Hartford Hell Week

I take a day off to play a little golf, and all hell breaks loose...Shall we see what it's all about.

Corona in Cromwell - As I heard it, every player in the field at the Travelers has tested positive and...  well, that might be a slight exaggeration.  As best I can make it out, here is what has actually happened.

On the heels of Nick Watney's positive test in Hilton Head, here's the timeline for the week::

Monday: Koepka, his coach Claude Harmon, and Elliott each tested negative for the coronavirus. Koepka and Elliott traveled to Ellington Ridge Country Club to cheer on Brooks’ brother Chase, who made it into the field through the Monday qualifier. 

Tuesday: Koepka and Elliott played a practice round with McDowell. After the practice round, McDowell found out Comboy (still in Orlando) had tested positive for coronavirus. McDowell announced he was withdrawing from the event. Cameron Champ also announced he had tested positive and was withdrawing from the Travelers as well. 

Wednesday: Koepka, Elliott, Harmon and McDowell went back for additional tests after hearing of Comboy’s positive result. Elliott’s returned positive, while the other three tested negative. McDowell returned to Orlando via private plane while Koepka and his team ponder next steps.

That cut off a bit prematurely, as Brooks and brother Chase have withdrawn.  Also, one further withdrawal:

Webb Simpson – WD’d out of an abundance of caution after a member of his family

tested positive. Simpson tested negative when he arrived on site. 

“While my tests this week were negative, I feel like it is my responsibility to take care of my family and protect my peers in the field by withdrawing,” Simpson said. 

So far, there have been seven positives in 2757 tests conducted by the Tour.

 I'm unclear as to whether that seven positives includes the Korn Ferry Tour.  

A total of five players have withdrawn, including a show pony or two, so that's gonna get folks' attention.  And while positive tests always felt inevitable, this volume certainly exceeds my expectations.

That said, has everyone lost their bloody minds?  Employee No.2 refers to the spaciness we've all experienced during the lockdown as Corona-Brain, and it seems to affect the press corp as well, including our Shack.  Let me give you a couple of examples, this first one from Luke Kerr-Dineen:

But the chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and unfortunately, the PGA Tour has a big one: The laissez-faire attitude of its players and caddies. 

Only after Brooks Koepka’s WD did I witness a handful of players wearing masks, and even then, it was only a handful. On Wednesday afternoon, coaches roamed the range with impunity. There were countless fist bumps and handshakes, and equipment changing hands. At one point, I witnessed a group of eight players and caddies huddled on a small tee box, waiting to tee off, one of the players killing time by going through another’s bag, grabbing his clubs and making practice swings before putting them back.

It’s easy to laser-in on individual anecdotes and cast wide generalizations, but the truth is, at least from my two days on site, that through some combination of not caring enough and feeling comfortable enough, the players simply aren’t, in the words of the PGA Tour’s most recent statement on the matter, “doing their part.”

Wow, equipment changing hands...  We can't have that.  

Alan Shipnuck isn't fooling around...teeth will be rended and garments gnashed, at least according to this header:

Why the PGA Tour should hit the brakes on its season again

Le Sigh!  

The whirlwind of bad news has overshadowed a stellar field in Hartford and raises 

Who was that masked man?

serious doubts about the Tour’s ambitious plan to reintroduce fans at the Memorial, a mere three weeks from now. It has also thrown into sharp relief the hubris of the Tour trying to barnstorm the county amid a raging pandemic. All the major team sports remain sidelined as the leagues work out the precise details of creating hermetically sealed environments in which to compete, with players marooned in one place for the duration. The PGA Tour is a movable feast, traveling to a different city each week and along the way introducing an incalculable number of complications.

The Tour has trumpeted its own bubble but, really, it’s more like a breezeway, through which hundreds and hundreds of people pass every week. There are the players and caddies, of course, but also the many folks with whom they interact: swing coaches, trainers, agents, Tour officials, chefs, equipment reps, wives, girlfriends, nannies and sundry others. The collective level of vigilance to preventative measures is varying, to say the least, and all of these people are traveling across a country in which the number of coronavirus cases is still spiking three months after the first mitigation efforts began.

I guess Alan had a better lockdown than your humble blogger, because he clearly wants to go back for more of the same....

Bartender, chill pills for the entire room, please.  Let me see if I can sum up the current state of play:

1. A higher than expected number of players/caddies have arrived at the Tour's venue with the virus, and:
2. The world collectively melts down because players are not wearing masks on the driving range and putting green, risking transmission withing the bubble.

Except that there is no evidence that anything hinted in No. 2 above has happened.  Because of two relevant facts:

1. You're not going to catch this thing outdoors, and:
2. You're not going to catch this from surfaces.

Now, does everyone feel better?  

I'm not saying there aren't problems, but those problems aren't on the range at TPC River Highlands.  Those problems are out in the greater U.S. of A.....

As you know, the Tour has attempted to tighten the bubble this week, including the hangers on in the testing protocol:

The system in place isn’t perfect, and any rational person knew it wouldn’t be — there are just too many variables. This is the first week coaches and media were tested, all of whom have been permitted to roam the grounds even as they await their official test results. That was always the most concerning loophole in the PGA Tour’s policy: that players and caddies could be carrying the virus and potentially spreading it on-site, unknowingly, until proven that they have the virus.

It certainly makes sense to guard against on-site spread, but that's a remote possibility as long as the players remain outside.  As I understand things, they were only indoors for pressers, and that's now been discontinued:

Also, kudos to the PGA Tour media team for axing all press conferences to focus on the matter at hand: more positive tests, more signs pro golfers are not immune to the virus, and more signs the that tour officials hear the bubble bursting.

There's also been quite a bit of discussion about that movable feast, contrasted with the NBAs concept of an isolation chamber, this from that LKD piece being typical:

Over the past months, millions of Americans have seen their day-to-day routines upended. In large parts of the country the simplest of golfing pleasures, like retrieving

one’s ball from the hole, or walking into a clubhouse, have been interrupted (and, yes, big picture, we’re very aware these altered customs are trivial). Golfers yearn for some sense of normalcy, and the return of the PGA Tour was supposed to provide it. In retrospect, perhaps the Tour should’ve followed the NBA’s model and pitched up at a sprawling property like Pinehurst, taken over the resort and played different courses over a series of weeks.

I think that was both unrealistic and unnecessary though, like all opinions these days, we'll see how reality treats it.  My take is that golf is intrinsically safer by virtue of it being outdoors and having no need for physical contact, whereas basketball is little more than an enlarged petri dish.

As seems always to be the case, folks are screaming for things (the wearing of masks) that don't remotely address the problem, which is folks arriving at the venue with the virus.  But it might be helpful to think of this problem in its component parts.  I see basically two:

1. Players' (and caddies, etc.) arrival at the venue and:
2. Players' etc. activities during the tournament week.

The former involves travel and family life in all its manifestations, excluding those presumably that arrive on the Tour's shuttle from the prior venue.  I can't find it right now, but one of the positive tests was a guy that flew a crowded commercial flight to Hartford, so we can guess the source of his infection.  But all are tested upon arrival, and those who have been in contact with those testing positive have done the right thing and withdrawn.  It seems the Tour is handling this part reasonably well, as I've not heard any suggestions for additional actions here.

That second category might be one requiring further scrutiny, as last week we heard Justin Thomas express concerns about packed restaurants, though it was unclear to what extent players were involved.  Geoff is all over the gym issue:

Then we learned the bubble was expanding to instructors, upgrading one set of tests and physio trailers would all be on site because, apparently, players were stupid enough to be hitting gyms in a time of a coronavirus easily spread in…gyms.

That's probably wise, though I'm not sure that transmission in gyms is quite the established fact that Geoff seems to assume.  Of course, I'm old enough to remember when we were told that face masks provided no benefit...

Perhaps this would be a good time to remind all that the number of deaths from the Wuhan flu contracted while playing golf remains zero.  In the context of the Tour, we have a group of young and healthy folks, a population one assumes has adequate levels of Vitamin D, so the cost of an infection is almost nil.  I'd also remind folks that this was the plan...  Flatten the Curve was designed not to reduce the number of infections, but rather to delay them....  Yet, an increase in positive tests has folks in freak out mode.

To me, and I've been pretty skeptical of the lockdown from the start, the risk of playing professional golf is quite manageable.  The issue I see down the road is The Memorial, specifically it's plan to allow 8,000 spectators per day on site.  Given the demographics of the golf audience, an abundance of caution seems to me to dictate a second look at those plans.  

Shall we move on to more pleasant topics?  Fair enough, though they might not all be that pleasant...

Scenes From a Meltdown - Mike Bamberger revisits a surreal moment in golf, that being Phil's play of the 18th hole at Winged Foot in 2006.  Remind me, how did that all turn out?

I'll skip most of Mike's set-up, and begin with this bit on the tee shot:

Loomis stood on the tee where Phil stood in 2006 and watched the clip. It’s a golfing nightmare. It’s like watching a freight train slowly derail. Johnny Miller is in the NBC

booth, alongside Dan Hicks, who is also a Winged Foot member. (Jim Nantz is a Winged Foot member, too.) In the clip, Phil, is wearing brown pants and a yellow shirt, an Arnold combo, at least now and again. Phil teed it up from the far left side of tee box. “This better be a 4-wood,” Miller says. Miller, the 1983 U.S. Open winner, was made for this moment. It’s not a 4-wood. 

Loomis has his own take on the club selection: It’s rational. The one place you can’t go off the tee on 18 is left. You can make par from the right rough. You can make par from a fairway bunker 290 yards out on the right side of the hole. But left is a disaster. For a left-handed golfer who liked to hit hard, fade drivers, Loomis explained, you aim at the right bunker and hit it with some oomph. It’s not asking too much.

I too never got excessively exorcised about the driver off the tee.  I always felt it could be argued either way, though what came next was pretty clear cut.  But see the bad break Phil got:

Now Loomis was striding down the fairway, Esley beside him, recording. Loomis had made that walk a thousand or more times. He figured out where Phil’s ball came to rest and the bad luck he had in drawing a clean lie. Had Phil’s ball settled in the lush rough in which Loomis is standing, he would have had no choice but to pitch out his second shot and hit a wedge from there. He likely would have had a putt to win on the green, and a second putt to tie. But the lie was clean and Phil is Phil and the shot he was attempting was borderline insane.

Borderline?  C'mon, this is full frontal insanity on display.  But only for Phil could a clean lie be a bad break.

The thought process has always astonished me.  Phil is supposed to be the premier wedge player of his era, but apparently he didn't like his chances of getting up and down from 100 yards.  Nor, apparently, did he like his chances in a Monday playoff with Geoff Ogilvy.  We all love his aggressive style of play, but at a certain point that becomes a parody of itself, as if he wasn't really trying to win.

The Year From Hell -  Gary Van Sickle covers the important subject of playing opportunities.  We all know what's happening out there, I just haven't seen it in plain English before this:

The 2020 PGA Tour is virtually a closed shop. It seems likely that this will be remembered as Golf’s Dead-end Year … unless Tiger Woods performs extraordinary heroics. 

There is no realistic path to the PGA Tour this year for non-tour members, barring the double miracle of beating 144 other pros for one of two Monday qualifying spots and then winning the actual event. Good luck with that. Powerball jackpot odds are only slightly worse. 

Most of the blame for the PGA Tour’s new closed-shop status falls on the coronavirus pandemic that short-sheeted the PGA Tour season. There were no good options to fix this unexpected shutdown. 

The fairest way might have been to share the pain. Instead, PGA Tour players will “shelter in place” in a different way. Those with exempt status or partial exempt status will keep it for an additional year and enjoy the equivalent of one and two-thirds seasons with status. All others will go two full years without it.

 I'm not a fan of the closed shop in a normal year, but anyone on their way up will be stymied.

That reference to Monday qualifying is spot-on, as they reduced the number of slots from four to two.  But, as Gary explains, this doesn't end with the FedEx Cup:

That’ll be 36 events this season, down from the original 49, if all goes as planned, but the 2019-20 season won’t end there. It will roll over into 2020-21 and keep going. No PGA Tour players will be sent down to the minors, so to speak. No Korn Ferry Tour players will advance to the big tour. There will be no Q-School to get onto the KFT. And there will be no Mackenzie Tour, period. Sorry, Canadian fans. Its season was wiped out. 

Well, if you expected members of the Player Advisory Council to vote themselves out of million-dollar-a-year jobs because a few events got canceled, you’re probably still waiting for Congress to defund itself for being incompetent time-wasters. 

Collegians are the ones getting the worst deal in this Dead-end Year. That’s no surprise. They get the worst deal every year.

One of those guys fighting to make his way onto the Tour is Mike Van Sickle....  

Also one of those is Fairview's own David Pastore.  No doubt you've read about Chase Koepka qualifying, with his big bro on hand to watch (they've both withdrawn).  The other survivor of that 5-2 playoff was David, a huge accomplishment.  David qualified twice on Mondays last season, at the Honda and at Torrey Pines, though failed to make either cut.

As GVS makes clear, there is no way forward for a young professional golfer in the current moment.  The guild protects its own....

The Case Against.... - John Huggan is one of the old curmudgeons of the game, so unsurprising to see this from him:

The downside of the Bryson DeChambeau experiment

John makes a fairly conventional case, but he makes it well.  He even uses this optimistic take as his framing device:

Last month, Rory McIlroy was a guest on the McKellar Golf Journal podcast. During what turned out to be a fascinating 90-minute conversation with the world’s top-ranked golfer, one of the hosts—OK, it was me—was banging on about/bemoaning the rise of science and the relative demise of artistry in the game at the highest level.

“You are right about that,” McIlroy said. “But the artist will always win.”

But is that right?  Here's John's rebuttal:

The danger is obvious. More and more, distance off the tee is going to be an absolute

prerequisite for anyone with ambitions to win tournaments at the highest level. On fewer occasions over the course of a season will those not physically blessed with turbo-charged clubhead speed be able to harbor even small hopes of the ultimate success. More and more, the golf played on the professional tours will be a one-dimensional blast. Creativity. Imagination. Strategy. All three will be less important.

This is not a good thing. Think about it. How can a game that all-but eliminates those who play with the artistic style of a Seve Ballesteros or a Lee Trevino be said to be improving?

This contention, I concede, might have something to do with my imminent 60th birthday—but golf at the highest level just isn’t as interesting to watch as it used to be. I also plead guilty to a level of snobbery here. To me, the game is at its best when it features a high level of the aforementioned creativity, imagination and strategy. In contrast, a glorified long-driving contest holds little appeal, even if it does attract the casual fan. “Mashed potatoes” is not my favorite dish.

John, you're still a child....This is one of those anecdotes:

On what is normally Kingston Heath’s par-3 fifth, Su hit a hybrid club through the wind that was quartering against and from right to left and onto the green. Mike hit a 4-iron. So did I. And Nicolas used an 8-iron. What was more depressing than the disparity between those clubs was the type of shot the gifted Belgian hit. Knowing the ball he was using was not going to spin much and thus not “balloon” into the air, he simply smashed it toward the target.

Seeing that, we challenged Nicolas to play a “proper” shot with a 6-iron. Which he did. There is no question he has the skill and technique to flight the ball in any conditions. That is obvious. Yet the little punchy hold-up shot in the right-to-left wind isn’t one he’d much think about hitting in a tournament. For him, the “proper” way to hit the shot was using force, not finesse.

I've long thought that we've erred in focusing exclusively on distance, whereas the reduced spin of the modern ball might be equally important.  It's a good piece, though John seemingly fails to connect the dots between the lower-spinning ball and reduced shotmaking...  It's hard to curve the modern ball, so the kids don't spend all that much time learning those skills.

I'll just add this bit from Hartford that give Huggan's arguments a ripped-from-the-headlines feel:

And this follow-up:

So, maybe next season?

Bubba Being Bubba - I've always had a soft spot for the Bubba.  I know he's not everyone's cup of tea, but I've always thought him an over-achiever.  But when asked about the importance of early week pairings, he had this response:

“Yes, it matters tremendously. There's guys that are a shot, maybe a two-shot penalty when you see their name on that sheet,” Watson said. “Maybe that's what they say about

me, too, so I guess it works both ways. I like to have fun and be energetic. You know, when you see a certain name, you know you can joke around, you know you can have fun and kind of get away from the stress and not talking and just walking down the fairway.

“You know, yeah, I look forward to seeing who the pairings are and sometimes I start praying early trying to get a good one.”

Ummm, Bubba, I've got a follow-up question.  I wonder how much overlap there is with Sergio's list of those deserving the virus.... 

But mostly we just want names....

Enjoy your day and we'll no doubt meet again tomorrow morning.