Midweek Musings - Thursday Edition

Hope you didn't miss me too much, but we've got a lot to cover....

Pete In Winter - As that great philosopher told us, Father Time is undefeated:

Please don't end your story on a sad note," Alice Dye says to me as I close my notebook and reach over to shut off my voice recorder. 

"I won't," I say, not believing I can keep the promise even as I say it. 

How can this not end on a sad note? This entire situation is sad, even tragic. Iconic golf-course designer Pete Dye, author of TPC Sawgrass, Crooked Stick, the Ocean Course at Kiawah, Whistling Straits and many others, a genuine genius at his craft, member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, Alice's husband of 68 years, the love of her life, sits in a rocker some 10 feet from us, seemingly oblivious to our presence. He looks healthy, maybe a bit puffy in the face, remarkably good for nearly 93 years old. But time has robbed him of his verve. He's now almost childlike, his attention not on us, but on a rerun of "Gunsmoke" on television. In the good old days, 30 years ago or three, I couldn't have had a conversation with Alice without Pete jumping in. Likewise, if I'd ask Pete a question, Alice would invariably cut him off with the answer. 

The two of them used to constantly talk to me at the same time, much as my parents used to do. During rounds of golf with Pete and Alice, they'd not only talk at the same time, they'd swing at the same time. The only three-hour rounds I ever played were with them.

The writer is Ron Whitten, longtime writer for Golf Digest and friend of Alice and Pete.  It's a sad take on Pete's current condition, sorry Alice, but also a wonderful encapsulation of his contributions to the game.  His love of which, amusingly enough, saved him from being an insurance salesman.

Pete's (another amusing fact, his name is actually Paul) architectural legacy is profound, though his missteps are sometimes more interesting than his obvious classics.  But I've always loved his partnership with Alice, and  he's just one of the nicest guys to be fund.  He also provided the first step towards the succeeding generation of designers, as this excerpt notes:

A major part of Pete Dye's legacy is the legion of present-day golf architects who got their start being mentored by Pete: designers like Bill Coore, Tom Doak, Tim Liddy, Greg Muirhead, Lee Schmidt, Bobby Weed and many, many others. "Everybody who ever worked for dad considered [Pete and Alice] their parents. That's because they treated every one of them like their son," P.B. says. "It's like they had a hundred kids. I lost track of the number of guys who said Pete would bring them lunch, a sandwich and a bag of chips, and the bag of chips would always be open, half-eaten. That's Dad for you."

They're called "Dyeciples" and, while he may have stolen some of their chips, he obvious helped them think for themselves....

Whitten, with Alice's help, takes a shot at summarizing the legacy:

As I review the final pages of a scrapbook, I try to put Pete's architecture into perspective. It seems to me, I say to Alice, that Pete always built holes to test the good

golfer, the tour pro, and that her role was to constantly remind him that average golfers needed to get around his courses, too. 

"Well, if you look at his courses, he almost always has an open approach in front of his greens," Alice says. But, she says, "I'm the one who put the wall of boards up in front of the 13th green at Harbour Town. I'm the one who told him to turn the 17th at TPC into an island green." 

"And you're the one who added that nasty bunker right in front of the green at the 17th at Whistling Straits," I add, and Alice nods in agreement. 

"The main thing about Pete's career," she says, "was that he had courage to do what nobody else would do. He went way out on a limb with every golf course he built. And the next one wasn't anything like the course he'd just built. 

"Every single green he built was a fresh idea. He never went to a drawer and pulled out a drawing, because we don't have any drawings of his greens. Every green came from his head, a new idea on that particular spot. He's done all the greens on all his courses." Alice folds her arms and looks at Pete.

Golf is a richer game because of Pete, as well as because Pete and Alice found each other.

Waxing Poetic -  You know my weakness for love letters to links golf, and today we have a twofer.  First, a few of the Golf.com gang score three days at Bandon Dunes.  Here's their take on Pacific Dunes:

Berhow: It’s definitely in the conversation, but I haven’t been to Pebble so it’s hard for me to compare. I have played two of the other top five — Bethpage Black and Whistling Straits — and prefer Pacific Dunes. (I also haven’t played No. 3 on the list, which is Pinehurst No. 2.) But Pacific has one of the most fun back nines I have ever played. The whole course is challenging and the bunkering and green complexes run together so seamlessly, but in a beautifully rugged way. As for the aforementioned back nine, it

begins with two gorgeous par 3s — it’s unconventional and I love it — and continues with a strategic par-5 12th and daunting par-4 13th, the latter highlighted by a crazy undulating fairway and a ridiculously huge dune flanking the green. That final nine featured exactly what makes every golf course fun — short par 3s, dramatic par 4s and reachable par 5s. It’s a simple formula and was done right. Play it at sunset. You won’t regret it

Sens: This is one of those fun grill-room debates, but I prefer it to Pebble. I love the raw, unvarnished quality. No houses. Stark cliffs. Minimal pre-round speeches from the starter. If you’re lucky enough to get it when the gorse is blooming, it’s pretty much an out of body experience. Throw in a little coastal gloom, and you half expect Shivas Irons to appear out of the mist. At which point you can tell him that Golf in the Kingdom was unreadable and you don’t get what all the fuss was about. Just to clarify, though. I think the front nine at Pacific Dunes is the stronger side. The back nine has four par-threes. All fun holes but if I had to come up with a quibble about a course I love, that would be it. 

Bastable: Raw is a good word for Pac Dunes. Spectacular is another good word. Doak killed it. It’s a more interesting design than Bandon but it’s also a far superior piece of land. I love the straightaway par-4 4th that plays along a bluff edge, the Pacific Ocean beckoning to your right. For right-handed faders — i.e., most of the golfing population — the drive and approach are knee-knockers, especially if you catch a left-to-right wind. The short par-4 6th will also haunt your dreams. You’d more easily land a wedge shot on your office desk than on the No. 6’s narrow, sloping tabletop green. The variety and creativity in the design is Doak at his best. Make sure your phone battery has a full charge. You’ll be stopping frequently to take photos.

That's the massive blow-out bunker to the right of the 13th hole pictured above, which is mostly ornamental.  But did you pick up all of the cosmic convergences we've featured.  Not only did we have the Doak v. Kidd thread on Tuesday, but we now know where Doak got his start in the biz....  Please, you're too kind, but it's just what I do.....

Amusingly, they're asked to identify any flaws in the design, which elicits this response:

Berhow: I’d like nothing more than to blow up the massive bunker hugging the left side of the 18th fairway. You can probably guess why.

Anything but that, as this is from our most recent trip in 2011:

 

That ill-fated trip into that massive bunker costs the bride our trip-long match, so you'll remove it over my cold dead body....

As for the four Par-3's on the back nine, that's a feature not a bug.

Read the whole thing, unless three guys having the time of their lives annoys you....

Mike Stachura goes the existential route with this ode to The Emerald Isle:

The remarkable restorative powers of Irish golf

Well, duh!  Although, it's not so much Irish golf as it is links golf, because the same can readily be said about Scottish, English or even Welsh golf....

And here he relates an experience we've all had when first we hear this term:

I don’t mean to sound like a drunk poet—although I did experience my first pint of Guinness and my first sip of Bushmill’s—but my Irish golf experience was a much-needed restoring of order, a reality check that is more hearty laughter than rueful smiles, a self-reflection that finds only hope, no regrets. Marty Carr, founder of Carr Golf, uses the lovely Irish phrase, “having a bit of the craic” to talk about the golf experience beyond the shots. I’m not sure of its literal translation, but it encompasses everything from the negotiation of strokes on the first tee to the telling of jokes long into the night. Golf in Ireland was a breath of fresh air that restored my lungs nearly as forcefully as it knocked down my 6-iron approaches. And I heartily endorse it as the best way to rediscover your game more than lessons or sports psychology or a club fitting or a yoga intensive or a new set of wedges. Or whatever else these days constitutes an excuse to make us want to love golf again.

I believe Lowell Courtney was the first I heard use that term, although from his lips it seemed more like crack, though presumably not of the cocaine variety:

"Craic" (/kræk/ KRAK) or "crack" is a term for news, gossip, fun, entertainment, and enjoyable conversation, particularly prominent in Ireland.[1][2][3] It is often used with the definite article – the craic[1] – as in the expression "What's the craic?" (meaning "How are you?" or "What's happening?"). The word has an unusual history; the Scots and English crack was borrowed into Irish as craic in the mid-20th century and the Irish spelling was then reborrowed into English.[1] Under either spelling, the term has great cultural currency and significance in Ireland.

To an extent I'm more interested in Mike's photos than his text, including this of famed Calamity Corner at Royal Portrush:

It's an odd angle, probably taken from over on their second golf course.  The iss on the right is harshly penalized, which is why a certain South African played left off the tee in the 1951 Open Championship, into what is now know as Bobby Locke's Hollow.  We'll have more to say next July...

More wonderful memories, as Lowell took us on a private tour of the Antrim coast, that middle panel is the famed Giants' Causeway.  Lowell and Carol also took us to a rugby match in Belfast, though for some reason we missed the Harbor Bar.  Perhaps next time?

The amazing thing is how these two pieces restored me, so mission accomplished.

Golf In The Middle Kingdom -  A return of our recurring feature, in which we note that if China is critical to the future of our game, that we're all gonna die....  They just don't want to play well with others:

Chinese players on the elite U.S. professional women’s golf tour have pulled out of this

week’s tournament in Taiwan at the 11th hour, after being told by someone “high up” in China to skip the event, sources familiar with the situation told Reuters.

They said world number nine Shanshan Feng and rookie Yu Liu were told during last weekend’s event in Shanghai that they should not play in the Swinging Skirts LPGA Taiwan Championship, which starts in Taipei on Thursday. 

China, which views self-ruled Taiwan as a wayward province, has ramped up pressure to assert its sovereignty. Ties have deteriorated since 2016, when President Tsai Ing-wen of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party came to power.

This is a Reuters item, an alleged news organization that over the years has made curious editorial decisions.   The most famous of which was the ban of the word "terrorist" from their style book, because "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter".  Even so, I found the segue from the excerpt above to this next 'graph a tad abrupt:

The United States sent two warships through the Taiwan Strait on Monday in its second such operation this year, as its military steps up the frequency of transits through the busy strategic waterway, despite opposition from China.

I don't know much, but I'm pretty sure that the movements of the U.S. Pacific Fleet is unrelated to concerns about the strength of the field at the LPGA's Taiwan event....  Unless it really is Trump playing more of that three-dimensional chess....

Department of Silly Photo Shoots -  Give those mandarins credit, when it comes to awkward photo ops for golfers, they're the gold standard.  Before getting to this year's installment, how about a trip down memory lane?

And this absolute classic from mammary lane:

Though for some reason they omitted the best of the bunch, perhaps because it resulted in a rib injury to the participant:

This year they went in a completely unexpected direction, and I'm man enough to admit that I never saw it coming:

Badminton?  Oh my God, you guys slay me!

Hold That Thought, At Least For Two Years - Wait, I had been reliably informed that the man is a genius.....  Not so much, it appears:

Paul Azinger brought up this question when discussing the 2018 Ryder Cup with the Morning Drive crew, noting that he was the first American captain in the modern era to

influence setup. He said it’s been more of a European tradition to meddle and suggested that Captain Thomas Bjorn exploited the U.S. strength. But the most interesting point: Azinger now agrees with Jack Nicklaus’ view that Captain’s shouldn’t have control over the setup.

While a sportsmanship element certainly seems undermined by course setup gamesmanship, and the 2018 Le Golf National presentation was just plain silly, I think the event is more interesting when the home team attempts to shape the course to their strengths. The move can easily backfire. But since the Ryder Cup seems determined to avoid genuinely captivating match play architecture with strong risk-reward holes, course setup ploys add intrigue.

Ummmm Paul, are you aware that the Americans get to set up the course the next time the event is played?  This is also a good example of over-interpreting the last event, as if our guys can't hit fairways with irons, then they deserve to lose.

See y'all tomorrow.