Back at World Headquarters after an uneventful travel day. It's nice having the terminal to oneself, though it's likely not a sustainable business model.
Pebble Pains - If Pebble Beach remains unchecked on your bucket list, this might be the time to address that. This weekend, perhaps?
This week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, however, has drawn the shortest end of the COVID stick. With no amateur competition on tap, no fans on the property, no-nonsense health-and-safety restrictions in California, no sun in the forecast and no let-up in the tour schedule, what is normally a week-long party by the sea has taken on a rather subdued atmosphere.
After Dustin Johnson’s withdrawal on Monday night—the World No. 1 cited jetlag after winning the Saudi International more than 8,000 miles away a day earlier—there is not a single golfer in the top 10 of the World Ranking teeing it up at Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill. (Monterey Peninsula’s Shore Course, normally the third—and easiest—course in the rotation, is no longer needed this year given the lack of amateurs.) Patrick Cantlay (No. 11), Daniel Berger (No. 15) and Paul Casey (No. 17) are the only top-20 players in the field, with Jason Day and Will Zalatoris coming in as the only other top-50 golfers. Three of the bigger draws—Phil Mickelson (No. 86), Jordan Spieth (No. 69) and Francesco Molinari (No. 103)—fall outside the top 50.As a result, just 30 World Ranking points will be awarded to the winner, the same sum as last fall’s Sanderson Farms Championship. That’s down from the 42 points Nick Taylor got for his win in 2020, 46 for Mickelson in 2019 and 54 for Ted Potter Jr. in 2018. It’s a disappointing development for a tournament with a rich history and a who’s who of past champions: Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson and Tom Watson, to name a few.
Time to move Pebble to the Fall wraparound portion of the schedule? So, why the stiff are from the A-Team? Shack throws up some bullet points:
- Saudi Arabia appearance fee money drew several top players last week
- Waste Management Open drew a better field with players knowing that with only 5000 the baba-booeys crowd would be minimized
- One-two punch of Riviera and free-money WGC are lurking the next few weeks
- No pro-am, no fun. Yes, there really still are players who enjoy the networking and old pro-am vibe.
Daniel Rappaport, author of the Golf Digest item linked above, focuses mostly on that last bullet:
The reasons, as mentioned previously, are multiple. The amateur portion of the tournament hasbeen an integral part of this event since its inception as the Bing Crosby Pro-Am in 1937, and the opportunity to play three world-class courses alongside the best in the world routinely draws celebrities, athletes and CEOs. Last year's Pro-Am drew NFL legend Peyton Manning, hip-hop star Macklemore, tech billionaire Jerry Yang, finance icon Charles Schwab—and, of course, unofficial tournament mascot Bill Murray.Sure, some tour pros roll their eyes at the prospect of playing a five-plus-hour round with a 15-handicap, but plenty relish the opportunity to mingle and develop relationships with ultra-successful people in other walks of life.
It's not just Tour pros with rolling eyes, your humble blogger has certainly taken his shots on this subject, as they'd do well to bring those rounds in at a mere five hours. But the event has always previously drawn a credible field, so we need to acknowledge that something is different this time.
I do think Geoff fails to see his own logical inconsistencies between his second and fourth bullet points. He begrudgingly acknowledges that some players dig the Pebble Pro-Am, but can't bring himself to do the same for the baba-booeys in Phoenix. More importantly, he seems to not understand the appeal of those 5,000 fans at the Wasted to those players struggling in the absence of fan energy (see, for example, McIlroy, Rory). To those craving normalcy, which is pretty much all of us, that was a mile marker on the return to the status quo ante. Well, hopefully...
Geoff mentions the Saudi event, as well as Riviera and the WGC, relocated to Florida, but I just don't see much that's changed from the last couple of years. The WGC has been moved from Mexico City to Florida, but it's not like those with an invited will be in a middle seat on a commercial flight, so what's changed?
One possibility that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere relates to Torrey Pines. I'm too incompetent and lazy a blogger to check, but is it possible that the Farmers drew a better field because the U.S. Open is at Torrey in June? That seems to be about the only change from prior years, except for that minor pandemic....
Human nature being what it is, folks want to blame these nice folks:
The Saudi’s’ filthy lucre is hurting both Phoenix and Pebble, two of the oldest events on Tour. It’s sad. Maybe tragic. https://t.co/2JDW0qGZHc
— Alan Shipnuck (@AlanShipnuck) February 8, 2021
Geoff thinks Phoenix was a winner in this, whereas Alan finds them a victim.
But folks don't seem to be connecting the dots. If you believe that Euro events (including their ability to offer large appearance fees) are hurting the PGA Tour's historically-significant tourneys, shouldn't we be considering the long-term effects of the PGA Tour-Euro Tour hostile takeover strategic partnership? Unless you think it was all about the media operations, in which case I have some swamp land in which you might be interested.
This is what worries me, a PGA Tour with no need to compete for the loyalty of players and sponsors. Because I like having that scrappy upstart out there, as competition keeps everyone on their toes. Unless, of course, you want professional golf to turn into the Post Office, though there's a chance that my warning shot is far too late...
One last bit of irony....
And if all of that isn’t enough, Mother Nature could deliver a haymaker as the forecast for this weather-plagued annual gathering is not kind – rain the first three days and temps tipping out at 55 degrees.
They can't be the Crosby clambake because of the pandemic, yet they're forced to endure what has long been called Crosby weather. Are we having fun yet?
Oops, I lied.... one final bit of irony about the Pro-Am, this from Trevor Immelman about a certain GOAT that has often played in this Pro-Am:
OK, I just threw that one in to torment the Brady-haters, who were already having a tough week.
Today's Distance Doings - One of my frameworks for discussing the effect of distance is to analyze how other sports have adapted to changing technologies over time.
The the most obvious comparison would seem to be to tennis. There the powers that be saw dramatic changes in the materials and size of tennis rackets, from the wood frames used by Rod Laver to the over-sized graphite and/or composite rackets of the 21st century game. But, and I think you'll readily see my logic here, they changed the characteristics of the tennis ball rather dramatically. If you have any doubts, watch how Federer or Nadal play on Wimbledon's grass, compared to the aforementioned Laver....
But the other sport I tend to fall back on is baseball. For the simple reason that Fenway Park and Wrigley Field have survived and flourished from the dead ball era to the current launch angle revolution, as compared to Merion and other Golden Age classics. Wassup with that?
Today we have a news item that might offer an explanation:
MLB making changes to the baseball, deadening it — but by how much?
This item is behind a paywall, so we're limited to that which Geoff chose as excerpts. But the concept seems simple enough, MLB will change the ball in reaction to the boys hitting it too damn far
“In an effort to center the ball with the specification range for COR and CCOR, Rawlings produced a number of baseballs from late 2019 through early 2020 that loosened the tension ofthe first wool winding,” the memo from the office of the commissioner reads, explaining that this change had two effects — reducing the weight of the ball by less than one-tenth of an ounce, and also a slight decrease in the bounciness of the ball as measured by the COR and CCOR.
COR is the coefficient of restitution, or the relationship of the incoming speed to the outgoing speed. So, in other words, this new ball will be less bouncy. How much less is a matter of science, but also opinion.
Research conducted by Rawlings says the balls will be centered more in the midpoint of the established COR range, which is from .530 to .570 with a midpoint around .550, as the (now missing) first report on the home run rate surge stated. So the COR likely changed around .01 to .02 at most, and the ball size was likely reduced by less than 2.8 grams.
While they don't talk about it all that much, this is quite evidently not the first time they've fiddled with their ball. And that, in a nutshell, is why we still have Fenway and Wrigley, although MLB has also resisted changes to the bat (in contrast to my tennis example above).
On a similar note, this bit from the USGA Turf Section should surprise nobody:
To better understand how golf courses have evolved, the USGA undertook an extensive study ofgolf course aerial photos as part of the Distance Insights Project. We looked at courses that opened from the 1920s to the present, mapping aerial images from various points in their history using digital mapping software. Through that research we sought to learn more about how individual courses change over time, how courses from different decades differ from one another, and how golf courses may evolve going forward.
I shant leave you in suspense any longer:
In the 80-course sample, courses built during the three most recent decades had an average total footprint of 216.3 acres. Courses from the earliest three decades – the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s – had an average footprint of 152.3 acres, a difference of 64 acres. This pattern was also observed in the championship course case study, where the five most-recently opened courses had an average footprint 47 acres larger than the five oldest courses (260 acres versus 213 acres, respectively).
I'm shocked... shocked, I tell ya.
There's quite a lot going on in this piece, it's not all about distance. For instance, we all know that greens shrink over time, but this bit took me a little by surprise:
In the 80-course sample, the average total putting green area was 109,077 square feet for the earliest map year and 101,197 square feet for the last map year. The average total putting green area for the championship courses decreased from 125,642 square feet in the earliest map year to 115,755 square feet in the last map year. The average area of bunkers in the 80-course sample decreased from 82,573 square feet to 76,823 square feet. In the championship course case study, the decrease was even more pronounced, with a drop from an average of 243,971 square feet of bunker area in the earliest map year to 156,033 square feet in the most recent map year.
So the extra acreage is dead area, with shrinkage ( life always imitates Seinfeld) in the most heavily maintained portions of the golf courses. This deserves far more thought than I have available in the present moment, but they're building them almost 25% bigger these days, so we'll just leave it at that.
I have one more item on this subject, but I think it the most important, at least of today's sampling. I'm sure you're familiar with the concept of confirmation bias, and that might be at play in the present moment. I have long believed that we, and by that I mean all of us, are making a big mistake in this debate with our myopic focus on distance. I think there's another aspect of this debate that we ignore, and in so doing it makes our objective harder to achieve.
I've not previously encountered Bryden Macpherson, but he offers his thoughts on distance in a newsletter called Pure Golf, beginning with some interesting thoughts on athletic performance:
In the 70’s, Jack was hands down the longest on tour with an average yardage somewhere around 270 yards off the tee, which with a balata and persimmon is no small feat. As of this writing the average on the PGA Tour sits at 296.2 yards with the longest players jostling for position around the 325-330 yard mark.
Let us also consider the rate at which athletes CAN improve their physical abilities; the 10-second barrier for the 100m Sprint was broken in 1968, with 9.97 seconds. The world record now stands at 9.58 seconds and was set in 2009, which represents a 3.91% improvement in speed over 41 years. Are we then to believe that the change from 275y in the 60’s to 325y in the 2020’s, an 18.18% increase in distance, is solely due to an improvement in athletic ability?
Are we seriously being asked to believe that, even though the sprinters train endlessly to run faster and shave milliseconds off their times, and golfers also have to practice their short game, putting and cut-up iron shots as well; that the golfers are apparently able to peruse increases in athletic ability at more than 4 times the rate of improvement as Usain Bolt and his counterparts? Please. Perhaps, if this is the case, it’s not Jamaica that is the Mecca for athletic development and the sprinters should instead be training on the back of the range at TPC Sawgrass.
I think that's somewhat simplistic, but true nevertheless. Simplistic in that it ignores technology such as launch monitors that function as force multipliers, converting swing speed into ball speed and optimized launch conditions far more efficiently.
As much as I'm happy to put the athleticism canard to bed, I mostly don't think it matters much the source of the distance gains. Even if you accept their case, though, how does that make Merion any more relevant to 21st century professional golf.
But now Mr. Macpherson gets to an issue that I've been citing, that distance is only one aspect of current issue:
But here is where I may take an unexpected turn in my thinking, because I actually don’t think it’s a problem. I don’t want to see the ball or technology reeled back in, and let me explain why.
Being smuggled in under the veil of the distance problem is the actual issue and real threat to the game’s integrity. This real threat is; the FORGIVENESS that comes with technology. I would not like to see the ball go shorter, I want to see the stabilising nature of the ball stripped back to make mis-hits go a consummate distance offline for how far it is traveling. THE FURTHER IT GOES, THE MORE RISK OF HITTING IT OFFLINE THERE SHOULD BE.
The increase in average swing-speed on tour is a function of a few things;
- Yes, players are probably on average stronger and a bit faster than 30 years ago
- The shaft technology allows for more intelligent kick-points that increase speed
- But the main reason, is that you CAN swing harder and the ball will still go basically straight.
That last point is the crux, players are swinging faster because they can get away with it. The risk of hitting driver no longer exists the way it always has in our game.
The key event in this revolution was quite obviously the introduction of the solid core ball in 2000. But we've focused only on the distance it travels, ignoring perhaps the bigger change, how much less the balls spin.
We seem to have backed ourselves into a bifurcation corner, which may have been unnecessary because a ball that spins a la 1990's technology doesn't affect the hacks in the same way:
This also serves as somewhat of an indefensible strategy for the best players, because your average social player won’t hit the ball far enough to actually spin it offline 50 yards. Therefore taking all the air out of Rory’s argument that the distance issue doesn’t apply 99.9% of the population. I agree, it doesn’t, and that doesn’t matter. If only the players swinging it 115mph and up suffered from say; a 2-times increase in offline shot dispersion. That would keep the current distance and accuracy in tact for the 99.9%, while making the Professionals honest again in thinking twice about pulling driver.
This is the author's conclusion:
So to sum up; the problem is not the distance, and the companies should be praised for their advances in technology, which is mind-boggling. The problem is the forgiveness that comes along with it that eradicates all the risk of hitting driver.
Let me try to tie a few things together. I think this is an important contribution to the discussion, though it's also strange in a couple of ways. Most notably, the word "spin" only shows up twice in the article, strange given that the last twenty years or so of manufacturer innovation largely consists of reducing spin. He falls back on "forgiveness", which to me is the result of lower spin, not the cause.
In addition to manufacturing alchemy, do you know what else reduces the spin with which a golf ball launches? That would be purity of contact... when we flush it, the balls spins less. This is why we speak of the game being de-skilled, because pure ball-strikers get far less separation from their peers with modern equipment, making our game more dependent upon putting and short-game skills.
As a strategic and/or tactical matter, it also makes it harder for the governing bodies to implement change. The modern elite player has worked hard, and sees the Distance Insight project as an attempt to take away his or hers performance gains. On the one hand, this is quite silly, because under any roll-back scenario the length becomes an even more precious skill... After all, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Wouldn't it be easier, seem fairer and encounter far less resistance to focus on adding spin to the professional ball, as opposed to threatening to take away distance from Bryson or DJ? They'd still be able to send it 350 yards, but their foul balls would show far more dispersion. I think would be fascinating to see their adjustments and strategy, and we'd all know who's puring it. And logically you'd have the best ball-strikers on the side of change, as opposed to the reflexive opposition of the entire Tour.
Lots of food for thought.
Ch-Ch-Changes - Think our governing bodies are a tad schizophrenic about technology? Yeah, it was a trick question. Just above we see them allowing changes to equipment that have fundamentally changed the nature of our game, but in one small, inconsequential area they've stubbornly held the line. At least, until now:
The PGA of America today announced that, beginning in 2021, the use of distance-measuring devices will be allowed during competition rounds at its three annual Major Championships: thePGA Championship, KPMG Women’s PGA Championship and KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship.
“We’re always interested in methods that may help improve the flow of play during our Championships,” said Jim Richerson, President of the PGA of America. “The use of distance-measuring devices is already common within the game and is now a part of the Rules of Golf. Players and caddies have long used them during practice rounds to gather relevant yardages.”
Do take a moment to enjoy that "Flow of play" howler, both for the awkward euphemism, as well as the silly idea that this will improve pace of play.
I'm very much of mixed thoughts on this subject, mostly I've just enjoyed the inconsistency. I know they've put some restrictions in place, but the players have had the benefit of 3D graphics of the green surfaces, but have been denied range-finders. It's just comically inconsistent...
On the flip side, though, it's not a great look, as per that photo above. And I do love the retro quaintness of stepping off yardage, but in our relentless quest to attract millennials.... We'll see how the USGA and PGA Tour react.
Global Warming, Is There Anything It Can't Do? - One last cheap shot and I'll set you on your way.... And yes, I am quite aware that the cool kids no longer call it global warming, it's now climate change, a far more flexible myth.
I'm just having some fun with the nonsense, but I've long had this photo in my slideshow:
Despite its reputation for horrible weather, Scotland actually gets little snow, especially in its coastal towns (which is where we find the links, so not much need to venture inland).
As we've heard from our friends Elsie and John de Coupland, they got whacked with snow recently, and Geoff has this delightful post with photos from linksdom, beginning with this from the home of golf:
That would be the iconic Road Bunker, formerly known as The Sands of Nakajima....
Of course you'll know that this is hardly the first snowman on the Road Hole:
Can you buy a corn cob pipe in the Auld Grey Toon?
This from Cruden Bay seems foreboding:
That's the million dollar view from the first tee.... Still haven't played our first round as members, and now have to face the reality that we might not make it there in 2021....
Stay well and safe, and I'll see you again later in the week.
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