Unplayable Lies: Match Play Thursday

For the guys that lost yesterday, for sure:

Wednesday match play results

Tommy Fleetwood defeats Byeong Hun An 3&2 (Group 11)

Kyle Stanley defeats Louis Oosthuizen 3&2 (Group 11)

Bryson DeChambeau defeats Russell Knox 3&1 (Group 6)

Marc Leishman defeats Kiradech Aphibarnrat 2-up (Group 6)

Tony Finau defeats Keith Mitchell 2&1 (Group 14)

Ian Poulter defeats Kevin Kisner 2-up (Group 14)

Brooks Koepka ties Tom Lewis (Group 3)

HaoTong Li defeats Alex Noren 5&4 (Group 3)

Paul Casey defeats Abraham Ancer 5&3 (Group 10)

Charles Howell III defeats Cameron Smith 2&1 (Group 10)

Francesco Molinari defeats Satoshi Kodaira 5&4 (Group 7)

Thorbjørn Olesen defeats Webb Simpson 2&1 (Group 7)

Kevin Na defeats Bubba Watson 1-up (Group 15)

Jordan Spieth ties Billy Horschel (Group 15)

Justin Rose defeats Emiliano Grillo 2&1 (Group 2)

Gary Woodland defeats Eddie Pepperell 2&1 (Group 2)

Jim Furyk defeats Jason Day 2-up (Group 12)

Henrik Stenson defeats Phil Mickelson 2&1 (Group 12)

Lucas Bjerregaard defeats Justin Thomas 3&2 (Group 5)

Matt Wallace defeats Keegan Bradley 1-up (Group 5)

Tiger Woods defeats Aaron Wise 3&1 (Group 13)

Patrick Cantlay ties Brandt Snedeker (Group 13)

Rory McIlroy defeats Luke List 5&4 (Group 4)

Justin Harding defeats Matthew Fitzpatrick 1-up (Group 4)

Xander Schauffele defeats Lee Westwood 1-up (Group 9)

Tyrrell Hatton defeats Rafa Cabrera Bello 4&3 (Group 9)

Jon Rahm defeats Si Woo Kim 7&5 (Group 8)

Matt Kuchar defeats J.B. Holmes 3&1 (Group 8)

Andrew Putnam defeats Patrick Reed 3&2 (Group 16)

Sergio Garcia defeats Shane Lowry 4&2 (Group 16)

Dustin Johnson defeats Chez Reavie 4&3 (Group 1)

Branden Grace defeats Hideki Matsuyama 4&3 (Group 1)

I got to watch about ninety minutes of the golf, though that didn't include the denouement of most of the matches.

In general, I found the quality of play to be shockingly bad. Is it me, or does that seem the trend on Tour these days.... Let me just cite a couple of examples:

Aaron Wise did a spot-on Stephen Ames impression, allowing Tiger to win the opening hole with a bad bogey. And then, having taken the lead shortly after the turn, reverted to C-Flight quality of play.
One match I did catch the finish of was the Billy Ho - Jordan Spieth affair, which I would desperately want to unwatch. Egads, can't anybody here play this game.
Bubba, what were you thinking?
The talking heads were desperately trying to convince us that Group 12 is the Group of Death. I completely agree, as longs as it's like the GOAT, and features 2004 Jim Furyk, 2015 Jason Day, 2006 Phil and 2013 Henrik. If it's the 2019 versions of those guys, then Alas Poor Furyk might be a lucky man indeed.

I think this sums up the Tiger win quite well:

The only score that mattered was the final score.

That was the exclamation point Tiger Woods made in describing his opening-round meeting with Aaron Wise on Wednesday in the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play.

While Woods was playing the event for the first time since 2013, he hadn’t forgotten that the essence of match play is to beat your opponent by any means necessary, be it with excellent play or otherwise.

“I broke 80,” Woods said with a big smile after defeating Wise, 3 and 1, in and up-and-down affair over the elevation-fueled Austin Country Club. Both players admitted they’ve had better days on the golf course, but each hole remained a tournament on its own and tension accompanied the two through 17 holes.

Yeah, but I'm pretty sure that Aaron didn't, even over only seventeen holes... I have no clue what we'll see from him today, but this will need to stop:

“The way we were playing today, we’re very thankful it’s not stroke play,” Woods said. “I was just trying to beat the guy in front of me. It was tough out there. It was tricky, and the wind was blowing all over the place.

“I drove it well and I felt like I putted well. I was hitting my irons flush and hitting through the wind, and Joey (LaCava, his caddie) says it’s a nice problem to have. But I said this is not the time to be encouraging me like this right now, I just hit it over the back of three greens in a row.

“I probably have to dial that down a little bit and figure that out.”

I'm not even sure that he actually drove it that well, though everything is relative.

Did you see the crazy finish to the Bubba-Kevin Na match? They were ~~all~~ ~~square~~ tied heading to the finishing hole, when comedy and farce broke out:

Watson, one of the longest hitters on Tour, nearly drove the par-4 18th green and ended up in the bunker short of it. Na, meanwhile, laid up. From 109 yards behind Watson, Na

knocked his second shot to 10 feet away, putting the pressure on Watson in the green-side bunker. That’s where the trouble started.

Watson’s first shot from the sand got caught in the rough and rolled back in. His third shot was on the same path, but before his ball had a chance to fall back into the bunker he picked it up to concede the 1-up win to Na.

“He’s gonna pick it up, what?!” said Nick Faldo on the Golf Channel telecast, perplexed. “You are down there with the advantage [off the tee] and you are in your pocket.”

While it’s unlikely Watson would have holed his third bunker shot to save a 4 and make par — he still would have needed Na to miss his birdie putt to halve the match — there still was a chance, one he didn’t take. (Jordan Spieth holed out from the sand earlier in the day.)

Bubba had a perfectly ordinary bunker shot for a touring professional, which he merely needed to get up and down for the win. And he simply chunked it....and watched it roll back into his footprint.

These guys are good, they used to tell us, except when we see them out of their comfort zone.

But I want to step back from this event and make a point that occurred to me only yesterday. Since January I've been listening to golf commentators refer to penalty areas. and I thought this was quite unnecessary and stupid. But yesterday I realized the extent of the USGA and R&A's malfeasance, and it seems Josh Berhow had the same epiphany:

The changes to the Rules of Golf have been the biggest story of 2019 thus far, but did you know that golf terms were included in the recent rules revisions as well?

Actually, I didn't. Last year during the comment period on the proposed rules changes, we heard all about the new drop rules (back then it was from as little as one inch), leaving the pin in and the like, but nowhere do I remember the governing organizations telling us they were going to change the language of golf. WTF?

Josh has this quick tutorial to get everyone up to speed for this week:

Here’s a quick rundown of the new preferred terms, so you know exactly what to say the next time you are deep into your Saturday match:

– “Tying” on a hole has replaced “halving” a hole

– “Score” of a match has replaced “status” of a match

– “Asking/requesting a ruling” has replaced “making a claim”

– “Telling an opponent about penalty” and “telling an opponent about number of strokes taken” has replaced “wrong information”

– “Dormie,” the match play term long used to represent leading or trailing a match by the same number of holes remaining, has been removed from the Rules of Golf.

I can't express how angry I am about this, and how misguided these folks are. And the more they explain, the angrier I get:

These changes were made to align the rules with more commonly used language.

The language of our game has evolved since at least 1744 (have you noticed how frequently I've been citing that date), and was uniquely perfect for its use. I don'y mean literally perfect, but it just worked for us all.... This is likely a misguided attempt to appeal to millennials and their micro attention spans, but once again the powers that be express no confidence in our game and its ability to appeal to generation after generation of people.

What is wrong with the concept of halving a hole? Why would you even think about changing that? Have you solved every problem in our game and now moved on to things that aren't actually problems? I know this pure apples and oranges, but here's a problem, as articulated by the best player of our generation, that they can't be bothered addressing:

Q. How would you describe the level of competition now in 2019?

TIGER WOODS: Well, I think that equipment has made it smaller. The margin is much smaller than it used to be. Now look at these heads, 460 cc's, you hit the ball anywhere on the face and have it go 300 yards. Before it put a premium on good ball-strikers to hit the ball in the middle of the face each and every time. And there was a distinction between the guys who could do that and the guys who couldn't. And that's no longer the case.

It promotes people swinging harder. Teeing the ball higher, swinging harder and hitting the ball further. And the old shot of hitting just a squeezier, low, heelie cut in play, that's no longer the case. Guys are trying to maximize distance off the tee, to try and carry that number 300, 320, 330 in the air. And it's become a game that's played more up in the air than it ever used to be.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, as these are the people that changed Far Hills into Liberty Corner.... They can't deal with sand-filled divots, but they don't want us to use "dormie" any longer....

Interestingly, I haven't seen any golf writer object to the chutzpah of legislating language.... Are they on board, or like me did they need the match-play to understand the magnitude of this arrogance.

I'm going to move on, but perhaps we'll circle back when I'm better able to control my emotions....

Milking The Gig - Dylan Dethier is back with 33 insights from his two days of toting luggage at the Valspar, though he gets to that gaudy total by recycling all of his Bones material. But there are some gems, or at least reasonably interesting looks behind the curtain:

The highest-pressure moment of the week…was my first bunker raking. I’d dodged the sand all Thursday until Trainer fired one over the back pin on 18, where I suddenly realized I’d make my debut in front of the day’s largest crowd. Afterward, Luke Donald’s coach Patrick Goss described the job as “well done, albeit world-record slow.” Golf Channel writer Will Gray was looking on, too: “It truly was a thing of beauty. You could feel each grain being re-positioned with great purpose,” he wrote later on Twitter. That’s good enough for me.

You knew his fellow writers would be the toughest crowd....

We all like to hear about the swag, no?

Free gear: When I was finally credentialed and deemed official, I was given five things.

1. A choice of Valspar hats, either electric blue, deep purple or pale yellow. I went yellow.

2. A yardage book

3. A page with last year’s pin positions (where they were likely to be again)

4. A voucher for a free can of paint — tint of my choosing!

5. Two tickets for each day of the week to give away (sadly, I somehow lost these almost immediately).

I love that fourth item, though I gather that Dylan was unable to sell his hat logo for the ~~week~~ two days as per our Duf.

Dylan also has some random quotes from the caddie shed, though you're gonna ask for names:

Overheard in the caddie lounge: I overheard a lot of things in the caddie room, a sampling included here for your entertainment.

Rumors: “I heard he’s intentionally gonna stay on the Web tour so he can smoke weed during the rounds, ’cause they don’t test as much there.”

Complaints: “I officially hate my guy. Hate him. Cannot wait to get another bag.”

Opportunism: “Just a heads up — I heard Trainer does have a caddie, even though he hasn’t checked in. Some buddy of his. The f—– buddy system.”

Good stuff.

More Alan is Better than Less - Grate news from the maestro of the mailbag:

What’s better than one #AskAlan per week? According to my editors, two. So starting here we’re going to try a new concept: for the midweek edition I shall answer queries about the recently completed tournaments and related concerns. For a second column every Friday, we can entertain more miscellania, venturing into the dark, shadowy recesses of your collective conscious. It’s worth a try. Let’s give it a couple of weeks and then we can decide if this Alanpalooza is working or not. One thing I know I can count on from all of you: brutal honesty.

Hope they're paying him more.... But this first query is delightfully predictable:

How come the Europeans have been so prominent on the PGA tour so far this season? They’re either winning or in contention every week now. Does this suggest that the Ryder Cup is over as a contest for the next 10 yrs (sorry, I couldn’t resist). -Colin (@cjgillbanks)

You and many others. (Eyeroll emoji.) A lot of it has to do with where we are in the

schedule: Florida has turned into Murderer’s Row, with Honda, Bay Hill and Valspar offering three of the toughest setups we see all season long. As we witnessed with the oppressive setup in Paris, the Europeans are simply better at navigating the skinny fairways where there is a high penalty for wildness. (The Players was a benign setup which suited Rory just fine.) Conversely, why do Americans dominate the Kapalua-Hope-Phoenix trifecta? Because these courses favor a bombs-away style. Expect the 2020 Ryder Cup setup at Whistling Straits to have wide fairways and minimal rough, helping the Americans to reestablish supremacy.

Heh. Alan's 2018 prediction of an era of U.S. Ryder Cup dominance was the golf equivalent of wearing a short skirt and asking for it.... Fortunately Alan is entirely content to lie back and enjoy it.

A couple of Casey items:

Does Paul Casey have a new level of “toughness” unseen before now that will bode well for Augusta or do I need to sit down? -Brad (@JustShake)

I think in golf, toughness is often mistaken for confidence. No doubt there are some guys who do have the mythical grittiness, and it’s already baked into them by the time they arrive in the big-time: Tiger, Seve, Azinger, Ray Floyd, Zach Johnson, etc. But they’re

rare and justifiably celebrated. More often it’s a matter of belief. Casey’s long winless drought had left his confidence in tatters. Then he broke through at Valspar last year and that confidence has infused his entire game. I don’t think this latest win is because he has suddenly gotten tougher; he just found a way to win, and that made it easier to do again.

Casey. A good guy. -@DonDoncarey4

Yo, Don, this is called Ask Alan, not Tell Alan, but I’ll allow it. Yes, I’ve always enjoyed Casey. He is a good-natured guy and one of the best quotes on Tour. It’s a pity that for years he had to live under the cloud of his off-the-cuff comment about American Ryder Cuppers. The blowback was ridiculous – he merely meant it in the way a UCLA fan hates a USC fan on game day. Thankfully, this late-career renaissance has allowed golf fans to focus on the real Casey.

Casey has always been a cheeky one.... I remember him telling an interviewer that if he misses long or short, it's his caddies fault, and if he misses left or right, it's his swing coaches (Peter Kostis) fault. Said of course with an impish smile....

But the only thing that looked tough on Sunday was the golf course.

Not sure I agree with him here, though maybe the issue was the set-up:

Exactly how strong a track is Copperhead? It’s hard to tell on TV, but apparently it’s not for the faint of heart. -@PopGarypopovich

The other day on Twitter, Graham DeLaet posited that it’s the best course on Tour. Those are big words. Of course, when healthy, DeLaet is one of the game’s most precise ballstrikers, so of course he loves the Copperhead. It’s that kind of course: tight, hard, claustrophobic, relentless. It’s certainly a great test, if not exactly an artistic triumph. Do I enjoy watching one tournament a year on the Copperhead? Absolutely. Would I want to play there regularly? Hell to the no.

I can attest that it plays well for the resort guests. It's tree-lined and on the tight side, but not unfairly so. I would say it's the best on Tour, but it is the best in Florida.

here are a couple on another topical issue:

Why is marijuana banned? Far from performance enhancing.
– Pat (@155Marathons)

This can be debated about ten different ways, but the Tour’s stance is pretty simple: weed is still illegal in many states, and it is a banned substance under the Olympic drug-testing policy, to which the golf tours must conform. But I think the Tour needs to build into its policy some common-sense discretion. Robert Garrigus is not a threat to qualify for the Olympics. He wasn’t arrested for possession. Is depriving him of his livelihood really the best solution because he ingested a natural substance?

Hi Alan, why is the PGA Tour so afraid of backlash from a conservative society about the weed ban? The Tour embraces betting and in particular alcohol (the Wasted Management Open is an advert for alcoholism that is actively promoted/encouraged by the Tour). Is it simply a question of legality? -Paolo (@pth1974)

Yeah, the shifting legality of marijuana provides an expedient excuse, but the hypocrisy is ridiculous. The Tour loves drinking, gambling and, judging by all the Viagra and Cialas ads… well, you know. Poor Garrigus just picked the wrong vice.

After a decade of the Tour's drug testing regimen ensnaring no one more successful than Doug Barron, Alan wants to let Garrigus off because he sucks? The point is that credible drug testing program needs to dispense punishment without regard for who the player is. I do agree that testing for recreational drugs isn't necessary, except for the Olympics....and you know how strongly I feel about Olympic golf.

Given that we had two of the ugliest trophies back-to-back weeks, what are the most aesthetically pleasing golf trophies to win? (After the Claret Jug, of course.)- @David_Troyan

The Wanamaker is cartoonishly oversized, but that’s why it’s great. I love Augusta’s clubhouse, Kenya Open rhino, the Torrey pine tree, Quicken Loan Capital Building, Tour Championship’s Calamity Jane, Silverado wine barrel, Sanderson Farms rooster and sundry others.

Oh ullleaze, hold my beer.. We've got the Nelson Mandela Championship: