Midweek Musings

Time is of the essence, so we'll muse over a couple of items, then let you get on with your day...

Roll Tide - The girls from Tuscaloosa looked unbeatable:

Potter had reason to be proud of his squad on Tuesday when the Crimson Tide took out Kent State in the quarterfinals, 4-1, and then beat USC in the semifinals, 3-1-1. Gillman,

Knight and Stevenson all won both of their matches, setting up stout lineup. 

“This is the best team I've ever had, front to back,” Potter said. “We have a lot of depth this year. Lakareber [Abe] is an all-American before she got injured her sophomore year, and Angelica [Moresco] in our fifth spot has meant a lot to us, has been someone we can depend on for her rounds, especially toward the end of the year. [Gillman, Knight and Stephenson] playing the way they do, we just get more one good score, and we're a really good team.”

Just playin' ya there, as everyone looks unbeatable until, you know, they get beat.  Their opponent in the finals shouldn't even be there:

But their opponents on Wednesday, Arizona, didn’t just stumble upon Stillwater, Okla., and ask if there was an extra spot in the field. The Wildcats came in ranked ninth in the country, having won twice this spring and finishing no worse than fourth in their seven starts. And while they needed an eagle on the 72nd hole of stroke play from Bianca Pagdanganan to get into a playoff for the eighth and final match-play spot, that took advantage of the opportunity, beating Baylor to advance to the main bracket. Then on Tuesday, they ignored the fact they were underdogs to a pair of Pac-12 rivals, UCLA in the quarterfinals and Stanford in the semifinals, knocking both squads off to earn a chance at the school’s third NCAA title, but first since 2000. 

Maybe the rest of the golf world perceives the Wildcats as a Cinderella story, but not coach Laura Ianello and her fivesome of Pagdanganan, Haley Moore, Gigi Stoll, Yu-Sang Hou and Sandra Nordaas.

Alas, I'll be playing an inter-club match while this is airing, though perhaps we'll use the DVR to provide evening viewing options.

As for that cumbersome shotgun playoff, well that might have been utilized in error:

What should have been used here to decide the eighth and final match-play team is the format we are used to seeing when two teams are required to break a tie. In that format, three players from Arizona would be paired with two players from Baylor in the first group. The remaining players from both teams would be sent off in the next group, creating two fivesomes that would play the same hole with the low four scores counting.

Baylor coach Jay Goble, along with other coaches in the field, had been sent an e-mail Monday morning describing what would take place if a team tie occurred. It described the shotgun format, which was not the designated for a two-team tie in past years. 

“I did not look at it,” Goble said. “I honestly thought, ‘Why did they send that?’ I was expecting it to be the old-school way.” 

Arizona coach Laura Ianello did read the e-mail.  

“I thought it was odd, but you just do what you are told here,” she said.

I didn't realize that the USGA was running the NCAA's....Shall we give these nice folks a mulligan?

Shack v. Van Cynical -  Gary Van Sickle has been found alive and well at Morning Read, though perhaps not all that well after a Shack Attack:

Take away the PGA Tour connection, however, and this project got the same things

wrong that developers and architects have gotten wrong for the past 30 years, which has pushed golf perilously closer to endangered-species status.

Golf’s decline – the apologists will try to tell you that the game is just fine, but it’s not – is based on three issues: Golf takes too long to play, costs too much and is too difficult. 

Golf needs low-maintenance, fast-play golf courses. Trinity Forest is a high-maintenance, slow-play golf course. Did you see some of those massive bunkers? An amateur could spend five minutes raking his or her way out of the trap. 

Greens are the most expensive parts of a golf course to maintain, and Trinity Forest has gigantic greens. One double green is 35,000 square feet. Pebble Beach’s front-nine greens would almost fit in that corral.

Gary, you ignorant slut.... Here's Geoff's rebuttal:

The concept is generally perpetrated by the tin siding-salesman masquerading as golf architects who sometimes plaid jackets and would just as soon be selling you a policy as they would be in designing interesting, affordable golf holes. They also don't really like the minimalist movement for a variety of reasons, from general point missing to just wanting to sell projects on goods and services they don't need. 

Born out of this have been derogatory whisper campaigns about the perils of going minimalist, including the contradictory notion that bunkers maintained as rough hazards take more time and money to present than those edged weekly and raked daily.

OK, he doesn't actually call Gary an aluminum siding salesman, but he does deride the concept.....  Including some actual data:

Reviewing my notes from an interview with superintendent Kasey Kauff, he noted Trinity's full staff for the course is a very normal 24, including assistants and technicians. 

Fairways are cut twice a week while bunkers are raked at the same rate (with touch ups). The greens are mown just five days a week in peak season, once or twice a week in the winter.

Thanks to the slow-growing zoysia and lean watering program, bunkers are rarely edged. Fertilization is at half the rate of a Bermuda grass golf course. Half.

As for slow play, maintenance and design are not to blame for threesomes in a full field PGA Tour event not getting around in a timely manner. When today's players can reach all par-5s in two and at least one par-4 in one, that's a distance discussion and sometimes a green speed discussion. Trinity Forest's greens were at a modest 10.5 on the Stimpmeter.

Gary further denudes his arguments by including red herrings such as forward tees and forced carries, the latter of which there are exactly zero at Trinity Forest.

His basic beef seems to be with pace of play on Tour, which one assumes was even more dreadful at:

1.  A venue the players had never seen before, and;
2. One that offered options of aerial vs. the ground game.

These Guys Are Good Deliberate!

These Guys Are... Gone - This might be a bit of a reach, but bear with me for a moment.  We've been having good fun with the Tour's new slogan, the off-putting, tone-deaf Live Under Par™.  No doubt that part of the disconnect is that the discarded These Guys Are Good™ was so pitch perfect.  Because, simply, they are so very good at something to which we all aspire...

Now comes this:

The PGA Tour's relationship with video-game mega giant EA Sports dates back to 1990, with the hugely popular Tiger Woods franchise debuting in 1999, drawing millions into

golf's video-game universe. It appears that partnership has now ended, at least for the time being.

The tour announced on Monday an agreement with lesser-known developer HB Studios to produce the tour's licensed video game starting in 2019. The game will be called "The Golf Club 2019," keeping the name from the developer's previous golf game "The Golf Club," which included the ability to design your own golf courses.

No doubt the decision to move from Big Cat branding to Rory, as his career went walkabout, could not have been helpful....  But this is where the move starts sounding curious

"The Golf Club 2019" game will be available in August on Playstation 4, XBOX One and on PCs and will feature a career mode, allowing players to go through the path to the PGA Tour—from Q-School, to the Web.com Tour, a 32-tournament season on the PGA Tour, and if you make it—the FedEx Cup playoffs. According to the release, only TPC-sanctioned courses are available to play in the game, which include TPC Sawgrass' Players Stadium course, TPC Scottsdale (Stadium), TPC Boston, TPC Southwind, TPC Deere Run and TPC Summerlin. It appears that this deal does not include being able to use the likeness of players, which previous EA Sports games included, enabling users to play with some of the tour's best players, including Tiger Woods, obviously.

OMG!  The FedEx Cup Playoffs.... 

Who among us thinks that grinding through Web.com events is as good a hook as playing against DJ, JT and Jordan?   The powers that be seem clueless as to the assets they control, and seem determined to try our patience at every turn.... But here's a clue for you mental midgets, nothing matters much except for the players.  In case you haven't noticed, they're awfully good and also quite likable.... here's a crazy thought...How about using them to promote the Tour?

What Could Go Wrong? - I fear for the octopus with this announcement:

Billy Horschel has always loved making a splash when it comes to his on-course apparel (who could forget those daring octopus pants from the 2013 U.S. Open?) — but the 2014 FedEx Cup champion is actually quite serious about his style. So serious, in fact, that the longtime Ralph Lauren ambassador is launching his own capsule collection this summer: RLX x Billy Horschel Collection — an especially notable achievement, since it's the first time Ralph Lauren has ever collaborated with anyone. 

"When I think about the people who have worn Ralph Lauren, whether it's golf or regular fashion — from actors, athletes, celebrities, anybody — to be the first one out of all those people to collaborate with Ralph Lauren...it's humbling," Horschel said at the collection's launch event in New York City. "When they called me last summer to talk about this, I was shocked. I was speechless, and that doesn't happen very often. It's been a truly awesome experience to have a line with my name and logo on it next to Ralph's."

Well, the solids look OK.... 

That ends the regularly scheduled broadcast for today, but on the way out I'll leave you with this way cool beverage cart serving the new short course at Pinehurst:

See you tomorrow.