Weekend Wrap

Lots to cover on this sluggish Monday morning, so let's have at it...

BREAKING - Must Credit Unplayable Lies - OK, I may have misinterpreted a reader comment...it said the blog is a drudge and I thought he was comparing me to, you know, Drudge, but this is one you might be hearing for the first time:

World No. 1 Rory McIlroy announced he ruptured a ligament in his left ankle and could

potentially miss the British Open.In an Instagram post early Monday morning, McIlroy posted a photo of himself on crutches with a walking boot on his left foot.

The caption reads: "Total rupture of left ATFL (ankle ligament) and associated joint capsule damage in a soccer kickabout with friends on Saturday. Continuing to assess extent of injury and treatment plan day by day. Rehab already started..... Working hard to get back as soon as I can."

Hard to imagine we'll see him at St. Andrews, though he's yet to concede that point.  Come to think of it, neither of the next two majors are easy walks, though for wildly different reasons.  At least he wasn't playing with fireworks...

High-Loft Putters - I guess we'll all be adding about 50 degrees of loft to our putters, but the finish at The Greenbrier was great fun.  Golf tournaments are like the proverbial Gumpian box of chocolates, as you park your rump on the couch one can't know what will unfold.

In this case it was a rugby scrum of relative unknowns unable to separate themselves from each other...  as compressed a leaderboard as you'll likely find.  The less interesting aspect of the story is the conclusion of the four-way playoff, won by former U.S. Amateur champ Danny Lee:

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. – Danny Lee made his PGA Tour-leading 27th start of the season at the Greenbrier Classic so no wonder he had the stamina to go two extra holes in a four-man playoff to notch his first Tour victory. 

The 24-year-old native of South Korea made par on the second playoff hole to outlast David Hearn, plus Kevin Kisner and Robert Streb, who both had been eliminated one hole earlier. 

“Wow,” Lee said, “Now I understand what winning on the PGA Tour feels like.”

It's been a long trek  for Danny, so good to see him finally break through.  All four in the playoff as well as many that narrowly missed it would have their lives changed by a win, which to me is as interesting as as a leaderboard of show ponies...

But the real fun was in watching Robert Streb finish with a flurry of birdies, including a way-clutch birdie on the finisher.... The astute reader will know that for Robert Streb to hold my attention there must be a catch, which is this:

Example No. 3,467 of why "these guys are good": Robert Streb made five birdies on the

back nine on Sunday at the Greenbrier Classic. Putting with his wedge.

That's pretty boss, although it would have been even more impressive if he just did it for the heck of it like in "Tin Cup" when Kevin Costner broke all his clubs except his 7-iron and parred every hole on the back nine at a U.S. Open qualifier. Instead -- as you'd probably figure -- Streb started putting with his 56-degree wedge after damaging his putter throwing it to his caddie on the ninth hole.

If you didn't see it, his putting stroke and the roll of the ball were incredibly pure... he did have one ugly three-jack coming in, but it was two-hours of good fun.  Here's video of the longest of his birdie putts:

Now this offers both a rules analysis as well as an irony alert.  As relates to the former, a playoff is considered a new round of golf, and therefore he was allowed to replace the club for the sudden-death playoff.  And while Gary McCord was beside himself arguing that Streb should continue to putt with his wedge, the irony is that he never had the chance to putt.... he put his tee ball in an impossible spot on the Par-3 18th, and took so many to get to the green that even marking his ball was unnecessary.

Good stuff indeed.

In other business, Lee, Hearn, Greg Owen and James Hahn punched their tickets to St. Andrews.  Most heart-breaking moment to me was watching Jason Bohn, for whom and Open Championship at St. Andrews was the high point of his career, missing a putt on the last that would have locked up one of those exemptions.

Corner, Turned? - John Strege tackles the ever-present wither Tiger question:

What would have been considered a tough week in good times is now a good week in tough times in a world turned upside down for Tiger Woods.

A cut made and an also-ran finish at the Greenbrier Classic were cause for optimism for a man who once considered anything less than victory as unacceptable. 

Yet there he was on Sunday, claiming a moral victory that means…who knows what in a year as unpredictable as his best years were predictable.

No worries, John, none of us knows where this is headed.... T32 as moral victory shows us how far he's fallen, but with just a few more reps I'm sure he'll get those golf feels back.

The Tour Confidential gang took on this issue in their weekly gabfest, and these were the more interesting takes:

Eamon Lynch, managing editor, GOLF.com (@EamonLynch): Tour-level golf is more about the quality of a player's misses than his good shots. All of these guys can hit superb shots, but how much damage do their poor shots inflict? Tiger's bad shots are crippling to his score. Greenbrier showed that when Tiger hits it well now he's an average Tour pro. That's progress of sorts, given where he has been, but hardly cause for optimism heading into St. Andrews.

The misses with the driver remain really bad and, what's worse, is that most of them seemed to be wide right....  The thing to keep in mind is that on the Old Course all of the really bad stuff is on the right.  You can miss left with impunity, but right is wrong there.

But this answer surprises me:

Michael Bamberger, senior writer, Sports Illustrated: If I had more of an emotional attachment to Tiger, I'd consider this analysis of a fair-to-middling week of golf almost sad. But right now, I'm just bored of thinking about Tiger Woods and the meaning of his golf and life. He's a name on a list with a lot of other names, trying to improve.

Mike is one of my favorite golf writers, and you may remember my review of his To The Linksland, the second half of which was his semi-mystical journey to rediscover his golf game.  While I get the lack of emotional attachment, we are journalists after all (well, he is, in any event), I would think the spectacle of the greatest golfer of this generation completely losing his game would fascinate a man with Mike's sense of history.

The Trump Dump - No further dumpage as far as I'm aware, but the Confidentialistas took this one on as well, and I just love Eamon's take on it:

LYNCH: Trump's conduct calls to mind a zoo chimpanzee that delights in throwing its feces at anyone unwise enough to pause and pay it attention. One can't really be surprised at the actions of the chimp, but it does make one question the judgment of those willing to stand next to it in their smart blazers, hoping not to get spattered during the spectacle.

That's just the perfect metaphor, isn't it?  I doff my metaphorical cap to him....Our Travelin' Joe is clueless as usual:

PASSOV: For now, that statement is sufficient. Donald Trump has been very good for golf in the past several years. During a time of waning popularity, he has helped prop it up with mostly positive publicity. He's such an easy target right now. Let's give it a little time to see if he clarifies, retracts or otherwise amends his position on the country of Mexico and its citizens. Otherwise, there's going to be massive collateral damage between Trump and the USGA, PGA of America and the PGA and LPGA Tours.

Really?  I'm not one who decries Trump's involvement in golf, but scarfing up high-end properties doesn't move the needle for our game, and his-off-putting, bombastic persona can't be helpful.  For a sport with a troubling history of exclusivity, Josh Sens had this as well:

SENS: It's the milquetoast response of an industry that would probably like to forget that Trump has become such a major player in it. Whether he actually believes everything he says is hard to gauge, because his entire brand is built on drawing attention to himself, no matter how much ridicule he attracts. Trump the person and Trump the persona have become so intermingled that you wonder whether he even knows where the line between them lies. In terms of the Tours and the USGA, the right response would be a distancing of business relations. But the most satisfying response would be if the entire world ignored him. Trump can withstand all kinds of other sanctions. But he might not be able to endure that.

Yanno, I can't really fault the reaction of the golf world, as they're not responsible for The Donald just because they hold events on his golf courses.   I'm actually enjoying this story greatly, as it's a fascinating intersection of two great interests of mine, golf and politics.

As I noted in previous commentary, the left side of the political spectrum has tried to turn any discussion of immigration policy into de facto racism.  To date the large field of Republican presidential challengers have kept to the script, refusing to throw red meat to a base frustrated with its party establishment.

Trump of course is not blessed with message discipline, and while he is currently enjoying a little boomlet in polling, the current situation would seem to be unsustainable.  One can only hope that it speeds his withdrawal from the faux campaign, as his involvement has no upside.

Chicks Dig The Long Ball - Especially when they hit it...congrats to Employee No. 2 who during yesterday's mixed-event gunned her drive some thirty yards past her nearest competitor in the long-drive competition.  She absolutely crushed it with a tight draw and it landed a good 12-15 yards past the stake, and rolled out the remainder.

Results are necessarily preliminary, pending the results of the drug testing protocols.