'Dis and 'Dat

I've much to answer for with my post-Masters letdown...even Jordan Spieth sucked it up and got back to work after one desultory round.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Spieth - It's quite amazing how people have taken to our young Jordan in this cynical age, which I can only attribute to his obvious decency.  I myself experienced a number of people expressing outsized joy at his Friday 62, way out of proportion for a second round score at a third tier Tour event.  In some cases this was partially a way of reminding me of my typically bad prediction of distraction-induced letdown (I promised you Mendoza-line predictive abilities, and it's Mission Accomplished), but more so genuine joy at his success.

This is the point in the schedule where we all over-interpret that which we saw at Augusta, and draw all sorts of grandiose conclusions.  First, Brian Keough with the Irish-centric opinion that this will be good for Rory:

Jordan Spieth’s record-setting win at the Masters could turn out to be the best thing that

ever happened to Rory McIlroy. 

The emergence of a new star with a real feeling for the nuances of Augusta National can only bode well for the world No 1, whose closing 66 simply underlined that fact the he’s a stunningly talented athlete with the game to bring Augusta to its knees.

Four successive sub-par round (the last of them seven shots better than playing parter Tiger Woods) show that McIlroy is slowly coming to grips with what it takes to conquer the Cathedral of Pines. After all, his total of 12 under 276 would have won 75% of the 79 Masters Tournaments held so far. 

Only Tiger Woods (1997) and Spieth with 18 under, Jack Nicklaus (1965) and Ray Floyd (1976) with 17 under, Woods (2001) and Mickelson (2010) with 16 under, Ben Hogan, Ben Crenshaw (1995) and Charl Schwartzel (in 2011, 14 under) and Seve Ballesteros and Fred Couples have ever shot lower than McIlroy's around Augusta National.

Brian performs an invaluable service in his coverage of Irish golf, but he misses I think a critical factor, which is that Rory might go some years without finding the same kind of soft conditions that so favor his game.  He played those last 45 holes in the manner we expected to see given those conditions, the issue is why it took him 27 holes to awaken from his slumber.

Everyone is ready to declare the future to be about Jordan vs. Rory, but it would be naive to assume that there's only the two that can compete at that level.  We know Rory will be challenged for supremacy, it seems a logical assumption that Jordan will be one of those challengers, but golf has no shortage of young talent these days and the plotlines have not yet been written...

That's a long preamble to this Jump-the-Shark piece from Oliver Brown in the Telegraph (admittedly not helped by the headline writer declaring Jordan the new Tiger):

To transcend is to climb beyond ordinary limitations. Is that not the purpose of sport itself? The Olympic creed of ‘faster, higher, stronger’ is a summons to step beyond prescribed parameters.

How curious, then, that transcendence should be a quality ascribed to so few athletes: Muhammad Ali, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods. For what we impute by the label ‘transcendent’ is not merely an extraordinary skill but a capacity to rise above the sporting realm – whether in triggering a paradigm shift in perceptions of race, as Robinson managed, or in planting oneself indelibly in pop culture, as Jordan did.

 Hope you wore your hip-waders, cause the BS is deep in here....further in the piece Brown has this:

Spieth, ultimately, could have far greater influence than McIlroy in appealing to the American mass market. Wholesome, deferential, good looking, God fearing, he looks like the identikit product of the middle-class heartland but plays the game as if touched by the heavens.

Touched by the heavens?  Please tell me this is an intentional parody, because he's won all of three times on Tour.  Jordan seems to be a really nice, incredibly well-grounded young man, which makes this kind of lazy hagiography all the worse...Jordan knows how hard our game is and respects his competitors, so maybe those writing about the game should show an equal measure of humility...

The Shark - The Gift That Keeps On Giving -  No word on how the bronze bust turned out when assembled, and shockingly my 60th birthday passed without Employee No. 2 taking the hint and casting your humble blogger in bronze.  But I digress...

So His Sharkness descended from the Mount and granted Hamish McLachlan (and is that a great name, or what?) an interview, and it's simply comedy gold.  I'll cite a couple of the best bits, but if you like a good Shark defenestration then go straight to Peter FitzSimmons' takedown here (if it had been a fight, the ref woulda stopped it in the first round).  So, a couple of excerpts:

GN: I’m comfortable with it. Sometimes when you walk into a room though, all you

want is a little bit of peace and quiet, and it’s not there. And when you feel like that, you have to really check yourself, and change your mood. We are all human beings and sometimes the burden on us feels a little bit heavy, but at the end of the day I also realise — and this is something I've only noticed in the last six or seven years — that I am the living brand. So it doesn't matter where you are, or how you are feeling, if somebody walks by you have to say “Hi, how are you doing?”

Show some respect folks, he's the living brand.  And how about this rather amusing rationalization of his epic 1996 Masters collapse:

GN: Simple, I won the tournament of life at Augusta. I never won the green jacket, but I did win the tournament of life. Two really tough situations happened to me on that golf course, one with Larry Mize in ’87, and one with Nick Faldo in ’96. Two totally different situations, and as a result, two different emotional reactions within myself. I could have tried to bury both of them, and pretend that they never really bothered me. But whenever I’ve been asked about them, I've talked about them, I've never run away from them. To this day people talk to me about how well I held myself, which is why I say I won the tournament of life.

I do so hate to be critical of the LB, but shouldn't we add 1986 to that list as well?  Norman was always a gracious loser and, while that's that's admirable, it's perhaps because he had more experience at it than most...

And while we're skewering the pompous Shark, there's other news on the Fox/USGA match made in heaven.  Here's how Fox explains their strategy:

“The live events drive the viewership,” Wanger said, “so we’re going to have about 40 hours of coverage on Fox Sports 1 of just the U.S. Open. You’re talking about eight hours on Thursday and Friday, and all sorts of preview shows, so it’s really important to establish a good base for people to come and check out the channel. 

“And particularly golf, which is a unique audience. It’s a little bit older, more upscale, so it’s an opportunity for those folks to be able to see the network.”

A little bit older?  When do you think Fox last ran a Cialis commercial?  I'm thinking never... as Awful Announcing's Matt Yoder explicates:

Seeing Fox Sports 1 publicly yearning to attract golf’s older, upscale audience and have them visit the network is a long cry from the days of #The1ForFun. The arranged marriage between the conservative golf audience and Fox Sports is one that will bear watching in June considering the golf world’s yearly reaction to Chris Berman.

And of potentially greater concern, Fox remains in a standoff with AT&T over carriage rights, per Shack:

“AT&T U-verse has determined it will forgo carriage of dozens of live sporting events on FOX Sports 1. Unfortunately, U-Verse subscribers have already missed several events, and will miss many more including FOX Sports 1’s coverage of eight USGA championships, including rounds 1 and 2 of the US Open. U-verse subscribers are encouraged to contact AT&T to request all FOX Sports 1 programming.” 

As of February 2015, approximately 84.8 million households in the U.S. receive Fox Sports 1, while 94.3 million pay television households have ESPN, where the U.S. Open weekday coverage aired for 28 years.

But that's worth it for the Living Brand, no?  I mean as long as we still get the crashing robots...

A Linksapalooza -  We'll be treated to a larger than usual dosage of the good stuff this summer, with televised links golf from everywhere, including an improbable U.S. Open.  In unrelated items loosely tied to this thread, first a short video to put you in the mood for our July visit to the Auld Grey Toon:

I always advise folks that it's well worth a visit to St. Andrews regardless of whether or not you're able to get on the Old Course.  

And the kudos continue to mount for World No. 1 and his support of The Irish Open:

RORY McIlroy’s powers of persuasion have resulted in US Open champion Martin

The Mountains of Mourne and Slieve Donard frame the beautiful ninth hole.

Kaymer, former world number one Luke Donald and American Ryder Cup star Patrick Reed in confirming their participation in the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open. 

McIlroy’s foundation is hosting the event at Royal County Down from 28-31 May and the world number one has been a major influence in attracting a top-class field, who will compete for a prize fund of €2.5 million (£1.8 million), an increase of 25 per cent from last year. 

Reed let the cat out of the bag on the final day of the Masters at Augusta National, also revealing he would compete in the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth the week before.

But the addition of Kaymer and Donald means the tournament will feature five players who have been world number one – McIlroy, Donald, Kaymer, Ernie Els and Lee Westwood – and eight major champions in McIlroy, Els, Kaymer, Darren Clarke, Padraig Harrington, Graeme McDowell, Paul Lawrie and Jose Maria Olazabal.

It's a spectacular venue and they'll be glad they make the effort... unless, of course, they get Irish weather.   

And in this week's airline schedule update comes this exciting news:

Beginning July 1, United Airlines will offer twice-a-week nonstop flights between Denver International Airport and Southwest Oregon Regional Airport in North Bend through Oct. 18. The flights will run on Sunday and Wednesday.

Scratching your head, are you?  North Bend, not to be confused with the better-known Bend located in the central portion of the state, is a coastal town a mere 30-45 minutes north of Bandon Dunes.  Finally you can get there from here...

This Week in Golf Rules Infractions -  I'm not especially inclined towards the premise that golf's rules are too complicated, at least not when you consider that it's the only sport played in the great expanse of nature wherein any circumstance can occur.  But admittedly the powers that be do provoke some head-scratching at times, such as this:

Italy's Edoardo Molinari was disqualified from the European Tour's Shenzhen International on Friday after failing to include a strange penalty on his round of 75 Thursday; his caddie hopped a golf cart between the ninth and 10th tees, but Molinari didn't see it.

Now understand, if Molinari had declared a shot to be in an...errr....what do they call such a thing? ...help me here...oh yes, an Unplayable Lie, he and his caddie could ride the cart back to the tee... Truly stupid, and even worse is to DQ a player that had no knowledge of the infraction.

Of course none of this comes from the Rules of Golf, which are blissfully simple...

This Week in Golf Litigation - Titleist dominates the golf ball market, and I'm guessing from this that they like it that way...

Acushnet, the parent company of golf ball behemoth Titleist, is saying more than a dozen different balls from an array of small startup companies are infringing on its patents for dimple patterns.

So it’s suing them.

Hmmm...taking on the minnows seems like an odd stratgey:

Many offer low-priced versions of multilayer, urethane-cover golf balls. That’s the kind of construction typically played by tour players and a segment that now accounts for more than 40 percent of the U.S. golf ball market, according to figures from golf research firm Golf Datatech.

Filed April 6 in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts in Boston, the lawsuit names 17 different balls from ten different companies. Among the companies listed are Rife (V-Motion), I Need the Ball (The Ball), Vice Golf (Pro) and Kick X (Tour-Z). According to the lawsuit, the dimple patterns on these balls are all the same: 318 dimples arranged in what the lawsuit terms “a triangluar dipyramid shape.”

Do I have this right, seventeen balls from ten companies all using the same dimple pattern?  That's gotta be some form of collusion or wild coincidence, no?  Not so much it turns out, as all of these balls are manufactured in the same Taiwanese factory:

In a recent email, Foremost’s Gavin Lee told Golf Digest the company has “several hundred” balls in its current catalog. “We work with the R&D [department] with each of our customers,” he wrote, indicating that Foremost is the second-largest manufacturer of golf balls in the world behind Acushnet. “Every creation is a custom design.”

While no Titleist ball on the USGA’s conforming list utilizes a 318-dimple pattern, the patents in question cover a broad area of ball and dimple design that include patterns that range from 250 to 370 dimples.

Out of curiosity, I wonder how similar the dimple patterns are on the Callaway, TaylorMade and Bridgestone balls... It's somewhat curious as a business strategy, since it's hard to imagine that Acushnet can even feel the volume lost to such competitors.