Thursday Threads

Balls are in the air at Ponte Vedra Beach...  Also likely that there are a few in the water already.

Predictions Are Hard - Especially the ones about future events, but the Golf Magazine guys give us their winners and longshots:

Michael Bamberger: Alex Noren: a shot-maker, on a shot-makers course, and one of the best players in the world. A future Ryder Cupper you should get to know. An intense and 

interesting guy. Sleeper: Alex Noren. It's not exactly like his name is dominating your grill-room chats, is it? He's Swedish, by the way.

OK...Of course he's no Craig Perks, but there are crazier picks.

This guy is like Wally and his Belgians: 

Alan Bastable: Michael's right. A Swede will win this week, although he picked the wrong one. Henrik Stenson is the obvious choice. Did you know he's leading the Tour this season both in driving accuracy and greens in reg percentage? Both those skills will serve him well at treacherous Sawgrass. (Bonus points if you also remembered he T-5'ed at the Masters.) Sleeper: Alex Noren.

I guess he missed that Pete Cowan item in which Henrik's coach noted that  "our" focus could be better.  And I don't know what this guy is toking, but he better have brought enough to go around:

Sean Zak: Winner: Emiliano Grillo. Yep, while you guys want to stick with your top 10 chalk picks, I'm going with Grillo. After struggling last year, he's dialed his game back in again. Grillo is putting as well as he has for his entire career and has always been a great ball-striker. Will he win? Who knows. But when he does, be sure to tweet about my prophesy. Sleeper: Adam Hadwin. He's notched six straight top-25 finishes. It's very easy to expect a solid performance from him, the new age Matt Kuchar. With anything decent he'll rise into the top 40 in the World Golf Ranking for the first time in his career.

The Grillo Pad?  Good luck with that one...

Dylan Dethier takes on the concept of Super Groups.  Hey, Cream and Blind Faith were totally worth it....  What?  Oh, that's very different....  I get it, he means things like the Tiger-Phil-Rickie thing, though I think this is a misfire:

As a result, this week will feel like a letdown if the winner doesn't come from the only-one-name-needed crew of Tour stars (DJ, JT, Jordan, Rickie, Rory, Tiger, Phil). Six of those seven players are in the featured groups, while the rest of the household names are packed into a few more groups, including these pairings: Patrick Reed, Jon Rahm and Hideki Matsuyama; Jason Day, Henrik Stenson and Sergio Garcia; Bubba Watson, Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka. Featured groups exacerbate the sense that there is a main event and an undercard, when, in fact, these guys are all playing the same tournament.

I just don't think that's right...  This is obviously an attempt to inject life into Thursday and Friday, but by Sunday will be forgotten.  In fact, notwithstanding their afternoon tee time, we may have already seen the best of this pairing, the back and forth in the pressers.

Now, he's spot-on here:

3. They turn a lively atmosphere into a spectator nightmare

Fowler and Mickelson each have large, independent fan bases, while Woods's following is a traveling circus in both vibe and number. That's a great thing! The game needs stars. But the Players has plenty of electricity without oversaturating any one section of the course. It's hard enough getting a glimpse of Woods to begin with — now it's that much harder for fans to see any of their favorites.

As Dylan notes, this also dilutes the drama should they be paired together over the weekend.

She Was Just Seventeen.... - You know what I mean....  Josh Berhow has some seemingly inconsistent data on the island green:

60

Feet covered by Tiger Woods's birdie putt on the 17th during the third round of the 2001 Players, a shot — and call — that's been viewed hundreds of thousands of times since. "Better than most..." NBC's Gary Koch repeated as the ball tracked toward the cup. That putt helped Woods notch his first win at Sawgrass.

And this:

59'9"
Feet and inches of the longest putt ever made on the island green during the ShotLink era. Bernhard Langer drained that monster during the second round in 2008.

Key words are obviously ShotLink era....

Oh, and Bob Tway made a twelve, with four balls in the agua.  The drop area is a brutal shot for sure, though it shouldn't be that hard for an actual professional.

Shack had this image from Military Appreciation Dayin his social media grabfest:

Flag looks to my eye to be about 60' wide....  Better than Most!

Getting To Know You... - That Rory would hate this course is a dog-bites-man story, easy to see how it takes his primary weapon, the driver, out of play:

After missing his first two cuts in 2009 and 2010, the Northern Irishman controversially

skipped the event entirely in 2011, and when asked why he might do so, he was his usual honest self: 

"I don't like the golf course for a start. Not to say the Players isn't a great event—it's very prestigious and it would be great to win it one day—but it just might not suit the schedule next year.

"It's a Pete Dye course, and I find it very awkward off the tee. You're hitting across fairways all the time. It creates angles, and visually it's very tough off the tee. He makes you feel uncomfortable because it looks like you've only got a little bit of fairway to hit, but actually once you get up there it's a little bit wider."

Don't forget the wind, Rors.... You know how you hate playing in the breeze.  But he's figured out the issue with the place:

So what gives? Has his strategy improved each year? Has he come in in better form? Has he "thought" his way around the course better, like so many winners do here? 

Nope, he switched hotels. 

"I didn't like it that much to I like it a lot," McIlroy said of his new fondness of TPC Sawgrass. "I mean, it's funny, like I started staying on the beach a few years ago, and that's made the event a lot more enjoyable. It is. It's sort of I stayed pretty much on property there at that hotel, and I just felt like I couldn't get away from it, and it's busy and there's a lot of people. And so to go and stay on the beach now, it's a nice sort of release from everything that's going on around the event. So I actually put a lot of it down to that."

let's see, you could work on your putting or distance control with your wedges... But nope, let's stay at the beach.  

March Madness -  I liked the Players better in March, as does this guy:

THE COURSE 

When the Players Championship moved from March to May in 2007, overseeding at TPC Sawgrass became unnecessary because dormant Bermuda grass returned with the

warmer temperatures. 

It also led to the course playing differently and not necessarily in a good way, according to some.

“I like the overseeded rye [in March],” said Adam Scott, who won the tournament in its "pre-Masters" era in 2004. “Not that you have to get stuck with tradition, but they’ve never set it up the way it was supposed to be in May. They didn’t take a big enough chance to make it different. They should’ve done more.” 

“The greens are not really designed for run-up shots,” Phil Mickelson added. “There’s a lot of holes where we’ve got to fly it on and stop it. I think the way it played in March, I kind of preferred over the firm, fast. I don’t think when it was designed, it was designed to be firm, fast the way it has played the last few years.”

 You mean like No. 17, Phil?

In general, we love firm and fats conditions as a test of golf.  But the problem is that warm weather grasses tend to be sticky, and don't allow for the ball to release.  Hence the design is for the aerial game, and in that case March is better...

Plus, yanno, the Florida swing is in March....

Tiger v. Phil, Imagined - Jason Sobel pictures that heavyweight title fight suggested earlier in the week:

The Prologue 

After the two players warm up on opposite sides of the practice range, Mickelson arrives to the tee first, a full seven minutes before tee time. 

Two all-time greats, and not a normal golf shirt to be found.

He fist-bumps all 1,458 fans in the capacity attendance around the tee, kisses seven babies, hands out four autographed gloves and takes a selfie with three former presidents.

Woods arrives five minutes later. Without breaking stride, he methodically tips his cap to the crowd and starts checking the pin sheet. 

At this point, Mickelson walks up to his opponent for some pre-planned mind games.

“You know,” he tells Woods, “I’ve spent the last two months adjusting my sleeping pattern, so my body clock is perfectly in tune for our tee time.” 

Woods never even looks up. 

“Also,” Mickelson continues, “I’ve noticed that the denser air at this time of day has resulted in my shots flying exactly 1.3% shorter, which is why I’m carrying two drivers, four 3-woods, a 1-iron and six wedges. It’s the only play, really.” 

Woods continues to ignore him. 

“And,” adds Mickelson, “I had my usual pre-round meal of tacos. They’re not only full of nutritional value, they remind me of my victory in Mexico, which was huge because I hadn’t won in almost five whole years. Can you imagine that? Not winning in five years? Man, I’m glad I don’t have that weighing on me.” 

Finally, Woods speaks. 

“I’m playing a Bridgestone 1,” he says, then returns to studying the pin sheet.

Spoiler alert, there's lots of presses....  Good fun.

Be Careful Out There -  The NCAA Golf Championships are underway, with the finals televised on Golf Channel late next week.  This was upsetting news:

A college golf regional has taken a bizarre turn for for the worse this week as a virus

swept through the regional afflicting multiple teams in the competition. 

According to Beth Ann Nichols of Golfweek, three players on the East Carolina women’s team — in addition to their coach Kevin Williams — were unable to compete and sent to the hospital to be nursed back to health. As many as nine players were sidelined during the event’s round Tuesday. 

The culprit? One source in question was the water coolers littered throughout the course, which players had used to stay cool. Ultimately, much remains unknown about the illness.

And to think that I thought "Throwing up all over your shoes" was just a figure of speech...  Though it did lead to some drama:

The Baylor women were in a four-way tie for fourth entering the final day and needed to finish in the top six to advance to nationals. But the road to the next round got rockier

when Maria Vesga had to withdraw due to the virus after seven holes on Wednesday, meaning the Bears needed all four remaining players to post a score to keep the team's NCAA Championship hopes alive.

They did, and one of those players was freshman Diane Baillieux, who spent Tuesday night in the hospital and yet still shot an even-par 72 Wednesday. Baillieux, Gurleen Kaur (71), Amy Lee (71) and Fiona Liddell (74) led the Bears to a 288 on the day, which gave them a team score of 869 and secured a top-six spot and trip to the next round.

If you've never watched it, the NCAA's are good fun.  Team match play rocks, and it's fun to see the youngsters carrying their bags and tending the pin for each other.  

Beware The Early Call -  Fan behavior is becoming an increasingly visible issue on Tour, though this from a local source concludes on an optimistic note:

“I think some fans are coming to a point where they’re policing themselves,” Horschel

said. “I’ve seen that already where a fan will tell another fan, ‘hey, that’s out of line ... you need to stop that.’” 

Thomas said he’s surprised that he hasn’t been the target of comments at tournament sites similar to the social media flak he took for having the fan ejected at the Honda Classic. 

“It seems to be getting better,” he said. “I haven’t had any issues, which is surprising. I would have thought I would have maybe heard some here or there. I feel like everybody is learning and the fans are getting better. Not that they were bad in the first place. It’s just that you don’t want those couple here or there to ruin it for the rest of them.”

If you say so, though the best spin you can put on it has to note the small sample size.  Shack concludes on a more worrisome note:

With high temperatures forecast for Friday, a 6:30 pm alcohol sales cut-off and the young stars out, the limits of good behavior will be tested.

6:30?   Why bother?  Let 'em grab a couple of refills on the way to their cars.

But Isn't Jack the GOAT? - But Seamus has cornered the market for sure:

Set down in the wild, rolling ranch land of eastern Oregon, there's a place called Silvies Valley Ranch. A luxury resort built on working cattle land, Silvies Valley, like Oregon

itself, is a funky little paradox. There's your traditional spa, lavish "glamping" cabins, and a quartet of rustic, links-style golf courses snaking through the brushy bluffs and occasional pine stand. But dig a little deeper—or, better yet, book a tee time on the 7-hole McVeigh's Gauntlet—and you'll quickly see not everything is as ordinary as it seems. 

Why? Because on McVeigh's Gauntlet, your caddie isn't some John Doe who's more interested in talking about his kids' grades than your yardage, it's a goat—a four-legged, bull-headed, actual freakin' goat. 

The bi-products of Silvies Valley's American Range Goat breeding program (in case you're as confused as we are), goat caddies come with a host of goat-related complications, however, so we sat down with Seamus Golf's Akbar Chisti to get an inside look at what went into crafting the world's first-ever goat-specific golf bag for the world's first-ever goat golf caddie. From peanut holders to beer holsters and everything in between, this is the story of the strangest, coolest, craziest golf accessory know to man mammal, so sit down, settle in, and take some notes. Who knows, maybe if you ask nicely, they'll even make one for your llama.

There's a whole Q&A on this, which I've only skimmed.  I'd just like to suggest that they name the goats after the Goats, yanno, jack, Tiger, Ben, Bobby and Young Tom.

Maybe It Means Something Else in Spanish - I believe Alan Shipnuck has a feature coming on this Tour:

 Hey, it's tough out there, they have to take any sponsorship opportunities that present themselves.