Rainy Day Blues

It's quite the miserable day here in Westchester County, so since we're not playing golf, perhaps we can talk about it a bit.

Going Low - These guys are good, as they never tire of telling us... but did you know there's never been a 59 on the Euro Tour?  Well, we almost had one this week, in the first round of this week's event in Portugal:

Nicolas Colsaerts of Belgium shot a brilliant 11-under 60 to take a three-shot lead of the

The Belgian Bomber reacting to his near miss.

Portugal Masters in the opening round on Thursday. 

Colsaerts came close to setting a European Tour record of 59 when his putt missed on the par-4 18th hole. 

Colsaerts made eagles on the 15th and 17th after hitting seven birdies through a near flawless first day at the Oceanico Victoria Golf Club.

Those two eagles on the back nine were good enough for a 29, which will rarely hurt you in tournament play.  Colsaerts has had a disappointing year, so it remains to eb seen if this a return to form or just a blip on the EKG.

But I'll see your 29 and raise you one:

Before Louis Gagne teed off in his final regular season tournament at Orlando Christian Prep, his coaches jokingly said they expected a 29 out of him. 

Little did they know, Gagne had one better in store.

Let's see, one better than 29 would be....really?

The high school senior drove the green on the par-4 first hole, reaching the putting surface about 260 yards away with a 3-wood. He made a putt for eagle, starting his round at 2 under. His second eagle of the day came at No. 5, where he chipped in from off the green. 

He ended up beating out his teammate by nine strokes for the win and topping his previous nine-hole best by three strokes.

A high school player hitting 260-yard 3-woods and shooting a 28?  He's committed to LSU and I expect we might as well pencil him in for the 2018 Masters.

Hickory Update - We had the result for you yesterday, but can now fill in more color on Sandy Lyle's win at the World Hickory Open Championship:

The 56-year-old, who became the first Scotsman to win the Masters in 1988, shot a

closing 69 in the 36-hole event at Scotland’s Panmure Golf Club to beat Paolo Quirici of Switzerland and Andrew Marshall of England by three strokes. Lyle used a set of Tad Moore’s hickory clubs to shoot 74-69—143.

“I’m very honored to have won the World Hickory Open 2014,” said Lyle, who said he has been playing hickory golf for nearly three years. “It’s been a very good experience which certainly got my ticker going, especially over the last two or three holes, which were very nerve-wracking.”


Nerve-wracking? You've got to love that from a former Masters and Open Championship winner.  And I also love this as to why he played:

“I came into the tournament quite late when I decided that, as I was in this corner of Scotland for the Dunhill, staying on for the World Hickory Open would be a great opportunity to test my hickory skills, while also helping to advance hickory golf in Scotland.”

Ryder Cup Leftovers - No doubt you're relieved that we've moved on from our flood-the-zone Ryder Cup coverage, but a couple of items have crossed my monitor in the last twenty-four hours.

First up, for Kooch the Ryder Cup is all about the fierce competition.  I'll let him explain:

"You know, we played mostly doubles. I think Jordan Spieth was the one guy that challenged me to singles, and he got what he knew he was going to get. But it was a lot of fun just to . . . with the amount of doubles happening because there's, again, the team atmosphere of it, and there's so many more people involved, so we had a lot of fun.

Bubba Watson has claimed me every year as his partner, and it works out really well. Bubba is an average player with zero backhand, only a forehand, and we take on kind of the best, and Bubba and I blend well and have competitive matches, and then for our short stint I took Phil and Phil was so excited to have me as his partner. But that was fun playing with Phil. But no, no surprises.

Jordan is good, Zach is good, Phil is good. They're kind of the next three guys."

I'm sure they have lots of time to fill, but these stories play a lot better after a win.  As best I can recall, after all it's been some years...

In terms of the pending Mickelson v. Watson litigation, Emily Kay catches Brandel Chamblee doubling down on his criticism of Mickelson:

I'd love to know when this photo was taken.

"In that press conference, Phil said they didn’t have any say in this Ryder Cup," Chamblee said on The John Feinstein Show on Wednesday. "And I know for a fact that all the players were brought together with their caddies and Tom walked amongst them and said, ‘Tell me who you want to play with. Write it down on a sheet of paper, and all of you tell me who you want to play with. Let me know.’ And everybody but one person contributed there. 

"So, what Phil said was not, in fact, true," Chamblee told Feinstein. "They were allowed to contribute – and who they played with was pretty much the way Paul Azinger went about his captaincy."

As the regular reader is tired of hearing, I strongly agree with Brandel that Phil's comments were inappropriate for the venue.  However, this is a terribly thin reed on which to make the case, and that assumes it's accurately portrayed.  And the fact that he told them to write it down is quite weird, as if he didn't want to engage in the discussion with the players....yanno, like they're telling us. 

And what of this Euro-template that we're supposed to copy?  Paul McGinley spent some time with Irish golf writer Brian Keough who led with this:

Paul McGinley flees from the idea that he was the perfect captain or that he has turned the Ryder Cup into a poisoned chalice for his successor.

Well, that's certainly dramatic...

“Whoever is going to be the next captain, it is going to be a great honour and they are going to come in with a lot of energy and vibrancy and captain as they see fit. It won’t be for me to tell them what to do and I’d like to think that just because I did it this way that they have to follow that.

“That is the advice that José María [Olazábal] gave me. When I would ask him about this or that he’d say, ‘Paul, what do you think? What do you want to do?’

All this talk of a template is quite silly, even laughable given the backstabbing of McGinley by Monty and Darren Clarke.  In fact, they've changed their selection process to avoid such unseemly antics in the future.

On the subject of the Euro's next captain, the latest meme is that The Most Interesting Man in Golf might not be the perfect choice for an interesting reason:

McGinley says he hasn't thought about who might be the best man for the job but when asked about the perception that Jimenez's English language skills might be a drawback,

A man who knows how to celebrate in any language.

he did not hold back in defending the cigar-puffing Malagueno, who was one of his five assistants in Scotland.

At the suggestion that there is a lot more to Jimenez that his pony-tail, his cigars, his love of a glass of Rioja and that entertaining warm up routine, McGinley says: "There's a huge amount going on. A huge amount.

"And he never misunderstands what you say. He is never there going, 'What? What?'

"But listen, I am not going to go down that road [of talking about the future candidates]. But I can tell you right now, I have never had a problem understanding Miguel's English. His English is perfect, it is just like a thick Kerry accent."

Perhaps not just like a Kerry accent, but we take your point.

Chicks Dig Professional Golfers -  Were you, like your humble blogger, sad to see Rickie Fowler WAGless at Gleneagles?  He seems a nice young man, and despite the love of orange surely there must be a woman that would appreciate him somewhere....  Good news on that front:

Aside from finishing in the top five of all four majors, Rickie gave his clearest indication yet that he's got a new love in his life when he named bikini model Alexis Randock his "woman crush Wednesday." The pair haven't announced anything official, but there are pictures of them together floating around on Instagram.

SPOILER ALERT: There's six more photos of the young lad at the link above, and she looks less than hot in none of them.

Cheesecake Saturday -  The Loop is the primary Golf Digest blog, and I understand that they sometimes struggle to find golf-related content.  The solution to that is elementary, simply expand the concept of "golf-related."  

For instance, there's currently an item up about a golf mistake in the new film Gone Girl.  Turns out it relates to a fraudulent $7,000 charge for golf clubs, and the guy doesn't even play golf... the gist of it is that if you paid full retail you still couldn't get up to $7,000, though the logic of the piece is that the credit card fraudsters would limit themselves to the legal limit of fourteen clubs, because any more would be, you know, wrong.

So, with that background out of the way, our current offering relates to a well-known Hollywood babe with this header:

How golf helped Jennifer Lawrence break the news of her nude photographs to her dad

Clearly Golf Digest understands the concept of click-bait.  But how exactly did it help her?  This is a bit thin...

You know the story by now. A bunch of celebrities had private photos hacked and

released on the Internet, and Jennifer Lawrence was one of them. 

Obviously, the 24-year-old actress is very upset. In an interview with "Vanity Fair," Lawrence said, "It is not a scandal. It is a sex crime. It is a sexual violation. It's disgusting."

We agree with Lawrence. Yet while not to make light of the offense, we couldn't help but notice her recollection of the excruciatingly awkward situation of having to tell her father about it. 

"Fortunately, he was playing golf, so he was in a good mood," she said.

What, did she call him on the golf course?   'cause I'm guessing his three playing partners had already seen them.

Everything Old is New - Notwithstanding my impulse purchase of a G30 driver, I'm not all that much of a golf gearhead and blog infrequently on that subject.  However, over the summer I was intrigued by the TaylorMade Ultimate Driving Iron as a potential addition to the kit bag for Ireland.  It was a club marketed to Tour and highly-skilled amateurs, and I believe they got a few into bags at Hoylake.

Now comes Mizuno with a new one-iron:

The 1-iron, which Lee Trevino once suggested only God could hit, might be making a

comeback. TaylorMade introduced a 16-degree version of its UDI driving iron this summer, and now Mizuno is offering a 16-degree 1-iron as part of its MP-H5 iron line.

The MP-H5 uses a thin, 1770 maraging-steel face welded to a hollow, stainless-steel body with internal weighting deep and low for higher flight. "We're seeing a shift in better players' bags from hybrids to more split sets with long-iron replacements," says Mizuno club engineer Chris Voshall. 

The iron is also engraved with the Japanese kubuki-theater term Hitogami, or "human-god." Trevino just might approve.

Can mere mortals get them airborne?