Between social obligations, golf outings and a little actual work, I've lagged the golf world and we need to catch up. This blog is officially on the clock, and each sub-post will be timed by the rules official. The first bad time will incur only a warning, but the second bad time is a mandatory one-stroke penalty, and we can't have that now, can we?
Your Rory Update - The former/prspective World No. 1 is always in the news, so here's our daily quota. First, Tim Healy informs us that Rors has won a skirmish in the lawsuit with his former managers:
The Commercial Court heard Mr McIlroy claims undue influence, and alleges Conor Ridge of
The Ulstermen greeting each other at Hoylake. Horizon made representations to him that he would get similar terms to Graeme McDowell.Barrister Rossa Fanning said his client had relied on those representations which turned out to be untrue as his client's terms were significantly inferior to Mr McDowell's.Mr McIlroy was also unaware, either when discussing the representation agreement with Conor Ridge in October 2011 or signing it, that Mr McDowell had a shareholding in Horizon.
The judge yesterday ruled Mr McIlroy was entitled to all documents held by the defendants related to McDowell's involvement with Horizon, including concerning Mr. McDowell's shareholding in that company.
That's clearly a victory for the youngster, though not necessarily a leading indicator of where the case may go. But one can only hope that we'll have continued leaks to amuse us. With McDowell stepping up his play recently and seemingly assured of a captain's pick, that should be a delightfully awkward team room at Gleneagles. McIlroy has said that he still hopes to tee it up with McDowell at the Ryder Cup, though that seems to be putting a brave face on things, no?
And does anyone remember this scene?
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| That's Rory throwing away a nice wad of cash. |
The quick-on-their feet guys at Green Jacket Auctions tweeted that they would pay $10,000 for the ball, and before you could say Caroline Wozniaki it was listed for auction. though the current high bid of $5,558 is substantially below that offer to the owner.
In this post, Shackelford lists some other items he'd prefer, including this set of Tom Stewart clubs. Stewart was a famed St. Andrews clubmaker, in a league with Old Tom and the Auchterlonies. And, in the way these things seem to go, my New Best Friend Kevin Mendik had Stewart clubs in his bag yesterday. Small world!
This concludes the Rory portion of our programming.
This season, although a success overall, has to be particularly painful for the 44-year-old Furyk.
Three runner-ups since May (plus a solo fourth at the British Open) have Furyk up to No. 8 in the Official World Golf Ranking -- the highest he's been since the start of the 2011 season. The difference is that then Furyk was coming off a three-win season in 2010 that ended with him winning the FedEx Cup and PGA Tour Player of the Year honors.
There's no way for me to not sound harsh with this, but Furyk has evolved into a grizzled veteran who can no longer close (Exhibit A is the 2012 U.S. Open). That is a really bad combination (at least as far as the Ryder Cup is concerned), and I was not an advocate of his selection for the 2012 team. He has earned his way onto the 2014 edition, but I'm not an optimist.
As relates to Sunday's winner, Tim Clark, Ryan Lavner had this about Clark's preparation for the 2016 anchoring ban:
“I've kind of put it to the back now, and I’m going to just do with what I've got now and maybe give it more thought sometime next year,” he said.That’s the same philosophy adopted by world No. 1 Adam Scott, who said earlier this month that he hasn't practiced with the conventional stroke at all since the anchoring announcement last May.
“I thought I’d worry about that when I have to change,” he said.
That's one of the reasons that, while supportive of the ban, I thought it a mistake to delay implementation for so long. That and the fact that every win by an anchorer in the interregnum deserves a Roger Maris asterisk.
As for the Senior Open Championship, it appears that bernhard Langer missed an extra point, winning by an amazing thirteen strokes. I can't do better than this quip from Alex Myers:
Yep, he won a major championship by 13 shots! 13! Martin Kaymer's eight-shot win at the
U.S. Open isn't even the biggest blowout in a major by a German this year anymore. Langer turns 57 in August, about a month before the Ryder Cup. Is it possible that European captain Paul McGinley, nearly 10 years his junior, will put Langer on the team?
As I noted in this post, that still seems unlikely to me. The real issue is that names like Poulter, McDowell, Bjorn, Blixt and Wstwood are all on the outside looking in. But it's sure less of a longshot than it was a few days ago.
Here's an idea, pick Langer and put him against Furyk in the first singles match on Sunday. It would be dinner time in Los Angeles before anyone finished.
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| Belen Mozo. |
And now to the Ladies' International Crown, the newly-created team match-play event the had it's debut this weekend. The event was won by the Spanish quartet of Azahara Munoz, Beatriz Recari, Belen Mozo and Carlota Ciganda. All of those ladies are sufficiently.....errr...let's go with photogenic, yet the event suffered a body blow when the American's were eliminated on Saturday.
I'm not opposed to considering tweaks to the format, and since I saw none of Sunday's play I'm not even clear on whether they reset the points and how the singles points were allotted with five teams involved. But it's a great idea to try something different, and it doesn't get much better than the win-or-go-home of match play. But that intensity isn't there if the loser doesn't go home (I'm speaking to you, Stacey Lewis).
PGA Prognosis - This is kinda cool, don't you think?
PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. – (July 29, 2014) The PGA of America announced today that the top 100 players in the Official World Golf Ranking have committed to play in the 96th PGA Championship, Aug. 7-10, at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky. Barring any withdrawals before the opening round, this would be the first time any major championship would feature every one of the top 100 world-ranked players.
Eat your vegetables and stay healthy, boys, we want to see all of you make it there.
Tiger Beat - Kevin Maguire at ESPN updates us on the state of play:
Tiger Woods owns eight PGA Tour victories at Firestone Country Club, site of this week'sWGC-Bridgestone Invitational. He just might have to earn No. 9 if he doesn't want a forced monthlong break after the PGA Championship that would put his Ryder Cup hopes in jeopardy.That's because Woods picked up all of two FedEx Cup playoff points with a 69th-place finish at the Open Championship. He's sitting in the 215th spot in the rankings. To qualify for the playoffs, a player needs to be inside the top 125.
So, how bleak is the outlook?
Coming into this week, Woods has 45 FedEx Cup points. That means he needs some combination of at least 358 points just to squeak into the field at the Barclays. A victory at the WGC-Bridgestone or the PGA Championship should get him a tee time at Ridgewood Country Club. Without a win, though, things get murky.There are many permutations as to what could happen the next few weeks. For example, say Woods finishes solo 10th in Akron; that'd be good for 78 points, which would leave him 280 shy of the 403-point mark. He likely would need a second-place finish at the PGA Championship (worth 330 points) to make the playoffs.
So he doesn't need to win to get into the Barclays, but he sure does need one or more VERY high finishes. And by high we mean a second or a third, back door top tens won't move the needle.
And The Hawk needs all of one 'graph to eviscerate Commissioner Ratched's wraparound schedule:
Just as the snarkiest of cynics feared, the PGA Tour’s 11 ½-month golf season has become a long walk to a small house. Jimmy Walker hasn’t contended on a Sunday in almost six months, yet he still leads the FedEx Cup points derby by a comfortable margin – Bubba Watson is the only player within 500 points of Mr. Dy-No-Mite.
Remember Patrick Reed? He's been missing in action since the WGC-Cadillac Championshipin March, yet he just slipped out of the top 10 and remains one spot ahead of British Openchamp Rory McIlroy. Same goes for Jim Furyk, who doesn't have a victory in almost four years, yet remains four spots ahead of Martin Kaymer, who won The Players and U.S. Open.
Yawn. Commissioner Ratched takes care of No.1, the rest of us be damned.
The Bermuda Triangle for Golf Bags - Karen Crouse, Pravda's golf editor, devoted last weekend's column to the perils of traveling avec golf bag:
The golfers’ stress level is heightened this time every year because the British Open brings into play London’s Heathrow Airport, which Hunter Mahan's caddie, John Wood, described as “the Bermuda Triangle for bags.”
On the advice of his caddie, Woodland bypassed London, “and they still didn’t make it,” he said of his clubs. Allowing time for any mishandled bags to catch up was also a factor in Woodland’s decision to move his travel plans up a day.
“If I had come over on Monday and they didn't get there Monday and they didn't show up until Tuesday, that makes it a little difficult,” he said.
The alternative is to ship the clubs ahead of time, but when I've inquired it's been quite pricey and it further requires you to live without them for many days on both ends of the trip. But we all know it's a crapshoot.
Millennials, Schlimennials - There's two concurrent thumbsuckers on why millennials hate golf, both of which give us a Chicken Little "The Sky is Falling." First out was Sara Germano's piece in the Wall Street Journal:
But the participation rates of people aged 18 to 34 fell roughly 13% in 2013 from 2009, while their rates for other active sports like running rose 29%, according to SFIA data. Greg Nathan, senior vice president of the National Golf Foundation, notes that the overall number of U.S. golfers has hovered around 25 million for each of the past three years, still down from the high of 30 million in 2003.
Again with the apples and oranges, not providing a consistent baseline to allow us to form our own judgments. So, with most recent graduates living in their parent's basements, we're supposed to acknowledge approaching Armageddon based upon a comparison with jogging and yoga, sports with slightly disparate cost profiles? Color me unconvinced.
Next up with a me-too offering is Matt Powell in Forbes, wondering why golf lost the millennials. At least he offers some data, though the portion size certainly isn't to my liking:
What happened to create this reversal of fortune? The Golf Industry failed to attract Millennials to the game. The National Golf Foundation said there were 400,000 fewer golfers in 2013, with 200,000 of the decline coming from Millennials. Since Millennials represent 25% of the nation’s population, this decline is devastating to the sport.So, why don’t millennials play golf?
OK, there were 400,000 fewer golfers we're told, but from WHEN? Secondly, how many of the baseline were millennials, it's called a percentage and I guess they don't teach that in J-school. But we lost 200,000 kids from a reduced base of 25 million, and that's considered material? Sheesh, his author bio pic makes him look old enough to know better.
Golf has always had a skewed demographic, rich but old. The golfer demo is so old that the average golfer has been dead for three years (bonus points for anyone who can identify from whom I pilfered that quip). But the rich part has value, just ask the folks who make Cialis.
And both pieces contain profound category errors, confusing the hiccups in the equipment industry with the more nebulous concept of the health of the game. When, for instance, they speak of "losing" 400,000 golfers, it's highly likely that those souls are the least dedicated, most infrequent players, thus depriving the industry of precious little revenue.
I too want to attract young people to the greatest of all games. I just think the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth is a bit much. We're a niche sport, and it's better for all if the game's leaders can acknowledge that.
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