Your Friday Frisson

Good to be home, though I'm in internal exile awaiting tomorrow's date with a nasal swab....Admittedly, it's a pretty sweet gulag...

Scenes From Pebble Beach - Horrible weather is inbound, though they caught quite the calm day on Thursday:

The 2021 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am (or lack thereof) doesn’t have the strongest field in tournament history, nor does it have the overall energy that both the fans and celebrities bring to the event each year. But Pebble is still Pebble. For those of us staring out the window and seeing nothing but snow, that’s good enough.

Is it?  Or does it just make things worse?  I could go either way on this...

Even with a dearth of star power, the handful of top players who did make the trip to the Monterey Peninsula showed up on Thursday. If they show up the next three days, too, this AT&T could end up being a damn good one after all.

Yeah, but that's a rather large ask...

 We've quoted liberally from Golf.com's Three Takeaways pieces recently, but Golf Digest goes them one better::

Patrick Cantlay is a robot (in a good way)

When pre-tournament favorite Dustin Johnson withdrew on Monday, Patrick Cantlay became the lone favorite at single-digit odds. He showed why he was the favorite on Thursday, shooting a

first-round 62 at Pebble, matching the course record. As it often looks, Cantlay played in an almost robotic fashion, the former No. 1 amateur in the world looking to get back inside the Official World Golf Ranking top 10 with another high finish this week. His last three rounds on the PGA Tour read a little something like this: 65-61-62. If not for a sloppy 71 on Friday at The American Express, he likely would have won his second tournament in four starts (he wound up losing by one to Si Woo Kim). Remember his poor stretch between late July and late September, when he … GASP … made five of six cuts, but failed to post a single top-10? That’s the standard of consistency he had set for all of 2019 and the first half of 2020, where Cantlay not top-10ing every week was cause for concern. He seems to be back to that level already, which will have the whole world on the Cantlay bandwagon as we inch closer to the Masters (only 60 days away, if you can believe it).

OK, but given that March 2020 lasted for nine months or more, I'm not succumbing to Masters fever just yet.

When you don't have any top ten players, it's obviously helpful for the No. 11 player in the world to play well,  Though he's a tough guy to get excited about, no?  

But I very much agree with the author here...  Do not get sucked in"

We will not declare Jordan Spieth back. We will not declare Jordan Spieth back. We will n-

After the letdown of all letdown final rounds from Spieth last Sunday at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, it was extremely fair to wonder if Saturday was just a flash of brilliance for the

three-time major champion. Hey, he’s shown those flashes since 2017 before, and it’s amounted to zero wins. Maybe he wasn’t back. Maybe he just had a Steph Curry-like day from long range with the putter. Maybe he got some really lucky breaks and was able to term them all into birdies. Maybe we all jumped the gun.

Thursday’s first-round 65 at Pebble, which has Spieth just three off the lead, has us thinking that maybe we didn’t. Maybe he did really find something last Saturday at TPC Scottsdale, and even though he didn’t finish the job off, he gained a ton of confidence from the weekend as a whole. That sure seemed to be the case in his opening round, which included a hole-out for eagle on the par-4 10th, plus six birdies and just one bogey. The approach game was strong again (eighth in the field in strokes-gained/APP), the driving was serviceable, and his putting and around-the-green play was as good as ever. No, we’re not declaring him fully back, but this was another huge step in the proverbial "process."

I'm finding the "Jordan is Back" meme great fun, as previously cynical folks jump on the silliest bits to declare him "back."  To be clear, I like the kid and I agree that he makes the game more interesting, I'm just not sold on the return to form thing.  Yet...

Want an example of this amusing meme?

This Jordan Spieth eagle hole-out is the latest sign he might be 'BACK!'

Can you say small sample size?  I thought you could....  

But, like Golf Digest one-upping Golf.com, I can top this...  What's more absurd than judging the state of a player's game from one shot?

Jordan Spieth pulls off crazy 100-yard shot in what could be a preview of a wild weekend at Pebble Beach

Yes, that would be judging the state of player's game from one shot.... in a practice round.  Mind you it's good fun, a companion piece to Bubba's driver on No. 16 in Phoenix last week, but it's just for fun.  

I'm happy to watch Cantlay and/or Jordan on the weekend, but it would be good fun if this kid could start paying off his potential:

Is Akshay SZN upon us?

Our Daniel Rapaport, who is on site this week, has the full Akshay Bhatia story from Thursday, but it’d be disrespectful to not tip our cap to this young king here. The 19-year-old (yes, 19)

threw up an eight-under 64 at Pebble, giving him a share of T-2 with Henrik Norlander. He gained more than 2.5 strokes on approach, which ranks him third in the field, and gained a silly 3.201 strokes putting. “It’s the first time I’ve ever putted this well,” said Bhatia, who switched to a short putter after using the arm-lock technique for “awhile.” Most impressively, hit all 18 greens, something that had only been done three times in the last 25 years at Pebble Beach, the last coming in 2008, when Ryan Palmer accomplished the feat. The kid is an S-T-U-D stud, and is quickly becoming a welcome addition to this crop of young stars on tour.

I don't know how you hit 18 greens at Pebble, given that some of those greens are barely large enough to hold a golf ball...

If you're actually handicapping the tourney, this last bit gets at the distortion on the first round leaderboard:

Daniel Berger and Will Gordon should be feeling very good about their chances

At the end of Round 1, Gordon is four back and Berger five back, but they probably both feel like

they are right near the top. Why? Well, these two went low at Spyglass Hill, the far more difficult of the two courses players will face this week. Six under and five under there is getting a huge head start, and if they do something similar on Friday at Pebble, one of them could very well end up with the 36-hole lead. One thing working against them, though, is that there are 10-to-20 mph winds in the forecast, so Pebble Beach won’t play nearly as easy as it did Friday. But posting a low one on Spyglass is still a win. As it stands, these two are the only players in the top 21 who played Spyglass on Thursday.

Spyglass played two strokes harder...  The announcers yesterday were all firmly convinced that those on Pebble Thursday had an advantage, though I'm not sure that's right.  Pebble is more exposed for sure, but wouldn't you rather play the easier course in the wind? 

While we're on the subject of cool shots, I've been reliably informed that chicks dig the stinger:

Si Woo stingers. 💯#QuickHits pic.twitter.com/I1eqpz4axS

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) February 11, 2021

The shot was cool.... But it would have been a nothingburger without the Shot Tracer....  More of that, please!

One last Pebble bit...  Si Woo is cool, but no one is Bobby Jones cool:

This is awesome. https://t.co/dFraPscfI6

— Alan Shipnuck (@AlanShipnuck) February 9, 2021

That's from that epic 1929 U.S. Amateur, in which Jones shockingly lost in the first round.  With time to kill, he played some golf, and this is the juncture at which the lives of Jones, Dr. MacKenzie and Marion Hollins converge:

In 1929, Jones was unexpectedly beaten in the first round of the U.S. Amateur, at Pebble Beach, and suddenly found himself with nothing to do. He played a casual round at Cypress Point, which

had opened the year before and which he had never seen. He then accepted Hollins’s invitation to play as her partner in an exhibition match on opening day at Pasatiempo, a course that Hollins had developed on her own. She had discovered the property while riding horseback in the hills above Santa Cruz, and, with financing from a wealthy Englishman she’d met through a friend of her father’s, had bought five hundred and seventy acres and hired MacKenzie to design the course. The project eventually also included a swimming pool, tennis courts (with clay imported from France), bridle trails, a steeplechase course, a beach club on Monterey Bay, and dozens of homesites, on one of which MacKenzie and his wife built a house. During the exhibition match, MacKenzie walked along with Hollins and Jones.

That link is to David Own's New Yorker feature on Marion Hollins.  I've sent you that way previously, but if you haven't read it, you really should.  Because, as you might have heard, Jones, MacKenzie and Hollins collaborated on a golf course in Georgia of some renown....

But what did you think of that 1929 Pebble?  Pebble opened in 1919, designed by two amateur golfers, Jack Neville and Douglass Grant.  But Chandler Egan was brought in the prep the course for that U.S. Amateur, with the assistance of a certain intern:

A stalwart golfer who won the 1904 and 1905 U.S. Amateur, as well as the silver medal in the

Olympics, Henry Chandler Egan worked with MacKenzie and Robert Hunter to prepare the course ahead of the 1929 U.S. Amateur. (Egan ended up reaching the semifinals in 1929.) Egan and Hunter – a partner of MacKenzie for several courses in California – reshaped every green, installed massive dunes-like bunkers and made lasting changes to a handful of holes, such as:

Moving the 1st tee to create today’s dogleg version

Lengthening two par 5s: Nos. 2 and 14

 Pushing the 9th green against the cliffs where the previous 10th tee resided, and moved the 10th tee inland

Extending the 16th hole 100 yards by moving the green behind a grove of trees

I just find a far more visually stunning course in the old photos.  Here's a side-by-side comparison of the seventh green:

See how they rig elections.  Not only does the current version benefit from being in color, but they even arranged to have a more dramatic wave cresting in the Pacific.  I can't do anything about the ocean, but I did find this colorized version of that 1929 in my file:

It's still a semi-free country, so you can decide which you prefer.  I know that I'm drawn to that wild and wooly unkempt look.

Golden Slumbers - I hear you ask, what's up with Martin Slumbers?  As if...  A potentially interesting bit in a sec, but first he feels compelled to remind us of his malfeasance.  or, yanno, maybe I'm just bitter...

Royal and Ancient chief executive Martin Slumbers indicated that there is “cautious optimism” that the British Open will be played July 15-18 at Royal St. George’s after it was canceled last year.

According to a report from the Associated Press, Slumbers said a “rigorous scenario-planning exercise” is underway.

“We continue to plan for a full-scale championship,” Slumbers said. “But [we] also have robust plans in place for a reduced capacity or behind-closed-doors model.”

So, the PGA and European Tours have been safely holding golf tournaments since last summer, but Brave Sir Martin is cautiously optimistic that he can hold his precious event in July?  Sheesh, what a useless tool...

Admittedly, this is the bit that really pissed me off:

“There are undoubtedly many more pressing concerns facing people at the moment,” Slumbers said. “We believe that seeing the world’s best men’s golfers in action at golf’s original championship will bring some much-needed joy and excitement back into our lives this summer.”

Martin, that's just oh so precious...  But, do you know when we really needed excitement and joy?  That would be 2020, but you were too busy filling out that deposit slip...Remind me again, how many zeros?

On a completely different subject, the R&A has what I'll characterize as a potentially interesting initiative, one that can also be seen as a use of the proceeds referenced above:

Plans for a new community golf complex at one of five municipal courses under threat of closure

in Glasgow, Scotland, have been put forward by game governing body The R&A.

It is hoped that the family-focused facility will open in the summer of 2022, providing a route into the game for newcomers from a wide variety of backgrounds. It will include a nine-hole course, a Par-3 course, putting greens, short-game area, adventure golf and a 25-bay floodlit driving range.

Additional features including a café, fitness studio, indoor simulator and movie theatre, education room and retail area are also being planned as part of a “central hub” offering views north over nearby Hogganfield Loch to the Campsie Fells and south to the City of Glasgow.

The news comes a year after Lethamhill and four other municipal courses in Glasgow were left facing the prospect of closure amid budget cuts by the city council. The R&A, which is responsible for governing the rules of golf and staging The Open competition, acquired Lethamhill in September in a deal reportedly worth about $276,000.

As you know, my view of the world comes from a conservatives perspective, so I have a natural skepticism about these kinds of top-down initiatives.  That said, I love seeing experimentation with different business models, and in areas like this I'm always happy to be proven wrong.  

Shack comes at it from the opposite perspective, so for him it's love:

For years the idea of a family-focused and smaller facility to give people with busy schedules a place to stay in touch with the game seemed like a swell idea. Some with grander ideas have considered weaving in non-golf amenities with the idea of creating something on smaller acreage in locations where scarcity or the need to re-imagine a golf footprint was called for.

No one has done it.

I'm not sure this is actually a smaller footprint, but let's see how it plays out.  If it offers an easier access point to the game, that could be a worthy endeavor.  

But while Geoff and I agree on little, one of those areas of common ground is the history of our game.  If Martin has that insurance payout burning a hole in his pocket, this  would be a truly worthy use:

So this makes for a fascinating move by the R&A to take matters into their hands by creating a model facility. (I still think priority one should be to rescue historic Musselburgh and incorporate some of these elements given its location and importance to the game…but we’ll save that for another day.)

I'd even contribute to that effort, as long as the preservation effort includes Mrs. Foreman's... 

More Evidence of Global Warming - Geoff has flooded the zone on pictures of Scotland under snow, including this concern about a certain body of water in the Auld Grey Toon:

This was Shack's concern:

But do note, Swilcan Burn is flowing just fine raising the question, what’s in that water?

Well, sure, it's not a natural body of water like, say, Rae's Creek, which is dyed every April...

 Geoff also posts this from Heaven-on-Earth:

There's not much to the video, but you can watch it at the link above.  It's not a great view of Dornoch, but for many of us Dornoch invokes a Pavlovian response....

Mostly, when I see the photos of the Old Course under snow, my reaction relates the the flatness of the site, thinking that it's a pity that there's really nowhere for the kids to go sledding.  At Dornoch, in contrast, there are several epic hills, and I'm guessing the children of Dornoch have been having quite a time of it...  And I think that's great, because Nicola doesn't seem to want to ever let them leave their homes...

The Popov Penumbra - I still find this one amusing, and a sign that Mike Whan is doing the right thing by riding off into the sunset:

The German penned the fairy tale story of 2020 when she won the AIG Women’s Open at Royal Troon. Many probably didn’t expect the world’s 304th ranked player to make the cut, let alone

walk off with the title. Even when she entered the final round with three-shot lead, few would have backed her to hold her nerve under the pressure. She did more than that. She closed with a 3-under 68 to win by two shots.

What happened next qualifies as arguably the biggest kick in the teeth to any major champion in golf history. Instead of receiving the five-year LPGA Tour exemption that normally goes to major winners, Popov only got a two-year exemption because she wasn’t a full LPGA member, despite previously playing on the LPGA Tour. She also missed out on playing in the very next major, the ANA Inspiration.

It's that last bit that is so befuddling.  Whether one looks at this from the perspective of the integrity of the competition, or just from a selfish marketing of the ladies' tour, it's pretty obvious that this girl should have been in the field at the ANA.  Having understandably established arbitrary rules to cope with the pandemic, making a fetish of said arbitrary rules was just silly...

Which he's now basically admitted:

At least the outgoing commissioner has helped overturn those rules so no player in future has to go through what Popov experienced, as former colleague Beth Ann Nichols reveals on Golfweek.com

Henceforth, any player who wins a major who isn’t an LPGA member will get the five-year exemption many feel Popov should have received. Moreover, said winner will receive official points and money from that victory if she takes up LPGA membership. Popov took up membership, but the $675,000 she won at Royal Troon, and points that should have gone with that victory, didn’t count on the LPGA money list. She consequently missed the CME Group Tour Championship, the LPGA’s season-ending finale.

I don't care about the CME because there's not a lot to care about.  And I don't even much care about Sophia's suffering.  But if you're trying to build up the ladies' game, how is that helped by making a mockery of a major and making her absence an issue?

No Rangefinder For You - The PGA Tour is sticking to its guns for now.  But this Alex Miceli piece fills in some interesting background.  First, this bit on the big-boy tour is grabbing the pixels:

“The PGA Tour conducted a four-tournament test of Distance Measuring Devices on the Korn

Ferry Tour in 2017, with varying results,” the Tour said in a statement released Tuesday. “We decided at the time to continue to prohibit their use in official competitions on the PGA Tour, PGA Tour Champions and Korn Ferry Tour for the foreseeable future. We will evaluate the impact rangefinders have on the competition at the PGA of America's championships in 2021 and will then review the matter with our player directors and the Player Advisory Council.”

Look, not a huge issue one way or another.  There are a few bits that I do find interesting.  First, I'm incapable of passing on any opportunity to revisit my old Nurse Ratched bit:

“We don’t like the way it looks,” then-commissioner Tim Finchem said at the time. “We don’t see a need to do it unless we conclude it would speed up the game, and there is no indication it would. Some argue that it would slow down the game.”

I'm always profoundly uncomfortable being on the same side of any issue with the Nurse, but it really isn't a great look... Though I didn't remember that he actually said it out loud.  Of course I wouldn't, since I long ago tuned out that frequency...

But am the only one that finds this a bit...well, let's go with inconsistent?

“I think hopefully it speeds up the game,” PGA Tour player Will Zalatoris said Tuesday at Pebble Beach (Calif.) Golf Links, site of this week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. “I know that that's been a big topic of conversation for a long time. Monday qualifiers have been doing it for a couple years now; we're able to have range finders. So, I don't see a downside to it. If anything, it will hopefully speed up the game, specifically of guys that hit one offline instead of walking over to the side.”

I'm a simple guy, but it's either appropriate or not for elite-level golf, but boy do these guys want to have it both ways.... 

I've been skeptical of the pace-of-play flow benefit, but Will does identify the one instance in which this really can help:

While not a ringing endorsement, Zalatoris does make a good point, that the speed of play likely will be affected positively on egregious offline shots.

Of course, that only works when you have line-of-sight to the pin.  In cases where you're blocked, think Jordan on the Birkdale driving range, better bring a GPS device as well.

What has always puzzled me in this debate is that distinction between information and advice.  Here, Mike Davis makes clear that he sees it similarly:

“We feel distance is distance is distance, as long as you are not using a device to measure gradient, wind speed, temperature, what club you should hit,” Mike Davis, the USGA’s managing director at the time, said during the 2015 Players Championship. “We haven’t done it at the U.S. Open, Women’s Open, Senior Open simply because it’s not done week to week on any of the [major professional] tours. That is the issue.”

Davis said he didn’t think that players or caddies were interested in allowing DMDs.

“We would change in a Minnesota minute if the tours get comfortable with it,” Davis said. “My understanding is part of it is caddies aren’t crazy about it. I don’t think its necessarily the respective commissioners saying we don’t want them. I think it’s some of the players that don’t want it.”

To be clear (and it's explicitly stated in Miceli's piece), the rules already allow the use of DMD, they're prohibited by the Tour (and at the USGA's professional majors).   

That said, if distance is distance, how is temperature not, you know temperature?

But Mike's reference to caddie's is on point, almost.  Per this Golf Digest piece, it's not so much that they're opposed, it's just that they live in a more complicate world:

“Each year there’s maybe once or twice where I wish I had one, and that’s only when [my player] is so far offline,” said Paul Tesori, Webb Simpson’s caddie. “Otherwise, I’ll still have to have the

front number, carry number, how many [yards] left or right and yards behind the pin. The last number we get is the pin, and what happens if the rangefinder is more than a yard off? Then we have to re-do all the other numbers to fit what we’re trying to do with the shot.

“I’d say that we are trying to aim at a pin less than 5 percent of the time. And off the tee, I still need runouts, carry numbers and lines over trees.”

Hey, I'm just glad that Paul has job security...  I'd hate to see caddying on Tour become another job that Americans won't do.  It's really quite a bit of sturm und drang over nothing.

Patrick, Call Your Office - Remember the good old days, when men were men?  This might be the perfect follow-up to the Patrick ball-drop at Torrey.  Remember (and you will, if only because of how often I remind you) how Patrick responded to a prior request for relief that was not granted?  He said, "I guess your name has to be Jordan Spieth", a true dick move to both the official involved and his alleged friend Jordan.

But Jordan's was a good name at the time, but do you know what's another good name?  How about Woods?  This from a Sports Illustrated item by Trey Holland, about the 2000 U.S. Open:

"Then on the 3rd hole he hits his second shot short of the hole, near a bunker. The ball sinks in the grass. He says to me, 'I  think my ball is embedded.' If it's embedded, he gets a free drop. There's an intensity in his voice. He knows how he wants  this to come out.

"I say, 'Mark your ball, lift it and test the dirt with a finger.  If the plane of the dirt--not the grass, but the dirt--is broken,  it's embedded.'

"He tests it. He says, 'I think it is.' I say, 'Let me have a look.' I put my finger down there. I say, 'It's not.' He doesn't say a word. Replaces his ball. Hacks it out. Makes a triple bogey.

"On Sunday we're back on the 1st tee. He says hi. Doesn't say anything about the ruling. He does his two-minute stare again, plays his final round, wins the U.S. Open. I congratulate him, and he says, 'Thanks, that means a lot. But I sure would have liked to have gotten that drop yesterday on 3.' Twenty-eight hours later and after winning the Open by 15 shots, he was still thinking about it. I was under the clear impression that he wanted to win by 18."

 I remember that triple bogey very well...  

But compare Holland to the jackal that was down on his knees with Reed pretending to feel the ridge of the indentation that we know didn't exist., as well as the refusal of the official to support Joel Dahmen in his cage match with Sung Kang.  Is there any institution in America that hasn't been compromised?

On that encouraging note, I'll release you and wish you a pleasant weekend.