Strange Times, eh? First we're overwhelmed by this Wuhan Chines Bat Soup Virus, which you may have heard talk of. Then come the murder hornets, though the paper of record has this helpful hint:
Deadly ‘murder hornets’ are also a crunchy gourmet snack
Good to know though, as of now, your humble correspondent is still trying to confirm that they taste just like chicken.
But has anyone noticed the mini-Ice Age that appears to have descended upon us? The bride and I are scheduled to play a little after noon tomorrow, when the wind chill will be a balmy 33 degrees...But I remain convinced that those climate models are every bit as accurate as Neil Ferguson's epidemiological models proved.
Match This - We have a date and time, as well as a format:
Turner Sports to Exclusively Present “Capital One’s The Match: Champions for Charity” with Tiger Woods & Phil Mickelson Joined by Peyton Manning & Tom Bradyin Blockbuster Live Golf Event Held Sunday, May 24, at 3 p.m. ET
$10 Million Charitable Donation Made to COVID-19 Relief;
Additional Fundraising to Include On-Course Challenges & Partnership with ALL IN Challenge
Showdown of Legendary Woods/Manning & Mickelson/Brady PairingsSimulcast Across TNT, TBS, truTV & HLN
Capital One’s The Match: Champions for Charity to be Hosted at Prestigious Medalist Golf Club in Florida
Covid-19? Is that anything like the Chinese Flu?
Shack's header screams that a minimum of $10 million large will go the virus-related charities, including an unstated level of contributions from the four participants. It's already a less revolting spectacle than the original, so they've got that going for them.
As for the format:
The competition will feature Woods and Manning vs. Mickelson and Brady, facing off in Team Match Play with a Four-Ball (Best Ball) format on the front nine and a Modified Alternate Shot format on the back nine, where each participant will tee off and then the team will play alternate shot from the selected drive. The unique combination of formats is aimed to provide an entertaining mix of strategy, team collaboration and consequence to nearly every shot. As part of the competitive play, there will also be a set of on-course challenges to raise additional charitable funds.
That shamble could be good fun, featuring potentially interesting decisions of which drive to play. But do I understand that the best-ball will be played without handicaps? The QBs are in the 6-8 index range, as are the pros (the later just with a plus sign). It's hard for me to see the QBs as much of a factor on the front side though....
There's a Zoom video at that link, in which they make clear that the QBs will at least play a shorter course, so they've got that going for them. As for the trash talk, unfortunately Tiger and Phil are not plus handicaps in that field.
As an entertainment spectacle, this features better headliners (in theory), but that other match airs the week prior and has a venue many will tune in to see...
Relentlessly On Brand - I'm of the opinion that the guys on Tour are mostly of a decent sort, perhaps a bit over-entitled, though we can see how that happens. But the exceptions stick out quite dramatically, and it's hard to identify a more off-putting fellow than Vijay Singh. As the old saying goes, he never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
There's a guy named Ryan French who owns the Monday qualifying space, who broke this news:
No doubt you'll understand why this is notable, given the paucity of playing opportunities for those trying to make their way in our game. Brady Schnell, a 35-year old KF rabbit put it nicely:
Schnell later tweeted an apology for some of that which he called Veej, indicating that we should all take a deep breath before posting on social media. I don't actually think he needs to retract that turd reference, so I hope he's just ruing that use of "except" in lieu of "accept".
And do enjoy this classic of the genre Ontheotherhandism:
To the surprise of no one, social media has not responded kindly. The common take is that Singh, a three-time major champion who has made north of $70 million in his career on the PGA Tour, should not take a potential paycheck from a player who may need it more, especially given the world's current situation. On the other hand, the 57-year-old Singh is one of the most competitive players the game has ever seen. One could argue he's simply looking to get those competitive juices flowing once again. And since he's not eligible for the Charles Schwab Challenge on the PGA Tour that same week, the inaugural Korn Ferry Challenge is his only alternative.
Yanno, you can be highly competitive and still keep your head out of your a******e. Don't get me wrong, the man has spent his entire career confirming that he doesn't give a flying f**k about anything but himself, but to take a spot from a struggling pro when there's nowhere to play? That's a new chutzpah high-water mark, even for a man that could teach a Master Class.
Left out of the coverage is any sense of the rules governing entry into these events. To me it seems pretty obvious that the KF Tour should not allow play by 57-year old guys that are looking for a game on an idle weekend, though of course the KF ranks include many older players trying to hang on. I just don't get why Vijay is even welcome in this event.
On Architecture - With society in a Time Out, we've had time for all sorts of thoughtful pieces on our fields of play. Today's takes an interesting turn based upon this question:
What is the most underappreciated feature of golf-course design and why? And what’s an example of a course where this feature is put to especially fine use?
First up, the man that gave us the Castle Course... OK, I kidd....heh, get it? Kidd has a number of very good courses on his C.V., including the original Bandon Dunes courses, as well as the well-received Mammoth Dunes at Mike Keiser's new Sand Valley Resort:
David McLay-Kidd (panelist since 2004; has played 60-plus of the World Top 100): Golf at its best is an exploration of a landscape. If everything is seen at first glance, thenthere is no adventure, no exploration, no mystery, no intrigue. The best golf courses offer that exploration — most golfers are likely unaware of the journey a great course takes them on. The skill to weave that path through a landscape is an underappreciated feature of golf design.
The best course layouts wander somewhat unpredictably across the landscape. My favorite layouts include Kingsbarns, Swinley Forest and Royal Melbourne. Another subtlety of golf design is the use of light in design. Every golf course architect I know loves to play with shadows. Low light can cast long shadows over the most subtle features while a midday sun can still throw shadow on a deep north-faced bunker. These shadows are key to the visual appreciation of a golf course. Think of all the photos you’ve seen of the fairways at St. Andrews on a late summer evening. Without the shadows it’s a different look altogether.
I interpret that answer to mean the routing of the course, which makes perfect sense to me. It's also the least understood aspect of the design process by most of us, because we never see the raw canvass before the course is built.
That's why I was so excited at the prospect of the Seth Raynor routing of Cypress Point being found.... One of the greatest natural sites for golf, and we might be able to discern how two icons of the Golden Age of Architecture would have routed their courses....
This gent seems in agreement with the Scot:
Steve Lapper (panelist since 2009; has played 84 of the Top 100): Smart routing is the least-noticed by the large majority of golfers, and often the most critical task for a golf architect: How to find the best holes, best green sites, how to make the highest use of the land forms, how to make use of natural dunes, how to navigate geological or geographical restrictions. Can it be a walking course, with proximate green-to-tee walks? Does the layout flow across the compass of wind? Will it return to the clubhouse after nine holes? All of these questions, and more, create a puzzle an architect must solve. It is even more so for a bland site that needs vision to transform into something interesting.
Sand Hills is a perfect example of balancing the use of natural land features with its large sandy blowout styled bunkering and innate green sites. Cabot Cliffs, Pacific Dunes and Ohoopee Match Club are also wonderful modern examples. Fishers Island may be the very best example of a routing that maximizes a water aesthetic. Classics like the Old Course at St. Andrews and Royal Melbourne West are both routed across the wind compass keenly and yield 18 wonderful holes in an intimate setting perfect for walking. The list could go on, but almost all the greatest courses have very solid routings. It is the core of their existence.
The other factor to contemplate are those areas where the routing leaves awkward holes or conditions. Not even Cypress Point could be laid out with out compromises, as anyone that's played their opening and finishing holes would readily concede.
This last guy opines on a subject of obvious merit, just one that's not all that interesting:
Brian Curley (panelist since 2011, has played 65 of the Top 100): As far as the required skills of a golf architect, I would offer the ability to transform a difficult site. This has been a modern-day phenomenon as equipment available today makes it feasible. This can vary from a dead flat site with no features or vegetation where everything must be created, to the extreme terrain of rugged properties where severe slope and soil conditions must be overcome. I do not want to sound as if all great properties can be handled by anyone with a good team, but there are very few architects with the experience of dealing with extreme terrain and very few that have managed to produce world-class courses on these sites.
I think there is a misconception that most sites offered to architects start out looking like Sand Hills or Bandon Dunes and that holes are merely “found” and bunkers added here and there. The reality is that most sites require some manipulation/rough grading, etc., to create playable terrain, long before there is discussion of features. On a few occasions the site bears no resemblance to natural golf terrain. For instance, I did Mission Hills in China, where I guarantee over 95 percent of the site was not even walkable, covered in severe rocky slopes. After massive cuts and fills and the coordination of thousands of pieces of equipment and labor, sites like this begin to resemble playable golf terrain. At that point, the detailed design process begins and is followed by a massive re-vegetation effort. In the case of Mission Hills, world-class golf was created and world-class events are held (such as the WGC-HSBC Championship, The World Cup of Golf and more).
I have also seen courses that attempted this but failed for lack of proper design and construction, usually for a lack of enough rough grading, and the result is a lost-ball fiasco. Designers lacking the vision, skills or experience can produce woeful courses. A great example of transforming a flat, nondescript site into a stunning, creative masterpiece would be Tom Fazio’s Shadow Creek in Las Vegas.
For those who argue that these sites should not be “transformed” to begin with, the reality is that in many countries, the only properties available are these extreme sites. The good, well-located sites are protected for farmland or other purposes. Unfortunately, this also adds to the extreme cost of construction and deters many beginning golfers in new markets.
Upon further review, I'm not sure there's actually much merit. Don't get me wrong, the courses that most of us will play are built on land of minimal interest. The ability to turn such real estate into worthy golf courses is a treasured skill, one that has provided pleasure to millions of folks.
But his two examples are quite off-putting, because they're examples of the "At any cost" school of architecture. Back in the real world we don't have unlimited budgets, yet we still have the need to create playable golf courses for folks. And we finally got to see Shadow Creek for that first Tiger-Phil match, and it underwhelmed most of us.
On a tangentially-related note, Golf.com has been publishing a series of items on Template Holes, a phenomenon typically identified with the Macdonald-Raynor-Banks school of architecture. Desi Isaacson has been our tour guide, and his last installment covered a Narrows Hole:
A “narrows” template hole is not just a hole with a narrow fairway. In fact, the first use of the template at National Golf Links of America has plenty of width (the fairway is about 35 yards wide).
Many golf course enthusiasts argue that the more width a hole has, the more opportunity for strategy. While logic would suggest a “narrows” hole would go against that credo, most of the holes still have ample width to allow their strategy to shine through.
The hole’s namesake comes from two bunkers that pinch in from each side of the fairway, giving the hole a narrowing effect. There’s lots of variation with these bunkers, but the original comes from the par-4 15th at Muirfield in Scotland, and its “twin bunkers.” Not every hole that can be categorized as narrows plays quite like No. 15 at Muirfield or has two bunkers with the same design. There is perhaps more variance in this template than any other as it is also quite rare.
But have you noticed lately that our experts don't seem to know much at all. I could drop a gratuitous Neil Ferguson reference here, but I'll spare my readers for the moment. But we expect those working for Golf Magazine to actually know something about golf, making the original inclusion of this photo with the article a spit take:
Shack is pretty harsh on the lads for a variety of sins, most notably ripping off the premise and most of the examples from The Fried Egg. I hadn't seen that series, but they weren't great for sure.
The State of Our Game - Mike Bamberger has been doing this for ages, and he remains an astute observer of golf and its people. Here he makes a confession that could land him in hot water:
I eased back into things with nine holes on Saturday. On Sunday, I took a grown-up’s portion, 36 holes. All in, over the weekend, I played the 45 holes of the Philadelphia Cricket Club. My club, if that phase is still permitted. Eight playing partners. One lost ball. Forty-five foam donuts. No rakes. One rules violation.Fifth hole, second round, Sunday. I tossed a ball back to its owner when it settled in gimme range. The reminder was immediate and incontrovertible: You’re not supposed to touch another player’s equipment. Last year’s common courtesy is this year’s health risk. I will not make that mistake again. For one thing, I don’t want this privilege to be taken from me or anyone else. For another, better safe than sorry.
You have to defer to the most orthodox in your group. It’s sort of like the slow play/fast play divide. A slow player cannot adjust to a fast player’s pace. Slow players lack the fast gene. But a fast player can slow down. And so it is with Covid-19 observance. In your house, in your golf group, in your grocery story, whoever is strictest sets the rules for everybody else. Anything short of that promotes chaos.
Can't or won't? But I think we're all inclined to absolve Mike of that breach of protocol, as long as he didn't do anything really dangerous like, you know, getting a haircut...
But here's the case he's really making:
While we’re at it, golf is better without bunker rakes, as we’re playing now. Faster, for one thing. More primitive. More penal, for being someplace you shouldn’t be. More imperfect, less uniform, as the world is imperfect and not uniform. Pine Valley has no rakes. You’ll never hear somebody there yell at a ball in the air, “Get in the bunker!”
Over time, if golf eliminated the bunker rake, architects and course superintendents would use heavier sand, less resistant to footprints, more responsive to the soccer-kick smooth-out. Goodbye, country-club fluff. Hello, beach sand: pebbly, heavy, nasty, golfy. This pandemic absolutely stinks. But something good can come from it. Simpler golf would be on that list. Not high, but on it.
But it takes Shack to add the perfect accompanying photo:
I tend to agree with Mike and Geoff on the subject, though I also don't see how we get from here to there. The sand we all have in our bunkers leaves footprints everywhere, so it seems we're all laying preferred lies in the bunkers, the exact opposite of that which is being advocated.
Free At Last - Exciting news for Phil:
Las Vegas businessman and gambler Billy Walters, whose insider-trading case waslinked to Phil Mickelson, was released early from a five-year prison sentence this week.
According to his lawyer, Richard Wright, Walters was released to his home due to his age, as it made him vulnerable to COVID-19 in prison. He will serve out the remainder of his sentence in Carlsbad, Calif.
“I want to thank all my friends and supporters for their well wishes on the occasion of my release from prison and move to home confinement,” Walters said in a statement. “I am extremely grateful to be in the safe environment of my home, with my loving family, during this pandemic. At 73, I feel quite healthy and will follow all of the guidelines for staying that way.”
Linked to Phil? Oh, that's a gift to our Phil, who skated on a technicality:
In 2017, Walters was convicted in U.S. District Court of securities fraud, conspiracy and wire fraud. Prosecutors argued that from 2008 to 2014, Walters made more than $43 million from trades of Dean Foods by realizing profits and avoiding losses thanks to information he had obtained from former company chairman Tom Davis. At the urging of Walters, Mickelson (a golf partner of Walters) began to trade in Dean Foods stock, and made more than $931,000 in profits after buying and selling holdings between July and August 2012. Mickelson’s trading in Dean Foods was used as evidence against Walters, but Mickelson did not testify at trial. The golfer’s lawyers informed the prosecution and defense that if called by either side, Mickelson would decline to testify based on his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
The government had no proof whether Mickelson knew where Walters’ information was coming from, and thus could not know if he intended to violate the laws against insider trading. But the SEC did name Mickelson a “relief defendant” in a civil case, meaning that the agency believed that he profited from insider trading in Dean Foods, even if he didn’t engage in it himself. Mickelson settled that civil case by agreeing to surrender his trading profits plus interest of more than $100,000. In doing so, Mickelson neither admitted nor denied the allegations in the SEC’s complaint.
I won't go into the nature of the technicality here, but it was a stroke of good fortune from Mickelson. But no journalist has touched on the larger issue as to why Phil's seven-figure gambling debt to Walters was unpaid, and why Billy felt compelled to share the private information to collect his legitimate winnings.
Phil presents an image of a "playah", one prepared to wager large amounts on any old thing. But he appears to not be so big on the paying part of the process, and when things go wrong seems to expect Daddy to make things right. Daddy at one point was Callaway, and Phil was perfectly happy to torch a Ryder Cup in the process of making those debts go away. In the present case he was happy to accept that which he had to know was non-public information.... Quite a guy!
Point-Counter-point - What do we do when both sides are ignorant sluts?
Should match play be used at a major championship?
No. Next question.
Profoundly silly, but we're all losing our minds these days... They waste a lot of time on which major it might be, including this howler-rich excerpt:
The U.S. Open is one of the only USGA events that doesn’t have a match-play element, so I think you could play it just like the U.S. Amateur and fans would be receptive to the format, though match play certainly removes some luster from the “golf’s toughest test” declaration. As for the Open, the Europeans seem to do quite well in the Ryder Cup, so you know they’d love the format. But the only major of the four that wouldn’t get significant blowback from such a significant format change would be the PGA, yes.
OK, there are those women and senior opens.... It's pretty much been the case that the amateur events at both the USGA and R&A have been match play, but the Opens have always been stroke play.
Beall: Absolutely. To varying extents, the identities of the Masters and both Opens is fueled by their rota and the distinctive performances those courses require. As is discussed annually, there’s no common thread among PGA Championship venues, doing a number on the tournament’s selfhood. If any major is willing to alter its character—or in this case, instill itself with character—via match play, the PGA is raising its hand.
Joel, perhaps you've noticed that most of the PGA venues are actually cast-off U.S. Open venues? Even lumping the Opens together is strange, because the premise does apply to the Open Championships, which are contested exclusively on links. But there's little common ground with U.S. Open venues, and the connective tissue he's seeking is far more in the set-up of the venues...
Strangely, there's one aspect of this left unaddressed. To wit, the event that they nominate to conduct their championship at match play found that format untenable in the age of television. In 1958, for those keeping a scorecard at home.... I love match play as much as the nest guy, but it simply doesn't work in championship golf... The Ryder Cup references are also kind of silly, because they fail to account for the fact that that is based on team match play, a different animal entirely.
Have a great weekend, the weather notwithstanding, and I'll see you here early next week.
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