Weekend Wrap

Hope everyone had a great weekend of golf...  Let's wrap this sucker up s we can get back to our Oakmont prep...

Memphis in June - Was there a sunny veranda?  Anyone actually get the Hoagy reference?  C'mon folks, at least try to keep up:

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) Killing time during a three-hour rain delay Sunday, Phil

Mickelson ribbed Daniel Berger about having won the PGA Tour rookie of the year award without a victory. 

That was a bit of a sore spot for the ultra-competitive 23-year-old Floridian.

Berger answered once the thunderstorms ended by winning the FedEx St. Jude Classic for his first title. He shot a 3-under 67 to hold off Mickelson, Steve Stricker and Brooks Koepka by three strokes. 

''To kind of get it done today means a lot,'' Berger said.

I know, who cares?  I didn't watch a minute of it, and if you've lost me, you've lost America...  Berger is a good player due to break through.  He's yet another member of the famous Class of '11, and there's a rumor that he might actually be Jewish.  

Folks of a certain inclination will over-interpret the strong finishes of Phil and DJ, but I still advise caution in investing emotionally in their chances next week. 

Brooke No Evil - It was a bit difficult for your humble correspondent to watch, but it turns out our Kiwi girlfriend is fallible:

SAMMAMISH, Wash. (AP) Brooke Henderson beat top-ranked Lydia Ko with a birdie on the first hole of a playoff Sunday in the KPMG Women's PGA Championship after overcoming a three-shot deficit on the back nine. 

The 18-year-old Canadian, ranked No. 4 in the world, closed with a bogey-free 6-under 65 - the best round of the week at Sahalee - to match Ko at 6-under 278. Ko finished with a 67. 

In the playoff on the par-4 18th, Henderson hit her second shot from 155 yards to 3 feet, while Ko's second from farther back in the fairway left her with 20 feet. Ko missed to the left, and Henderson tapped in to cap a week that started with a hole-in-one on her fourth hole of the tournament and ended with a major championship.

The "F-word" relates to a short miss on the 17th that would have won the thing, though she did play her final round bogey-free.  But Henderson had one of those days that defy logic, one I can only liken to Justin Rose's finish in his singles match at Medinah.  The hole must have looked like a manhole cover to her....

There was the bomb from across the green on No. 17 and the poor tee shot on the finisher that magically left her with goal posts framing her shot.  Then when she ballooned it into the trees it bounced clear and she made the twelve-footer to secure par.  But all of that os chicken feed compared to the 648-foot putt for eagle from the front of the 11th green....  Maybe I'm exaggerating, but we can agree it was an unlikely make....

A few additional thoughts from an entertaining week.  First, Ariya Jutanagarn, whom we love, finished strong to take third place one shot out of the playoff.  That makes the top three 18 (Brooke), 19 (Lydia) and 20..... they'll be with us for a while.

Second, I wish everyone could have caught a look at this golf course, especially that 11th hole.  I can't find an image that captures it, but there's a huge tree just short of the green on the left, that hangs over the front of the green.  But some 50-60 yards back there's another huge tree in the right-hand side of the fairway, that creates a tunnel for the players that looks to be about the width of a bowling alley.  And people think Willow Ridge is tight...

Lastly, what a whacky television schedule....  I understand that the ladies are desperate for network TV coverage, but see if you think this does them any good.  For most of the week, they took advantage of the West Coast venue and broadcast in prime time, but for some reason they came on early on Saturday.  Worse than that, Sunday's coverage started on NBC at 4:30, but that window was all of ninety minutes.  Then coverage moved to Golf Channel, except it didn't because the Senior Players Championship was running long.  Thank God for the ladies that Bernhard Langer made that fifteen-footer, or the ladies would have been in television purgatory.

Laughably, the guys got the short end of the stick for once, as the rain delay caused their coverage to be moved among MSNBC and something called NBCSNY- M-O-U-S-E.

That above will count as coverage of the round-bellies, which is a shame only because the Philadelphia Cricket Club is such an inspired venue.

After The Deluge - The best laid plans of mice and USGA men and all....  Alan Shipnuck, who has been everywhere lately, takes us on an interesting trip.  Here's his technicolor lede:

To gaze upon Chambers Bay nearly a year after it hosted the U.S. Open is to be

presented with enough shades of green to fill a box of crayons. If you consult the Crayola color chart, Chambers Bay features swaths of Fern and Asparagus, with splashes of Mountain Meadow and Granny Smith Apple. Notably, the putting surfaces are Maximum Green. Last year, during one of the most contentious Opens ever, Chambers Bay offered a decidedly different palette, all yellows and browns. The scorched earth was due to a historic heat wave and the USGA's new commitment to environmentally friendly course setups.

Green, you say?  The irony, she does burn....Don't be deterred, but here's your agronomy course:

Beginning around April Fool's Day—2½ months ahead of the Open—watering was reduced by about 20% and the application of nitrogen fertilizer, which had typically been applied to the fairways and greens every three to four weeks, was halted. USGA agronomists and Chambers Bay greenkeepers were banking on the usual rainfall, but it never came as the area roasted in cloudless days in the mid-80s. By the time USGA executive director Mike Davis arrived on site, two weeks ahead of the first round, the course was already fiery and there was no Crayola green to be seen. "I never dreamed we would have the weather that allowed us to get the course to look this way," Davis told Chambers Bay staffers. "This is awesome."

But a chain reaction had already begun with the greens. Among the many firsts that came with Chambers Bay was its fine fescue greens; no U.S. Open had ever been played on this grass, which is more common on the ancient links courses of the British Isles. Fescue does well in Tacoma's traditionally cool maritime climate, but in the blazing heat the grass went dormant in an act of survival. Complicating matters, the greens are not exclusively fescue—there are also strains of bentgrass and poa annua, and the mix varied from surface to surface. For example, the elevated 18th green, with plentiful exposure to the sun and wind, was approximately 5% poa, 20% bent and the rest fescue. The 12th, tucked into a shady amphitheater, was roughly 30% poa and 30% bent. While the fescue laid down in the heat, the poa's last gasp for survival was to sprout white seed-heads. Watering only exacerbated the difference—the fescue stayed dormant, but the poa stood straight up, the seed-heads blooming enough to make a golf ball wobble. Three or four times in the run-up to the Open the greens were "brushed and groomed" with special devices to smooth the surface and make all of the grasses a uniform height to allow for a cleaner cut by the mowers. But this process also makes the greens run significantly faster. Given Chambers's heaving undulations, Jones believed the ideal speed for the greens was 10 on the Stimpmeter, 11 tops. As the tournament loomed, the USGA pushed it to 12. Fearful the speed would get out of control, the brushing and grooming was stopped two weeks before the start of the tournament. Thus the die was cast: The greens would be mottled in color, and because a variety of grasses were featured, the blades would act quite differently in the heat.

Give Alan's piece a full read, as there's much that's of interest.  From the start it's been an interesting project, and there's much from Trent Jones, Jr. to like, especially those target stimp readings.   I'll admit that a links was always an awkward fit for a U.S. Open, both because there's already a major played on links, but also because of the vulnerability to weather and conditions.  Today's pampered pros expect to contest their events in hermetically-sealed environments, as witness by Billy Horschel's and other's hissy fits.....

Phil On A Roll - That's not a reference to yesterday's T2, but rather to this news of his involvement with yet another unsavory character:

Golf great Phil Mickelson wasn’t anywhere near a courthouse in California on Monday when a 57-year-old money launderer was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. The name of the three-time Masters winner didn’t even come up.

But for the second time in less than a month, Mickelson’s gambling was linked to court proceedings in which a suspected gambling associate faced criminal charges. Gregory Silveira, who was also fined $18,000, had pleaded guilty to money laundering for transferring $2.75 million between bank accounts in March 2010 for an unidentified client to promote an illegal gambling operation. Mickelson was the gambler, according to a man who describes himself as a longtime friend of Silveira’s and two other people familiar with the matter.

Boy this is getting ugly.... Here is some more on this specific transaction:

Some of the golfer’s bets have been far bigger. He lost almost $2.5 million at Las Vegas casinos from October 2000 to June 2003, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

According to Silveira’s court filings, the $2.75 million wire transfer from a gambling client was to cover "losing wagers." Silveira, who prosecutors say was involved in “illicit high-level sports betting,” told the court his actions were a “misguided desire to help friends.” 

“Mr. Silveira, virtually as a personal favor to an individual who did not wish his wagering activity to become public, handled the payment of the funds,” his lawyers wrote. “Silveira simply deposited his acquaintance’s gambling loss payment into his own account and, thereafter, transferred it to the offshore sports books with whom the funds had been bet.”

I'm very curious to see what the Ponte Vedra family does about this, as these associations are really troubling.  At least they should be....  Now you know how we are, and I can't let go the howlers contained in this Bloomberg article.  First, there's this, where the writer appropriately attempts to connect Phil's questionable associations with the Tour's attempts to cozy up to legalized sports betting:

In many ways, golf is a game made for wagering, with some of its greatest players learning the sport through the well-played hustle or pursuing friendly wagers during practice rounds.

OK, those are two completely different things.  Golf is uniquely great for betting among the players, but an awkward fit for a sports book.  The British prove that you can make lines on anything, but the prop bets are almost more interesting than the real stuff.

Then there was this:

Mickelson’s ties to Walters and his alleged relationship with Silveira have surfaced at a time when golf’s popularity has eroded. The number of participants has slowly declined to 25 million from 30 million a decade ago. Golf courses are closing at a rate of 150 a year. It may be a reason the PGA Tour has sought proposals from data companies to submit bids to package real-time tournament data into feeds for gambling houses. That idea opens the door to manipulation, tempting players to miss a putt or shank a drive, said Lia Nower, co-director of the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers University.

Yanno, you're really not being kind to your expert there....  He's obviously not a golfer so perhaps you could have whispered to him that players don't really shank drivers.....

But the biggest howler in the piece comes from Phil's mouthpiece:

Representatives for Mickelson also declined to comment. Previously, Mickelson’s attorney, Gregory Craig, said he was an “innocent bystander” to Walters’ alleged trading scheme and that Mickelson would return his proceeds because he didn’t want to benefit from a transaction the “S.E.C. sees as questionable.”

Innocent bystander?  Heh, that's a good one.... Of course that attorney's name might ring some bells from a galaxy far, far away, as he's a man that will argue over the meaning of the word "is".

Golf History For Sale - It's very rare that one can buy a major piece of golf history, so how much cash can you all scrape together?

When in St. Andrews, most golf fans make a point of visiting the Dunvegan Hotel for a

drink. But how about pouring your own pint at one of the most famous golf pubs in the world? Now that opportunity can be yours whenever you want. 

On Sunday, the owners of the property, Sheena and Jack Willoughby, announced their plans to sell. The couple has owned and operated the hotel since 1994.

We visited the Dunvegan in August the day after our round, and ran into my caddie Rich.  We had played in the group in front of Jack the day before, and Rich was good enough to introduce me.

Along with the Jigger Inn, just a great place.