Weekend Wrap - Willett Happen?

Let's start with the obvious, absolutely no one saw this coming... and I imagine that the professional golf writers shared a problem with me, namely where do you start?

For lack of a better idea, how about Alan Bastable's item title, "Why we should have seen Willett coming?"

As recently as two weeks ago, it wasn't clear if Willett would be in the field at all. His

wife, Nicole, was on the verge of giving birth to a baby boy. Due date: April 10. If the baby didn't come early, Willett had made up his mind: no baby, no Masters. But when Nicole opted to have a c-section in late March, Willett was back on the tee sheet. 

The topic came up when Hobb reconnected with Willett at a practice round at Augusta National earlier this week. The Englishman spoke of how relieved he was that Nicole, who was still back home in Yorkshire, had given birth to a healthy boy. Truth be told, he also was happy to have a little break from fatherhood. 

"Coach," Willett said, "I'm glad to be here, so I can finally get some sleep."

That's a great story, though Alan never really gets to explainin' why we should have seen Willett coming....  Fact is that all serious golf fans knew of him as a player whose fortunes were very much moving in the right direction, one who was, even prior to this week's play, clearly going to be on the Euro team at Hazeltine.  But still.... 

We'll come back to the winner in a bit, but a quick Unplayable Lies shout-out to Warren "Wally", The Great Walloon" Light, who had Willet on a list of three names in a Thursday afternoon text... Of course the other two names were Spieth and Day, so he was confining himself to long-shots.  But you can guess which one he was crowing about early Sunday evening....

As you'd expect, far more ink (more like pixels these days) is being spilled on the runner-up than the winner, with profound shock at the nature of the disaster.  In fact, just as an example, here's how Steph Curry reacted to the news of Jordan's quad:

I'm guessing he had a few sheckels on the line... and something I don't think I've seen before, a Jack Nicklaus condolence tweet:

I think the whole golfing world feels for Jordan Spieth. He had a chance to do something truly special and something very few have done before—and be the youngest to accomplish that—and he just didn’t pull through. My heart goes out to him for what happened, but I know that Jordan is a young man who will certainly learn from this experience and there will be some good that comes out of this for him. He’s a wonderful talent and a wonderful young man.

Did Van de Velde get the same courtesy?  One note I'd like to interject.... Augusta is famed for the roars of it's galleries... you know the drill, how the location and specific nature of the eruptions can tell all.  But in a very few instances over the years, epic fails have been greeted with an eerie stunned silence, such as that on No. 12 yesterday.  My last known memory of that profoundly jolting and memorable discomfort is the last few holes of the '96 event.... not something our Jordan was expecting or desiring.

And what to make of the meltdown?  You guys know by now that my golf predictions are laughably bad....for instance, the guy that I picked to win it all had the pleasure to play with Jeff Knox on Saturday (maybe more on that later).  But I got the essence of Jordan correct this week..... I thought coming in he was making too many loose swings and it all just felt a little off.  I remained skeptical after his bogey-free opening round 66, though he was back to his old tricks with the flat stick.

But I found the finish to his third round beyond baffling... Eerily reminiscent of how Tiger staggered home after the miracle chip on No. 16 in 2005, Jordan was unable to get to the clubhouse.  Strange doings indeed, but then the final round unfolded in a manner perfectly to his liking.  None of the challengers did much early, and our expectation of pyrotechnics from the DJ-JD went unrealized.

I bravely incurred the wrath of our entire golf professional staff when I threw a needed dose of cold water on the Bernhard Langer storyline.... c'mon guys, we've seen this movie countless times before and it always ends in tears.  Just think about how Freddie's putting stroke held up when he was in contention as a fifty-something, and applaud the man for a great few days.  

So, nobody makes a real run and Jordan is golfing his ball.... oh he made a bad swing on No. 5 that resulted in a very typical Masters bogey, but this kid always seems to bounce back with a bird.  This time he reels off four straight birdies and makes the turn with a gaudy five-shot lead.  Even I, a cynci with a capital "C" had to admit that this round he could likely finish off.  In fact, at this moment I use another "C" word, remarking to Employee No. 2 that the back nine was smelling like a coronation.... "Oh, you never know", she sagely responded....

First question, did something happen on the short walk from the ninth green to the tenth tee?  Because that guy that made four straight birdies seems to have headed straight to the carpark... We all know these golf holes intimately, and the significance of the big lead is that one needs to treat the holes with a certain amount of restraint.  The bogeys at Nos. 10 and 11 were of the ominous drip-drip-drip ilk, the recurrence of that bad block swing that plagued him Saturday was troubling, but his decision making seemed intact.  

And then we come to No. 12, with Jordan's once lavish lead now down to a single stroke by virtue of two Willett birdies, though we're unsure what Jordan knew at that point.  Here is the man's explanation of what ensued from his post-apocalypse presser:

Just a lapse of concentration on 12 and it cost me.

Q. How disappointing is this? 

JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, it's a tough one. I knew the lead was 5 with nine holes to play. And I knew that those two bogeys weren't going to hurt me. But I didn't take that extra deep breath and really focus on my line on 12. Instead I went up and I just put a quick swing on it.

OK, let's first state the obvious....that this is the first know instance of the adjective "quick" being used the describe Jordan this week....  

For as long as I've been conscious of the game of golf and this event, I've been aware of Jack's admonition that you don't go at this traditional Sunday pin.  But we've all seen this rule violated more frequently in recent years, as the lads have spent all that time in the gym and are thereby hitting wee lofted irons into it...  Surely Jack's rule, dating to when five and six-irons were the rule, couldn't still apply?

Back to Spieth:

Q. What did you learn today? 

JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, I mean just ‑‑ I learned what I learned in 2014. And it's just stay committed. 12 is a 150‑yard shot and I feel I can bleed it next to the hole, and it's a stock 9‑iron for me. But that hole for whatever reason just has people's number. Stay committed behind the bunker. That's about ‑‑ it was really one swing.

Not sure he's quite in touch with the meaning of "learn", because it seems that the concept still eludes him.  Here's Shack's take:

It's amazing to think that the player who prides himself as a tactician and who has proven himself at a young age to out-think a course fell victim to a tride-and-true axiom of Augusta: do not play toward the 12th hole's Sunday pin placement.

Temptation? Pressure? Poor swing? The genius of the 12th? A little of all the above.

Yes, the simplicity of the design is really something, but Jordan's decision making remains baffling, as it did last year in showing up at St. Andrews late Monday.  

Bob Harig has a fun piece, though that's not quite the appropriate adjective, about the history of carnage at this tempting little 3-par:

No doubt. Ask Greg Norman, who 20 years ago saw his Masters dreams swallowed up in Rae's Creek for good when his tee shot went at the flag -- always on the right side on Sunday, always the wrong place to aim -- but landed short and rolled agonizingly back into the water. 

Tom Weiskopf made a 13 there in 1980, recording the highest score ever shot on the hole; Arnold Palmer saw a chance to win a second straight green jacket get wet in 1959 when he couldn't clear the water (it was also the hole of a controversial ruling in 1958 which helped him win his first green jacket). Two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson made a 10 on the 12th in 2013.

Only the first of those was truly significant, but Norman is not the man you want to model your course management skills after.... but the reason there haven't been more, is that most folks have treated it with profound respect.

Back to Jordan:

"We were still right on pace,'' Spieth said. "I just didn't take that extra breath. And I remember getting over the ball thinking I'm going to go ahead and hit a little cut to the hole, and that's what I did in 2014 and it cost me the tournament then, too. 

"That was the right club, just the wrong shot. I was more comfortable hitting a draw with my irons. I knew every time I played a fade this week, that shot kind of came out. The swing just wasn't quite there to produce the right ball flight.''

So, the swing wasn't there but you tried to use it anyway?  There's an odd stubbornness to the young man that's hard to understand.  He's a likable and genuine young man for sure, but maybe this will shake us his brain trust...

So, enough of the sturm und drang, shall we have some fun?  How about the tweeting of the winner's brother Peter?

Thanks, but I could have lived without that specific image... But this echos what many have thought and said:

True that!  I wonder if amid the sympathy, that message will get through....

Martin Kaufman is preaching to the choir with this scathing review of the CBS broadcast.  But as far as his lede goes, I'm forced to dissent:

Rather than covering the tournament and showing as much golf and as many golfers as possible, CBS put all of its chips on Spieth. That was the story that CBS wanted to tell: the popular young American star marching to his second consecutive Masters title. But then Spieth faltered, and Willett swooped in, seized the green jacket and spoiled the CBS narrative. 

Officials at Augusta National and CBS can talk all they want about showing only four minutes of commercials each hour. But if you’re not going to show the vast majority of the field, then the production itself is not much different than a regular Tour event.

To be fair, given that all we're talking about this morning is Spieth, it's hard to argue that they focused on him excessively.... should they show more of the golf?  Absolutely.... but Spieth was the major plot line.

But this is a drum I've been beating pretty regularly:

Eight months ago, CBS Sports president Sean McManus touted his network’s use of 

Is there a golf hole that needs ProTracer more than the 13th?

technology after the PGA Championship. And leading into the Masters, much of the talk was about CBS’ limited use of 4K cameras on Amen Corner. OK, fine. 

Beyond that, however, the Masters was noteworthy for its lack of even the most basic technology, such as Protracer. And for all of the talk about the hills and slopes and wild undulations on Augusta National’s greens, we never see any 3-D hole graphics. 

Similarly, for all of the talk of high winds on Saturday, did we ever see a wind gauge?

Here’s something odd: Sky Sports and the BBC use Protracer and 3-D graphics in their Masters coverage for U.K. viewers. Why is the coverage overseas more sophisticated than what we see in the U.S.?

That's something of which I was not aware.... as the constraints on the broadcast I'd always understood to be dictated by the club.  If the standards are different for the Euro rights, that baffles me.  You all know the story of CBS and the endless one-year contracts, but perhaps they need to push back a little?

Kaufman has many good insights, including his analysis of Dottie Pepper's rocky performance.  But ANGC does not allow them to employ on-course reporters, and it remains inexplicable.  I always use the Bubba miracle gap wedge from 2012 as my proxy for this, as at the time he hit that shot we had no knowledge of where he was, his yardage in, his line to the pin or the club he pulled.  All of that knowledge came after the fact, and one can only wonder why they find this preferable.

I suspect you'll agree with this, though:

Jim Nantz is an outstanding NFL and college basketball play-by-play man, but I find the reverent, even patrician, tone he adopts for golf, particularly at Augusta National, to be exhausting. 

Here’s an example: On Saturday, Jim Nantz referred to Michael Greller as Spieth’s “esteemed caddie.” Let’s be clear on this: Arnold Palmer is esteemed. 

Jack Nicklaus? Esteemed. 

Tom Watson? Esteemed. 

Michael Greller? Nice fellow, but not esteemed.

Especially when you let your man fire at the pin on No. 12... but treacly is the word that comes to this minds.  It's descended into parody at this point.

In other stuff, or udder stuff as we say around here:

The legend of Jeff Knox grows...word is he played Bubba about even on Saturday.  No word on how long his Sunday round with Kevin na took, but the man is 53 and can't reach half the Par-4's in two.

A nice tribute to Tom Watson:

I'm not well versed in his ouvre, but I'd have pegged him as more of a Rickie fan...

Sky Sports created an #askmonty hashtag, and hilarity ensued.  This was inevitable:

 Monty captained a Ryder Cup team?  Who knew?  But these were just curious:

And cranky old man of the week is lee Trevino, who had this contribution to the week:

“There were just too many rules for me,” Trevino said. “If you go there now and try to

use a cellphone they will kick you out, even if you are using it in the parking lot or on the driving range. The players can’t even use them on the driving range. Have you heard one of them complain yet? No, because they are gutless. 

“If they went to the U.S. Open and the U.S. Open told them they couldn’t use their cellphones on the driving range they would raise all kinds of hell. They’re scared to death.”

Really, Lee?  An old timer like you is going to the barricades over cellphones?   Maybe it's not so bad that they unplug for a bit?