Catching Up

Apologies to readers for the unexpected absence due to family matters...But we're back in the saddle, so strap yourselves in...

The Cat In The Hat Is Back - No doubt you've heard the news, The Striped One is on the prowl:

Spurning The Players Tribune and speaking exclusively to TigerWoods.com, Tiger Woods says he's coming back this fall at the Tiger Woods Invitational in Monterey, followed a few days later by a PGA Tour return at the Safeway Open in Napa.

He's also planning to tee it up in the Turkish Airlines Open in early November and the Hero World Challenge in December.

That's welcome news indeed, though the SEC requires that we provide this Rule 144 disclosure:

"My rehabilitation is to the point where I'm comfortable making plans, but I still have work to do," Tiger said. "Whether I can play depends on my continued progress and recovery. My hope is to have my game ready to go.

I always heard that hope is not a strategy, but we'll just hope that this hope is justified.  Shack gives him credit for the timing of the announcement:

The Big Cat has picked some strange times to break news, but this was actually quite excellent. Not on a Friday, not on a day anyone else was announcing something, and well in advance so the events he's teeing up at can promote his appearance. Progress!

You mean like the Mea Culpa Press Conference on the Wednesday of the Match Play?  But when even the FBI has taken to holiday weekend data dumps, perhaps that ploy has jumped the shark.

Now, much as I'm pleased to see Tiger supporting the lesser events on the Tour's calendar, there's some old history here.  Tiger (along with several others) chased the appearance money to Istanbul previously, and owed the Commish a visit to the competing Frys (now the Safeway) from then.  I don't think he ever honored that commitment due to injuries, so there may be less here than meets the eye.

Though I find it somewhat off-putting that he's again chasing the appearance fees instead of helping to make Sea Island great again.  I get that he no longer flies coach, but is such a long trip really a good idea?  How'd that money grab junket to Singapore work out for Jordan?

By far the most interesting item on Tiger's return was actually written prior to the news by the estimable Jaime Diaz.   You will, of course, read the entire piece.....  But see if this rings true:

How good is this illustration?

There is much research providing evidence that tension from unresolved repressed emotions—particularly anger and shame—can be an important source of chronic pain. 

According to work pioneered by Dr. John Sarno, a now-retired professor of rehabilitation medicine at NYU, the body's reaction to deep psychological wounds can be to create physical pain to prevent hidden emotions from becoming conscious.

Sarno calls this Tension Myoneural Syndrome and says that such psychosomatic pain that can't be traced to actual structural changes often occurs in the back.

Afremow, the peak-performance coordinator for the San Francisco Giants, says he often sees variations of the syndrome at work in competitive sports. "Especially with top athletes, pain can be a barometer of their stress level," he says. "Men especially tend to bottle everything up, and this is more true for the highest achievers, who are used to pushing through everything. It can result in constant pain, without any physical sign. The mind-body connection has been underestimated."

Ummm....how's that work with the Giants going?   He knows it's an even year, doesn't he?

Now the reactions are what you'd expect from players, as he still moves the needle for sure.  Other reactions are a little more curious:

First, a sober suggestion:  

Jason Day: "Even though he's Tiger Woods, don't expect too much" in return

Well, he used to be.... whether he still is, that's TBD.

This guy is way out there:

Tiger Woods has “six to eight wins” left in him, says Johnny Miller

 I didn't even click through to see the basis for such speculation, or whether that includes majors.

And in our "It's in his nature" moment, I bring you Brandel being Brandel:

Chamblee: Without new swing, Woods risks injury

So you're suggesting that he take a couple of years to groove a new swing?

Ruled By Fools - Peter Kostis takes a crack at the current state of rules enforcement and, spoiler alert, finds it wanting.  This is the nut graph:

In addition to updating the "Ball at Rest Moved By Player, Partner, Caddie or

Equipment" rule (18-2), which went into effect at the start of this year, the USGA also decreed that you may no longer post scores for handicap purposes if you play by yourself. It's another example of the governing bodies looking over our shoulders, like Big Brother. Apparently, they don't consider golfers to be trustworthy. So we have an issue: Golf is either the pristine, righteous game they proclaim it to be, or it's not—in which case the USGA and R&A look like ambulance chasers, eager to find fault with you at every turn. The latter mentality mocks everything the game is supposed to stand for.

As you'll intuit from the accompanying photo, Count One in the indictment was the U.S. Open, and far be it from me to interrupt a justifiable trip to the woodshed for the USGA.  But like everyone else that tackles this subject, Peter submits apples, oranges and a small section of a large intestine in support of his position.

First and foremost, we've been banging this drum for some time, but the revision of Rule 18-2 seems to have been conceived by folks who don't get out much.  I'll acknowledge that they may have had good intentions, but the net result has been unusable ambiguity seemingly based on the concept that a player can identify the cause of his ball moving.  Obviously those that drafted the rule were not in the field at recent USGA events, because when a ball is placed on a glass surface almost anything or nothing at all will cause it to move.

There are also tangential issues related to the USGA's ability to handle situations when they arise, to wit not having a video rules official and the patently unfair staging of announcements in the midst of competition (I do hope that Bethany Brittany Lang sent a thank-you note).  But those are secondary, or at least should be, once the rule is fixed.  We don't need a committee or a long-term process, we need a quick rewrite that makes the player blameless if the ball moves on the green unless he touched it.

On the other subjects on which Peter touches, I do not believe that the rules of golf are a meaningful impediment to participation in the game, and I find that most commentary on the subject fails to account for how we play.  For instance, while the rules governing a given drop might have some arcane twists in the Decisions, the fact is that you ask your opponent if he's OK where you want to drop and that's the end of it.  So, by all means go crazy with your simplification task force, but let's not waste the energy pretending that it matter much....

Peter's citation of the rule banning posting solo scores deserves a more nuanced answer, though I'm perfectly OK with the change.  No doubt it inconveniences some souls, and that's always unfortunate.  But the handicapping system has always been a peer review system, and how could it be otherwise?  But the premise that golf is a game of honor is not the slightest bit undermined by acknowledging that humans are flawed creatures....  The rules of golf, like the constitution, are not a suicide pact.

Rors Roars - I saw none of his Monday pyrotechnics, so let's segue to the Tour Confidential panel's take on how this alters the landscape:

Jeff Ritter: He hasn't played like one in a while, but McIlroy is one of golf's biggest stars, and this win, against a loaded field, is significant. A fully charged McIlroy is great for golf and nice for the FedEx playoffs...and (sky darkens, thunderclap explodes, cue music: DUN DUN DUNNNNNN) ominous for the U.S. Ryder Cup team.

Gary Van Sickle: It's impressive that he won in a howling gale--he hates playing in the wind and as a high-ball hitter, he hasn't been very good at it in the past. This win doesn't change anything unless Rory starts playing like Rory and backs it up with more good play. It does alter the Ryder Cup landscape. America's forecast just downgraded to mostly cloudy.

Those guys stuck the dismount, didn't they?  Who cares about Crooked Stick or East Lake, the only real issue is how it affects that little exhibition at the end of the month.

Is golf better with Rory playing well?  Of course....What does this portend for the FedEx Cup?  Sorry, I nodded off there....

The real news is that things only got murkier for Davis Love last weekend.  Guys on the periphery like Ryan Moore and James Hahn helped themselves marginally, but they were marginal to begin with.  But the guys that Davis wants a reason to take, J.B. Holmes (T33), Rickie (T46), Kooch (T46), Snedeker (T46) and Alas, Poor Furyk (T57) didn't distinguish themselves.

Of course they out-performed Bubba, who had the weekend off.  You might enjoy this spirited debate from Friday on Golf Central, in which our Brandel ensures that he won't be on Bubba or Rickie's Christmas card list.  I don't necessarily disagree with him on Bubba or even J.B., though he seems to have drunk Phil's Kool-Aid on pods.  But I'm certainly hoping that Mr. 58 is not a lock, though my hope could well be less realistic than Tiger's.

The man that gave us the pods opined that it's a deep dumpster dive:

“I look at it now and I think we’re probably 8-9 deep on who we could pick,” Azinger said.

Hardly, but even that can't explain a header like this:

The Case for ... Will McGirt as a U.S. Ryder Cup Captain's Pick

That would be....none, nada, nil, zip, zero...shall I go on?

Tour Stuff -  If it seems like the Euro Tour has more energy than the PGA, this is a small bit of why.  The guys just seem to be having fun with it, and the use of ProTracer is just priceless.

The Tour has finally perhaps started to address the shortage of playing opportunities, though you'd be right to remain skeptical.  Earlier in the week came word that the automatic exemptions henceforth would be based upon FedEx Cup points, not the money list.  In theory that shouldn't matter, but I'll remind that there's a reason that Shack and others call it The Reset Cup....  So players may lose pints earned in that process.  I've no idea how unfair this might prove to be...

Next came this:

This week the player advisory council debated whether the circuit should consider reducing the number of exemptions from the FedEx Cup points list - the top 125 are currently exempt heading into the following season - and from the Web.com Tour’s Finals Series. 

The move, which according to various sources was widely dismissed by the PAC, is an attempt to assure those who do get their Tour cards that they have plenty of playing opportunities. 

Although the pressure to give every member a chance to play has been mounting in recent years, taking away playing opportunities seems counterintuitive.

Rex, you ignorant slut!  The move would not eliminate playing opportunities, it would eliminate the guarantee thereof.  The background is that the Tour has royally screwed recent Web.com graduates who were promised Tour cards...  Oh, they got some kind of card, but not one that allowed them to tee it up in Tour events.  Word has been that there were non-recurring issues, such as a record number of guys playing on major medical exemptions and the like.  

I don't what the answer is, but when you remove Q-School as an avenue to the Tour and require a full year of indentured servitude, you should at least deliver that which was promised.

Putting The Malt in Maltbie - Do you know the Maltbie story?  Yanno, the one that came to define his life and career?

On July 20, 1975, Roger Maltbie won the Pleasant Valley Classic, earning a first-place

check of $40,000. He was handed the payment on the final green afterward -- not some oversized novelty check, but the real deal that looked very much like any other paycheck, only with a few more zeroes attached. 

"I had a courtesy car driver that week who kind of adopted me," recalled Maltbie, who made the cut on the number, then shot 66-67 in breezy conditions for the title. "I won the tournament, I went in, I bought a round of drinks at the bar, then I said, 'Where do we go? What do we do?' He took me to T.O. Flynn's." 

Needless to say, Maltbie and those around him enjoyed themselves at the local establishment that night. When he awoke the next morning, the champion was admittedly a bit foggy. 

"I don't know how long I sat there, but it took a little while until I realized I won the day before," he said. "I was going to get a newspaper and read about how cool I am. Then I reached into my pockets and I'm like, 'Oh, s---. Something bad's happened here.'"

Yup, he lost the check..... Hard to imagine something like that following him all these years...

Just to be clear, they replaced the check and he's had the cash all these years.  He was simply reunited with the physical check, which is a nice story all the same.