I have a tee time to make, and other obligations to satisfy this morning, so there's little time for pleasantries...
Tiger Scat - In case you didn't notice the method to my madness, I ducked all Tiger threads until today, knowing that Tuesday would yield his presser comments. Those comments were worth the wait, as he chocked up recounting last year's emotional vignette:
As he recalled his 2019 Masters victory during his press conference Tuesday at Augusta National, Tiger Woods teared up a bit.
“I’m getting chills thinking about it,” Woods said about his one-shot victory over Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson and Xander Schauffele, picturing in his mind a few moments from his magical journey to his fifth green jacket and 15th major championship triumph. “Coming up 18, and knowing that all I have to do is just two-putt that little 15 footer and to see my family there and my mom and my kids and all of the people that helped support me or were there for me in the tough times, and I was walking up there trying not to lose it, and still saying, ‘Hey, I’ve still got to two-putt this.’
“Then I walked off the back of the green, to see (son) Charlie there, just opened up our arms, it meant a lot to me and still does. It just reminded me so much of me and my dad (hugging after his 1997 Masters win), and to come full circle like that, it stills gets me you know, a little teary.
Well, we all made that connection as well, as those 22 years (1997-2019) brought no shortage of changes to all of us...Though I'm not sure that this is how one plays the expectation game:
“Do I expect to contend? Yes, I do,” Woods said. “This is a golf course in which having an understanding how to play and where to miss it and how to hit the shots around here, it helps. When I first came here, it was a lot of drivers and a lot of wedges. Now it’s a little bit different and a little bit longer clubs into the holes, but still understanding how to play it definitely helps.
That’s one of the reasons why you see past champions able to contend so late in their careers.
“Hopefully I’ll be one of those guys.”
At the risk of harshing your mellow, Tiger, you already were. After all, 2019 reminds us, more than anything, of 1986. We'll cast Frankie Molinari in the Seve role, and Koepka as the Shark, and X-man can pass as Tom Kite in a pinch...
A bit more from another account, including details on the traditional pairing with the U.S. Amateur champion:
A ceremonial golfer he is not. He has a tournament to play, and his intentions are clear.
Woods will tee off in his 23rd Masters on Thursday by doing something he’s never done before:starting the tournament on the 10th tee. He, Shane Lowry and 2019 U.S. Amateur champion Andy Ogletree will begin at 7:55 a.m. off the back side Monday, another reminder of the unusual nature of this November Masters.
To mount a stout defense, Woods will have to play much better than he has since the tour restarted after a three-month COVID-19 hiatus. It’s that simple, and Woods knows it. In his six starts since mid-July—Woods waited an extra month or so to return to play out of an abundance of caution—he has no finishes better than T-37. He missed the cut in his last major start at the U.S. Open and beat just three players in his last event, the no-cut Zozo Championship.
The tenth tee start is an interesting wrinkle, both because of the difficulty involved in those early holes, but also because of Tiger's notorious struggles on the first hole. The next time he hits that fairway might also be the first...
But my favorite Tiger item isn't really about Tiger, including this awkward meeting:
Tommy Bennett did not want to caddie for Tiger Woods at the 1995 Masters.
"I didn't want no damn amateur," he recalls. "I wanted that green jacket."
Tommy Bennett did not want to caddie for Tiger Woods at the 1995 Masters.
"I didn't want no damn amateur," he recalls. "I wanted that green jacket."
He wanted to carry for Dicky Pride, a promising young pro who had won a PGA Tour event the previous summer in Memphis, Tennessee. But Pride's sponsor preferred a different man on his bag, and so did Jack Stephens, the investment banking magnate who was the chair of Augusta National Golf Club. Twenty years after Lee Elder had become the first African American invited to play the Masters, and five years after the club had accepted its first African-American member, Stephens knew that Woods was primed to become the game's first Black megastar. Like Earl Woods, Tiger's father, and Butch Harmon, Tiger's coach, Stephens wanted to assign the rookie a tour caddie who knew his way around.
Though the unassuming Stephens was not quite as autocratic as some Augusta National overlords -- Bennett calls him one of the nicest men he's ever carried for -- the chair could drop the hammer on club employees when he deemed it necessary.
"You can caddie for Tiger Woods or nobody at all," he told Bennett.
The 45-year-old veteran didn't need much time to weigh his options.
"I went with Tiger," he says.
Who'd want a Dickie with a Tiger on offer, but there was no green jacket in Dickie;s future, nor was there a weekend teetime. Just read the damn thing, and you can thank me later.
Mike Bamberger had this earlier in the week for the faithful:
The simple reason why an out-of-form Tiger Woods can win this 2020 Masters
His victory at Augusta last year, No. 15, came 11 years after his 14th, at the 2008 U.S. Open,where he hobbled around Torrey Pines for five days. It came nine years after his private life was exposed in a way nobody deserves, the Stiletto Parade appearing daily for a while in the New York Post and the National Enquirer. His 15th win came two years after his drug abuse was revealed by way of a roadside arrest, in the early hours of Memorial Day, 2017. It came after a long litany of surgeries.
His victory at Augusta last year was cathartic for millions for one reason above all others: A man came back. He screwed up but did not give up.
He rose above his pain and his humiliation. Who among us would not want to do the same?
But . . . can he win?
Probably not.
Which means of course he can.
No one wants to say that he can't... But 2019 provides the template for that which would have to happen, which seems unlikely to occur in two successive years.
Scenes From The Press Room - Alan Shipnuck writes an ode to Tuesday pressers:
AUGUSTA, Ga. — You know how the Super Bowl media day has become an event unto itself?Golf’s version is Masters Tuesday, when one-by-one the game’s best players and biggest personalities are beckoned into the press room to be grilled by reporters. It is a chance for the golfers to pontificate and obfuscate, to say nothing of move merchandise.
Carried live on digital platforms and often on Golf Channel, the Tuesday pressers are where Tiger Woods, in 2019, introduced his Frank logo to the wider world, and it’s no accident that the players bust out their best five-figure timepieces and drape meaty forearms across the dais, the better to please their endorsement partners.
The “scripting” of player clothing has become a big deal during major championships, but Dustin Johnson said that doesn’t begin in earnest until Thursday. Did he spend extra time picking out Tuesday’s outfit — navy pants paired with a charcoal grey Adidas shirt with a blue collar — knowing the world would be watching? “No, I didn’t even think about it,” he said.
Well, DJ.
But the new press center has to feel odd this year, what with the reduced press contingent and all. Alan touches on it:
As David Letterman famously did with his studio, the room is kept quite cool, to help those being interrogated from getting the dreaded flop-sweat on their brow. With social distancing protocols in effect this year, the largely empty room felt particularly chilly. “Are they hanging sides of beef in here?” one press room wag wondered aloud.
That’s not the only reason the space can feel foreboding. The interview room in the old press room was a little bandbox that was crowded and intimate and promoted a sense of closeness and connection between the players and reporters. To provide clean lines for the video feeds, the competitors are now seated on a raised stage, far from the scribes and separated by a moat of plants. It feels less like a conversation and more like they are professors offering a lecture.
Here's that old band box:
Which is not to be confused with the iconic Quonset hut that preceded it. Here's the modern, soulless version:
I do very much recall Pultizer Prize winner Dave Anderson's epic rant against the Lords of Augusta. he basically told them where they could stick their new media center, all he wanted was to be allowed inside the ropes.
Alan does eventually get around to the content of said pressers, including this pitiable lad:
And yet, there were still lovely, revealing moments on this Masters Tuesday. Phil Mickelson appeared genuinely happy to have been invited in given that he now rarely does pre-tournament press conferences. A spot in the big room on Masters Tuesday is an acknowledgement that he still matters. (Less heralded players are consigned to the flash area near the clubhouse.) When I asked Mickelson about this he said, “I just don’t think my views are that much desired during this era, and it’s been easy to kind of just slide in and out.”
So, the Masters press corp. has followed the lead of your humble blogger...
This bit from Rory is worth your time as well:
McIlroy spoke sweetly about his baby girl and offered a moving monologue on how the mettle of a champion is forged: “I think my grit’s came from my failures, and I don’t have to look any further than this place in 2011 [when he lost a four-shot lead on Sunday]. I try to say this to young guys that are coming through: You can’t be afraid of failure. You have to embrace the fact that you are going to fail at things, but you should learn from them and then when you go again, you should be better. I’ve had a nice little bit of success in this game, but I have failed a hell of a lot more than I have succeeded. And that is why I have succeeded, is because I went through those tough patches. So, I feel like that’s where I’ve got my persistence or grit from.”
I'm having trouble following, because the successes were all up through August 2014, and the failures have mostly come thereafter.... So the mechanism by which the failures lead to the earlier successes eludes me...
If you found me dismissive of DJ above, I was out of line. He simply can't be bothered worrying about his ensembles because he's focused like a laser on the truly important stuff:
It takes a similar perseverance to make it through Masters Tuesday, with 10 pressers spread across eight and a half hours. At the end of this marathon I found inspiration (and the right focus for an afternoon snack) in the wise words of DJ, who, when asked to name his favorite part of Masters week, said, “The sandwiches. All of them.”
Yeah, he doesn't seem the type to coo about their wine cellar...
The balance of presser time seems to have been spent discussing shaft lengths, first Mr. DeChambeau:
That longer driver is a half-inch short of 48 inches, the legal limit in competition, the type used by the World Long Drive competitors who turn the long ball into a spectacle. DeChambeau tried it out Monday after his practice round and liked how it reacted. He has not ruled out using it when the Masters begins Thursday
“I got my swing speed up to 143, 144 (mph),” he said.
The average swing speed for a power player on the PGA Tour is around 120 mph.
Numbers define DeChambeau these days, starting with the more than 40 pounds of muscle and mass he has added in the last year, remarkable gains from an estimated 5,000 calories a day in his diet and relentless work in the gym. More recently, it was the excitement at home in Dallas when one of his drives carried just over 400 yards.
It's less that he's defined by numbers, than the fact that he's defined by big honkin' numbers...
Then Phil, who has the whole bag conceptually configured:
The first: “Ultimately, it might be five years, 10 years, 15 years, but every driver will be standard at 48 inches, and then you’ll have a weak driver – kind of a 2-wood, which is what I’ve gone to now. For me, it’s actually really good in that I’ve always used length of swing and leverage to create speed, rather than a violent, physical, rotational force. I’ve actually quieted my body down a little bit as I try to create more speed with a bigger, longer arc. So transitioning to a longer driver is not that much more difficult because it’s just a timing issue.”
That 5-10-15 year bit seems a head feint, given his thoughts on the coming week:
The second part of the equation is that Mickelson believes distance and an aggressive style of play will pay off this week at Augusta National. Already softened by agronomic conditions in thefall, the course should play even softer with rain (occasionally heavy) expected each of the next five days. Without patrons, there’ll be more space for Mickelson to explore if he hits it off-line. Slower, softer fairways and a thicker second cut should also keep some balls from trundling into the trees and pine straw.
“This course, I think, gives me as good a chance as any golf course,” he said, “and I just need to play it aggressively and execute.”
Sounds very much like what Hitler called lebensraum. Hitler only needed France and Russia, but that seems insufficient for our Phil, given how he sprays it...
Shack might have found the most depressing bit on this, a WRX/PGA Tour page on the status of Tour players testing of longer shafts:
Bryson DeChambeau: 48-inch LAGolf Rebar Proto 60
- You can imagine the launch numbers and 200-plus mph ball speed, although there’s a very slim chance it sees action this week.
Phil Mickelson: 47.5-inch KBS TD 60 C5 TX
- Mickelson has been testing for weeks. He’s seeing ball speeds in the mid 180s with a 310-315 carry. As of now, it’ll see action at Augusta.
Viktor Hovland: 47 and 48-inch Project X RDX 60G 6.5
- Strictly for off-season testing
Adam Scott: 46-inch Fujikura Ventus Red 6 X
- Led the field in driving distance last week in Houston at a 326.4 clip.
Dylan Frittelli: 46-inch Mitsubishi Tensei CK Pro White 60 TX
Vijay Singh: Testing (no further details)
Dustin Johnson: Testing (no further details)
Le Sigh! Though the inclusion of Vijay did at least provide a chuckle...
Architectural Notes - Shack hardest hit, as per these comments:
I felt like we were making such progress with Augusta National, down to public comments by Chairman Fred Ridley to uphold the original architectural vision of Alister MacKenzie and Bobby Jones.
So to read of Hootie Johnson-era manipulations to the course via rough and trees is, well, a setback given the well-stated views of the architects.
What has him so cranky? This kind of thing:
- The rough appears longer. It's possible it will be cut prior to the first round, but on Monday it was thicker than what the "first cut'' would normally play and look.
- In various spots, clusters of trees have been added. One interesting location is beyond the fairway bunkers on the 18th. At least five trees have been added, making the idea of blasting a tee shot over those bunkers less advantageous. Could this be in response to Bryson DeChambeau, who could easily bomb his tee shots that distance.
- There is also another cluster of trees farther up the right side of the fairway at the par-5 13th. It may prevent those who think they can just blast the ball into the 14th fairway from the tee into thinking they can do so.
- The weather has been warm in Augusta, so the Bermuda grass that would normally die out in the winter is not completely gone. The ryegrass overseed gives the courses its usual lush, green look, but from a competitive standpoint, the Bermuda grass that remains will be of interest.
The Masters Champions Dinner is on, and Tiger Woods is serving fajitas and sushi
Whatevah! But this is the bit that shocked me:
For the diners, it's a pretty basic menu and one Woods has picked before.
Whoa! He waited fourteen years to win another green jacket, and then he phoned in the menu? Jack never did that, I'm quite sure.
And this:
Here’s what the socially distanced Champions Dinner looked like
And that's for everyone... Not just Bubba.
This stuff is always fun:
WATCH: Jon Rahm makes magical skipping ace on Augusta National’s 16th
Though I've been reliably informed that he won't play the hole like that in competition...
There are lots of questions about this guy, but this isn't one of them:
Did Brooks Koepka get the bulletin-board material he craves from Brandel Chamblee to fuel another major moment?
It is modestly interesting that Brooksie cops to slacking. A for Brandel, it's way past his sell-by date.
This will serve well as our exit quote:
Bryson DeChambeau looks to overpower Augusta National: 'I have no idea where the end game is on this'
Yeah, we know.
I expect to see you tomorrow as well.
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