Weekend Wrap - Yule Log Edition

Just a few quick items to remind folks to check back here every now and again...

Como Estas? - One piece of actual news broke over the weekend:

Tiger Woods announced Friday he is parting ways with swing coach Chris Como. The two have been working together since 2014, most recently re-tooling his swing after a

fourth back surgery prior to the Hero World Challenge. 

“Since my fusion surgery I have been working hard to relearn my own body and golf swing,” Woods said on Twitter. “I’ve done this by primarily relying on my feel and previous years of hard work with Chris. For now, I think it’s best for me to continue to do this on my own. I’m grateful to Chris Como for his past work, and I have nothing but respect for him.

No valuable parting gifts?   Tiger has always seemed a bit over-reliant on swing coaches, so I'd expect there to be a replacement announced in the near term.  And am I wrong to remember him using the "Go it alone" line in one of his previous divorces?  

They convened a slimmed-down Tour Confidential panel on Christmas Eve, and they pondered the greater significance (on a 1-10 scale) of it all:

Jeff Ritter: A little surprised, but Woods tends to cycle through instructors every 3-4 years. I'd say for now the significance rates a solid 1 out of 10. Woods has had as many lessons as anyone and should have a good idea of how to manage his swing. I think eventually he'll start up with another teacher, and the right match can potentially help him considerably. (A potential 10 out of 10!) But for now, it's all about health and range time.

Josh Sens: Agreed on the significance ranking, Jeff. It's hard to get too worked up about

this. Tiger has shown the impulse to go it alone before. Nothing surprising here. If it says anything noteworthy, it's that Tiger is feeling physically healthy enough that he doesn't feel he needs help working around his injury, which is a part of what Como was doing with him. He'll start working with someone else before long, though. He has now gone through as many instructors in his Tour career as he has back surgeries. 

Joe Passov: Yes, I was surprised by the split. Certainly the partnership of Tiger Woods and Chris Como was star-crossed early and often, hamstrung by Woods's never-ending injury battles. Yet, it also made sense (to me, anyway), that a newly pain-free Woods might now be able to practice what Como has been preaching. By the same token, now that Woods is feeling good, perhaps the operative word is "feel." Let Tiger regain that long-lost feel, and dump the over-reliance on process and mechanics and I'm betting we'll see the old Tiger again. Significance is a 5, impact more like a 2.

Michael Bamberger: Is zero an option? Zero. Chris Como is by all accounts a fine teacher and person, but I cannot see Tiger really trusting any teacher after Butch Harmon. He had an intense and successful relationship with Hank Haney, but if you read Haney closely and look at the swings closely the whole of it looks like one big, effective band-aid to produce winning scores from a body that was in the process of falling apart. I could actually see Tiger going back to Harmon now. Time to let bygones go.

Sheesh, Mike, hasn't that fantasy long since reached its sell-by date?  Tiger doesn't do bygones....

Predictions Are Hard -  No doubt you're onto my trick of lengthy excerpts to allow others to do the heavy lifting.  The TC gang was asked for 2018 predictions:

Ritter: As loyal GOLF.com readers undoubtedly know, some of us went deep on this topic in our most recent podcast. My pick: Jordan Spieth wins the PGA at Bellerive to polish off the career grand slam. This prediction's boldness was debated, but closing a slam is no bargain — just ask Phil and Rory. I think Spieth gets it done sooner rather than later. 

Sens: Tiger gets through the entire season without significant injury but doesn't sniff the winner's circle. There are heebie-jeebies in that short game. You don't win with those, and those don't just go away. Oh, and Xander Schauffele wins the Masters. 

Passov: Josh, you just like spelling out (and probably pronouncing) "Xander Schauffele." Not a bad pick though! I think Tiger wins twice, and I see Arnold Palmer's grandson, Sam Saunders, fresh off a T2 at the Web.com Tour Championship, scoring a hugely popular victory at Bay Hill in March. Jon Rahm, after a breakthrough 2017, becomes the Justin Thomas of 2018 — five wins and a major. 

Bamberger: Davis Love III, with a new hip and at age 54, wins a Tour event.

Mike, exactly how much eggnog have you had?

Jeff has me depressed merely by reminding me that the PGA is at Bellerive....  maybe another August trip this year?

But Josh will have the Tiger fans gnashing teeth and rending garments...  

They were next asked for breakout stars:

Ritter: After losing the better part of three years to a back injury, last year Patrick Cantlay finally got healthy and ripped off four top 10s in 13 starts, made it to East Lake and then won the Shriners in November. He had an elite amateur career that included winning the Haskins award as the nation's top collegian in 2011, so the pedigree is there. Look out. 

Sens: Peter Uihlein didn't bolt onto Tour like so many of us expected after he won the 2010 U.S. Amateur. He's taken a longer route, but he's got his card for 2018 and some vital experience on the European Tour under his belt. I like him to make a lot of waves this year. 

Passov: I've been on the Cantlay bandwagon for a good while, just because his feel-good story makes him so easy to root for. However, I'm returning to my pick from last year in this category, veteran Englishman Paul Casey. He managed to finish fifth in 2017 PGA Tour average over 90 rounds — ahead of DJ, Jon Rahm and Hideki Matsuyama, among others — but never did win, due in part to some mediocre final rounds. He's already started the new season with a T7, T11 and T19. Look for Casey to soar this year. 

Bamberger: I'm going with Patrick Reed, by which I mean he wins a major, another event, and contends in some others.

Can't argue with Cantlay, especially with the feel-good aspect in spades.... 

However, as with Joe's mention of Sam Saunders above, I'm guessing that Peter Uihlein has been toiling long enough that we can conclude that's he's just not that good.

But Mikey Bams is disqualified for choosing a player that clearly wouldn't qualify after numerous Ryder and Prez Cup appearances.  Though, to be fair, it really is an important year for the jowly one....

Click through if you want to read about guys wishing Tiger a healthy year, though this to me is the more interesting:

5. Of course, Santa has a naughty list, too. Which figure from the golf world is most deserving of a lump of coal in his or her stocking?

Ritter: What became of those Massachusetts high school officials who denied Emily Nash a trophy and a spot in the state championship after she beat a field of boys by four shots? I know Nash received a different kind of award but those behind the original decision will receive no sympathy trophy from me. 

Sens: An easy answer is Grayson Murray for all the embarrassing tweets, but that feels like piling on, because I'm sure there's already plenty of coal in that stocking already. 

Passov: I'm hoping I won't jeopardize future visa opportunities here, but one lump from me for Xi Jinping, the leader of China. His ardent anti-golf sentiments have helped derail the growth of the game in his country during a time (of Olympics fervor) when it should be booming. His edicts have stopped new courses from being built, closed down existing layouts and impeded coaching and junior training. We were all hoping, perhaps naively, that China would lead the next wave of development in the 21st century. Instead, they've gone the other direction.

Bamberger: In the spirit of the season, I extend coal lumps to no one and good tidings to with the fervent wish that in the new year we will all hit our sweet spots with more regularity.

Joe, what part of "in the golf world" don't you get? 

His Year in Golf - Golfweek has a fun spin on their year-in-review pieces, with their writers each penning a "My year in golf" item of personal reflections on the iconic moments of the year for them.  Gearhead Dave Dusek's is worth a few moments:

Scotty Cameron can’t walk down the wide aisles at the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, Fla. If he did, he would attract crowds of Cameron Crazies demanding

autographs, selfies and “just one minute” of the putter maker’s time. 

To accommodate people, Cameron sets aside blocks of time every year at Titleist’s booth to talk with people, sign things and take pictures. The lines get long fast and never seem to shorten, but when Cameron needed a 10-minute break, he winked at me, tipped his head toward a backdoor in the booth and we discreetly escaped the crowd. 

We wound up talking about American muscle cars, his retail gallery in Encinitas, Calif., and the growing trend of pros switching to mallet putters for about 20 minutes. 

As we talked, Cameron pulled out the silver Sharpie he had been using to sign head covers and notecards and began sketching a Studio Newport putter on top of a black table. He explained to me that he took that shape, extended the back and rounded it to make the Newport Mallet 1. Then he applied the same principle again, pulled the back even further away from the face and basically created the Futura 5W. 

I bet he could have sold that table for a few hundred dollars to someone waiting in that line.

Interesting stuff.

The Key Word is Long -  Golf Digest has a wonderful collection of their favorite Golf World longform pieces from the year, including this Jaime Diaz feature that I missed:

Why is it so hard to make a good golf movie?

The movie “Tommy’s Honour,” based on the relationship between Old and Young Tom

Morris that premiered last week, has been mostly well received. Splitting the difference between a dismissive take in the New York Times (in which the opening words are “redolent of damp wool and dour personalities”) with a couple of glowing ones, the emerging consensus is of an earnest and beautiful cinematic effort that might be a tad slow.

A tad?  Jaime makes a number of interesting points, though ultimately I think he's grasping at air:

Golf movies have it especially tough. They raise a red flag commercially, which is why there have been so few of them and why getting them made can be such an ordeal. The conventional wisdom is that even the best backstory will be hampered by the weight of a game that to the general audience is arcane and lacks much action. As the director of “Tommy’s Honour,” Jason Connery (son of Sean), told Golf Digest’s Max Adler in February, “The big mistake is to make a film about the game, when it’s so much more interesting to make it about the people who play the game.”

Perhaps, but the people are only interesting because of their role in the development of our game.

And I think he's way over-invested in the qualities of the film golf swings:

Because a good golf swing is such a sublime thing—and a bad one is painful to watch on 

the big screen—golf movies walk a tight rope when it comes to authenticity. A flowing, battle-tested action is impossible to fake. Matt Damon couldn’t do it in “The Legend of Bagger Vance,” and Jim Caviezel failed in “Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius.” Kevin Costner worked very hard with instructors in preparation for “Tin Cup,” but ultimately all the skills he brought to giving Roy McAvoy the external swag of the gifted was undone by a swing that was studied and stiff. 

Not that a good swing alone is enough to make a golf movie work. Jeremy Sumpter, the lead in “The Squeeze,” has the repetitive, well-timed move of the plus handicap he is, but that authenticity couldn’t overcome a story that was too thin. In “Seven Days In Utopia,” Lucas Black truly looked like a player, but the movie, even with Robert Duvall in a key role, got too weighed down in homilies.

After a digression into the use of humor in the best sports movies (Slapstick, Major League, etc.) he then offers up his take on the best golf movie ever:

But so far, capturing the correct blend of authentic action and soul in a golf movie has proved elusive. The closest all-around try at a great golf movie is “The Greatest Game Ever Played.” Shia LaBeouf as Francis Ouimet did a good job with the swing, and the family dynamic was even more compelling than in “Tommy’s Honour.” The director, the late Bill Paxton, didn’t play, but he grew up in a family of golfers and hung around Shady Oaks when Ben Hogan practiced there and understood Hogan’s legend. 

Paxton got the best depiction ever of a professional golfer on film from actor Stephen Dillane, who played a Harry Vardon, bringing out the supreme outer control and inner desperation that the English icon displayed in late career. “You’re going to be Alan Ladd in ‘Shane,’ ” Paxton said he told Dillane in recruiting him for the role, evoking one of the screen’s most multi-layered heroes.

I don't disagree with his nominee, though I do think he's off the mark a bit.

There's an old adage about sports, that the smaller the ball, the better the writing.  Think golf and baseball, versus basketball and football....  The challenges of our game are terribly subtle, often contained in the five inches between our ears. (with apologies to Bobby Jones).  It makes complete sense to me that the written page is better suited for an examination of our game, than the large screen.

Further, it obvious to me why the Ouimet story makes a better movie than Tommy's Honor.  In fact, I think Jason Connery and his backers were quite misguided in producing their film.  I say with love, but the book was about the grand arc of Old Tom Morris' life, a horribly tragic life in which he buried his entire family.  That tragic arc coincided with significant developments in our game, for many of which Old Tom was the guiding force.  The book has a small but dedicated target market.... who was the movie for?  Golfers would be bored by the slow-moving love story, whereas the general public has no reason to invest in this tweedy story.

And it's easy to see why the Greatest Game would make a better movie...  At its core its about one amazingly unexpected event, still the greatest upset in golf history.  It's also got nationalistic overtones in the nascent American embrace of golf, us vs. them is always easy to convey.  In fact, isn't that the basis of pretty much every great sports movie, think Hoosiers and Breaking Away.

That said, each and every one of you should read the book if you haven't done so already.

Chicago On My Mind - The USGA has created a senior women's open and they're taking it to historic Chicago Golf Club.  The USGA has posted this interesting backgrounder on the joint, including much that this writer didn't know:

To escape the chaotic aftermath of the Great Chicago Fire in 1872, Macdonald’s parents sent him to Scotland at age 17 to live with his grandfather and attend the University of 

The 8th hole in 1910.

St. Andrews. The day after his arrival, Macdonald’s grandfather took him to meet Old Tom Morris, who provided the teenager with a few clubs and a locker in his shop. Over the next two years, Macdonald spent numerous hours on the St. Andrews links and developed his golf skills to a level where he could compete with the best golfers of St. Andrews, including Young Tom Morris. 

His two-year education in St. Andrews would not only prepare him for a highly successful business career, but also instill in Macdonald a passion to transport the game he called “Scotland’s Gift” from the sandy dunes of St. Andrews to the fertile prairies of Chicago.

Who knew that Mrs. O'Leary's cow resulted in The National Golf Links and the rest of Macdonald's contribution to the game.

 This was also new to me, though very much consistent with the man's abrasive character:

Macdonald moved to New York in 1900 and following the formal opening of his renowned National Golf Links of America on Long Island in 1911, it became clear the 

A spitting image of the 16th at Sleepy Hollow.

course in Wheaton would soon need to be updated and modernized along modern, scientific design principles. 

In a characteristically blunt letter to the club in 1917, Macdonald wrote, “I have long wondered when the intelligence of the Chicago Golf Club would realize that theirs is one of the worst courses in the country as compared with its former position. Nearly every change that has been made at the Chicago Golf Club has been for the worse and not for the better… You have got to scrap your golf course… I have today in mind the suggestions Jim Whigham and I made some years ago, and I have in mind now how I would alter the course if I were a committee of one to do it.” 

Macdonald convinced the club to engage his longtime associate, the brilliant engineer Seth Raynor, to finalize a plan based on his and Whigham’s ideas. Raynor, a studious Princeton grad, didn’t know “a golf ball from a tennis ball,” but was soon Macdonald’s indispensable right-hand man. Remarkably, Raynor would soon go on to design world class courses on his own despite never having played golf himself.

No word on whether there will be television coverage.... 

Merry Christmas to all.