Weekend Wrap

For those of you new to these proceedings, and the stats indicate there are many, we use this space on Monday mornings to catch up on the golf played over the weekend.  Even, you know, when no one really cares....

Napa No-Show - John Strege captures the desultory proceedings in Wine Country:

It rained on a charade in California wine country this week, Tiger Woods’ head fake and three days of weather interruptions leaving the inaugural Safeway Open bereft of reasons 

Can anyone name this guy?  Hint:  He won the event.

to watch. 

Tiger did play golf, but in a Woods Foundation fundraiser in Pebble Beach on Monday following his curious withdrawal from the Safeway Open only 72 hours after he officially committed. 

And when rain pushed the second round into Saturday, the third round into Sunday, and interrupted the final round by nearly two hours on Sunday afternoon, suddenly — one week in, in the wake of the shortest offseason in sports — the new season already is dragging.

See what he did there?  Don't rain on my charade, that's a good one.... But then he adds this:

But the show must go on, with or without the interest a tournament with Johnny Miller as host deserves, and the careers it still is capable of impacting is worth something.

To which we can only plaintively inquire, WHY?   Obviously this event suffered from the Tiger head fake, and it at least offers a quality golf course in a nice neighborhood.  That weather was a downer, as I've personally spent some beautiful October days in Napa....

I found this recent Travelin' Joe offering interesting, in it he ranks the forty-seven PGA Tour events from top to bottom.  I know... I'm old enough to remember when there were only fifty-two weeks in the year....  Back in the day no one would be crazy enough to try to jam forty-seven events into that time frame.

Most well-adjusted folks would start at the top of said list, where they'll find all the usual suspects...  It leads with the four majors and The Players is right where it belongs as the fifth of four.  I do find this to be wishful thinking:

7. Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard (March 16-19, 2017)

Typically Arnie's Party would finish somewhere near, if not in, the Top 10. It will be night-and-day different in 2017, however, as the emotional reverence will be out in full force, remembering The King and his contributions to golf, to the PGA Tour, to Orlando and to the planet Earth.

I love the King as much as the next guy, but this is easily the worst track they play in Florida,  If it weren't in the run-up to Augusta (as well as being Arnie's place), it's field would mirror the Barbasol.

But work your way up from the bottom as this guy did, and you'll be curious as to what in heck these events are....or, perhaps more acutely, why?  The Tour Confidential panel took on the surreal weekend, and had this:

1. When last we convened, Tiger Woods had committed to play in the Safeway Open and was on the cusp of making his first PGA Tour start in 14 months. But four days before the start of the tournament, Woods withdrew, saying his game was not where it needed to be. What did you make of his surprising 11th-hour WD?

Michael Bamberger: That for once he was really candid about where he is in his life: he’s not close and he knows it. It’s almost heartbreaking to see where he is, given where he was.

OK, but that candor seems to have come to him only over the weekend...  on this one I wish I could ask Alan to explain:

Alan Shipnuck: Yes, it was the ultimate capitulation. I’m afraid the end is nigh.

To reality?  Age?   

By the way, what do we think of this trophy?

It reminds me of when I won my first tournament back at Lake Isle....  I was so excited to get my first actual golf trophy, you know, the kind with the figure of a golfer at the top of his backswing on top.... So imagine my disappointment when they handed me a clock.... For years afterward, the guy I beat in the finals would ask me whether the clock was still keeping accurate time....

Other Golf Results - No need to dwell here, though a couple of interesting notes:

Spaniard Carlotta Ciganda won her first LPGA event in a playoff over Allison Lee.  Ciganda is a big hitter and has been due for a while, and Lee is one of the few strong young American players.  Let's face it, anytime and event is won by other than a South Korean, that constitutes news.

The previously unheard-of Doug Garland beat the pack by four shots in the regular season finale on the round-belly tour.  Garland never so much as teed it up in a PGA Tour event, but apparently has some game.  

In an item of trace-level significance, Alex Noren won the British Masters for his third Euro Tour win in his last eight events.  Operating form memory, I believe that Alan Shipnuck omitted Noren from his projected 2018 Ryder Cup roster, but this makes one take notice:

Ranked 110th after missing the cut in the Irish Open in May, Noren will be 18th in Monday's updated standings after adding Sunday's triumph - and the first prize of 500,000 pounds ($608,000) - to victories in the Scottish Open and European Masters.

On the other hand, he's no kid.  He's 34 and has been out there for a while, so perhaps it's a bit much to think he can keep up this level of play.

Quaker Quest -  Shack is characterizing this court ruling as a victory for the club, though I'm not sure.  The subject is Quaker Ridge, home to an historic A.W. Tillinghast design, and more specifically it's second hole.  Recent visitors to the club have found it playing as a 300-yard Par-4, a mere shell of its former self.  The cause of this was a lawsuit from an adjoining property owner related to incoming golf balls.....

Here's the gist of the ruling per the local paper:

Quaker Ridge Golf Club will have to pay a homeowner about $7,300 for errant golf 

The netting in the second hole at Quaker.

balls, a Westchester judge ruled last week. 

The second hole on the golf course runs parallel with homes on Brittany Close, where Leon and Gail Behar moved into their $3.7 million home in 2007. A 2010 lawsuit filed by the Behars alleged nuisance, trespass and negligence against the club for the dozens of balls that flew into their yard each year. 

"All of a sudden, we were bombarded by golf balls," the Behars claimed in court documents.

The reason that this was such an awful case (for golfers certainly) was that the golf course was built long before the residential development, and in fact a restriction was placed on the deed in approving the building of houses.  The buyers should have been aware of this, and they might also have noticed the golf course adjoining their property before ponying up $3.7 million large.

No doubt this is the bit that had Shack using the "V-word":

A letter sent to Quaker Ridge club members said the Behars were seeking in excess of $3.3 million for punitive damages. Wood's Oct. 4 ruling awarded the plaintiffs $7,323.75.

“It should not be unexpected that any house abutting a golf course, including the Behar’s house, would from time to time, receive three, four, five, or more balls on a given particular day of poor swings, and that there could be no liability on the part of a golf course for trespass, nuisance or concomitant damages," Wood said.

I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but even I get that $7K is a pittance for a club like Quaker.  But awarding damages is only done upon the determination that they are, in fact, liable, which to me implies that the 2nd hole will remain partially off-limits to the membership.  And that to me seems a horrible miscarriage of justice...

Celebrating Sand - Only a golf architectural geek could get excited about this news, but stick with me for a moment.  Direct from the Home of Golf:

Some out of play areas on the New course at St Andrews will have a different look from now on, after extensive removal of gorse and the creation of exposed sand areas in its

place.

Taylor told GCA that the reason for converting the gorse areas back to exposed sand was primarily ecological. “Bob Taylor, our ecologist from the Sports Turf Research Institute, actaully first suggested the exposed sand areas back in 2005,” he explained. “Bob explained that exposed sand was a habitat common to linksland and was ecologically important. We tried a few areas then, but nothing like the scale of what we are now doing. Bob visited us again after last year’s Open, and again suggested that creating open sand areas would be very beneficial ecologically, restore natural habitats, and be an interesting feature to otherwise scruffy areas.”

First question dear reader, is do you know what gorse is?  It's a word that is often misused, most notably on golf broadcasts by folks you'd assume knew better.  But it's a vile plant with no reddeming qualities, save perhaps the yellow flowers that bloom for about an hour in May.

Wikipedia amusingly uses the term "extreme thorniness" to describe it, not to be confused with an hormonal condition most of us experienced during our school days.  The plant is thick and impenetrable, and imparts a viscous onto onto skin and clothing that will never leave.  As we've been over previously in connection with Bandon Dunes, gorse is also highly flammable, so less of it is preferable to more....

Gorse is an odd hazard on the golf course, one that stretches the concept of fairness (what Tom Doak calls the "F-word").  The problem is that since it's not technically a hazard, if one's golf ball unfortunately bounces into a gorse bush, one needs to find it to avoid replaying the prior shot.  And one does not want to have to find it, given that "extreme thorniness" we spoke of above....  that's a very good reason (among many others) for hiring a caddie when visiting the links of Scotland and Ireland, but that only works early in the round before you've become fond of your looper.

I do acknowledge that they're speaking of areas that are out-of-play, but out-of-play for whom?

School Daze - A first tip-of -the tam to John Coupland, our dear friend from the Scottish Highlands, for this sweet item about personal loyalty.  I know you have the World Cup noted on your calendars, and you've probably been wondering about that Scottish team.  Perhaps this might make you actually want to root for them:

There was quite a choice for Russell Knox, you'd have thought. Richie Ramsay or Martin 

Laird would surely have been worth consideration. How about Marc Warren? Or maybe Stephen Gallacher...

Instead, Florida-based Knox chose someone he knew well to join him in the two-man Scotland team at the lucrative World Cup of Golf in Melbourne next month.

Knox, as Scotland's highest-ranked player, sitting at 19th in the world, had the privilege of choosing his playing partner. 

In selecting Duncan Stewart, 309th in the rankings, he will have beside him on the Kingston Heath course not just someone who knows his game, but a friend from their days in the Highlands. 

"We got together at the age of 13 or 14," Stewart, now 32, told BBC Radio Scotland's Sportsound. 

"We played junior opens and played for the district together and from there we blossomed into good friends and hopefully good team-mates in November."

Knox is obviously giving his old friend an opportunity, and risking his own finish in the event to do so.  We're awfully quick to ascribe money-grubbing motives to today's players, so we should take pleasure in seeing the opposite.

I think it's especially noteworthy in light of Knox's recent Ryder Cup disappointment.  I would assume that his take-away is that the only way he'll play for Europe in a Ryder Cup is to qualify automatically, and one wouldn't expect that this choice would help him in that regard.

John, please keep those interesting items from your side of the pond coming...