Thursday Thoughts

How great to wake up and have golf from Royal County Down to watch with my morning coffee...Add that to the list of things that don't suck.

Cardinal Rules - The final match between Baylor and Stanford didn't disappoint, with a dramatic comeback needed to seal the deal:

“At the end of the day, I couldn’t envision having anyone else in that anchor spot than

Stackhouse

Mariah,” Walker said of junior Mariah Stackhouse, who fought back from a two-hole deficit on the 17th tee to force an extra hole that she won with par. 

Stanford and Baylor had two points apiece by the time Stackhouse reached the 17th tee in her match against Baylor's Hayley Davis. Even worse, Davis has just completed a miraculous up-and-down, including a shot from a hazard as her feet sank into the mud. Stackhouse won No. 17 with a two-putt birdie, No. 18 with a 15-footer for birdie and the 10th with a routine par.

The shot Davis hit from a muddy lie in the hazard was destined to be the shot that defined the week, until it wasn't... But Stackhouse just continued to hoist her bag onto her strong back and march forward, and ultimately won the match on an unforced error by Davis, who missed a 3-footer that even I could see through blurry eyes was aligned way to far to the right.  Alas, it didn't threaten the cup...

The Standford team

In the middle of watching the event on tape delay Employee No. 2 walked in and asked if I was enjoying my time with the comely young lasses, presumably an effort to tweak her elderly husband as well as indicating that she had read my earlier post.  Fortunately I've no need to disguise my enjoyment of the eye candy, but as i explained it was the golf and especially the format that was so compelling...With 5-person teams, it seems inevitable that each team grabs two points, and one match is for all the marbles, dropping a weight of excruciating magnitude on two young ladies.  Really good stuff, and with the men on tap from the same venue, pull up a comfy chair...

I thought the production values were surprisingly good, given the ratings profile for college golf, not to mentions women's college golf.  It's quite clever to bring the men to the same venue, allowing the network to spread its fixed costs over two weeks of play.  Because of that not only did we get ProTracer (though employing it on the tee shot of an unreachable Par-5 seems somewhat curious), but aerial shots from a fixed-wing plane.

Marty Kauffman has this interview with producer Brandt Packer that you might find of interest:

GW: Having produced the women’s championship, will you make any adjustments for

the men’s championship? 

BP: No. I thought we would, but having seen it, the answer’s no. It’s the same golf

Packer, in the middle.

course, but the setup is going to be dramatically different. It’s going to be so much longer for the men. Our cameras are going to stay in the same spots, and I’m anxious to watch on Friday the sight lines. There are a lot of big doglegs here, so the sight lines will be different. They might go for more of the par 5s in two, so that might be more of an adjustment. 

But other than that, doing match play, whether it’s the Presidents Cup or the Ryder Cup or the Solheim, it’s not so much the drives as the second shots and around the greens. So that’s why it will pretty much stay the same.

Good on them for the coverage, and congrats to the Stanford team for their first national championship.

The Irish, Early Notes - The marque Rory-Rickie-Martin group has just made the turn (tape-delayed, of course) and none of them are setting the world on fire...

The course looks spectacular, though rain overnight has perhaps taken some of the fire out of it.  Rory looks completely clueless, not only spraying the ball but struggling with both speed and line with his putter.  He's missed a series of 5-8-footers badly, the kind that never look on line, though he's far from the only guy struggling on the greens.  I've always believed that links greens are the most difficult to read, as there's a subtlety to the movement difficult for the eye to discern.  That's my explanation for my struggles on links greens, and I'm sticking with that story...

 Though I am pleased to see Rory at least trying to play those linky knockdown shots with the sawed-off finish...we didn't see any of the during his disastrous second round at the Old Course, and continue to express our amazement that an Ulsterman doesn't have that in his DNA.... 

I was also pleased to see old-friend Gary Murphy providing the on-course commentary...Readers with a photographic memory will recall I played a few holes with Gary last September the day we arrived in Ireland...Gary was out having his weekly match with his mates and carrying his own luggage, and you can read about that day here.

That's Gary in red working on his takeaway.

It has started to rain in Newcastle and Rory is 5-over...only one of those data points is unexpected.

Miscelania - A couple of amusing little items for you... First, the only thing that would make this story better is if it happened on their anniversary:

The story of the Blundys comes from the Lansing State Journal, and seems legit thanks to a pair of witnesses who saw what went down on the 16th hole at Ledge Meadows Golf Course in Grand Ledge, Mich. on Sunday. Tony Blundy went first and one-hopped a 7-iron into the hole from 135 yards out. 

It was Tony's first hole-in-one, which matched his wife, Janet's, total. But apparently, Janet had no interest in staying tied with her husband. "You're going to be really mad when I put mine in," she said as she walked to the women's tee box. She then knocked in her pitching wedge from 110 yards. 

In other words, Janet Blundy is the Babe Ruth of calling golf shots.

I've previously related that when I made my one ace that Employee No. 2 holed out from the bunker... so the Blundys only beat us by one.

We've all seen the cute yardage markers on sprinklers 300 yards from the green, featuring "Dreamer", "Just Hit It" and some such, but see it you like this version:

I get and enjoy the humor, but they're actually not helping with pace of play...the point of getting your yardage from such a distance is to decide how to play your lay-up, i.e., from where do you want to play your next shot.

Lastly, we need one of these at our place:

Your match just ended all square after 18 holes. In most cases, your next move of

heading to the 19th hole would mean going to the clubhouse bar. Never a bad plan.

But what if your course actually had a 19th hole? And what if that 19th hole involved a floating green? 

Westchester Magazine has the story on this cool concept recently introduced by GlenArbor Golf Club in Bedford Hills, N.Y. Following their rounds, golfers there can hit a shot from near the clubhouse patio onto a green in the middle of a lake.

"It's the coolest shot in golf," GlenArbor head professional Brian Crowell told Westchester. "It's the perfect way to settle your bets -- or make a few more -- at the end of your round."

And what else are you going to do with all those TopFlites and Pinnacles in your bag?