Stuff Lying Around

Lots of this and that sort of items, so let's dive in, shall we?

Doral, Torched - And our arsonist was an unlikely sort:

J.B. Holmes never liked the old Blue Monster at Doral because he thought it was too

easy for a World Golf Championship. 

He said this with a straight face Thursday after a 10-under 62 that tied the tournament record at the Cadillac Championship, gave him a four-shot lead and left the rest of this world-class field to wonder just how he managed.

But only torched by some...Alex Mysers has some perspective on J.B.'s rounds, as well as comments from a jury of his peers:

Secondly, while conditions weren't particularly difficult on Thursday, the scoring average for the field was 73.39 -- meaning Holmes played his round in nearly 11 and a half fewer strokes. To put that in perspective, Jim Furyk's 59 at the 2013 BMW Championship was 12.1 shots better than the field that day, putting Holmes' 62 in the same ballpark.

It was crazy good and I thought it warranted an official 59-watch.  Here's just a sample of the praise:

"Ten under? You're joking," Shane Lowry said after a hard-fought 71.

Jim McCabe thinks His Donaldness will be pleased:

The Donald wants tougher than tough, and Holmes made it look easier than easy. But when Round 1 of the WGC-Cadillac Championship was over with, there were plenty of reasons why The Donald could breathe easy. His Blue Monster was not the pushover one might think, based on Holmes’ score. 

Here are 10 things about Round 1 that The Donald should focus on: 

1. The field average was 73.402.

2. Maintaining its ferocious reputation, the par-4 18th was toughest, at a 4.603 field average. Only three birdies were made – by Alexander Levy, Charley Hoffman and Ross Fisher.

 If No. 18 had been a prize fight, the ref woulda stopped it.  The surpise was less the number of tee balls in the water than how far right the guys were bailing.  Good thing it's a small field, cause thetre was lots of incoming on the first fairway.

Think the money is too easy out there?  How about $42 grand for eight holes?

Thomas Bjorn picked up a quick paycheck Thursday. 

Bjorn, playing in the first round of the WGC-Cadillac Championship at Doral, withdrew from the no-cut tournament after only eight holes – and earned $42,000 for his trouble.

Bjorn hit his tee shot on the par-3 ninth into the water and called it a day afterward. The New York Post’s Mark Cannizzaro said via Twitter it was due to personal reasons.

Personal reasons?  Hey, at least Rory came up with a phantom toothache... 

Adam Scott seems to have spent his winter vacation productively, producing a male heir and learning the claw putting grip as well:

The former world No. 1 had five birdies, a bogey and one double bogey en route to a 2-under 70 Thursday at Trump National Doral. He had 27 putts, including nine one-putts and no three-putts. 

“I putted really good today I thought,” Scott said. “I kind of took everything off the range that had been feeling good and off the practice areas and put it in on the course, and it was pretty good. I certainly didn't feel like it was kind of a three‑month layoff round.

We should expect that he'll have days where he regresses, since he's never been a particularly good putter, even with the broomstick.   

WADA Ya Mean? - Say it isn't so....

Golf is scheduled to return to the Olympics at next year’s Rio Games, but according to

the World Anti-Doping Agency, the drug-enforcement policies followed by the sport’s biggest tour are still a problem. 

In an interview with Golf.com, David Howman, WADA’s director general, called on the PGA Tour to take the necessary steps to strengthen its “Anti-Doping Program Manual” in order to bring it into compliance with WADA’s Code. 

“There are gaps in the program, and that means someone might not be tested or might not be detected,” said Howman. “If you’re not smart, you’re not going to catch the cheats.”

Mr. Howman obviously doesn't understand the complexity of Commissioner Ratched's worldview (and bonus points for any reader that can identify the literary source of that bit), as golf is a game of gentlemen where we call penalties on ourselves (and would logically turn ourselves in for using PED's).  But this is as if it came from mine own keyboard:

Howman also joined those critical of the lack of transparency in the Tour’s administration of its drug-testing program, citing the PGA Tour’s recent suspension of Bhavik Patel, a 24-year-old Web.com Tour pro, for an undisclosed performance-enhancing drug violation. 

“We don’t know the substance he used and we don’t know the rationale behind the length of the sanctions,” said Howman of the Patel suspension. “It goes some of the way, but it actually creates more questions than it gives answers.”

What's this transparency you speak of, Sir?  Obviously the Tour does want to catch cheat, but only minnows...  Understand that and you'll understand all.

But the Tour has good reasons for it's colander-like program, with only the best interests of its players at heart:

Speaking in response to criticism from the World Anti-Doping Agency, Andy Levinson, the Tour's vice president for tournament administration and anti-doping, said drawing blood could have an adverse effect on performance. 

“Taking blood draws from golfers’ arms might impact performance if it caused a hematoma or a player suffered anemia given the fine motor skills required on certain golf shots,” Levinson said.

Really?  But this bit is spit-out-your-coffee hilarious:

According to Levinson, urine collection and testing covers a large percentage of the PGA Tour’s prohibited substances. To monitor human growth hormone, a substance prohibited by the Tour which some athletes use for recovery and is only detectable through blood testing, Levinson said the Tour relies on other methods, such as information or evidence that a player was using it. If a player was found to be in possession of a prohibited substance, for example, Levinson said, that would be a violation.

So they're going to rely on other evidence that a player is using, but avoid the procedure to find such information out.  Commissioner Schultz could not be reached for comment...

Authorized By Whom? - This is silly fun, Alex Myers' Phil Mickelson and the thumbs up: An Authorized History, wherein we learn much useful information such as this:

The thumbs-up sign dates back to ancient Rome, where emperors made the signal to convey if they thought a gladiator's life should be spared. But it has patriotic roots in this country. It's believed to have become popular in the U.S. during World War II, when fighter pilots used it as a way of communicating with ground crews that they were ready to take off. 

Phil Mickelson Sr. was a navy pilot. That just can't be a coincidence. 

Phil Jr. uses the move as a sign of appreciation for the hordes of fans that follow him at every golf tournament. And he uses it a lot.

That he does....As do other folks, though in this case I'm sure the recipient has seen other digits as well:

Distaff Nonsense - Shack goes on a micro-rant about the silly responses to Royal St. Georges allowing women members and the mostly unjustified juxtaposition with growing our game:

I'm sure you saw the usual stuff on social media and elsewhere about the great grow the

game statement from Royal St. George's in voting to admit women to their membership. 

It's mostly hogwash. Adding a few spry rich women certainly is a nice gesture, but it sure it's not going to grow the game. Now, if more of these high-end places like Royal St. George's were bringing in promising junior golfers, that would have an impact.

I've been saying much the same for years, and though symbolism matters, there's far more benefit, for example, from ANGC opening its gates to the Drive, Pitch and Putt competition than there is from admitting Condi Rice.  That said, both Geoff and I love this:

Unlike the Royal & Ancient, Royal St George’s has a junior section. The club currently has about 50 boys, and takes in about six new juniors per year. Checketts says girls may join the club that way, too. 

“The junior process tends to be faster so we may get some juniors (girls) in straight away. 

“We get juniors in quite quickly and get them involved and playing. We don’t really have an upper limit for juniors. We take as many as we can cope with.”

Now we're making some progress...

We've Waited This Long -  Twelve years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, I think waiting for the snow to melt is no biggie:

The highly anticipated public opening of Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point has finally arrived. Now, golfers just need the weather to cooperate.

On Wednesday, Donald Trump announced that people can start scheduling tee times at 10 a.m. on March 11 for the month of April (www.trumpferrypoint.com). The new course's official opening day is scheduled for April 1, which seems ambitious with all the snow that's been dumped on the New York area of late and no winter reprieve in sight.

Shack is shocked, shocked that there's gambling in Casablanca  city residents don't get a bigger break:

Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point, NYC RESIDENT rate is $141 and $169.

NON-RESIDENT rate is $190.00 and $215.00.

As loyal readers know, I was lucky to play a preview round in October, and my thoughts are here.   Trump got a sweetheart deal from Bloomberg, bot for the abused taxpayers of NYC these greens fees will be the least of it.

Ritchie Rich - We hear simultaneously that the game is dying but that all sorts of unlikely folks have gotten themselves quite mad about golf.... both can be true I suppose, but it's always heartening to hear of folks discovering the joys of holding a golf club in hand.  Here's the latest of this genre, concerning Bob Ritchie, d/b/a Kid Rock:

Lately, Rock has been getting into golf. He was just accepted into Jack Nicklaus' private

Bear's Club, near Palm Beach, Florida. "If you told me five years ago I'd have to take my hat off and tuck my shirt in, I'd have slapped the taste out of your mouth," Rock says. "Now I'm like, 'Look at me, hair slicked back, shirt tucked in.' I'm like, 'What a fag!' "

Mr. Rock, we don't use the "F" word here at Unplayable Lies. Of course I skipped over this earlier in the piece:

Kid Rock stands outside puffing a cigar, his ponytail spilling out of an orange hunter's hat. "Welcome to L.A.!" he says, meaning Lower Alabama. "I thought you were coming yesterday. We got our days screwed up. We cooked fuckin' chitlins!"

We don't use that one either, unless we can't help ourselves...Now it turns out that Mr. Rock has something interesting to say out one Eldrick Woods:

Rock recently got some pointers at the range from Nicklaus himself, and he hit balls at Tiger Woods' nearby house. "Nice kid," Rock says. "A little bit of an Eminem and Axl Rose syndrome. Very reclusive, literal, and sometimes you feel a little bad for them. Sometimes they think the world's against them. You gotta loosen up, man! People are gonna talk shit. You just gotta enjoy it!"

Kid? Though I'm not exactly clear on the sense in which he hit balls at Tiger's house. . Was he at the house or was it, you know, his target?  But I digress...

But this leads us to a really fun piece from a most dubious of sources.  I was somewhere between surprised and mortified to learn that Rolling Stone is still publishing, as their account of a gang rape at the University of Virginia well apart at Usain Bolt speed.  But now they've turned their attention to our Tiger, and no doubt he'll feel serially violated.  I did like their lede graph:

Back in the days when Tiger Woods was an untouchable American icon, back in an era when he was winning major tournaments with steadfast regularity and was a high-profile pitchman for both luxury automobiles and Saul Goodman's preferred counterfeit watch brand, back when he was young and fresh-faced and seemed destined to shatter Jack Nicklaus' record, no one would have bothered to believe a journeyman professional making outrageous claims about him on a radio station in Lansing, Michigan.

You're right, it's not all that good....After watching all of Breaking Bad and diving into the prequel, I'm an easy mark for the Better Call Saul reference.  But it gets better:

At some point over the past few years, as his marriage broke down and his body broke down with it, Tiger Woods became something far weirder. To see those pictures of him wearing a skull mask at a skiing event in Italy to hide a missing front tooth, you couldn't help but wonder if he's veering into Michael Jackson territory

Michael Jackson territory? Someone pinch me....

He is, as Sports on Earth's Will Leitch wrote, firmly ensconced in his "freak show" phase; he now appears so far removed from normal life that it's getting more difficult to imagine he'll ever be an object of mainstream affection any time soon. In, say, 2002, it would have seemed utterly absurd to compare Tiger Woods and Mike Tyson; now it feels like an increasingly apt metaphor. The fact that he felt the need topublicly attack a biting satirical column by a legendary sportswriter best known for biting satire may have been the least self-aware and most humorless screed by an athlete who was never exactly known for his edginess. 

There is that freak-show angle to this that can't be denied, which lent Olsen's claims more weight than they probably deserved, given the lack of evidence behind them. There are, of course, people who are fascinated by the way mega-celebrity and competitive pressure can drain the human psyche; it's interesting to speculate how Woods might be handling the notion that the one thing he was always good at – the one thing he was physically and mentally constructed to be good at from a tender age – has spiraled completely out of his control. It almost feels novelistic, the way his life imploded all at once, like something out of, hell, a Dan Jenkins novel; but there's also something inherently depressing about it, too, for those of us who grew up watching Woods transform golf into something counterintuitively electric.

Freak Show phase? Mike Tyson? Too much fun for words... I've grabbed the best bits for sure, but do yourself a favor and read it out loud to a loved one.