Saturday Stuff

It's a little brisk out there, so shall we cover a few loose ends?

Nurse Ratched, You Shan't Be Missed - Our long national nightmare is coming to a close:

The long-anticipated move from Tim Finchem to Jay Monahan as PGA Tour commissioner may become official in days.

The “keys to the kingdom” in Ponte Vedra Beach could be handed over on Monday, according to a report on GolfChannel.com. The PGA Tour Policy Board’s final meeting of 2016 will take place that day (Nov. 7), with the board voting to approve Monahan as the PGA Tour’s new commissioner. 

The move itself would of course not be a surprise, as Monahan has been Finchem’s anticipated successor for the last few years. Monahan, 46, has been the PGA Tour’s deputy commissioner since 2014 and added on the title of chief operating officer in April. Prior to his deputy commissioner appointment, Monahan had been the Tour’s chief marketing officer and executive vice president from 2013-14 and its senior vice president of business development from 2010-13. Previously, he had stints running the PGA Tour’s Deutsche Bank Championship and The Players.

Monahan has kept an extremely low profile, for which we can't blame him.  He's Finchie's hand-picked successor, so there's no reason to believe he views the world any differently than his mentor, yet he offers hope to the disillusioned.  Rumors that he was recently sighted in a "Make the PGA Tour Great Again" baseball cap could not be confirmed by press time....

I eagerly await the wistful eulogies to the late commissioner, who's been with us for a while:

Finchem took over the role from Deane Beman on June 1, 1994, but when reflecting at East Lake on his legacy after 22 years at the helm, he deflected to his predecessor.

Really?  Seems longer...  And for those wondering how Monahn got his new gig, tis might shed some light:

“Getting him going is the right thing to do,” Finchem said at the Tour Championship. “It just feels good.”

OK, that's going to put me off my feed for a bit....

What Happens in Vegas.... -  In this instance it'll stay there, because no one is watching.... But there is one aspect that offers trace elements of interest:

Tiger Woods earned his first victory 20 years ago in Las Vegas the same year he won the

NCAA Championship at Stanford. 

This year, coming off his NCAA Championship this spring for Oregon, Aaron Wise has a chance to do the same thing. 

Wise sits in third at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, two shots back of leader Rod Pampling as the second round was suspended at 5:45 p.m. local time due to darkness. Wise finished 14 holes in his second round and was 7 under before the horn blew.

He's a good young payer, though it's not clear yet how good.  Cue Sgt. Peppers, "It was twenty years ago today....".

I'm Shocked, Shocked I Tell You - Remember those two crazy Aussies that "pranked" their way into North Korea....  You'll be shocked to learn that all wasn't as it seemed.  Josh Sens, who has actually played in the North Korean Open and filed this wonderful account, debunks the nonsense.  Details can be found here, but this was the key bit:

"They didn't prank the North Koreans," Harris said. "They pretty much just pranked the media."

That's one of my pet peeves, I just hate folks that prey on the weak.

A Pebble Primer - I fully get that it's the slow season, but even so I'm not clear on the need for this Travelin' Joe Q&A on Pebble Beach.  I know, that place gets no press....

However, this Q allows me to tell a story:

4. What’s the best method, time of day or time of year to get on Pebble without staying on-site? What are your chances of getting on as a walk-up nowadays?

I was trying to get on in 1989, and I came up with quite the stroke of genius....  My ex-wide and I had been doing the Northern California thing, SanFran, Napa and Mendocino, and were finishing the trip in Carmel.  I had called Pebble very day to try to get a friend and I on, and they had no use for us.

Then the earthquake struck, you know the one that caused a one-week delay in the World Series.  I called Pebble the next day and their response was, "What time would you like to play, Mr. Simpson?"  It's of a kind with Steve Martin's advice on how to become a millionaire, "First, get a million dollars."

Saturday Silliness - Shack posted an additional two videos from The Links at Petco:

Joe House isn't my cup of tea, but your mileage may vary....

Things you shouldn't try at home....Though it's easy to see how it could have been worse.

This goes in the "At least he's good at something" category:

It's been an up-and-down season for New York Jets QB Ryan Fitzpatrick. After re-signing a $12-million deal to be the team's starter in July, Fitzpatrick was benched in a

Week 6 loss to the Arizona Cardinals -- only to get his job back the next week when backup Geno Smith got hurt. But forget about football, it's already been a successful year for Fitzpatrick, who was a co-champ at Golf Digest's Celebrity Smash this summer. 

Fitzpatrick was just one of many big names taking aim at a pane of glass with a golf ball during the week of the American Century Celebrity Golf Championship. But he was among a select crew of three, joining Alfonso Ribeiro and Mardy Fish, as the only competitors to shatter the glass on their first try. Fitzpatrick may not have a Super Bowl ring, but he's the only NFL QB to ever raise this trophy:

 OK, I'm in the dark as to which part of Fitzpatrick's day job is the "Up" portion, but breaking glass, an homage the the late Big Break Golf Channel reality show, is fun.  The Willow Ridge pro staff incorporated that into the holiday weekend mixed tourneys, and it was a hoot.  I won the event in 2014 and 2016, which I guess makes me the San Francisco Giants of the event.

A Media Rant - Forgive me, I just can't help myself....  In this political season of our discontent, the candidates take second place to the media as targets for my contempt.

Examples are legion, and I'm not suggesting that the ones I choose are the best, just that they caught my eye....  My first example comes not from golf, but from the recently-concluded World Series, in which, you might have heard, was kind of exciting....  I mean, not exciting like a Barrack Obama speech, but good for its kind...

Here's a screen shot from the broadcast:

Now, dear reader, can you guess where this is going?  

Some watchers of Wednesday’s World Series game featuring the Chicago Cubs vs. the Cleveland Indians were shocked to see what seemed like a banner for the Ku Klux Klan hung in the stands.

Specifically, Mediate writer, Josh Feldman, corralled a small army of offended Twitterers by publishing an article exposing the horrific display of racist allegiance.

Yeah, they certainly did, then  when confronted with the extent of their ignorance, they acted like professional journalists the juicebox mafia:

Yes, baseball is America's pastime, but I don't actually think it's un-American to not know what a K means, I do think it's scary that a practicing journalist expects to find a KKK banner at a World Series game being watched by tens of millions of his fellow citizens.  Because that happens all the time. right?  And remind me, which of the major political parties had closer ties to the KKK?

The James Taranto had a wee bit of fun with this header from a Chicago Tribune opinion piece:

Commentary: Don't like Donald Trump's piggish prejudice? Blame golf.

This was a throwaway gag as part of his longstanding "I blame George W. Bush" bit, which is funny because....  well, you guys know why it's funny.

The writer, Michael Peppard (of the WaPo) makes a strong case for the game of golf:

At its best, the game of golf is both noble and common. 

A golfer meanders meditatively through lightly cultivated nature, strategizing not against a foe but against wind, water, slope and one's own fickle mind. Golf teaches life's fundamental lessons: the role of practice and humility in self-mastery, when to play it safe and when to go for broke, and the social conventions of spending four hours with complete strangers. The culture of golf is open to all, an everyman's game. Scotland's village putting greens have neither fences nor fees. And New York City’s Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, the oldest public course in the United States, showcases the fullness of American diversity.

Common?  OK, let's not get sidetracked here, for the reader knows there's a but coming...  well, not so much a but, more off a BUT:

But at its worst, golf is a game of lying, cheating, blaming and gambling. At its worst, the culture of private golf courses propagates misogyny, racism, exploitation of undocumented labor and unchecked privilege.

There's gambling in golf?  Who knew?  So, what has this to do with anything?  Well, it turns out that it's all golf's fault:

The relevance of golf to understanding Trump should have been clear all along. Golf courses feature prominently among his branding ventures. And if you catch a rerun of an old interview with Trump on the Golf Channel, what stands out is how earnestly happy he is when talking about the subject — a completely different person than the disgruntled bundle of id on display at his political rallies.

Wow, were you a prosecutor or something before going into journalism?  Because that's some kind of connecting-the-dots there...

And it just goes on and on in this vein..... are there no editors left?  Get this:

Private golf courses are also frequently racist. Augusta National Golf Club, which hosts the Masters, is the most notorious example of racial discrimination, thanks to its exclusion of black people from competition in its Masters tournament until the mid-1970s. But really, walking onto any private course can feel like stepping onto a Southern plantation. In 1997, professional golfer Fuzzy Zoeller was asked about the new phenom, Tiger Woods, winning the Masters. After calling the 21-year-old Woods a “little boy,” he dismissively said Woods (who, as the winner, could choose next year's menu) should not “serve fried chicken … or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve.”

OK, the members of Augusta National can answer for themselves, but I'm guessing that the golf course itself isn't racist.  Or at least it's never said anything to me that I interpreted in that manner...

 But does anyone remember the reaction to Fuzzy's stupid comments?  Might the author let those that are not golf fans know that the entire golf and sporting world came down on the man and he immediately apologized, and hasn't stopped apologizing since....  and here's his rousing coda:

Besides these structural features of private golf culture, there is, finally, the game of golf itself. At its best, golf encourages honor, honesty and self-control. But for a man who plays poorly, there's always a distraction from one's failures. He can gamble on the side. He can kick his ball out of a bad lie, while no one's looking. He can throw clubs in rage. He can blame his dark-skinned caddie for interrupting his backswing or the dark-skinned greenskeeper for mowing the grass too short. 

And no matter what, in a few holes, the cart girl will come around again. He can have some fun with her. She loved it last time, he thinks. It's just locker-room banter.

I want to belong to that club where only the bad players gamble, but the game itself is guilty.  How is it that the Dems haven't outlawed our game yet, given its inherent misogyny and racism?

But as taught in Blogging 101, always leave the best for last.  In this case it's the author's brief bio:

Michael Peppard is a lifelong golfer and former employee at public and private courses.

And, ipso facto, a racist.  I'll be glad when this election season is over, mostly so that these cretins will crawl back from whence they came.