Friday Fun

Lots to talk about, even excluding the festivities at Fortress Ponte Vedra:

Match Play MIA - Doug Ferguson informs us of this startling development the other day:

The Valero Texas Open announced that it would be played next year on March 26-29, two weeks before the Masters.

I take a back seat to no man in my reverence for the Valero Texas Open, but you'll by now have intuited that I'm going somewhere else with this:

That means every day on the PGA Tour calendar is taken between the Hyundai Tournament of Champions (Jan. 9-12) and The Players (May 7-10).

Ferguson speculates that the tourney could conceivably take a year off, though as of now the Tour has a whole in its 2015 schedule the week after the Players Championship (and the week before the Byron Nelson).  It's ironic that we're facing this dilemma after the most exciting match play in recent memory, but that's where we are.

Wouldn't it be nice to have one week on the calendar where they don't play a dreary 72-hole stroke play event?  Just askin'...

Expert Advice - We scour the golf blogosphere for expert opinion on all aspects of our great game, so you don't have to.  Today, we follow up on Golf Digest's targeted appeal to millennials with this sage advice from Justin Hartfield, courtesy of Peter Finch:

Juatin, any openings in your game?

“Different strains of marijuana will have different effects on you. Indica strains will have kind of a ‘body high’ effect, while a sativa will be more like a ‘head high.’

“So there’s different types of weed for different times in the round. If I had my druthers, I’d start with a strain that was very high in THC-v. For me, that’s really energetic and really gets me going and excited on the first couple of holes. There’s no sort of lethargy or anything like that. It’s like the perfect, ultimate, morning, no-comedown kind of high. A strain that’s high in THC-v is called Green Crack.

“Around the fifth or sixth hole, I like to move to a high-THC sativa. Maybe something like a Tangie, which is a tangerine-smelling [strain], a really delicious kind of flower. Or maybe I’ll move to a haze, like a Lemon Haze.

“Maybe on the 13th or 14th hole, I’ll have a hybrid. I’ll have something that’s going to hit me in the head and that’s also going to affect my body, making it looser. A hybrid could be like a God’s Gift or Skywalker OG or something like that.

“And then maybe at the end of the round, that’s where I’ll switch to indica only. You want your body to relax. You don’t want to have too much pressure going into the 17th and 18th holes. Maybe I’ll have a dab of CBD (cannabidiol). That’s the stuff that doesn’t get you high, but it has a really nice body effect. If my back hurts a bit during the round, I might have a dab of the indica and then a second dab of the CBD back-to-back: one for the head and one for the body.”

That's way too much to remember, especially if you're, you know, stoned, so please feel free to print this post and keep a copy in your golf bag.

Fingers Crossed -  Jeff Rude gets my hopes up with this:

There’s a strong possibility the Open Championship will return to Royal Portrush in Northern

The spectacular fifth green at Portrush.

Ireland for the first time in more than six decades, multiple sources told Golfweek. One insider said an announcement of a 2019 Open there could be made this summer.

“I believe it’s a done deal,” one source close to the situation said. “I think I’s have been dotted and T’s crossed except for when will it be held there and how often.”

We last touched on this subject here, and Rude confirms that two new holes would be built on what is now their Valley Course.  The work is apparently to be performed by Martin Ebert, whose firm has worked on five Open rota courses, and also contributed his help at beloved Ashkernish.

Rude closes with this:

Royal Portrush’s cause certainly wasn’t hurt last November when PGA of America president Ted Bishop said the course would be his personal first choice if the PGA decides to go ahead with the idea of occasionally contesting the PGA Championship outside of the United States.

Sad that it would take that for them to make the move.  And no mention of whether a certain resort on the Ayrshire coast might be leaving the rota.

Pet Therapy -  John Strege with a nice story about Carolyn Bivens:

The "Brand Lady."

Bivens, whose three-plus-year tenure as the LPGA commissioner was often controversial, now lives in Newport Beach, Calif., and is a pet therapy volunteer at the cancer center. Twice a week, she and Monster are there making their rounds. 

Pet therapy was a perfect fit for both of them. For the better part of five years, Bivens had been volunteering her time to a variety of causes. She herself is a breast cancer survivor, having been diagnosed in 2011, and gone through surgery, treatment and therapy. Monster, meanwhile, "is a fluffy little thing, with gobs of personality," she said.

Strege includes this wonderful testimonial:

“It was so interesting to me,” he said. “She had some cancer herself and now she’s spending many hours a week helping people. I know she had a controversial run with the LPGA, but there’s always this thing called redemption. She turned out to be a really cool lady. Very nice and fun. She perks people up around the hospital. I’m going through my chemotherapy and she made me think I can beat this. She just made me feel better.”

Controversial isn't quite the right word, as I would have gone with disastrous or,as the crazy kida are wont to say, an epic fail.  But that's business and this is life.  Glad to hear she survived her own bout with cancer and that she's found an effective way to give back.

Pink Is The New Orange - Are the planets out of alignment?  Did Marty mess with the flux capacitor?  Take a look at Rickie Fowler's scripted outfits for The Players and see if there's something amiss:

No OK State orange, for those keeping score at home.  I get the Mother's Day/breast cancer awareness thing, but a full week sans orange?  Is that prudent?  Will Puma clothing sales go into freefall?  Inquiring minds want to know...

Timeless - A couple of items relating to the timeless Ben Hogan.  The news part is that the Ben Hogan brand of golf clubs is to be revived:

It may not be as dramatic a comeback as the one fashioned by the man himself from his near-

fatal car accident in 1949, but the Ben Hogan Company is back in the equipment business. A dormant brand for nearly a decade, the Ben Hogan Company is being resurrected with clubs bearing the famed Hogan script scheduled to be return in stores in 2015.

Perry Ellis, which owns the Hogan name, has entered into a licensing agreement with Eidolon Brands, whose president and CEO is Terry Koehler, a former director of marketing for the Ben Hogan Co. Koehler already has assembled a research-and-development department that will be based in Fort Worth, where Hogan clubs were first produced.

Really, is there a better name to associate with golf clubs?  Perhaps they should stay out of the putter market, but has any player ever been more clpsely associated with the art of striking a golf ball.

With Hogan on our mind, no better time than to link to a series called Playing with Hogan by Shelley Mayfield, being run by Armchair Golfer Neil Sagebiel.  Neil, it bears reminding, wrote The Longest Shot, his account of Jack Fleck's great upset at the 1955 U.S. Open.  Here's Neil's lede:

Shelley Mayfield in 1963.

GOLF LEGEND BEN HOGAN DIED on July 25, 1997, in Fort Worth, Texas. Hogan was nineteen days shy of his 85th birthday. Three of the men who served as pallbearers at Hogan's funeral at University Christian Church were Hall of Fame golfers—Sam Snead, Ken Venturi and Tommy Bolt. 

Another pallbearer with a distinguished golf career was not well known to the public, but he might have been the closest to Hogan, especially from the 1960s on. His name was Shelley Mayfield. This is a story about Mayfield's life in golf and his friendship with the enigmatic Ben Hogan.

The first installment of this series can be found here, with subsequent installments here, here and here.  Well worth a read if Hogan and that era are of interest.

Drive For Show - A few days ago, Shackelford posted the press release from the new Jack Nicklaus course in Cabo San Lucas, and it's mostly what one would expect:

Los Cabos, Mexico (May 6, 2014) – In a dramatic setting at the tip of the Baja Peninsula,

marked by windswept dunes, sheer cliffs and desert foothills 10 minutes from downtown Cabo San Lucas, Jack Nicklaus has crafted a golf course that is poised to redefine the Cabo golf experience. Quivira Golf Club is the centerpiece of Quivira, the newest luxury development in Los Cabos, which encompasses two resorts—Pueblo Bonito Pacifica Resort & Spa and Pueblo Bonito Sunset Beach Resort & Spa—and three high-end real estate communities: Montecristo Estates Luxury Villas by Pueblo Bonito, Copala, and Novaispania Residences. 

“Our team has worked with the canvas Mother Nature provided to create what we hope is one of the most spectacular courses in the world,” Nicklaus said of Nicklaus Design’s sixth course in Los Cabos. “This property afforded us a rare opportunity because of its topographic diversity and natural environment.”

Employees of Unplayable Lies and their families are not eligible for this offer, for obvious financial reasons. I'm sure it's quite spectacular, but see if you react as I did to this:

The three-quarter mile drive to the fifth hole, which crosses arroyo-spanning bridges and traces a switchback route up the side of a mountain, has already been dubbed the “Greatest Drive in Golf.”

Egads, those minimalists have even gotten to our Jack.  Shackelford let that pass without a reaction, but I'm guessing he's not staying up nights waiting for them to put in 15" cups.

The Most Interesting Man in Boxers - Luke Kerr-Dineen shares this Jose Maria Olazabal story about you-know-who:

"I have never met anyone who loves every single moment of his life so much," says his friend Maria Acacia Lopez-Bachiller, the longtime Spanish player liaison to the European Tour. She says Jose Maria Olazabal -- who as an introverted ascetic from the north of Spain is outwardly Jimenez's opposite -- loves to tell the story of his close friend standing nearly naked in front of a locker-room mirror (the mind's eye can't avoid a vision of bikini briefs) and saying, "Vascorro [Spanish for Basque], I am such a beautiful man."

OK, I'm not sure I need to have that image floating around my brain, but Luke uses it as an excuse to share a couple of his Greatest Golf Photos of All Time.  The first, appropriately enough involves The Mechanic:

Miguel Angel Jimenez doesn't always smoke cigars in China, but when he does, he uses chop sticks.
Luke's second nominee also involves a Spanish player:

 Here's Luke's case for the latter as GGPoAT:

Why it qualifies: 

-- Because that's Michael Jordan, perhaps the greatest athlete ever, chasing Sergio Garcia during the 1999 Alfred Dunhill Cup at St. Andrews. 

-- Because not only does Garcia seem to be leading (talk about an upset), but he also appears to be taunting His Airness by sticking out his arms and pretending to fly. Who says golfers aren't real athletes? 

-- Because their strides are perfectly synced. Nice job, David Cannon of Getty Images! 

-- Because this probably involved a big bet between the two. 

-- Because Sergio is actually smiling and laughing on a golf course. 

-- Because Sergio's eyes are fearfully saying, "What happens if he catches me?"