I did manage to find time to watch the conclusion from Oahu on tape yesterday, but only after watching the Pats and Saints.... Hey, my quads observe the Sabbath. Well, I know it's not actually me Sabbath....
Kooch the Mooch - I miss the original Mooch.... seems he was only with us for a few days. What? OK, it was only a few days, but that's not important now. Golf.com with their invaluable 30-second guide:
Who won: Matt Kuchar (four-under 66, 22 under overall)
How it happened: Kuchar opened the day with a two-shot lead but struggled early, and Andrew Putnam jumped out ahead and took a one-shot lead at the turn. They were tied at19 under after 13, but Putnam made bogey on 14 and Kuchar didn’t look back. Kuchar made birdies on 15 and 16 to extend his lead and cruise to a four-shot win.
What it matters: It’s Kuchar’s ninth career PGA Tour victory and second in the last three months. He also won the Mayakoba Golf Classic in November, and that came with a local, fill-in caddie. He won this week with regular looper John Wood on the bag.
Best quote: “I think it might have been Jay-Z who said 40 is the new 20.” — 40-year-old Matt Kuchar
What it matters? My kingdom for a proofreader.
There were a few interesting notes to the week, and we'll circle back to the winner and my header in a sec. But first, The diminutive (I know, pot, kettle) Chex Reavie hung on the leaderboard all week, partially as a result of his Friday pyrotechnics:
Friday at Waialae Country Club, Reavie holed out for eagle three times, becoming the first player to do so on three par 4s in the same round since the PGA Tour started keepingtrack in 1983.
“I was trying to think back to any round I even had more than one hole-out, and I couldn’t think of any,” the 37-year-old journeyman said.
He didn’t take long to make the first one, jarring a sand wedge from 101 yards on the par-4 10th, his first hole of the day. Six holes later he made another, from 149 yards with a 9-iron.
The momentum didn’t last long, though, with Reavie making bogey on the par-4 first and double at the par-3 fourth after missing the green left and blasting his sand shot across the green, prompting him to change balls.
You can guess what happened next. Two holes later he holed a gap wedge from 135 yards, prompting two of the caddies in the group to throw their hats at him.
Only two?
Did you catch any of Jordan's play? Well, you needed to be quick, as trunks were slammed..... Shall we see what the Tour Confidential panel thought?
1. Jordan Spieth made his first start in two months at the Sony Open but missed the cut to kick off his 2019 on a sour note. “For not playing well at all and being on the bad end of the draw, to miss the cut by one is reassuring,” he said afterward. Still, Spieth is coming off his first winless year as a pro, and this wasn’t exactly anencouraging debut. Do you expect Spieth to rediscover his mojo this year?
Jeff Ritter: Spieth definitely seems a little lost in the wilderness right now. I’d still bet that he wins an event sometime this year, but it’s a bet on his talent overcoming his current struggles.
Sean Zak: “To miss the cut by one is reassuring.” Just wanted to repeat that for you guys. What the what? I’m confident that Spieth is a very good golfer, but he’s seemed a bit all over the place mentally the last six to 12 months. It’s an odd thing right now but of course we expect him to rediscover said mojo. That feels obvious.
It doesn't sound any better with repetition, does it? I get that these guys need to stay positive, but there's nothing that compels us to go along for the ride....
Dylan Dethier: Call me an optimist, but there actually was something reassuring about the charge he put on Friday when he was trying to make the cut. He started playing golf rather than playing swing. “I just told myself, Just point, aim, and shoot and stop thinking,” he said. More of that would be good.
Michael Bamberger: You can’t play world-class golf without being a great putter, and putting was/is more of Spieth’s game than others. He’s in a weird place. Without knowing how weird it’s impossible to say if he can come back.
I saw the stretch to which Dylan refers, and he has a point.... It's just that he only got there when he had nothing to lose, and next time he pegs it he'll of course have much on the line.
But if only that were it... Alas, we're forced to ponder whether Jordan has contracted a case of the.... well, we're not supposed to say that word out loud:
2. Before the Sony, Hank Haney said Spieth “visibly has the yips” on the greens. (Our instruction editor Luke Kerr-Dineen performed his own analysis on why Spieth misses so many short putts, theorizing that Spieth gets too rigid.) What say you? Does Spieth have the dreaded y-word?
Well, if that rigidity persists for four hours, he should call his doctor.... What? Yeah, at his age four hours s a bad night, but perhaps I've milked every last bit of humor out of that bit....
Ritter: During his major-winning rise to No. 1, putting was Spieth’s strength, and it really is hard to believe we’re having this debate only a few years later. I don’t know if it’s yips, a mechanical thing or something else, but his game has flipped to the point where putting is now his weakness.
Zak: I believe there are levels to the yips. I cannot understand it as a black or white disease where you’ve either got it or you don’t. It’s far more likely that there are yipping tendencies on display, or yippy moments, in Spieth’s game rather than a broad-brush version of that dreaded word. Luke clearly found something interesting in Spieth’s on-green routine, but I’m still hesitant to point to that as a clear reason why he’s struggling inside 15 feet.
Levels to the yips? Is that akin to rings of hell?
Dethier: I was pretty convinced by LKD’s analysis and think Spieth would do well to read it. Spieth is in constant, frenetic motion over long putts. He excels over long putts. He appears to struggle when he freezes over short putts — it’s almost an anti-yip, a lack of motion. Too much time to think.
Bamberger: I would completely agree with that. He’s the opposite of the modern, robotic golfer and putter, right through the bag, until he gets to the short putts. Circa 2015, he looked the same over 40-footer and four-footers. LKD is on to something.
Even during ski season, it just can't be good for any golfer to be reading about the yips....
Did you catch the bizzaro world backstopping incident? The Golf Channel guys were all over it:
Another backstopping incident has emerged on the PGA Tour, and Frank Nobilo his fellow Golf Channel announcers took notice.
Matt Kuchar was playing from the greenside bunker on the 9th hole during the finalround of the Sony Open on Sunday when Nobilo, Steve Sands and Jim “Bones” Mackay started discussing the controversial practice on the Golf Channel broadcast.
One of Kuchar’s playing partners, Andrew Putnam, had left his ball just a couple of inches from the flag and didn’t put a mark down. Backstopping on Tour is when a player, directly or indirectly, fails to mark a ball near the hole and another player hits it. Kuchar would have received an advantage had he hit Putnam’s ball and it slowed Kuchar’s down or stopped it completely, because Kuchar would play it from where it lies. It wouldn’t harm Putnam, either, because if that were to happen he would be able to move his ball back to where it was for no penalty.
To be clear, Putnam held a one-shot lead at the turn over Kuchar, so there’s no reason for him to want to help Kuchar out. In this case Kuchar could have played quickly or Putnam was just a little slow to get to his ball.
Still, Mackay, the on-course reporter for the final group, pointed out how he was surprised Putnam didn’t mark.
“That’s crazy,” Nobilo said. “It really is.”
Yeah, it really is! My theory has been that this younger generation has somehow failed to absorb the obligation to protect the field... But failing to protect yourself? It's madness, I say.
Shall we get back to our Kooch, a guy about whom I've never heard a bad word.... Until now, perhaps. When Kooch won in the Fall sat Mayakoba he had a local caddie on his bag, the flavorfully nicknamed El Tucan.
Over the weekend Tom Gillis indicated that Kooch failed to adhere to prevailing wage legislation:
Hmmmm... Kooch's first place purse was $1.3 million, so folks will be doing the match, though we don't actually know that it's true, as Kooch has kept it zipped.
Brandel Chamblee was among those defending Kooch, and the TC panel was less harsh than you might expect:
3. Caddie compensation was a hot topic on social media over the weekend after questions surfaced about what Matt Kuchar did or didn’t pay his fill-in local caddie during Kuchar’s winning week at the Mayakoba Golf Classic last year. In general terms, what is equitable in a situation like this? Assuming Tour pros typically pay their loopers 5% to 10% of their haul, do stand-in caddies deserve the same rate?
Ritter: It’d be nice to see a stand-in get the same fee, but since they’re unlikely to do the job as well as the permanent looper, a Tour pro can justify a reduced rate. I think as longas Kooch ultimately paid his caddie whatever they agreed upon at the start of the week, no harm no foul. (But a tip would’ve been nice!)
Zak: It would be interesting to learn what Kuchar has paid local caddies in the past if and when he’s missed the cut…but let’s leave that aside for now. Kuchar hadn’t won in 4.5 years. He had one top-five finish all year. It’s remarkable that he won with with a stand-in looper. Here’s hoping that Kuchar is right, that this isn’t “a story,” and that there’s something missing in the allegations.
This where it gets amusing, and it would have been amusingly awkward to have regular looper John Wood on the panel this week. Because those extra services that he provides seem at best trivial, given that Kooch won without them.
Dethier: For context, I walked several holes with Kuchar and his caddie, El Tucan, that week in Mayakoba. It was clear Kuchar wasn’t leaning on him the way he would a full-time looper. I think something in the neighborhood of 5% makes sense, but I don’t think there needs to be an ironclad rule on this — when in doubt, shell out, right? But in fairness to Kuchar, I think we’re still missing a key part of this story.
Bamberger: I’m not pretending to know a thing about how Kuchar paid El Tucan, but in general: be frugal with yourself and generous with others, unless you’re flush. Then be generous with everybody. Give and get back.
Shack's got much more here, but this would seem to be an easy story for Kooch to swat away..... Unless, you know, it's accurate.
Augusta On My Mind - We've all seen these invitations previously:
I'm beginning to think I might never receive one....
But there's a new one that the girls are swooning over:
That's Alexa Pano opening her cherished invite for Beth Ann Nichols....
This youngster receiving an invite is inevitably newsworthy:
We covered the back story of Lucy's participation in that Apple ad, and now we await a decision from the USGA. The problem, of course, is that the USGA wants nothing to do with this one.....But, unfortunately for them, with great power comes great responsibility....
The TC panel takes on the bigger picture:
4. Invitations to the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur, which will be held the week before the Masters, began surfacing on the social feeds of a few excited invitees last week. Given the clout and prestige of ANGC, what kind of impact do you expect this event will have on the elite women’s amateur game?
Ritter: It’s a fresh new way to inspire young girls to play golf and I can’t wait to see it. The event’s impact may be hard to initially quantify, but who knows, someday a U.S. Open winner may say she got serious about golf as a kid after watching this event. The tournament offers nothing but upside for the entire sport.
Zak: It’s absolutely an historic event. I just hope it reaches its potential. I hope it expands to include more than just one day on the hallowed grounds of ANGC. I hope it can stand alone on the greater women’s golf schedule instead of taking place at the same time as a major. I’m stoked it’s getting started, and I totally trust Fred Ridley and his team to nail it.
Bamberger: It can be one of the most positive developments in women’s amateur golf in years. What Augusta does it does well. This whole thing should be first-rate, fun and inspiring.
Dethier: I can’t tell if Zak is being earnest with his last line there, but he hits on a key point: there’s an element of execution involved here that will determine whether it gets to the next level. Help the golf world get excited about it; I don’t think we need much encouragement.
I think it's a great thing the club is doing, and I especially like that it's an amateur event. But that only me feel worse about my sense that watching the young girls play this golf course will ultimately disappoint.... Inevitably I think it will only serve to showcase the inferiority of the women's game as they all lay up on the Par-5's....
The Euro Beat - Golf.com is slow-rolling the results of an anonymous poll of Euro Tour players, first with this:
That was one of the questions we asked players on the European Tour in our recent survey. Sound familiar? That’s because we asked PGA Tour pros the same question in 2018. As it turned out, European Tour players have actually played hungover LESS than PGA Tour players.
38% of the Euro Tour pros polled said yes, they’ve played a tournament round hungover before, which arrives a touch under the 46% of PGA Tour pros who admitted to some less-than-stellar feels during a round in their career. It’s worth remembering Englishman Eddie Pepperell, who fired a 67 during the final round of the 2018 British Open, all while being “a bit hungover.” For a long time that day, he remained in contention to advance into a playoff.
Glad we cleared that up.....Though "a bit" is open to interpretation, but I'm sure Keith Pelley is at work on the Hungover Open for next season....
The other question released served as the exit question for our Tour Confidentialistas:
6. In GOLF’s anonymous poll of European Tour players (we’ll publish all the results Tuesday), 79% of Euro Tour pros said they would rather have dinner with Tiger Woods than Phil Mickelson (9%) — 12% said they would rather eat alone. With whom would you rather dine, and why?
Ritter: If it’s a working dinner, it’s Tiger because I’d like to be able to share every moment with readers. (You’re welcome, readers.) If it’s a casual, off the record meal, it’s Phil because I think he’d spill more gossip.
Bamberger: I had a breakfast with Phil a few years ago and I’m still trying to process it. Mr. Ritter’s distinctions are salient. If Tiger’s going to actually talk, Tiger.
Zak: If it’s dinner, that means we’re going deep in conversation, so it has to be Phil. He’s the one ready to go deep on golf physics, strategies, bad course architecture, etc. What a treat that would be. I imagine the experience with Tiger to be a bit formulaic. We just probably wouldn’t get very deep. I suppose Ritter said that in a much nicer way.
Hmmmm...its' that 12% that has me curious, because the original Table for One is a member of the European Tour.
Gonna leave you here.
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