Today's TED Talk

I go to considerable effort and expense to be snowed in in Park City....only to find myself instead snowed in at home.  What's wrong with this picture?

But our favorite ex-PGA Prez is back and he's dishing, so pull up a chair and freshen that beverage....

I curled up in bed last evening with the new issue of SIG-Golf+, and...well, the cover will tell you where we're going with this:

That's reasonably clever though, given the byline, I'd have worked Ted Bishop in as a bishop, no?  It's a dreaded digital magazine, so excerpting will be a challenge, though others have provided some assistance.  The digital mag can be found here, and golf.com has two takes on it here and here.

 Now Ted wield an industrial-sized axe these days, so we'll need to take care to read between the lines.  But he ledes by explaining that the task force, or Task Force, was entirely his idea, conceived on the plane home from Scotland.  He seems to think this is something to be proud of, so thus far my BS detector has not hit the red zone.  

But how did three-sticks end up with a mulligan?  Here's Ted's take:

"What’s curious is how Love wound up as captain," Bishop penned. "A majority of the eight men who represented the players and past captains on the task force wanted Fred Couples to take the helm."

Hmmmmm....that doesn't help all that much as we need names.  Then there's this from Marika Washchyshyn (Vanna, I'd like to buy a vowel):

Bishop's column reads:

"It’s clear that Mickelson controlled the tenor of the task-force meetings. Last week,

when a reporter asked Love how he evolved from a task-force member to captain, Phil practically knocked down Davis to grab the microphone. Mickelson was quick to point out that Love had not lobbied for the job. He said Davis sees the big picture, has the experience and is a perfect fit. He also acknowledged that Love had made mistakes at Medinah and that he had learned from those mistakes. Phil capped his remarks by saying, “Davis will put us in a position to succeed rather than create obstacles to overcome.” Phil was clearly taking another shot at Watson." 

The PGA of America did not respond to requests for comment by press time. 

Could Couples, who Bishop claims held the popular vote, have walked away with the job had Mickelson not exerted his influence on the task force? When it came to the task force, it appeared to be 'Mickelson rule,' not majority.

The name seemingly missing from both Ted and Marika's accounting is Pete Bevaqua.  My operating assumption has been that Bevaqua put the kibosh on Freddie, not unreasonably understanding that Freddie being Freddie is an awkward fit for the Ryder Cup (think of the stories of Freddie at Medinah hanging with MJ and not answering his radio).  Still, it's got to be a tad awkward telling your task force that you're not much interested in what they think...

This bit seems to be the basis of Ted's contention that Phil had the conn:

OK, but Phil's not the only big name that will skip those events, though of course the Istanbul 8, including Tiger, will need to play the Fry's next year this Fall.  But the usually knowledgeable Doug Ferguson takes Phil and the entire Task Force, sorry for this folks, to task for sins against the Holy Emperor:

What's to keep Augusta National from following suit and no longer offering a spot in the Masters to winner? And if those tournaments go away, does the PGA Tour become even more of a closed shop and a time when it's hard to keep track of all the promising young Americans? 

Most disappointing is the silence of PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, except to commend the PGA of America for including his players in the process. It was just over a year ago that Finchem and former PGA president Ted Bishop shared the stage and boasted of a new era of cooperation between the two organizations.

Doug, you ignorant.....errr, let's not go there.  The wraparound schedule was a complete over-reach by Commissioner Ratched, and Phil makes a very good point.  But it's the naivete on display that most amuses me, as expecting a PGA of America task force to protect the interests of the PGA Tour ignores a wealth of real-world evidence.

And should the winner of the Sanderson's Farm Championship get an automatic invite to the Masters?  The current holder is Nick Taylor and I'll go way out on a limb and speculate that most of us wouldn't miss him in April....

Ted also tells a story of being on the 18th hole with Phil and Rickie at Celtic Manor during a practice round, presumably in leaky rainsuits, when out of the blue Phil mentioned that Bethpage Black would make a boss Ryder Cup venue...So here's how our Ted sees the captaincy playing out over the next few cycles:

Maybe, but that's quite the long con Phil has been running, and 2024 is still way off.  Stricker is no doubt a lock for Wisconsin and Phil is no doubt smart enough to tee himself up for a home game.

Color me skeptical that Freddie will be their guy for the 2018 road game, though I could see where Bevaqua might have used that as a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down, holding out the possibility that if Freddie shows personal growth as III's aide-de-camp in '16 he'll get the nod.  Easy enough to go another direction at a later time.

But to me the real question is whether Ted's case becomes conventional wisdom, that this was all orchestrated by our Phil.  And does Davis owe Phil such that he'll get extraordinary consideration for one of those four captain's picks (though I'm surprised that nobody has laid that change on Phil as well, since his chances of earning a spot seem to be increasingly remote)?

No doubt there will be some credit if it all comes together and the U.S. wins....  but where does this go if, despite the Task Force, continuity plans and the captain of Phil's dreams, the same guys show up in bred white and blue?