Got more than a few of those these days, not least this stubborn shin splint. I hate being a buggy golfer, but that's my fate in the current moment.
The Match II, It Can't Suck More - This one obviously doesn't reek like the original, though that may be largely the result of our forty years in the desert. It's not forty years yet? I'm gonna need confirmation...
Where to drop in? How about this Golf Digest Viewer Guide?
The TeamsThe two-man teams for The Match: Champions for Charity are Tiger Woods/Peyton Manning and Phil Mickelson/Tom Brady.
Handshakes are now hate crimes. The FormatThe format for the event is an 18-hole match, though the front and back nines will be very different. On the front nine it will be Four-Ball, better known as best ball to the weekend golfer. Each team member plays their own ball, and the lower of the two scores is the team score for that hole. The low score between the two teams would win the hole. Brady and Manning will each get three strokes on the front nine, one on a par 3, one on a par 4 and one on a par 5. A committee will determine which three holes.On the back nine, the teams will play a Modified Alternate shot, which some may know as the Pinehurst format. In this format, each team member hits a tee shot, then they select the best tee shot of the two and alternate from there until the ball is holed. There will be no handicap for Brady and Manning in this format.In the event of a tie, the match will go to an extra, shortened hole. Teams will continue playing Modified Alternate Shot, though it will be from a spot 100-125 yards away from the 18th green. They’ll repeat until a winner is determined.
OK, finally they answer my question about handicaps. Of course, one expects folks that draw a paycheck from Golf Digest would be expected to have accumulated some actual golf knowledge, but not so much... This Modified Alternate Shot is quite obvious not a Pinehurst, in which the players choose a ball to play into the hole after their second shots...But since I'm in an amiable mood, we can call it a Modified Pinehurst...
But that format description was incomplete:
Additional ChallengesSo far, there have been two reported challenges that will take place. According to Yahoo Sports, players will play Medalist’s par-4 fifth hole with only one club, a page straight out of MGM Resorts’ The Challenge, which took place this past fall in Japan with Tiger among the foursome competing. On Tuesday, Bleacher Report announced that Charles Barkley, who will be one of the analysts for the event, will also play one hole as part of a Bogey or Better challenge for an additional $200,000 to charity.
How about if instead of having to watch Charles play we just have Trump call in to the announcing team? And just like that, heads are exploding all over America.
I hear you asking, What has Phil had to say about this all? As a defense mechanism, I've tuned out the frequency of Phil's voice, but fortunately others haven't:
“I can’t wait to go to Tiger’s place and take him down,” Mickelson said in a phone call
Remember that word, Phil. with Golfweek. “Tiger thinks he has a huge advantage playing there because he was insistent that this event is played on his home course. Despite everyone else wanting to play it elsewhere. That’s fine. We’ll take it to him and Peyton.
“There will be no excuses. It’s his home course but Tom and I are going to go down there and put it to them, and we’ll make it that every time Tiger shows up at his home course, he’ll have a bad memory.”
But doesn't this seem an admission against interest?
“Tiger and I clamped up the first time,” Mickelson said. “That won’t happen again. I think having Peyton there will be a big part of it because he gives me and Tom somebody to rough up. Peyton, when he comes back at you, he does it in a funny way that elicits a laughter from you as opposed to a defensive response.
“And I think that’s why he’s so funny, because even the person he is cutting up finds it funny and doesn’t take it personal. And that will allow us to free it up and do it a little bit more.”
So, what you're sayig is that Tiger and you aren't enough to carry the event? Now you tell us?
And one last bit from Phil the Shrill:
This alternate-shot wrinkle puts a lot of pressure on Brady and Manning.
“I give them a lot of credit for putting themselves out there because there is going to be a unique pressure,” Mickelson said. “But that’s why it’s going to be so much fun, because we are going to have mishaps and we are going to have some bad shots and we are going to laugh at ourselves.”Mickelson also said there will be plenty of ribbing, unlike the near silence during his and Woods’ first match in Las Vegas. Each of the four players will be mic’d up, with each riding in their own cart. There will be no caddies or spectators.
I find myself nodding my head, just when I've learned to be most cautious if ever I'm on the same side of an issue as Phil...
The obvious takeaway from recent "challenge matches", and I go back as far as those Tiger prime time events, is that they mostly suck. Said suckage comes from the absence of high stakes, but also because of the likelihood of poor play.
The original Match had all of those failings in spades, beginning with the horrible optics deliberately employed:
We're obviously on better footing this time, with the event supporting relief efforts. The logic of that first match seemed to be that, as put by Phil, they would play for enough money to make Tiger uncomfortable...But there likely is no such amount, unless the loser has to fund Nancy Pelosi's $3 Trillion Covid stimulus wish list.
They tried every martial metaphor known to mankind, but it proved a bad fit for pampered professional golfers. The go around seems more promising, as I think the amateurs and the format choices seem designed to add some interest and, most critically, two guys not named either Phil or Tiger.
Josh Berhow tells all sports fans that they need to watch this one, which I assume is the liquor talking. The match will be on opposite NASCAR, so I'd recommend keeping expectations low. But he agrees on the format:
2. The format
Let’s be honest, 18 holes of a fourball would be boring. Nine holes of it? We’ll take it, especially since the back nine, in this writer’s opinion, will be a lot more fun with a modified alternate shot. The simmering pressure of an alternate shot for Average Joes like Manning and Brady — dealing with the anxiety of potentially letting your parter down — will be real. And the results might be fascinating. (Give us at least a shank or two, please?)
I agree, just adding that the decision of which drive to play will have its own interest... Hopefully, despite the minimalist broadcast footprint, that they can capture the audio. I'm most interested in how the pros will manage these decisions, presumably with the objective of keeping the amateurs comfortable.
This can be taken a couple of ways:
4. The betting
FanDuel said betting for last Sunday’s Seminole skins match was “nearly double that of a normal PGA Tour event.” That’s nuts, and proves people are eager to throw down a few bucks on live sports. This Sunday, an event with even bigger stars that will almost certainly bring in a bigger audience, should easily see a betting increase from last Sunday.
Obviously, those who gamble on sports haven't had much succor recently, so that's the implied message. But I'd also add that PGA events kinds suck for gambling, lacking the clarity of team mano-a-mano results.
And a couple of notes on the venue:
7. The course
Medalist is an exclusive club that many pro golfers call home. It’s also a place few fans have seen, both inside the gates and on the course. Now we’ll get that chance. GregNorman founded the club in 1995 and co-designed the course with Pete Dye. It was renovated by Bobby Weed five years ago. Oh, and it’s hard. Good luck, Peyton and Tom.
8. The members
Few clubs, if any, have more pros as members than Medalist, which includes Woods, Thomas, Rickie Fowler, Brooks Koepka and more than a dozen others. And like noted above, the typical golf fan doesn’t get a glimpse of Medalist very often. If nothing else, it’s a cool experience to see a place that some of the best in the world choose to call their home course.
Medalist, unlike Seminole, has actually been on TV previously:
It’s been 25 years since Medalist Golf Club last appeared on national television, when Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf pitted then-world No. 1 Nick Price against Greg Norman, the world No. 2 and founder of the newly opened club.Just don’t expect to see Greg Norman anywhere.
Why not? It's been a rough stretch for the emotionally needy Shark:
It’s been seven years since Norman had an acrimonious and very public split from Medalist after the board hired architect Bobby Weed to make changes to the course, which the two-time major winner furiously described as “a slap in the face.” He famously removed a stuffed shark mounted above the bar in the grill room, which was replaced by a board listing winners of the member-guest including, in 2002, Norman and Andy Mill, his former best friend whose wife, tennis great Chris Evert, left him for Norman in 2006.
Gee, why aren't they BFFs any more? Oh that little thing? But Greg was willing to give her back within a week or so, so why's Mill holding onto that grudge?
Back to Josh, who we all can agree is setting the bar way too low:
13. It WILL be better than the first match
The Las Vegas Shadow Creek match between Tiger and Phil was a trial run of sorts. What went well? What didn’t? Organizers and producers have had lots of time to mull, so it’s safe to say this one will come back better because of it.
Hoping to clear that hurdle by a LOT.
So, who ya got? I know, a profoundly silly question, as this is best understood as frivolous entertainment. Vegas has Tiger-Peyton as the substantial favorites, though I'd encourage you to bet with your head on this one.... Form is just a wee bit hard to judge... This guy lays out some prop bets, including a long drive and closest to the pin. I know, but I do like the one-club challenge... This Tale of the Tape doesn't tell me much, but I do like E. Michael Johnson's deep dive on the QB's GHIN data. First, the lower handicap:
He’s remarkably consistent.
Manning’s low score out of his last 20 is a 78 and his high is 88. But perhaps more remarkable is that half of his scores only range from 80 to 82. That said, when youcomplete 65.3 percent of your passes in your football career, consistency can be expected.
Unlike his professional partner...
Difficult courses are his thing.
The Honors Course can be a bear and Manning clearly doesn’t shy away from tough tracks. Of his last 20 rounds only one has been played at a course with a slope below 137 and eight have been on courses with a 140 slope or higher.
That bodes well, though I haven't seen how long a course they'll play...But Medalist is a obviously difficult, just look at the membership. Of course, he hasn't posted a single score in 2020, so perhaps he's focused on handicap management.
As for the best Tampa Bay quarterback in franchise history:
His play is sporadic.
Unlike Manning, Brady has played in 2020, posting an “away” score of 86 in April, sogood for him. Before that, however, his most recent score was from July 2019. Football season can do that to a guy.There is some game there.
Brady has a low score of 82 on his card, but he hasn’t reached that level of play since May 2014. That said, he has a nine-hole score of 40 from May 2019 so there has been a glimpse of the old form.
Let me just guess that the absence of caddies might affect these guys more than Tiger or Phil (though, of course, Tiger should have no need of a caddie on this track). We'll see who gets the most help from their pro, as well as who adjusts best...
Got time for some udder stuff?
Restart Blues - Although many have residences in the States, add Adam Scott to the list of Tour players not rushing back to work:
Unsatisfied with the US PGA Tour's safety measures, Adam Scott is set to go into the the year's first major championship with just one tournament under his belt following the shutdown.
World No.6 Scott will watch from home on Queensland's Sunshine Coast for the first six weeks after the tour resumes on June 11, but is then pondering a marathon stint of nine weeks or more in the US.
And this:
"What concerns me is dialogue that (the tour) is hopeful of returning one or two-hour test (results). You'd want that in place before competing.
"The other (concern) is it seems an asymptomatic person could operate within a tournament.
"If they're not showing symptoms and I somehow picked it up inside the course and I'm disqualified I'm now self-isolating (in that city) for two weeks. I'd be annoyed if that happened."I thought you'd start quite tight and loosen those protocols to normal if appropriate."
I sense that he's being overly-cautious, though I'm not incline to blame anyone for that.
Probably the most interesting aspect at the current moment is the fight over the Ryder Cup, which Derek Lawrenson characterizes as a battle between players and administrators:
Four months to go to the Ryder Cup and, as ever, the battle lines are being finely drawn,and the speculation ramped up. The composition of the two opposing sides is coming into sharp focus.
What's different this time is that the two sides are not Europe versus America. It's the players versus the administrators, over whether the contest should take place at all in late September at Whistling Straits.
At the heart of the matter is whether a meaningful Ryder Cup can take place without fans. The administrators want to see what the game looks like without spectators when the PGA Tour resumes in the middle of next month, and are urging everyone to keep their counsel until then.
But battle lines have been drawn:
How would the players react to all this subtle coercion? Would they come on board with the move towards reserving judgement? Last week, we had the answer. The two best players on either side dug their heels in. Brooks Koepka said he mightn't even bother playing if there were no fans. Rory McIlroy said it would be unfair to ask players to turn up in such circumstances for a contest in which they would be reluctant participants.
You can see both sides of the argument although, as so often these days, it's McIlroy who presents the most persuasive case. After all the momentum built up by a string of compelling Ryder Cups, there would be a real danger of causing lasting damage with a soulless charade.
Derek is looking at the argument of whether it ca be played, whereas I've made the case that it shouldn't be played. In a year desperately short on playing opportunities at all levels of the professional games, the governing organizations prioritizing a 24-man exhibition just seems profoundly wrong.
But above that last excerpt comes this curious bit:
The PGA of America - who run the contest when staged in the US - want to keep their options open because they've bills to pay and cottage industries to think about. They tried to keep the ball rolling by wheeling out a couple of vice-captain picks last week.
The PGA Tour - a separate body, running the most powerful circuit in world golf - will not want the Ryder Cup postponed for a year, because that would have a knock-on effect for their own Presidents Cup affair in 2021, when a US team takes on the Rest of the World.
Anyone know what "cottage industries" he's talking about? More importantly, I'm hearing mostly that it's the Euro Tour pushing to play this event to mitigate their rather dire cash flow.
Lastly, there's a lot of this out there:
The United States Open Championship won’t be played this year.
It has been replaced by “The United States Closed Championship.”
What else can we call it? The U.S. Golf Association made official Monday what manyhad expected – there will be no qualifying for the U.S. Open or U.S Amateur, men’s or women’s, for the first time since 1924.Those championships are effectively closed to competitors who aren’t already world-class professionals or amateurs, unless they become one in the next three months. (Practice hard, people!)
The USGA just kicked every dreamer to the curb and out of its tournaments, whose fields will be filled by players who receive exemptions. The USGA did not say how those exemptions will be allotted. (Lottery, anyone?) What should we expect from the exemption process? Flawed rankings (pardon the redundancy) and politics.
Kicking folks to the curb? It's old friend Gary Van Sickle, who's typically more even-tempered than this... It's not like anyone is happy about this, but I'm not quite sure what he expected.
Gary does a good job of making clear what a perfect storm this all is for those trying to make their way on Tour:
With the big tour effectively closed to Korn Ferry Tour graduates, the KFT canceled its Q-School and rolled over its season, too. You didn’t make it through Q-school in 2019? You’re on the sidelines until December of 2021. Now that’s a shutdown.
Monday qualifying spots for PGA Tour events were cut from four to two for the rest of this season and will return to four next season. The KFT, which cut qualifying spots from 12 to 8 before this season, has not announced whether it will have Monday qualifiers at all or if so, how many spots will be available.
The USGA national championships were the last hope for a lot of players, especially those college seniors who lost graduation ceremonies and a chance to play in the NCAA Championship and now have nowhere to go to make a living as a pro. Many will go back to school to play golf for a fifth season and were thinking, “Well, I can always qualify for a USGA championship.” Probably not now, pending the coming exemptions controversy. Will a couple of college stars get slotted into the Winged Foot field? For public relations purposes, probably.
Which is exactly why we were all so pissed at Vijay.... It's a disappointment, but the logistical challenges of running qualification sites all across this great land are daunting, especially given the uncertainty that the main event will be played. This gives a sense of the scale:
“There were a number of factors,” Bodenhamer said, “and one of them is that with any (competition) that we conduct, there is a need to test and to implement robust health and safety protocols. The inability to do (uniform testing) at 660 qualifying sites, several hundred of those that would have been rescheduled into a timeframe that was already getting jampacked with other things, presented (insurmountable challenges). Those venues and our allied golf associations have lost revenue; they’re struggling; they’ve canceled events; they need to run events; they need to generate revenue, just as the host venues for those qualifiers need to do their own things.”
Revenue at the USGA was never mentioned but those on the outside believe it played a role. It is widely believed that the USGA has a big financial incentive to conduct the U.S. Open in some fashion this year. Fox television network pays a healthy sum for the delivery of the event. No tournament means no revenue, which likely would put a healthy dent in future operating budgets.
There was a hope that perhaps sectional qualifying might be maintained, but folks don't realize that each of those requires a willing club (sometimes two, as 36 holes is required) that can commit, and where does one find those in the present moment?
I'm just happy to have the USGA trying to host its championships... Yes, we can challenge their motives, but I'm liking them way more than the R&A right now.
Be Careful Out There - With golf newly legal in all fifty states (sorry, Elsie and John, who are living under Nicola Sturgeon's Reign of Terror), there have been no shortage of these kind of features:
Coronavirus: 5 tips for staying safer on the golf course
Including the obligatory...
4. Leave the flagstick in: When the powers in the game changed the rule and allowed the flagstick to remain in the hole when a player putts, there was some outrage. Now, it might be the go-to precaution on courses. Grabbing the flagstick and laying it on the ground or holding it while others putt is something that happens in almost every foursome, meaning a lot of people are touching that stick. Simply leaving it in the hole while people in your group putt is one less item you have to worry about in your day of prevention.
Don't forget the highly dangerous bunker rates...
Except, as you may heard, the CDC has asked for a breakfast ball:
CDC Now Says Virus 'Does Not Spread Easily' on Surfaces
Now you tell us. The next thing the CDC gets right will also be the first...
Forgive a minor rant, but remember all the guys that passed on Rio in 2016? They have been harshly criticized by folks like Alan Shipnuck and Brandel Chamblee, with which I strongly disagree. Yeah, no one seemed to come down with Zika, but have you been watching since March as our elected officials and government organizations actually hurt our efforts to control the virus?
I took Rory and other's refusal to go to Rio as less a worry about Zika specifically and more a recognition that we can't depend on government for the simplest things. So Rory's decision to not test the limits of third-world governance for a meaningless competition seems prudent from my vantage point.
Isn't This Why We Have Forensics? - Geoff had an item a few days ago on a struggling Scottish club:
World's Seventh Oldest Club Offering Membership Specials
The incredible Fraserburgh is offering options for membership to help raise funds for both domestic and international players. I wrote about the course here for GolfDigest.com and Ran Morrissett published this profile many years back.
You can check out the primary offerings here and the more extensive options here.
First, this is an embarrassing hole on my resume, mostly because I've spent less time in this corner of Scotland than around other clusters of courses, mostly because it has the reputation for having the worst weather in Scotland. That, as we know, is an extremely competitive category...
For some reason, I am unable to get to the Fraerburgh Golf Club website, seemingly under some hacking or denial of service attacks if Google's security warning is to be believed. My interest is in adjudicating that claim of being the seventh oldest golf club in the world, as I'm aware of a competing claim.
As you know, the bride and I have joined the delightfully named Crail Golfing Society, which has this on the history of the club:
The Fraserburgh Golf Club dates to 1777, so I think my guys are going to come up short here. In fact, let's go to the Scottish Golf History website to see the official reckoning:
1735 Royal Burgess Golf Society
1744 Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers
1754 Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews
1761 Bruntsfield Links Golfing Society
1766 Royal Blackheath Golf Club
1774 Royal Musselburgh Golf Club
1777 Fraserburgh Golf Club (1881)
1780 Royal Aberdeen Golf Club
1786 Crail Golfing Society
Certainly Fraerburgh is older than Crail, I'll just have to cope with that reality. But I'll venture a guess that not all those clubs are still in existence, and that the wording on Crail's website reflects that.
I don't have time to read about all of these clubs, though I did click through to read about Royal Burgess (I had always thought the Honourable Company to be the first club formed), which is still in existence.
From their history, I found the following amusing:
A few years after the grant of the Seal, in 1807, the club was split in two over a row about the Stymie as outlined in the Rules of Golf, though this time there was a reconciliation.
And you guys think I take this stuff too seriously...
I'll wish you the best of holiday weekends, and likely see you next on Tuesday.
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