Weekend Wrap

Another day, another dusting of snow.... what was I just saying about clinical depression?

Dyn-O-Mite - In our sport, sometimes home game can be difficult to win, so I'm guessing this one was pretty sweet:

Walker, who lives outside San Antonio, made his case emphatically on Sunday, winning the Valero Texas Open by four shots to become the first to win multiple times on the PGA Tour this season. Spieth, who resides in the Dallas area, finished second, two weeks after winning the Valspar Championship.

And it wasn't really that close, as Spieth made a late charge to secure second place... but to quote the SEC, it's those forward-looking statements that require additional scrutiny:

McIlroy is a green jacket shy of the career grand slam, and we hear about inevitability

(“If Rory doesn't win at Augusta in a few weeks’ time, he’ll win next year. And if he doesn't win next year, then he'll win it the year after,” Darren Clarke said last week). But don’t summon a tailor just yet. 

Walker, who has two victories and a playoff loss in 2015, now has five PGA Tour victories in less than 18 months, the impetus for a rapid ascension that has landed him in the top 10 in the World Ranking. 

Spieth, 21, came into the Texas Open ranked sixth in the world and is aiming higher. “I'd like to at some point be the number one ranked player in the world,” he said earlier in the week. “I'd like to win at least one major championship, try to get one before we look forward from there. But ultimately I'd like to be one of the best players to ever play the game.”

Walker's game should travel well, and he very quietly had three top-tens in majors last year.  Spieth remains hard to handicap, as he seems to be a bit error-prone at crunch-time.  Of course he's still quite young, but from the quote above we can all agree that he doesn't suffer from a failure to set high goals.

Kerrvacious -  Who doesn't like a comeback story?

CARLSBAD, Calif. (AP) Cristie Kerr closed with a 7-under 65 on Sunday and won the Kia Classic for her first LPGA Tour title in nearly two years. 

Kerr made four straight birdies on the back nine at Aviara to pull away from Mirim Lee and 17-year-old Lydia Ko. It was her 17th career win, and her first since May 2013 at the Kingsmill Championship.

Kerr started working with a new swing coach recently, and her ball-striking was near perfect in closing out the event yesterday.   And she was hitting it long....

My Lydia faded to solo third, so clearly she's peaked.  The curious part is how poorly she played the finishing three holes both days, almost as if she actually has warm blood coursing through her veins...

The Kia sets the stage for the first major of the week, the iconic Dinah Shore Kraft Nabisco ANA Inspiration.  It's a fact of life and I don't have an easy solution, but when you don't even know what to call an event, especially an iconic event with all sorts of history, it ain't good for promoting a tour.  They were running promos for it on the broadcast, and I'm sure most folks just thought it was a run-of-the-mill, forgettable women's event...

Of course the event used to carry a reputation that the LPGA would like to minimize at this point, not that there's anything wrong with that, but I wonder if they regret not keeping Dinah's name in the title.  The Kraft name grew on us over time, a function of their longevity and ubiquitous reputation, but ANA Inspiration is barely a step up from Pure Silk...

In any evet, I'll be curious to see how Lydia plays next week.  There's a ton of pressure on her to live up to her ranking, but this is very much a big girl golf course.  She's still giving up some yardage to the top ladies off the tee, so she'll need to be very much on her game to play well.

Masters Stuff - Everyone knows the latest Masters' meme, that the course favors southpaws (who have won six of the last twelve).  Paul McGinley throws out an interesting theory:

"That's not a co-incidence," the American (Aaron Oberholser) said. "In 2003 the ProV1x came out - the

three-piece hard ball. 

"My theory is that right handers have a harder time drawing the ball because when you draw the ball as a right hander around Augusta on certain shots — 13, where you really have to draw it hard comes to mind — the ball wants to dive out of the air. There is not enough spin on a draw to be able to hold your line and keep it in the air. 

"Now with a fade, naturally the ball spins more and a lefty, especially a big hitting lefty like Bubba (Watson) he can spin that ball a lot more. The ball stays in the air and the ball curves a lot more easily for him. And you can control a fade a lot more than you can control a draw, especially with this new golf ball and the new technology over the last 12 years.

Phil would also comfortably fit into that class of long-hitting lefties...But class, who can name the lefty that won the sixth of those titles?  And to really test your retention of grey matter, whom did that lefty beat in a playoff?  Answers at the bottom of the post...

As McGinley notes, there are a number of crucial drives that demand a right-to-left ball flight, although No. 13 is extreme in the severity of the dogleg.  But it kind of works because it's sufficiently short that the guys can pull 3-wood and still easily reach it.  Most of the tee shots we're considering (think Nos. 8, 10 11 and 17, for example) require ten-yard draws, and guys like Patrick Reed don't exhibit any difficulty with that.

But that was the concerning aspect of Rory's play on the Florida swing, his inability to move it right-to-left.  Well, that and the misses from within five feet...and the distance control on his wedges...yada, yada, yada.

Meanwhile, the field is at 99 and counting:

The Masters field is now at 99 players, and if the winner in Houston is not already in the field, the Masters will have at least 100 players for the first time since 1966

Much ado about nothing, even if they all showed... but they won't:

pending the status of players such as Tiger Woods, Kevin Stadler, Graeme McDowell, Brooks Koepka and Steve Stricker. 

Woods has not played since withdrawing from the Farmers Insurance Open on Feb. 5 with back stiffness and subsequently said he'd be taking time off to work on his game. 

Stadler has a wrist injury and hasn't played since the first tournament of 2015 in Hawaii, while Koepka (ribs) and McDowell (ankle) withdrew from the past two tournaments, respectively, with injuries. Stricker has not played since the Hero World Challenge in December and had back surgery shortly thereafter.

Koepka's injury is a shame, coming so soon after his breakout win and since his game seems to scream ANGC.

I've got some loose ends, but I'll have to check in later....