Weekend Wrap

At least a heartwarming story came out of Congressional this weekend, though I wasn't there to see the denouement.

The Hurley-Burly Man - John Strege with the backgrounder on the winner:

A Naval Academy graduate, Hurley spent five years post-graduate in the Navy, two of

them aboard a destroyer, the USS Chung-Hoon, in the Persian Gulf in a time of war. Last August, Hurley’s father, Bill Hurley Jr., died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. 

Last year, Hurley lost his full PGA Tour exemption. This year, he had fallen to 607th in the World Ranking, had not finished higher than 41st in 11 previous starts. 

Then on a brilliant Sunday at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md., 44 miles from the Naval Academy in what is now his hometown of Annapolis, he improbably won the Quicken Loans National, a tournament designed to pay homage to those in the armed forces.

I'll add that he was only in the event because Tiger gave him a sponsor's exemption....well done all around.  Tour highlight package here:

Hurley, Jon Rahm, Harold Varner, III and our old friend Vijay punched tickets to Troon with their finishes.  And the tournament host sheds exactly no light on when he might return:

More muscle?  yeah, that's the ticket....

You Ko Girl - You knew I'd bring this one up, right?

Top-ranked Lydia Ko won the NW Arkansas Championship on Sunday for her third LPGA Tour victory of the year, closing with a 3-under 68 for a tournament-record 17-under total and a three-stroke victory. 

The 19-year-old New Zealander has 13 career LPGA Tour victories, also winning the Kia Classic and major ANA Inspiration in consecutive weeks in Southern California. She broke the previous tournament record by two strokes.

Ko has finished sixth or better in each of her four appearances at Pinnacle Country Club, and she has shot under par in all 12 rounds. 

Morgan Pressel, tied for the lead with Ko at 14 under entering the day, had a 71 to tie for second with Candie Kung (69).

I was able to watch a bit of this when I got home from dinner and she seemed in complete control of matters....  though it was only a 54-hole event.

Isn't That Special? - It's all going pear-shaped, and fingers will be pointed:

Golf should lose its place on the Olympic programme unless it can guarantee the

participation of its top players, International Olympic Committee member Barry Maister has claimed.

"I think it is appalling," Maister, winner of an Olympic gold medal in hockey at Montreal 1976, told New Zealand radio station Newstalk ZB.

"I don't like it and I don't think the sport should be allowed to continue in the Games under that scenario. 

"Once they've got in, they have got to deliver. 

"Just getting in with your name, and then putting up some second or third rate players, is so far from the Olympic ideal or the expectation of the Olympic Movement.

"The Olympics is about the best, and they pledged the best. 

"Quite frankly, any sport that cannot deliver its best athletes, in my view, should not be there."

I'm guessing that that bit of Maisterbation at least made Barry feel better... As for the rest of us, I felt like we should have at least gotten dinner and a movie.

Of course there's an inherent truth to his point, if the best players won't show up it doesn't work on any level....  Of course he strangely elides the choice of Rio and all its implications.... minor stuff for sure, Zika, raw sewage, a formal Stae of Calamity and all that...

And just from the latest news cycle there was this:

Six weeks before the Summer Olympics open in Rio de Janeiro, the laboratory that was set to handle drug testing at the Games has been suspended by the World Anti-Doping Agency in a new escalation of the doping crisis in international sports. 

WADA — the global regulator of doping in sports that oversees three dozen testing labs around the world — confirmed the suspension Friday, citing the Rio lab’s “nonconformity” with international standards. 

The lab has a prior disciplinary record and is one of a handful of labs that have had their certification to conduct drug testing revoked in WADA’s 17-year history. Among those is Moscow’s antidoping lab, which was disciplined last fall following accusations of a government-run doping program in Russia.

I did have a possibly interesting thought over the weekend as to how to salvage golf's participation in the Olympics.  It's a retro thought, but make it an exclusively amateur competition....  they'll jump at the opportunity whereas the pros are golfed out.  As for format, since our governing bodies aren't too swift just copy the NCAA's.  Use the individual event to qualify for team match play and then let the kids rock.

Lastly on this subject, Branden Grace is the latest WD from the Olympics..... South Africa, land of Bobby Locke and Gray Player, featuring Ernie & Retief & King Louis & Charl, will field a team of Jaco Van Zyl and Brandon Stone.  Though Gray Player did have a good response:

They could do worse....

I lied, one more note.... The players are finally getting a break in the brutal summer schedule:

The PGA Tour officially canceled the Greenbrier Classic in White Sulphur Springs, W.V., because of the devastating floods that have ravaged the Greenbrier Resort and surrounding areas. 

“We are heartbroken by the devastation that the residents of West Virginia are experiencing at this time and the reports of lives lost due to the terrible flooding,” PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem said in a statement. 

“Cancelling the Greenbrier Classic is certainly the most prudent course of action as our foremost concern is the well-being of those who are having to live through this tragic situation. Our thoughts and prayers are with them.”

Damn!  If only it had been the Bridgestone!

Rulesgate, The Story That Won't Go Away -  This item is notable both for its perspective as well as the source:

In the aftermath of the near-fiasco at Oakmont, Slugger White hopes the whole thing

results in at least one rules change that’s seems so obvious, you wonder why it wasn’t set in stone when Old Tom Morris was in grade school. 

“I like to use a par-3 hole as an example,” Slugger said Friday from his Ormond Beach home. “Let’s say your tee shot ends up about 8 feet above the hole and you have a downhill putt for birdie. You mark your ball, read the putt, replace the ball, and before you address the putt, a gust of wind nudges the ball and it rolls forward, down the hill into the hole. 

“You’ve made a 1. But you know what, come on, you haven’t really made a 1. Let’s just put the ball back where it was and let’s go from there.” That’s not how the rule reads, however.

Slugger is of course a rules majordomo for the Tour and was hitred by the USGA to work at Oakmont, so he knows stuff.   And this:

On the flip side, if the ball was to roll into a bunker or pond, well, that’s too bad. You’re stuck blasting from the sand or taking a penalty drop. 

“And that’s not too farfetched with the speed of the greens we play these days,” added Slugger, getting to the root (so to speak) of this whole ordeal.

Farfetched?  Au contraire, that latter scenario is exactly what happened to Billy Horschel on the fifteenth green at this year's Masters....Here's Slugger's conclusion, which sounds remarkably like my own:

Unless and until there’s a philosophical shift on green speeds, Slugger would love to see the rule amended again to allow for the replacement of a ball that moves for any reason without being touched. 

“I’ve been beating that horse for years,” he said.

Good luck with that unless and until bit....The Tour Confidential guys circled back on this issue, first with this little bit of institutional dysfunction:

Alan Shipnuck: It was a brutal public relations hit for the USGA, and Davis’s quasi-apology didn’t really help. I got the first interview with him at Oakmont. Davis was upstairs in the locker room changing into his tie for the trophy presentation and I pounced on him. At that point DJ was on the 16th hole and Davis still hadn’t seen video of the incident! He was just going by reports from other staffers. It was clearly an institutional breakdown in communication and procedures. This will all lead to some soul-searching and clearly the USGA needs to overhaul how it handles things on the ground at big tournaments.

There's much of interest in their comments, including their unanimous panning of the concept of the Tour creating their own rules  regime.  Though this comment from Shack rings very true:

It's fascinating how the rules community continues to see a violation while most golfers I've talked to can't see anything close to evidence of Johnson causing the ball to move. Nor can many even make sense of the entire episode more than a week later, other than to express disdain for the rules of golf.

To me this is the crux of the matter.... The rules guys (and Slugger thinks the rules guys had to act as they did) interpret 18-2/.05 and the decisions relating thereto to mean that the player needs to identify what caused the ball to move.... Perhaps if DJ had only said that he heard a guy in downtown Pittsburgh sneezed....

Turnberry In The Time Of Brexit -  Interesting timing at the least, as our hero flew to Scotland just as Thursday's results were being announced.  Golf Channel's video report is here, though omits the obligatory lefty handing out red golf balls with swastikas on them....so clever....

I'm way tired of the man and all that goes with him, and all I care about is the golf course.... No word on that, but there was this:

Of course it is.....  Now, about that ninth hole?  Crickets....

But this was my favorite photo of the day:

Turnberry: Great again.  British dentistry.....errr, not so much.

John Strege takes a crack at the effect of Brexit on our little game, and has this:

Uncertainty” is the operative word in evaluating the impact of the U.K.’s decision to leave the European Union, even down to the relatively unimportant matter of golf and the effect it might have on travel. 

“I think, unless somebody wants to be an alarmist, the truth is it probably will have very little impact,” Sam Baker, the founder of Cincinnati-basedHaversham & Baker Golfing Expeditions, said on Friday.

This really misses the point, though later he does get to the issue of Northern Ireland and it's border with the Republic of Ireland.  But as overjoyed as I am at the Brexit vote, it does have long-term implications for Scotland and Northern Ireland.  

Those possible effects are beyond our scope right now, but Scotland has evolved into a liberal enclave, think Austin, TX.  They want desperately to be part of the European Union, or at least they think they do.... but they're also heavily subsidized by Westminster, and with oil prices where they are..... 

Muirfield Fallout - Morning Drive is reporting that Muirfield will hold a second vote on admitting women members.  I had told you that this would not take long, but there's little doubt how this vote will go.  As I predicted, we'll be back at The Honourable Company right on schedule....

Cheap Shots - In which we offer our typically sensitive thoughts on current headlines:

That's Not How You Spell A*****e - Comedian removed from Donald Trump Turnberry event after handing out ‘Nazi’ golf balls

Sending Your Child To UNC Is Parental Abuse - UNC-Chapel Hill Employee Forum cites 'a round of golf' as a microaggression

Has He Told Him That Second Place Sucks? - Tiger Woods’ son finishes runner up at junior tournament

The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations - Good USGA News: Record Low Audience Saw '16 Fiasco!

I've Never Liked Tribute Bands - VIDEO: Sergio Garcia makes ace and breaks into Jimenez dance at BMW International Open