Tuesday Trifles

OK, you folks know that I love you and appreciate you reading my drivel.  But Park City just reported 20" in the last 24 hours, so today will be all the news that fits in the time until first chair.  I knew you'd understand.

Return of the Tiger - The striped one was available to the media yesterday in conjunction with his new responsibilities at the Genesis Open, that's Riviera for those of you that don't speak PGA Tour Sponsorship....

Here's the bit on the ambitious schedule:

Common sense says it’s an ambitious and maybe even brutal stretch ahead for Woods given the combination of rust and difficulty of Torrey Pines, Riviera and PGA National.

Throw in his off-course business, media and fan obligations – which he handled with aplomb Monday at Riviera – and lesser mortals wouldn’t want to get out of bed by Week 2. 

Yet seeing a refreshed Woods gracefully work through the normalcy of a live television press conference while bookended on the dais by obviously nervous corporate types, it was hard not to sense he’s finally found the drive and passion to be Tiger Woods again. 

“I’ve sat out long enough,” he said.

No quibble as to that last bit, but why the brutal schedule right out of the gate?  Bob Harig had this on his role in the LA event:

PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. -- Tiger Woods was back at Riviera Country Club on Monday, the place where it all began. 

As a 16-year-old thin-as-a-1-iron amateur, he made his PGA Tour debut here in 1992, missing the cut and learning he had a long way to go in order to compete with the game's elite. 

Now 79 PGA Tour victories and 25 years later, his Tiger Woods Foundation is hosting the newly named Genesis Open at the historic course -- where Woods will play for the first time in more than 10 years when the tournament commences on Feb. 16. 

"To come full circle and have an opportunity to run this event is really special moment in my life,'' said Woods, who will make the tournament one of three in four weeks that he is playing to start 2017.

Everybody is making nice, but left unsaid is that once he was the established alpha dog he turned his back on his home town tourney that gave him his first Tour start.   

Shack has some interesting betting odds in his post, such as these:

How many birdies will Tiger Woods record during the 2017 Farmers Insurance Open?

OVER 6.5 (-110)

UNDER 6.5 (-120) 

How many bogeys or worse will Tiger Woods record during the 2017 Farmers Insurance Open?

OVER 8.5 (-115)

UNDER 8.5 (-115)

I'm not the go-to source on bookmaking, but it seems that those are merely yes-no bets on his making the cut.  He should clear the over on both if he plays the weekend, no?

Tiger plays the North Course on Thursday, where he needs to score.  With the rough long and juicy, the South could be a brute....these days meaning, they'll struggle to post 64's.

Golf In The Middle Kingdom -  The future of golf is in China, except if it isn't....

I forget which is the Yin and which is the Yang, but China's schizophrenic approach to our game is the constant:

BEIJING (AP) — China has launched a renewed crackdown on golf, closing 111 courses 

in an effort to conserve water and land, and telling members of the ruling Communist Party to stay off the links. 

The state-run Xinhua News Agency said Sunday the courses were closed for improperly using groundwater, arable land or protected land within nature reserves. It said authorities have imposed restrictions on 65 more courses. 

China banned the development of new golf courses in 2004, when it had fewer than 200. Since that time, the number of courses more than tripled to 683 before the new crackdown, Xinhua said.

As per self-described demography boor Mark Steyn, China will get old before it gets rich.....

Ch-Ch-Changes -  Since journalism is clearly a job Americans won't do, there's little surprise that Alistair Tait broke news of the substantive rules changes under consideration for 2020:

Golfweek understands that among the revised rules under consideration are: reducing the search time for lost balls from five minutes to three; allowing players to repair spike

marks on greens; allowing players to drop a ball from any height when taking relief rather than the current stipulation of shoulder height; more of an emphasis on using red stakes for water hazards while still allowing yellow stakes in some cases; and eliminating the use of club lengths for taking relief.

Doing the job that Scott won't do (only in the interest of time), Shack posts these reactions:

Well I hate to be cynical but... 

--Five to three minutes may just increase the number of players who have to go back to the tee and hit another tee ball.

--Players already repair spike marks on greens. They call them ball marks. 

--The shoulder height thing? Beats me why that has to go. 

--Red stakes over yellow in more cases is a winner. Though the yellow spray paint lobby may say otherwise. 

--Eliminate club lengths for taking relief? That's a grand prize winner! Nearest point of relief. Progress!

OK, I already regret my use of the word "substantive", as this is really small-ball.  I don't care all that much about the first three, though I'll dissent from Geoff in that they should clean up the spike thing, which is much less of an issue in the modern era.

On the red vs. yellow thing, it seems to me that it's usually pretty obvious which should apply to a given hazard.  So before giving an opinion, I'd like to see some diagrams of how this change would be applied.  I'll also add that the dog that didn't bark on this item is replacing white stakes with red....  Although the white paint lobby is also pretty fearsome...

But I heartily disagree on the last item... they'll have to pry my one club length from my cold, dead hands...  I think it entirely appropriate that the player be given a reasonable patch of turf on which to make his drop, unless of course he's the guy that put the damn cart path there.

Stay tuned....

Gonzo Goes Full Stenson - Secure the children, as GFC is NSFW:

By now, you've probably seen it. With his golf ball hanging just above a water hazard on PGA West (Nicklaus)'s ninth hole on Saturday at the CareerBuilder Challenge, Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano stripped down to his underwear to hit his third shot. And it turned out to be as impressive of a moment as it was funny since the Spaniard pulled off a fantastic recovery. 

Click through, as I'm not even going to waste time on a screen shot.  The twitter reactions are fun as well....

These Guys Are Good... -  Except when they aren't:

Greg Eason struggled in strong winds and rain last week, and it didn't get any better for

him on Sunday. 

Eason shot 91-95 at the Web.com tour's Bahamas Great Exuma Classic last week and said afterward that he lost 32 balls. Fast forward to this week's Great Abaco Classic in the Bahamas, and Eason was playing marginally better for Sunday's first round. He was eight over after 17, but then disaster struck (again). 

Eason recorded a decuple bogey 15 on the par-5 18th -- 10 over for the hole -- and ended up shooting 90. The 15 is the highest score ever recorded on a hole in a Web.com event. We were unable to find a shot-by-shot breakdown of the 18th, but maybe that's for the best.

Decuple?  Is that a real thing?  So how does this guy have playing privileges?  

A Ted Talk - Ted Bishop has chimed in and is not a fan of Mothers' Day:

It is being widely reported that the PGA of America is considering moving the PGA Championship to May, beginning in 2019. The shift would be crucial to the PGA Tour’s

plan to move the FedEx Cup playoffs to August and finish the Tour Championship before the NFL season starts. It would be a great move by Jay Monahan, the new commissioner of the PGA Tour, but a bad one by Pete Bevacqua, the PGA of America’s chief executive officer. 

Moving the PGA Championship earlier in the schedule during Olympic years such as 2020 and 2024 would make the PGA relevant in determining who makes golf’s Olympic teams, which presently is not the case. To have that option is one of the fundamental reasons why the PGA picked TPC Harding Park in San Francisco for the 2020 PGA.

Irony alert, Quail Hollow would be far more bearable in May...Just sayin'.

Even though I'm in agreement with him, I can't even summon up crocodile tears for this argument:

Early spring jeopardizes even Valhalla in Louisville, Ky., a site owned by the PGA and one that Bevacqua seemingly has shunned. In 2012, the PGA spent $5.5 million in course renovations and delivered a memorable ’14 championship won by Rory McIlroy as darkness fell. There is nothing on the docket for Valhalla. It will be the first time since 1996 that the PGA has gone longer than four years in playing a PGA, Ryder Cup or Senior PGA at its own facility. Louisville is renowned for the Kentucky Derby in early May, so where does the PGA Championship fit in the corporate picture later in the month at Louisville? It fits nowhere.

By all means, let's organize the golf calendar around maximizing our exposure to Valhalla!  But this speculation is interesting:

Maybe it makes sense for Monahan to cough up the PGA’s purse of $10 million per year to cement his FedEx deal for the future. It still would be a bad deal for the PGA, which can own the August sports calendar for three out of every four years.

Ted is an interesting guy, and far more interesting after he was Unfriended. 

Worth A Screen Shot - Jaye Marie Green channels her inner Kramer in preparing for the coming LPGA season:

I like the cut of her jib....or something.