A long weekend beckons, with far too much golf scheduled. Hope it's a good one for all...
Wither The Tour - As of close of business Monday, another Tour season will be in the bank. Quite the kidney stone of a year, we can all agree. Earlier in the week, the Tour announced its 2020-21 season:
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – The PGA TOUR today announced the complete schedule for the 2020-21 PGA TOUR Season, featuring 50 official FedExCup tournaments – including 14 tournaments that were postponed or canceled as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic –culminating with the crowning of the FedExCup champion Labor Day weekend in 2021.
The schedule, which reflects a net increase of one tournament over the original 2019-20 schedule, features the most tournaments in a season since 1975 (51). Three events postponed in 2020 – U.S. Open, Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship and Masters Tournament – will be played in the fall portion of the 2020-21 season and again in their traditional dates during the 2021 calendar year, along with 11 tournaments that were canceled and not rescheduled as a result of the pandemic, including THE PLAYERS Championship. In addition, with the postponement of the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2020, the men’s Olympic Golf competition will take place July 26-August 1, 2021, as a standalone event for the first time.
And, as Jay Monahan was heard gloating to Mike Whan, we'll see your five majors and raise one... Not that Jay has much to do with those majors...
Other notable changes include the Bermuda Championship, scheduled for Nov. 26-29 in the week after the Zozo, being elevated to full FedEx Cup point status after the WGC-HSBC Champions in China, originally slated for the same week, was officially canceled earlier this week. Likewise, the Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship also will be played with full points available.
Meanwhile, as previously reported, the tour’s Florida swing has been reconfigured with the Honda Classic moving to the week after the Players Championship, March 18-21, while the Valspar Championship moves to the first week of May, after the Zurich Classic of New Orleans.
Five new venues will also be featured in the 2020-21 season: Shadow Creek and Sherwood; Memorial Park (Houston Open); TPC Craig Ranch (AT&T Byron Nelson) and Caves Valley Golf Club, outside Baltimore (BMW Championship).
If you wanted to kill the Valspar, it's hard to see a more effective plan than this one. A pity, since it's the best of the Florida venues... I had thought that the Nelson was returning to Las Colinas, so we'll take that bit as good news, as well as Caves Valley.
Jay was available as is traditional to opine on the state-of-the-Tour, and had these comments on the return to normalcy:
As for fans returning, Monahan said the Tour remains in constant contact with federal, state andlocal health experts and tournament organizers as COVID-19 continues to have a major impact on the way of life in the United States and throughout the world.
“At this point, we’re going with the system that we have. We’re going to reinstitute pro-ams, participants in pro-ams will be tested, and we’re encouraged by the fact that you’re continuing to see more (testing) options, which creates more potential for a quicker return of our fans,” Monahan said. “When we feel like it’s safe to return fans out here, that’s when fans will return. We owe that to them, to make sure that we feel like we’re supported locally in every market we play in, that that is supported by the local government authorities.”
We can only guess at how much the players miss those Pro_Ams.... Yeah, just pulling your leg there. But Wednesday is for the sponsors, and without them....
Jay was asked about the propriety of maintaining purses at pre-Covid levels, and gave a long, meandering answer that Shack has here. To the extent he addresses it, it's to be found in this bit:
To answer your question directly, you know, to be the No. 1 Tour in the world, to get players to play here and to play the schedule that we play and to be able to generate the dollars we have, it's a competitive marketplace, and we feel like it's really important for us to be able to present the best possible opportunities.
That "directly" is comedy gold, given the 5-paragraph detour immediately preceding it. But Shack has the same reaction as your humble blogger:
As the only other “major” circuit on the planet has resumed with severely reduced purses at the moment, I’m not clear what the competition is?
Since the pandemic forced increased testing and safety expenses—with the Tour succeeding against the odds—coupled with Tour job cuts and sponsors paying for diminished perks, why do the market forces require everyone to take a hit but the players?
Surely playing for $6.5 million instead of $7.5 million would not be noticed by fans, but appreciated by sponsors, partners and local charities?
But this attempt to take credit for golf's moment triggered a spit take:
Given that golf lends itself naturally to social distancing, recreational play has seen a surge in recent months. As one of the few professional sports competing earlier this summer, I'm certain our tournaments and our players played a role in inspiring participation during the last few months, and we look forward to building on all this momentum as we head into the end of the year and into 2021.
Shack posterizes Jay thusly:
Recreational play was strong during the COVID-19 quarantine(ish) before the Tour restarted in June and was robust from the outset thanks to golf’s outdoor setting, safety and most of all, a huge increase in free time for active participants or wannabe players. Only in Cult Ponte Vedra could they believe they inspired the robust increase in play.
Yes, Jay, while you were on vacation the rest of us were living under par. At least to the extent Andrew Cuomo and Gretchen Whitmer allowed it... Brian Wacker revisits the start-up, including those worrisome moments in Hartford:
A week later, however, the tour had its first positive test in Watney. It would be the only one at the RBC Heritage, but it caught everyone’s attention because the quiet, polite 39-year-old is known among his peers as a rule follower. In the wake of the news, Justin Thomas, who was also playing that week, said that Hilton Head was a “zoo” and criticized the island for not taking the virus seriously.
Then came the Travelers.On Wednesday of that week, Monahan emailed players alerting them to adjustments in the tour’s protocols, among them that players and caddies, along with all others “inside the bubble,” were not allowed on property until first being cleared with a negative in-market test during pre-tournament screening (previously, players and caddies could be on site to practice as they awaited their test results). He also said that the recent developments should serve as a “wake-up call.” Later that week, two more players, Denny McCarthy and Dylan Frittelli, also tested positive, but the tour pressed on.
Which had certain people, Shack and Alan Shipnuck most notably, calling for an immediate shutdown. But there was never any transmission among players and/or caddies and others on site, confirming that golf could be played safely.
Wither Those "Playoffs" - You know how I feel, it's just such an unforced error. John Feinstein is here to solve that problem, but we have a lovely pre-holiday surprise. Alan Shipnuck's mailbag has been... well, I don't know, on hiatus? Quarantined? Anyway, he's out with a pop-up edition, which is long on FedEx queries of a surprisingly existential nature. I'll just start here:
Will each golf writer send Tim Finchem a personal apology or will you guys just send one letter with a bunch of signatures? Because the FedEx stuff has proven to be awesome. — @pmmacaluso
Awesome? I'd say that he needs to get out more, but...yeah.
No such letter shall be forthcoming from me because my position about the Cup has never changed: the format is hokey and the promotion relentless but — and this is a huge but — I’m still glad it exists because we get great fields and compelling tournaments during what used to be a dead part of the schedule. The key to enjoying the FedEx Cup is not to think about the FedEx Cup and merely focus on the golf itself.
Agreed, to a point. No question they are best taken as packed-field individual events, but the uninspired venues and relentless promotion are increasingly tiresome. And "hokey" is too kind, methinks. It simply falls flat on its face as any type of serious, season-long competition, too dependent on that last event with a minuscule, 30-player field.
Some more of Alan's Q&A's:
Was Sunday at Olympia Fields the greatest finish in FedEx Cup Playoff tournament history? — @SteveThomsonMN
Yes, because it’s the only one I remember. Kidding! What DJ did to Spieth at the ’17 Northern Trust has to be in the conversation, as does Bill Haas’s up-and-down from a lagoon at the 2011 Tour Championship. But for sheer improbable giddiness I think the bang-bang double whammy of DJ and Rahm making crazy putts is very, very hard to beat.
Bang-bang? Weren't they a half-hour apart? Both putts were a shock, so it was a good finish to a lackluster week.
If DJ doesn’t get Rahmed in the playoff he has 2 wins and opens with a mere 2 stroke lead at East Lake…. Fair? — @BobbyTeeItUp
I guess. An NBA team can sweep the first three playoff series but they’re back to square one when the Finals begin. The endless tweaks that the Tour has made to the FedEx Cup formulas all have the same goal: make the Tour Championship more compelling. The way Dustin is playing right now, if you gave him a four- or six-shot head start, the proceedings at East Lake could get very boring very quickly.
Yanno, if Rahm's putt misses they're still tied? Oh, and if Rahm didn't get DJ'd...oh, never mind.
Who cares about fair? It's cosmically stupid, and embarrassing to the game to conduct a competition in such a manner. Remind me whose idea this was?
Here's John F.'s take on the status quo ante:Which is why Finchem came up with the idea for a four-tournament playoff earlier in the fall, and more important, convinced FedEx to finance it in a way that would get the players’ attention. The argument can be made that it was the most important thing he did as commissioner.The playoffs have worked. The best players almost always play—money talks, even for multimillionaires—and the tour can now claim to have a legitimate climax.Almost.
But he was promised playoffs:
So, increase the payoff for regular-season performance, and then start everyone at zero for the three-tournament playoff series. You can use the current formula going from 125 players to 70 to 30 in each successive event, or you can give more players the chance to play the first week, say 150 (it was 144 the first year of playoffs) and then drop to 100 and, finally, send 64 players to Atlanta. This gives the TV guys the chance to warble about guys on the bubble both weeks, and it makes it less likely that stars will be cut before the final weekend.
Not clear to me whether the results of the first week carry over to the second. But he's pushing in the direction it needs to go, make it a shoot-out. But that's a much larger field in Atlanta, so where's he going with that:
But that’s not why I’m suggesting 64. The most dramatic moments in golf often come in theRyder Cup—which is match play. To me, the WGC-Match Play event is vastly undersold by the tour, although a good deal of the drama was sucked out of it when the format was changed from straight knockout to pod play. Again, TV wanted to ensure the big names would be around for at least three days. Prior to that you had to watch every day or miss something dramatic.The TV networks aren’t wild about match play. They worry about the stars being knocked out early. Here’s my proposal: Play 36 holes of stroke play and let the top 16 advance to match-play bracket. If there are ties for the final spot or spots, play off. That creates real drama early in the week. Then, have four matches on Sunday afternoon: the two finalists for the title, the two losing semifinalists playing for third place, and the four quarterfinalists playing for fifth and seventh. Make the money difference from third down at least $1 million. Plenty of drama there. Championship match goes off last so, barring a rout, it’s the last one to finish.
Except that you already have a match-play WGC, and its death for television. The category error that John and so many other make, is that the Ryder Cup works not because its match play, but because its team match play. A different thing entirely, and even then it helps if the guys dislike each other just a little.
John heads down a useful path I think, culling the field event by event. But I think the end point has to be some manageable number of players in a high-stakes shoot-out that last day... Probably more than a foursome, maybe 8-10, enough critical mass that you would expect to have some show ponies in the mix.
Wither Frankie - Has a career course correction ever exceeded that of Francesco Molinari as he took the club back on the twelfth tee at Augusta National in April of 2019, which only seems like a lifetime ago. Molinari has played especially poorly since that meltdown, but he's implementing quite the different protocols than the Tour
Francesco Molinari insisted he is not suffering from burnout in a series of Twitter posts on Tuesday.The 2018 Open Championship winner has not made a start on either the PGA Tour or European Tour since the opening round of the Players Championship in March. In July, Molinari announced he was moving from Europe to California, a decision that was keeping him away from professional golf. However, he stated he hoped to return by the PGA Championship in August.Molinari ultimately pulled out of tournamrnt at TPC Harding Park, and then on Monday, the USGA announced that he had withdrawn from this month’s U.S. Open.
Well, he insisted... I've always found that insisting you're not in burnout always makes those stories go away.
“I see a lot of questions,” Molinari wrote in Italian. “I didn’t hang up the bag, I took a break to manage a life change with my family. I have no physical problems. I don’t feel burnt out, but only time will tell. I’m not changing gear.
“It will be hard to get back to the levels of 2018 no doubt, you don’t think it was easy the first time. I am the only one who has not returned. I am well aware of it, but it is not the first time that I have made different or unpopular choices (see Rio 2016).”
These guys are hard-wired to compete, so when you see a guy not there, it's a shock. Feels as if something is wrong, so let's hope all is well with his family.
Course Ratings of Note - I take it on faith that the rating and ranking of courses has at some point been interesting, though I could use some specifics here. But we can all agree it's been a dreary business of late, so it's welcome indeed to see Golf Magazine breathe some life into the tired formula. They're out with the following lists that might, perhaps should, be of interest:
The 50 best 9-hole courses in the world, ranked!
The magic number? 3. Here are the 25 best par-3 courses in the world
Short and sweet: 25 sub-6,000-yard courses golfers are buzzing about
The pleasures are bountiful, far too much to depend on my idiosyncratic excerpts. The first category includes only standalone nine-holers, and we'll lead with this iconic name:
1. Royal Worlington & Newmarket GC, Suffolk, England (Tom Dunn/1893)Expert’s take: Just as the Yale golf team has enjoyed playing out of one of the USA’s top golf courses, the golf team across the pond at Cambridge have a gem of their own. In this case, it is Royal Worlington & Newmarket Golf Club. As one saddles up to the unassuming clubhouse and plays the first couple of holes, it’s hard to understand the fuss around this little nine-holer. But patience has its virtue as you will soon encounter some of the more extreme green complexes in all of England. Creativity rules the day with tee shots crossing greens and a final two-shotter that requires a clever little tee shot over the entry road. If you have an appreciation for quirky, you’ll relish your visit. (For more on Royal Worlington & Newmarket, click here.)
I know precious little of it. It's near nothing, inland, but certain folks worship it.
Where it started:
4. The Dunes Club, New Buffalo, Mich. (Dick Nugent/1991)Expert’s take: About as diverse and versatile as a 9-hole course can be. In a roundabout way, this Dick Nugent design on sandy, scrubby ground had enormous influence on the post-Bandon golf world. Mike Keiser was a member here for years, before he ever developed anything golf related.
Not Pacific Dunes, but just a trace of the raw genetic material...
It still galls me that we ran out of time to get her eon our last trip to Donegal:
10. Cruit Island GC, Donegal, Ireland (Michael Doherty/1986)Expert’s take: The landforms on this rocky, seaside routing are almost Seussian, like you’re playing golf at the edge of the world — in a sort of netherworld where rules don’t apply. But the holes are legit, if short in spots, and the tiny green sites are perched in some truly phenomenal, unlikely places. Played it in a downpour accompanied by howling winds. Would love to go back but it’s so far out there in the northwest, I sorta doubt I ever will.
You can't get there from here...
I've gone too long already, but I haven't found room for Musselburgh, now mostly inside the race track.
Milking their premise, and who can blame them, there's this follow up item on these yardage-challenge tracks, providing a glimmer of why Musselburgh matters:
348The oldest course on our list is the historic Musselburgh Links in East Lothian, Scotland. The course was founded in 1672, making it 348 years old — over 100 years older than the United States. Though it is just a nine-hole track, Musselburgh is one of just 14 clubs to host an Open Championship, having crowned the Champion Golfer of the Year on its ground six times in the late 1800s. The course also holds a significant place in the history of the game as it is known as the place where the four-and-a-quarter inch hole diameter was first implemented.
The late 1800's was a battle for primacy in the golf world among St. Andrews, Prestwick and Musselburgh. Spoiler alert, St. Andrews won, but the contributions of those other two communities should not be over-looked.
For the Par-3 courses, I'll use a lighter footprint, though I'm thinking that if the bride and I venture south again this winter we should perhaps arrange to play here:
Palm Beach Par-3, Palm Beach, Fla. (Dick Wilson/1961; Updated by Raymond Floyd/2009)Expert’s take: Stunning views of the ocean and intercoastal waterway. A great place for family fun. My son and I played there many times when he was a junior. An added benefit is the outstanding restaurant overlooking the dunes and ocean for lunch or post-round drinks.
Northeast Harbor, Northeast Harbor, Maine (5,602 Yards/Par 70)
Expert’s take: Opened in 1895 as a 9-hole course, Northeast Harbor survives some 125 years later as a 5,600-yard Herbert Strong design in which only one par-4 measures longer than 400 yards.
Employee No. 2 and I took an early trip to Maine, at a time when we had an associate in our firm from there. He told me about Northeast Harbor, and I dragged herself to play it against her protests. She still thanks me for that, as it was completely charming, excepting for their modernized 18th hole (likely the long one noted above). Amusingly, there was a long walk through the woods from the 17th green to the 18th tee, no easy task with a pullcart,completely unmarked and seemingly ungraded... Charmigh, though more than a little curious.
A most enjoyable series of features to amuse ourselves. More like this, please.
Oh, Is That What Happened To Him - You've heard the happy couples good news, and we applaud their ability to keep it under wraps until the end. But Rors hasn't exactly been lighting it up lately, and now you throw this at him:
Like Danny Willett and so many before, will the 'Nappy Factor' come into play for Rory McIlroy?
It is 24 years since Keith Elliott, the golf betting analyst, first posited his theory around fatherhood in The Golf Form Book 1996
The rest alas, lies behind a paywall. But based on magnitude, you'd have thought Danny had triplets.
I think this is what they mean by real life overtaking events:
John Huggan with the tip-in:
OK, really happy for them, but....Poppy?
Milking Alan - Never let a mailbag go to waste, just a few odds and ends from Alan:
Alan, in this odd 2020 season which golfer(s) took a step forward in their game and which ones took a step back? Thanks — @forearmshiverForward: B. Todd, Morikawa, Horsfield, Højgaard, Niemann, Berger, Hughes, Hovland, Wolff, English, Rahm, DeChambeau, Scheffler, R. Palmer, Hatton, English, P. Casey, Dahmen, JT, DJ.Backward: Spieth, Koepka, Molinari, McIlroy, Woods, Pepperell, Kiradech, Haotong, C.T. Pan.
Interesting lists. He did mention that Cannuck:
The putts that Rahm and DJ made were amazing and made for an incredible ending butwas anyone else more nervous about the Mackenzie Hughes 5-footer on 18 or just me? — @JonathonJFelix
Oh, heck yeah. Both Rahm and DJ woke up on Monday and their life was pretty much the same as the day before, and that would have held true if Johnson had won the playoff.
There was real human drama watching an obviously nervous Hughes fan a weak approach into the bunker, play an incredible shot from the short-side and then wiggle in a career-altering putt. The money handed out at East Lake is gaudy but for Hughes — a longtime underdog finally playing his way into the big-time — that putt meant everything. It was awesome to see him hole it.
Couldn't agree more with the both of them. Always preferred the old model Fall Finish, which feature those kind of career-altering moments.
Having risen to No.13 in the OWGR, should Daniel Berger have received an invitation to the Masters in November and, in winning the AIG Women’s Open, should Sophia Popov have received an invitation to the upcoming ANA Inspiration? I say a resounding Yes and Yes. — @TheGolfDivoTee
Berger for sure. In the past the green jackets have extended special invitations to everyone from Shubhankar Sharma to Shugo Imahira. Yeah, these exemptions are more about breaking into
international TV markets than righting wrongs, but the fact is the czars of the Masters can do whatever they want and certainly Berger should be in the field.
The Popov situation is more nuanced, because Tours have always made rules to favor their members and plenty of players through the years have been victims of the bureaucracy. I think it would be great if she receives the full five-year exemption, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Mike Whan makes an exception at the end of the season, which would be a very popular move. But I also thought the commish offered a persuasive and well thought-out case why, for the sake of fairness, it’s not being done now. It certainly swayed me.
In a way, the question is silly, because there's no case for them not being there. It's just that rules exist which failed to anticipate such eventualities. but you'd hope the powers that be will find the necessary flexibility.
Why does Dustin Johnson not get the same amount of criticism as Greg Norman for his major record? I’d argue Greg’s record in the majors is more impressive than his. Greg just got beat by flukes or guys who had the rounds of their lives, DJ has had implosion after implosion. — @War_Eagle1991
I think Dustin gets plenty of stick for having won only one major among his many, many chances. It may be tempered because he’s still only 36 and is clearly going to have plenty more opportunities. If Johnson can get to three major championship victories that puts him in very rarefied air. Of course, he’s got to get there first, and his uninspired play on Sunday at Harding Park to lose the 54-hole lead doesn’t inspire confidence that Dustin is ready to apply all those hard-earned lessons. For now, he’s definitely in the conversation for the most vexing career ever, up there with Shark and John Daly.
Alan assumes much, as it's easy to imagine a world in which DJ retires with just the one. But DJ-Shark is an obvious comparison, with many similarities. John Daly is just another category error... if anything, he's an over-achiever.
Winged Foot, A Teaser - Just a few snippets about the joint, as they prepare for their moment in the sun. Mike Dougherty of the local Journal News spends some time with Steve Rabideau, the man in charge of presenting the golf course. He has some interesting takes, though he obviously hasn't seen the explosive scoring on offer recently:
It’s now a made-for-TV championship that gets under way Sept. 17.
“Basically, the one thing we have left is showcasing Winged Foot, showcasing the golf course,” Rabideau added. “That’s been driving us to make this one of the hardest U.S. Opens they will
ever play.”
Remember the Massacre at Winged Foot in 1974?
As he reached into the rough to retrieve the golf ball Tuesday, Rabideau quietly offered a familiar refrain.
“Plus-8. Plus-8. Plus-8. … That would cap a very difficult summer,” he said. “And my guys know that’s what I’ve been thinking.”
Eight over? Hard to imagine...
There's lots of good stuff, including their lockdown experience, the extensive Gil Hanse restoration and issue of daylight and grass growth.
The course is currently reported to be #firmandfast, although I'm guessing that was written before the last three days of rain. He's right as far as this goes:
“The flip side is that September could be a great time of year for the U.S. Open,” Rabideau said. “It feels like August, lately, but we can get some cooler nights. The one thing we have is that we’re three months off the longest day of the year. We have less daylight, but for grass, the longer nights allow the grass to recover quicker. We have two hours less daylight so the grass can withstand a little more stress.”
So if the conditions are right and USGA wants to dial up the greens to warp speed, the delicate grass will not require life support.
Yes. For an Open in the Northeast, September is perfect, though we still need to get lucky with the weather. I just took a look at a monthly forecast, and the only rain to be found was on the Friday of tourney week. A bit early for it to mean anything, but dry will help...
This is true enough, yet...
“With the tremendous investment Winged Foot has made, they are better prepared now to deal with a rain event if we encounter one,” Hall said. “I will also tell you, Winged Foot, whether it’s soft or firm, is a very difficult test of golf. It may require a different kind of shot-making if the conditions soften the course, but Winged Foot is never easy.”
Yes, it's difficult, but once a track softens, I don't know to what exetnt scoring can be controlled. Or should be controlled, as we've seen with the ...err, difficulties the USGA has experienced at Oakmont and Shinnecock.
Have a great holiday weekend and I'll look forward to catching up on Tuesday.
No comments:
Post a Comment