Late Week Lamentations

I may have to go easy on the java today. as the excitement of the FedEx Cup denouement has me on edge....

In his Forward Press feature, that Shack guy tees up the drama:

The intrigue, in order of importance: 

—Will Bubba Watson, Justin Thomas, Daniel Berger or some other masked man play his 

way onto the Ryder Cup team 

—Will switching the nines at East Lake finally deliver the sense something epically wild and crazy might happen in the Tour Championship? 

—Will Dustin Johnson cap off a breakthrough player-of-the-year season that included a major and two more wins? 

—Will Emiliano Grillo, Smylie Kaufman or Si Woo Kim emerge as Rookie Of The Year in one of the better freshman seasons in recent memory? 

—Will all 18 greens be mown each day? 

—The outcome of the FedExCup.

Please, Geoff, our Commish doesn't do epically wild and crazy.... wouldn't be prudent.

Brian Wacker holds out hope that Nurse Ratched's successor might spare us this hot mess:

When Horschel's pants provide the only excitement....

Among the distinct possibilities is moving the end of the season up to Labor Day, which would help the tour achieve one of its goals when it created the FedEx Cup Playoffs a decade ago of avoiding conflicts with college and pro football. Another possibility still at the conceptual stage is moving the Players Championship back to March and the PGA Championship to May. 

On moving the end of the season, Saturday’s third round of the Tour Championship has traditionally teed off early in recent years, and will again this week, because Notre Dame, which also plays on NBC, has a game Saturday afternoon. This year, the nearby University of Georgia also has a game at Ole Miss that is scheduled to kick off at Noon ET -- something that will likely affect attendance at East Lake.

 Moving the PGA will require the cooperation of at least two of the Five Families, and will create quite a vacuum after mid-July.... 

I don't know much about William McGirt, but these comments leave me wanting to know more:

“How many viewers do you think will be watching us this weekend?” William McGirt said. “We’re never going to compete with college football. Ending the season on Labor Day is perfect. It’s the start of football and the unofficial end of summer." 

To that point, a 1.2 rating for the final round of the BMW Championship two weeks ago tied for second-lowest for final round coverage of the tournament since the FedEx Cup began. 

“What do you think the ratings are going to be this fall?" McGirt continued. "Nobody is watching these events. Eventually you water down your product.”

Wow...I mean I know it's the soft bigotry of low expectations, but can you say things like that and not be looking over your shoulder?

But before we get allow our hopes to rise to unsustainable levels, here's your dose of cold water:

“If something's really working well, we really kick the tires pretty hard for a while before we mess around with it, and it's working pretty well,” Finchem said. “But on the other hand, we're also always asking, how can we do this better? 

“I think we're focused increasingly on our television rights discussions laid out over the next few years. We'll probably get further into that before we'll start tinkering much with the schedule. But I wouldn't rule out changes, but at this point in time, I wouldn't assume changes either.”

Nothing to see here...please exit through the gift shop.

 As for those Ryder Cup ramifications, Joel Beall details the mixed bag, first the guy who should already be on the team:

Thursday gave Watson a chance to quiet the storm. Instead, a two-over round -- marked

by a poor short game performance, ranking second-last in strokes gained: putting -- will amplify the situation, as the 72 puts Bubba in the middle of the 30-player field. 

"I thought I played great," Watson said after the round. "The ball striking was where I want it. The driver was coming off hot. Around this golf course, it takes one good round, shoot a five under. It's a long marathon around this place."

Because how he putts on Bermuda greens tells us what about his putting on bent?  And the young Turks had a split verdict:

However, Berger's Tour Championship began with a stumble out of the gate to the tune of a four-over 74. Only Kevin Na and William McGirt turned in higher scores. 

It wasn't all gloom for prospective Ryder Cup members. Though he was wild off the tee, hitting just four fairways on the day, Thomas managed to shoot a two-under 68 and sits just two shots back of the leaders. 

"I really didn't think I was playing very well to start the day," Thomas said. "I wasn't driving it as well as I would have liked through 13 holes or so...I kind of figured something out, something clicked, and I made a couple of easy birdies."

I'm not overly impressed by either of these guys, especially since their highlight reels are from early in the season.  But I'd pick Thomas for the sole purpose of pairing him with Rickie, because what says teamwork better than matching porn 'staches?

Peter Kostis is up with a piece carrying this provocative title:

Why the Ryder Cup Task Force Is the Best Thing for Team USA

Hmmm...do you sense a dissent coming?  But I'm nothing if not fair, so let's let the man explain his thoughts:

It’s been two years since the Press Conference Heard Round the Golf World. In 2014,

after enduring another stinging loss to Europe, at Gleneagles, Phil Mickelson questioned Team USA's Ryder Cup strategy. Phil claimed that no players were involved in any decision making that week, a statement that put Captain Tom Watson on the defensive. Many people lambasted Mickelson for publicly airing grievances, but I applauded his candor. The timing ensured that everyone was aware of the frustration affecting the team. And the result of Phil's brutal honesty is the Ryder Cup task force, a group comprised of 11 past captains, players and PGA of America leadership figures.

The bolding is my doing, because while it was certainly the former, it doesn't qualify as the latter....  We're going to cover some familiar ground, so I'll understand if regular readers choose to skip ahead.  Phil's comments at the Gleneagles presser were way off-base, for the following reasons:

1. It was the wrong venue;
2. It was the wrong messenger;
3. It was the wrong message;
4. It was untrue.

Other than that he's a great American.....Let's quickly dispense with items Nos. 1-3:

1. A losing presser is the time to congratulate the winners and get the hell out of there.  Disgaree?  Watch the video and look at the "What fresh hell is this?" look on Hunter Mahan's face.
2. Phil's career Ryder Cup record is a Furykian 11-17-6.  Didn't like the throwback pick of Watson as captain, well perhaps if you'd won a match or two along the way...
3. Phil, you can't play well unless you're coddled and stroked in a pod?  Noted.

So, Phil wants us to believe that he wasn't involved in any decisions....  Curious, that... First, he played with the now-retired Keegan Bradley.... was that done over his objections?

More importantly, why the vitriol towards Watson?  I know, that was bound to happen, and was why I was pretty sure that Cap'n. Tom would have issues with our modern day prima donnas....  But more specifically, they played fourballs in the morning that year, and Phil and Keegan eked out a win despite playing poorly.  Watson's plan was to bench them in foursomes, and given the reliability of Phil's driver and Keegs' putter, you can readily see the logic....

But then Phil and his partner begged Tom to play the afternoon session, and Tom unfortunately relented....  They stunk up the joint as you'd expect, and started a chain reaction where Tom benched them in the Saturday fourball and, if you're not gonna play them in fourball, you've no business playing them in foursomes....  So, Tom gave them what they wanted, they didn't deliver the goods, and Phil stuck a shiv in Tom when handed the opportunity....  Pace Animal House, Tom effed up by trusting them.

Udder Stuff - First up, a couple of our ubiquitous "woe is golf stories:

Golfsmith - I've avoiding diving in on this story mostly because the reporting has been so superficial, basically attributing the bankruptcy to the obvious death of golf.  Since golf isn't, actually dying, I find those not especially helpful.

Mike Stachura, the resident gearhead at Golf Digest, provides a better look:

To the first point, it’s clear from a read of the Golfsmith bankruptcy filing and those familiar with the company both internally and externally that Golfsmith expanded to its current 109 stores in the U.S. too aggressively, in the wrong way (as far as store formats go) and most likely without proper capital to support such expansion.

Said a source close to the situation speaking on background, “Golfsmith has markets where there are simply far too many stores where the coverage is too great, and in other markets there might be the right number of stores but perhaps the size of the stores was larger than they needed to be. That over-investment in bricks and mortar costs quite a bit of capital.

“Golfsmith has a cost structure with its store base that is far too great and also a debt load as a result of some of those investments that is too high.”

Retail is all about the leases, it almost doesn't matter what's on the shelves.  The bankruptcy petition indicates the intention to close twenty stores, as well as this:

The bankruptcy filing does allow for the possibility of the closing of additional stores. But what it sets in place is the potential for Golfsmith in its new form to be more attractive to potential buyers, thanks to a streamlined business model and a focus not on larger stores, but on relatively smaller stores, in the 11,000 to 14,000 square-foot range. About 10 percent of Golfsmith’s current stores fit this model.

The first store listed for closure is Minnetonka, MN (when you've lost Minnetonka....), which I can't help but note this coincidence from an earlier item by the same author:

Meanwhile, golf megastore PGA Tour Superstore just opened its 26th store. The new 41,000-square foot operation in Minnetonka, Minn., has five hitting bays, seven practice bays and a 1,500 square foot putting green. And the company is looking to expand, with CEO Dick Sullivan telling the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal, “We are already securing locations that we think are viable for us across the United States."

 It's a jungle out there....  but those small stores better be located an hour or more drive from their competitor's 50,000 sq. foot stores, or I'm not liking their chances.

Nike - Pravda took time out from dragging Hillary across the finish line to looking at Nike's exit from the golf equipment business, and had this pearl that our Shack characterized as a "shrewd observation":

“The secret sauce in the equipment business that Nike didn’t have is that each of these

companies that’s thriving comes from a core competency that they grew out of,” said Casey Alexander, a senior vice president at Compass Point Research & Trading, which has long tracked the golf industry. “Callaway still uses the Big Bertha name — that’s what people know them for. TaylorMade invented the metal-headed driver, and that’s still a huge part of what they do. Titleist has a core competency in golf balls. Ping has a history in cast-iron clubs. Nike just never broke through with something like that.”

What a load of horse hockey....  a name like Big Bertha is a valuable asset, but its hardly a "core competency."  And if TaylorMade is so successful, why is Adidas dumping it?   Adams is a company that was innovative, or at least they were, but isn't valuable enough to be sold separately.  

What the alleged paper of record never gets around to sharing is that the equipment market is a low margin business, and therefore it's no surprise that those at the, ahem, margin, should struggle.  But it's more than just the marginal players, as TaylorMade demonstrates.  That would make an interesting article, but it requires that actual journalism be performed, and the Times has been out of that business far longer than Nike.

Duf, in Batter - Nothing but the important stories here:

This week's Tour Championship features a field of 30 elite PGA Tour players battling it out for the sport's biggest monetary prize. But it seems there was also a world-class pancake artist on hand at East Lake. That's right, a pancake artist. 

This virtuoso of batter created pancake portraits of every PGA Tour pro in the field and they were beautiful. Behold this griddled masterpiece:

It's rare when I agree with DJ, but he makes a compelling point:

“I don’t eat pancakes – especially not ones that look like me.”

-- Dustin Johnson

Brooke Pancake was not available for comment.

Tweeter Uber Alliss -  Peter Alliss is a treasure, not least because of the extent to which Twitter seems to have been developed specifically for him.  Maybe he's got a grandson showing him the ropes, but it's a marriage made in heaven.

This is noted because the Sports Editor at The Sun used Twitter to solicit a piece by the man:

That's a clever approach, I do hope that Sam received a prompt and courteous response:

I'm going to take that as a no... No word from the old chap as to whether offense was taken.