You'd be within your rights to think that the midpoint of this week was yesterday... But someone was sneaking in his last round of the year. At least I'm guessing it will be my last round....
Turkey Day - A topical post for sure, though our Golfers Behaving Badly meme is pretty much a daily feature. But, envelope please, Josh Sens has our Turkeys of the Year, including these notable nominees:
THE BENJAMIN BUTTON AWARD FOR AGING BACKWARDS
Winner: Sergio Garcia
After blasting from a bunker, Tour pros aren’t expected to rake the sand. But they’re also not expected to trash it altogether, as Garcia did when he regressed into a tantrum-throwing toddler at the Saudi International, stirring up a sand storm with his sand wedge. Oh, and it was also in that same tournament that he damaged several greens with his club, which led to a “serious misconduct” and, eventually, a disqualification.
I don't begrudge Josh his gags, and Benjamin Button is an amusing reference for sure. But it doesn't really fit our hero, who has pretty much flat-lined his immaturity and boorish behavior. But who are we to judge, it's just his own personal take on Living Under Par™...I don't know, Josh, but I might have gone with the lifetime achievement award angle.
This is an eccentric choice, though I'm coming around on it:
THE ANTI-SHIVAS IRONS AWARD FOR VIOLATING THE SPIRIT OF THE GAME
Winner: Trey Bilardello
Shooting a single round 131-over 202 at a U.S. Amateur qualifier is nothing to be proud of. But the real embarrassment for Bilardello is that he started out trying but then, after botching a couple of early holes, was deemed to have intentionally run up his score.
My first instinct was to cite the woman caught kicking her daughters golf ball inside the OB stakes, just because of the obvious Oedipal angle. But this is pretty ugly for sure.
This should be nominated in the "Truth is No Defense" category:
THE WE AREN’T THE WORLD AWARD FOR CULTURAL INSENSITIVITY
Winner: Hank Haney
“I’d go with Lee,” Hank Haney said on his SiriusXM radio show, offering his prediction for the winner of the U.S. Women’s Open. “If I didn’t have to name a first name, I’d get a bunch of them right.” The remark earned Haney a rebuke from Michelle Wie, among others. It also cost him his radio job.
Yet the event was actually won by Jeonjeun Lee6, kind of, you know, making Hank's point. In the immortal words of Johnny Rivers, "They've given you a number, and taken away your name."
THE DEREK ZOOLANDER AWARD FOR GOLF PROS WHO DON’T KNOW THE RULES TOO GOOD
Winner: Kendall Dye
Some say the Rules of Golf are too complex and arcane. But there was nothing esoteric about the dictate violated by Dye at the LPGA Q-Series this fall, when she requested info from another player’s caddie on what club that player had hit. Even casual golfers know that intel-seeking of that kind is a no-no. But apparently not Dye, who said afterwards that she’d been oblivious to the prohibition. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. But dang if it isn’t embarrassing.
An extremely competitive category. My personal favorite was the old lady that had her caddie line her up for a day and-a-half at that senior event, but at least she has the excuse that she doesn't compete regularly.
This one I saw live, a slow-motion train wreck that could have ended so badly:
THE PAUL BLART AWARD FOR OVER-ZEALOUS SECURITY WORK
Winner: Unidentified security guard at Augusta National
Even now, watching the replay, it’s hard not to cringe at the alternate history that was nearly written Friday at the Masters, when a security guard, rushing to shield Tiger Woods from the masses, slipped on rain-slicked turf and came this close to sending Woods back to surgery. In the end, it all worked out. Tiger hop-skipped the slide-tackle and went on to an historic win, and the security guard avoided becoming golf’s Steve Bartman. But he left us with a lingering image of a nightmare that might have been.
I forget, who won that Masters?
When I first saw Josh's item, especially the photo of Sergio, my immediate thought was long the lines that he's at least have the grace to skip the Saudi event this season. Wrong yet again:
The Telegraph and ESPN report that Garcia, as part of a stipulation from the European Tour following last year's disqualification, will waive his appearance fee to play in Saudi Arabia. Garcia reportedly received $650,000 for the 2019 Saudi International, which he was able to keep. A Golf Digest request for comment to Garcia's representatives has not been returned.
Hard to see why they feel so entitled.... Not!
Fall Fans - ESPN's Bob Harig is auditioning for a gig in the Tour's PR Department:
From Tiger to Todd, why the fall season in golf mattered so much
To whom? Brendan Todd's family?
Go ahead, Bob, make your case:
Golf needs an offseason, one longer than the blur between the end to one and the start toanother, a chance to appreciate what just occurred while taking time to soak in what will be new. Fans need a chance to miss the game to truly appreciate it.
That said, if you are going to cram 11 tournaments into 10 weeks prior to Thanksgiving and call that the start to the new year, then it could not have gone much better for the PGA Tour during the first stretch of the 2019-20 season that began in September in West Virginia and ended Sunday in Georgia.
Can we go back to the need for an offseason?
So, what are the tangible results of these eleven events? Start with this:
Joaquin Niemann (Greenbrier), Sebastian Munoz (Sanderson Farms), Cameron Champ (Safeway Open), Lanto Griffin (Houston Open), Todd (Mayakoba) and Tyler Duncan (RSM Classic) are the six players who earned invitations to the 2020 Masters by winning full FedEx points events in the fall.
Rock my world, baby! Young talent needs the opportunity to rise, but I gather I'm supposed to be more excited than I am.
In another hot take, we have on offer five take-aways from the Fall:
Wolff/Hovland/Morikawa aren’t the only phenoms we should be excited about
Matthew Wolff, Viktor Hovland and Collin Morikawa deserve all the hype they get, but they’re not the only youngsters worthy of our fawning.
Joaquin Niemann, who turned 21 earlier this month, is more than a year younger than Hovland and Morikawa, and he’s only six months older than Wolff. Still, we don’t think of him in the same breath as the other three because the Chilean didn’t play college golf and because he turned pro right after the Masters in 2018, 14 months before his age counterparts.
We probably should. Niemann picked up his first PGA Tour victory in the first event of the season at The Greenbrier, a performance that earned him a captain’s pick for what will surely be his first of many, many Presidents Cup appearances. He has the highest World Ranking among the four (57th compared to 68th for Morikawa, 97th for Hovland and 115th for Wolff). Most importantly, he’s found his footing on tour—in 46 starts as a pro he has nine top-10 finishes, 14 top-25s and has earned $4.2 million—which suggests the former No. 1-ranked amateur could become a top-10 player before long.
Yeah, though some pretty weak fields involved.
As for this, beware the early call:
Patrick Reed is not a pariah, after all
In the aftermath of the Americans’ blowout loss to Europe in last year’s Ryder Cup,Patrick Reed broke a sacred omerta by complaining to the media about his teammates. After calling out Jordan Spieth, the conventional wisdom was that Reed’s time as Captain America was over, that he had alienated himself, perhaps beyond repair, and that the only way he would play on future American teams if if he did so on points.Isn’t it amazing how winning seems to fix everything?
Reed played some terrific golf toward the end of 2019, culminating in a victory at the Northern Trust, his first W since the 2018 Masters. That victory, along with some impressively consistent play—he’s finished in the top 25 in 13 of his last 14 starts—convinced Tiger Woods to select him with one of his four captain’s picks for the Presidents Cup.
Reed, who has since apologized for his post-Ryder Cup behavior, now has a precious chance to get back in good graces with a solid and uneventful display down under. The takeaways? One, we tend to exaggerate any golf scandal, probably because they’re so few and far between. Two, there is very, very little that good golf cannot fix.
There's only one thing that Patrick needs to do to ensure acceptance by his fellow players, and that's to stop acting like Patrick Reed. Oh, and a divorce wouldn't hurt as well.
But about that last 'graph? Has Patrick ever apologized for anything? Seriously, I must have been away that weekend, because I sure don't recall it. As for his prospects for Oz? Patrick doesn't do uneventful...
First World Problems - Golf is so flush, that even second tier tours are faced with high-class problems. Keith Pelley explains:
There’s a contradiction here. The Rolex Series was set up precisely to try to get Europe’s top stars to play more on their home tour.
The problem? The top players earn so much money they can afford to turn their noses up at tournaments worth $7 million and more.
The three final Rolex Series events came on the back of the $10.25 million WGC-HSBC Champions in Shanghai. There was a time when the tops stars would have built their schedules around a quartet of events worth a combined $32.75 million. Not now. These guys are so rich they don’t have to play four in a row. Even players who are not box office names can afford to skip Rolex Series tournaments, a fact Pelley acknowledged.
“I had an interesting discussion with Victor Perez, who is ninth in the Race to Dubai. Last year he was a Challenge Tour player but he got into the WGC-HSBC Champions but he doesn’t want to play four in a row, so he made a decision not to play in Turkey or South Africa.”
But for those dismayed at the absence of nonsense MBA-speak since the retirement of Nurse Ratched, your train has just arrived:
“If we expected the top players to play on a weekly basis, then out expectations would beunrealistic,” Pelley said. “There is unbelievable optionality for the players right now. There are probably less than 10 golf tournaments in the world now that are mandatory. And there are 35 tournaments offering prize money of at least $7 million. So there is no point in us obsessing over any of the above.”
Optionality? But all-square is too complicated for millennials? His Diversity id Our Strength message is inspiring, but good luck with this:
“If top-player participation was the only metric that our sponsors and partners look towards, then we are setting ourselves up for disappointment,” he concluded. “But Rory [McIlroy] is here this week and Justin [Rose] is here and Jon [Rahm] is here. We have 49 of the top 50 [in the Race to Dubai rankings], and we celebrate when they play. But we recognize the multiple choices they have about where to play. There is no simple solution. And that is being realistic.”
Yes, Mr. Sponsor, you only think you want Rory in the field....
The Fifth Major - Have you ever heard of The Wishbone?
It ended in a dramatic walk-off. Now, this is a Fall event I can get behind...
Memories - Hmmm...Thanksgiving 2009? Why does that ring a bell?
Nov. 27, 2009 is a date that lives in the surreal outer reaches of sports infamy. It is a date that marks the most bizarre self-induced sabotaging of an athlete’s image, career and lifestyle in the history of sports.
It is the date that Tiger Woods ran his car into a fire hydrant at the end of his driveway, triggering a cascade of scandalous revelations that forever altered the way tens of millions of people around the world viewed him as a golfer, pitchman, husband, father and cultural icon.
In other words, the 10th anniversary of Tiger’s drive off the metaphorical cliff is one that undoubtedly will pass without his celebration.
Some might believe that because Tiger has won several high-profile tournaments since those dark days of 2009 – including, finally, another major at this year’s Masters – he has bounced back to where he once was and that everything is the same today as it was the moment before he tore out of his house in his Cadillac Escalade in those early morning hours after Thanksgiving.
Right. Josh Peters takes a popular route, following up with the major protagonists of the story. Of course, few were more critical than this one:
The Escalade
The SUV, which can be tracked by its VIN number, rolled off the General Motors assembly line in 2008. GM still owned the vehicle during the time of Woods’ accident. From there things get murky, although CARFAX offers some tidbits.The Escalade has made its way from Michigan to Florida, and from Tennessee to Missouri, and finally to Arkansas, with its sixth owner.
In fact, it serves as the piece's lede:
In May, on a rainy evening in Springdale, Ark., a 2009 black Cadillac Escalade with an infamous history headed south on Carlton Street.
A 1997 Chevrolet Blazer headed east on the perpendicular street, McCray Avenue, and both cars approached the intersection.
When the driver of the Escalade failed to yield the right of way, the vehicles collided, and it wasn’t the first accident involving the Escalade. That came about a decade earlier, when the SUV was driven by the most famous golfer on the planet.
Tiger Woods was behind the wheel of that 2009 Escalade on Nov. 27, 2009 when at about 2:30 a.m., outside his former mansion in Windermere, Fla., he collided with a row of hedges and hit a fire hydrant. The vehicle finally came to rest after hitting a tree.
How about a tearful reunion? Throw in Elin and that seven-iron, and we've got a ratings bonanza....No word on how Tiger will celebrate the anniversary.
Gotta run. Have a great Thanksgiving and I'll blog as content is available.
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