Monday Musings

We're in a bit of a lull on the golf calendar, so your favorite golf blogger is going to pace himself before the inevitable flurry of activity as the golf gods give us a month of linksy goodness.  It all starts with the Scottish Open at Royal Aberdeen and The Open Championship at Hoylake, but also includes the ladies at Royal Birkdale, a first-class links, and the Seniors at Royal Porthcawl in Wales, which will be my first look at that well-regarded links,

But there's a few things to kick around, just to keep my blogging muscle-memory in sync:

Congressional Drudgery - Those curmudgeons who hated Pinehurst, think James Achenbach crying over the width of the fairways, must have thought they'd died and gone to heaven watching the preceedings from Congressional over the weekend.  Per John Strege:

It is called the Blue Course, presumably in a nod to the color of the language it evokes from a

Not  sure what Rose is doing here, unless it was his last golf ball?

vexed PGA Tour constituency. The word of the day there Sunday was “#amp;@?$%$!” 

Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md., occasionally hosts the U.S. Open, suggesting its tournament course is not likely to warrant a Miss Congeniality award. But that’s the U.S. Open. Why was it showcasing its ugly side in a tournament now known as the Quicken Loans National?

Please, John, feel free to call it the Quickie.   And what of the overnight leader, Mr. Top Five himself?  Barry Svrluga, good luck with spell-check on that one, fills us in:

The final group on the final day consisted of a pair of 23-year-olds: Patrick Reed, a three-time winner on tour, and Seung-yul Noh, who posted his first victory this season at New Orleans. But they combined to play the first two holes of the back side — the water-protected par-3 10th and the hardest-on-Tour par-4 11th — in 7 over. Reed shot 77 and finished tied for 11th. Noh shot 79 and finished tied for 28th.

Needless to say, Shackelford was not a fan of the set-up:

I know that Justin Rose was trying to be nice and make the (apparently insecure) members ofCongressional feel better, but his post-round remark is ultimately an unintended slap at Rory McIlroy's resounding U.S. Open victory at the Blue Course in 2011. And also a bit of outdated thinking that a great test is one that rewards the least accident-prone driver. Naturally, Thomas Boswell lapped it all up, even bringing out the "defenseless" word to describe the U.S. Open at Congressional.

Read the Boswell piece if you're so inclined, and of course this is a never-ending argument discussion.  But the logic for knee-deep rough seem limited to "That's how it's always been,"  the purpose of which seems to be to shut down the argument.  Pinehurst proved to be every bit as resistant to scoring as Congressional, without one square inch of rough.  And while the conditions of a Pinehust are not transferable to other locales, one of the arguments that the Boswells of the world ignore is that if you insist on holding the Open in mid-June in Washington, D.C., you're assuming the risk of the heavy rains and soft conditions we saw in 2011.

And, going way out on a limb, I'll wager that Freddie Jacobson agrees with Shack and me:

Home Game - Stacey Lewis considers the LPGA event on Northwest Arkansas to be a "home game," so good on her for this:

Stacy Lewis has worked tirelessly over her career to embrace the overwhelming support in her adopted state of Arkansas. 

The recovering introvert finally found a way to do so while overcoming her self-imposed pressure Sunday -- shooting a 6-under 65 and rallying for a much-sought after official win in the NW Arkansas Championship. 

Lewis earned an unofficial rain-shortened win at the tournament as an amateur in 2007, but she had struggled to match that effort since as her popularity -- and ranking -- soared.

Michelle Wie had held the lead at the start of the final round, but her much-discussed putting prowess deserted her and she posted a 73, finishing T8.  When will she ever deliver on her potential?  Oh, last week?  Never mind, then...

Yawn -  This week the seniors apparently played one of their majors...who knew?

The main stage at storied Fox Chapel Golf Club is its 17th green, a classic Seth Raynor

example of a Biarritz green. It’s big and long and wide and divided by a serious approach-shot-eating trench.

So there was no better place for the biggest stroke of the Constellation Energy Senior Players Championship. Bernhard Langer, known for conquering the yips more than once, rolled in a bender of a birdie putt from 35 feet at the 17th on Sunday.

It didn’t win him the tournament. All it did was lift Langer into a tie with Jeff Sluman going to the 72nd hole, but it was a stroke of genius and the shot of the week. Langer needed two playoff holes to defeat Sluman and score his third Champions Tour major championship -- holing a short birdie putt on the par-5 18th the second time he played it -- but it was that unlikely putt at the Biarritz green that made it possible.

Most surprising to me is that this is only Bernhard's third senior major.  Doesn't it seem like he wins 2-3 of those every year?  

Business is Business - I'm usually in sync with that combination adage and old Jewish joke, but this item will be something of a dissent.  I've long been troubled by Jim Furyk's sponsorship and promotion of 5 Hour Energy, which is at best innocuous and at worst...well, read this for the at worst.  I understand that Mr. Furyk's staff bag and hat are valuable real estate, but surely he has other endorsement opportunies, no?

Karen Crouse is quietly redeeming my opinion of the N.Y. Times with her golf column, and she had this in yesterday's edition:

Tiger Woods’s new golf bag, with the neon green MP on the front panel, a pocket and the base, is an attention grabber. The initials stand for MusclePharm, a Denver dietary supplement company that recently signed Woods to a multiyear endorsement deal. 

In the fields of nutrition and science, supplements fall on the hazard line, with officials divided on whether they are O.K. or out of bounds.

Now Tiger might be a harder sell to the sponsorship community, given that he's radioactive to 50% of the homo sapiens population.   But still....  Can't you just put another Swoosh on the nag and leave it at that?  Do we really have to be promoting such drek?

But this, from Tiger's lapdog mouthpiece, had me chuckling:

“Our goal is to take the stigma out of supplements,” said Woods’s agent, Mark Steinberg.

“Tiger Woods, maybe the most fit golfer that we’ve had, let’s show that it’s O.K. to align yourself with supplements. Just be safe when you do it. That’s the message we collectively want to spread.”

Silly me, I thought the goal was to, you know, win golf tournaments...  Business is too complicated for my tiny little brain.

This Game is Brutal, Vol. CCCXXXIII - I saw none of the big-boy play from Congressional yesterday, but I turned on Golf Channel and saw the conclusion to the Web.com event:

England's Greg Owen won the United Leasing Championship on Sunday for his first Web.com Tour title, overcoming a seven-stroke deficit with a 5-under 67 for a one-stroke victory.

The 43-year-old Owen, the winner of the European Tour's 2003 British Masters, had a 9-under 279 total at Victoria National and earned $108,000. 

''It's just a crazy game,'' Owen said. ''I'm delighted. This was unexpected. ... It's been a long time. I've had back surgery and changed continents. You always wonder where you are and how to compete these days. The game kicks you in the teeth so many times. If I could do anything else I wouldn't be playing this game. It's a tough sport but only one of 156 can do this each week so it feels very special to be holding this trophy.''

Happy to see a guy like Own, who has stuck with it through lots of thin and little thick, get himself a "W" and a check.   Unfortunately what sticks with you is then endless procession of youngsters, all looking for their first breakthrough win, throwing up all over their soft spikes.  The names include Matt Weibring (not sure if he's D.A.'s son), Mark Hubbard, Tony Finau and Andres Echavarria, and it was just ugly.  

There's nothing I can say to mask the extent to which they succumbed to the pressure, one can only hope that they learned from the experience.

Toledo Mudballs, Anyone - John Strege points us to an interesting David Briggs item in The Blade concerning the efforts of Inverness Club to position itself for a return to major-tournament golf.  

The Inverness Club spent its first century accumulating some of the biggest moments in golf

The 2nd and 11th holes during the renovation.

history. 

If a major series of changes have their intended effect, more could be on the way. 

Inverness reopened last month after a nine-month shutdown with a new course and a new philosophy — in large part to make its latest run at bringing one of golf’s crown jewel events back to Toledo for the first time since 1993.

Thankfully no mention of the Lon Hinckle tree... not one of the USGA's finer moments.  There's lots of good stuff on working with the golf organizations, though one hopes the club officials are not being hopelessly naive.  From my perspective, the USGA will be happy to let you host as many U.S. Amateurs and Women's Opens as you'd like, and if you're thinking those are test runs for a U.S. Open, well the USGA doesn't consider it incumbent upon them to disabuse you of your dreams.

But this was quite interesting:

Golfers will notice a longer, tougher, faster, and greener course. Beyond the redesign — which also rebuilt and moved back the conjoined Nos. 1 and 10 tees — the most significant change is the new playing surface. Inverness superintendent Steve Anderson put more than a dozen strains of grass for the fairways and greens through more than a year of testing in the nursery, then, along with top club officials, unanimously selected two Oregon-based varieties. The grasses so outperformed the others in the trials that Anderson told a reporter, “You would have picked them out.” 

The course is gaining particular attention for its greens. Inverness is just the second club to regrass with the seed known as Pure Distinction. Anderson described the greens as much finer, denser, and upright than the old ones.

I thought Pure Distinction was, how shall we put it, a Gentlemen's Club on the West Side Highway, but perhaps I'm misinformed.  In any event, it's a storied venue and I'm quite intrigued by the description of the new turf.  

Golf in the Middle Kingdom - The relationship of the Chinese government to the game of golf might be more convoluted than your humble blogger's relationship to the truth.  Because of a concern about resources, water in particular, golf course construction has been banned in the country...except, they're building them anyway.

Here's some background from a Reuters article:

Nevertheless, developers interviewed by Reuters expressed little concern, saying golf courses were in demand by local authorities who wanted the revenue from selling land while attracting well-heeled visitors to their regions. 

The ban was imposed to protect China's shrinking land and water resources in a country home to a fifth of the world's population but which has just 7 percent of its water. The only place exempt is the southern resort island of Hainan.

Developers had built 639 golf courses across China up to the end of last year, tripling the total since 2004, according to the website of Forward Management Group, a company based in the southern city of Shenzhen that offers a range of golf services in China.

This is in the news because of reports that three golf courses have been destroyed by the government:

From 6-irons to plow shares, now a corn field.

All that remains of the long fairways and manicured greens at the 18-hole golf course on the outskirts of Beijing are bits of rubble and mounds of mud. In March, Chinese authorities sent in workers to dig up the course and tear down the clubhouse. 

Two others across China were also demolished while another was turned into an eco-friendly park and a fifth converted into a tea plantation, suggesting the government could finally be cracking down on developers who have long ignored a 2004 ban on building new golf courses. 

The government, which announced the demolitions last month, said its actions served as a warning and an attempt to educate "would-be" violators. A few weeks later, the national auditor joined in, publicly shaming two big state-run enterprises for building golf courses.

Seems more than likely that the bribes were no longer being paid, as per this comment:

"It's a stepped-up campaign for sure," said one Chinese developer, whose company built a course after the ban and who spoke on the condition that neither his name, his firm nor the course be identified. 

Nevertheless, developers interviewed by Reuters expressed little concern, saying golf courses were in demand by local authorities who wanted the revenue from selling land while attracting well-heeled visitors to their regions.

It's not uncommon for golf to be caught in the class-warfare sniper fire, it's just always amusing to see how corrupt the People's Republic is.