Webb Simpson isn’t conceding anything this week at the WGC-Workday Championship.
The 35-year-old former U.S. Open champion carded seven birdies, including three in his final four holes, to shoot an opening-round 6-under 66 and share the lead with Matthew Fitzpatrick at
Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, Florida.
The field of 72 at this week’s World Golf Championship event relocated from Mexico to Florida this year due to the global pandemic. The layout, co-designed by World Golf Hall of Famers Jack Nicklaus and Tony Jacklin, is named in tribute to one of the game’s most famous sportsmanlike gestures. At the 1969 Ryder Cup, Nicklaus picked up Jacklin’s marker to concede an 18-inch putt at the last hole with their match on the line. The result meant the biennial competition between the U.S. and Great Britain and Ireland (at the time) ended in a tie with the U.S. retaining the Cup.
When Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy was asked what current American player would be most likely to follow in the footsteps of Nicklaus and his magnanimous gesture, McIlroy didn’t have to think long before responding: “Most likely, Webb Simpson.”
As someone cleverer than I (I know that doesn't narrow it down much) once said, Webb leads the tour in Strokes Gained: Attitude.
On a larger issue, don't you think now would be an awfully good time to declare a moratorium on "concession" references, such as in that lead 'graph above? It does get rather old....
Webber is tied with Matthew Fitzpatrick, and there's no shortage of firepower in the chase pack, so we'll be giving it a look as the week plays out.
All the Jordan hullabaloo aside, this guy's return to form would seem the more significant:
When Brooks Koepka is playing the sort of golf he played on Thursday, he makes the game lookeasy. He makes it sound easy, too.
Before his opening round at the WGC-Workday, Koepka had played Concession’s front nine once — in Wednesday’s pro-am.
“I mean, Rick walked it, I get a yardage book, it’s not too difficult,” he said, referring to his caddie Ricky Elliott. “I don’t think anything of it. It is what it is. You’ve got to look up on the tee and you know on 10 that there’s water’s right, there’s bunkers on the left, so put it in the fairway.”
Koepka actually missed the fairway with his opening tee shot, finding a fairway bunker on the left. He also three-putted No. 16 from just 12 feet, resulting in a sloppy bogey. But nearly everything else about his game looked nearly flawless, and Koepka made six birdies against that lone bogey for a ho-hum five-under 67 to leap into contention, one shot back of the 18-hole lead.
Of course, if you paid attention to that accompanying photo, you'll know that the Mean Girls press only focused on this aspect:
The grouping with Johnson felt significant for several reasons. It was the first time the two had played together since Koepka’s comments at last summer’s PGA Championship, when Koepka seemed to throw shade at Johnson’s ability to close and later called their friendship “overplayed.” Since then, Johnson has won the FedEx Cup and the Masters, finished no worse than 11th place and ascended to world No. 1, a title he now owns by a wide margin.
Koepka has fallen outside the top 10 in the world in that same stretch and has split with his coach, added new equipment, worked through pain and tears and rehabbed extra-hard to get fully healthy. The process seems to be paying off; he won in Phoenix and showed glimmers at the Genesis. Still, there’s no question that Johnson has seized back top-dog status.
Yes, for sure... And I did pick up on the fact that the subtle costumed department put Koepka in black.... Coincidence? We don't believe in coincidences here at Unplayable Lies.
The event is at Concession Golf Club, raising an obvious question as to whether folks know the source of that unusual name. Shane Ryan asked:
On Tuesday, just for fun, I posted a simple yes-or-no question in an online chat room populated by about 40 golf fans: Before this week, did you know what “the concession” was?Keep in mind that these were not casual golf fans, but people who had purposely sought out a golf channel in an online forum, and—to varying degrees of zealotry—love the sport. The results surprised me: Of the 26 who responded, 12 knew about the concession, and 14 did not. If those numbers are at all representative, that means there’s a roughly 50 percent chance that you, anonymous reader of this article, have any clue what I’m talking about.
Don't know much about history...
Shane polls the players, with decidedly mixed results. But that Webb Simpson bit above comes with an amusing add-on:
Patrick Reed knew about the concession, but wasn’t aware of the exact details, and didn’t profess a strong opinion on whether it was the right move. That became funny when Rory McIlroy later identified Webb Simpson as the player most likely to concede a putt in that situation, and Reed as the least. (Xander Schauffele would later designate Rory as the most likely.) McIlroy found it unlikely that anything similar could happen today—“feels like there’s a lot more on the line than there was back then,” he said, perhaps underestimating the mutual loathing at that moment—and even brought up the sheer number of gamblers who would be furious at that sort of late twist. Will Zalatoris had recently read about the concession before playing at the namesake course, and said that he “definitely” would have done the same thing, while Dustin Johnson allowed that he’d “probably give it to him.”
I'm thinking that Rory owed Patrick one after that Torrey Pines nonsense...
But, like most history, there's far more to this than is commonly recognized. While Jack's gesture has, appropriately I think, become the stuff of sportsmanship legend, not everyone was initially on board with it. And by "not everyone" I mean, out guys:
True history buffs might know more, like the fact that while Nicklaus’ gesture is considered one of the highest examples of sportsmanship in golf history, some of Jack’s teammates were furious with him, U.S. captain Sam Snead being the angriest of all. And the real fanatics might know some of the arcana, like the fact that Jacklin’s putt was only about two feet, or that, far from a figure of pity, Jacklin was the reigning Open champion and posted a 4-0-2 record at that Ryder Cup, one of the best performances ever. Or that before Nicklaus’ famous act, it had been an incredibly tense Ryder Cup in which an actual fistfight nearly broke out on Saturday, and where 17 of the 32 matches went to the final hole. (It was, in fact, one of the few—perhaps the only—really great Ryder Cup match in the pre-European era of American dominance.)
Sam Snead was not amused...
Players are, of course, funny creatures, and it's a mixed report card on historical knowledge. But Jon Rahm shines in this department, and makes the cases for Jack's gesture most effectively:
Rahm then interestingly pinpointed an aspect of the concession that doesn’t have so much to do with the conceded putt itself—though that was undeniably stunning, even to Jacklin—but about the foresight, empathy and sheer sense of the moment, in the midst of incredible tension and playing in his first Ryder Cup, that Nicklaus had to possess to even think about making this move.
“I think Jack had the future vision,” Rahm said, “giving Great Britain, an island, a tie instead of a loss, which I think benefited the event itself, the future generations of the event, because if the U.S. kept winning every year, it’s not fun, right? It’s no fun to watch for both sides. So I think Jack had that vision. And nobody wants to see somebody miss a three-footer to lose a tournament, that’s just an awful feeling. … I wouldn’t argue with what he did at all. Again, it’s a stamp in history, one more of the reasons he is who he is.”
The funny thing about that is that Jack himself always considered the Ryder Cup just an exhibition. But, not only was there this, but Jack is also the guy that pushed to add continental Europe to GB&I, leading to Seve and all that sturm und drang resulting therefrom.
But there's a little nugget in that last excerpt that has always amused me. Here's a listing of Jack's majors from that era:
1962 - U.S. Open
1963 - Masters
1963 - PGA Championship
1965 - Masters
1966 - Masters
1966 - The Open Championship
1967 - U.S. Open
The man won seven majors, including the career Grand Slam, yet his first Ryder Cup appearance was in 1969? Seriously:
Despite having won his seventh major title as a professional at the U.S. Open in June, 27-year-old Jack Nicklaus was not a member of the U.S. team. At the time, a five-year apprenticeship as a professional was required before Ryder Cup points could be earned. Nicklaus turned pro in November 1961 and was granted tournament status at the end of that year.[11] He expedited his status by passing PGA business classes in February 1966, and was granted full membership that June.[12] Only then was he eligible to accumulate Ryder Cup points, which ended with the Masters in April. Captain's selections did not exist in 1967 and Nicklaus was in a slump following his win at the Masters in 1966;[13] entering the Masters in 1967 as the two-time defending champion, he was in 13th place in the U.S. Ryder Cup standings. Also just off the team were Dave Marr and Bob Goalby.[14] Nicklaus and Goalby missed the cut at Augusta and Marr's T-16 finish was not enough to pass Johnny Pott for the tenth and final spot on the team.[9] Pott was 4–0–0 in the competition.
This was that 1967 U.S. roster:
It's easy to take, well, potshots at Mr. Pott, but most of those guys were pretty good, and they won handily. But when we think of that era of Ryder Cup dominance, remember that the U.S. played with one hand tied behind its back.
But is there any wonder why Jack considered the event an exhibition?
Did you catch any of Matthew Wolff's day from hell? It's kind of interesting when elite players lose it, but this one included a fun twist:
The former NCAA champion’s opening round in Bradenton, Fla., was doomed from the beginning, as he started par-bogey-bogey-double bogey on the back nine, which is one of the gettable stretches on the Jack Nicklaus-Tony Jacklin co-design. Two holes later he made a quadruple-bogey 8, then followed with his second double bogey of the day at the 16th. Back-to-back birdies at 17 and 18 helped keep him upright, but the damage was already done.
Woof (no pun intended).
Things only got worse on the front nine, where Wolff tripled No. 1, three-putting from 15 feet. After another bogey at No. 2, he settled down for a bit, playing the next three holes in one under. His round from hell was then perfectly summed up at the par-3 sixth, where Wolff hit his tee shot to 14 feet, setting up a good look at birdie. On his practice stroke, however, Wolff made contact with the ball:
These Guys Are Good!™ Except, yanno, when they're not... No penalty, but a good-sized portion of shame, which works for me.
That Woof, intended or not, was about these rather amusing ShotTracers:
that's a lot of yellow https://t.co/KdLHOhaXey pic.twitter.com/wMiqGKilNA
— Eric Patterson (@EPatGolf) February 25, 2021
But we have a "beware the early call" moment:
To Wolff’s credit, he finished out the round, even making birdie on the par-4 eighth. He wound up shooting an 11-over 83 and learning exactly why The Concession has earned the nickname of “The Concussion.”
I'm happy to credit him for that.... But, fair is fair, we'll be debiting him for this:
UPDATE: Wolff withdrew on Thursday evening, per a release from the PGA Tour. No reason was cited.
I can come up with about 83 reasons, none of which is acceptable ( unless he's actually injured, but color me preemptively skeptical on that).
Before we move on, this Ran Morrissett feature on the club is well worth your time:
Inside Concession Golf Club, a Florida course that doesn’t always feel like one
Which to me is a very good thing... Should be a fun week.
The Ladies Are Back - I always have decidedly mixed feelings about these curtain calls:
More than 12 years removed from her last official tour start, Annika Sorenstam teed it up oncemore in an LPGA event on Thursday, shooting a three-over 75 in the opening round of the Gainbridge LPGA.Eyeing a possible start in the U.S. Senior Women’s Open this summer, the 50-year-old World Golf Hall of Famer was seeking tournament reps and picked this event in Orlando for a simple reason: she lives on Lake Nona, the host course. That allowed her to make her return with her parents and children proudly watching.Though Sorenstam said her game lacks the automatic quality she had when she was dominating the tour—winning 72 times between 1995 and 2008—her scorecard had only one major blemish. It was a triple bogey on the par-4 fifth hole, which included a drop for an unplayable lie and a three-putt.
We turned on the evening rebroadcast for a few moments, and caught a disconcerting bit. Are you familiar with the concept of doxxing? From the invaluable Urban Dictionary:
doxxing
Doxxing, by way of "name-dropping," is document (doxx) dropping. It's publicly exposing someone's real name or address on the Internet who has taken pains to keep them secret. Also spelled "doxing."
"She calls herself 'Connie from Fat City' but someone outed her real identity and location as Karen last name from Palo Alto,' even giving street address, and put it all over the web."
"I hate that kind of doxxing. It's mean."
It's all the rage on the angry left (but I repeat myself) these days, but doesn't come up much in golf. But we caught the Golf Channel announcers telling us more than once that Annika lives on the 16th hole with our family, and I just have to ask whether this is wise? It was commonly know that this is a home game for Annika, but the level of specificity seems unnecessary. You might be rolling your eyes, but as recently as yesterday our Geoff was still bringing the hate for Annika accepting that Presidential Medal of Freedom from you-know who.
Sanity, Delayed - Perhaps not the biggest issue in these troubled times, but what were they thinking?
What was the most controversial thing about golf in 2020?
Was it Bryson DeChambeau’s bulked-up approach to winning the U.S. Open? Was it the cancellation of events like the British Open and the Ryder Cup? Was it a Masters in November?
What about the Big Blue Wall?
You remember the Big Blue Wall. If you remember the 2020 ANA Inspiration was played in September after a postponement from April and played with no spectators under COVID-19 restrictions, then you remember the Big Blue Wall.
Built to replicate a wall at the front of a hospitality tent traditionally on the back and left of the island green on the par-5 18th hole of the Dinah Shore Tournament Course at Mission Hills Country Club, the Big Blue Wall kind of took the concept of the traditional backstop and went over the top with it. It was big, it was blue and the critics of the wall were numerous and loud.
If you didn't watch the event, this will likely seem a particularly frivolous concern. But it dramatically changed how the ladies played into the green, and made a joke of the finish of their premiere event.
But the Big Blue Wall inspired more talk and more criticism than other such backstops. For one, it was, well, blue. It was impossible to miss, maybe even from the International Space Station. Second, it was wider than the hospitality tent backstop. Third, it seemed to be much closer to the actual putting surface than the hospitality tent wall. Finally, even if a hospitality tent is artificial on a golf course, the Big Blue Wall was definitely artificial.
Yes it was very blue and visible from low-earth orbit, but the single funniest detail is that the advertising content was in such a small font that it wasn't visible to anyone. But this to me belongs on the list of late-term Mike Whan missteps...
And, yes, the grandstand will be back once spectators are allowed, so perhaps we could have the larger discussion of the concept of grandstanding? To me, having that grandstand there eliminates most of the strategy of the second shot and the decision to go for the green, but is it necessary that the player be allowed to drop almost on the green?
Focusing on the Important Things - Really? because you'd think there might higher priorities:
The PGA Tour is making a change to its sudden-death playoff format beginning this week,according to a memo the organization sent to players on Monday.No longer will the order of play in a playoff be determined by blind draw. Instead, it will be based on a “first-to-finish, first-to-play” method. For players tied in the same final round group, order of play within the final round groupings will be used.
According to the email, this will allow the tour to expedite the playoff process and allow its broadcast partners to know the order of play in advance. The decision was made following last week’s Player Advisory Council meeting during the Genesis Invitational.
This is mostly a TV issue, as we can all agree that it takes them too damn long to get the playoffs going. It's a somewhat interesting issue, as the anachronism of players signing scorecards is I think a valuable part of our golf culture, but it certainly isn't helpful in this context.
That said, let me act the contrarian (I know, a real stretch) and suggest that this is short-sighted. The issue is that sudden-death playoffs are already a rather silly means of settling events, virtually a coin-flip in the context of our game. I rather like that awkward bit of choosing the order of play as a means of setting the table for the playoff, rather akin to the coin flip in football. I just find it strange to have them rushing the process, though we know the imperative is for CBS and NBC to not run into their evening news program...
I suppose what really irks me is that the Tour is doing the bidding of CBSNBC to finish on time, yet those networks don't feel compelled to prevent college basketball broadcasts to eat into the first half-hour of the golf coverage?
Keeping The Kids On The Farm - Amateur sports has faced an existential crisis for quite a long time, think of the Olympics and their rather comical adherence to amateurs ideals on a highly selective basis. We have news on that front from our governing bodies:
As the definition of amateurism continues to evolve in the broader athletic landscape, the USGA and R&A appear ready to significantly change their Rules of Amateur Status.
The governing bodies announced several proposals to those amateur rules on Monday after lengthy discussions, which began in late 2017, with several areas of the golf community, including the NCAA, professional tours and organizations and elite-level amateurs. The aim of the new rules is to maintain a distinction between amateurs and professional while updating the old requirements for amateurism in order to reflect the modern game and ensure that the rules are easy to understand and apply.
Brentley Romine has a list of the changes , but the easier path is to excerpt this rather short list of those actions that can cause one' amateur status to be revoked:
• Prizes in excess of the prize limit (remains at $750).
• Payment for giving face-to-face or traditional instruction (one-way, digital or written instruction is allowed, as is instruction while working for an educational institution, camp or other program approved by a national governing body).
• Employment as a club professional or membership of a professional tour or association.
That second bullet would seem to be unnecessarily convoluted, but basically the governing bodies have removed all restrictions on sponsorships, not that the kids weren't already walking billboards.
Mostly this just makes me sad, because it eliminates the connective tissue to so much of golf history. The world changes on us, but the decision to turn pro was an important mile-marker in a young player's career.
Just a couple more thoughts, then we'll start winding down. First, Geoff thinks that this is the USGA-R&A's effort to get ahead of this Supreme Court case, which may well be true. The broader issue of compensation of college athletes is interesting, though the larger issue for the world is what happens to other collegiate sports when the cash cow of basketball and football is not available to fund lacrosse and field hockey?
In our little golf fishbowl, it's also a bit complicated. One of the ongoing subjects of this blog is the extent to which the actions of the professional tours has motivated the kids to turn professional earlier, something that's long troubled me. And here I refer to the elimination of big tour Q-school and the year of indentured servitude on the Corn Fairy Tour.
But the other interesting dynamic is that, while the major U.S. and British Amateurs are substantially diminished events in recent years, much of that is due to, or at least contemporaneous with, the increasing appeal of the NCAA Championships. That to me is a result of the dates (May versus August), as well as the NCAAs embrace of team match play. Waiting until August basically costs a kid almost a full year, so I've long wondered whether the USGA should move that date.
Club Pro Guy - Ironically, this came from one of my ski buddies, but are you familiar with Club Pro Guy?
Over a 14 year career, the internationally renowned “CPG” made more than a dozen cuts on theMexican Mini Tour, including the famed Yucatan Masters, and holds the distinction of defending his 6,583rd position in the World Golf Rankings for 311 weeks. As one of the most prolific players in the game’s history, his astounding career culminated in 2003 when he was inducted into the Mexican Mini Tour Golf Hall of Fame with the lowest percentage of votes than any other inductee in history.
So, basically he's bene making fun of guys like you and me for those fourteen years....
Not only am I an imperfect tour guide for social media, but I have an instinctive aversion to cart girl humor, because it obviously carries such a low degree of difficulty. But, legitimate reservations notwithstanding, if you're going to engage in cart girl humor, this would be how it's done:
Just met with the media to discuss Anastasia's contract extension. pic.twitter.com/nOlYWIqqvd
— Club Pro Guy (@ClubProGuy) February 11, 2021
Hopefully we sent you into the weekend on a laugh. I'll look for you on Monday.
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