I've been wracked by guilt since I took Friday morning off.... Started throwing these things together Friday night but didn't get back to it until Sunday morning....
Dissing the Gals - Lorena Ochoa's Mexican LPGA event spun its wheels for a bit, but as a limited field event by design it's low hanging fruit (I promise metaphor alerts going forward) and went to match-play. It's a home run, 'cept for this one niggling bit:
MEXICO CITY — It’s a shame you can’t see what’s happening down here.On Thursday, two-time U.S. Women’s Amateur champion Danielle Kang trounced SuOh 7 and 6 here in the opening round of the Lorena Ochoa Match Play. Michelle Wie dominated Lizette Salas 6 and 5, and Brooke Henderson outlasted Katherine Kirk in 20 holes. On Friday, a sister-sister matchup of Ariya and Moriya Jutanugarn went the full 18, and Angela Stanford upset gold medalist Inbee Park 3 and 2.The only problem? No one at home was able to see it.
It's match play, 'nuff said? And for the Jutanugarns, that's a week after their third round pairing as co-leaders. There's less sniping than you'd expect:
The LPGA by all accounts did its best: each of the staffers I spoke with on-site said they wished the event was televised. But because money was tight, the organization released the tournament organizers of their broadcast commitments.“The LPGA will continue to work with the Lorena Ochoa Match Play team to ensure television coverage in future years,” the LPGA said in a statement. The tour is working around the clock to deliver content to the masses, including live scoring updates, post-round interviews, Facebook live segments, and nightly Golf Channel highlights. Golf Channel did not respond to GOLF.com’s request for comment on the decision not to broadcast.
Mike Whan has done good work, but it's long been the Tour that can't shoot straight. The pencils apparently are quite sharp in such matters:
Golfweek reported that a tournament broadcast in Mexico costs $1 million, which is more expensive than domestic events by $250,000. The current tournament sponsors (Citi Banamex, AeroMexico and Delta) were unable to cover the cost.
Seems a pitifully small amount to cost them such great exposure.
Click through for the mandatory four 'graphs of players using social media to fill the void in their fans' lives.
Still A Trick Shot Artist - EXTRA SPIN
WATCH: Wesley Bryan makes the best birdie all time
No.... but it's a very good one. Driver off the deck and all.
Say What? - THE KNOCKDOWN
Who is the ultimate No. 1? Ranking golf's short list of top dogs
Whattya mean by top dogs?
Dustin Johnson's ascension to the top of the Official World Golf Ranking in February means that 20 men have now reached that lofty perch since the list was birthed in 1986. It's too early to say what kind of reign DJ will enjoy (although his win at the WGC-Mexico City in his first start as No. 1 portends nicely). But here's my highly subjective countdown of the game's other 19 top dogs. Note that this is only a ranking of their tenure at No. 1, not their complete careers.
Whatya wanna do that for? Are we gonna be surprised by who wins? But thing is, it starts kinda amusingly:
19. TOM LEHMAN (TOTAL WEEKS AT NO. 1: 1)Is it better to have reached the summit for one brief moment or to have never peaked at all? That's for philosophers, not sportswriters, to decide. Lehman's 1997 cameo is a metaphor for the parity of the post-Faldo, pre-Tiger years.
18. BERNHARD LANGER (TOTAL WEEKS AT NO. 1: 3)Langer enjoys the distinction of being the first No. 1 when the ranking debuted, but he never made it back to the top despite a long, consistent career.
Kinda fun so far... and a few fond names to recall:
8. IAN WOOSNAM (TOTAL WEEKS AT NO. 1: 50)The wee Welshman summited the list a week before the 1991 Masters, then backed it up by taking the green jacket. Macho.
7. NICK PRICE (TOTAL WEEKS AT NO. 1: 44)Price's double-dip wins at the 1994 British Open and PGA earned him his deserved run as golf's headliner.
6. SEVE BALLESTEROS (TOTAL WEEKS AT NO. 1: 61)The great Spaniard enjoyed four different residencies at numero uno.
Would you have thought Woosie held it for longer than Price? Or that he got there before that Masters.
I've Got Some Thoughts - 9 THINGS THAT SHOULD BE BANNED FROM GOLF
Earlier this week the USGA sent out a notice that green-reading materials could soon be prohibited. Which made us wonder: what else should be banned from golf?
Fair enough, whatcha got?
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| Plumb-bobbing Know why so few guys on tour do it? Because it doesn't work. |
That's one we can all get behind.
But Whoa!, Cowboy:
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Professionals keeping their own score There's this new thing called a "score board" that does the job quite well. Besides, you don't see LeBron James asking Steph Curry how many points his team scored in the second quarter. It would be chaos out there. |
That is shockingly misguided, especially from a house organ of the Tour. A player's responsibility for his score is what makes our sport different, cede that at your won peril.
But wait, there's more:
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Handicaps "But they even the field!" Yes, because a touchdown counts for 12 points for some quarterbacks and just six for others. Doesn't this defeat the entire ethos of competition? |
Raise your hand if you think "no handicaps" is a swell grow-the-game initiative....
It's a slideshow and all in fun, and plumb-bobber guy and "Mashed Potatoes" guy have long been asking for the opprobrium. But taking out the handicap system that lets me have spirited small-dollar matches with the guys I actually want to spend 5 hours with? That allows us to have a competitive outlet for as long as we're looking down at the grass? Who thinks like that?
But this is kinda funny in another sense. Over the winter Golf Digest announced that they were going to double the size of their golf course rating panel, and your humble blogger threw his visor into the ring. It was Steve Hennessey who responded, and we had a pleasant back-and-forth over my name. I told him of introducing myself to the real Scott Simpson at Baltusrol in '93 and my namesake quickly moving away, clearly convinced that I was a stalker...
Steve told me when to expect to hear back, a date which has long lapsed. When I tell folks that I've applied, the general reaction is that it's a no-brainer, though by now one has to conclude that Golf Digest sees it differently. I recently e-mailed Steve to confirm that they don't want me, because I'm making golf travel plans and need to know, and I'm not received the courtesy of a response.
One thing that struck me was that their requirements include a handicap index of 5.0 or lower.... I found this curious, as I've always thought the hardest part of the design process is making a golf course play well for a wide range of players... I get that you wouldn't want horrible hackers, but perhaps I was just a little sensitive because I had ballooned to 5.8 due to the scores from Fairview late in the posting season. Note the lack of personal responsibility, but be a nice reader and don't ask me how things look as of May 1st.
Anyway, I'm just amused if that's Steve's actual handicap. It's not that I'm bitter or anything...
Not Sure What He's Smoking, But Hope He Brought Enough to Share - PGA of America Prez Pete Bevaqua gave an interview to CNNMoney, and starts out saying the obviously right things:
“You want the right kind of attention, but when you have the president playing golf and saying that golf is a good thing, that’s good for the game,” Bevacqua said.“President Obama was good for the game,” Bevacqua said. “President Clinton was good for the game. I think President Trump, again, being a proponent of the game, understanding the power of the game, is good.”
No need to choose sides, especially when you're joined at the hip with events going to his venues. But this is just so wrong....
Bevacqua actually feels Trump could be a leader in getting more publicly funded courses built in the United States, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt did with more than 250 public courses built under the New Deal.
“That’s a powerful story because those golf courses are open to everybody, they’re very affordable, and now we’re bringing golf’s best and one of golf’s major championships to those public venues year after year,” Bevacqua said. “We think that’s a powerful signal for the game.”
Sigh. Not only does POTUS think that golf should be aspirational, but every time government and golf intersect it has profoundly disastrous results. Perhaps, Pete, you could speak to the citizens of New York City, who unwillingly invested more than $230 million at Ferry Point only to hand it to Trump because they weren't capable of finishing it.
It's perverse government incentives that led to the over-building of golf courses, and to your own members being laid of as those projects have cratered.
With No Clinches... - Brian Costa covers the golf beat for the Wall Street Journal, and sees the Tour as A Fine Bromance:
In theory, professional golf after Tiger Woods has become fiercer than ever. Thecompetition at the top is tighter, the cast of rivals is bigger and supremacy is more fleeting. But as an entertainment product, the PGA Tour isn’t a survival drama. It’s a bromance.
Last month alone, the scenes have included Sergio Garcia and Justin Rose exchanging high fives as they battled each other to win the Masters and then hugging after Garcia won. Days later, another Sunday pairing at Augusta, Jordan Spieth and Rickie Fowler, joined Justin Thomas and Smylie Kaufman on a group vacation in the Bahamas.
Though it seems that it's more scripted than spontaneous, so I might have gone with the reality show analogy:
Kaufman said social media offers them “a huge opportunity” to appear relatable and likable to a wider audience. He described the Bahamas group almost as if he were talking about characters on a show.
“Rickie is the go-getter, the racer, the fearless kid,” he said. “Jordan’s the genuine, honest, Arnold Palmer-type of kid. Justin is the kid who’s always been successful at every level. And I’m just the one that likes to have a good time.”
Big Break: Baker's Bay?
If you buy into this as a worrying trend, just remember that it's nothing new:
Not everyone thinks chumminess is the best look for the sport. In an interview with author John Feinstein, Palmer once bemoaned the impact of growing riches on the Tour’s competitive verve, saying players had become too friendly with each other. “I just think our tour has become too comfortable,” he said.That interview was in 1994, when six players earned more than $1 million in prize money. In 2016, there were 107 such players.
I don't waste a lot of energy on these kinds of concerns, because Arnie, Jack and Gary used to stay at each others' houses and share breakfast. As Costa notes, these kids have been playing against each other for years, and they've become a self-supporting family. Will some of these kids become complacent making millions for top tens? Of course.... Do I think Spieth's career will suffer from a lack of competitive fire? Not so much....
To be fair, Costa most certainly wrote his piece before seeing these photos from Churchill Downs:
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| The guy that looks like Rex Hoggard is jockey Chris Landeros. |
Timing Is Everything - I've not watched a minute of it, but apparently Patrick Reed, whose season has been one long disappointment, has found something:
But two weeks ago at the Valero Texas Open something clicked and last week paired with Patrick Cantlay at the Zurich Classic, he tied for 14th place.Reed said part of the turnaround was an equipment change (new golf ball), and the other part is his approach on the greens.“I used to read the putts and also [caddie Kessler Karain], and I used to use a green-reading book,” Reed said. “I just felt like there's too many eyes and too much thought process going into putts on trying to figure out the read.”Reed, who is sixth in the field at Eagle Point Golf Club in strokes gained putting, said he want back to the way he used to read putts in college with more instinct.
“I've done that pretty well all week,” he said. “I have my green-reading book with me just to kind of confirm, not really to go off of it, just to make sure I'm seeing what the book is saying and just kind of going from there.”
How much is Mike Davis paying you? The irony, of course, is that they're at an unfamiliar venue, when you'd expect them to be more reliant on the printed page. But I take Reed's thoughts as mostly irrelevant to the can o' worms recently opened by the USGA/R&A, as he's just one player looking at the green before using the book for confirmation...
But pay close attention, as we've got another of those world-class segues for you, one in which my hands never left my wrists....Here's the provocative header:
Ban green-reading materials? One golf innovator says it would hurt amateurs
Stracka, 58, is the CEO of StrackaLine, a USGA-approved technology that uses 3D
Jim Stracka with son Chase. lasers to create custom maps of greens from around the world. On his company's app, users can call up putting surfaces at hundreds of courses for a close look at every fall line, hump, bump and subtle undulation. It takes the guesswork out of the read. Drop a point on the green to place the pin, pick the spot where your ball lies, and the app will plot out exactly how the resulting putt will break.
StrackaLine, which Stracka started in 2007, is used by more than 40 PGA Tour pros and 200 college golf teams, plus hundreds of golf facilities and 10,000 recreational golfers. This year he introduced the technology to the PGA Tour. The majority of his business comes from golf courses that use the program for its hole-location software, which helps them plan their daily pins.
It's obviously not just players and caddies compiling yardage books with penciled arrows and the like. And how ubiquitous is this?
To date, StrackaLine has lasered greens at more than 500 courses, collecting millions of data points. Most relevant to the Tour: these detailed maps can be printed and dropped into a golfer's back pocket, which is exactly what dozens of card-carrying pros currently do. Stracka says Zurich Classic co-winner Jonas Blixt is a user, and several pros subscribe to the "Elite" membership service, where they get a fresh book delivered each morning with the day's pin locations. Paul Casey, Keegan Bradley, Hudson Swafford, Graeme McDowell, Charles Howell III and Jhonattan Vegas are among those with "Elite" status.
Anyone have the same reaction to that list as I did? Except for Jonas Blixt, it's not exactly the creme of the Tour's putting crop, is it? Very much what we saw with anchored putting, no? As for this, methinks thou dost pretest too much:
Vegas is a loyal subscriber, but he says the golfers still have to hit the shots."If it was that helpful, everyone would be using it and everyone would be a better golfer," Vegas said in a recent phone interview. "Sometimes [the USGA and R&A] get in the way of making the game more fun and getting more people to play. It doesn't affect the game at all."
Would I want this? Of course.... Do I think it would be a better world if 28-handicappers were pulling big honking yardage books from their back pocket, no siree!
Stracka has some thoughts on pace of play worth hearing:
As for pace of play, Stracka insists StrackaLine speeds up golfers, not slows them down. He says that by the time players arrive at the greens they are already familiar with them and play quicker."Some of the older guys think, 'We already understand these greens. We don't need greens guides,' and all they see is people using books and it's a perception that they are actually playing slower," Stracka said. He believes golf should have a shot clock and allow players to do whatever they want before they play their ball, as long as it's done inside the time allotted. "My opinion on slow play is slow players are slow and fast players are fast. It doesn't really matter what type of technology they have."
Unfortunately, there some wisdom there, and w ejust might have to acknowledge that Ben Crane will be painfully slow for the remainder of his natural life expectancy. But let's take a moment and look at some graphics:
I'm reminded of Tiger and Stevie huddling over a pin sheet at The Old Course (can't remember if it was 2000 or 2005), marking each green for the location from which they wanted to be putting. How do we feel about this dropping into their inbox each morning?
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| The two left photos are maps of a green's slope, and on the right is Strackaline's app. |
We're in a bit of a bizarre moment, where Tour players can't use a rangefinder, but they can use this....
Stay tuned, this will get increasingly interesting.
Golf Sixes, Unplugged - Again, I've not seen any of it, but we did have a shot clock violation:
For the second consecutive week, a major pro golf tour is using a two-man team format. But unlike the PGA Tour's Zurich Classic, the European Tour's GolfSixes event features a shot clock. And it didn't take long for it to come into play.
In the second group of matches on Day 1 (each match is six holes), American Paul Peterson went over his allotted time to play a shot of 40 seconds. And one of his opponents, Bradley Dredge of Wales, noticed.
Dammit! Was it the East German judge? Most amusingly, he blames it on his caddie.... You'll want to click through to watch, mostly to see Bradley Dredge's reaction.... Yanno, Brad, it used to be a gentleman's game...
Also, you'll want to see the video of Team England's first tee introduction.... I can't make out the walkout music, but there's mascot chest bumping and smoke, all the more amusing because it includes the very tall Chris Wood and the not-at-all-tall Andy Sullivan.... Perhaps the funniest comment on this team is courtesy of Brian Wacker, for whom it evokes memories of a similar pair:
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