This and That

Some doings in the golf world that we'll throw together...

Can Anyone Beat a One? - A couple of ace-related items from the last few days.  First, you may well have caught this Peter Hanson ace from The Quickie:

Everyday stuff on Tour, no doubt, but it's the first payoff from a new Quicken Loans promotion:

With Quicken Loans now the title sponsor at this tourney, the ace also resulted in an award for Arline Deacon of Fayetteville, Ga. As the winner of a random drawing triggered by the hole-in-one, she will now have her mortgage payments taken care of for a year. Quicken will now do that for every ace at PGA Tour events for the rest of the year (Hanson's is the 11th of this season).

Dean McPherson

We like anything that shakes up the drab, week-to-week sameness of the Tour, so a hat-tip to the folks at Quicken.

This one, is definitively not everyday stuff:

Many thanks to reader Alexandra for this stellar Joe Avento story on Dean McPherson, who made two aces in 24 hours, one with a PW and another with a hybrid (and with witnesses). Both came at Tennessee’s Johnson City Country Club.

 That's a 1-in-5.7 million chance, per Shack's header (nobody told me there'd be statistics in golf blogging).  

Match-Play Resurrection - Today's announcement that the 2020 PGA Championship and 2025 Presidents Cup will be staged at San Francisco's Harding Park comes with an unexpected surprise:

Wednesday’s news conference at City Hall will include this Match Play announcement, a source close to the PGA Tour said Monday. The tournament, held the past eight years at Dove Mountain outside Tucson, Ariz., is expected to move from February to May, improving the chances of dry conditions at Harding. 

The tour’s commitment to hold Match Play in San Francisco covers only one year, but Rec & Park General Manager Phil Ginsburg said, “The idea here is that Match Play has the potential to be a recurring event.”

Well isn't that a nice surprise for us all....and there's even more good news as relates to the format.

Next year’s inaugural edition of Match Play at Harding Park – set for April 29 to May 3, the

week before the Players Championship – will include a significant change in the tournament’s format. Simply put, it will duplicate the structure of the World Cup, with group play leading into single-elimination matches (or the “knockout” stage, if you prefer). 

The top 64 players in the Official World Golf Ranking will qualify for the event, as in the past. Starting next year at Harding, the field will be divided into 16 four-player “groups,” with round-robin match play on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of tournament week.

Then the winner of each group will advance to the round of 16 on Saturday morning. (Head-to-head results will be used to break two-way ties, with sudden-death playoffs for three-way ties.) 

Those who were with us back in February will recall me feelings on the matter.  The first day of the event I found to be one of the best days in golf, presenting 32 win-or-go-home matches of great intensity.  But, forced to deal with reality, one readily understands the problems this creates for television, hence the departure of Accenture as sponsor.

I believe this is the least-bad adjustment to the format they could make, and I must commend Commissioner Finchem ( a one-day waiver of the Nurse Ratched recurring bit seems the least I can do) for his efforts in this matter.  I was quite worried they'd go with a 36-hole stroke play qualifier, and this is far preferable.  The sponsor knows that the show ponies will be there at least until Friday, and while Day One will nor be win-or-go-home, By Day Two it will have that urgency for Day One losers.

As for the venue, it's a somewhat over-rated golf course and an uninspired choice for match play, but it also has spectacular views and a May date should be fine as far as weather is concerned.  And I can easily console myself with its single greatest virtue, it's not Dove Mountain.

No sponsor has been named, though it's not likely they'd make this commitment without one in the wings.  It's being presented as a one-off, though there is this wink at us about the long-term plans:

The tour’s commitment to hold Match Play in San Francisco covers only one year, but Rec & Park General Manager Phil Ginsburg said, “The idea here is that Match Play has the potential to be a recurring event.”

Can I Put You In a Calendar Ap? -  Folks, don't ever do this:

What do you do when you're the defending champion in one amateur tournament and in the finals of another, and they're both held the same day?

Actually, don't let that happen. That was the lesson 21-year-old Max Christiana learned recently. The Boston College senior abruptly conceded the June 6 final of the Westchester (N.Y.) Golf Association Amateur midway through the match at his home course, Westchester Country Club in Harrison, because he was scheduled to play in the Anderson Memorial at Winged Foot Golf Club the same afternoon.

Christiana had played the morning 18 of the 36-hole Westchester Am final, and even held a 1-up lead over opponent Jonathan Renza. But with an afternoon tee time at the Anderson beckoning, he alerted tournament officials he was conceding the match. Although Christiana wrote a handwritten apology to the WGA after the final, he was eventually handed a one-year suspension from all WGA events by a nine-person committee.

And a well-deserved suspension it was.  There is simply no excuse for this, and if he was going to play in the Anderson Cup he should have defaulted long before the finals.  

History vs. Hooch -  That's the title given to John Strege's item at The Loop, but isn't it a shame that we have to choose:

Glen Garden Golf and Country Club is a nondescript patch of hardpan and history in Fort Worth, Texas, a century of memories spread across its 106 acres. 

Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson caddied there, earning 65 cents a loop, this their introduction to the game. The last of Nelson’s 18 victories in 1945 came in the Glen Garden. Sandra Palmer was weaned on golf at Glen Garden, where Jack Grout was an assistant pro before moving to Ohio and becoming the caretaker of Jack Nicklaus’ swing.

I never knew of Jack Grout's relationship to Glen Garden, but \it's famously where Lord Byron and Hogan met in the caddy yard.  You'll know form the title where this is headed:

Today? The Firestone & Robertson Distilling Company, an award-winning producer of whiskey, has agreed to buy Glen Garden with the intention of moving its distillery there.

If the Scots have taught us anything, it's that a distillery and golf course should be able to coexist peaceably. 

Challenge This - Perhaps I'm just an old curmudgeon, but the ice bucket challenge getting old ahead of schedule.  This link will take you through many of the ladies' efforts, most of which seem to be more of a water bucket challenge.

Ian Poulter got called-out by Golf Channel's Gary Williams, which can be seen here.  He in turn called out Justin Rose, Martin Kaymer and Tiger Woods.  Yeah Poults, good luck with that last one.

Prototype Previews - Mike Stachura of the now-idle Bomb and Gouge blog brings us pictures of the new Ping driver seen at The Greenbrier:

For more than a decade, observers have known what to expect from Ping drivers: A consistent, oversized shape that emphasizes forgiveness on off-center hits, all with a relatively traditional look. But starting with the alignment stripes on this year's i25 driver, Ping is expanding its horizons.

That trend continued this week as the company unveiled its G30 driver on the PGA Tour. Like the i25, the G30, which according to the USGA's list of conforming drivers includes the word "turbulators" on the top of the club, employs what appears to be a crown technology. Generally, a turbulator is a means of improving the air flow around an object like an airplane wing or car. Clearly visible are a series of ridges on the crown of the G30.

 I really love the alignment features on the top of the club:

Though the sole leaves me cold (of course we don't look at the sole):

There may be more to those ridges than alignment, however, per this:

The G30's crown ridges have the look of airfoil turbulators and could play some role in improving the club's aerodynamic efficiency during the swing. In fact, Ping engineers led by Dr. Erik Henrikson, head of fitting science, are presenting a paper at the 2014 Conference of the International Sports Engineering Association this month in England. The title, "Experimental investigation of golf driver club head drag reduction through the use of aerodynamic features on the driver crown," may say something about what the G30's crown ridges might be trying to do. The presentation is listed here in the Programme Schedule for the conference.