Monday, March 1, 2021

Weekend Wrap

We'll obsess in our usual fashion over the golf, but your humble blogger actually watched a little baseball yesterday as well.  If we're looking for mile markers on the road to Spring, that's a good one as well.

Scenes From a Collinoscopy - Well, the first word that popped into my mind was "surgical", though I think this header is slightly off:

Unfazed, unbothered, unrattled: How Collin Morikawa makes winning on the PGA Tour look so easy

I found it an extremely impressive performance, but I don't think it ever looked easy.  Just the opposite in fact, seemingly every shot presenting the chance of a train wreck.  But that difficulty is what made the aforementioned lack of faze, bother and rattle so noteworthy.

In situations like these, it’s tempting to constantly analyze the things that could go wrong, to go on permanent scan searching for the moment when things will change. And sure, sometimes they do.
And sure, asserting that in some cases they never could—that the rhythms of the day were set in stone—is hindsight, golf’s version of shooting an arrow and painting a bullseye around it. Still, to watch Morikawa on Sunday was to watch someone who was just too much better than everyone else to allow for any other outcome.

Of course, inside his own mind the picture wasn’t quite so serene.

“It’s never comfortable,” Morikawa said. “You want to get as comfortable as you can. … There’s a lot of pressure, a lot at stake heading into those last nine holes knowing where you sit. If you look back at my third round, it wasn’t the finish we wanted. I couldn’t have had that today. ... We just kept going on shot after shot, giving myself some good looks at birdie. And overall we were just able to kind of wear out the field.”

So, the obvious follow-up questions revolves around that putter grip.  Morikawa is, strike that, has to date been one of those guys.  You know the type, great ball-strikers but really suspect on the greens.  Oh, they'll have weeks when the putter works, weeks they get plenty of weekend air time:

But that was just a hot week, not a preview of the rest of his career. Dating to his junior golf days,
Morikawa has always relied on his iron play and struggled on his greens. “I’ve never felt comfortable,” he said. “You guys have all seen it.” His frustration finally boiled over two weeks ago, when he was practicing at home in Las Vegas. He had heard about Mark O’Meara’s “saw” putting grip, and he stopped and chatted with the two-time major champion for an hour at The Summit Club. Morikawa tried the saw the next day but made nothing.

And yet ...

“For some reason, I couldn’t sleep, and that’s never happened to me,” he said. “I’ve never thought about putting or golf this much in my life, because it felt so good. It just felt so different on how I was putting that I knew I was heading down the right path.”

Morikawa remained committed, even if his strokes-gained statistics the following week at Riviera were dreadful – last in the field.

What he felt is inevitably ephemeral, but he most certainly felt something...  And when you hit your iron as he does, you don'y have to be the best putter, you just need to be slightly above average:

For the week, Morikawa ranked 10th in the field in putting, gaining nearly four shots on the field – the second-best putting week of his Tour career, behind only the PGA.

“His putting stroke looks unbelievably good,” Horschel said.

So why is this not just another hot streak? Why does he feel confident that these weeks can be the norm, not the exception?

“Now I feel confident I can take the stroke out of play and I can just really focus on speed, I can focus on the line, how do I get that ball to fall in the hole where I want it,” Morikawa said.

“That’s what’s really exciting for me.”

If only there were some big events coming up...

The Tour Confidential panel did actually lead with a question about the young man....  Yeah, a silly question, but still:

1. Collin Morikawa picked up his third PGA Tour title in eight months on Sunday, coolly winning the WGC-Workday Championship by three strokes over a chase pack that included Brooks Koepka and Viktor Hovland. For all the recent talk about the importance
of distance in the pro game, Morikawa has excelled with a 295-yard driving average, which isn’t short by Tour standards, but isn’t long, either. (In fact, 295 is exactly the Tour average.) In your mind, which part of Morikawa’s game has most powered his success?

Michael Bamberger: His head. Just seems like a level-headed, collected person who is going to make good decisions under stress and not get too down when things go south or too up when he’s riding high.

Josh Sens: You don’t notch four Tour wins by such a young age without having the intangible Michael mentions. But if we’re looking at hard numbers, it’s his iron game, as the stroke-gained stats confirm.

Sean Zak: Everyone knows about his irons game, but really he’s just so damn confident, and hasn’t let his putting woes seep into other parts of his game. He expected all this success, even if that’s an unrealistic point of view. He’ll expect to win at the Players, too, and his ballstriking will surely push him into contention.

Dylan Dethier: Irons, irons, irons. I spent a bunch of time walking with Morikawa this week, and I was struck by just how many times he hit an iron to the smartest possible portion of the green. When we’re writing instruction articles, I often reference making “aggressive swings at conservative targets” and when he’s on, Morikawa has both the brains and the surgical precision to execute on that like nobody I can remember save perhaps Tiger Woods.

Well, he's got me expecting him to win at the Players as well, though that might just be the recency bias speaking... But, per Mike, he does have quite the head on his shoulders, as evidenced by how he absorbed that difficult Saturday finish...

Better Dead Than Red?  Like me, you might have been surprised by the red-and-black yesterday... Specifically, how little of it there was.  Turns out it became a bit of a Twitterstorm, as folks were forced to defend their sartorial choices.  Here's last week's winner, the guy that was handed the trophy by Eldrick himself, mansplaining:

Max couldn't go to Walmart, though apparently this guy did:

 Only one way @PhilMickelson would wear red.

What, Mizzen + Main doesn't do a red button-down?  

About That Concession?  What did we think of the golf course?  Lots of back-and-forth there, much of it amusing.  For instance, Dylan Dethier had this on Friday:

Triple-chips? Quadruple-bogeys?! Concession is delivering a thrill ride of golf

Dylan is mostly focused on the carnage, but does touch on the fact that it was simultaneously gettable:

On Friday, the front hole location on No. 3 sat in a bowl surrounded by steep slopes long and right and precariously close to a ridge on the left. It typified the creativity required around the
greens. I stopped to watch one group, who’d each ended up greenside in two shots.

 Jason Scrivener, who’d left himself 25 yards short and right of the pin, played first. He aimed well right and hit a spinning chip that just about died some 20 feet above the hole but then trickled ever so carefully down the slope to three feet. Chan Kim played next, from low and left of the green, and sent a high, soft flop that landed short of the hole and rolled up to kick-in range. Laurie Canter went last. His angle was similar to Scrivener’s but he selected putter instead, kept the ball on the ground and played a preposterously wide break. His ball eventually settled four feet past the hole. Three distinctly different strategies. Three birdies.

Not everybody had the same luck. Two groups later, Daniel Berger took three chips just to get his ball on the green; he stormed off with double. Mid-afternoon, Erik van Rooyen found himself just left of the green in three — and then hit three consecutive chips that came back to his feet before getting up-and-down for triple-bogey 8. Each of his playing partners made 4. At Concession, birdies and round-ruiners reside in close proximity.

Nothing demonstrated the yin and yang of the place better than Bryson DeChambeau's early week, in which he started 77-64.  

To which, Curmudgeonly James Corrigan responded curmudgeonously:

I'm of mixed minds on this, so let's solicit further inputs.  Shack had this:

Before we move on from The Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, a salute is in order for putting on a good short notice show with the World Golf Championships-Workday Championship at The Concession (just imagine, the first tee announcer repeated that doozy all day!).

While the architecture leans a little too artificial and overbuilt for my taste, the course appeared to give players plenty of fun problems to solve. It’s not clear if this is a one-off, but the February 16th press release announcing Workday as sponsor only specified this stand-in role because the normal host in Mexico City was not available (and sounds unlikely to return). The Concession also paid an unsustainable fee to help fund the purse and maybe move some real estate.

Just a little?  And that TC panel:

2. The WGC-Workday was played for the first time at The Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, Fla.; Concession was a late fill-in for the usual venue, Club de Golf Chapultepec, in Mexico City. Though Morikawa finished at 18 under, Concession was no pushover, presenting the field with a variety of risk-reward decisions and challenging shots, especially around the greens. Would you like to see Concession worked into the regular Tour schedule? (Disclosure: The course was built by Nicklaus Design, which is an affiliate of GOLF.com’s parent company, 8AM Golf.)

Bamberger: Yes and no. Looks like a course you could make as hard as you want, but more WGC events need to be played beyond the lower 48.

Sens: Definitely high entertainment value. As we saw with the wild fluctuation in scoring, it would be especially cool as a match-play venue.

Zak: Yes! But damn that’s so many good courses in a short span. Could we get it in … October? Is that crazy talk? I just hate seeing players pass up courses like Pebble in favor of other events/tournaments. February and March have TOO much great Tour golf.

Dethier: Oh yeah. I love the chaos! For reference, Riviera, which is notably difficult, extracted 97 bogeys and five “others” from the field at last week’s Genesis Invitational. This week, in a smaller field at the WGC-Workday, players made 110 doubles and 26 “others” — and the greens weren’t even close to full speed! As a fan of chaos on Tour, I’m in.

Yeah, all those great courses, like PGA National and Bay Hill?  Which is almost as funny as Mike arguing against the lower 48...  Sure, I get it, but they went to Mexico, which is not part of the lower 48, and the Mexicans said, "Never mind".  At this point on the calendar, a month from Augusta, is not the time to travel the world.

My problem is that I instinctively hated the golf course, first and foremost for those overwrought greens.  But also because every tee shot seemed to be a cape hole with water in play...  Most of the time I simply wondered how the club's members get around, as I assume they have member that don't play as well as, say Zinger...

But I have to give Dylan his due, the chaos was interesting, mostly because it was accompanied by low scores as well,  Morikawa won at -18, and we had no shortage of mid-to-low-60's scores as well.  It just seems we're at a juncture with the professional game that this is about what can be accomplished.  It's a bit harsh and can't possibly satisfy those with a fairness fetish, but it is entertaining golf.  To me, this was far more interesting than the Honda, not least because most of those large, crooked numbers came about because of what the ball did once it hit the ground... 

So, I guess that adds up to begrudging OK to a prospective return, since they can and have previously found far worse.

Sister Act - Who doesn't like a good family story?

Petr and Regina Korda sat on their fold-up chairs on the grassy hill that overlooked the 18th green at Lake Nona as their youngest daughter, Nelly, won the Gainbridge LPGA, her first tour
victory on home soil. That it marked the first time they’ve seen Nelly, 22, win on the LPGA says a lot considering that it marked her fourth career title.

It was a similar story last month at the Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions when eldest daughter Jessica won her sixth LPGA title in a playoff over Danielle Kang. That too was the first time Jessica had won in front of her parents.

What’s it like watching your daughters win in back-to-back tournaments on the LPGA in their home state of Florida?

“Nerve-wracking,” said a proud Petr.

 Very sweet, but this as well:

The only two parents who know the feeling happened to be on hand for the celebration. Tom and Gunilla Sorenstam live at Lake Nona and walked all 72 holes this week as their 50-year-old daughter, Annika, competed in her first LPGA event in nearly 13 years. Annika and her sister Charlotta won in back-to-back weeks on the LGPA in 2000.

I'm not in love with the old girl actually playing, but this Beth Ann Nichols suggestion makes so much sense it'll never happen:

Nichols: Wouldn't it be great if Annika Sorenstam hosted the LPGA every year at Lake Nona?

It's a little scary how much thought Beth Ann has put into Annika's schedule (including her partner at the Father-Son), but how she plays isn't terribly important.

Did you catch that penalty she suffered on Thursday?  Add this to the #youhadonejob file:

On Thursday, the Hall of Famer hit her drive on the fifth hole left, and it came to rest near a
fence. Rules official Dan Maselli determined the ball was in bounds. Sorenstam wasn’t able to hit it, however, because the fence was in the way. There was a gate there that if she opened, she’d be able to hit the ball. But the Maselli said she couldn’t open the gate. (The gate itself is not the out of bounds line; fence posts on either side of the gate were used to determine whether the ball was in bounds or not.) Sorenstam took an unplayable (which includes a one-shot penalty), played out the hole and made triple.

On Friday, however, an error with that ruling came to light. It turns out, Sorenstam could’ve actually opened that gate to hit her ball, which would’ve saved her from having to take the drop and add the penalty stroke.

Both parties to the incident behaved like adults and, since she made the cut, there really wasn't an adverse impact:

“Per the 2021 LPGA Rules of Play Card, gates attached to objects defining out of bounds are integral objects. The official on scene misinterpreted the definition of integral object. While it is correct that there is no free relief provided from the gate, it could be moved to a different position under the Rules. The definition of integral object says in part, if part of the integral object meets the definition of a moveable obstruction, that part is treated as a moveable obstruction.

“The option to rescind the penalty is not available under the Rules of Golf. The official met the player immediately following her second round to explain the mistake and apologize.”

Recounting that apology, Sorenstam said that she told Maselli not to feel bad about it.

“He said, I won’t make that mistake again. I said, Well, I won’t hit there anymore,” Sorenstam said. “You know, those things happen. The rules have changed. That’s the way it goes.”

Nice people, but let's not make a habit of screwing these things up...

The TC panel did have an interesting take on this that folks should bear in mind.  Well, Mike Bamberger, in any event:

5. In the second round, Sorenstam received an incorrect ruling from an official that cost Sorenstam a shot. The rules don’t allow for retroactive corrections in the case of a bad ruling. Should they?

Bamberger: I think it can be done, and it certainly has been done. Bob Jones was the ultimate rules authority at the Masters. But in this situation, Annika holed out after taking a drop, and that complicates matters. Her play on the hole unfolded a certain way because of the incorrect decision, and you can’t get that back. Had she played two balls, one from the open gate position, one as instructed, she could have counted the open-gate score at the end of the day. She had the right idea, and Annika, at least by reputation, is a rules expert.

Sens: Yes. It has already been proven to work in other sports. Of course, even retroactive rulings aren’t always perfect. But on balance, they’ve been a good thing, producing fairer outcomes. Golf prides itself on fairness. Why not take a very manageable step toward ensuring it?

Zak: Why not? Once again, it seems like common sense can be applied to the rules of golf, but sometimes the rules don’t want to listen to common sense.

Dethier: Yes. But in this case, I don’t think it would have quite worked out unless, as Bamberger says, she’d played a second ball.

This reminds me of nothing so much as NFL fumble that is incorrectly whistled dead before the ball is recovered....  Without a clear possession of the fumble by the defense, there's nothing to do but consider the play dead.  

 Even Mike's answer is a bit of a mess, because I have no idea what he means by that "has been done".  

But as I understand the sequence (which, per the item linked above, was on Thursday), the error was not acknowledged until Friday.  I still believe it would have had to have been resolved before Annika signed, though had she played two balls that might have forced the issue.  In any event, it's quite she herself didn't know the rule despite a prior reputation for using the rules aggressively, but let's not ferget she's actually a retired golfer.

So, we all learned a new one... But, will we remember it the next time it comes up, say in fifteen years?

A Tribute - I was unaware of this gentlemen, but was deeply touched by this USGA tribute:

William Wright, the first Black golfer to claim a USGA championship, died on Feb. 19 at the age of 84 in his adopted hometown of Los Angeles. In 1959, Wright defeated Frank Campbell, 3 and
2, in the final match of the U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship at Wellshire Golf Course in Denver. It was a seminal moment in USGA history, even though the 23-year-old Wright initially considered himself only as a national champion, not the first Black to hoist a USGA trophy.

“He felt so thrilled to be the best golfer that day, not the best Black golfer,” said Ceta Wright, who was married to Bill for 60 years, in an interview with the Seattle Times. “And, of course, afterward he realized that he was a barrier breaker and that was important to him. It was important to everyone, really, and especially in the Black community.”

Shortly after the trophy presentation, a Seattle journalist called Wright and asked what it was like to be the first African American to win a national championship. Wright, who was about to enter his senior year at Western Washington College, slammed the phone down.

 Wright later told golf.com, “I wasn’t mad. I wanted to be Black. I wanted to be the winner. I wanted to be all those things. It just hit me that other people were thinking [about race]. I was just playing golf.”

Wright competed that week with only 12 clubs: two woods, nine irons and a putter. His opponent from Jacksonville, Fla., had been a professional for four years before regaining his amateur status and returning to the insurance business.

It's been a week in which Jack Nicklaus' character has been rightly praised.  But it wasn't a one-off:

Winning the public links title earned Wright an exemption to play in the U.S. Amateur Championship later that year at the Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs. When the white golfers who were to join him for a practice round refused to play with him, Chick Evans, who had won the Open in 1920, invited him to join his group. That group included Jack Nicklaus, then 19 years old, who would win the event.

“I have never forgotten it,” Wright once said of Evans’s gesture in an interview for usga.com. “He came over and made it so I could enjoy the most aristocratic hotel. It was just amazing.”

If I've done my math correctly, Chick Evans was 69 years old at that time.  Not exactly sure how he came to be in that field, but I'm certainly glad he was.  As for playing a practice round with young Jack, that's a special part of our game.  

This video from the USGA is well worth your time as well:


R.I.P.

Reading Is Fundamental - So, the tour hits a new venue such as Concession.... er, strike that, The Concession, one characterized by crazy greens.  Yet a player such as Brooks Koepka places highly while playing only nine practice holes.  Once again with the math, but my calculation indicates that he didn't so much as see the other nine holes.  Wassup with that?

Jon Rahm explains in his Wednesday presser:

Q. Jon, I had some super golfing questions for you. Dustin said that with the detailed greens books, it's actually easier to learn a golf course these days than in the past. You might even
be able to figure out a golf course before you even get here. I'm just curious, do you think that negates some of the challenge or perhaps even some of your advantage of having some prior golf course knowledge?

JON RAHM: You mean the greens books like the little map with all the slopes?

Q. Yeah. All the charting is so good now that he basically figured it out before he even arrived on site.

JON RAHM: Well, I don't use those books.

Q. How come?

JON RAHM: My caddie gets them. I don't look at them because I just--I'm a feel player, I trust what I see. If I have a question, I'll ask him, and he might look at it if we're in doubt. I've never spoken of this, I have to be honest, I don't think they should be allowed. That's my opinion. I think being able to read a green and read a break and understand the green is a talent, it's a skill that can be developed, and by just giving you the information, they're taking away from the game. Again, I think being able to read greens and understand greens, it's a talent, it's part of the game, and like I said, it's a skill that can be developed or not. So that's my take on it.

Ummm, remind me Jon, for whom does your caddie work?  So, you're using the books, notwithstanding that a dusting thereof would not reveal your fingerprints...

The bigger question he's pointing us to, however, is whether they should be allowed. Geoff had this:

Besides the de-skilling and dumbing-down component at a time the governing bodies are reviewing those matters, there is the horrible optic of a professional golfer staring at their little cheat sheet on national TV while we wait for them. The situation has been made worse (not better) by the rule change restricting rendering sizes.

Essentially the only people wanting to keep them in the professional game profit from their creation and sales.

Context-wise, we recently had a discussion of distance measuring devices, as a result of the PGA of America allowing them in their events.  In that case, the DMDs are allowed for the raw distance, but not for the elevation adjustments.  Yet, on the greens, that elevation information is given to the players in book form....  I don't get it.

And, yes, it's a bad look... and it can't be good for pace-of-play, can it?  The priorities seem quite strange.  We reduce the search time for lost balls by two minutes, but they can insert their noses into these books for seemingly as long as they need to.  

Mano a Mano - As prop best go, it's not half bad:

3. Brooks Koepka, who won the Waste Management Phoenix Open three weeks ago, had another strong start at the WGC, finishing at 15 under, good for a tie for second. In the first two rounds, Koepka played with his one-time bash brother, Dustin Johnson, and outplayed him by a cumulative 12 shots; Johnson went on to finish at five over for the week and in 54th place. Prop bet time! Whose cumulative score in the 2021 majors will be better: Koepka’s or DJ’s, and why?

Bamberger: Koepka. Even when Dustin Johnnson is going great, he has a much wider range of scores. He doesn’t bring it again and again. Koepka does. Koepka has a far better chance of playing 288 holes, which is the starting point for this wager, as I read it.

Sens: It’s hard to bet against Koepka’s record in the majors when he’s healthy. But whatever happens, along with Jordan Spieth’s revival, the Koepka-Johnson question points to what I think promises to be the most compelling throughline of the 2021 season. Given their shared past and the kind of game they both play, they’re the closest thing we have in the game to a rivalry, so they’ve that going for them. As a bonus, I suspect we’ll see them paired in the majors more than once.

Zak: The answer is DJ. Brooks has never really peaked in February and March before. Can he stay hot All Year Long? DJ might be playing some average golf right now, but he’ll dial it in soon enough to be in contention a bunch this summer.

Dethier: Dustin Johnson is the best golfer in the world. If we’re getting even odds, how could you avoid him here? Once he gets his driver worked in, he’ll be back in time for major season.

Let me just say that I have no clue as to what Sean Zak means by his answer...  Seems to me a pretty good time of year to be finding one's form, no?   Not that I'm worried about DJ, but for Brooksie to have proven that he's healthy again and found his form seems rather significant...

Of course, the flaw in the question is that no one cares about cumulative scores.  The fun part is to consider the Freudian complications should these two be in contention down the stretch at one of those four.... Say that one in four weeks?

Have a great week and we'll reconvene probably on Wednesday.

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