Midweek Musings - Mudder Eition

This week, both in St. Louis and New York, reminds me of a conversation I once had with my maternal grandfather:

Six Year Old Me:  Grandpa, will it ever stop raining?

Grandpa Brach (Taking a long draw off his pipe for dramatic effect):  Well.... It always has...

This just in from St. Louis Town and Country, MO:

2018 PGA Championship: 1.1 inches of rain turns Bellerive into mudder’s paradise

It's Shack, in his Golfweek swag, but I assume his use of the P-word was with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

History suggests Bellerive is kind to shortish plodders. 

Not at this year’s PGA Championship. Not after Tuesday’s downpour. 

According to the on-site rain gauge, 1.1 inches had fallen through midday Tuesday on top of a golf course that was already lush but not wet. Any hope of control players getting a fair shake against the bombers went right out the window. 

While Bellerive is a stout 7,316-yard par 70, past championships here have quietly favored straight drivers, well-known par machines and players who pride themselves on precision.

Like your humble blogger, he swats away this guy's chances in a hurtful manner:

Jordan Spieth, a member of the sneaky-long club but likely on the permanent waiting list for the silly-carry club, was trying to keep an open mind. After all, it’s just Tuesday. 

“The course itself has a lot of – it has a great mix of longer and shorter holes that dogleg both directions,” said the holder of every major title but the PGA Championship. “You’ve got to hit different clubs off the tee, different shots into the greens, and I don’t think it necessarily favors any one kind of player.” 

Sorry Jordan. But after the rain moved track conditions from good to sloppy, Bellerive features a bias. With the slow-running fairways and heat-weakened slower greens capable of holding a 737, expect only the bomb and gougers to thrive at Bellerive.

As the man says, it's just Tuesday....  and already we've had our fill of this venue.  Let me just add one more excerpt, which sounds quite bizarre:

“The rough’s a little interesting to me,” Spieth said. “They mowed down grain for a couple yards and then into the grain and then down grain and then into the grain. I’m not sure if it was for aesthetics or what, but that makes it a bit luck-based when you hit the ball into the rough.”

Sparing no effort, the PGA has updated their notice to the players:

 English Translation:  We are so Effed!  Maybe this is why Pete Bevaqua jumped to NBC?

I'd like to make a reservation for Dylan Dethier in his own private circle of hell for this bit of maternal optimism:

But it’s Tuesday, after all, and while hating on this edition of the PGA Championship seems particularly in vogue, I’d advise this: get excited! Forget the muddy practice rounds and the unknown, unexciting golf course and the weird spring-training vibe of pasty-calved players in shorts. It’s the dog days of summer in Missouri, but this is a major championship, damnit, and it’s the last one we’ll get for a while.

Screw you, buddy!  I was given the standard allotment of one Jewish mother, and I'm not in the market for another.... But I'm pretty much all-in on hating this tournament, so there'll be no talking me out of it.

OK, Dylan, we'll do the bygone thing, and I'll even excerpt your rousing coda as a gesture of reconciliation:

Embrace the imperfection 

These glorious possibilities come into conflict with the storyline that the PGA isn’t good enough to merit our attention. One thing is undeniable: compared with its peers, the PGA comes up short. But the artist formerly known as “Glory’s Last Shot” has been a vital part of the schedule for decades. It has changed entire careers, salvaged seasons and signaled rises to greatness, all in the shadow of the looming end of summer. 

So let’s enjoy the the PGA for what it is while we can, before the move to May threatens its identity further (despite making plenty of sense). Anyone ready for Glory’s Second Shot? The drama of Bellerive is unlikely to be determined by the sogginess of the golf course or the speed of the greens but rather by the theater of the leaderboard as it unfolds. Golf at its best is a crowded Sunday leaderboard filled with twists and turns, subplots and mini-dramas. 

So soak up all you can of this soggy fourth major. You’ll miss it when it’s gone.

Alan Shipnuck, in his weekly mailbag, dealt with some similar themes:

Why is the Centennial PGA Championship being held at Bellerive? #AskAlan-@ScottyGman2 

Are you kidding, it’s perfect! This is peak PGA: A course no one is excited about, with minimal history as it relates to the tournament, played in a furnace.

And they wonder about their reputation as the fifth among the four majors....  

St. Louis has a perpetual inferiority complex, so why is everybody so down on Bellerive before the tourney even starts? @Andrew_Long 

Poor Bellerive. It’s not the course’s fault. It’s a perfectly nice, old-fashioned parkland layout. In fact, it’s very much like last week’s venue, Firestone, which is part of the non-enthusiam you detect. Narrow holes, framed by trees and thick rough, leads to boring golf, robbing the game of strategic options and thrilling recovery shots, to say nothing of visual interest.

I attribute their perpetual inferiority complex to their perpetual inferiority but, hey, your mileage may vary...  But only the PGA of America would have us in St. Louis in August and Rochester, NY in May....

As for this, the underlying question is good, but it's undermined by the suspension of reality:

What courses should the PGA host at to differentiate it from the U.S. Open? No one will remember Bellerive. Whistling Straits is a hit. My take: Whistling Straits, Spyglass Hill, Cherry Hills, Grayhawk, Bandon Dunes, and Kiawah.-@JimmyWoodCu 

You’re sort of on to something here. Though the PGA occasionally dabbles, the U.S. Open is defined by classic courses. As it should be. With the Chambers Bay/Erin Hills experiments in the rearview mirror, it’s clear that the USGA going forward is consolidating around the best old-school venues. It’s folly for the PGA to try to make inroads here. It would be much smarter to focus on buzzy, cutting-edge newer venues, with Bandon being the archetype. How about Sand Hills? Ballyneal? Friars Head? The Alotian? The PGA has ‘America’ in its name but no other specifics, so how about opening up the event to all of the Americas – North, South and Central? That would put in play Cabot Links, the Olympic Golf Course, Diamante, the Jockey Club and various other exotic courses. Short of going back to match play, which will never happen because of TV concerns, the only way for the PGA to carve out an identity is through imaginative venues that become the star of the show.

I love Bandon as much as the next guy, but the original course tops out at 6,732 yards, and I'm far too lazy to research the other three.  The Alotian Club is an interesting name, but the underlying question is what do they want this event to be when it grows up.  I've long criticized the PGA's penchant for Southern (Kiawah, ACC and Quail Hollow) and hand-me-down U.S. Open (too numerous to list) venues, but the move to May changes the calculus of the former.... Not that we need to see ACC again anytime soon.....

Alan had this moderately interesting bit as well:

Which player’s career benefits the most from winning this major? -@the_fried_egg

Tiger is certainly the easy answer: it would complete one of the greatest comebacks in sports history, give him the victory lap he deserves and restart Woods’s quest to summit

Mt. Nicklaus. Taking him out of the conversation, here’s my top-6, in descending order of desperation: 

6. Spieth. It would give him the career Grand Slam, continue *his* low-key chase of Jack’s career record, redeem the crackup at Carnoustie and salvage what has otherwise been a lost year. 

5. Rahm/Fleetwood. Huge talents who need a major breakthrough to go to the next level. 

3. DJ. For such a prolific winner it’s a red flag that he has only one major. He needs to win another major (and then another and…) to fulfill his legacy. 

2. Rory. He looks so woebegone these days, but one hot week in steamy St. Louis would send a lightning bolt through the game and renew Rory’s ascent up various all-time lists.

1. Rickie. This is his last major before turning 30. Will the one-time boy wonder ever deliver on his considerable promise?

Shall we give Rory a moment?  Shane Ryan goes deep on the missing Rory mojo, though I think it's a bit of a misfire.  His lede revolves around the second hole at Augusta on Sunday, which I certainly didn't overlook at the time.  That said, I don't find this all that enlightening:

But McIlroy has always been defined by more than his great skill. There was a psychological element to his dominance that once imbued him with the kind of aggressive, field-annihilating aura that invoked memories of Tiger at his sadistic best.

For one four-week stretch in the late summer of 2014, I watched him batter the likes of Phil Mickelson, Rickie Fowler and Sergio Garcia as he won two majors and a WGC. He was the man who always made the big shot—some of which, like his approach at the 10th on Sunday at Valhalla, were legendary from the moment they touched down—and who always holed the big putt. And who always came through when it mattered.

For those of us who carry the memory of that man in our heads, the current incarnation of Rory McIlroy is hugely disappointing. You can rap me on the knuckles for lack of objectivity after this confession, but the truth is that Rory has always been one of my favorite golfers. He’s fascinating on the course and in the interview room, and though I’ve never had the pleasure of speaking with him in a one-on-one setting, I’ve admired his intellect from afar. (For those interested, he gave two of the all-time great athletic interviews to Paul Kimmage, first by himself and then with Padraig Harrington.) He seemed worlds different than the factory-produced bores of the PGA Tour, but his intelligence, far from being a secondary quality, was the practical kind he applied to the art of winning. 

Now, he seems to have lost the art. He makes dramatic Sunday runs at majors, but only when he’s too far off the lead to catch anyone (2015 Masters, U.S. Open, 2016 and 2017 Open Championship). He takes himself out of the running with a miserable round when he’s close to the lead (falling from second with a Saturday 77 at the 2016 Masters). And when he’s truly close, he can’t find the winning gear, as we saw at this year’s Masters and a few weeks back at Carnoustie.

But Rory was always a very limited artiste, able to dominate in soft, windless conditions, but pretty clueless when outside of what Jordan would call the dome.  The bad putting and wedge play has been with us all along, and he seems unable or unwilling to improve it.

But this week is an interesting test, because the conditions are those he would specify...  Makes it a put-up or shut-up kind of week for the still-young lad.  But again, it was the same story last week at Firestone, and that one ended in tears.

How are we supposed to cope with this almost-but-not-quite phase of Rory’s career? Has he officially lost his edge?-@ShaneRyanHere 

It’s an unsettling time, to be sure. So much life has happened to McIlroy since 2014: breaking up with Caroline W., a nasty lawsuit with his ex-manager, injuries, equipment changes, getting engaged, getting married. While all this played out it was easy to excuse dips in his performance in 2015 and ’16. But over the last couple of seasons his life stabilized and he seems to be happier than ever off the course, so what gives? Some answers are obvious: inconsistent wedge play, shaky putting. But his struggles seem more metaphysical, especially given the awful Sundays at Augusta National and Firestone. We’re all dying to see McIlroy in full flight, and every time he strings together a couple of good rounds Golf Twitter pulsates. But then a meek Sunday performance ensues, and we are collectively sad and let down. My solution is to not get so excited when Rory plays well, which, come to think of it, is a sad way to live. Maybe it’s time we think of McIlroy like a fairy or unicorn: a mythical creature that we’re lucky just to have glimpsed. As for what has happened to his edge, I always refer back to this Arnold Palmer riff on how his ability to win simply vanished: “Once you vary, and you lose that thing … What is it? Sometimes it’s hard to put in place. What is it? I’m not sure I know. I’m not sure Jack knows. … Can you get it back, can you get that thing you can’t put your finger on and get hold of it and choke it and keep it? Boy, that’s a tough deal. … It could be a psychological thing. You say, ‘Well, I’ve done it.’ Then you say, ‘I want to do it again.’ But it isn’t there. You can’t find it. You can’t grasp it. You can’t hold on to it.”

Curious week of questioners, no?  First the Fried Egg and now Shane Ryan....  Does Alan take questions from mere civilians any more?

We can't wrap this up without a Tiger sighting...  Hey, don't blame me, it's buried in the Terms of Service fine print.

Mike Bamberger has an interesting profile of the "New Tiger" and, while I'm not sure I fully buy the premise, it's worth your time and consideration:

My first real glimpse of the new Tiger came on the Sunday of this year’s Honda Classic.

Woods was semi-contending until he rinsed two balls late in the round. But he did not have the red-ass. No. He was playing pain-free golf again, with his two children nearby and in front of worshipful fans. He was competing. It seemed to be enough. 

On that day Tiger’s age was 42 years, one month and 26 days. (We all do this thing called life one day at a time, right?) In the aftermath of a 12th-place finish, Woods was asked about his fourth-round playing partner, Sam Burns, a golfer half Woods’s age. Tiger processed the question in a nanosecond (as per usual) and said, “He played beautifully. Top-10 is big for him because it gets him into Tampa, next official start, a full-field event. He’s trying to build momentum and build his exempt status. Today and this week was a big step for him.” 

The old Tiger would have been can’t-see-straight mad. But this Tiger Woods was evaluating the talent, dreams and career path of another player! But this was the new Tiger. Empathetic, for one thing. Grateful, for another. Soon after, he decided to go to Tampa himself. Amid the pandemonium there, he finished one shot back.

So, you're saying that a tiger can change his spots?  Interesting....

Here's another young player about which he has interest:

During his pre-tournament press conference at Bellerive, Tiger was asked about DeChambeau’s chances of making the 2018 U.S. Ryder Cup team. Since he’s a vice

captain of this year’s squad, Woods’s opinion on the matter has a great deal of weight. So what does the 14-time major champ have to say? 

“We want him on that team.”

I agree that Tiger's opinion has weight, but it's more a result of him being, you know, Tiger Woods....

“Bryson is very analytical as we all know, but what most of the guys don’t know is how competitive he is. He is very fiery, very competitive, and that’s the type of person we want on the team. We want someone who is fiery, who will bleed red, white and blue. We want those type of players on the team.”

Silly me, I thought we wanted players that are good at this golf thing...   Given that we'll have Phil, isn't one genius sufficient?  And if, by any chance, you haven't seen that video included at the link, you'll want to give it a look.  

Am I the only one to find this header a bit troubling:

Tiger Woods battles inflammation ‘everywhere’ this week at PGA Championship

Didn't that cause a spot of bother back in 2009?

And before leaving, Shack has some fun with practice round attire:

Players In Shorts Not Growing The Game Or The Prestige Of Golf's Fourth Major

Not a great look, for sure....  Geoff calls it a Member-Guest vibe.  Interestingly, Tiger, who has advocated for shorts to be allowed on Tour, was in big-boy long pants yesterday.

This will be it for pre-event blogging, as we have our Caddie-Member event tomorrow morning.