Thursday Threads

There are balls in the air in Springfield, NJ, though at this point it's only those of three club pros....But just a few things to sort through and then I'll let you go....

Golf.com leads its Five Things We Learned on Wednesday feature with this:

1. Sergio Garcia has no plans to live in a cave when he retires, in case you were worried. The nine-time Tour winner was asked about how he would feel if you he finished his career without ever winning a major. Sergio responded,"I'm not going to go in a cave and stay there until I die."

Fair enough, though it leaves me wondering if he would do this in his cave:

Other bits:

2. No one will reach the monster par-5 17th hole at Baltusrol in two shots. Don't believe us? Then take it from Dustin Johnson, the biggest bomber on Tour, who said Wednesday he didn't think anyone would make eagle there this week. But what did the U.S. Open champ think about his chances to putt for eagle at the par-5 18th? "Everybody is going to reach 18."

I'm expecting that someone will hole a wedge there, but that's about all.... 

4. Jason Day is out of gas. The World No. 1 told reporters that he was "running on E" today after a chaotic night in which his wife ended up in the hospital after an allergic reaction. The defending PGA champion is also battling a bug he thinks he caught from his son.

We had this bit yesterday, but it only reinforces my point.  Yes, there were unexpected circumstances with his family, but it's not the first time a father caught something from his spawn.  Going to the Canadian Open was an unforced error....

As for everyone's everyman, well, the beef goes on....

The Beef hype has arrived at the PGA Championship. Fans out here are dressing up like the cult hero from the Open Championship at Troon -- he’s being stopped for autographs left and right, you can hear "BEEF!" being called from all over Baltusrol. 

Even defending champ Jason Day chimed in on Beef Fever, calling him, “A top bloke.” Going on to say that Beef: “Looks like a guy you want to go down to the pub and have a beer with, even if you don’t drink.” High praise. 

Johnston's nickname needs no ratifying; the guy is now endorsed by Arby’s for crying out loud. And as his other Titleist Vokey wedge was stamped with nine different steaks, Beef's latest wedge from Titleist leaves no doubt as to who the owner of it is.

The writer seems unclear how this all works.  He's endorsed Arby's, not the other way around... But here's a peak at his mouth-watering wedge:

First thing you'll notice is that it's the S grind.....OK, maybe not the first....

Did you notice that John Daly is in the field?  The PGA is the major without an identity, though they now have a Past Champions' Dinner and those guys get to play, so you know who they want to be when they grow up.

On that subject, this header caught my eye:

John Daly's patriotic outfit will restore your faith in America

That seems a remote probability at best....But patriotic is way down the list when I see this photo from the dinner:

Thanks for dressing up, John.... At least they had the good sense to put him on the outside, where he'll be easy to crop....Yanno, I don't particularly like dressing up either, but sometimes you just need to suck it up.

Do we think he's angling for a vice-captaincy:

I believe it was Sigmund Freud that said, "Sometimes a practice round is just a practice round."  Bill Pennington, writing in Pravda, is way over-interpreting this:

Jordan Spieth continues to tell people he is not in a slump. Phil Mickelson must once

again expound on the heartbreak of another second-place finish in a major championship.

Perhaps that is why Spieth and Mickelson played a practice round together on Tuesday, preparing for the 2016 P.G.A. Championship. Separated by 24 years in age, for a day they might have been the salve to each other’s burdens, real or invented.

Not that either needs too much help defending, or explaining, himself.

Or maybe they just enjoy each other's company or ran into each other on the range?  We've been hearing this bot from Jordan for a while now, and can only hope it's true:

“I’ve gotten back to kind of the gunslinger — the way that I grew up playing, which is just step up and hit it,” he said. “I went from over-dissecting shots to really feeling like less is more.”

That may not sound like the player that the golf world came to know last summer when Spieth entertainingly, and amusingly, would harangue himself with detailed, verbal post-shot analyses on the course. But Spieth apparently wants to do less of that.

“Golf is a game where you smack it, go up to the next one and smack it again, then count it up at the end,” he said. “Simplifying things has really been the trend recently. It’s really helped me.”

 He's a sound engineer's dream, but one gets the sense that he hasn't been helping himself with the sturm und drang on every shot.  

Udder Stuff - Did someone mention Ryder Cup Assistant Captains?  Well, the Euros are one-up on us as of now:

The European Ryder Cup team's vice captain squad has swollen to five, potentially boosting Club Car's third quarter revenues as Darren Clarke looks to become the first captain to have a shuttle driver for every two players.

According to a BBC report, 2002 winning captainSam Torrance joins Ian Poulter, Paul Lawrie, Thomas Bjorn and Padraig Harrington on Clarke's coaching squad at Hazeltine in Minnesota.

Good one, Geoff,  a nice subtle riff on your evergreen cart-driver meme.  And this was good as well:

Oddsmakers have installed Mark James, Neil Coles, Peter Alliss and a hologram of J.H. Taylor as co-frontrunners to grab the next vice-captain spot.

And a perfect listing of names...  Most would have gone for Vardon or even Braid in that last bit, but the most obscure of the Great Triumvirate is pitch perfect.  Now, can I get that fee in twenties....

I'm planning to look at the Ryder Cup teams after the PGA, but I'd recommend an industrial-size grain of salt with this:

Rory McIlroy says Team Europe is probably going to be the underdog at the 2016 Ryder Cup at Hazeltine, and that's just fine with him.

"I'd say it’s very evenly matched, but if anything…" McIlroy told GOLF LIVE host Ryan Asselta, hesitating. "I'd give the U.S. a slight advantage in terms of who you would say is the favorite. But we don't mind that. We don't mind being the underdogs. Hopefully we can go in with that mentality and try to get another one."

So, why does he think that? 

"This American team, they're young and they're hungry and they're motivated to try to go out and beat us. We're going to have at least five or six rookies on our team, and coming into an environment like a Ryder Cup away from home, it's tough. It's tough to play your first Ryder Cup like that."

A fair point I'll acknowledge, the U.S. squad will have far more experience.  Of course that experience is almost exclusively of losing Ryder Cups, but still....

A Sour Note -  I'll share this Martin Dempster piece, mostly because he agrees with me... the subject is Keith Pelley's plans for a wacky Euro Tour event with shot clocks and less than fourteen clubs and he's on board with all that...with one exception:

As for PA announcers and music? No! Neither belongs on a golf course and there really is a fine line here between trying to be, in Pelley’s words, innovative and creating something that just doesn’t sit with the fundamentals of the sport. On the one hand, the European Tour chief’s vision is aimed at trying to attract more young players to the sport. But what if the cost of that happening is losing too many of those who actually like the game as it is right now? Personally, I think change of some sort is required but let’s be careful here because, as Stenson and Mickelson showed us just over a week ago, the traditional form of golf can still show the sport off in its full glory.

I was of course making a point about a different issue, allowing millennials and other freaks of nature to blast their music on the golf course, to the inevitable irritation of those golfer's not residents of their parents' basement.  But still, it's always helpful to have someone with a byline make the case that our game can be pretty damn good.