A couple of sneaky-good ski days has me at the keyboard with a heating pad on my lower back... Who says I don't play hurt?
Desert Doings - I did watch a bit of the Wasted, but you shouldn't feel that you missed much if you didn't. Golf.com has a "Three Things You Missed" format for the early rounds of Tour events, and this week's is telling. They do devote the first bit to the two no-names that shot 63 (-8), but their next two are telling:
U.S. Ryder Cup captain is two shots back
Lashley made seven birdies and Burns nine on their way to their 64s. Stricker, the 53-year-old U.S. Ryder Cup captain, was grouped with Padraig Harrington, the European captain, and beat him by six shots with his 65.
Co-leader Matthew NeSmith
“Felt like the old Steve Stricker,” Stricker said. “I am old, but I don’t feel 53 or 4. I feel like I still have a little bit of game left in me.”
Three shots back of Hubbard and NeSmith were Xander Schauffele, Keegan Bradley, Billy Horschel, Tom Hoge, Ted Potter Jr., and Kyoung-Hoon Lee.
Jordan Spieth is four shots back back
Among other players, Jordan Spieth shot a 67 and is four shots back, Brooks Koepka and Jon Rahm are five behind, and Rory McIlroy is seven strokes off the lead.
Or, yanno, you could just convert the leaderboard to prose... they give Pulitzers for that, right? But Stricker and Spieth's regression to the mean begins in 3,2,1...
Of course, this is the subject of greatest interest:
At the PGA Tour’s most notorious hole, the 16th, reactions were subdued compared to howinvolved fans and players get with each other in a typical tournament.
It was more like The Few People’s Open. But some fans were just fine with that.
“I kind of like it to a certain degree,” said Scottsdale resident Chad Scuncio at the 16th hole on Thursday afternoon.
By mid-afternoon, there was more of a buzz at hole, with boos from the crowd for hooked tee shots from players Tyler Duncan and Grayson Murray.
“You can watch more golf without the madness. Walking around has been great. You can get as close to the green as you can,” Scuncio said.
You can get as close to the green as you can, huh? I'm gonna have the ponder the existential implications of that for a bit, though next thing you know he'll be telling us it is what it is.
Of course, you have to beware the whiplash... There's a certain pining for the status quo ante:
But the Open still offered an atmosphere, with more fans allowed than at other tournaments McIlroy has played in, and McIlroy decided to take part. He seems willing to return, in part because he likes the course and he wants to experience an actual 16th hole atmosphere, where there are thousands of fans right on top of the action and making noise.
“Yeah, I think I have to experience a real Phoenix Open at least once in my career. I think it’s important to do that. I’ll definitely be back when things are more normal,” McIlroy said.
Though that status quo ante was.... well, just just note that it's not for everyone:
The 16th hole is known for the cheers and boos fans rain down on the players, the boos for errant tee shots. In 2015 when Francesco Molinari aced the hole—the most recent player to do so—the crowd went so wild that they tossed cups of beer onto the grass. The cleanup delayed play.
They're running a hole-in-one contest Saturday to support local businesses, but what if the most memorable shot on the most memorable hole on Tour happened on Wednesday?
You never know what you’re going to see at No. 16…Like @BubbaWatson busting out a driver. 👀Pin high. pic.twitter.com/1ymCGsk4nF— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) February 4, 2021
The shorts are a nice touch, but is that one of Phil's Mizzen & Main button-downs?
Desert Doings, Saudi Edition - I can't generate any enthusiasm for this event, though there is one quasi-amusing bit. First, I don't care enough to excerpt a game story, but I'm willing to go as far as a game header:
Bryson DeChambeau in the hunt, David Horsey leads at Saudi International
Bryson will make an appearance below, but Paul Casey was an amusing victim of gotcha journalism, not that he didn't have it coming (h/t Shack):
Q. Can we talk about the reasons why you're playing in Saudi this year? You previously declined to play for political reasons and now you're obviously there. Can you talk us, how difficult a decision has this been for you and what specifically changed for you?
PAUL CASEY: I don't think I was necessarily that political before, but you are correct, I took a stance where I didn't participate before.
I think something that -- which I felt at that time a couple of years ago, was that I think I was a little bit torn. You know I'm a father. I've got two kids. You know my charitable ties with UNICEF, and I felt that it was not right for me to play.
I've spent the last two years thinking about that a lot. I've learnt an awful lot. I've read an awful lot. And one of the things that I was flat-out wrong on was -- was with my UNICEF ties, is that they are not a political organisation. Their focus is purely on the vulnerability of children around the world, and making sure they look after children around the world and doing everything they can to save them. And that's important to me and that's my focus with my charitable views and endeavors.
And so I was reminded that if you stay away, if you don't engage, if you don't talk, you don't visit, then you're merely kind of hardening positions, and so that actually doesn't do any good.Engagement and inclusion is really what it's all about. And look, I think things are not black and white. It's very much a grey area what we discussed in the last -- two years ago when I made a position. You know, if you mentioned something like children's rights -- there's not a country on the planet that meets every single rights of a child, not a single country on the planet. And so all you can hope for, Neil, is that a country is on a path towards meeting at many of those as possible.
There's something called the convention of a child, conventions of a child; the rights of a child. You can look it up. This country has signed up to those conventions and is making progress to ticking off as many of those as possible. And that's all I can hope for. And if my -- I felt that if my participation this year can assist in that process -- and if that can make a difference, one iota of a difference, then that's something important.
So it was more -- so I will hold my hand up and say that the position I had two years ago was probably not the right position to have. And so that is why I am here.
Q. You said in your October statement, "I hope my participation will make a difference." Amnesty International called golfers this week to speak up about human rights issues in Saudi Arabia, and since that statement, Loujain al-Hathloul has been jailed for five years for her activism. So would you like -- is part of that process to make a difference, would you like to condemn that?
PAUL CASEY: Run me through that again.
Q. Right. You said in October, you said in the statement, you said, "I hope my participation" -- "my participation will make a difference."
PAUL CASEY: Yes.
Q. In Saudi, okay. Amnesty International called the golfers in Saudi Arabia to speak up about human rights issues in Saudi Arabia. And since that statement in October, Loujain al-Hathloul a very well known human feminist activist in Saudi has been jailed for five years. That happened in December. So would you like to take this opportunity as part of that process to condemn that action by the Saudi government?
PAUL CASEY: And that's who is jailed her?
Q. Saudi Arabia have.
PAUL CASEY: Okay. Neil, this is the first I've read of that. Clearly I'm not well enough read on that particular topic. Clearly with what I just said to you in our previous question, yeah, there's no question that that is not aligned with my beliefs, does it.
Look, I didn't want to go -- I don't want this week to be about this situation. You know, what I've just said in my statements to you to answer your previous question, I think it's very clear you know my views.
OK, have you stopped laughing yet? I actually feel a little bad, because Casey is one of the more likeable sorts out there, but these are the wages of virtue signaling...
But a better solution, at least to this observer, would be to not make a professional golfer responsible for the actions of the Saudi government. And, to the extent that we do want to hold folks accountable for doing business with the noxious Saudis, doesn't the fault lie with Keith Pelley and the Euro Tour? Which, amusingly, makes it Jay Monahan's problem now...
But there's no shortage of same to go around. For instance, while Geoff Shackelford is not a political reporter, the truth is out there. This was Geoff's intro to that amusing Paul Casey transcript:
Last week’s winner in Dubai notably de-committed from the inaugural Saudi stop after the Kingdom was linked to gruesomely assassinating Washington Post columnist Jamal Kashoggi.
Yes, it was a gruesome murder and I've no interest in dissuading folks from their contempt for the Saudis. It's that "Washington Post columnist" bit (though, for the record, the style book recommends "Washington Post Journalist", and this formulation is marginally preferable). Why do I object to that?
DUBAI: Slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s Washington Post columns were “shaped” by an executive at the Qatar Foundation, an entity funded directly by the Qatari regime which is at odds with Saudi Arabia, according to an article published by the Post on Saturday revealed.
“Text messages between Khashoggi and an executive at Qatar Foundation International show that the executive, Maggie Mitchell Salem, at times shaped the columns he submitted to The Washington Post, proposing topics, drafting material and prodding him to take a harder line against the Saudi government,” a statement in the article read.
Got that? The great WaPo was running Qatari agitprop, to which they still haven't fessed up. The Saudi's killed a paid operative of a political opponent. To me that's bad enough, but wrapping Kashoggi in the guise of "journalism" is its own fake news. But we'll never get an honest account of that from the WaPo, will we?
Shall we move on to the fall-out from some recent stories?
Distance Doings - We have a series of interesting reactions from Tour pros to the recent USGA/R&A announcements on distance and equipment, and they're a curious lot. Let's lead with the aforementioned Bryson Dechambeau, who'll have you pulling your chin:
“I welcome it as long as they don’t change the human element,” DeChambeau said this week before the Saudi International. “Again, I’m going to play with whatever they gave me. I’m notworried about it. I’m going to do what that they say is legal, and I’ll just go from there and find the best way to play for me under The Rules of Golf.
“There’s no issues — it’s funny, I’m sure there’s a lot of excitement about me having a potentially controversial thought on it, but I don’t. I think it’s a really cool thought process.”
A really cool thought process? The human element? How long until we get an English translation?
But wait, there's more:
DeChambeau said the USGA and the R&A “are trying to make it more of a — I guess you could say same or fair playing field.”
“Where you can’t just put a 48-inch driver and it works for this person, you could gain six, seven miles an hour where somebody couldn’t because the driver just doesn’t work for them or whatever,” he said. “I think the most important factor in this whole discussion is that they are focused on keeping the integrity of the game and trying to make it more of a fair playing field while not taking out the human element.
“From my perspective, I think it suits me really well because as of right now, I’m still playing the 45-and-a-half-inch driver, and it’s suiting me perfectly well, and I’m not going to the 48. So if someone was trying to go to the 48 for them they could gain six, seven miles an hour pretty quickly and now it’s not a possibility. And I think it’s going to be more difficult for people to gain speed easily. They are going to have to work really hard, just like I have.”
If I understand the man, it's OK for the USGA to ban 48" driver shafts because....well, it wasn't working out for Bryson. I think we can all agree that that is the appropriate standard...
I just find it sad that another strawman needed to be sacrificed:
And what if the governing bodies limited that? What if there were limits on swing speed? Or practice? Or training? “That’s when I would say it would be too far,” he said.
it's about damn time they regulate ab work, no?
But if it’s just equipment, DeChambeau said he will always have the “greater advantage.” Why? He used the 459-yard, par-4 12th at Royal Greens Golf and Country Club as an example.
“I think whenever you’re trying to shorten the equipment or whatever, the person that can swing it the fastest will always have an advantage,” he said. “I mean, even on golf courses that are short, I can hit, for example — a great example, actually, No. 12 out here. I can hit 3-wood up there, but it tightens up quite a bit. But I can leave it short of the bunker and have 155 yards into the flag, which is a 47-degree for me, less than a 47-degree for me, which is a 6-iron off the tee. So I’m literally hitting 6-iron off the tee compared to somebody’s hybrid or sometimes 3-wood or whatever.”
This is a maddening part of the debate, as the longest hitters will still be the longest under any regulatory regime. In fact, to the extent that distance is constrained, it only becomes that much more of an advantage.
To Bryson's credit, he initiated the conversation with the USGA, speaking to both John Bodenheimer and Jason Gore.
Dustin Johnson is also in Saudi Arabia, and had these interesting comments on the linkage to scoring:
“I don't think so,” responded the 36-year-old, when asked if golf needs to have something in place to control distance. “I mean, if you look at the scores over the last 15 years, scores aren't really any different, and I don't feel like the game is too easy by any means.”
“It's all conditions I think. But I don't think that we're hitting it too far or our scores are too good. So, if they want to do something, that's fine, but obviously we'll all adjust to it and go from there. But as of right now, I don't think there's anything they need to do.”
First, I'm not sure that I've ever seen the need to use DJ's name and the word "interesting" in the same sentence. And, while Geoff characterizes this as toeing the TaylorMade line, I find it a little more nuanced than that. Unlike many players, he doesn't feel threatened by any action that might be taken, and understands that he and his peers will adjust. As a wise man once noted, these guys are good...
Of course, Geoff can't resist noting the inherent irony of these comments from the man that just set or tied nine Masters scoring records... Noted.
But, to this observer, the most interesting comments come from Rory McIlroy, with this Golfweek header typical of the reaction:
Rory McIlroy calls USGA, R&A Distance Insights Report 'a huge waste of time and money'
Hmmm....where's he going with this?
“Honestly, I think this Distance Insight Report has been a huge waste of time and money, becausethat money that it’s cost to do this report could have been way better distributed to getting people into the game, introducing young kids to the game, introducing minorities to the game.
Sometimes the best part is photo chosen.
“I heard Mike Davis say something about we’re trying to protect the game for the next hundred years. This isn’t how you do it. This is so small and inconsequential compared to the other things happening in the game. It’s the grassroots. It’s getting more people engaged in golf. That’s where they should be spending their money, not spending it on the Distance Insight Report.”
So, we're seriously supposed to worry about the cost of their studies? I do love that bit of magical thinking that if only we could redirect money into introducing kids to the game. Have you not seen what they do with that money, Rors?
But, on the other hand, this is an actual Touring professional that seems to be concerned with something other than himself, so that seems newsworthy. But folks don't seem to have actually heard this from Rory's remarks:
McIlroy, who is a paid endorser of TaylorMade equipment, called the report a “huge waste of time and a huge waste of money,” when it affects only “0.1%” of the game’s population.
“The authorities are looking at the game through such a tiny little lens, that what they’re trying to do is change something that pertains to 0.1% of the golfing community,” McIlroy said. “Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the people who play this game play for enjoyment, for entertainment. They don’t need to be told what ball or clubs to use.
I'll not dwell on it, but that last bit is way out there, seemingly advocating that there be no equipment standards whatsoever.... Don't think he thought that one through.
And how is this not the header?
Then McIlroy, as he’s done before, said he’d be “all for” bifurcation, in which the professionals and amateurs would play by a different set of rules.
“If they want to try to make the game more difficult for us, or try to incorporate more skill to the game, yeah, I’d be all for that, because I think it only benefits the better player, which I feel like I am,” he said. “Maybe they said that in terms of local rules and maybe some sort of bifurcation, but we are such a tiny portion of golf. Golf is way bigger than the professional golf. We’re such a tiny portion of it. It’s the other stuff that really matters, and that’s the stuff they need to concentrate.”
That seems a rather important support for the concept of a local rule and, much more so than DJ's comments, is very much in opposition to the position of TaylorMade, whose rather sizable checks he's been cashing. as the kids are wont to say, developing...
Reed, Redux - What, you didn't think I was gonna milk this one? A few interesting follow ups, first as relates to the Rory involvement. As you know, Rory's relationship to the rules is far more complicated than most folks seem to realize, though I want to make clear that I don't lump him in with Patrick, a noted serial offender.
But still, one had to be troubled by Rory taking relief from an embedded lie after video showed the ball bouncing once. You know who else was troubled?
Still, later that evening he began to question what he’d seen.
“Did I do the right thing? Did I play by the rules? Did I see something that wasn’t there?” McIlroy wondered. “I just started to doubt myself a little bit, which is not like me. But I was convinced that it was an embedded ball.”
He should have been, but good to have confirmation that he was.
It so happens there's a catch:
But then he heard a detail from the PGA Tour that painted the incident in an entirely different manner: On Monday, a volunteer had come forward to say he’d stepped on McIlroy’s ball while trying to find it that afternoon, suggesting that the ball may have embedded from his shoe rather than its own original pitch mark.
“The Tour got an email on Monday that it had been stepped on and the volunteer said something like, ‘I’m so sorry that Rory is being dragged into this scenario, but I didn’t tell him that I actually stood on his ball to find it.'”
I actually feel better as well. I tend to believe Rory, but there was no way that ball embedded on its own. Still, seems a rather important thing for the volunteer to have, well, volunteered.
We've got a couple of strange ones for you, none stranger than Dylan Dethier's:
Patrick Reed can change his image, but first he must find his voice
Well, I've been reliably informed that it's always in the last place you look. But riddle me this, Batman, why would you assume that that which we've been hearing from Patrick isn't, yanno, his voice?
Most of Dylan's piece is a recitation of Patrick's voice to date (including that of Justine and that mysterious useGolfFacts Twitter account), and it's not a pretty picture:
The Ryder Cup tweets weren’t the first time Team Reed’s social-media usage had garnered himunwanted attention. In fact, a post from Patrick’s social-media accounts had raised eyebrows just two months prior. The photo showed Patrick, Justine and Justine’s sister Kris, all smiling. But the caption was less than smiley, going after the PGA Tour for giving them tickets in the “line-drive section” while Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth, among others, sat closer to the field.
Nor was it the last time. JustineKReed never tweeted again after the day of our brief exchange at Le Golf National. But by the end of 2019 another Twitter account, this one under the handle @useGolfFACTS, began sending tweets in defense of Reed — and taking shots at nearly everyone else. Adam Scott’s swing? “Mechanical.” Justin Thomas? “Bad attitude.” One reporter was “pushing a false narrative” about Reed. Another was “a hater and a bully.”
Dylan has a great story about being asked to confirm Justine's tweets on Ryder Cup Sunday in Paris, that's worth your time.
But I really think Dylan is engaging in wishful thinking here:
I promised you there was an important point here, so let’s get to it. In addition to steering clear of any future rules controversies, Reed needs a major shift in another area: how he portrays himself to the outside world. We get very little sense of how Reed thinks or feels or spends his time away from the course. It’s one thing for a player’s social-media accounts to be bland. But in this case it seems likely that the same person who is writing the tweets that appear on Patrick’s account, including now-infamous episodes from Torrey Pines and Fenway Park, is also writing from @useGolfFacts, a faceless pro-Reed account that regularly trashes his peers, competitors and Ryder Cup teammates, from Justin Thomas to Xander Schauffele to Jon Rahm and beyond. That seems like an imperfect way to represent Reed to the world.
Ummm, Dylan, where do you think you're going with this? it may be imperfect, but that doesn't mean it's inaccurate...
Dylan seems to assume that inner Patrick is some sort of model human being, and all he has to do is let us in. But all one has to do is look at how he's treated his parents, how he treated his college teammates and, yes, how he treated his Ryder Cup teammates. I would suggest that the various Twitter accounts, as well as Patrick's direct actions and statements, comprise a rather large body of evidence attesting to Reed's underlying character, and it's not pretty.
And for those worried about Patrick and the X-man, let your heart be light:
Patrick Reed and Xander Schauffele texted after Torrey: 'We're all good'
Well, that's a load off my mind. Of course, why Xander wants to be good with Patrick will remain a mystery....
I briefly linked to this Eamon Lynch piece on Patrickgate, and today we have an odd reaction to it. The gist of Eamon's argument is clear from the header, but I didn't excerpt from it at the time, so let me do so here:
“But there are no ShotLink metrics for integrity, and just one seed of doubt can be corrosive in sports gambling. Folks who lose bets often cry foul, as an hour spent at any table in Vegas will illustrate, but the bedrock upon which betting in golf must stand is transparency, a firm belief among punters that everything is above board, that scores have standing, that rules are equitably applied.”
Someone named Wayne Mills takes umbrage to that:
Has Lynch watched an NFL game in the last 20 years? How about the NBA? Does he think the rules are equitably applied in those contests? When was the last time LeBron James was called for traveling even though he routinely tucks the ball and rushes like a running back going for a first down?
OK, you can see the issues here rather easily. Yes, NBA and NFL officiating is troubling, but it's not really the same thing at all, is it?
But here's his actual point... It's a good one, one that I make frequently, though its relevance here is more arguable than Mr. Mills seems to understand:
Possibly a bigger question is why the PGA Tour — with its near-constant push to promote the squeaky clean image of the game and its players — has chosen to get involved in gambling. Do they not realize that problem gambling is a disease that has ruined millions of men and women and destroyed the lives of countless families?
Yes, when you lie down with fleas...
That said, I agree that Eamon's use of professional sports gambling is a curious, at best, appeal to authority. But it might all be in the angle from which one views it. For instance, I think it's a rather strong argument to note that our game is failing to live up to the ethical standards of.... professional gamblers. In a better world, that would be garnering some concern in Ponte Vedra Beach and Liberty Corner, no?
We'll close with Adam Woodard, and this vexing question:
Is Patrick Reed good for golf? It depends on who you ask
The Yin:
P. T. Barnum, the 19th century showman and founder of the Barnum & Bailey Circus, is often associated with the phrase “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.” I wonder if he’d say that if he met Patrick Reed.
Those who view professional golf as a vessel to promote the best of the game they love will say absolutely not, “kick him off the Tour, Doug!” as Shooter McGavin’s memorable line from Happy Gilmore goes. His talent gets lost in the cloud of controversy that seemingly follows him everywhere he goes.
You want me to quibble with P.T. Barnum AND Shooter McGavin? That, Eamon, is an appeal to authority...
Of course, you know we have a Yang as well:
On the other hand, those who view professional golf as an entertainment product, much like every other professional sport, see Reed for what he is to the game: someone other than Tiger Woods – and maybe Bryson DeChambeau now? – who evokes an actual emotion that pulls you in.
Everyone loves a villain, and it’s a role Reed has seemed to embrace. But at what cost? Social media flack is one thing, and this weekend had it in spades, but internal criticism carries a different weight.
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