Other Stuff

While all eyes were justifiably on The Big Wiesy, the world surprisingly continued to turn on its axis.  Who knew?

Seven Straight - When you look up Tour Rabbit in the dictionary, you know doubt see a picture of Kevin Streelman.  That probably sounds harsh, but it is what it is...

But yesterday he did something that's never been done before on Tour:

Streelman birdied the last seven holes to win the Travelers Championship by a stroke, shooting

The Man of Streel.

his second straight 6-under 64 to finish at 15-under 265. 

"It's probably my favorite nine holes on the PGA Tour," Streelman said. "But you can't plan for something like that to happen. It just kind of falls into place."

Probably?  I of course saw none of the seven, but back-to-back 64's anywhere is pretty darn special.

Funny thing is that over the weekend I saw a Wilson golf commercial featuring Streelman, and my immediate reaction was to wonder whether anyone but me knew who he was?  I guess today there'd be a few more...

Not Quite Up To Elk's Standards - I'm not now nor have I ever been on Twitter, but I can see it's uses as a social medium.  I'm also aware that it provides a way for prominent people to bypass the media in communicating with the outside world and/or to share their experiences (see my prior post and the Michelle Wie pictures for a real-world example).

But, and it's a big but, there seems to be a class of people who don't get that that which they put up on Twitter to be read, will be read.  So, as a handy rule of thumb, if you wouldn't say it to their face, you probably don't want to be tweeting it.

The latest poster child is Web.com player Tom Gillis, who at age 45 really is old enough to know better.  Here are the offending tweets:

When u play the http://web.com tour u get to warm up with the lady members.

Never been to a course with a higher opinion of themselves. crestview c.c.

Now, who is it that sounds like they have an inflated opinion of themselves?  This is admittedly not as offensive as Elk's Michael Sam handbag toss, but it might be even stupider given that he had to play the next few days at said Crestview CC.  You can read the full back and forth here, if you're so inclined.

That Pioneer Spirit - John Paul Newport devotes his weekly Wall Street Journal golf column to a profile of one of the true pioneers of the women's game, Peggy Kirk Bell.  Bell and her husband purchased the Pine Needles resort for $50,000 in 1953, and have hosted three Women's Opens as well.  I'll give you a little tease, but you'll really want to read the entire piece:

On Tuesday about a dozen former Women's Open champions played a round at Pine Needles,

Bell, on the left, with good friend Babe in 1953.

with Bell viewing some of the action from her cart. The previous week Lucy Li, the pig-tailed 11-year-old charmer from Northern California who is the youngest ever to qualify for a U.S. Open, practiced at Pine Needles and had lunch with Bell several times. 

"She's phenomenal. She didn't miss a shot," Bell said. "I told her she had the skill to win here this week." That is not going to happen but the generation-spanning marvel of their friendship is a pleasure to ponder: A woman who took lessons from Tommy Armour, the 1927 U.S. Open champ and an influential early instructor, encouraging a girl who, when she is 24, might well be a contender for the 2027 Women's Open.

The Irish Open -  Mikko Ilonen, who should be a forward for the Black hawks but is instead a professional golfer, won the Irish Open on Sunday by one shot over Eduoardo Molinari.  It's the fourth Euro

Mikko Ilonen

Tour win for the 34-year old Finn, not that anyone really cares.

Earlier in the week Former World No. 1 Rory McIlroy announced his decision to play for Ireland in the 2016 Olympics, then proceeded to stink up the joint and speculate as to whether he'll qualify in 2016.  This is of course only of interest because it continues the streak of no-good, horrible results for Rory since THAT picture went up on a certain Danish tennis player's Twitter account.  You know the one:

Back To Tiger - We noted the return to competitive golf of Tiger in this post, in which your humble blogger speculated about whether he might be jumping the gun.  John Strege had similar thoughts here, and also used a much more appropriate picture than I did:

"Listening to John Feinstein talk about the condition of the golf course [Congressional Country Club] — he lives there and is a member there — it’s going to have four-inch thick rough,” Chamblee said on the network’s Golf Central Pregame show. “And then listening to Dr. [Ara] Suppiah talk about the risk of re-injury, every single time Tiger Woods hits it in the rough next week is going to be a hold-your-breath moment.”

Suppiah, a sports medicine consultant for Golf Channel, said he was surprised to learn that Woods was coming back so soon. “To me that’s not enough time to hit a driver full swing,” he said. “That’s really the benchmark of how well he’s doing, whether he trusts to hit the driver as aggressively as he used to.”

Obviously none of us knows for sure, including Tiger, and we're all anxious to have him back in the mix.  But, it does seem awfully quick...

In a follow up post, Strege also checks in with the British bookies:

Earlier this week, Sam Weinman, editor of GolfDigest.com, noted that should Tiger Woods

return at the British Open, “Oddsmakers will insult players who have played well all season by giving Woods a better chance of winning.” 

It has already happened, even before we know whether Woods will returns or not. A mere hint that Tiger might be ready to play the British Open caused Jeff Sherman, the assistant sports book manager at the Las Vegas Hotel, to move odds on him from 20/1 to 15/1, he said.

 Can you short Tiger with the bookies?  

Nobody Doesn't Like Lucy Li - Yes, she got way too much attention at the Women's Open, but I'm guessing the other women didn't mind too much.  Michael Bamberger was certainly charmed, and in this piece he's exactly right when he says that she exuded joy.  And we can all use more of that...  

And then it looked like the wheels could come off. Then it looked like she might go for a number. Worse than that, then it looked like the drain of playing world-class competition on a world-class course with cameras might suck the life right out of her. And you wondered right then and there: was Stacy Lewis right? 

She was not. 

Lucy Li played the last five holes in even par, for another 78. She walked across that 18th green with her shoulders forward, using her putter as a walking stick. She exuded joy.

Stacey was being protective of the young girl, and her concerns shouldn't be minimized as we've seen plenty of teen prodigies suffer from their early exposure to the cold, cruel world.  I just hope that Lucy came away from Pinehurst with great memories and Michelle Wie's cell phone number, as Wie is uniquely positioned to help Lucy deal with her career.

Potty Humor - We try to take the high road here at Unplayable Lies, unles sof course it means passing up a cheap laugh.  We're all familiar with the mind-numbing ubiquity of the FedEx Cup standings, but Shackelford informs us that they're even more widely available than imaginable, specifically in the men's room at TPC River Highlands:

Now Shack has been calling it the Reset Cup for years, and I was accordingly surprised that there wasn't an off-color reference to flushing the point standings before each playoff event.  But perhaps that's why he's a highly-compensated Golf Digest scribe and I'm just a lowly unpaid blogger.

Streel, Redux - Brian Wacker has a nice feature on Streelman at PGATour.com that's worth a read, as wife Courtney and he have certainly been through the ringer.  It's a brutal game we play with far more anguish than joy, so it's good to see those that persevere be rewarded...eventually.

But I was most taken by his description of his state of mind during the birdie binge:

“When you're in the zone like that, when athletes talk about being in the zone, everything is really slow, and it's really clear and concise, and it's very vivid,” said Streelman, who began the day four strokes back and was 2 over through his first seven holes Sunday. “The lines are easy to see. The hole seems to appear bigger. It's almost to a point it doesn't matter how you read the putts because you just know they're going in before you hit them.”

That hit home because I had a similar binge on Sunday, making a personal-record six birdies in the round (I'd never had more than four previously).  It was an eerily calm and serene feeling, but as I stood over putts on our 8th and 9th greens (we had started on the back nine) I just knew the line and that they would somehow drop.  Caddy Nick, a reader of the blog, deserves credit especially for the last putt, which was to a cup cut way toe high into the slope, which assured me a twenty-footer for par had I missed.  But I didn't miss and, as Streelman relates, I somehow knew I wouldn't miss.

Next time, of course, that feeling will be gone and I'll have been forcibly regressed to my mean.  That's why we have to enjoy it when it happens.