Tuesday Tastings

We'll get an early start and hope to finish our heavy lifting before the heat and humidity rise....  Madam is playing in this heat, whereas your humble blogger is giving careful consideration to an afternoon nap....  

Of course I'll be out in the heat tomorrow, when they'll likely be no post.  

The Medici of Muirfield - It's a challenging location for a new golf club, and the name begs for historical significance, though the UK Golf Guy isn't sold:

It takes a certain chutzpah to take a piece of land tucked between Muirfield and North Berwick - 2 of the greatest links courses in the world - and try to create a course from scratch which gets close to comparing to those great tracks. That was the vision of a

wealthy American - Jerry Savardi - and he pulled out all the stops to get the job done. 

The architect is Tom Doak. I have really enjoyed reading Doak's works - from his Confidential Golf Guides to The Anatomy of a Golf Course and I appreciate his philosophy for building golf courses. In the introduction to the latter Ben Crenshaw says '"It is up to the golf architect to present us with a thinking contest as well as a physical one". That's a great philosophy but I can't help thinking that Doak didn't quite live up to that ideal here.

Doak has been quite open that he was asked to design a course which is suitable for professional championship play and in the 21st century that tends to mean one thing - a long and brutal golf courses. That at the heart of it is the problem that I have with The Renaissance Club, it's just too hard for me. There are numerous long carries off the tees (playing a 500 yard + par 4 into the wind with a long carry over heavy bracken isn't my idea of fun) and both times I played it the course was set up for punishment rather than pleasure I felt. I am not alone in this view, some pros I have spoken to don’t talk about the challenge it sets them but the punishing nature of the track. Of course, others love that challenge but for me it is just too much.

Given the abundance of championship venues in this corner of the world, it seems an odd mandate.  Even odder is to hire Doak, who has made playability such a priority in his work and writing on the subject.

I'm guessing this is a typo, or a Britishism:

Three new holes have been added - the 9th, 10th and 11th - which go down to the Firth of Forth and provide the spectacular views that the owner no doubt craved, and it would be churlish to say anything apart from that they are really good additions to the course. The par 10 4th in particular provides a wonderful setting. The course was tremendously well presented and the attention to detail is great. There are many architectural features - such as the incorporation of ancient walls - which can be really savoured.

Yes, that Par 10 will likely take the boys by surprise, though I've been reliably informed that the longer hitters can reach in seven...

Doak is always thoughtful on the subject of architecture, and had this in an interview with the UK Golf Guy:

‘One feature I incorporated was having a couple of long par-4 holes (8 and 18 normally, 2 and 18 for the tournament) with very difficult greens. That's normally frowned on by American designers who think it's unfair, but I noticed several of them in my year abroad (like the 13th at Prestwick or the Road Hole at St Andrews) and was determined to incorporate one to test the players, both physically and mentally. If you're trying to test a plus-6 handicap you have to have a couple of features that a scratch player will struggle with.’

Those guys that show up looking for a gentle week to acclimate to links golf, might instead find themselves punished:

The Renaissance has a reputation as a tough driving course – and that has been exacerbated by some set-up decisions made by the club. ‘The course is now about half as 

wide as when I built it. They stopped mowing large portions of fairway a few years ago to prove that the course was a tough test, though I thought the length and difficulties around the greens would take care of most of that.’ 

Doak is phlegmatic about what happens when a course is picked to host a top event like the Scottish Open. ‘Mr. Sarvadi still asks my opinion of things, but for example it was not my idea to renumber the holes and put the most compelling part of the golf course right at the start (and likely not on TV). Once the Tour takes over, even the owner doesn't get a say, and the architect surely doesn't.’ 

What they won’t have banked on is the recent conditions in East Lothian. Doak believes that the wet year in Scotland so far means that ‘the rough could be pretty brutal for the Scottish Open’. It has been the wettest June in the East of Scotland for many years and the rough on all the local courses is high. Forget the wispy grass of last year’s Scottish Open at Gullane, this is deep, succulent, cloying rough that will gobble balls up and make them hard to get out.

There isn't anything in this that sounds appealing, either for amateur play or for the Scottish Open.  I will tune in to give it a look, but Lahinch is much more my cup of tea....

Portrush Stuff -  We'll start with Tiger, whose been MIA since Pebble Beach.  Padraig Harrington remains one of the better quotes in the game, offering these thoughts last week during the Irish Open:

"I personally think if you're serious about winning the Open you've got to be playing tournament golf at least before it," Harrington said at Lahinch. "You'd rather be playing

links golf and being in a tournament than just [playing] on your own, so if you're serious about trying to win the Open you should be playing at least one, if not two, of the events running into it."

"But I do think links golf is different. You're giving up some shots if you don't play some links golf in the couple of weeks coming up to it. There's no better way to understand your clubbing than when you've got a card in your hand and if you under-club there's a little bit of pain and you remember it."

David Feherty, a local boy, had these thoughts along the same lines:

Tiger Woods is a three-time winner of the Open Championship and a 15-time major champion, most recently winning the 2019 Masters this past April. But Golf Channel

analyst David Feherty isn’t quite sure what to make of the No. 5 player in the world ahead of the fourth and final major of the season next week at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland.

“He sticks to a plan,” Feherty said. “I think a good deal of it will depend upon the weather, which I suspect being from there may not be great. We may get some real Open Championship weather. Personally, I kind of hope we do. There’s something traditional or special about playing golf in bad weather. And Tiger typically is not renowned as a bad weather player. I don’t know what sort of shape his back is in for that kind of thing, but I know Freddy [Couples] suffered with it over the years. But the only mistake I’ve ever made about Tiger Woods is underestimating him. He’s an unknown quantity at the moment.”

Except when he doesn't....  His plan was to play Quail Hollow, then as it approached he just didn't feel like putting in the work.

I skipped this question and answers from the Tour Confidential panel in yesterday's blogging:

5. Can Tiger Woods win the Open after taking this long of a break between events? Padraig Harrington isn’t so sure. “I personally think if you’re serious about winning The Open you’ve got to be playing tournament golf at least before it,” Harrington said at the Irish Open. “You’d rather be playing links golf and being in a tournament than just [playing] on your own, so if you’re serious about trying to win The Open you should be playing at least one, if not two, of the events running into it.” When preparing for The Open, how advantageous/critical is a week or two of links-golf warm-up? 

Bamberger: Harrington is a top-10 quote producer in this new century, but I think Woods knows the best way for him to give himself the best chance of winning. Crazy-talk, from Paddy — but I love it! 

Kerr-Dineen: The point Paddy’s making is the correct one, and it’s something that gets dismissed far too often by Tiger’s fans. Golfers need reps. They need to feel that heat under pressure and close it out. Even when you’ve done it thousands of times before, like Tiger, you still need them. That’s the point Paddy’s making, and it’s nothing different than what Tiger himself has spoken about multiple times. 

Sens: Tiger has gone from saying he needs reps to saying he needs rest. He was right then, and I’ve got to figure that he’s right now. Clearly, he’s not oblivious to the drawbacks of a layoff. He’s just trying to give himself his best chance.

True that, Josh.... he needed his reps to get back his golf feelz....  and there was something about traj involved there as well.

Wood: Agree with Josh. None of us know exactly what’s going on with Tiger’s body, and I’m gonna go ahead and trust that someone with 15 majors is going to give himself the best chance in his mind. In an ideal situation I’m sure he would have liked to have played before, but I think health and being fresh is much more important than overly prepared. 

Ritter: No doubt Tiger feels rest is his best move, but I still see it as a red flag and will probably avoid him in my Open-related pools. I think he would’ve played somewhere this month if he felt up to it, because for years he spoke about the importance of reps as part of his preparation. (For a while “reps” was right up there with “traj” and “glutes” in his press-conference parlance.) Tiger’s month off tells me his body currently isn’t quite where he wants it to be.

It's of course true that we don't know what's going on with his body, a major reason that I've been a skeptic about his chances in the majors (yes, including The Masters).  

Let me also add that Tiger is an incredible creature of habit, and I don't ever like his chances at a new venue....  See how many practice rounds he plays, but he seems awfully chill about the race to 18 or 19, no?

And this doesn't make me feel any better about his chances:

Tiger Woods is preparing for the British Open by using some faux time travel. 

The 148th Open Championship begins a week from Thursday at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland. 

In a video posted by Nike on Instagram (seen above), Woods said he is adjusting his body clock for the five-hour time difference between the East Coast of the U.S. and that of Northern Ireland by getting up in the middle of the night. 

“Hey Nike, it’s Tiger. Wake Up! It is now 1 a.m. here on the East Coast,” Woods says in the video. “Why am I doing this? It is now 6 a.m. on Royal Portrush. I will be playing the Open Championship there. And in order to be prepared for the time change, I am getting up.”

Some faux time travel in order to get those faux feels....  what could go wrong?

John Feinstein takes on the R&A's decision in re John Daly, and gets it about as wrong as a human being can, though maybe it's me....

In denying John Daly a cart, the R&A misses the point

I'm guessing we'll disagree with THE point, but the crazy part is that he seems to understand it at first, framing it in the Casey Martin contretemps:

I vividly remember being at Torrey Pines the week of the trial and sitting in the locker room during a rain delay—it was an El Nino year—listening as players debated the issue. 

Most agreed with the tour’s position that walking was an integral part of the game.

Perhaps the most adamant in that group was Fred Couples, who has dealt with back issues most of his career. “If he gets a cart, why can’t I go to the tour and say my back hurts, I need a cart?” Couples asked. “Where do you draw the line?” 

Payne Stewart had the answer. “This isn’t an injury, Freddy,” he said quietly. “This is a birth defect. It’s a disease, and it’s only going to get worse. The kid may lose that leg someday. Everyone gets injured out here at some point. Very few people have diseases like this one.” 

Later, as the argument raged on, I stood in the corner of the locker room with Stewart. “They should give the kid a cart,” he said. “They’re worried about what it will look like for carts to be on the golf course. What are we talking, one, two carts? Maybe? They should be worried about looking completely heartless, because I think that’s the way people perceive it.”

John, you had me at hello...  It seems pretty obvious that Daly's problems are far closer to Freddy's than to Martin's, but John actually tries to argue otherwise.

He’s 53 now and has osteoarthritis in his right knee, a painful degenerative condition that makes walking difficult for him. He was also diagnosed as a diabetic last fall. There’s no doubt his weight, even though he has lost almost 30 pounds in the past year, doesn’t help the condition in his knee. There are also those who would argue that his lifestyle through the years has contributed to his knee problems and the diabetes. 

Certainly he doesn’t present the image one might want to see in an athlete taking part in a major championship with a cigarette stuck in his lips, Diet Cokes all over his golf cart and the very loud pants he wears in a sponsorship deal. 

But all of that is irrelevant. If a smoker develops lung cancer, you can say it was their fault, but does that mean you don’t sympathize? Do you tell them, "Hey, you did this to yourself, deal with it"? 

Of course not. Daly’s condition isn’t nearly as serious, but he has been certified by the ADA as having a legitimate medical condition that makes walking difficult. He’s not injured; he has a medical condition. Like Martin, like Compton, like Verplank.

The worst appeal to authority ever.... the ADA would certify that a ham sandwich has a disability, how about we just pair him up with a support dog?

 The old saying is that bad cases make bad law, and any case that relies on John Daly will by definition be bad.  My bigger issue with the man is that, after fighting to ge his cart, after the first triple bogey he'll just mail it in.

But arthritis is a condition resulting from the ageing process, despite the Johns' (both Daly and Feinstein) attempt to attribute a fancier name to his condition.  We also love the humor inherent in the latter John's attempt to distract us from the former's obesity and lifestyle contributions to said condition....  Pay no attention to that fat man behind the curtain.

But here's a thought... how about we avoid these issues entirely and not invite all living champions to play.  We would thereby strengthen the field, offer additional playing opportunities to those trying to make their way in the game and, of greatest importance, your humble blogger wouldn't have to watch this miserable excuse for a professional golfer.

Were you with us yesterday when I raised the issue of Marching Season?  Via Shack, The Guardian informs us of the plans for Saturday in Portrush:

As the third round of the final major of the year concludes, spectators will exit Royal Portrush to the sound of flutes and drums. The R&A wants us to cast our minds dreamily back to 1951, when Max Faulkner triumphed on Antrim’s north coast; Saturday evening will instead catapult us back to 1690 and the Battle of the Boyne. 

A 2008 march in Derry.

In what has been billed as a “celebration of marching bands”, a three-hour concert will take place from 6.30pm in the centre of the town. The performers are listed on social media as if it were as natural as Glastonbury (which, in respect of Northern Ireland, you can make the reasonable case it is). 

The William King Memorial band start proceedings, followed in half‑hour slots by the Derryloran Boyne Defenders, Dunloy Accordion, Ballykeel Loyal Sons of Ulster and Moneyslane Flute Band. The Drumderg Loyalists will round things off from 9pm. The Sons of Ulster will then march to an Orange hall. There is naturally a comedic, ludicrous undertone to this in 2019 but when placed on the Open’s doorstep it is a horrendously embarrassing look.

Are you up on all things William of Orange?

Twenty-one years on from the Good Friday agreement, loyalists still mark William of Orange’s Boyne victory with anthems and bonfires, many of the latter featuring tricolour flags or effigies of the pope. This is about as far from an epitome of social inclusion as you could find. 

It is the Northern Ireland that will not feature on advertising campaigns for one of the world’s biggest sporting events. It does not, either, on the Causeway Coast & Glens borough council’s what’s on guide for July alongside the Open, a maritime festival and food tours. Middle-aged men belting out The Sash does not tend to have a wider resonance. Sky Sports Golf will not deliver a special outside broadcast.

Though there is this rebuttal to keep in mind:

As an academic who has researched marching band traditions in Northern Ireland, I must point out that, contrary to Ewan Murray’s article (Portrush Orange parade gives the Open an embarrassing problem, 3 July), there will be no Orange parade in Portrush. The event is a band parade with which the Orange Order has no connection and will play no part. There will be no Orange sashes, no bonfires or effigies of the pope. The parade does not commemorate the Battle of the Boyne. Indeed it does not commemorate anything: it is an annual fundraising and social event.

Let's hope this comes off without much attention paid, and that we can just enjoy the golf. 

Mike Stachura takes his shot at Portrush's second chance, showing some writing chops I've not previously noticed:

To come at Royal Portrush from the Antrim Coast Road in Northern Ireland is to find a kind of golf brigadoon meets “Game of Thrones.” The ruins of Dunluce Castle— which has been used as GoT’s Castle Greyjoy—date to the 1500s and stare along the cliffs of The Whiterocks down to a seaside village that was a resort town before there were cars to get to it. Between that headland and the castle lie dunes that roll like a sea with bad intentions. So natural a setting for golf is this ground that they’ve been playing the game here since the 1880s. The great old course takes its name from Dunluce, and like the castle, its holes now seem to breathe with renewed vigor, menacing and majestic, beast and beauty, terror and treat. Like the castle, it seems as if the course nearly falls into the sea. The castle didn’t survive. The links, thankfully, did. 

Royal Portrush steps forward to host the 148th Open Championship July 18–21, a rightful place for a venue that today consistently ranks as one of the world’s best. 

Unbelievably, there was a time when Royal Portrush, while well regarded for close to a century, was lost from view. Located in a land torn by the three decades of violence that came to be known as The Troubles, Royal Portrush was never so close to the tensions between Catholics and Protestants, but never all that far. Though The Troubles were largely why Northern Ireland was not in the discussion for an Open Championship for a lifetime, the only course that ever was in that discussion is Portrush’s mighty Dunluce Links. It last hosted the Open in 1951, the only time before or since that the Open wasn’t played in Scotland or England. Neither possible nor practical for what amounts to generations, Royal Portrush is now poised to reassert its qualifications while Northern Ireland writ large wants to show the world its poetry, not its peril.

Read the whole thing, especially if you're unfamiliar with Wilma....I can't leave without sharing this picture of the 13th green (there's inevitably some confusion in hole numbering, as I believe this will play as No. 15 next week):

It's one of my favorite holes on the course, offering a spectacular vista of the dunes and sea.  I'll have more to say about it as we get closer to the event.

Mikey Likes It - Ron Whitten, the architecture editor at Golf Digest, has a nomination for the World Golf Hall of Fame:

In the World Golf Hall of Fame, there’s a category called Lifetime Achievement, which

has honored 30 individuals—a handful of golf architects and golf writers, a club manufacturer, some administrators, instructors and television commentators. There are even two U.S. presidents honored, Ike and 41. But there’s not a single golf-course developer. 

World Golf Hall of Fame, I give you Mike Keiser, the course developer who made golf great again, at a time when many were predicting its decline and fall. At the start of this century, Keiser redefined public golf as immersive and escapist. He built layouts on the fringes of continents, enormous sandboxes where grown-ups can decompress in weeklong sessions, playing two or even three rounds every day. It’s an exhausting yet exhilarating pursuit, the perfect remedy for 21st-century angst. 

Keiser put bounce back in the repertoire of course architects, made walking with caddies or pullcarts the norm rather than the exception and convinced us that golf in wind and rain can be delightful.

Ummm....Peggy Kirk Bell?  I know, she was a player and teacher as well, but still.

There's much to enjoy here, although he doesn't fully deliver on the Kesier Method promised in the header.

The less convenient but more interesting fact is that the Keiser Method developed haphazardly in the creation of Bandon Dunes, making this book a great read.  After all, Ron doesn't even mention the gorse...

But lots pf great photos, including this of the iconic Sheep Ranch:

And this from Sand Valley:

Catch you Thursday.