Tuesday Tastings

Lots to cover, so buckle up....

The Euro Scene - Martin "Golden" Slumbers has been out and about, with lots for us to digest, first on our most pressing existential issue:

“There’s no doubt in my mind that the technology has made this difficult game just a little bit easier,” Slumbers said. “At a time when we want more people to play the game,

I think that’s a good thing. But we do also think that golf is a game of skill and should be reflective of skill. If you look at the data, there has been a significant move up across all tours. We’re looking at the longest on-record average driving distance. Both of those have caused us and our colleagues at the USGA serious concern. 

“For a number of years there has been a slow creep upwards, but this is a little bit more than slow creep. It’s actually quite a big jump. Our 2002 joint statement of principles put a line in the sand. But when you look at this data we have probably crossed that line in the sand. A serious discussion is now needed on where we go.”

One man's slow creep is another man's....well, never mind.  But it's been creeping since forever, though I'm guessing that in the next distance report not even Michael Mann could "Hide the decline".

Shack takes these words to make the case for bifurcation, which in isolation makes sense.  But I'm struck by the extent to which Mike Davis, in his recent comments on the same subject, went out of his way to note that this isn't an issue only for the men's elite game.

In other news, the R&A confirmed that which everyone has known for years:

The R&A finally made official on Monday what everyone basically understood: the Open Championship will return to the Old Course at St. Andrews in 2021 as part of the celebration of the championship’s 150th playing. 

This breaks from the recent timing of Opens at St. Andrews, which had been occurring every five years starting in 1990. But the six-year gap from Zach Johnson’s triumph in 2015 until 2021 was only appropriate given the expected pomp and circumstance that will go with marking the Open’s historic anniversary.

Well, you don'y hold your 150th birthday every day....  This oughta put you in the mood:

When asked about a certain venue in Ayrshire, Slumbers was heard to mutter incoherently:

“Turnberry is a fantastic golf course and will be a great venue when we get there,” Slumbers said. “It would be very complex having an Open at Turnberry at the moment. You’ve got the ownership issue of the course and the staging there. But there are a number of other courses we haven’t been to for a few years and we are looking forward to going back to all of them. Turnberry remains one of the 10 courses, and it will considered every time that we come back to Scotland. What I can say is that because St. Andrews is such a magnetic place for people to come to, it is better to not play in Scotland the year after a St. Andrews Open. So we will be going to England in 2022.”

The ownership issue?  Whatever could he mean by that....  Shack notes that the earliest Turnberry could be awarded an Open Championship is 2023, though I'm not aware of 2022 having been awarded.  '23 would be in the third year of that ownership's second term....  Yeah, I just said that to make a few more heads explode.  Geoff may be assuming that by 2023 the drywall will be finished for the ladies' outdoor privy in Gullane.

As long as we're talking Open stuff, Shack had this great old photo a week ago:

That's the Great Triumvirate, with the estimable Ted Ray thrown in as well. 

Back To The Riv - You might have heard that The Striped One is back..... again.  Shack with some needed background, especially for me:

In nine starts with the swoosh emblazoned on his hat, Woods owns a 69.39 scoring 

Found this in my files, playing his first Tour event at age 16.

average at Riviera and came closest to a win in 1999. He trailed by two strokes heading in the final round and needed a birdie at the 18th to tie Ernie Els, but lost his approach right, where it hit the unfortunately placed cart path and ended up in a concession stand. 

That T-2 came a week after Woods closed with 62-65 to win down at Torrey Pines and a year after he lost in a playoff to Billy Mayfair when the tournament temporarily moved to Valencia Country Club. In the ensuing Riviera appearances, Woods struggled to make putts on Riviera’s bumpy poa annua greens. In 2006, caddie Steve Williams didn’t have an umbrella in the bag when a surprise rain struck Friday afternoon. Woods was already battling something, grew more sick overnight and withdrew the next morning.

I remember him struggling on the course, so happy to be corrected.....But apparently it wasn't the golf course:

As legend has it, and Woods confirmed to me in his own way last year, the entire thing was exacerbated by getting stuck in a brutal Friday night traffic jam heading to his lodging east of the course. Riviera never made it onto his schedule again.

Geoff shares some local knowledge of how to avoid that traffic, and also makes the case that the set-up will be much more to his liking.  The shorter rough for sure, unless he's suddenly finding fairways.

The Tour Confidential panel led with a couple of Tiger questions, no slight intended to ted Potter:

1. Tiger Woods will play the Genesis Open at Riviera this week in his second Tour start this year. Now that we've seen him finish in the middle of the pack in the Bahamas and T-23 at Torrey Pines, how have your expectations changed for Woods, and what should we expect from him this week in SoCal?

Michael Bamberger: A very difficult golf course for him, much harder than Torrey. If he drives it that poorly again, he'll have no chance of making the cut.

Jeff Ritter: Tiger's comeback is off to an encouraging start, but he hasn't played this event since '06. As Bamberger says, Woods won't be able to rely on guile and experience if his long game betrays him like it did at Torrey. I'd probably give him 50-50 odds to make the cut, but the most important thing is continued good health while slowly tightening his game.

Josh Sens: I'll lean on my same pre-Farmers Tiger assessment: he will hit enough good shots to give the optimists hope and enough poor ones to give the doubters cause for skepticism. But I agree with Bamberger. The same long game as Torrey and he'll be finished on Friday at Riviera. That sticky rough is a whole different animal. The Houdini act he pulled in San Diego will not work here.

Alan Shipnuck: What adds dramatic tension to all of this is that nobody knows how Tiger will play...not even Tiger. Should be fascinating to watch, yet again.

No real issues with their thoughts, and I especially liked the last two responses.  Though I'm surprised nobody noted that the sticky Kikuyu provides quite the test for his short game.  These will be the tightest lies he plays from until Augusta...

2. Woods has not revealed which events he intends to play beyond this week, though he is listed as a "maybe" on the early field list at the Valspar Invitational at Innisbrook. Where do you expect we'll see him compete next?

Ritter: Honda → Bay Hill → Augusta

Shipnuck: When is the Seminole Pro-Member?

Good one, Alan.  I'd actually love to se ehim play in something like that, but one assumes he'll stick to his habitual haunts....

Say It Ain't So, Ko -  Our Lydia's fall from grace has been rather dramatic...  What shall we call it, Duvalian?  Baker-Finchian?  So, good news?

Lydia Ko begins 2018 the same way she started last season – trying something new. The

14-time LPGA winner switched things up in the offseason, working with former playing professional Ted Oh in Phoenix, Ariz. The 20-year-old also has a new caddie on the bag at this week’s ISPS Handa Women’s Australian Open in veteran looper Jonny Scott, who most recently worked for Karrie Webb. This will be their first week together. 

Ko’s management team said “it’s just a normal transition and exploration that everyone does in their offseason. They’ve only been working together for one to two months. She is hoping to make a great result with them.”

I know I sound like a broken record, but it simply hasn't been the same since she ditched the glasses.

The Battle in Boca - Wow, this is quite the stretch....  My shortened wrap form yesterday didn't have time to accommodate Calc's round-belly win, but Mike Bamberger is building a bridge to nowhere:

BOCA RATON, Fla. – I like the Pebble Beach tournament, but late on Sunday afternoon, I had no earthly idea what was going on out there. I was here, in the warm, humid air of South Florida, at a senior event called (this year) the Boca Raton Championship. There were maybe a thousand of us on the scene and any sentient being had to be absorbed by the drama unfolding on a flat, pleasant track we walked, the Old Course at Broken Sound. The leader (Mark Calcavecchia) was leaking oil and the chaser (Bernhard Langer) was lighting matches. Yes, those two! Let's do the time warp again!

Mike, is this necessary?

At Kiawah in '91 — Ryder Cups were played in odd years before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — Calc shanked his tee shot into a pond on the par-3 17th in his match

against Colin Montgomerie. At the moment, any dry shot pretty much would have assured the U.S. a point it desperately needed. But Calc, who has always played emotional and sometimes frail golf, could not summon what he needed when he needed it. That's golf. That's all of us playing golf, though some more than others. 

Langer is on the other end of the spectrum. Then and now, and throughout his 40-year career, you have almost never seen him play emotionally wrought golf. What made the final moment of the '91 Ryder Cup so stunning, when Langer missed that five-footer on the final green in the final group, was his reaction to it, the deep, primal anguish. His miss meant the U.S. had won the Ryder Cup. Langer missed and Calc could breathe. Thank you, brother. They've been linked ever since.

They've spent 27 years trying to forget those moments, though that swing of Calc's is the worst you'll ever see a professional make.   I could see if they had been paired on that Sunday, but they weren't....

Back To Pebble - Did you notice anything strange on the 8th hole at Pebble this week?  Anyone.... Bueller?

I'm having trouble finding the picture I want, looking out from the tee box...  This is as close as I can come:

That sea of gold flowers has never been there before.... all week I waited for someone to tell me what and why they were, to no avail.

Now comes Shack with a rant and a priceless photoshop to help us understand the need for a master plan:

The latest addition to Pebble Beach demonstrates, in glaring fashion, the danger of not having a master plan or a genuine grasp of the architectural high-point of a course. The planting of South African gazanias on one of golf’s most beautiful locales needing no help suggests it is time for America’s national golfing treasure to commission a serious master plan. To not recognize the architectural and landscape malpractice suggests either too many or not enough cooks are in the Pebble Beach kitchen.

And that photo to which I alluded.... take a bow, Geoff:

Just perfect.

Let's give Geoff a few more pixels to make his case:

Taking a hard look at Pebble Beach’s design evolution and targeting the course at its peak would help the famed resort understand priorities in aesthetics, strategy and playability. There has been a sense that doing so would damage the grand story of amateurs Jack Neville andDouglas Grant, commissioned by Samuel Morse and concocting the masterpiece we know today. Their masterful routing will always be integral to the Pebble Beach story, however, design trends evolved over the decade following their effort and the course ultimately came together with touches from Herbert Fowler, Alister MacKenzie, and then most significantly, thanks to Chandler Egan and Robert Hunter's pre-1929 U.S. Amateur remodel. Egan reached the semi-finals of that amateur and is one of America's greatest amateur golfers. 

A study of that 1929 effort would show larger and more intricate green shapes and a better attempt at injecting a sense of naturalness on a magnificent site plagued in early days by geometric and unsightly features. The old images below validate the unique qualities of the 1929 version and while the current ownership of Pebble Beach has taken the resort from hard times to grand stewardship, the golf course vision has fallen behind the clarity they've shown in maintaining the overall Pebble Beach community. It's time for the resort to consider restoration professionals who can identify the best features, understand how the course has evolved, and steer Pebble Beach in a direction that best embodies the course at its peak. Given the importance of the course, perhaps even a bake-off style process open to many architects will provide even more clarity.

And Bobby Jones famously lost in the first round, allowing him time to go play Cypress Point.  A story for another day, perhaps.  Give it a full read if you enjoy architecture at all.

He Has My Vote - Boy, that Jordan Spieth-Bill Hurley campaign for the PGA Tour Player Advisory Council is getting quite dirty.  I mean, politics ain't beanbag, but still.   You'll want to click through and watch Hurley's campaign ad, but he's sold me on the fact that Jordan Spieth is not one of us.

Nothing says "Dictator" like grainy black-and-white footage....