Late Week Letdown

A shout-out to the estimable Bobby D., who took your humble correspondent to the cleaners yet again.  On paper, the thrashing looked similar to Wednesday's, but the golf was much better on both sides.  In fact, I threw up a nice little 39 on the front nine, which was just good enough to have me only 2-down.  And as you'll see below, one of our topics of conversation features in today's post.

Strip Mining - Joe Passov provides some interesting history, but utterly fails to deliver on this header:

How Las Vegas became a primetime golf location once again

There's no "how" to be found in the piece, just a stroll down memory lane:

It wasn’t long ago that Las Vegas was front and center on the PGA Tour. The Tournament of Champions, now played at Kapalua, was born here in 1953 and competed 

at the Desert Inn until 1966. Winners included Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus.

Vegas also hosted a second Tour stop in the 1960s and 1970s, the Sahara Invitational, which the Golden Bear captured on four occasions. Tiger Woods snagged his first PGA Tour title in Sin City, at the 1996 Las Vegas Invitational at TPC Summerlin.

As for this, beware the early call:

But the show that’s really bringing sizzle back to the Strip will be unveiled No. 23, the Friday after Thanksgiving, when golf fans will feast on the Tiger Woods-Phil Mickelson $9 million winner-take-all challenge match at Shadow Creek. 

Blast it in neon: Las Vegas golf is prime-time once again.

If you say so, Joe.  

Shack has been harping on another issue, justifiably as it turns out:

Just work with the idea that 70 players broke par, 51 broke 70 and 11 shot 66 or less led by first round leader Peter Uihlein. 

Not many strokes being played, right? No high rough and crazy tough conditions to slow down the pace, correct?

No.

The Shriner’s Hospital For Children Open, already facing a reduction of 12 spots this year to help get the field around before dark (as reported by Rex Hoggard a few weeks ago), still could not finish the first round.

Why? Sure, today’s players are slow but more than the usual tedium, their prodigious driving distances mean the entire field is forced to wait for every par-5 green to clear and every short par-4 green to become available to their drives.

But as you know, nearly all players and their recent Commissioners have stated that slow play is not an issue, nor is distance in the game causing problems for getting a tournament field around. 

Hopefully next year the Shriners shrinks to 120 players. Because maybe losing two-dozen “playing opportunities” will help the players and officials realize there are some very basic financial ramifications for chasing distance.

And if this happens in Chamber of Commerce weather.....  well, you can finish the thought without my assistance.

Hope Springs Eternal -  Speaking of Tour golf in the desert, there's trouble afoot:

The desert’s PGA Tour event is bringing back a familiar name and an all-too-familiar situation: looking for a new title sponsor. 

CareerBuilder, the title sponsor of the La Quinta-based tournament since 2016, is taking its name off the 2019 event. The 60-year-old tournament, to be played Jan. 17-20, will be renamed the Desert Classic, a throwback to when the event was called the Bob Hope Desert Classic from the 1960s to the 1980s.

For those of you with a sense of deja vu:

This marks the third time in 10 years the desert tournament has searched for a new title sponsor. Following Chrysler’s departure after the 2008 tournament, the event was played without a sponsor for three years. Humana agreed to an eight-year deal to sponsor the event starting in 2012 with the Clinton Foundation's involvement, but left after the 2015 tournament. CareerBuilder’s five-year deal started in 2016.

It's obviously one of the softer spots on the Tour's calendar, though this is top drawer spin:

“We are one great partner away from taking this event to the highest level it has been at in many, many years,” Jeff Sanders, the executive director of the event for tournament operator Lagardere Sports, told The Desert Sun in an exclusive interview. “The most important thing right now is to find that passionate title sponsor. Carefully make sure the title sponsor is committed, is all in and really excited about where this event can go.”

We're only one sponsor away from saving our sorry asses....  So, why did Career Builder break up with you?

“This opportunity came to us less than two weeks ago. I’ve had a number of conversations with clients of ours who spend money in golf,” Sanders said. “They understand the power of the business of golf. I have had fantastic response. I am not

surprised. I don’t think that this property will be available very long.” 

Sanders said CareerBuilder’s departure has nothing to do with the company’s displeasure with the tournament, but changes in CareerBuilder ownership. A Chicago-based online employment and human resources company, CareerBuilder was purchased in 2017 by a group led by private equity firm Apollo Global Management.

“That private equity firm has made a decision to not continue, which by the way happens all the time. This isn’t that CareerBuilder doesn’t like this tournament,” Sanders said. “They were bought. And their new owner, as a private equity firm, does not need to have a golf tournament.”

Let me translate that for you.  New owners, ones that have investors that require actual returns, decided to stop wasting their money so that the CEO could play in the Pro-Am.

I've long thought that the cost of sponsoring golf events was unjustifiable, though the Tour admittedly keeps coming up with new suckers.....  I guess there really is one born every day.

He's Baaack -  Employee No. 2's original fave golfer is back, though with a cloud on the horizon:

More than two decades ago, Tim Herron arrived on the PGA Tour with a dry wit, a sweet 

swing and one of the game’s greatest nicknames: Lumpy, a nod to his couch-potato physique. The Minnesota native proudly called ice fishing his favorite hobby. At one point in his career, he worked with a trainer six days a week to lose 30 lbs. “It was like throwing a chair off the Titanic,” Herron says. He decided he was miserable and put the weight back on, with gusto. He now has a website (lumpco.com) that sells such cheeky items 
as a throw pillow with a photo allegedly depicting the high-calorie breakfast he ate before his victory at the 1996 Honda Classic, the first of his four wins on Tour. 

In short, Herron has always been easy to root for, and he enjoyed the warm embrace of the galleries. “I had a good time,” he says, looking back on the sweep of his career. “Maybe a little too good of a time. Man, sometimes I wish I would have tried harder. But then I remember it wouldn’t have been as much fun.”

Alan Shipnuck is guilty of journalistic malpractice for mentioning but not providing a pic of said pillow, but I've got him covered....

Here's why we'll root for him:

Now Herron is looking forward to the game’s ultimate mulligan: He is a year away from turning 50 and becoming a rookie on the Champions tour. But this final act to his career has been complicated by a rare disease. 
A big man with soft hands, Herron is battling

Dupuytren’s contracture, a condition in which layers of tissue beneath the skin on the palm and fingers thicken and stiffen. There is a dark history of Dupuytren’s in Herron’s family; his sister Alissa, the 1999 U.S. Mid-Am champ, gave up the game when she lost her soft touch on the golf course. Tim has a milder case, similar to his father’s. So far, his fingers have not been affected, but in the last few years he has felt some hardening in his right palm. “I can still hold the club fine,” he says. “If I practice too much I get some cramping. The only time there is real discomfort is hitting shots out of rough, when the club twists and torques in my hand.” 

Dupuytren’s cannot be cured, but the symptoms can be managed, so Herron sees a specialist four times a year. He has made a few small allowances in his everyday life, like shaking hands left-handed. “It’s awkward, so I have to explain the disease, and then people say, ‘Eww, don’t shake my hand, I don’t want to catch it!’ Of course it doesn’t work that way, it’s genetic. So they’re just joking. I think.”

By the way, lumpco is a hoot.  If you're unfamiliar with his Masters scripting, you can catch up there.  But I also loved his webpage devoted to divots, which he explains as follows:

BEST DIVOTS 

Some people collect Hummel figurines, I collect divots. I bagged my first when I was 12. It was from a Craig Stadler 5-iron at the Greater Milwaukee Open. Since then, I've always kept a supply of Ziploc Freezer Bags on-board for perfect, terrible and/or memorable shots. I'm now up to 8 storage freezers in my garage.

We could use a few more Lumpys in our game.

Pinheads -  During our match yesterday, Bob had a putt on the sixth green from the back fringe, and asked our caddie Ray to remove the pin.  That triggered a conversation about the new rule, and what we might see out on Tour.

Bob's contention is that the pin can only serve to keep the ball from dropping, with which I mostly agree.  I play a lot of golf with Bob and there have been times when I'd have preferred that he leave the pin in, but mostly times when a 2-putt (or an up and in) is sufficient to the task.  But Bob also speculated about the type of pins they us eon Tour, about which most of us are clueless.

Before getting to the news of the day, let me also note that I've speculated that the Tour might use a local rule, as guys putting with the pin in seems a bad look, no?  Think of Tiger's putt on No. 13 at Augusta (no e-mails, I know it's not technically a Tour event) a few years back, a pin that would no doubt stay in after 1/1/19.

Bryson DeChambeau likes to leave the pin in whenever he can. Under golf’s new rules

for 2019 that will mean he can leave it in all the time. 

Speaking with GOLF.com at a recent photoshoot, DeChambeau was asked about his current preference to leave in the pin, even when he’s close to the green or putting from the fringe. As ever with DeChambeau, his decision is the result of careful calculation. 

“It depends on the COR, the coefficient of restitution of the flagstick,” he said. “In U.S. Opens, I’ll take it out, and every other Tour event, when it’s fiberglass, I’ll leave it in and bounce that ball against the flagstick if I need to.”

U.S. Open pins are often notably thicker than typical Tour pins, leading to more aggressive rebounding when struck. “It’s a higher propensity for it to go in the hole if it’s fiberglass compared to metal,” DeChambeau said.

Wanna bet they go back to metal by the time we get to the Desert Classic?  But lest you think Bryson is unhinged, he's got support from a noted analyst of the short game:

DeChambeau has some support on the pin idea, however. Years ago, Top 100 teacher Dave Pelz conducted a study for GOLF Magazine on whether leaving the pin in was the better call. Here was his conclusion: “Leave the flagstick in whenever the Rules allow, unless it is leaning so far toward you that the ball can’t fit.”

Take that, Bobby D.

Turnabout Is Fair Play -  The problem with these millennial golf writers is that they miss so many golden opportunities.  On the one hand, you can't really blame them...  But, on the other hand, blaming them is the raison d'etre of this little blog.  

We're a couple of days late, but Bryson went as Rickie Fowler for Halloween:

It's a mandatory deduction for wearing orange on Wednesday, but we like watching the guys have fun with each other.  there's video at the link of him approaching Rickie and asking for an autograph.

But here's the gripe.  There's an obvious way of finishing this item, and Josh missed it:

Yup, that's a seven year old Rickie dressing up as his favorite golfer.

Tiger 3.0 - Golf Digest's Undercover Tour Pro shoots down the theory of the new, improved Tiger.  This is the kind of item that's right in my wheelhouse:

This past season much was made about Tiger Woods being a changed person. That this latest comeback, from passed out behind the wheel in post-surgical hell to nearly winning majors, has given him "a new lease on life." It seems all the announcers and media have latched on to this narrative. Friendlier, warmer, tastes great and less filling. Well, I think it's a bunch of bull. 

Sure, there have been divergences. The old Tiger didn't walk down the range saying hello to rookies, like I saw him do at Tampa. The old Tiger didn't wait around the last green to congratulate the guy who beat him, like he did for Brooks in St. Louis. He wouldn't fight back tears like he did at East Lake. 

Certainly, the prospect of never competing again felt scarily real to him at one point. And finally having one's family life in order years after a messy divorce must add perspective. Still, I'm not buying that he's "changed." Because what most people don't know is, Tiger's always been a good guy.

Well, that's not going to generate any traffic, can't you at least throw me a bone?

Most people have no idea how funny Tiger is. He has a very dry, almost British sense of humor, and is one of the few American players I know who can really mix it up with the Europeans. Several times it's taken me four or five seconds to realize Tiger has just made fun of me, usually some contrived way of inferring I'm a slob, delivered deadpan. He also comes up with clever nicknames for players. I won't reveal mine, but as an example, Tiger's the guy who coined "Rainman" for Bryson DeChambeau. Just the right touch of mocking yet celebratory. 

But Tiger can also keep it simple. He's a guy's guy, loving crude jokes just as much as smart ones. One year at the Players, I'm on the practice putting green and a ball hits my shoe. I look up and see Tiger, 40 feet away, grinning. Bam, another ball smacks my shoe. We're all about to go play for millions of dollars, and he's clowning like a 10-year-old.

Hmmm...I might need to get a second opinion.  Anyone got Stephen Ames' cell number? 

Preaching To The Choir - Mike Bamberger with an engaging portrait of Harold Varner III, which comes at an interesting time.  The header provides the road map:

In the age of tricky race relations, we need more Harold Varners

The PGA Tour, in my experience, has never been whiter. Forty or so years ago, there were a dozen or so black golfers on Tour. This year, at FedEx I, there were only two

black players — Tiger and Harold Varner III — among the 119 golfers in the field. 

HV3 told me I was looking at it the wrong way. “Every time you talk about race, you’re just making race more of a thing,” he said. He’s moved on. He looks at his touring brethren and sees no black golfers, no white golfers, no Asian golfers. Just golfers. He’d be at large in a post-racial society, if people would just let him. He’s 28. 

We were sitting, after his fourth round, in a dining room at the Ridgewood Country Club, a club that was once…

This is interesting because the calendar just turned to November....  Remind me, Mike, which political party and which side of the political spectrum are insisting that it's the only thing that matters?  Anyone?  Bueller?

... In Which Our Jordan Clams Up - Jordan Spieth has always been a likable sort, one willing to let us inside his thinking.  Hence, as Shack notes, this from his Vegas presser was a bit strange:

Q. 31st in the FedExCup is a pretty good low mark for a career so far. How do you assess it yourself given it was you first winless season in a while, and what do you need

to do better this season? 

JORDAN SPIETH: You know, I really felt like I played like 30th, but Tiger played healthier than everyone thought. He just kind of took my spot there and then went on and won 

But, yeah, it was a building year. I look back at last year as something that I think will be beneficial for me in the long run. I really believe that. I know that's an easy thing to say looking at kind of the positive in a negative, but there were tangible, mechanical things that I needed to address, and I was able to throughout the season. 

Unfortunately, I had to play so much, like I said, towards the end that I couldn't really get it intact. So I stepped on the first tee knowing that I was playing a C-game instead of figuring where my game is at through the first couple rounds. 

But I've done a lot of good work over the last four weeks, whether it required time off thinking or required actual practice. I've done I think a good balance of that and come in here with confidence. 

Q. Will you nerd out a bit on us on those things you were trying to do? 

JORDAN SPIETH: I can't, you know, because that's a competitive advantage for myself.

Shack's all over that second bit, so give him a read.

But isn't that first bit just as curious.  As though he had his play calibrated the end up in the 30th spot, but it was all Tiger's fault.   Apparently 30th has a very different fell than 31st....

Have a good weekend.