Mid-Week Musings

Just a few items for you today, as we conserve energy heading into the holiday weekend.

Horror Chambers - Next month's U.S. Open venue is a great unknown, and the genus-species Tourus Proffessionalus doesn't deal well with uncertainty...  You'll recall that USGA Executive Director Mike Davis made news by calling this a different kind of Open, predicting that the guy that shows up on Monday and plays two practice rounds will have no chance of winning...

Doug Ferguson surveys our entitled golf 1-percenters, and  you'll be shocked to hear that they're not amused:

"We'll play for second," former U.S. Open champion Webb Simpson said at Quail

Hollow with no shortage of sarcasm.

"What's Mike Davis' handicap?" asked Rory McIlroy, another U.S. Open champion and the best player in the world, something Davis is not. It was a playful reminder that amateurs who run tournaments should not underestimate the skill of those who do this for a living.

Does Rory understand that Mike isn't, you know, in the field?   And, by the way, his index is 3.4...

And you'll understand that I couldn't pass on this bit:

No amount of chirping would be complete without Ian Poulter weighing in. Never mind that Poulter has never seen Chambers Bay. He listened to a few players who made scouting trips on their way to the Match Play Championship and tweeted, "The reports back are its a complete farce. I guess someone has to win."

And I'll go way out on a limb and predict, nay guarantee, that it won't be our Poults.   Now I do think Mike's words were ill-advised, not least because of this:

But what about the players who don't qualify until the Monday before U.S. Open week? Or the players — two of them last year — who qualify through the world ranking on the Monday of U.S. Open week?

We obviously assume that such players are not going to be in contention, but it shatters the veneer of democracy, no?  But Doug also reminds us of this over-looked aspect of U.S. Opens:

It's all about attitude.

Jack Nicklaus is famous for saying how he would listen to players complain about the U.S. Open and figure that was one less guy to beat that week.

Fortunately for Poults, Jack is also not in the field... Now we've heard ad nauseum that this is the first time the USGA is taking the Open to the Pacific Northwest, a beautiful part of the country.  But like clockwork comes this report:

Several groups — Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Backbone Campaign, and

the People’s Climate Action Fleet — are planning an offshore environmental protest during the final round of the Open. 

“Join the People's Climate Action Fleet, Sunday- June 21, 2015 off the coast of the Chambers Bay Golf Course in Pierce County,” the Olympia Fellowship website says. “Bring all your watercraft - kayaks, canoes, sailboats, and power boats… 

“More than two hundred thousand people will attend the tournament and one hundred million more will watch the action on television. This is our chance to bring a dramatic climate justice message to the attention of a national and international audience.”

Oh Goodie...I just home they can get the drums onto the boats.   Seattle is notorious for this nonsense, from the 1999 riots in conjunction with the World Trade Organization meeting to the more recent May Day protests earlier this month.  Won't it be lovely spending the week with these gracious hosts?

Back To The Island - Pete Dye has a good quote that Google won't find for me to the effect that while he's most famous for building island greens, he's only built tow of them.  We now have news about the second of those:

Twenty-nine years after the course was played for the one and only time in the old Bob

Hope Classic, the TPC Stadium Course at PGA West is officially returning to the course's rotation in 2016. 

In one of the worst-kept secrets in the desert, the Stadium Course along with the Jack Nicklaus Tournament Course will be announced Tuesday as new courses for the 2016 CareerBuilder Challenge in partnership with the Clinton Foundation.

This may actually be a good call, as this tournament is once again on life support.  At the time of its construction it was arguably the most difficult golf course on the planet, currently featuring a course rating of 76.1 and a slope of 150.  The issue will be what it does to the as the one time it was used in the Hope rotation hilarity ensued as Tip O'Neill did his best impression of a front-end loader in trying to escape a penal bunker.

Of greater import is the future course of this event, specifically the involvement of the Clinton Foundation.  The pairing with prior-sponsor Humana at least passed the laugh-out-loud test, promoting wellness and all.  But new sponsor careerbuilder.com has no such connection to wellness, and we'll no doubt be treated to many further revelations about the Foundation's use as a slush fund for Clinton loyalists (see Blumenthal, Sydney).  Unfortunately, when you lie down with dogs...

Of Rory and Tiger - I know we're in the Jordan Spieth era, but take a minute for a retro item on a couple of the old guys.  If you take Rory at his word, he seems to keep things in good perspective by focusing on his next tournament and not obsessing over career milestones.  Ass he says, we'll just add them up when he's done...

He sounded a similar note in a recent interview:

During an interview with BBC Sport on Tuesday, McIlroy was asked if he could replicate what Tiger Woods did for golf. 

"I'll never be able to do for golf what Tiger did,” McIlroy said. “He was a phenomenon, he brought so many more people into the game because of his background and how he started on Tour and everything…”

Set aside the fact that the case for Tiger bringing people into the game is rather sketchy, but how about this item on other contributions he's made to the game:

Since 2011 the Federal Communications Commission has fielded 22 complaints about profanities heard on golf broadcasts on CBS, NBC, Golf Channel and ESPN, according to FCC records obtained by GOLF.com through a Freedom of Information request. Fifteen of those grievances, or nearly 70 percent, relate to salty language uttered by Woods.

So Rory, I'm OK with you just being yourself and occasionally flinging a 3-iron (and doesn't that seem like it was ages ago?).

These Guys Are Good -  Our tongue-twister of the day features Troy's Tolver Dozier (really, you can't make that up) who found himself in a playoff for the individual spot out of the the NCAA Division 1 regional at Yale.  Fortunately his teammates had the video going...

With a name that good, I can only hope he has a long career...

Looking For a New Driver? - A promotion from TaylorMade to sweeten the pot for the U.S. Open:

Dustin Johnson is already a fan favorite. But we have a feeling D.J. is about to pick up even more fans for this year’s U.S. Open.

If D.J. wins at Chambers Bay in June, anyone who buys a new TaylorMade driver between May 18 and June 17 at a PGA Tour Superstore will be refunded for the driver’s full price. So, that new R15 ($430) or AeroBurner ($300) could end up being free.

So I shouldn't get "Custom Fit" at Dick's?  You guys have me very confused... 

Party Like It's 1987 - With the Tour headed to Colonial this week, Golf Magazine runs this 1987 interview with Ben Hogan that you'll want to peruse.  I'll just excerpt the opening question:

GOLF Magazine: Next year we'll be celebrating the 100th anniversary of golf in

America. You've been around for 75 of those years. What's your first golf-related memory? 

BEN HOGAN: I guess it goes back to about 1920. I was nine years old and selling newspapers in Forth Worth to make some money when one of my friends told me I could earn more by caddieing. The word was you could make 65 cents just by packing a bag around 18 holes. So one day I walked the seven miles from my home to Glen Garden Country Club to see what it was all about. The established caddies at Glen Garden ran sort of a kangaroo court. For a new caddie to break in, he had to win a fist-fight with one of the older, bigger caddies. So they threw me against one of those fellas and I got the better of him. It was through the caddie experience that I got the golf bug.

A lot of golf history captured in one simple Q & A, especially when you remember that it was in that caddie yard that Hogan met a similarly hardscrabble youngster named Byron Nelson.

The photo is from a 1965 Shell's Wonderful World of Golf match against Sam Snead, in which Hogan famously hit all eighteen fairways and greens.  The man could golf his ball...