Tuesday Trifles

I will need to be on the road in a bit, so let's not waste any valuable blogging time on pleasantries...

A Dissent - John Feinstein harshes the mellow with this:

A Woods-Mickelson match is mere manufactured hype

Oh, it's pretty much all hype, though I do think in this case said hype is sufficiently natural that no assembly was required.   But let's let John make his case:

That doesn’t mean the event won’t get a high TV rating—it will because sports fans love big names and because there is still a fascination with everything Woods does among most of the golf media and many golf fans. 

What the heck logo is that?

There’s nothing wrong with exhibition golf—it’s been part of the landscape forever. 

Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf—especially the old version with Jimmy Demaret and Gene Sarazen doing the announcing--was, in fact, wonderful. The old CBS Golf Classic, when the late, great Frank Chirkinian came up with the idea to mic the players, was a lot of fun to watch during the winter when there was snow on the ground outside. 

Even the Skins Game was worthwhile at the beginning because of the big names who came to play. When it died though, it did so for one major reason: people realized there was really nothing at stake; corporate America was paying the players. It wasn’t as if the other players were taking out their wallets to pay Fred Couples off on the 18th green. 

There were also the Woods prime-time exhibitions played against guys like David Duval and Sergio Garcia when he was TIGER WOODS. Those mercifully ended after a couple of years.

Back in the day they were called Challenge Matches, and featured the Parks of Musselburgh against the Morrises of St. Andrews.... And they weren't playing for their own money either....

Here's John's coda:

I know most of my colleagues will line up to cover this. I know TV ratings will be high. I HOPE a lot of the money will go to charity. 

Meanwhile, I’ll pass. I’d rather watch guys coming down the stretch at Greensboro trying to get into the playoffs and retain their playing privileges for next season. 

THAT’S what I call uncomfortable.

Yup!  No surprise that, given that John famously wrote a book about Q-School....

His point is well taken, that there's nothing inherently wrong with such an exhibition, but that the golfing press could use a perspective transplant.   This can be a fun event, it just can't have aspirations of importance.

The results are in....  and Hillary still can't carry Wisconsin.  Just kidding, but good times.  Shack ran a silly poll, and has the results:

However, you know the M's love their subscriptions! 

Say, how the auto manufacturers are taking car leases, losing the down payment into the monthly cost, and calling them...subscriptions. Ding! Millennial joy! 

With nearly 70% of you saying no to paying for the proposed Tiger v. Phil match revealed by Alan Shipnuck and without any other known details (such as follow-up competitions as part of the package or a format that promotes presses), the organizers will face an uphill battle getting golf fans to pony up. Then again, 22% said you'd pay between $1 and $50. 

So perhaps as part of a subscription, or incentive to subscribe to an app this match could make sense? 

There are certainly plenty of entities out there right now who would love to include Tiger v. Phil as their entry into sports. And perhaps throw in future undercards of Shell's type matches.

The car subscription slam is quite droll, but concept of golf pay-per-view is really quite comical....  You have five minutes for them to walk to their tee shots and personally, I'd rather watch the Cialis commercial with side-by-side bathtubs than listen to Sir Nick drone on.

This is perfect for a Monday night in August, and I'm guessing that Golf Channel can shoehorn it into its schedule.

Golf in the Kingdom -  John Huggan, a curmudgeonly Scot (but I repeat myself) has a troubling item on the state of Scottish golf:

Plus, golf is struggling generally at the moment. Scotland is not unique in that respect.

We’re not a big country. And there is no guarantee that, just because we are the home of golf, we are going to produce an endless stream of great players. Right now, we have a bunch of good players who are also good lads. Russell Knox is certainly one of those. But he is a bit detached living in America. We need someone who looks like he could win a major.” 

Lawrie’s point is well made. Somewhere around 50,000 golfers have given up their club memberships in Scotland over the last decade. Almost 20 clubs have also disappeared, although—whisper it—none of their courses were actually any good (the real worry will come when better courses start to shut their doors). 

The Golf Participation Report for Europe 2017 showed 192,533 registered golfers in Scotland in 2016, a fall of 6,711 during the previous 12 months. Only one other European country, the Czech Republic, also lost more than 2,000 golfers.

John is troubled by the state of golf in his home country.  I, on the other hand, am troubled by a country that feels that golfers need to be registered....

I'm actually not sure how to react to John's concerns, but I'll add this excerpt as well:

One with very definite views on all of the above is former Ryder Cup player Andrew Coltart. The last winner of the Scottish Boys Championship (in 1987) to go on and win on the European Tour, Coltart sees coaches justifying their own existence. Too often, he feels, they are swing technicians who coach a method that causes fun and imagination and feel to disappear. 

“Scottish Golf does not exist to provide the world with European Tour players,” he says. “It is not the job of any amateur body to fill the pro ranks. But is in their interests to develop talent. And, if it does, that is a happy consequence. All too often we have coached the playing of the game out of lads with talent. Rather than understanding their own games, they spend far too much time on the range worrying about the swing. Jordan Spieth is a great example of someone who knows how to play more than swing. In Scotland, Dustin Johnson’s left wrist position at the top would have been coached out of him. Today, he’d be off winning a club championship somewhere.”

Errr...OK, but there's many American coaches that would have done the same to DJ.  

I do think that people lose sight of the fact that Scotland is, by the standards of the U.S. and Europe, a very poor country.  Ultimately golf, even as practiced on the scale of Great Britain, is an expensive game that won't be accessible for all....  

To be discussed further?

In a similar vein, you'll not want to miss Mike Bamberger's love letter to the British Open Championship:

In many places and to many people, this opinion borders on fact: The greatest of golf's four majors is the British Open. For starters, it closes with the winner draped in these

time-smoothed words, delivered with Churchillian authority: champion golfer of the year. Come next year, when the PGA Championship moves to May, the British Open will be the final of the four majors and those crowning words will become even more meaningful. If that's possible. 

Yes, over there, in the kingdom, our American phrase — the British Open — hits the ear like the clank of a shank. As Malcolm Booth, the R&A's head of marketing, said to me recently, "When we hear 'the British Open,' it just jars a bit, as it would for anyone who is called by the wrong name." His point is incontestable. The name of the thing is The Open Championship, and it was a WGC event long before WGC events were invented. The Open is the ultimate world golf championship.

So, Mike, the Open Championship is a no-cut, money-gran played on a dreary golf course?  I don't think so.  Can this possibly be the same guy that wrote this?

Insults aside, Mike's item is really a celebration of attending The Open, and the opportunities afforded:

I find that nothing gets you in the mood to play golf like attending an Open. I've been to 23 and I can't tell you about all the fun I've had playing evening golf after a day at the Open. I am thinking of a night game at Elie when my playing partner and I quit after 17 to get a last-call dinner at the Golf Tavern, opposite the 18th tee. Playing the Old Course as a singleton in 2007, with strange toothy creatures darting out of the rough. Touring Rye, Western Gailes, Kilmarnock and many other fine courses with my friend John Garrity, the man behind the classic (and hard to find) ode to seaside British golf, Dunesbury. The public Southport Golf Links, in Southport, England—must make a nod to our night game there. We had read somewhere that it was the worst links golf course in the British Isles. We were laughing, it was so good. We ate that night at Pizzeria Mama Mia. Or did we eat there another night after another evening game at a different Southport course?

Meanwhile, a Google search of "Dunebury" has yielded no promising results.....

Just read it all, and you can thank me later.

The "C-Word", Further Thoughts -  Eamon Lynch with an interesting follow-up to his coverage of the Dahmen-Kang cage match:

“Bottom line is there are just guys who are going to cheat the rules, no matter what their

livelihood,” says one multiple winner on Tour, who requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the topic. “Golf is supposed to be a game of integrity, yet obvious offenders aren’t held accountable.” 

Only a tiny number of professionals have earned the suspicion of their peers, leaving playing partners to watch warily and wonder, ‘Will he play fair?’ Yet not everyone among the honorable majority would be willing to call out the dishonest few. 

“They don’t want to bother because it takes you out of your game,” said former PGA Championship winner Rich Beem. “It’s an uncomfortable situation for some players. Is it really your job to enforce the rules? Or do you rely on your fellow players to abide by the unwritten gentlemen’s game rule?”

As you know, I'm a bit uncomfortable with the accusation of cheating, given the inherent difficulty of identifying where a golf ball crosses a line 200+ yards away.  That said, I do belive the situation was handled very poorly, and offers profound incentives towards bad behavior.

“With no clear evidence to prove otherwise, it was determined by the official that Kang could proceed,” a statement read. “The PGA Tour will have no additional comment on this matter.”

There's an old saying that bad cases make bad law, which clearly applies here.  Obviously that "no clear evidence" is the Tour's way of saying "Nothing to see here", since at least four individuals have contested the location of Kang's drop, and Kang himself undermined his own position with his characterization of the ball flight as "straight".

This is the bit that's getting the most play:

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan took a positive step in making public drug test violations. He ought to put in place a similarly transparent process to address credible accusations of cheating. The number of deceitful players is small, but there is no deterrent if a player knows his (or her) Tour lacks either the process or stomach to expose them. 

It’s inevitable the Tour’s standing will be impacted if a player is found to have cheated. What is avoidable, however, is tarnishing the hard-earned reputation of the 99 percent with a perception that rogues are shielded from the reckoning they deserve.

Here's where I think we find ourselves, and it's an awkward spot.  Folks have been outraged over the post hoc penalties assessed  against players, which we all get.  The rules have been rewritten to give greater weight to the player's in-the-theater judgment, which isn't objectionable on the face of it.

But what is the proper role of the rules official involved in this matter?  Because it seems to me that he was presented with credible evidence that Kang's proposed drop location was highly unlikely at best, and Kang's own words could have been critical in proving such.  And yet, at the end of the matter, Kang got pretty much what he wanted (he did drop 30-yards back from pin-high, where he first wanted to take his relief).

As a student of humor behavior, I know two things about how players will react to this incident:

1. They're opening negotiating position for drop locations will tend towards the more favorable, and, more importantly;
2. No player will contest another player's drop.

Is this where we want to go?

Open Stuff - As we begin our controlled descent into Carnoustie, some odds and ends on that topic.  First, oddsmakers continue to defy logic:

With British Open week just around the corner, World No. 1 Dustin Johnson remains the betting favorite for the third major of the season.

Johnson is 12/1 to win, according to the latest update from Golfodds.com. Rory McIlroy, who won the British Open in 2014, is 14/1 to win, and Justin Rose and defending champ Jordan Spieth are both 16/1. 

Tiger Woods is 20/1, and Phil Mickelson is 40/1. Complete odds are listed below.

Is there anyone who likes either Rory or Jordan at this point?  And while I like Tiger at a baked Carnoustie more than at, say, Augusta, I wouldn't touch him at those short odds.

Alistair Tait confirms that which we already knew:

After the shambles of Shinnecock, will we get carnage at Carnoustie for the 148th British Open? Probably not. Unlike the U.S. Golf Association, the R&A learned its lesson about taking courses to the edge of insanity after the 1999 Open. Besides, there’s no need to make Carnoustie tougher. It’s already a brute, the hardest links on the Open rota. 

“In terms of toughness, you couldn’t go past it,” said two-time winner Padraig Harrington, who won the last Open at Carnoustie, in 2007. “It’s the toughest, not only because of all 18 holes, it has the toughest finish in championship golf. You’ve got a very tough 14 holes and an extremely difficult last four.”

All I remember is crossing the Barry Burn a few hundred times on the way home, though perhaps I exaggerate.... It's not much fun and it's not very pretty, so I've not been back in a long time.

Keep this in mind:

Carnoustie doesn’t have the grandeur of Turnberry, the classic links land of Royal Birkdale or the charm of St. Andrews. First-time visitors might stand on the first tee, look out over a dour, bleak landscape and wonder what all the fuss is about.

Dour?  Sure.  Bleak?  Yup.... 

Unfortunately, this guy may not be able to play:

Fingers crossed.

On My Way Out - Don't miss this social media post from Geoff.... My personal fave is Rickie playing with a trolley at North Berwick, but it's all good.

See ya tomorrow.