Tour Notes

Sorry for the light blogging over the weekend, but real life will occasionally intervene.  Hopefully everyone enjoyed the weekend as much as the bride and I, as the weather finally cooperated.

It was a quiet weekend golf-wise, but shall we pick through the rubble and see what we missed on the various tours?

THE Tour - Somebody named Brendon Todd won the Byron Nelson at Bushwood Country Club TPC

Have you seen this man?

Four Seasons Las Colinas.  Hard to control one's excitement I know, but it's been that kind of season. 

Mike Weir, a name from the wayback machine, took second place.  One can't help but root for a guy like Weir, as gritty a competitor as you'll find, but such a short hitter that he's got to be perfect in every other category to compete.  Unfortunately he suffers from Luke Donald Disease, as evidenced from his driving statistics for 2014.  He's No. 197 in driving distance, which you'd expect, but 192nd in driving accuracy.  The problem requires no further explication, as short and crooked leads to weekends home with the family.

Not that I watched any of it, but it was a week of brief appearances by such names from the past, who quickly regressed to the mean.  David Duval shot 66 on Thursday, then backs it up with a 76 on Friday, missing the cut by a single stroke.  Paul Casey, who I always thought would be the best of this generation of Brits, shot an inconceivable 27 on the back nine Friday to briefly grab a share of the lead.  This what the electronic scorecard for a 27 looks like:

Six birdies and an eagle... with two disappointing pars.  The King Louis made a brief appearance after a Saturday 64, only to fade on Sunday.  I know, it's a long wait until Pinehurst, but console yourselves with the thought that unlike your humble blogger, you're under no obligation to make it seem interesting.

Round-Belly Report - Kenny Perry won something called the Regions Tradition yesterday, beating Mark

Not a fan of the color on Kenny, nor the new Adams logo.

Calcavecchia by a stroke.  Stifling yawns, this is actually considered a major, and just so we get the point they're going to play another major next week.  Mind you, that's a notch lower in absurdity than the the schedule a few years ago, when they played the 2010 Senior U.S. Open at Sahalee in Washington State the week after the Senior British Open at Carnoustie.

The only interesting item I can scrounge up on this event is that John Cook was determined to have double-hit his ball utilizing cellphone video.  From the AP story:

Cook's ball was buried deep in the right bunker just under the lip, and appeared to ricochet backward before winding up a couple of feet out of the sand. 

Tour officials reviewed the bunker shot using phone video shot by an event staffer and determined that Cook hit it again. 

''Golf Channel didn't have a great view of it but there was someone with the event who was shooting social media video of it that had a face-on angle, and it was clear that he double-hit it,'' said Brian Claar, the Champions Tour's vice president for competition.

Reminds me of a conversation from a few years ago in which a longtime member of our club opined that a player always knows when he double-hits the ball.  I think otherwise, because it's such a rarity and always unusual circumstances, that it's entirely believable that the player is unsure, as with Cook, of what happened. Unless it's schrager, in which case full knowledge and complicity is the only reasonable assumption (inside joke for WRCC readers).

Distaff Dispatch -  Twenty-four year old Lizette Salas won her first LPGA tournament at Kingsmill Resort yesterday.  She has endured some final-round difficulties when in contention, so good to see her get it across the finish line.  She's also a wonderful story for the game:

Lizette Salas

The daughter of Mexican immigrants, Salas was introduced to the game when her father, the head mechanic at Azusa Greens west of Los Angeles, did some handyman jobs for the club pro and, instead of pay, asked him to teach his daughter to play. 

She went on to star at Southern California, where she was a four-time All-America selection and helped the Trojans win the 2008 NCAA title.

This has to be far more important to growing our game than any of the silly initiatives we've discussed recently.  I also liked how her round started:

Lizette Salas didn't have to wait long to be tested in her latest attempt at a breakthrough victory on the LPGA Tour. 

The challenge came on the first hole Sunday in the Kingsmill Championship, after she was overly cautious with her first putt, leaving it nearly 10 feet short of the cup with a sliding, downhill test to save par. 

She made it, the start of a day when she did little wrong on her way to a four-shot victory.

We've all been there... nothing worse than leaving yourself a testy one on the first green.  Unless you make it, in which case there's no better start to your day.

The Reign In Spain - When last we caught up with The Most Interesting Man in Golf, he was taking wedding vows and planning a month-long honeymoon.  Not quite sure if the time has flown or if the break is planned for later in the year, but The Mechanic was back in the office this week to good effect, as per Alistair Tait:

More interesting all the time.

Who’d bet against Miguel Angel Jimenez playing in this year’s Ryder Cup at the ripe old age of 50? Not many. 

Like fine Rioja wine, the Spaniard matures with age. That was obvious as he earned his 21st European Tour win in a playoff with Australia’s Richard Green and Belgium's Thomas Pieters. Fourteen of those wins have come after he turned 40. 

The senior golfer earned victory with a par at the first extra hole, the 18th. Cue celebrations featuring Cuban cigars and expensive bottles of vino tinto.

There are few golfers that have won consistently in their forties (Snead and the Veej are the two that come to mind), and Jimenez is now fifty.  But who wouldn't love to see him make the Ryder Cup team, which seems a stronger possibility as the year progresses.  Perhaps we'll take a look at the point standings later this week.

And Shackelford helpfully informs us that Jamie Diaz's profile of Jiménez is now available online.  Here's Diaz's lede:

Without ever seeking the designation -- indeed in large part because he didn't -- Miguel Angel Jiménez has become "a thing." 

The catalyst has been his remarkable golf, so let's first give props to Jiménez as a player. There's the fourth-place finish at the Masters at age 50 (the best at that age or older since Sam Snead finished third in 1963), followed by his victory the next week in his inaugural Champions Tour event (his first win in America). Late last year he broke his own record as the oldest victor on the European Tour. Jiménez is currently the 32nd-ranked player in the world.

Well worth a read, as it's an almost sublime combination of interesting subject with the best golf wordsmith of the day.  Lots of fun Cuervo commercial references if you need further inducement.