Weekend Wrap - Masters Week Edition

While we're contractually-obligated to wrap the weekend's action, we certainly don't need to dwell much on it...

Memorial Daze - This is a strong entry in the Overwrought Header Hall of Fame:

Carlos Ortiz makes history in stunning victory over Dustin Johnson and Hideki Matsuyama at the Houston Open

It wasn't much in the way of history, and I found myself stubbornly un-stunned, but whatever...

Among the names who made a charge on Sunday at the Vivint Houston Open: Dustin Johnson (No. 1 player in the world), Hideki Matsuyama (former World No. 2) and Brooks Koepka (four-time major winner). Trying to fend them off was Mexico’s Carlos Ortiz, currently ranked 160th in the

world. Surely, he’d be no match for that trio of world-class players.

Not only did Ortiz hang with them, he flat out beat them. The 29-year-old shot a five-under 65 that featured a two birdies on his final three holes, including a 22-footer on the 18th that he walked in to win by two.

“That was amazing,” Ortiz said, fighting back tears after claiming his first PGA Tour title. “Me and my caddie, Eddie, have been working on staying patient and having a good attitude, stay positive. We did that great this week, and it paid off. I’m just really happy with the way I played.”

It's to me off-putting to pump up this win using those bold-faced names, because Ortiz played quite well and any win is a good win, the more so when you're losing your maidenhood.  But DJ and Brooksie were playing a long game, or at least they should have been...

That said, i was surprised to see Brooksie featured when I turned on the DVR.  I was vaguely aware that DJ had turned his week around after a so-so Thursday, but I thought Koepka was retiring to focus on his architectural career.  Our regular Monday features included the Golf.com Tour Confidential panel, which features one query on this event (though CTR:F-Ortiz yields zero results);

2. Two of the world’s best entered the Houston Open with question marks. They left with exclamation points. Dustin Johnson, after sitting out two tournaments due to Covid, tied for second. Brooks Koepka, who’s battled knee pain, tied for fifth. From what you saw in Houston, which of those two players are you most bullish on at Augusta?

Bamberger: Koepka, for sure. He’s such a big-time, big-moment player, and he had to have learned so much about how to play on Sunday last year. I’m not dissing Dustin Johnson; I’m just answering the question. Koepka.

Geez, I'd have thought that he'd have learned all he needed to know about Sundays in winning four majors... But he didn't lok like he had in that final round at Augusta, which seems the more interesting issue.

Sens: I’ll take DJ in that matchup this week. Koepka’s rep as a big-stage player speaks for itself, but four days walking a hilly Augusta will be a different sort of test for his knee than pancake-flat Memorial Park. I won’t be surprised at all if Koepka goes out and dominates. But I’d be even less surprised if DJ does.

Dethier: Brooks Koepka. Fool me once by showing up out of nowhere at a major, shame on you. Fool me five times, and, well, you know how this goes.

LKD: DJ, for sure. I’m glad to see Brooks back and healthy again, but I’m not buying his stock just yet. DJ has been honing in on another major for a while now, and a green jacket in November would be the perfect cap on a bizarre but undoubtedly successful season.

Is he healthy?  But this is the most curious of the answers:

Shipnuck: It’s been such a lost year for Brooks, it would be very on-brand for him to snatch this Masters and flip the script. But Dustin has been playing at a much higher level. It’s hard to imagine him never winning a Masters – this is as good as any year to get off the schneid.

Really, Alan?  DJ's career is all about under-achieving...  As we speak, he's failed to win a Masters, and that seems pretty on-brand for the guy.  Just having no difficulty imagining that.

So, is there anything you'd prefer to talk about?  

Augusta On My Mind -  Shall we begin with that same TC panel?  Maybe they'll tell us a story:

1. It’s Masters week … finally! We’ve been speculating about this moment since, well, last Masters week — 19 months ago. There’s much to chew on this time around — fall conditions, no patrons, Tiger Woods defending — but which one storyline are you most intrigued to see play out?

So, a priest, a minister and a rabbi walk into a bar... What?  OK, not that kind of story.  Got it.

Michael Bamberger: How Bryson plays the course and if the club can find a club coat suitable for him, should it come to that.

We might just have a bit more on Bryson below, but the green jacket bit is intriguing.  As you likely know, they grab members' jackets in the size for each contender for a potential green jacket ceremony, so whose would they use for Bryson?  As a first pass, I'm going with the artist know as The Walrus...

Josh Sens: I second Michael’s Bryson call. But next up, Tiger Woods, playing the Masters as defending champ. Something we haven’t seen in 15 years and may not ever see again.

I'm just thinking about the lifetimes that have elapsed since that Reconquista...

Dylan Dethier: Both good answers! I’ll add in that I’m excited to see just how these guys act on Sunday afternoon, when the tournament’s on the line. Will it feel no-fan chill? Or will the tension ramp up in a particularly intimate way, with only a few onlookers to watch the action?

Luke Kerr-Dineen: I’m most excited about the weather, to be honest. There’s a chance of rain, which is the nerve-wracking part from a pure tournament-playing perspective, but this being a November Masters means it’ll also be colder and windier than usual. I’m hoping for a Masters-meets-Open Championship vibe, with the elements and the course working in tandem to test the best players in the world.

From what I've heard, wet for sure, but not so cold... Which would be good news for the holder, though might be in that maddening necessary but not sufficient category.

Alan Shipnuck: There are so many top players who need to win here but haven’t: DJ, Brooks, Rory, JT and Rahm come to mind immediately. At a Masters unlike any other, can one of them finally break through and add the unlimited accomplishment to their resume? I hope so.

The failure to win a Masters is not yet a thing for Rahmbo, Brooksie and JT, methinks, though those last two are a bit arguable.   But it's a bit of a make-or-break for Rory especially, so I'll go with that.

Dave Shedloski seems to be on the same page as well:

Masters 2020: Rory McIlroy's got an Augusta National problem … and here's how he can fix it

Yes, well there's just the one fix, no?

It doesn't help that Rory seems to be in denial:

Sooner or later I’m going to get rid of the bad stuff, and I’m going to be right there.” So said

Rory McIlroy after another disappointing Masters? Actually, no. That was his assessment after converting 29 birdies, a personal best, while finishing T-17 at the Zozo Championship two weeks ago.

And yet, you can picture McIlroy uttering those same words after each of his 11 starts at Augusta National Golf Club, where he has collected nine top-25 finishes—the latest a T-21 in 2019—five top 10s, but no victories. Not that he needed to be reminded of that last part.

In fact, after his 2016 effort, one of his better chances to capture the only major missing from his resume and become the sixth player to complete the career Grand Slam, McIlroy did say, “I just didn’t play the golf I needed to when it really mattered. That’s the thing that I take away not just from this week, but from previous Masters.”

Get rid of the bad stuff.

Just get rid of the bad stuff?  Though Rory himself hints at the larger issue, to wit, that the more he wants it the more poorly he plays.  Shedloski does at least take a pass at the deficiencies in Rory's game, though I continue to over-interpret the boyhood best friend on the bag.  I'll get serious about Rory's chances when I see him approach it seriously...

This approach might work:

"I've got enough distractions going on in my life at the minute in terms of a new baby; it's almost a nice thing to not have the Masters on your mind 24/7,'' McIlroy said during a phone interview.

"Erica and Poppy [their daughter born in August] are going to be there, it'll be her first golf tournament. And after getting home each day, it's such a nice thing to be able to get your mind off of golf.

"I've always been better that way. If I let something consume me too much then I start overthinking it. It's just not a good thing. It has been a good distraction that way. I'm looking forward to getting myself ready to play some good golf. It's going to be a different tournament, a different Augusta.''

I can see that as helpful in the run-up and early days of the event.  But ultimately one has to win it Sunday afternoon, and for that we're left with those vivid images of 2018 Rory rolling over and playing dead for Patrick Reed.

But he does give us a detailed scouting report on conditions:

"A lot more Bermuda [grass] in the fairways and in the surrounds of the greens,'' McIlroy said. "The greens are exactly the same as they always are. But for the fairways, it just hasn't been cold enough for the Bermuda to die off. That's going to make things very interesting around the greens. Chipping will be a lot trickier.

"[The fairways], instead of being thin it can be a little grainy or a thicker patch. But it was soft. There were a lot of mud balls and looks like some rain during the week so that can be an issue. It's just going to play very different. They haven't done anything to the golf course -- it's just the way it's playing.''

Everything about this one-off Masters seemingly sets up well for Rory, except perhaps for the fact that he's played very poorly since the restart.  

Shall we stay with the big boppers?  I had suggested that his would be among the most eagerly-anticipated practice rounds ever, one of my better calls:

The most shocking to this observer are those into the two front-nine three-shotters... Both of those are severely-contoured greens in which we have decades of memories of balls running onto the green and feeding off those slopes.   This sounds far more like dart practice, which I suspect will prove to be far less exciting...

Our TC friends have thoughts:

3. Reports surfaced earlier this week of a Bryson DeChambeau practice round at Augusta National, where, as suspected, he overpowered the course much like he did at Winged Foot during the U.S. Open. (Also earlier this week, Jack Nicklaus suggested that, in the right conditions, DeChambeau could drive the green at the par-4 1st.) A week from now, what are the chances we will be debating in this space how ANGC best Bryson-proof the course?

Bamberger: Odds are good, and the fix is easy: shorten the course; give the players a tournament ball.

I'm old enough to remember when a Masters ball was the solution.  I didn't find it realistic then, nor do I now... 

Sens: Possibly, but if we are having a Bryson-proofing conversation, we’re having too narrow a chat, as he’s far from the only player with course-shrinking length. I think the more likely conversation will be: Wait, how come Bryson didn’t win? Didn’t everybody say he was practically a lock?

Dethier: We’re going to be talking about other stuff, luckily, because the Masters is a really exciting golf tournament and promises to crown an intriguing champion. But yeah — it’ll be on the list. Everybody knows Augusta National, so it’s the one place (alongside possibly St. Andrews and Pebble Beach) where mind-bending distance really hits home for fans.

LKD: Whether he wins or not, we’ll be talking about needing to Bryson-proof courses, because he’s changing the fabric of golf at the highest level. He may not win the 2020 Masters for a number of reasons. He may get unlucky. He may not putt well. But I’m calling it now: He’ll do something this week that blows people’s minds. He’ll end up nudging a sand wedge into a hole – the 13th, perhaps – that prompts people to think about Bryson-proofing professional golf.

Shipnuck: It ain’t easy to come in as a huge favorite, while having had to navigate all the life changes that come with winning your first U.S. Open. Even Bryson’s vaunted focus will be put to the test as to whether he can drown out the noise and just go play. But his putting at the Masters has been quite poor – that has to change for him to win.

There are some reasons to be skeptical about Bryson's chances, but not the trend line.  He will solve those putting woes, because he won's stop obsessing about it until it's accomplished.  There's just no way of knowing whether that will happen this time, especially without the green-reading books on which he depends.  But note Josh's point, this is hardly just about the one guy...

Joel Beall has this for anyone desiring a deeper dive on this beast:

Masters 2020: Can Bryson DeChambeau break Augusta National?

I'll remind here of the Paul Azinger comments we had last week.   perhaps Augusta cannot be defended, though they can buy up the entire Augusta, GA metro area, but the implications for the more vulnerable, the Old Course first and foremost, are deeply troubling.

Alan Shipnuck has this item in a similar vein, though it doesn't actually deliver the goods:

This data-first approach to course strategy is changing how pros play, including at the Masters

But Alan does share this story of the man of the hour from his SMU days:

In early 2015, Southern Methodist University golf coach Jason Enloe had a thorny problem: his

Scott Fawcett

most talented player, Bryson DeChambeau, was also the most hyper-aggressive. There wasn’t a flag DeChambeau wouldn’t fire at, and the inevitable bogeys were occasionally sabotaging his rounds. Enloe pleaded with his star junior to play more thoughtfully but couldn’t quite get through to DeChambeau, famously a physics major. “Bryson is very analytical, as everyone knows now,” Enloe says. “I felt like he would benefit from a different way of looking at things.”

So Enloe brought in a big gun: Scott Fawcett, a former touring pro who was using math to deconstruct the mysteries of the game. Poring over ShotLink data and Google Earth images of hundreds of courses, Fawcett invented Decade, a course management system that helps players optimize and trust their decision-making in the same way a launch monitor can help them max out their carry distance. The name itself is a sales pitch, implying that a lifetime of golf knowledge can be distilled into a series of decision trees.

Fawcett met with DeChambeau and the other Mustangs in an indoor classroom, because NCAA rules prohibited him from doing any “coaching” on the course. He laid out his case on how to play the game and protect against mental mistakes, using detailed statistics to hammer home the points. DeChambeau’s brain was so stimulated you could practically hear the neurons crackling.

And those neurons haven't stopped crackling yet...

Alan does better with this piece:

Inside the Augusta National playbook that helps players outsmart the course

I do certainly agree with this one:

2. The short par-4 3rd is not a birdie hole

This short, tantalizing and occasionally drivable par-4 had a scoring average of 3.86 in 2019, meaning a par loses very little ground. Fawcett: “I firmly believe that seemingly high scoring averages on holes like this one stem from players continuing to try to make birdie even after getting the tee shot in slightly bad position. If you happen to hit it left when the pin is on the front left I believe surrendering birdie and simply trying to get it to the middle-left of the green will result in an average score of 4.2ish. By going slightly right of the hole you gain quite a bit of room for distance control, which is the main challenge. Proper strategy REQUIRES patience and discipline when you get even slightly out of position on a hole like this.”

At least up until now, it seems that every player that pulls a long club on Sunday has struggled to make par on the tease of a hole.  Though it might be one to watch this year, especially if guys are blowing it over the green with 3-woods.

But what do we think of this one?

5. Par is an okay score on the par-5 15th

Fawcett: “You should have a good look roughly half the time. Just like on 8 and 13, those are the times you score, obviously. It is far more important that you don’t overdo aggression when you are out of position, let trying to hook a 4-iron around the trees or something silly. If you can average 4.35 on your good tee shots and 4.9 on the out-of-position ones, you will beat the scoring average.”

Blocked out by the trees after your drive at 15? Don’t try to be a hero with your second shot, Fawcett says.

OK. I get the theory, but they all do try to hook it around the trees, and mostly successfully... As we know, the wedge shot off a lay-up can be terrifying so, unless your name is Chip Beck, the thinking seems to be that you might as well go for the hero shot.

I'll close out the Augusta portion of today's post with some bits from Shipnuck's latest mailbag:

Most exciting major of the 21st century not involving Tiger? #AskAlan -@martincbrennan

It has to be the 2004 Masters. The gentle giant Ernie Els makes two eagles in the middle of the round to surge ahead by three and then Phil Mickelson chases him down with a back nine for the ages, including an all-time walk-off putt on the 72nd hole that delivers a victory that had been hotly anticipated for a decade and a half. I’ve heard a lot of roars around Augusta National but I’m pretty sure the loudest ever was when Phil’s putt dropped.

That was a good one, for sure.  Phil played poorly on the front nine, even leaving a ball in a bunker, but was nails coming home.  But the aforementioned 2011 installment, won by Charl Schwartzel, might have been the single craziest Sunday I've ever seen.  Anybody, including about twelve Aussies, could have won that damn thing...Just not a champion for the ages.

Do you think AGNC will play firm and fast next week? Does a fall Masters favor a different type of player, or give someone with less AGNC experience a better chance? -@bill_lundeen

We’re now close enough to start paying attention to the forecast and it’s pretty grim: rain and/or thunderstorms likely Tuesday-Thursday and possible Friday-Sunday. Uggggghhhhhh. This would obviously preclude a firm, fast golf course and give bombers even more of an advantage. I’ve felt all along that the fall Masters helps those who have been snakebite in the spring, because everything will look and feel different. Throw in a soft course and Rory, DJ and Bryson are very, very dangerous.

I'll circle back to this in the next couple of days, but there will certainly be rain during the week.

What is your favorite Masters concession item? My personal hot take is that the egg salad routs the pimento cheese 7&6 in match play. #askalan -@JeffShelman

Yep, egg salad is my fave, too. I add Texas Pete’s hot sauce, a handful of BBQ potato chips and sliced pickles, plus a tall glass of chocolate milk. My go-to afternoon snack to help me power through deadlines. Perhaps this explains some of those articles!

The questioner seems to consider pimento cheese  the Stephen Ames of Masters concessions...

Who’s a good dark horse for next week? I have Charl Schwartzel. He’d be considered one, correct? -@SonofaFitch46

He’s so dark he’s 90% cacao. I’ll take local boy Charles Howell, who knows all about the weather and turf conditions this year and is floating along on the good vibes of a life-changing awakening.

None of the above....

Today's Sad News -  I got the sense that something was up, but sad to have it confirmed:

For Tim Rosaforte, this week’s Masters will be like no other. The longtime golf journalist won’t be covering this revered tournament for the first time since 1983.

His absence has nothing to do with the coronavirus pandemic that delayed the Masters to the Fall. If only it was that simple. Last month, Rosaforte was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. He has been having memory issues for about two years. Rosaforte turned 65 on Oct. 25.

Instead of keeping Golf Channel’s viewers informed throughout the week, Rosaforte will watch this Masters from his Jupiter, Florida, home. Rosaforte retired from Golf Channel last December because of the cognitive problems.

Rosaforte – or “Rosie,” a nickname he has had since high school — last visited a PGA Tour event in late February, when he was at his hometown Honda Classic at PGA National. This week is when his new world, and the diagnosis, really hits home when he stays home.

Sometimes this job is just no damn fun.  

This one hit Jeopardy Nation hard over the weekend, though it was inevitable once the diagnosis was made:

Remembering Alex Trebek with a rundown of golf's history on Jeopardy!

Just way too soon.  I wonder if they've shows in the can with Alex hosting, which will be hard for all of us to watch.  Ken Jennings has been waiting in the wings, but it's just a sad world these days.

On those sad notes I'll release you to your busy day.  Hope to see you tomorrow.