Weekend Wrap

I missed the blood moon (who schedules these things?  The same guys that did the President's Cup?), we'll find out later today that there's life on Mars, but the really big news is that the FedEx Cup makes perfect sense.

FedEx Finale - From my little anecdotal vantage point it seemed that this was the year that it finally metastasized for folks that the FedEx Cup was one mixed-up nonsensical mess.  As just an example. I had lunch with our head pro John Reeves yesterday and he was spinning scenarios in which Stenson finished second and still won the ten mil large, and he was quite aware that the Swede hadn't won a thing since the Carter Administration...

So of course Henrik fades, as he's recently wont to do, and that Spieth kid is the last man standing....our Commish is one lucky stiff.  Now if he were a smarter man he'd seize on that as an opportunity to retire....but he's been throwing cold water on those hopes.   

So, how great was the kid's year?  Well, pretty great to be sure.... certainly no one wins two majors, especially their first two, in an off year.  OK, first up is Steve DiMeglio and he goes with the "W" word:

ATLANTA – With dreary skies above and a saturatedEast Lake Golf Club below, Jordan

 Spieth capped a watershed season on Sunday by winning The Tour Championship by Coca-Cola and the FedExCup. 

Having said it already was a dream season, the 22-year-old Texan put an exclamation point on the year and one of the best campaigns in history by holding off playing partner Henrik Stensonand a few late chargers to win the season-finale. With a final-round 1-under-par 69 at mushy East Lake, Spieth finished at 9 under and four shots clear of Stenson (72), Danny Lee (65) and Justin Rose (66) to win his fifth PGA Tour title of the season.

Heh, that's a good one, Steve, using watershed when the week was notable mostly for its abundance of the wet stuff.  And would this be a good time to note that he beat all of twenty-seven other guys when they were forced to play lift, clean and cheat?

Doug Ferguson gives us some good insights into the young man's prep:

Even when he missed the cut in the opening two playoff events, Spieth knew he could atone for it all by winning the Tour Championship. He showed up Monday morning to get to work on the range, and Sunday morning was even more impressive. Spieth arrived three hours before his tee time, dressed in tennis shoes as he went to the practice green. 

“Early grind,” caddie Michael Greller said. 

They only do that at the majors, and Spieth approached the Tour Championship that way. Ultimately, that’s what finished off his big year.

I'd guess that Commissioner Ratched got a little woody at the comparison of his little exhibition to a major....though I thought this capture the magnitude of the event far more accurately:

Stenson made a $1 million putt of his own, though it was the least he could do. He was three shots behind when he shanked his shot from the 17th fairway and made a double bogey. That dropped him into a four-way tie for fourth and moved him to No. 3 in the FedEx Cup, but he bounced back with a 60-foot birdie putt on the last hole to tie for second and finish No. 2 in the FedEx Cup for a $3 million bonus.

So he beat guys that were shanking it?  Let's just say that when Golf Channel runs this tape on a future Tuesday night, I'll be watching paint dry or the Jai Alai Network instead.

Joel Beall takes a shot at putting Jordan's season into perspective:

While there are parallels to his contemporary McIlroy -- lest we forget, Rory has four majors of his own at age 26 -- the go-to similarity in analyzing Spieth has been Tiger Woods. It's a juxtaposition Spieth has shied away from, but there is evidence to the contrary. 

Woods is the youngest Masters winner, but Spieth grabbed his second major at an earlier age. Spieth is nowhere near the neighborhood of Tiger off the tee; Woods could only hit approach shots like Spieth in his dreams. Both of their scrambling abilities left opponents in awe, and the hole seemed to double in size when attempting putts over 20 feet.

That's quite the heady comparison, but how do you avoid it when you win two biggies at age 21.  Please don't misinterpret my churlishness above, it was quite the remarkable achievement, I'm just not that impressed with this latest piece.

But I suspect the Tiger comparison will seem a bit silly in a few years.... noting that Jordan won his second major at a younger age than Tiger (and I do hope he sent DJ a thank-you note) seems like bragging that a horse stayed with Secretariat for the first 100 yards of the Belmont Stakes.  That first Masters was something, but it's what he did from late 1999 through 2006 that made him Tiger Woods.

Jordan is going to have a great career, but he doesn't have a game that will intimidate and he'll need to be very much on to win big events.   But this was a lovely seen, and we're blessed with great young talent in the game, talent that comes with hall-of-fame character as well:

The first person to greet him was his younger sister, Ellie. His parents, girlfriend, grandfather and high school friends from Dallas were at East Lake to watch another amazing performance in a year filled with them.

It will be fun watching him grow up and battle Day, McIlroy, Fowler and the rest of the chase pack.  The only downer is that the Masters, the next meaningful golf, is six plus months away.

Blue on Blue -  When the hated opposition is fighting (Spoiler Alert:  not about Hillary), one needs to just sit back with a bowl of popcorn:

Paul Casey is ready to rule himself out of playing for Europe in the Ryder Cup in

Minneapolis next year, in a move that would send shockwaves through the European game. 

The Englishman is currently ineligible because he is not a member of the European Tour but, on the back of his fine season on the PGA tour and re-establishing himself among the world’s top 30, he was widely expected to rejoin in January. 

However, Casey’s disenchantment with the European Tour is such he is showing little inclination to make the move. He is due in London next week and hoping to meet new chief executive Keith Pelley before making a final decision. Asked by Sportsmail if he was leaning towards staying away, he replied: ’That would be a totally fair assumption.’

Our two kajor tours have created quite the mess of a schedule, and I'll remind you that we recently saw Martin Kaymer lose his PGA Tour card for next season, exactly one year after winning that Tour's premiere event.  

Now Casey still holds a grudge, as he was overlooked by Monty for a Captain's Pick in 2010 depsite being in the Top Ten in the OWGR.  But this is the substantive part of the argument:

One change Casey would like to see, as would the other American-based British players, is a reduction in the required 13 events for membership. Playing in the Ryder Cup has long been the carrot with which the tour persuade players to commit to this number but Casey appears in the mood to become the first player of true stature ever to call their bluff. The way he is playing right now, and given it is a Ryder Cup being played in America, his absence would be a huge blow to pulling off a successful defence.

Casey is to meet with new Euro Tour majordomo Keith Pelley to discuss, and it seems inconceivable that something won't be worked out.  My guess is a 2016 exemption justified based upon the shockingly insane calendar that is 2016 caused by the Olympics.  Remember, you heard it here first.

The Same But Different - The played a Senior Tour event at Pebble Beach and a reported six people watched the broadcast... and I was one of the six.  The reason is that it's our first look at the new 17th green.  Shack has the goods:

It's basically restored to its original scale.  It's quite the amazing thing, but decades of bunker shots expand the contours of the bunker and encroach on the green.  The result was that at the 2010 U.S. Open the players were laying up into that front bunker because that back section of the horglass wouldn't hold their shots.  

Now where do things stand with the 14th green?

Dawson Unplugged - Retiring R&A Prez Peter Dawson was notably quiet when the Trump furor exploded over the summer, but Martin Dempster caught up with him in the obligatory "Cleaning out the desk" piece.  First, here's our Peter in July:

Q. Does the R&A have a problem or is it compromised in terms of Turnberry's place in The Open rota in terms of Mr. Trump's comments?

PETER DAWSON: Well, it's had a lot of publicity, hasn't it. We don't have any decisions to make about Turnberry for quite some time, and I think we'll just let a bit of time pass and future championship committees will deal with them at the time.

And here's our hero after, you know, a bit of time has passed:

Work is also underway on the Ailsa Course at Turnberry, where Donald Trump would like to be an Open host for the first time soon after its return to Northern Ireland. “To think that we are going to determine where an Open Championship is held because of something somebody said on the political trail in America is absurd,” said Dawson of Trump’s controversial comments about Mexican immigrants. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. We have other priorities, but that’s for a future committee to judge.”

I have no shortage of issues with the man, but isn't this the position we'd like them to take?  Even if you think that Trump's an ass, we have a hard enough time finding interesting venues for our events...

Also there for this availability was John Huggan, who had this:

“The issues we have with clubs and balls have been the most intellectually demanding in

my time at the R&A, both technically and philosophically,” says Dawson. “Everyone thinks that, when they played, that is how golf should be played. You never heard Jack Nicklaus say he really should be playing with Bobby Jones’ clubs. You never heard Bobby Jones saying he should be playing with Old Tom Morris’ equipment. And apart from one or two, the best players today are just as silent. They’re not saying they should play with Jack’s equipment.” 

That silence is, of course, bought and paid for by the equipment companies through the contracts those leading players sign to use their clubs. But please continue.

“It’s a balance between maintaining the skill level required to play the sport and responding to the call of golfers for better equipment,” argues Dawson. “That has been the case since the game began. And it remains the biggest issue in golf. There are those who call for a split in the rules between the elite and the rest. I think that is an awful prospect. We all want to play the same game. There is a huge gap between Roger Federer and the club tennis player, but they both play by the same rules and they both play the same game. Golf is the same. We don’t need to dumb it down.”

So, as I understand the current state of play, on the most intellectually demanding issue of your time, you've done nothing?  Well, not truly nothing, its' actually even worse:

Since 1995, the last St Andrews Open before Dawson’s arrival, golf’s most famous venue has endured more facelifts than Anne Robinson, Barry Manilow and Dolly Parton combined. All have been done because the R&A were asleep at the equipment wheel and now are forced into more and more egregious measures just to keep scores within acceptable levels. 

Tees now exist outside the Old Course boundaries. Long grass grows in places it has no business growing. Many bunkers have been re-shaped to the point where they are almost perfectly round and are now surrounded by rough. New bunkers have also been added in places they simply should not be. A depression on the seventh fairway was filled in because – heaven forbid – the world’s most talented golfers might just have to play from a poor lie. Instead of being mowed to an appropriate speed, the 11th green has been “de-sloped”. And, most offensively, the area around the world famous Road Hole Bunker has been manipulated.

And Huggan ignores the fact that despite the "de-sloping of the 11th green, balls were moving in the last three majors such that play had to be suspended due to "unexpected" wind.  He's still going to miss Peter, though... is that because he fears that Martin Slumbers will live up to his name?

About That Moon - I wrote that opening sentence before this had been posted, but you do all remember that Jimmy Walker moonlights (pun intended) as an astrophotographer, right?  Nice to see that didn't let his poor week month half-season deter him from sharing this with us: