Midweek Musings

There's bills to be paid and Madam has suggested that we consider an afternoon movie, so let's do this...

The Tenth - Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly, so you'll be well sick of hearing about one silly little golf hole by Sunday.  Shack tells us in his Forward Press that finally the revolution will be televised:

Apparently some business is best conducted in private. 

Like Supreme Court hearings. Or, the antics at Riviera’s short par-4 10th. At least the latter will now be televised. 

After years of golf fans hearing rumblings about how fascinating Riviera’s 315-yard 10th plays during the Northern Trust Open, they can finally watch it all from the comfort of their home or office. The PGA Tour’s LIVE app, which debuted last year, will be streaming all of the antics via its app and a new Yahoo partnership.

Here's Geoff's take on how the hole plays in the here and now, similar to comments he made on Morning Drive on Monday:

You'll find Geoff in this grandstand with Doug Ferguson.

In a nutshell, the 10th at Riviera strips players down to their core and puts them in their place. It dangles a reward of easy birdie for the perfect play, and a nice par with a smart lay up. But the slightest miscue or boneheaded choice off the tee can lead to the fastest double bogey on the PGA Tour. 

With recent warm weather sand some maintenance ploys to keep the hole relevant in modern times—lowering and rolling fringes, greens rolling 12 on the Stimpmeter—the tenth has bordered on silly in recent years. The PGA Tour rules staff always has the best interests of all in mind so the antics should remain sane, but if you’re watching the LIVE coverage, don’t be surprised if things push the boundaries of sensible. Which will only make the Featured Hole coverage that much more fun to watch.

It's rather a simple conceit... you simply have to stay left of the green.  And yet they don't...  And they're pretty good.

Last year Scott Piercy was the poster child for how this wee hole can crush a man's will to live:

All in all, it was a pretty good six.

Golfweek compiles players' comments about the hole, and it's obvious that it hasn't gotten into their heads one little bit.  

Jeff Sluman: “The layup should be the easiest shot in the world, and yet what makes the hole great to me is there is no out-of-bounds, no man-made lakes. I would love to design a hole like that some time in my life that people would say the same sort of things about it. It’s just a hard little hole.”

Layups are never the easiest shots in the world, just look at the tape of Phil and Jonas Blixt playing No. 14 at Pebble Sunday.

Scott Verplank: “I’ve done everything. I’ve knocked it on the green and made 2, and I’ve gone back and forth from the bunkers and made 8 (in 2014). Yeah, that was unreal. But I’m not the only who has done that, I can promise you.”

Must be something in the name...it's a relief that I'll never be invited.

Kenny Perry: “That green is diabolical. It seems like it shrunk. It doesn’t matter if you can spin it or not spin it; it just seems to go in that back bunker. It’s almost impossible to hold it now. You think a hole you can drive you wouldn’t be making bogey so often, but it ate me up.”

Greens absolutely do shrink over time, especially with all those guys named Scott van pelting them (heh, that amused me, not sure of your mileage) with sand.  That's why they had to rebuild the 17th at Pebble (as well as its 14th).

Brad Faxon: “The green these days looks more like a cigar. When it’s firm, it is a really challenging shot. Every par 4 would wish to have the options off the tee there. How many options do you see off the tee there? Driver, 3-wood, hybrid, long iron, mid-iron. That’s what I love about it.”

Yanno, Brad, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar...

Twitter Spat of the Day -  The TSOTD began with these relatively sober words from Brandel Chamblee:

"The only thing that gives me concern with regard to Rory going forward I say it with a

lot of trepidation, because it's a different era for sure. And I don't know the full extent of what he's doing, but when I see the things he's doing in the gym, I think of what happened to Tiger Woods and I think more than anything as much as what Tiger Woods did early in his career with his game was just an example of how good a human being can be, what he did towards the middle and end of his career is an example to be wary of. That's just my opinion. And it does give me a little concern when I see the extensive weightlifting that Rory is doing in the gym."

Me too, if we're being honest.   Rory's response included this tweet as well as a short video that can be seen at the above link:

I'll anxiously await the English translation of Rory's response, but what's a civilian to think?

I certainly blame Tiger's golf swing for his knee and Achilles issues....  His back?  That's where it gets interesting...

But I'd enjoy a more substantive debate on this issue from fitness experts.  Obviously there's a benefit to strength, but also to flexibility....

Though when all is said and done, if Rory doesn't stop missing three-footers it will all be moot.

Irony Alert - Changes are afoot, as per Doug Ferguson:

LOS ANGELES - Tiger Woods got caught in the rain without an umbrella, shot a 74 and made the cut on the number at Riviera. He withdrew the next day with the flu and hasn't been back. That was 10 years ago. 

That's not to suggest Riviera has seen the last of Woods. 

This will be the last year Northern Trust is the title sponsor at Riviera. Northern Trust will take over the first FedEx Cup playoff event in the New York area (formerly The Barclays), and Hyundai is leaving Kapalua to become title sponsor at Riviera.

It's all seemingly a game of musical chairs, as northern Trust is leaving the LA market, where it has no presence, to take over sponsorship of what has heretofore been The Barclays, in the NY marker where it has no presence.

But this is the thread:

There have been discussions in recent months for the Tiger Woods Foundation to have a

significant charitable component of the Riviera event. It would be the perfect fit for Woods, mainly because the first Tiger Woods Learning Center is located down the road in Anaheim, and the foundation headquarters also is in Southern California. 

The foundation is the designated charity for the Quicken Loans National, and the Hero World Challenge in The Bahamas. The World Challenge was held at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks from 2001 until 2013, giving the foundation a local presence. 

Woods' foundation also is primary charity of the Deutsche Bank Championship, though Deutsche Bank is not expected to renew its sponsorship after this year.

Hmmmm......the irony of course comes from the fact that there isn't a course played on Tour that Tiger hates more than Riviera.  If his foundation becomes  a major beneficiary, he'd have to play the event, right?  I mean to the extent he's playing anywhere.

But isn't the Tour placing a lot of eggs in this particular basket?  I don't have the information to assess the work of his foundation, but there are other worthy causes.  I found it moderately off-putting that hew was given sponsorship of the D.C. event so early in his career, and the treatment of his December money-grab is downright unseemly (world ranking points for an 18-player field?).  But if you're going to be in bed with the man, shouldn't it be limited to one event to which he would devote his entire efforts?

Other Changes - Here's one that Shack characterizes as "Noble but pointless"... He may have to explain the noble part to me...

East Lake Golf Club front, back nines to be reversed for TOUR Championship by

Coca-Cola 

ATLANTA, Ga. – With an eye on creating even more excitement around the finishing stretch of not only the TOUR Championship by Coca-Cola, but the entire 2015-16 PGA TOUR season, officials today announced that the front and back nine holes at East Lake Golf Club will be reversed, providing a more dramatic finishing stretch with more risk/reward opportunities as the 10th year of the FedExCup culminates on September 21-25, 2016.
With the new routing, the final five holes now have more potential for lead changes. The finishing stretch on the back nine begins with the par-4, 500-plus-yard 14th hole that has statistically been the most difficult hole on the course dating back to 2007. From there, players will be faced with a peninsula green at the par-3 15th that has traditionally resulted in a wide range of scores from birdie to double bogey.

My bad.  That should have come with a warning about open beverage containers...

Seriously, does anyone care?  It's not a very interesting golf course, and about the only thing I can visualize of it is the Par-3 finisher, so by all means bury that on the front side.

I Beg To Differ - At least for now....  He may be the luckiest creature on the planet, but these guys have drunk the Kool-Aid:

Dustin Johnson has yet to win a major, but that didn't stop NBC golf analyst Brandel Chamblee from annointing Johnson a future Hall of Fame player.

"I think he's on a Hall of Fame trajectory," Chamblee said on a conference call Tuesday.

"I've said that, I think, a year or two after he came out, he's going nowhere but straight to the Hall of Fame. I think it is very easy with the early success of a Tiger Woods or Rory even to expect much, much more from players than is reasonable."

OK, perhaps we expected too much too soon from the young man....  But, Brandel, is there nothing that causes you to reassess that initial verdict?  I don't know, the three failed drug tests, the missed tee times, the mindless penalties and, most importantly, however you want to characterize to events that unfolded on the 18th green at Chambers Bay?

The question, and it's an interesting one, is whether DJ can begin to achieve that which was projected for him.  Mindlessly repeating it as if there haven't been unexpected detours seems to me not terribly helpful.  I'd be happy to hear the logic for why it's still in his grasp, the Gretzky effect and all....

David Feherty, also on the conference call, compared Johnson's game to Tom Weiskopf.

"I think Dustin Johnson is magnificent. As a player, he's Weiskopf‑like in a lot of ways and he's been unlucky a couple of times, too, especially at the PGA Championship, Whistling Straits. I think that was one of the worst decisions in the history of major championship golf was penalizing him there," Feherty told reporters.

David was there and it was a horrible set-up, this concept of kids playing in sand traps outside the ropes, but DJ also put his willful blindness on display.  There's a reason they gave you that list of local rules when you arrived at Whistling Straits, but I'd have a whole lot more sympathy if you could be bothered to read the damn thing.

Perils of the Internet - I venture into the dark morass of the Internet so you don't have to.  You can thank me later, but one of the greatest dangers lurking out there for the unaware is clickbait.  Yanno, the unwitting blogger is lured into a click that will inspire regret.

Here's such an example....

Tiger Woods' and Rory McIlroy's Exes Star in 2016 SI Swimsuit Issue

Now who among you could pass on that hypertext?  OK, besides you, Employee No. 2?  I know, but this what the link reveals:

And you call yourself a respectable publication.... Maggot, we all feel your pain.