Weekend Wrap

Once again your humble blogger watched more football than golf, though we never let that dissuade us from opining on that we missed.  Of course the Brady-haters had a long night....

Na Na Hey Hey - We'll get to the winner in a sec, but this was Saturday's header:

Brendan Steele, a year after letting the Sony Open title slip away, has a chance to get quick redemption

Is a year quick?  In any event, old habits die hard:

Instead of redemption, it's heartbreak again for Brendan Steele as a second straight Sony Open title slips away

I think what I love most is that passive voice.   Coming in January 2022, Brendon Steele chases the hat trick.  It's a brutally hard game we play, so I mean no disrespect to a man that has dramatically over-achieved.  It's just that folks have way over-interpreted a couple of silly season wins...

In any event, about that winner...

But when nothing really was going his way in Sunday’s final round of the Sony Open in Hawaii, Na had to tap into his reservoir of patience and temper a bit of frustration, especially after falling three shots back with six holes to play.

Then Na started getting in step with his game and started walking in birdie putts – from 14 feet on 13, from 9 feet on 14, from 6 feet on 15. And when he needed to birdie the par-5 18th at receptive Waialae Country Club in Honolulu to win, he blistered a 5-wood from 242 yards to just over the green, chipped from 28 feet to 2 feet, and rolled in the winning putt.

“It feels great,” Na said. “I felt like Waialae is a golf course I really have a chance at, and there’s not too many of these left anymore, so I have to take advantage of it. What a great feeling to win at a golf course I really feel like I can win at.

“It’s just all positives. I feel great.”

For him, yeah.  But it's basically 155 portions of heartbreak against the one of these.  We'll likely have more below on that horses for courses bit.  

We'd typically defer to the Golf.com Tour Confidential panel for perspective on the winner but, while fully one-third of their subjects were Sony-related, none referenced the guy holding the hardware.  Strange, that, as well as this Brian Wacker item:

How Kevin Na changed the trajectory of his career and became addicted to winning on the PGA Tour

We all remember Na at Sawgrass, when he couldn't take the club back, so that should have been a profile that wrote itself.  Except it didn't, this being about the only payoff of that header:

The win was the fifth of Na’s PGA Tour career. It also marks the fourth straight tour season that he has won at least once, after picking up just one victory in the first 17 years of his career.

It's really quite the step-up in performance, all the more remarkable given the absence of firepower.  

I chide those aforementioned Confidentialistas for some of their editorial decisions, most notably their Tiger-centrism.  But no quibble for me on the importance and pleasure in this story:

Even four-time winners on the PGA Tour have to grind for membership.

That was Chris Kirk’s situation this week at the Sony Open in Hawaii. The 35-year-old needed to

finish in a two-way tie for third place or better this weekend at Waialae Country Club in Honolulu to retain his PGA Tour membership. Playing on the final start of his major medical extension after taking a months-long leave of absence to seek treatment for alcohol abuse and depression, Kirk took a share of the lead into the clubhouse at 20 under on Sunday night at the Sony Open in Hawaii.

Kevin Na would end up making birdie on the final hole for his fifth PGA Tour win, and while there aren’t any trophies or oversized checks for second place, Kirk’s T-2 was almost as good as a win.

I get it, but $587,400 would be considered "oversized" by the vast majority of the world's citizens, so let's not be dismissive of a T2 on Tour.

Amusingly and predictably, we all obsessed over this more than the man himself did:

“I never felt like it was a do-or-die type of situation,” Kirk said of his weekend challenge. In fact, he didn’t know where he needed to finish to retain his membership until he received an email from the Tour. “I wasn’t looking. I was just going and playing.”

Of course, otherwise, how would you even be able to take the club back?

He was very honest about his struggles, so it was rewarding to see him hold it together and do what needed to be done.  As they're wont to do, that TC gang went the historic angle:

1. Needing a T3 finish or better at the Sony Open of Hawaii to hold on to his PGA Tour card, Chris Kirk shot four consecutive 65s to finish tied for second, finishing just one shot behind Kevin Na. Kirk was 2 over thru three holes Sunday, half a dozen shots back and in need of a top 3 finish to retain full status on the PGA Tour via a major medical exemption. Well, he made seven birdies in his final 13 holes, including a great up-and-down birdie on 18 to clinch his card. Where does Kirk’s week rank among the best back-against-the-wall performances in recent memory?

Sean Zak: Perhaps my brain is fried, or perhaps there just isn’t another option but I’m struggling to think of one that includes everything like Kirk’s story. The personal battles, the down-to-the-wire drama, the early bogeys and the tricky pitch to clinch it? That’s all pretty damn great.

Josh Sens: It wasn’t to keep his card, but when I think gutty performances, I think of today’s winner, Kevin Na, at the 2012 Players. The man had the full swing yips. Could barely draw the driver back. Was getting heckled by fans as he twitched and balked on the tee. Most of us would have curled up and cried or simply packed it in. He finished 7th.

Nick Piastowski: I love the Kirk story, and it is certainly among the greatest rallies in recent memory. But the man HBO just finished a two-part documentary about gets my nod. From where Tiger Woods was, to thinking of quitting the game, to where he finished at the 2019 Masters, in a green jacket, is as good a comeback as you’ll find anywhere.

Dylan Dethier: Incredible. I don’t know where to rank it because there’s no real way to rank this sort of thing, but what a stretch of gritty play when he needed it the most. What’s cool about the PGA Tour is that even on relatively quiet weeks like the Sony Open, someone is grinding for the future of their career. For Kirk to pull that off, given his backstory, is inspirational.

As noted in the question, coming back from that terrible start makes it all the more impressive.  Someone to root for through the remainder of the season, so what's not to like?

Horses For Courses - You saw Kevin Na's thoughts on the matter above, comments very similar to those from Kevin Kisner earlier in the week:

“Probably not,” Kisner said whenasked if he could win anywhere. “I’m not going to win at

Bethpage Black or Torrey Pines.”

Naturally, a follow-up was made: So, why play?

“Because they give away a lot of money for 20th,” Kisner said, before further explaining: “I don't think I can make up enough ground in the areas that I'm great on certain courses, so I just don't attend those. I think on the flipside, I think I probably put too much pressure on myself on the courses I know I can win at.”

There's a lot going on here, so let's unpack it.  While some are always surprised to hear a professional say that they can't win, I'm not so sure that we should accept it at face value.  Given those 155-1 odds I cited above, I think a big piece of this is just to lower expectations.  The hardest things is to win when you're supposed to, and we all do the same at times.

But is it even true?  I always cite the counter-intuitive fact that in 2003, the year Augusta National was Tiger-proofed, we had that epic Mike Weir-Len Mattice playoff, two guys not exactly renown for their power.  Kiz cited Torrey, which we all know has been won by Tiger a gazillion times, as well as big boppers such as Phil, Bubba, Daly, Jason Day and Jon Rahm.  But mixed in with the alpha males are names such as Snedeker (twice), Ben Crane and Jose Maria Olazábal, as well as defending champion Marc Leishman.  Heck, their gallery of past winners even includes this ugly mug:

That's the 1998 champion, you can look it up, but short-hitters don't come much shorter than that bunter.

So, as we're in a moment of agonizing over distance, this guy helpfully guides us on how to protect golf courses from himself:

How exactly does one “Bryson-proof” a course? It depends on who you ask. According to

DeChambeau though, it won’t be easy.

“You look at those golf courses that are more short, tight, whatnot, and even East Lake where you have a bunch of cross-bunkers in front of the green, you look at those types of golf courses, that’s really the only way to combat it on any level,” DeChambeau told reporters on a call ahead of the Saudi International. “(But) no matter what, you really can’t combat the distance. You can kind of control it a little bit with setting up cross-bunkers short of the green where you can’t run stuff up like I could at the U.S. Open at Winged Foot.”

Which is not a problem at all unless, yanno, your golf club has actual members.  Oh, and it would help if those members cherish their 5 1/2 hour rounds.

Let's pivot at this point to another of those bunters, the delightful Peter Malnati.  I like his attitude a bit better than Kisner's, but I love his putting the lie to the angle concept:

Q. Talking to a few guys about this week, as the game goes to distance, are there places you can't win?

PETER MALNATI: Where I can't win? I hit it far now. I'm longer than average I think.

Q. Are you longer than Cam Champ?

PETER MALNATI: No. But he's pretty long. There's not places I can't win. There's probably conditions in which I can't win. But like golf courses, I've never been to Augusta. Augusta probably ain't going to suit me great but I putt it really well and I hear you have to do that there.

Q. You do. You have to do it everywhere. What conditions are you talking about, do you think?

PETER MALNATI: When it's super wet and we're doing everything through the air -- one of my favorite things to criticize, a weird way to say something, I absolutely hate it when I'm watching golf on TV, which is rare, and I hear the commentators say, oh, this course is all about angles.

Golf, on TV -- that's rarely ever true. Have you ever watched golf on TV? Like, look at the way Jason Day hits it. Angles don't mean anything when you fly it to the hole. Like just fly it to the hole and land it next to the hole. Angles aren't important. So when people say, oh, this golf course is all about angles, that's not true. Like that doesn't matter.

And so there's places that are the big, wide open course when is they get really soft like it's going to be tough to hit three clubs longer into a green and compete. But when the ball is bouncing and going crazy places, like here, I hit several drives ShotLink will say they went 320 plus. Like when the ball is bouncing like that, I can play anywhere.

It would make me very happy for Peter to get that trip to Augusta...

But yeah, angles haven't mattered much to these guys for quite some times.  I've called Bryson evolutionary vs. revolutionary, just because he's not that much longer than Cam Champ and the rest of the chase pack.  But it's also true that he's taking line off the tee that we didn't even know existed....

 That TC panel devoted two questions to this broad topic.  This second of the two doesn't add much to the debate, methinks:

4. Speaking of distance, relative short-knocker Kevin Kisner (his 284.1-yard driving distance average ranks 217th on Tour) candidly admitted that there are Tour events in which he plays that he believes he “probably” can’t win. Do you suspect other shorter hitters enter tournaments with that mindset, and, if so, is it wise to let your competitors know you feel that way?

Zak: I don’t just suspect it, I know it to be true! Kevin Na mentioned it in his post-victory interview with Todd Lewis. He said there are certain courses where he knows he has a better chance of winning, and conversely other courses where he has a very low chance of hanging around. Jim Furyk told me the same thing in December. A lot of shorter hitters hold this mentality. And the long hitters know it. We all know it. You still need to get it in the hole.

Sens: As Sean says, no doubt. Players who don’t need to fight and scrap to keep their cards have been cherry-picking courses for years. Letting your competitors know you don’t think you can win doesn’t seem like a disadvantage. But why tell yourself that? It’s strange for a professional athlete to compete in anything having convinced him or herself that they don’t stand a chance.

Piastowski: Love the honesty. Though, yes, other players love to hear it. Brooks Koepka has admitted as much. I remember his quote from the 2019 PGA: “156 in the field, so you figure at least 80 of them I’m just going to beat. From there, the other — you figure about half of them won’t play well from there, so you’re down to about maybe 35. And then from 35, some of them just — pressure is going to get to them. It only leaves you with a few more, and you’ve just got to beat those guys.”

Dethier: I suspect Kisner’s trying to take the pressure off himself at the courses he sees as suboptimal. It’s definitely pretty funny, but it’s also a good reminder just how many guys on Tour are just trying to stay there. Piling up top-20s can seem much more achievable than taking down one big check.

It might have been a more interesting back and forth had they included Malnati's take as well.  But shall we see their reactions to Bryson's comments?

3. When Bryson DeChambeau was asked last week how he would defend a golf course against Bryson DeChambeau, he admitted it’s a challenge, saying, “You really can’t combat the distance.” But he also said: “You can kind of control it a little bit with setting up cross bunkers short of the green where you can’t run stuff up like I could at the U.S. Open at Winged Foot.” If you were given the authority to tweak/set up courses on the PGA Tour, what measures — if any — would you take to try and neutralize the bombers?

Zak: I’d try and do exactly what the R&A did at Carnoustie in 2018. That course was firm, fast and proper. Those big greens were difficult. The bombers will always be the bombers; your job is to challenge other aspects of their game. That means closely-mown runoff areas around the greens. Firm fairways and greens. Precise placement of bunkers — pot bunkers, even — to make players think twice about where those long tee shots could become troublesome.

Sens: Keep it firm and fast. Holes with doglegs (and maybe even internal OB to prevent corner cutting). Tough pin positions that fall shy of tricked up. Beyond that, I don’t know what you do other than accept the fact that par is just a number. The player who shoots the lowest one still wins.

Piastowski: I agree with the above, and so I’ll toss another idea out for the conversation. Make the courses tighter. And shorter. If everyone’s hitting it in the same general area, then the bombers’ advantage could, theoretically, shrink. Or just grow out the grass to the height they did in some areas at last week’s Tournament of Champions.

Dethier: All good suggestions. If your only goal is to take away bombers’ advantages, you can certainly take drastic actions, like installing chasmic bunkers at the 315-yard mark on every hole or growing the rough progressively thicker and thicker the closer you get to the green. But you could argue that’s disproportionately unfair. Hitting it far and straight is an enormous part of the game. As long as the setup tests everything else, too, it’s more than fair game for big hitters to be the best golfers.

I still get than tingle up my leg when folks mention #firmandfast, but unless you're prepared to repeal weather... But Bryson himself has indicated that, contra Nick P., narrow is actually an advantage for him.  I certainly like his chances if everyone is playing from the rough.

I hate When That Happens - Since you mentioned Bryson, remember his disappointing Masters?  Folks took much pleasure in his inability to master (yeah, sorry) that Par-67 pitch-and-putt course?  Now there were allegedly some physical issues:

In his defense, DeChambeau clearly wasn’t right physically that week. Despite testing negative for COVID-19, he complained of headaches and fatigue.

“I’ve got to fix whatever is going on up here,” he said after a final-round 73. “I have no idea. Just dizziness. It’s only when I go from down to up, so I can’t even like think and talk right now.”

Clearly?  I wasn't sure folks actually believed him, as he can, you know, be a tad whiny...  But he sure got checked out:

“I actually went to multiple doctors, multiple people, trying to figure out what this was,” DeChambeau said Friday, speaking ahead of his appearance next month at the Saudi International on the European Tour. “I got a couple MRIs. Went to an inner ear doctor, eye tests, eye pressure, ear pressure, even did ultrasound on my heart, ultrasounds on my neck to see the blood flow and how things were moving through the different areas of my body, and everything came back really, really well.

Any conclusions?  Well, it's The Professor, so you're forewarned:

“The one thing I will tell you is that I’ve done a lot of brain training with Neuropeak, and the frontal lobe of my brain was working really, really hard and that’s kind of what gave me some weird symptoms, like crazy overworking."

Given this information, DeChambeau began to adjust his routine in preparation for the 2021 season. “So as I started to relax my brain a little bit and just get into a more comfortable situation and got on a really good sleep schedule routine, a lot of those symptoms went away,” DeChambeau said, “and they come back every once in a while, but as I do a lot of breathing, it goes away and that’s really what I’m focused on trying to do.”

The reader is encouraged to insert his or her own frontal lobotomy joke...

Today's Long Read - This is worth your time, but with some huge caveats:

HOW GOLF WON

THE INSIDE STORY OF HOW THE PGA TOUR SALVAGED ITS SEASON AMID A RAGING PANDEMIC

I also think that golf "won" the pandemic, I just don't think the PGA Tour or professional golf had anything to do with it.

The piece doesn't come with an Ad-Supported disclaimer, but it should.  Max Adler is the author, and he starts with a long description of the circumstances of the shutdown at The Players, though to me he avoids all those unpleasantries of the time.

There is no mention of Jay Monahan's dithering, and his robotic recitation of his "Golf is played over 200 acres" mantra, the one that obviously considered the risks to his member professionals, but was just a wee bit cavalier as relates to his paying customers.  You might discern all you need to know by the simple fact that a CTRL:F: Chainsmokers query yields zero results.

I called Jay tone-deaf any number of times, though I'm not sure I was aware of this:

At 9:30 p.m., West simultaneously received a call, email and text from the tour imploring her to join a conference call that would start in 10 minutes. On that call, she learned that the tour was canceling the Players, her event and the two after. Minutes after she hung up, the players were emailed the same update. They would split that week’s pot, and so Matsuyama’s 63 would be worth the same—$52,083—as the last-place 79s by Patton Kizzire and Nick Watney.

What's a good term for tone-deaf on steroids?  Wouldn't it have been better to give that money to charity?  I mean, they keep telling us that we're all in it together, right before they make sure to take care of themselves...

The best part of the article is its description of the challenges of the reboot, and all credit to them for making it happen.  But take a gander at this bit of revisionist history:

On April 6, the Open Championship was canceled. It had full insurance, but more importantly for the oldest major, no chance given the stricter attitudes and regulations toward the pandemic in Europe. This opening let golf’s schedule fall into place 10 days later. The logos of all the major golf associations—even the usually restrictive Augusta National—appeared together on one press release. 

Really, Max?  If they had no chance, how was Keith Pelley able to pull together his UK swing on short notice?  The cashed the check, that's really all we need to know...  

You can make your own informed decision as to whether or not to read it.  I just wish we had golf writers that weren't so good at copying-and-pasting from Tour press releases.  I know, I'm not holding my breath.

One last bit, and then I'm out of here.  We've dealt with some pretty weighty issues this year, matters of life and death, not to mention... well, hoodies.  But this might be the biggest of all:

Bubba Watson unveils iron covers, and the internet breaks

Bubba, let me make this easy for you.  When it comes to iron headcovers, just say no!

I'll see you later in the week.