Weekend Wrap

As the long holiday weekend recedes into memory, let's catch up on all that we've missed:

DJ Über Alles - It happened so quickly that I failed to notice that the Jordan Spieth Jason Day Era had ended:

It’s not just that Johnson shot 66-66 on the weekend and came from behind to snatch

another title from Jason Day, the world’s top-ranked player. 

It’s not just that Johnson won the U.S. Open at Oakmont, as hard as it gets, with a sterling back nine and two of the best shots you’ll ever see on an 18th hole.

It’s how easy he has made it all look. 

Let the numbers fall where they may as the Official World Golf Rankings are revised on a weekly basis. Johnson should move up to No. 2 after this. But really, who would you least like to play right now in a match for your life? It has to be Johnson. Day, who lost the Bridgestone when he went trees-to-trees-to-pond and made double at the par-5 16th hole Sunday, would be second. Spieth is third because of his putting prowess, and then it might be close between Rory McIlroy and Scott Piercy since the latter finished second to Johnson at Oakmont and again here, although Rory’s four major championships give him an edge.

Yes, there's so little to choose between Rory McIlroy and Scott Piercy.....  The former has run away from the field in winning four majors, whereas the latter has done Izod commercials with Webb Simpson.

That's from the usually sober Gary Van Sickle, and it's hard to believe that a copy editor didn't spit up his coffee when blue-lining that last graph though Gary, to his credit, does frame the issue better with this:

You could argue that Johnson has flown by them both in the passing lane. But this is big-picture stuff, not Player of the Month. Still, if you haven’t considered that this may be the start of Dustin Time, that the U.S. Open victory got the pressure of great expectations off his back and freed him up and we’re seeing a golfer finally reach his potential, maybe you should.

 The key word being "May"....  We saw a flurry of pieces on this after Oakmont, and there's an obvious logic to the sense that Dustin had removed a monkey from his back.  But deadlines loom and writers are far too quick to draw sweeping conclusions....

Given that DJ has more talent in his left pinkie than most do in toto, it's conceivable that this could be the summer of DJ....  But let's also note a couple of factors about this latest win.  First, it's an awfully small field... Due to the unique scheduling issues, only 61 guys teed it up, and only 60 of those hit their second shots.  Secondly, this course suits DJ perhaps more than any venue on tour, as Mike Stachura explains:

While its stick straight, tree-lined fairways may not immediately make you think of a bomber’s paradise, Firestone Country Club’s South course’s brutish length (7,400 yards, par 70) requires driver as much as any layout on tour, and the driving-distance numbers clearly reflect that tendency. Six times in the previous 10 playings, the driving-distance average for the WGC-Bridgestone was in the top three of all events on tour, and three times it was No. 1. 

Nowhere was that more the case than last year when the field averaged 317.1 yards off the tee for the week. As best we can tell, that’s the highest driving-distance average for any event in tour history.

And click through for the details on Justin Thomas' 413-yard poke earlier in the week. I thought I heard him say that he got it a little out on the toe....

The Tour Confidential panel tried to get their arms around DJ, and while this isn't the most insightful of their answers, it was the funniest to me:

Marika Washchyshyn: I owe DJ an apology. I spent weeks doubting his ability to stay calm, to make smart shots (and recover from the not-so-smart ones) and to close, and then he turns around and does it...twice. In my mind, he's totally erased Rickie Fowler from the 'Big Four' conversation and has deftly inserted himself into golf's upper echelons. Sorry, and welcome, DJ!

Geez, Marika, take a chill pill.  I've been trashing DJ since you were in diapers, and I'm guessing that you've never called his girlfriend a slut....

 Then there was Jordan and this week's cry for help, announcing his intention to play more quickly:

"The quicker part actually helps me, because then I just get up there and fire away," he explained Friday. "The more I can do that, actually I think the better off [I am with a] kind of gun-slinging mentality, just to go up and hit the way I always have played."

Playing quicker is just one piece of the puzzle that he's hoping to solve while trying to emerge from what he has described as "a little lull."

It's an open question as to whether it'll help him, though it can't but help me enjoy watching him play.  Though this remains the crux of the matter:

That has been the case this week -- from tee to green, at least -- as through two rounds of the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational he has found just 12 of 28 fairways and hit only 15 of 36 greens in regulation,

And he had another social media spat with the Twitterati when he took on Firestone's iconic 16th hole.  Shack's got the skinny here.... I tend to think he's got the better of the architectural arguments, but that he was ill-positioned to make them after Saturday's snowman.

Rio, It's Not Getting Any Better - The Golf Channel promos are the same, they're just sounding shriller as we go from bad to worse....

Japanese star Hideki Matsuyama said Sunday he was pulling out of the Olympics

because of the Zika virus, making him the seventh golfer to cite the mosquito-borne virus for sitting out golf’s return to the Olympics after 112 years.

“Although I am excited that golf is returning to the Olympics and I realize that my potential success would help grow the game in Japan, I have come to the conclusion that I cannot put myself or my team member’s health at risk,” he said.

That makes seven players from the top 25 in the world who have said they are not going to Rio next month. The others are Jason Day and Adam Scott of Australia, Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland and the South African trio of Branden Grace, Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel.

Shack makes a reference to Hidecki having a history of bad reactions to bug bites, but as is noted in reaction to such man-made disasters, what difference at this point does it make?

For those with strong stomachs or prepping for a colonoscopy, here's the men's roster and here's another with the reserves.  I for one have had to go far too long without seeing the charismatic Mikko Illonen, but I'd ask you to remember that Golf Channel will be providing nine hours a day of coverage..... How does that jump to NBC look to Feherty about now?

The women's field with reserves is here, their problem being the number of top-flight players not invited because they happen to be Korean....  I'll leave you with this quite graphic Vanessa Barbara piece from Pravda on Rio's readiness, which you should really read in full. But I'll post some excerpts that caught my eye:

The few projects that have been completed don’t inspire much confidence. In April,a newly built bike path along Rio’s seashore collapsed, killing two people. 

Work on the beach volleyball arena at Copacabana stalled because the organizers failed to get the proper environmental licenses. Then the structure was damaged by waves. Workers erected a six-foot-high sand barrier to protect the site. It also protects thugs; tourists are being mugged behind it. A construction worker told me he’d seen a man stabbed there, and warned me to stay away. The robbers were so comfortable that they had left their backpacks and a beach chair nearby on the sand.

Please tell me that the robbers used sunscreen....that Brazilian sun can be a killer....

Frequent shootouts near the Olympic arenas and on routes to them are also a concern: 76 people have been hit by stray bullets in Rio so far this year; 21 of them have died. On June 19, more than 20 men carrying assault rifles and hand grenades stormed the city’s largest public hospital to free an alleged drug kingpin in police custody, leaving one person dead and two hurt.

And I totally get that the Zika concerns are overblown, as this helps put it in perspective:

In Brazil, these concerns are generally greeted with scorn. First, August is the middle of winter here, so the weather will be drier and cooler, meaning fewer mosquitoes. Second — and more important — the virus seems like a relatively minor problem: According to one calculation, in Rio a woman is more than 10 times more likely to be raped than catch Zika. (Men are more likely to be shot to death.)

So you see, that glass is in fact half full....

Troon, Soon -  Have your ski caps at the ready, as we've several weeks of linksy goodness ahead of us.  And I'm pleased to report that Royal Troon has gotten itself on the right side of history:

There are no longer any golf clubs on the British Open rotation that do not allow female

members. 

Members of Royal Troon Golf Club voted overwhelmingly on Friday to end the club’s male-only membership policy, paving the way for the club to remain an Open site. 

“I think this means that Royal Troon Golf Club is reflecting the society in which we exist in the 21st century,” said Martin Cheyne, the club’s captain and top official, in a telephone interview from Troon on Friday night. “We are not insular, and I’m proud to say that we have made this decision.”

Not insular in the slightest..... And I'm sure that Lady Bonallack will have the good sense not to show up too often...

The reader knows that I find these stories tedious, not least because the history here is not as it seems:

That is in part because Royal Troon already has an affiliated women’s club: Ladies Golf Club, Troon. Its clubhouse is a short walk from Royal Troon’s clubhouse, and the two clubs will work together to stage the British Open. 

“We were a mixed club until the 1890s, when the ladies elected to leave and build their own clubhouse,” Cheyne said. “We have had a very harmonious relationship for 138 years, and the ladies have always been able to come play the Old Course free of charge any day of the week and enjoy our clubhouse.”

But facts that are narrative buzzkills will be ignored.... 

Joe Passov provides a wealth of history in his 13 Things To Know About Royal Troon, such as:

13. A classic out-and-back links, (think Old Course at St. Andrews) where the 9th hole extends furthest away from the clubhouse, Royal Troon features a front nine along the sea with nearly every hole heading in a southeasterly direction. The back nine then comes back to the northwest, with every hole except the 12th playing in that direction. Typically the road home is played into stiff sea breezes, making the incoming nine one of the hardest in championship golf. As Gary Player once put it, the last nine holes at Troon are “the most difficult in the world when the wind is blowing.”

Troon is to this observer perhaps the least interesting of the Open Rota courses.... No doubt that it can provide a stern test, but there's precious little of aesthetic or architectural interest.  Here's Joe on it's most famous hole:

8. Royal Troon’s most famous hole is the par-3 8th, called “Postage Stamp.” At 123 yards, it is the shortest hole on the Open rota and has seen its share of ecstasies and agonies. At age 71, Gene Sarazen aced the hole with a five-iron in the first round of the 1973 Open, then birdied it by holing a bunker shot the next day. Forty-five minutes before Sarazen’s ace, Scotland’s David Russell became the youngest player ever to make a hole-in-one in the Open with his seven-iron effort at the Postage Stamp. Most recently, Ernie Els scored a 1 at the Postage Stamp in 2004. The hole’s saddest victim was the German amateur Hermann Tissies, who floundered to a 15 on this hole in 1950. Rookie professional Tiger Woods took a triple-bogey 6 here in 1997’s final round.

I have a particular fondness for short Par-3's in this era of bomb and gauge (see Thomas, Justin above), and there's nothing particularly wrong with this version of the species.  There's just many others that I prefer, such as the ninth at Lytham.  See if you agree, though you should know that there are nine bunkers surrounding that smallish green:

The Fourth, As Opposed to the Forth - In honor of the 4th of July, folks have been kicking around America's contribution to the game.  Why are you laughing?  Yeah, I get it, let's get this out of the way:

1. Motorized Carts. A nation falling in love with the automobile, when given the chance, was bound to want to drive the golf course as well. Born in the 1930s but not embraced until the 1950s (when you might have driven a Sears Roebuck), the golf car became our foremost addition to the game. And our biggest subtraction: We removed the walk. Though hoofing it -- via caddy, pull cart or bag-on-back -- has made a bit of a comeback among the fitness-conscious, carts are still the norm, with four generations of golfers, fit or not, knowing no other way. Our misgivings about this innovation remain.

I'm not any happier about than you, but it is what it is.... The list takes every cheap shot imaginable at us yanks, but this was unnecessary:

9. John Daly. Let Daly here represent the American public golfer and all the fun he's had learning this country club game. Let him represent league guys. Let him represent hackers who hate dress codes. Let him represent the hat-backward, t-shirt wearing, flip-flop dragging ex- jock who just can't get enough.

 Thunk!

I much prefer this take:

Shipnuck: Not just Tiger—how about Bobby Jones, Big Jack, Arnie, Hogan, Hagen, Sarazen, Lord Byron, Sam Snead, Trevino, Watson, Phil...most of the greatest players of all time are American.

I don't think we should discount Young Tom, Vardon or Bobby Locke either, I just don't feel responsible for John Daly...

Judicial Overreach - You know what else is distinctly American?  Judges sticking their noses into matters on which they should have no jurisdiction:

Earlier this month, Judge Jeanette Irby of the Circuit Court of Loudoun County, Va. entered her ruling in the case of Michael Vechery vs. Florence Cottet-Moine, a dispute over custody of their 10-year-old daughter.

The legal wrangling is now in its seventh year. Among the mundane and stereotypical custody-dispute edicts about which parent gets the kid for birthdays and Thanksgivings, in the latest ruling Judge Irby threw in an odd clause: The child “shall not be permitted to play competitive golf for one year.” 

The ban comes as the kid is thriving on the links. By the count of Vechery, a career real estate salesman and part-time golf coach, his daughter has won 11 of the last 12 tournaments she’s entered in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Now no doubt the parents should be held to account, and there's good advice to similarly-situated folks to be found.  When parents can't work things out in the best interests of their child, that's parental malpractice because they're supposed to be the adults.

But what's frustrating is that the writer doesn't tell us why the mother sought to have her daughter banned from competitive golf, at which she seems to be pretty talented.