Weekend Wrap

It wasn't either the best nor the worst of times, but this might be the weirdest weekend of golf in some time... I only watched the women's Open, but that other event was the leader in the clubhouse in Strokes Gained: Irony.

Olympic, Where Giants Fall - Yeah, that reputation is way overdone.  Sure, Ben Hogan v. Jack Fleck and Tom Watson v. Scott Simpson were, as the book puts it, The Longest Shots, but Palmer v. Casper was one immortal beating another.   Of course the single funniest bit of the day was hearing the announcers try to cast Lexi in the role of Hogan or Palmer, which is quite the stretch.

The winner's day started with this shoutout:

Yuka Saso getting a shoutout from her favorite player, Rory McIlroy pic.twitter.com/WPwXlFn7f6

— Zephyr Melton (@zephyrmelton) June 6, 2021

The haters might feel compelled to note the source has had his own Sunday travails, but we're above that sort of thing here at Unplayable Lies.  When have I ever had a harsh word for Rory?  The winner's day got off to quite the rocky start:

She did her idol proud. But for much of the sun-splashed afternoon at The Olympic Club, that outcome looked to be far from the case.

Saso arrived at the course on Sunday in a comfortable position. She had a tee time in the final group and her game was in form. She was poised as she towered shot after shot through the Bay Area breeze on the driving range. When her name was announced by Mike Davis at 10:35 a.m., Saso blasted a driver into the fairway and started a walk she will never forget.

But by the 2nd hole, those good vibes had worn off. Saso’s drive veered well right of the fairway, and her pitch back to safety never reached its destination. She carded a double-bogey 6, and followed it with another double on the 3rd. The margin between her and leader Lexi Thompson had swelled to five.

“My caddie talked to me and said, ‘Just keep on going; there’s many more holes to go,'” Saso said. “That’s what I did.”

Is that what he really said?  Because I wouldn't have been able to resist reminding the young lady that the player she was chasing has a career defined by squandered opportunities....  I know, hateful, yet with the added benefit of being true.

I was watching on tape and did not hang in for the playoff, having seen my expectations of a Lexi collapse come to fruition.  Yeah, that's up there with the sun rising in the East for monotonous predictability, yet it fascinates much as a train wreck does.  Ironically, I could have turned on the Yankee game and seen much the same.

There was this one moment in the playoff on which the outcome tunred:

Dueling pars came on the 9th before Saso faced yet another putt to win the championship on the 18th green. She powered it through the break and faced 10 feet for par to extend the playoff. It never left its line. The two headed back to the 9th tee box.

On the green, Saso faced yet another winning putt. Draino. The crowd erupted and champagne soaked the newly crowned champion.

But the aforementioned Lexi walked off the 8th green with a five shot lead, yet all your humble blogger could think was, "It'll be interesting to see her Greg Norman impression....  Cynical, sure, but those that don't know history are doomed to repeat it.  Zephyr Melton has the unfortunate job of attempting to explain the inexplicable:

Lexi Thompson stood in the interview area just off the 18th green fighting back tears. Three

hours earlier, she held what felt like an insurmountable five-shot lead. Now, she was recounting where it all went wrong.

“Yeah, of course it’s tough,” she said. “I really didn’t feel like I hit any bad golf shots. That’s what this golf course can do to you, and that’s what I’ve said all week.”

But soon after the questions started, the press conference was brought to an abrupt halt. Thompson’s agent intervened after just two questions and declined to allow his client to speak any further. She was whisked away in a flash, and attention turned to the playoff between Yuka Saso and Nasa Hataoka starting just 100 yards away.

Denial, it ain't just a river in Egypt.   She, of course, hit nothing but bad shots at the crucial junctions, and seemed equally a victim of some quite dreadful decisions as well.

Let me just interject something here from Barndel Chamblee.  The man makes no shortage of dramatic yet bat guano crazy comments, but he's an astute analyst when he sticks to the basics:

Chamblee said that first putt, the missed eagle, was a preview of the putts to come. Thompson hit it off the toe, and the ball slid past the right edge of the cup.

“She’s got 6 feet away,” Chamblee said on Live From. “Now professional golfers don’t miss the center of the face by a pinhead. Look where she hits this putt on the very 1st hole. Look where this putt comes off the face. She would have missed the center of the putter there by a half an inch. I have never — I have never — seen a professional golfer miss the center of the putter by a wider margin than that. That was at the 1st hole. …

“When you miss a putt, the center of the face, on the first hole of a major championship, the final round, by that much because — look if you miss the middle of the face by this much [gestures], it feels horrible to you. You feel it all the way through your body. You miss it by that much [gestures], you think to yourself, what just happened here?

NBC, which employs Mr. Chamblee, never showed that first putt on the first, though they did show her drive and second shots more than once.  But with the Open firmly in her grasp, four up with eight holes to play, Lexi discovered one of the immutable laws of nature, that water finds its own level:

Four-shot lead with eight to play. But with one swing on the 11th tee, things began to unravel. Thompson hooked her drive into the rough and drew a terrible lie. She muscled it up near the green. A chunked chip and three putts later and her lead had been cut in half. Still, the smile remained.

A drone buzzed overhead, and the crowd size swelled. Everyone wanted to be a part of the coronation. Thompson made par at 12 and stepped to the tee at 13. The day before she had blistered a 3-wood onto a downslope and converted for birdie. Sunday was much different.

Perhaps fearing the thicket of trees left of the fairway, Thompson pushed her shot into the right rough. Again, all she could muster was pushing the ball to the front of the green. And again, she left the chip short. Another bogey.

Those rather anodyne descriptions of the events fail to capture the shockingly shoddy play.  She missed the fairway on No. 11 which, depending upon the lie one draws, may well sentence the player to a bogey.  Lexi turned that bogey into a double with a muffed chip and two weak putts.

She came to the 16th tee still in the lead, facing back-to-back Par-5's.  Can it set up any better for the beats of women's golf?  Yet she played those two three-shotters in +1.... She hit 3-wood off both tees, yet didn't sniff the fairway.

Off the 17th tee, Thompson again pulled her shot into the rough. She pitched out and held a wedge in her hand looking at the green. The ball ballooned into the air and came down 15 yards short of the green. Her par putt never had a chance. Yuka Saso made her second birdie in a row, and there was a three-way tie at the top.

Murmurs went through the crowd.

“Is she really going to blow this?”

 “Why can’t she make any putts?”

“What hole do they use for a playoff?”

In order, the answers are:

Yes, because that's what our Lexi does...

Because she is perhaps the worst putter to ever play elite-level golf.  Throw in some nerves, and she becomes whatever is worst than worst putter among elite-level players.

I don't know, but Lexi needn't worry her pretty little head.

It's easy to focus on her putting, which is hard to watch, but on both of the last two holes she had wedges in her hand, and both came up a full 15-20 yards short.  On No. 17 she could be heard telling her caddie how flush she hit it, reminiscent of nothing so much as Xander Schauffele on No. 16 at Augusta.

Shall we see what the Tour Confidential folks thought

1. Nineteen-year-old Yuka Saso of the Philippines defeated Japan’s Nasa Hataoka in a playoff to win the U.S. Women’s Open at the Olympic Club. Saso became not only the youngest Women’s Open winner (joining Inbee Park, who was the same age to the day

when she won the U.S. Open in 2008) but also the first Filipino major winner. What most stood out to you about Saso’s performance?

Michael Bamberger: She held up to the moment. Yes, Lexi had a collapse for the ages, but Saso had to be there to take advantage of it. Usually, you lose before you win. She didn’t.

Sean Zak: An opening was created for her, and she pounced. Seems emblematic of her game — that she can pounce. She made consecutive doubles to play her way out of it, but she didn’t collapse. She battled back for a hard-fought 73, which she probably would have signed up for at the beginning of the day, too. It’s not about how, it’s about how many.

Alan Bastable: I was touched by Saso’s post-round interview, when she tearfully thanked her team of supporters and said that she will strive to be better. Better?! She just won her sport’s biggest title — at 19! They’ll be dancing in the streets in Manila. Her humbleness was so charming.

Dylan Dethier: Her second putt on the second hole of the playoff, after she’d rammed the first one some 8-10 feet past the hole. I have never made one of those comebackers in my entire life, but she rammed it in the middle to extend the playoff in the biggest event in the game.

 She didn't go full-Norman and was therefore in position when Lexi did.

But you'll want to know what they thought of the girl that let it get away:

2. For much of the final round, it looked like Lexi Thompson’s day. Thompson had a four-stroke cushion with just eight holes to play, but she let her lead slip away, ultimately missing out on the playoff when she failed to get up and down from a greenside bunker on the 72nd hole. Simple/complex question: What happened?

That's easy, Lexi happened.  Some players are defined by their ability to get it done under the greatest of pressure.... 

Bamberger: The easy answer would be to say Olympic happened. And Olympic is funky. Hogan and Arnold and Payne Stewart will all tell you that. But Lexi’s game, as great as it is, is out of the smash-and-pitch game. That’s not Olympic. The course and the moment caught up to her, sad to say.

Mike doesn't want to be harsh, but that requires him to pull his punches.  These guys don't have Mike's good manners:

Zak: I think Bamberger is right, but there’s more. The course and moment did catch up to her, but in harsher terms, she got yippy. She got quick. She got caught thinking about the score for the first time Sunday. It all leads to Johnny Miller’s favorite word: nerves.

Bastable: Lexi said the wind got her, but the putter seemed like the biggest culprit. From the first green, Lexi’s stroke looked shaky — credit to Brandel Chamblee, who noted that Thompson’s first putt of the day was nowhere near the center of her putter face. The closer Lexi got to the hole, the more uncomfortable she looked over the ball. U.S. Open pressure is no joke, even if you’ve been there many times before.

Dethier: A little bit of everything. Drives increasingly found the rough. Approach shots started coming up short. Putts got wobbly. To close out that tournament, in front of that crowd, on that golf course, after a year without fans, was a really tough position. That’s what made it unfortunate to watch.

I've never had much use for Lexi, and can barely stand to watch her swing a club.  But her backstory is that she's was supposedly battle-hardened by growing up competing with her two professional golfer brothers.   But the reality is just the opposite, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more fragile psyche in all of professional sports.

But also true that she's one of the worst putters in the game, and her other short-game skills are equally suspect.  From a distance it doesn't appear that she's done much to address these weaknesse3s, and watching those parts of her game break down isn't pretty.

But now comes the killer bit:

3. Where does Lexi’s Sunday rank on the major meltdown meter?

Bamberger: South of Greg Norman at the ’96 Masters by a length.

Yanno, Mike my initial instinct is to agree.  But Norman lost to Faldo, whereas Lexi lost to Yuka Saso.  More of a photo finishe, methinks.

Zak: It’s definitely up there. It all happened on the back nine, and after a par on 10! The final eight holes. With a pair of par-5s in the final three holes. And the 18th that allowed her to play iron off the tee. One mistake begetting the next. It’s pretty high, even if that hurts.

Bastable: Thing is, similar to Norman’s collapse, there was no signature meltdown moment. Sure, there was the double at 11, but, mostly, it was a slow burn paired with some strong play (and surely Lexi heard the roars) from a couple of other players nipping at her heels. Most stunning moment had to be the putt at 18 — that’s an insanely fast putt, which I thought would help ensure that she’d get it the hole. Nope, not even close. Many props to Lexi for keeping her chin up (smiling, laughing even) through what had to be an excruciating couple of hours.

Dethier: I have no data to back this up, but it feels like we’re often accustomed to players with four- or five-shot leads bleeding a couple shots down the stretch, giving the illusion of a close tournament before they ultimately right the ship. Think Phil at the PGA. That’s what I was expecting midway through the back nine. But then the ship never righted. No. 17 was the most surprising — bogey on a birdie hole, especially for long-hitting Lexi. Anyway, I have no idea where it ranks historically. But I’m confident it’s the most painful blown lead I’ve seen since I took this job.

Except that many of us knew it was coming....

But isn't this the intereting subject?

4. The Olympic Club, as it has in so many men’s Opens past, delivered in its debut as a Women’s Open site. How would you assess how the USGA set up the Lake Course for this championship, and are there any takeaways for future U.S. Women’s Opens?

Bamberger: U.S. Open courses, through the years, have been defined by their trees. The Lake Course has trees. Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Zak: A tough event where the greens were firm, the rough was long and few scores under par? Sounds exactly like a typical U.S. Open. My real takeaway is major kudos to the USGA for hosting this event here. The first Women’s Open at Olympic. The first Women’s Open at Pebble will take place in two years. About damn time! Ask the best women in the world what they want, and a lot will tell you they want a piece of all the tracks that have hosted the best men in the world. GIVE. THEM. THAT.

Bastable: Zak nailed it, and I loved how juicy they kept the rough. When Lexi can advance a ball only 40 yards, you know that’s some gnarly spinach. Fairly certain I couldn’t hit the 18th fairway with a large bucket. Come to think of it, the 18th green, too. Fabulous USWO swan song for Mike Davis.

Dethier: They got creative with the yardages, varied the looks and kept the course tough but reasonable, which meant we saw birdies and doubles aplenty. It went swimmingly! If you’re into par, four under seems like a proper U.S. Open final score. And to Bamberger’s point, Olympic has zero penalty areas, which can make it tricky for viewers to distinguish between holes — but the setup and the broadcast kept it fresh. And the trees.

The broadcast itself was dreadful... Listening to Margan Pressel's prattling on her nasal tones about how well Lexi was putting isn't ,y idea of knowledgeable commentary.

I actually think it was a dreadful week for the ladies, not that I think many will see it this way.  I understand their existential need to play at these iconic venues as a measure of respect, and you'd think it's a slam dunk.  But my view of the week, and I watched quite a bit and am sympathetic to the women's game, was that it dramatically exposed the weakness of the ladies' games.  It's a hard golf course with penal rough, but the enduring image in my mind if of women unable to advance the ball any distance from said rough.  I think they accomplished was to reinforce the inferiority of the product, though I'm quite sure that will be a minority opinion.

The Asterisk Invitational - I didn't watch any of it, but it had to be a surreal Sunday at Jack's place.  I'm not going to go deep, as I'm already up against the clock:

5. Meanwhile, in Ohio, Patrick Cantlay won the Memorial in a playoff over Collin Morikawa. But the story that dominated the weekend unfolded on Saturday when Jon Rahm was forced to withdraw from the tournament after 54 holes — with a six-stroke lead — after testing positive for Covid-19. Rahm was notified of the test result moments after he walked off the 18th green Saturday. “It’s kind of the worst situation for something like that to happen,” said Patrick Cantlay, Rahm’s playing partner. What did you take away from this surreal episode?

Bamberger: Reading the fine print, it would seem that Rahm did not get vaccinated, or was not

fully vaccinated (two weeks past second shot, in most cases). Too bad for him. The Covid-19 vaccines are a miracle of modern science.

Zak: My takeaway — thanks to the mentions of a popular tweet — is that there is still a lot of people who don’t know what they don’t know about vaccines, about Covid-19, about the PGA Tour’s rules about vaccines and Covid-19. Perhaps that’s Twitter, but I think it speaks for a lot of non-Twitter users, too. Subscribe to a newspaper and read it.

James Colgan: That we (and the PGA Tour, for that matter) aren’t out of the woods yet! And that’s OK. And also that the Tour’s protocols exist for a reason, and maybe they ought to look at extending them indefinitely for unvaccinated players rather than lapsing them at the end of June.

Bastable: That this happened more than a year since the PGA Tour restarted is yet one more grim reminder of how this virus turned the world on its head.

Dethier: There were no winners from this episode. The entire thing was just a huge bummer — for the tournament, for the fans, for the Tour, for Rahm, for our polarized online discourse. I cede the rest of my time to Senator Morikawa, out of California. Here’s what he said:

“People know the risks of not getting vaccinated versus vaccinated.”

 He added this:

“What I was seeing yesterday with how many people were judging Jon for doing this, doing that, like, it’s got to stop. Why are we judging people off that? Jon’s a great guy.”

And that the golfing press and Tour suck, given that we haven't been updated on Rahm's vaccination status, including why he wasn't vaccinated at this rather late date?

Unfortunately, when you DQ a guy leading by six with 18 holes to play, it renders said 18 holes moot.

The second unanswered question is hw this played in the sports betting world?  Are those with money on the Spaniard still Living Under Par™?

As for that irony reference in the lede, this was the scene at The Memorial:

The irony: she burns.

Brooks v. Bryson, The Saga Evolves - I never really bought into the premise that this spat is good for golf.  Oh, I don't mind rivalries and a little bad blood, but two frat boys acting entitled never struck me as a winning formula:

6. Bryson vs. Brooks took another spicy turn last week. After DeChambeau was taunted by Memorial fans with cries of “Brooksy,” Koepka threw more gas on the fire by releasing a video in which he promised to send beer to any fans who had been ejected. When asked whether all the attention on Bryson and Brooks is good for golf, DeChambeau said, in part, “I’m happy that there’s more conversations about me because of the PIP fund” — aka the Tour’s Player Impact Program, which rewards players for generating engagement on social media. How much of the Bryson-Brooks rivalry do you suspect is being driven by the promise of a payday?

Bamberger: None of it. Because we’re the ones driving it, and we’re not getting paid. We’re paying, if anything. Who do you think ultimately banks that PIP fund, those endorsement deals and all the rest? Not Brooksy! Not Bri-Bri! We do.

Zak: I think Koepka seems to be acting differently since the PIP was made public … but we all forget that the PIP has been known to players for much longer. So why now? I think the answer is that he genuinely does not like Bryson, for reasons Bryson shouldn’t necessarily have to answer for. The way he discusses his shots, the way he discusses his game, the sound his cleats make on pavement. Is BDC the most likable dude on Tour? Nope. Is Brooks? Nope. I’m ready for them to put this to bed.

Colgan: This is a delightfully cynical question. I actually don’t think it’s being driven by a payday — at least not anymore. Bryson was clearly bothered by the taunting he received at Muirfield, and Brooks clearly loved it. Brooks genuinely didn’t love Bryson to begin with. Maybe he’s playing it up a bit for the PIP of it all, but I’m holding out hope my man Jim Herman is going to pull up the rear in those rankings, anyway.

Bastable: It all feels a bit silly and frivolous at this point. When you’re integrating sponsor activations into your smack-talk, it’s probably time to step back and cool the jets.

Dethier: Brooks is after something far more valuable than money: Clout. Clout has no true dollar value. Except when it does.

Which is worse?  Bryson gloating about his Meltdown Messages or Brooks egging on spectators to heckle another player?  It reminds of far too strongly of Henry Kissinger's famous quote about the Iraq-Iran war....  It just makes both seem extremely unpleasant and, more than anything, that they are deserving of each other.  

One would assume that the Tour might have an objection to Brooksie offering to liquor up already drunk spectators, but the Tour refuses to disclose its disciplinary actions under the impression that we'll buy their BS that these guys are all gentlemen.  After all, who ya gonna believe?  Kubla Jay or your lying eyes?

I shall leave you here, gentle reader, and circle back to cover anything we missed tomorrow.