Thursday Threads

The worst is now behind me, as all automotive issues have been put to bed.  You therefore have my full attention....

The Year That Was - Golf Digest has turned its attention to the receding year, all of course viewed through that sepia-toned filter.  First up is this guy, about whom I'm always inclined to get choked up:

One of the ironies of 2018 is that Captain America could have used a good shushing. For all of the deeds Patrick Reed accomplished this year, it’s his words that linger. Too bad, considering there is no shortage of deeds to define Reed’s season. 

There were the five birdies in the first seven holes Sunday at Shinnecock Hills that vaulted him into the thick of a U.S. Open shootout. There was his back-nine charge at the DP World Tour Championship to secure runner-up in the Race to Dubai, the highest finish by an American in the European Tour’s season-long points competition. And, of course, there was the 25-foot birdie putt he buried on the 12th hole at Augusta National that triggered his winning the green jacket. 

Yet for all his success on the course, including that career-altering Masters victory in his collegiate hometown, the image that stands out is Reed leaning forward after the Ryder Cup and flashing a wicked smile across the dais when a question was offered in the post-match press conference regarding why he and Jordan Spieth hadn’t been paired that week. It was a look that said “Should I light this room on fire?”

It's quite the curious piece of writing, conflating a few holes at the DP with winning the friggin' Masters, but his overriding point remains unchallenged.   It's not enough that he earn his "table for One" moniker, he seems to need that the hatred be visceral.

Here's a pretty good synopsis of the man:

Reed’s tarnished relationship with his Ryder Cup teammates follows the same pattern as his collegiate experience. He was persona non grata when he was kicked off the team at Georgia in 2009 after one season, and most on the Augusta State roster tolerated him as a necessary evil in helping deliver the school consecutive NCAA championships in 2010 and 2011. 

“They all hate him—any guys that were on the team with him [at Georgia] hate him and that’s the same way at Augusta,” said Kevin Kisner, a Georgia alum who predated Reed’s arrival in Athens and lives 20 minutes from Augusta in Aiken, S.C. “I don’t know that they’d piss on him if he was on fire, to tell you the truth.”

Ouch!  While there's little doubt that Reed feeds on the conflict, it gets old in a hurry for the rest of us.  One last little excerpt:

Like him or not, Reed isn’t going anywhere. He’s 28, and his golf only seems to be getting better. You’d probably take the over if the number of majors Reed were to win in his career was set at 1.5. A little team-room drama isn’t going to derail a man who staved off popular challengers like McIlroy, Spieth and Rickie Fowler to hang a green jacket in his closet. Reed is at his best when he lets his clubs do the talking.

Is it getting better?  This may be the more interesting point, because I can't decide how I feel about his game.  He's a truly terrible driver of the ball, 107th in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee last year.  Obviously the golf world will abide him if he continues to win big-time events, but he'll not be getting many captain's picks.  Stay tuned....

As we continue out misty nostalgia tour, next up is Shane Ryan on Ryder Cup hype:

As to this state of affairs, two questions: Why? How? 

Blame the format, if you like. It’s essentially perfect—a simple, understandable

competition that nevertheless manages to yield up from its basic framework an irresistible brew of nationalism and individual heroics … and strategy and sociology and history and even despair. Unlike tennis’ Davis Cup, which is now attempting to fight off certain death with desperate alterations, the Ryder Cup has only improved with time. There is little to no discussion of changing anything about this event, because when you’re thriving, you talk about everything else. You analyze pairings and form and team-building and relationships. You hand-wring every few years about hostilities between players, or the behavior of the drunken American fans, and you engage in endless debates about the impact (critical or negligible?) of the captains. If you’re a golf writer, you begin pitching Ryder Cup stories sometime in January and have to be restrained by a more moderate editor, and when you’re finally freed from the constraints, you unleash reactions and counter-reactions that are sometimes grotesquely wrong.

This is so damn cute because Shane seems to think that this is a new phenomenon.... The bride and I finished watching something last night, and the TV flipped back to the default Golf Channel, which just happened to be airing a retrospective on the 1991 Ryder Cup at Kiawah, the iconic War By The Shore.  As a humanitarian effort, can't we at least agree to destroy all video of Calc on the 17th hole?  No one should ever have to watch that....

Give it a full read, as it's well worth your time.  He grapples with the existential issue of whether it's good or bad, coming down with the rest of us in realizing that it just is....

Back on their top twenty-five newsmakers list, shall we pop in and see what else they've come up with?  I thought so:

No. 13: Golf & Gambling

History could one day view it among the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decisions of the early 21st century. In May, by a 6-3 vote, the high court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which made it unlawful for states outside of Nevada

to authorize sports gambling. In turn, an industry some estimate could be as large as $6 billion annually was born. How professional sports navigate the brave new world of legalized betting remains unclear, although the PGA Tour appears to be embracing this major change in a progressive manner. The possibilities for pre-tournament and in-round wagering were seen during last month’s pay-per-view telecast of “The Match,” with live odds shown for each hole in Tiger and Phil’s head-to-head showdown. The PGA Tour recently signed a multi-year agreement with a major sports-betting service and content distributor, IMG Arena, which will allow the company to take the tour’s ShotLink statistics and develop data specifically geared for sports-betting purposes. What exactly does that mean? Could golf telecasts of the future show the odds of a player executing a particular shot or holing a putt? Seems possible. With only eight states having taking advantage of the new opportunity so far, the betting landscape has yet to fully emerge. But given the nature of gambling and how closely tied wagering is to our sport recreationally, nothing would surprise us in 2019 (and beyond) regarding the full potential of the sports-betting-meets-golf relationship. —Stephen Hennessey

The court decision may ultimately prove itself to be of this level of significance, though I remain skeptical.  Ours is a funny game....  It's uniquely well-suited to gambling among active participants, as we all treasure our weekend fourball matches with our buddies.  But professional gamblers have so many other options, games better suited to the action.  I'll go way out on a limb and say that time will tell.

How about another?

No. 16: Everybody’s No. 1

Chalk it up to fierce competition, or perhaps a fallacy in the point system. But the No. 1

ranking in professional golf in 2018 was not so much a crown as it was a hacky sack. The title changed hands nine times in the men’s game between Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas, Justin Rose and Brooks Koepka this season. Since August alone it’s happened seven times—the most in any previous year was seven in 1997—while each week of November featured a new top dog. Although not occurring at the same frequency, the women’s No. 1 was also a hot potato, with four different players—Shanshan Feng, Inbee Park, Ariya Jutanugarn and Sung-Hyun Park—holding the honor. For the record, the current No. 1s are Koepka and Jutanugarn. In short, don’t expect the records for most consecutive weeks at No. 1—Tiger Woods at 281, Lorena Ochoa with 158—to fall anytime soon. —Joel Beall

It's funny how folks react to this, expecting perhaps for it to mean more than it does.  Or may we're all just bored after the season winds down....  I would just suggest that if you're worried about changes to the world rankings after the Hero World Challenge, you might want to get a life.

Tiger Scat -  The previously unknown-to-me Evan Priest scored a sitdown with the man on his trip to Melbourne, and some interesting bits came out:

You’ve had a few weeks to digest your loss to Phil Mickelson at The Match. Does is still sting? 

Of all people for me to lose a match to, he was not the person I wanted to lose a match to. [Laughs] We’ve gone at it for so many years and had so many great times, but this was a special event. It was one we thoroughly enjoyed, because it was presenting golf in a different way, in a different light. From what we’ve seen so far, it was pretty well received.

No protective cocoon there..... Is Tiger blissfully unaware that all viewers got their $20 back?  Egads, when Charles Barkley is the voice of reason...

We’re here at Royal Melbourne, where next November you’ll serve as captain of the U.S. Presidents Cup team. Are than any lessons the U.S. team learned from its Ryder Cup loss in Paris that you’ll apply to the Presidents Cup? 

We’ve just got to play better. We were outplayed in Paris. [The Ryder Cup] is an event in which there are big momentum swings. It’s about getting those right putts to go in at the right time and get the momentum going in our direction.

But Tiger, I was reliably informed that it's the pods.....  this is so disillusioning!

This back and forth on the arc of his career is interesting:

Let’s shift gears for a moment. If you could steal one part of any player’s game — any player ever — what would you make your own? 

Well, I figure if I could hit every fairway for the rest of my life I’d be all right. [Laughs] From there, I can figure out how to get it on the green, I can make my fair share of putts and I can get it up and down. But if I could hit it in the fairway [every time] about 320, maybe 340 yards, I’d be all right.” 

So, Greg Norman? 

Well, it depends. In that era, 280 was a long drive. Now it’s, “Hey, can you carry it 320 in the air?” The game has evolved and, I was telling some [people in Melbourne], when I came down here to play the Presidents Cup in 1998, some of the guys were transitioning out of persimmon. The game has changed dramatically since then.

Tiger's first win in Vegas in 1996 came in a playoff against Davis Love, who was using a persimmon driver.  If you're making the case for Tiger as GOAT, this to me is the strongest argument.  His achievements came at a time of significant changes in club and ball technology which mitigated the advantages of superior ball-striking.

In a book published last year you revisited your landmark 1997 Masters victory. Two years from now can we expect a 20-year anniversary account about your 15-shot win at the 2000 U.S. Open?

I haven’t even thought about that. [Laughs] That would be an interesting idea. It was a special week. I played some pretty good golf at that time.

What, you thought he was going to ask him about this other book?  You do that, then you don't get the interview....

There's lots more if you're so inclined....

Peace In Our Time - The Forecaddie with the exciting news:

The Forecaddie is pretty certain Rory McIlroy won’t quit golf’s European Tour in 2019,

despite what he said during the DP World Tour Championship, Dubai. 

European Tour chief executive Keith Pelley has taken steps to make sure his star player keeps his status.

Pelley wasn’t about to hang around to let McIlroy make a decision detrimental to the tour. Pelley jumped on a plane to Northern Ireland and McIlroy’s home in Holywood for an emergency meeting with his star player. 

European Tour officials were tight-lipped about the confab during the 2018 Hilton European Tour Golfer of the Year Award lunch in London on Monday. But from the way Pelley strutted about the room with a wide grin on his face, it seemed everything was rosy in the European Tour’s backyard.

So now the biggest impediment to a future Ryder Cup captaincy is.....well, his lousy play.  Glad you kids were able to work it out....

Gonna leave y'all there.  Tomorrow is a travel day, so we'll likely next see each other on Monday.