Fringe Friday

That sound you hear is the barrel's bottom being scraped....  I'll thank you to remember that I'm just the messenger.

Orlando Oratorio - This guy sure turned it around:

There are bounce backs, and then there's crawling out of a grave after being left for dead. What Matt Every did on Thursday at Bay Hill falls squarely in category No. 2. 

Last Friday, Every missed the cut at the Honda Classic in spectacular fashion, shooting a second-round 85 that included an 11 at PGA National's par-3 fifth. He responded in equally spectacular fashion on Thursday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, opening with a bogey-free seven-under 65 to take a one-shot lead over the No. 1 golfer in the world, Rory McIlroy. 

"I think it's awesome," Every said of improving by 20 shots from his last PGA Tour round. "I wouldn't read too much into that last round." 

Every's two career PGA Tour victories came back-to-back in 2014-'15 at Bay Hill, where the Florida native attended tournaments as a kid.

A man that won twice here leading is clearly a dog-bites-man story, but Every's presser might hold some interest.  First, about that eleven:

Q. I mean, there’s one hole you made an 11. Just curious, what happened on that? Were you just … 

EVERY: OK, I’ll tell you what happened. It was a back left pin. I was already going to

miss the cut. The wind was off the right. I had been having problems all week holding the wind, and I normally can hold the wind. And I’m not going to learn anything by skanking one out to the right and bailing out. I know I can do that. So I wasn’t leaving that tee until I hit the shot I wanted, and I flushed every one of them, like, exactly in the same spot in the water. And then finally I hit one that held it. But, yeah, that’s just -- 

Q. You hit, what, a 4-iron? 

MATT EVERY: I hit four 5-irons and then one 4-iron. 

Q. What took you four shots to go to the 4? 

EVERY: I think I had like two balls left, and it was … I just didn’t want to have to deal with that talking about -- I was ready to get out of there.

OK, first the important stuff...  I believe a club change renders the events at best an unofficial Tin Cup...I'll have to await the decision of the judges...

But, of greater import, "I hit four 5-irons" might be the best thing I've ever heard an actual Tour Pro say...OK, a Tour Pro not named John Daly.

Those familiar with recent history remember Every's most recent headlines, and he's most certainly not chastened by the experience:

Arnold Palmer Invitational first-round leader Matt Every has called on the US PGA Tour and the World Anti-Doping Agency to allow athletes to use marijuana for medical use having been suspended last year. 

Every, twice a winner of the Palmer event, was suspended for 12 weeks for violating the PGA Tour's Conduct Policy for drug abuse. 

Every revealed the suspension was for cannabis for which he has a legal prescription in the state of Florida for a mental health condition. 

Two months after his suspension ended, he shot a scintillating 65 on day one at Florida's Bay Hill course to top the Palmer leaderboard at seven under.

Funny how the Tour is so anxious to embrace legalized gambling, but legalized pot use?  Not so much...  It's possible that it's because the former allows them to cash checks, but only a cynic would mention that.

Every, who suffers from anxiety, was irritated more consideration wasn't given to mental health by the US PGA Tour and WADA.

"I think it would be cool if we were proactive about it and made some changes," he said. 

"Anxiety is a real thing and the way I treat it is the healthiest way possible for my body.

"But WADA doesn't think so and the Tour goes by what WADA says. It's really silly, to be honest. 

"Now I'm kind of fired up about it, so I'm going to stop talking." 

When Every was suspended in October, he explained he was not eligible to use prescription 'Z class' drugs such as Xanax. 

"It bothers me that (cannabis) is even an issue (and) on the list of banned substances," he said on Thursday. 

"You could fail for heroin and marijuana and the penalty is the same. If anyone wants to make the argument that that is performance enhancing, they have never done it before."

He's got a point, though the Tour has put themselves into the enviable position of blindly following WADA.  All well and good, until a name brand player gets ensnared in the net....

In Re: the Matter of Azinger v. Continent of Europe -  He's one off the lead at Bay Hill, yet it's this comment from his deposition in the above-referenced matter that are most intriguing:

I’d like to think I’m quite a loyal person, and I think the PGA Tour has given me a

platform to showcase my skills, to build my brand, to turn me into this golfer and athlete than I am. I think Jay Monahan and his team do a wonderful job with the tour.

Take that, Lee and Poults....  Should be an awkward team room at Whistling Straits, no?

Rory also took a sideswipe at the source of the money:

Didn’t really like where the money was coming from, either. I wanted to be the first one to speak out against it and I’m glad that I have.

Remind me, which tour holds an annual event in Saudi Arabia?  This is as much fun a sI can squeeze out of the doings at Bay Hill, at least until Rors kicks away a Sunday lead...

But They Seemed So Happy Together - At least initially, but there's trouble in paradise... Justin Rose gave this recent interview with gearhead Jonathan Wall about his switch from TaylorMade to Honma:

Compare your involvement in the product creation at Honma to what it was like during your time at TaylorMade? 

Rose: I had many, many happy years at TaylorMade and it just came to the point of wanting to do something different and doing it for the reasons of wanting to become a

better player. And I think I felt that with Honma there was some flexibility there in terms of product creation and just having a team that was willing to listen to my needs and my wants. And they’ve been responding brilliant, just in terms of shapes of clubs, and toe designs on irons because, at the end of the day, a blade is a blade, so the most important thing about a blade is that it looks pretty. 

I’ve got quite a distinctive eye of what I like to see. I like to see quite a pinched toe, the reason for that is it makes the club look more upright than it actually is, which works to my swing, so there are all these reasons behind these things. And the team has just been so excited to respond to the challenges that I’ve been throwing at them. Every rendition of the product just seems to be getting better and better and better. And obviously to win pretty much first time out with them at Torrey was awesome last year. And I’ve got admit I didn’t have my best year last year from a mechanics and a swing point of view, and sometimes you’ve got to blame the Indian not the arrows, but I feel like I’m really beginning to get back on track here. The whole team’s been just so responsive and the new, I’m sure we’ll get to it, but the new TR20 stuff is even better.

Awww, it's sweet to hear JR gush over his new sweetie, but of course his stated motivation for leaving TM is a bit curious.  Of course he felt the need for something different.. being unceremoniously dumped by them will do that to a guy.

But that interview is not even three weeks old, and there's trouble in paradise:

Then last week Rose was spotted with a Taylor Made driver and this week at Bay Hill, the bag has seen a total turnover from Honma to mostly Taylor Made, reported Wall.

Then this from the interviewer:

That's sad, but I do hope these kids can remain friends.

A Deep Dive - I'm not entirely convinced that this effort is worth the time, but Shane Ryan is a bit of a specialist in such things.  I'll let him lay out his premise, but be forewarned that he calls in the cavalry:

“Got me thinking … what is the tournament with the best group of past champs …wonder if there’s a way to get a ranking?” 

I loved this idea, and immediately started turning it around in my head. What tournament produced the best winners … or, looking deeper, the best finishers in general? A champion alone, I thought, was a little too volatile, and would yield a small and unreliable sample size. Still, if you could take the top 15 from the leader board over a number of years, and compare the majors with PGA Tour and World Golf 

Championships using the same data set, you could start to answer the question. 

But what was the question, exactly? As near as I can devise it, the simplest form is this: Which tournaments consistently have the best players finish the highest? 

Or, less formally: Which events have the most top-loaded leader boards, relative to their field? 

From there, you can form your own opinions about what it all means. My reason is that I thought by finding the tournaments where the best players reliably performed well, over time, you could reasonably infer that those tournaments (and courses) were the best at testing the field, and rewarding the golfers with the most complete games. It’s a way of measuring that old cliché: Where do we find the truest test of golf?

The cavalry being old friend Mark Broadie, the Columbia University stats guru and inventor of the Strokes Gained metric.  Mark comes up with this new metric:

I’m afraid even that description is a gross over-simplification of the labor that went into this, as well as the quality checks that validated the approach, but to go much deeper is to get lost in the weeds. So we’ll move now to the great unveiling of results, but first, what to call the new metric? This one was my idea: MOCCASINS. 

M easure o f C ourse/C ompetition A ggregate S trength by IN dividual S uccess

Why not? Everyone loves moccasins. And the great thing is that each separate tournament can be measured by its own MOCCASINS rating, which means this is a statistic with plenty of future utility.

Is your head hurting?  Yeah, I thought it might, so let's cut to the chase:

Shane and Ryan provide a reasonable explanation for the Dell Match Play ranking so low, which basically comes down to, it's match play, you ignorant slut!  But I'm immediately struck by the ranking of the Players Championship, perhaps the revenge of Craig Perks?  Or Stephen Ames...

But does this tell us anything useful?  Sure, the Sony and Byron Nelson surprise, just because we expect their fields to be especially weak....  I'm not sure to what extent Mark has adjusted for that, but I'm awfully excited to anticipate a stronger leaderboard this week at Bay Hill than next at Sawgrass...

McCord Breaks His Silence - Yeah, as if...  But Gary went on Colt Knost's podcast and had some comments on CBS' current travails:

“I’m not part of it. You can kind of react to it from a position I have never had before for

a long, long time. It just so happens that my former network is not doing as well as they would like with the golf broadcast at this point. I have never seen anything quite as negative as I’ve seen coming out of everywhere about what’s going on, so I have a lot of empathy. Those are my friends. I don’t want to see them fail, but they are getting blasted. It’s not a good time.”

Of course, we don't need Gary to be our social media tour guide, as we can read those reactions ourselves.  But, as a former insider, we might be interested in his diagnosis:

“If you go, ‘Wow, that was a great shot, and let’s go to Gary.’ ‘Oh, that was a wonderful shot, and how about that one? That was fantastic.’ Are you kidding me? You can’t have that,” McCord said. “You gotta have this ridicule. Some guys gotta jack it up and another guy has to break and you got to get those people together and get your team together and do it. And that’s what we are lacking at this point in my humble opinion.”

Finchie, I think he's calling your name...  

Of course the bigger issue is whether Lance Barrow and crew have a clue as to the nature of these failings.   I f you think your broadcast needs a certain edge, you don't hire Davis Love to fill that need...

So, Magic Eight Ball says, "Outlook Cloudy":

If reports are true of—wild guess here, $8 billion 10-year TV deal announcement next week that includes CBS—they’ll have 10 years to figure it out.

Le Sigh!  Not sure I have another decade of Mumbles Faldo in me...

Have a great weekend.