Monday, June 28, 2021

Weekend Wrap

 A wild weekend that featured two majors and just a little bonus golf in Hartford.  Where to begin?

Taking The Sudden out of Death - When I got to the TV in late afternoon, I opted to start with the taped women's major, an interesting mano a mano (you'd prefer perhaps, birthing person a birthing person?)battle of contrasting golf games.  However, I overheard Employee No. 2 watching the men live at time that indicated something special must be happening:

Little did anyone know that the tournament itself would wind up being the amuse-bouche. The main dish was an eight-hole playoff culminating with fans doing the wave around the 18th green and par after agonizing par being made on a course that yielded 263 birdies in the final round.

When it was over, English outlasted Hickok after eight playoff holes to earn his fourth PGA Tour win. This was the first time a PGA Tour playoff went to eight holes since 2012 when John Huh defeated Robert Allenby at the Mayakoba Golf Classic.

“This was awesome. The fans were keeping us in this it, getting the juice from them,” English said. “That’s been really all afternoon. Hats off to Kramer. What a competitor. We were both grinding. That’s what it was all about. We were grinding and trying our hardest.”

After seven holes of back and forth golf, with each player having his chances to win but not capitalizing, Hickok’s approach to the 18th green on the eighth playoff hole went 27 feet past the hole. The crowd roared and chanted his name (“Kramer! Kramer! Kramer!), then quieted before English hit a gap wedge from 138 yards out that stopped just over five feet.

I missed this sequence but, ironically, on a course noted for its birdies and crooked numbers, the playoff featured a seemingly endless stream of pars, though some were awfully well-earned:

Hickok thought he had the tournament won twice. With English plugged in a greenside bunker on the second playoff hole, Hickok thought his 43 birdie putt was going in, but it curled around the cup and lipped out. His par was virtually guaranteed, putting all the pressure on English, but the former University of Georgia All-American drained the seven-footer to save par and extend the playoff.

Take a gander at this lie English drew:

Good stuff.  Perhaps the most amazing part of all is that CBS stayed with the playoff until the end, pushing 60 Minutes deep into the gloaming.

Daniel Rappaport covers the day here, including this one the "loser":

As for Hickok, the temptation is to portray this as a heartbreaking defeat. Truth is, this was the
best day of his professional life. Coming into this week, the 29-year-old had two PGA Tour top-10s to his name, and both came in opposite-field events. This was his first time anywhere near contention on tour, playing in the final group alongside honorary Hartford resident Bubba Watson—who squandered a chance for a fourth Travelers title by playing his last five holes in six over par. All Hickok did was birdie the 18th hole to get into a playoff.

“I learned that I belong,” Hickok said. “I just looked at it like it was a privilege. I just wanted to enjoy it and just take it like it is. I was just so happy to be in this situation, and I'm just going to draw on this going forward in my career and just hopefully learn a lot from it.”

There's still some heartbreak involved, but that's a first class attitude.  It's just so hard to cement status out there, and this was tantalizingly close to solving that issue for the young man.  Although the second place finish certainly helps:

Hickok should’ve been shaking in his boots and nervous as hell when he arrived at the 18th tee for the first extra hole. Only he could not stop smiling. The hard part was already done—Hickok had locked up a solo second at worst, which meant 300 FedEx Cup points, which meant he’d essentially locked up his spot on the Big Tour for at least another season after starting the day 139th on the FedEx Cup points list. The playoff? Gravy.

So, so, sooooo much gravy.

Joel Beall covers a couple of side notes to the event, including this unexpected collapse:

With five holes left Bubba Watson held a one-shot lead. Five holes later, Watson was left to wonder what the heck just happened.

Watson, who has won the Travelers Championship three times in his career, was denied a record-tying fourth title after playing the final five holes in six over.

“Gosh, I mean, the close to the round, I thought I hit good shots,” Watson said afterwards.

The leakage started at the 13th, when Watson hit a poor lay-up at the par 5. His third trickled up to the edge of the green and his birdie did not fall, taking 5 on the third-easiest hole on the course. At the 14th, Watson’s approach missed the green to the left and his putt from the fringe barely reached the green, giving Bubba a bogey. He found a pond on the drivable par-4 15th, leading to his second straight bogey. Then a third at the par-3 16th thanks to a three-jack.

Watson’s tournament run officially ended at the 17th when he dumped his approach in the same pond that swallowed his drive on the 15th, leading to a double. The final damage was a three-over 73, dropping from first to T-19 in 90 minutes.

It's a shock ant a collapse by Bubba has the power to shock, but who could see it coming with his history at this venue and play up until that moment.  Part of it is the nature of the course, at least that finishing stretch, with the remainder probably accounted for by the nature of Bubba...

 And this cry for help:

Brooks Koepka has called the major championships “easy,” and as audacious as that claim is, his
résumé backs it up. What often goes unsaid is Koepka’s outlook on the tournaments outside those four weeks. On Sunday, Koepka gave us a glimpse into that mindset.

Koepka, who contended for last week’s U.S. Open but fell just short, turned in an admirable performance at TPC River Highlands with a final-round 65 translating into a T-5 finish. But when asked if he was battling mental or physical fatigue following Torrey Pines, the four-time major winner was blunt in his assessment.

“It's all mental. It's tough to focus like that for …I'm going to be flat out honest,” Koepka said. “A major I get excited and I feel stuff on the first tee. I just struggle to do that in regular events.

“The focus and discipline is there in a major where it's not here. I kind of go for everything.”

This argument/excuse has changed with the times.  Back when Brooksie as bagging majors, it almost felt like a quaint throwback.  Now that Brooksie is drop-kicking majors away like everyone else, it just seems a little whiny....

Whoa, Nellie! - It had the feel of Tiger v. Chris DiMarco, no?  Those seeming mismatches were always surprisingly competitive, as was this for quite a while:

As screams and hollers rained from the crowd around the 18th green at Atlanta Athletic Club, American golf fans greeted their next superstar.

Nelly Korda — whose talent and resume had gotten good enough to take over unenviable ownership of “Best Player Without a Major” — finally added the most important line to her CV: major champion.

“I just can’t believe it,” she said. “I’m still in shock.”

Her three-shot victory at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship represents the 22-year-old’s sixth win on the LPGA Tour, and she becomes the first American to win a women’s major since 2018. Korda also becomes the No. 1-ranked player in the world with the win, overtaking Jin Young Ko.

To get her hands on the trophy, Korda had to go head-to-head on the weekend with the dogged Lizette Salas. The short-hitting (yet deadly accurate) veteran proved a formidable opponent.

And Salas hung tough for the longest time, but she was playing her second shots from 35-50 yards behind Nellie all week.   This was the early kill shot, though apparently it barely grazed Salas:

Though this was ultimately the critical exchange:

In the end, though, the cream rose, and the killing blow came on another par-5, the 12th, where a massive drive set up a 6-iron from 173 yards that crawled mere feet over the water guarding the green, landed softly and set up another short eagle putt that she converted. (Later, Korda admitted she chunked the shot, and it was fortunate that after some debate with her caddie Jason McDede she’d opted for the longer club.) Salas blundered her third shot, finding the back bunker on a short approach, and by the time she made bogey, the one-shot margin had become four. Korda, at 20 under, followed up that eagle with a textbook par at 13, a birdie at 14, and it was like the wind came out of Salas’ sails at last. She continued to fight, but how do you maintain faith when your opponent simply has no flaws? You could say that Korda was too good, or you could say that the tournament was about eight holes too long for Salas, who simply couldn’t play that far above her head on a scorching Sunday outside Atlanta. In both cases, you’d be right.

As in our discussion of TPC River Highlands above, it's the kind of golf course that forces the player to challenge the water repeatedly, but that shot of Nelly's on No. 12 was really close.... As for Salas, her short game had been impeccable all week, but that wedge was seemingly 25 yards too long.   

The more interesting question as relates to Nelly is what comes next.  The talent is irrefutable, though perhaps she's just a little more high strung than is recognized:

Korda, for her part, embodied the ethos of her superlative family in the aftermath. She was happy, but controlled—living in the moment. As Jessica Korda noted earlier in the week, they have been

trained to limit their focus to a very narrow scope. Along with genetics, it accounts for the success of both daughters and their brother Sebastian, a rising star in American tennis, in professional sports. It may be that Nelly diverges the most from that ethos, as she had to be reminded by McDede to stop thinking too far ahead on Sunday and has had her battles with nerves. It may also be that she is the most talented of one of the world’s great athletic families. She was effusive, as she stood next to her trophy, about the role that family plays.

Nelly was asked if she ever felt like destiny was on her side on Sunday, that she meant to win, and that even her errors would pale in comparison to the triumphs that awaited her. In true fashion, she backed down from the more dramatic implications, and spoke of the luck on No. 12.

“When I chunked it and it flew the water,” she joked, recognizing her moment of destiny. “Yeah, in golf you’re going to get bad bounces with good shots and you’re going to hit it close with really bad shots. You’re going to chunk it. That’s just golf. I keep reminding myself that I’ve hit amazing shots in the past, and I’ve been completely screwed in a sense. In a way, no, I didn’t really think about it too much. I just honestly right then and there, I was like, Oh, my God, thank God that flew the water.”

She was virtually flawless, which made the God-awful swing on No. 15 that much more of a shock.  But she reeled it back in and the cushion was sufficient to allow her to play to conservative lines.

We always fall into the trap that a breakthrough win will open the floodgates, and that assumption seems even more appropriate than usual for Nelly...  or, who knows, maybe it's time for her big sister to grab one.  Or, yanno, Wimbledon...

What Women Want - Jeff Babineau has a blindingly obvious piece on the Olympics, but I just enjoy the whiplash induced by his lede two paragraphs:

Fair or not, there is a general sense that male professional golfers give off a vibe of disturbing disinterest in the Olympic Games. Some of those who are choosing to show up seem to be doing so as if it were a chore to be ticked off between cleaning the gutters and wheeling the garbage to the end of the drive. Or attending Sunday brunch at Grandma’s house.

That sounds very troubling...  I mean, no ordinary, run of the mill disinterest, but rather the disturbing kind...Of course, the last tour pro to actually clean his own gutters was.... well, have any?

But, see if you can suss out the cognitive dissonance?

Truthfully, five of world’s top six male players plan to be in Tokyo in a few weeks, with Americans Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Xander Schauffele and Bryson DeChambeau joining world No. 1 Jon Rahm of Spain. The seventh-ranked player in the world, Patrick Cantlay, would love to be there, but he can’t, as the four-man U.S. roster declared “last call” after DeChambeau’s name at No. 6. That goes for Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed, too, who are top-10 players on the outside looking in.

Jeff, have you perhaps considered the possibility that the exclusion of Cantlay and others might have caused that "disturbing disinterest"? 

To the extent that Jeff has a point, it's that the ladies are all-in on the Olympics:

“I just think men golfers, they just have so many big events,” 2016 women’s gold medalist Inbee Park of South Korea said at this week’s KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. “They definitely play a different level of golf with a lot of different perspective. They have so many opportunities
and so many different weeks with so many big tournaments. For us, I think it's a little different. We're not as big as men's golf. I think girls just treat it a little differently.

“I’m sure not everyone's goal is the Olympics. It really depends on the player, but I think most of the players think that it's a very special opportunity, and I think I know a lot of Korean girls, I think it's one of their most wanted goals to be on the team. For me as well. I've achieved a lot in golf, won a lot of majors, won a lot of tournaments, but winning the gold medal was something really different. I wish a lot of the players think the same and treat Olympics the same. I think it's definitely something that you should experience.”

How good do you have to be to make the South Korean Olympic team? Well, the women’s standings won’t be finalized until Monday, but right now, Hyo-Jo Kim holds down the fourth spot (a team can have four players if all are ranked top 15), and she’s No. 8 in the Rolex Rankings. In truth, what we have on the LPGA Tour — take this week’s event in Atlanta, for instance — is an Olympics on wheels that travels from town to town.

Yes, and that exclusion of South Korean women golfers is every bit as troubling as the exclusion of Patrick Cantlay.  But the simple fact is that the women need it more, so of course they embrace it, as well as the absence of comparable scheduling gluts.  Dof bites man, though Inbee seems to understand reality far better than the allegedly dispassionate journalist.

Today in Dead White Men - A few weeks back I was at Pelham Country Club with the Met. Golf Writers Association, an event that normally wouldn't merit notice, the more so since we got rained out after eight holes.  Pelham is a once-proud golf club that modern life has treated harshly, specifically Route 95 now bisects their golf course.  But its one claim to fame is that it hosted the 1923 PGA Championship, which produced the best final round match of that event's match-play era.  Here's today's history lesson:


It's also instructive in the context of the Brooksie-Bryson cage match.  There have, of course, always been rivalries and resentments in our game, so bad blood is nothing new.  

Today in Cart Drivers - Padraig has added a couple of Euro stalwarts to his management team:

The European Ryder Cup team is starting to take shape, from the top down at least, as Padraig
Harrington added two new names to his list of vice captains Wednesday.

Martin Kaymer and Graeme McDowell are the new men for the job, and both will make their first stints as vice captains in their respective careers. Kaymer, 36, has played on four Ryder Cup teams, memorably draining the winning putt for the Euros at the Miracle at Medinah in 2012. McDowell, 41, also competed in four Cups, and it was his match victory in 2010 that sealed the win at Celtic Manor. They’ll both join Luke Donald as Harrington’s right hand men at Whistling Straits in September.

“I feel honored and humbled to be part of Captain Harrington’s Team of Vice Captains at Whistling Straits later this year,” Kaymer said in a post on Instagram. “Still have huge aspirations on making the Team, however I am more than happy to support the Team in any way possible and keep the trophy in Europe.”

Amusing, at least to your humble blogger.  The U.S. adds a vice-captain and the world yawns.   Padraig adds a couple of guys, and every American golf fan is forced to relive Ryder Cup trauma from the past.  Of course our guys will win this home game.... right?

Today in Reversible Golf Courses - Have you ever heard of https://golf.com/travel/forest-dunes-the-loop-golf-course/The Loop?  Just an amusing exercise in architecture:

Its reversible course, The Loop, is magnificent

In this line of work, I’m lucky enough to play a fair number of rounds at excellent golf courses. And perhaps once a year I’ll finish playing a course and think, “Wow, that’s unlike anything I’ve seen before.” The Loop is one of those tracks. There is basically nothing like it.

Our sherpa for the week was Tyler Tabor, a modest 6-handicap who has worked at Forest Dunes for four years. He put it plainly when he said, “We believe it’s the first and only truly reversible course in America.” Need any more encouragement?

While it’s not the only reversible course in the country, The Loop might be the best. It switches direction based on the calendar, with the Black Course on odd numbered days and the Red Course on even numbered days. (For those wondering, on the few 31st days of summer months, they’ll host an event called The Dual, a two-man best ball that has players play the course in one direction during the morning and the opposite direction in the afternoon.)

And so any trip to Forest Dunes requires at least two days, one to play The Loop in each direction, the second of which will really get your head spinning. Wait, what hole was this yesterday? This was a par-4 green from that direction? Oh, that’s the big bunker you played from 16 hours ago…” No golf course invokes the word “yesterday” more than The Loop.

Just a crazy concept, until you realize that for centuries they played The Old Course in the opposite direction its played today...

I shall leave you there and we'll catch up later in the week.

 

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