Thursday Thoughts

A little bit of a delay getting started, so without further ado....

Doubling Down - The Tour has its eye on those nine guys in robes, and is prepared to seize the day:

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. – The PGA Tour will support regulated gambling on its competitions if the Supreme Court overturns a federal ban on betting. 

Earlier this season the Tour began an integrity program that players had to complete and has been working with a firm, Genius Sports, to monitor betting on tournaments and players. 

“Over the last year and a half we worked on developing an integrity policy,” said Andy Levinson, the PGA Tour’s senior vice president of tournament administration. “That policy was put in place to educate all of our constituents in the world of sports betting and the potential for corruption that might exist and to put in place a set of rules and regulations that clearly defines someone’s responsibilities if they have direct access to our competition.” 

Levinson explained that the Tour has been working with the NBA and Major League Baseball to assure that the types of betting that might be allowed protect the customer as well as the integrity of the competition.

That's a lot of words to describe a very simple concept:

Specifically, Levinson said the Tour would want to avoid bets that focus on a negative outcome, such as a player missing a fairway or a green or making a specific score.

Good luck with that, guys....  I'd always been told that every golf shot makes someone happy....

Shack pithily identifies the connective tissue:

I have almost no concern about the players. But fans encouraged to Live Under Par and who might have a wager on the competition? Baba booey!

I think the context was more appropriated for a "Mashed Potatoes", but every week might look like Phoenix....

Live Under Par, The Day After - The suits at Ponte Vedra beach don't spend much time with normal people, those that are familiar with how people speak.  Here are a couple of response that apparently didn't come up in the focus groups:

Not just in the UK, and they wer paid handsomely, Lee.  But what were they to do when No Laying Up was already taken?

And here's an actual writer addressing the useage:

But Lorne, I was reliably informed that it was the same inside and outside the ropes....  Were they just playing me?

This marketing campaign will be measured in hours...  and, of course, in the millions of dollars.

News You'll Never Use - I wish that we all had a way to apply these lessons, but never gonna happen.  Newbie Dylan Dethier is now the most hated man in the media, having won the lottery in his first go and playing the course on Monday.  Lots of fun insights, including this:

7. There are lots of scary shots. Here are the five scariest, ranked

5. Opening tee shot. Just make contact. I ended up right — though not quite Rory right — but thousands of fans and millions of dollars at stake may have pressured me into

something far worse. 

4. Approach on 3. There’s nowhere to land it! 

3. Approach on 11. Even with a flip wedge, I’ve been trained through years of Masters online streaming to fear everything about this hole. 

2. Wedge on 15. Downhill lie, water short, trouble long, plenty of recent visual evidence from our defending Masters champion as to how this could go wrong. 

1. Tee shot on 12. I was determined to fire dead at this pin until halfway through my swing, when I could hear the taunts of colleague Sean Zak telling me I was going to go “full Spieth” and chunk a couple into the water. I settled for a pull hook that soared over the green — but stayed dry.

Give the young man a click, if only to intensify your hatred.

And, a kind of reprise to the Golf Digest bit with putting amateurs on U.S. Open courses, Alan Bastable muses his way through this thought process:

What would an average Joe shoot at Augusta National? An investigation

Spoiler Alert: Many.

Alan in Full -  The mailbag is upon us, with some good follow up from you know what....

Why ask a personal question about Reed's parents and sister at the Masters presser when you have already written an article where he has stated he won't comment? Anything changed since your 2015 article or was it to get a response on a bigger stage? — @ckrishna 

As you can imagine, I got a lot of questions about my Reed story, so I broke it all down for you here in what is essentially "The story of my story."

Lots of passive-aggressiveness in their for a Krishna devotee... Fair enough that he references his tell-all, though he does dig a little deeper with this:

How should I/we feel about Reed's win? #AskAlan — Matt (@PurdueMatt05)

It's complicated, man. You can't understate what a macho performance that was. Rory McIlroy has long been every internet fanboy's favorite player but Reed utterly emasculated him during the final round. Throw in the 2016 Ryder Cup and Reed now has a timeshare in Rory's head. He's younger than Fowler but has more wins, and Reed now owns as many major championships as Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas, Brooks Koepka, Jason Day and other more celebrated contemporaries. He's a better Ryder Cupper than Tiger or Phil could ever dream of being. It's going to be fascinating to see where he goes from here as a player. I can't wait to watch. 

Various point-missers on Twitter have accused me of having some kind of vendetta against Reed, but that's poppycock. Until Sunday night, I've always found him to be cordial, if a little distant. I love his cocky muttered asides in press conferences and his rascally grin. But he and his wife have always projected a standoffish vibe, not only with reporters but pretty much the entire Tour community. It's like they're always in a defensive crouch, waiting for someone to say something about Patrick's checkered past. Now that the story is out there in such a public way, hopefully they'll find a way to move past it – maybe a Players Tribune essay, or perhaps a tearful chat with Tom Rinaldi. Tiger, for all of his flaws, has always taken ownership of his mistakes. Bubba Watson has, too. That has allowed them to move on and the rest of us to enjoy watching them play the game. I hope Reed can similarly make peace with his past. Golf is undeniably more interesting with him as a keynote player. I look forward to him winning more big tournaments, and hopefully I can ask him in the champion's press conference how good it feels to be on top of the world.

I completely agree with the first graph, though I think Rory's collapse is best viewed with Patrick out of the frame.  Maybe Patrick owns him, but that's still an awfully small sample size....  I'm most impressed with the fact that he grabbed the lead and hung onto it for three full days...

But setting aside whether Alan has it in for Patrick, I'm most amused by his obvious lack of respect for Tom Rinaldi...Harsh, man!

But it's a very tough, appropriate I think, portrait of Reed and his posse.  It's not just the cheating, where like Vijay he just pretends it never happened, but at every stop he alienated those around him.  To some extent Vijay made it work for the long term, but I wonder about Reed's shelf life.  I also wonder if the penchant for grievances doesn't inevitably turn towards those in the inner circle.

 Alan's got other musings as well:

Is Jordan's recent run at Augusta (constantly near the lead) more impressive or disappointing ("only" one jacket to show for it)? #askAlan — @ShoshEAK 

I had already been thinking about this. Spieth is clearly a generational talent, and Augusta National is where he is most able to express his gifts, so it makes sense to

compare him to the greatest Masters champions of all time. Both Nicklaus and Woods had similar runs in their early 20s. From 1963-66 Big Jack had three victories and a runner-up finish, which, if you think about it, will make your face melt. From 1997-2002, or what we could call the Butch Years, Tiger won three out of six Masters while having two other good chances. Arnold Palmer won his first Masters in 1958 and took three more in the next six years, also mixing in a tie for second and a third. So clearly Spieth's .200 batting average is well below these historic benchmarks, and worse still is the scar tissue accumulated in the losses. Beyond the epic collapse in 2016, he led by two strokes late on the front nine in '14 before getting run over by Bubba Watson, and as electric as his play was on Sunday he's going to be thinking about those missed putts on 13 and 18 for a very long time. 

The near-misses are also costly because the Masters is generally a young man's game — it's best to putt those crazy greens before the nerve endings get too fried. In one of golf's great stats, Nicklaus went the entire 1970s without finishing outside of the top eight at the Masters — but he won only twice. Woods didn't contend in 2003 and '04, the beginning of the Hank Haney years, but from ‘05-09 he had five prime chances to win but collected only one more jacket. 

So, to answer the question, Spieth having only one victory has to be considered a little disappointing. I expect he'll win more, but it doesn't get any easier from here.

If The Masters is a young man's game, why does your buddy Bamberger keep picking Langer?  Fun query and subject....  I think he makes a great point about the scar tissue, which might have reared it's ugly head on the 18th tee.  But the comparisons to Nicklaus and others ignore, I think, that Jordan's run started at the embryonic stage of his career...  The loss to Bubba in '14 was a nothing burger, because he shouldn't have yet been in the mix....  

This depresses me more than anything:

Will Fred Ridley be the chairman to make bold changes to the course and return it closer to the original intent in design and strategy? — Jeff (@GolfInPebble) 

Ridley is the answer to a trivia question: who is the last U.S. Amateur champ not to turn pro? He played in the Masters in the 1970s, when ANGC was a wide-open canvas that encouraged artistic impression. Ridley is a student of golf course architecture, unlike his clueless predecessor Billy Payne, who didn't know that Bobby Jones's and Alister MacKenzie's genius idea for Augusta National was to bring the shot values of the Old Course to a parkland setting. Ridley sees the course through the eyes of an elite player. He reveres Jones, having become a gentleman lawyer like his hero. So I would say that Ridley is our last, best shot to return the width and angles of the old Augusta National by chopping down trees and losing the rough. Here's hoping, anyway.

 Here's hoping, anyway!

How distraught are you about Rory's performance on Sunday? — T.J. (@TheRealTdotJ) 

Very. He looked so lost and helpless out there. From 150 yards and in Reed is much more 

proficient, so McIlroy's only hope to run him down on Sunday was to overpower the golf course and get in his opponent's head. Instead, on the first hole, he hit literally the worst drive I've seen in McIlroy's career. It was a telling moment. But the ensuing par save was stout, and two jaw-dropping shots on the second hole put him in position to erase Reed's lead and send roars cascading through the pines. Instead, Rory yipped the little itty-bitty eagle putt and just like that he was toast. Following the third round I wrote about his travails at Augusta National, so peruse that story if you want the gory details about his past meltdowns and the haunting reflection of fellow greats Norman, Miller and Els, all of whom should've won a green jacket but never did. After this brutal debacle, it's impossible not to fear that McIlroy is headed for the same fate.

Here's a better question, how distraught is Rory?  Enough to actually do something about the obvious weaknesses in his game?

Does Rickie win a major in the near future? If so, when? #AskAlan — @brianros1 

I've been saying for a while that Fowler is the best player in the world in a casual game. He holds a bunch of course records, in South Florida and beyond, and is a legend in the Tour's Tuesday practice rounds. There's nothing he can't do to a golf ball. Obviously he's been getting in his own way at the majors, and even when trying to win lesser Tour events. I think this weekend at the Masters was massive for him: 65-67 while going toe-to-toe with the best players of his generation, and unlike Spieth, Rickie gutted a do-or-die putt on the 72nd hole. I fancy his chances at Shinnecock and Carnoustie, two stout tests that demand a strong all-around game.

He does seem to be getting closer, but it's also not getting any easier to win out there...

If you were a pro-ready female amateur would you hold off on going pro in order to play at the new tourney at ANGC next spring? (Asking for Wake Forest, which has two pro-ready elite female amateurs...) — Todd (@tamcfall)

Of course! It's going to be one of the most buzzed-about events the women's game has ever seen, with a global audience tuning in. What better way to launch a pro career than win that first?

I do think the first one will have buzz, but I also think it will be boring watching the ladies play the golf course.  I know, haters gonna hate, but they'll be laying up on all the Par-5's, so where's the drama.  Good move by the club, especially embracing an amateur event.

Before we go, it's Harbor Town week, a nice little vent that seems to work the week after.  Shack posted this great photo of our King, with the lighthouse under construction:

Go do something productive.