example:

No. 5: A similar look to No. 4 off the tee, only No. 5 requires a longer poke at 471 yards. Miss right and you're wet. Miss a little less right, and you're in a deep fairway bunker. Miss left, and you're not much better off. "I think five really stands out, because the easy bail out is left and ends up getting caught in really thick rough on that hill usually," Nick Faldo said.

I don't get why he thinks it looks like No. 4 off the tee, but it's a brutal tee shot, especially if like me you tend to draw the ball.  Quite frankly it's a brutal golf hole from start to finish.

He also includes Nos. 8, 13, 14 and 18.  I don't agree with him that No. 8 is a scary tee shot, as there's no water in play.  But it's a really difficult par-3 because of its length and that there's no good miss.

Good 911 Call - David Dusek tells us that Lefty decided to spend some quality time with a trusted advisor after his tough finish at Quail Hollow:

Peltz performs triage.

You won't typically see Phil Mickelson on the range or a practice green on Mondays, especially after he played in the previous week's PGA Tour event, but under a cloudless Florida sky Monday at TPC Sawgrass, Phil the Thrill was grinding with putting guru Dave Stockton.

 I played nine holes yesterday afternoon with Bruce Berman, our club champion.  After a power lip-out from 4-feet, Bruce joked that that was his Phil impression, to which I added that to be convincing he'd need to do it three more times on that hole.

Mirror Images - I like when the guys have fun out there, especially early in the week.  At Augusta it's skimming balls across the pond on No. 16, but at TPC I thought it was the caddie comp on No. 17.  This week they seem to have come up with a new twist:

And here's the highlights from Wednesday's Caddie competition on No. 17:

And while we're on caddie stories, how about this story that Phil shared about Bones:

Mickelson had never seen Mackay hit a golf shot. With his former boss, Larry Mize, tending the flag 140 yards away and yelling encouraging words, Mackay hit with Bob Estes' 7-iron -- and the ball soared left into the water. Mackay reloaded but this time used a slightly shorter 7-iron from Jeff Maggert. 

"And Mize is still tending the flag and Bones hits this beautiful shot and as it starts to come down, Mize jumps out of the way, because it was going to hit him," Mickelson said. "And it flies into the hole and stays. 

"Here we are 21 years later and I remember it vividly. It was incredible." 

Said Mackay: "The best par I've ever made in my life."

Big deal.  I saw Freddie do that once on 17, and he was, you know, in competition.