Your Friday Frisson

I'm actually starting this in Thursday, as my schedule is a bit cramped.  We'll bounce around from topic to topic, but please forgive any continuity errors.

Dispatched From Planet Bryson - As you might have noticed, I took a pass on the latest Bryson v. Brooksie nonsense from Royal St. George's, as I find the frat-boy act increasingly tedious.  It's good to know that Brooks loves his driver, though it does beg the question as to why it's not therefor performing better...  If Frankie Molinari hasn't been the same guy since the 12th tee at Augusta, Brooks' demise kicked in right about the 10th tee at Bethpage in 2019.

But others are on the case, and we'll lead with Alistair Tait, whose header provides the necessary road map:

How about Bryson DeCharlatan?

Not really sure that charlatans win U.S. Opens, though there was Andy North.  

Tait recounts DeChambeau's comments about his driver, though this bit in Cobra's response seems to be the key to understanding what set the guy off:

“He has never really been happy. Like, it’s very rare where he’s happy.

“Now he’s in a place where he’s swinging a five‑degree driver with 200rpm of ball speed. Everybody is looking for a magic bullet. Well, the magic bullet becomes harder and harder to find the faster you swing and the lower your loft gets.

The Law of Diminishing returns, which you'd expect a guy nicknamed The Professor to understand.

Hallelujah! How many equipment reps have felt like saying that to pampered pros they’ve went out of their way to help only to feel the sharp end of their tongues when things don’t go the tour pro's way on the links? Too many.

Just as well Bryson didn’t play 30 years ago when elite tour pros would often spend weeks testing drivers before they’d dare put the right club into their bags. There was perhaps an excuse to blame the sticks in those days. Not now. Not in this high-tech age.

I have to admit to a certain fascination with DeChambeau when he first arrived on the scene. He seemed a breath of fresh air: the scientific approach, the one-plane swing, irons all the same length, etc. However, he’s becoming less cool the more we see of his personality: the glacial slow play, the haranguing of referees for relief from a single ant, face tripping him when he’s not quite on song, and now the latest brattish, eight-year-old outburst.

Is he fast morphing into Bryson De-Charlatan?

Again, I just don't think he makes the case for DeCharlatan as anything more than a silly jibe.  Now, the bit about Bryson acting like an 8-year old, there he's on firmer ground.  I'm actually a little more charitable there than you might expect.  It's objectionable behavior for sure, it's just that these guys operate in a pressure cooker and scorecards are quite unforgiving, so I concern myself with how, not it, they blow their gaskets.  But I much prefer that his hissy fit be directed at Cobra, than at a cameraman just doing his job...  Not a fan of punching down.

Writing for Golf Australia, Jimmy Emanuel takes on a different foible of our hero:

Watching DeChambeau’s press conference on Tuesday at The Open, one couldn’t help notice the occasionally irritable major winner was on edge the moment he walked into the interview room

and his intense and occasionally heated responses did nothing to dissipate such a thought. Nor heighten any expectations for his chances this week at the major he has struggled with most.

It was a question from Golf Australia magazine columnist John Huggan that best displayed DeChambeau on tenterhooks after an intense period of tournament play and attention.

“I do shout fore. I don't know what you're talking about. There are plenty of people on the tee box that do shout fore. You're bringing up a very controversial thing, which is unfortunate, but 99 percent of the time I do, and unfortunately people think I don't. But that's okay, they can say whatever they want,” DeChambeau snapped when questioned about his widely noted reluctance to make the crowds down the fairway aware he has hit a wayward drive.

But it's his take on The Feud that folk will focus upon:

The so-called “feud” has ignited interest in golf and the two protagonists beyond regular observers, and while we have all enjoyed some of the back and forth it appears to be doing nothing for Bryson when it comes to his job, which is playing golf. A pursuit he has dedicated a complete overhaul of his physical make-up to in the past 18 months and countless hours.

Surely someone in the DeChambeau camp has suggested he attempt to quash the storyline, and cease from engaging in it. Because, put simply, he has taken on an entity in Koepka who is better at the schoolyard mud-slinging than he is.

Whatever your thoughts on Brooks’ locker stuffing jock-like antics, he has consistently proven himself to be more skilled at publicly baiting his target than Bryson.

Koepka uses social media with the deft touch of an upset ex trying to tarnish the reputation of their former flame. Just ask Brandel Chamblee.

Offering free beer to hecklers, celebrating “caddie appreciation day” when news broke of the DeChambeau/Tucker split and posting a photo of his four major trophies in response to a Bryson comment about his lack of abs are just some of the examples of Koepka’s supreme trolling of his compatriot.

I'm pretty sure this is the first recorded instance in which the words "Koepka" and "deft" appear in the same sentence.... Of course, the deftness of an ex is a pretty low bar....

I don't think either guy is coming off particularly well, especially since neither of them is doing anything of note at the office.

 But he does note that the stakes will soon be raised:

The dislike between the two isn’t going anywhere, despite Ryder Cup captain Steve Stricker perhaps wishing it would, but simply not engaging in it further would be advisable for DeChambeau. Or perhaps taking the Tiger Woods approach and waiting till after producing a superior performance on the course to stick the knife in. See Ames, Stephen and Ancer, Abraham.

I'm still unclear as to why Tiger was such a dick to Abe Ancer, but that's not important now.  I strongly believe that team chemistry is way over-rated, but we have a test case for that theory in September.  To the extent that they continue with the cheap shots and play like they did in Paris, they will look even more foolish, for sure.

Olympic Glory - The Olympic Games themselves could be headed for quite the disaster, so golf is very much an afterthought, which only confirms my larger case.  But we're supposed to be excited, so let's run with that hypothesis... We'll start with this perhaps rhetorical question:

Does an Olympic gold medal mean much to PGA Tour players?

No.  next question....

The actual next question is contained in this short 'graph:

So you start to see a pretty obvious pattern — that some golfers who didn’t play in 2016 won’t play in 2021, and for some of the same reasons. The Olympics aren’t that important in the eyes of those golfers, or at least not important enough to disrupt their professional schedule.

Isn't the real question, Why should it be important?  Also worth noting that those telling us it's important weren't willing to reschedule their own events (talking to you, Messrs. Monahan and Slumbers) to make the schedule work.

Fortunately, Alistair Tait is here with hall passes:

Olympic No Shows Deserve Free Pass

What's strange is the logic for said free pass:

The beauty of the 2016 Games for players like Rose and company was the opportunity to attend other sports, to learn from other athletes. Not just athletes, journalists too. Padraig Harrington took in as many opportunities as possible to attend other events. He, teammate Seamus Power and Irish captain Paul McGinley sat in front of me at table tennis one night.

That opportunity has been severely curtailed due to the pandemic. Golfers will likely be confined to the golf course, their hotel and any chance to experience a wide range of sports will probably be restricted, not to mention gaining a deeper understanding of Japanese culture. Fun, huh?

Covering the 2016 Olympic Games is one of the highlights of my career, arguably my favourite experience in golf. I realised those two weeks in Rio just how tiny golf is in the grand scheme of world sport. However, I wouldn’t jump on a plane to Tokyo to cover this year’s games for love nor money. No way.

So let’s give Hull and other golfers who choose not to participate this year a free pass. No one should be forced to go anywhere against their will in the world as it is right now.

Say what?  Except for the length of the trip, how is that any different than their experience in Sandwich last week?

The only difference is the importance of the title and event.  With the field, schedule (at least for the men) and format lacking in any merit, there is simply no reason to make the long flight.  But I seem to be about the only one in golf willing to say that out loud.

One last Olympic bit, involving the tortured Rory McIlroy.  It's an installment of Eamon's Corner, a video feature from the estimable Eamon Lynch, who importantly hails from the exact corner of the universe from which Rory hails:

Patriotism is an easy thing to embrace in a lot of places, but not so much in Northern Ireland. Half the population identifies as British, half as Irish, and that conflict has taken thousands of lives over the years.

Rory McIlroy is of the first generation to grow up in Northern Ireland largely post conflict. So the idea that he has no nationalistic sentiments whatsoever is something that ought to be celebrated, not condemned, because a generation that isn’t motivated by warped and expedient ideas of patriotism is at least an improvement on the generations who were, and perhaps still are, hostage to it.

This is a question I once posed to our friend Lowell Courtney of Portrush, Northern Ireland, which he chose to answer in his travel blog:

British or Irish?

My good golfing buddy Scott Simpson of New York City has posed the question as to whether we, the long-suffering folk of the province known as Norn Iron, consider ourselves to be British or Irish. Now there's a Pandora's box, if ever there was one.

No easy answer, there.  As Eamon notes, Rory is headed to Tokyo, but not with any enthusiasm.  So, as Mark Steyn once said about a former POTUS, he's going to fly around the world to phone it in.

Keiser Rules - Dylan Thomas famously advised us all as follows:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Mike Keiser seems to have taken that advice to heart, as he's got lots to do before the aforementioned light dies:

A year after the Sheep Ranch opened at his Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, golf developer Mike

Keiser has the itch to start building even more courses along the Oregon coast.

Next up for Keiser is a new 18-hole public-access layout on the opposite side of the town of Bandon named New River Dunes, which will be designed by David McLay Kidd, plus a new par-3 course designed by Tom Doak at the main resort.

Both are in the early stages as Keiser, plus his sons Michael and Chris, navigate state and sometimes federal permitting processes. There is no schedule for when a shovel might be stuck in the ground to start construction.

Keiser said demand for tee times at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort has convinced him to add more holes.

Yowzer!  That photo is of the site for the new Par-3, which is just next door to the old Par-3:

If all bureaucratic hurdles are cleared, Doak’s par-3 course likely will be the first addition to the resort’s lineup. Keiser said the layout will be on land near the second hole of Bandon Trails, not far from the par-3 Bandon Preserve and along the coast south of the original Bandon Dunes course. A name has not been formalized, but Keiser is excited at the prospect of the new short course by the designer of the resort’s Pacific Dunes layout, which ranks as the No. 2 modern course in the United States.

“Competition is good, isn’t it?” he said. “Let’s see what Tom Doak has up his sleeve.”

There's technically a third Par-3 called Shorty's, but its not in the league of this new one or the Coore-Crenshaw Preserve.

But the big news is the public course, because that project had been declared deceased:

The second project, the 18-hole New River Dunes layout, is the resumption of a plan Keiser had more than a decade ago. He owned what he describes as a superlative piece of golfing terrain

south of town, and he worked with state officials for eight years on a land swap to expand his contiguous holdings to accommodate a 27-hole course.

But after reaching agreements with the state, complications with the federal Bureau of Land Management – and its ability to possibly reclaim the swapped land – halted the project in 2015. Keiser’s interest shifted to other projects, such as Sand Valley in Wisconsin and the under-construction Cabot Saint Lucia in the Caribbean, which is slated to open in 2022.

Keiser is now ready to resume the project with just 18 holes on land he already owns, making for far fewer headaches in the approval process than if he had stuck with original plans for 27 holes.

Dream Golf, he called it, though the book will need several updates.  That book detailing the creation of the resort is a shockingly good read, as it's quite the improbable read.

But it's not like he didn't already have a full plate.  he's still involved in trying to revive the plans for Coul Links near Dornoch in the Scottish Highlands, but he's also recreating the freaking Lido in central Wisconsin.  Forget the Olympics, this kids is how you grow the game, by making it fun and interesting.

Alan, Asked - This edition has been up for a while, and you'll recall we had previously grabbed his rankings of Open venues.  Now we'll riff on the leftovers, starting with that bizarre scene from the Scottish Open:

#AskAlan, A lot of comments about the incident in Scotland with Rory and the lack of reaction from his caddie. What is the expectation on Tour for this? Is “defending the bag” in the job spec or is intercepting potential lunatics above the pay grade? @TheSecretDuffer

It’s very situational. If a drunken frat boy at the Phoenix Open tried to run off with a club, I think any caddie would be a lot more aggressive. In that context the interloper is perceived as an annoyance, not a threat. But the creepy manner and dead-eyed stare of the dude in Scotland made that encounter much more unsettling. He was hemmed in by a grandstand, so the tool of Rory’s trade wasn’t going anywhere.

I think de-escalation was the right tactic, and Harry Diamond was wise to let trained security deal with the trespasser. Though part of me certainly wishes he had grabbed a long iron and started jousting with the guy as if they were the Dread Pirate Roberts and Inigo Montoya.

That's a reasonable take, though many of us would have liked to see such an incident back when Stevie was on Tiger's bag.  

You'll like Alan's take on this one:

El Pato’s arrest and 2-year prison sentence for domestic violence is a very sad story. He rose out of poverty, won the Masters and became a role model for Argentina’s kids. Will the

PGA Tour allow him back on the tour? @LaBeets50

Well, professional sports is full of athletes who have committed serious crimes and returned to the playing fields. Golf is admittedly different because the sport is packaged as consisting of nothing but “perfect gentlemen,” to use a felicitous phrase. But if Cabrera, who turns 52 in September, pays his debt to society and expresses remorse, or at least contrition, I’m not sure how even the lords of Ponte Vedra Beach can bar him from the Senior tour.

The more interesting question is whether he’ll set foot on Augusta National again. That tournament is an invitational hosted by an aggressively private club. Past champs are invited back by custom, but the green jackets can do whatever they damn well please. I can’t imagine he’ll be welcomed back anytime soon.

And there could be a similar issue with Thunderbear, Thorbjørn Olesen, whose case is still pending.  Should he rise to the top ranks of the game after being convicted, that would present quite the dilemma.

How many times do you think I’ll have to see #AskAlan before I stop accidentally reading it as #Alaskan? If you had to pick 5 golfers to take penalty kicks to win the Euro cup, who would you pick? @luke_peacock

Well, I do live in Northern California, so #BakedAlan could be a thing. Have you seen European golfers throw a ball? Collectively, it ain’t pretty. I’m assuming they have better skills at footie, but let us not forget Rory McIlroy blew out his Achilles tripping over a soccer ball. Let’s tweak this slightly and pretend the Ryder Cup finishes in a tie and will be decided in a putt-off of 15-footers. Here are the Euros I’d want for that shootout, in this order:

1. Jon Rahm
2. Ian Poulter
3. Shane Lowry
4. Rory McIlroy
5. Tyrell Hatton

I'm sorry, you're asking an American about Euro players' prowess at soccer?  Next question.

Crazy as that was, here's a second Eurotrash centered query:

#AskAlan, What kind of ratings/interest would there be if Euro Tour events were more widely available on TV in the U.S.? It seems like they don’t air very much of it, and it’s only on Golf Channel. @ImPaulieWalnuts

Interest would be substantial, because the courses are more exotic and/or interesting, the players more fun, the social media more sophisticated and the TV presentation far more pleasing.

 They are on and nobody watches... which is the confusing part for you?

#AskAlan, our U.S. Olympic golf teams look formidable, especially the Kordas, Danielle Kang and Lexi. What’s your medal predictions for each team? Also, do you think the four guys bond enough in Tokyo to give us an extra push in Ryder Cup play? Thanks. @forearmshivers

It’s sooo hard to predict stroke play. But I’d be shocked if the U.S. women didn’t bring home at least one medal. The men in red, white and blue (JT, Morikawa, Xander and Bryson) inspire less confidence. Only Collin and Schauffele are in decent form, although Thomas showed some signs of life at the Scottish Open. Xander, of course, hasn’t won a tournament in 2½ years, but unlike on Tour, finishing second or third at the Olympics does come with some hardware. To be sure, it’s a formidable quartet. I can’t wait to watch it play out.

The Ryder Cup question is intriguing particularly because of DeChambeau. His game and personality are so, uh, specific it is vital the U.S. identify suitable playing partners. Schauffele and Morikawa are so mild-mannered and self-contained they are both prime candidates, so hopefully through all the team bonding in Tokyo a natural partnership will emerge.

OK, stroke play is admittedly difficult to predict, but Lexi in stroke play is drearily predictable.  If she gets so much as a sniff of a medal, look out below.

As for the guys bonding?  What the hell is Alan talking about?  This is an individual event and they won't be paired with each other, so a big fat NO.  Oh, and the guy he needs to patch it up with won't be there...

When/will we ever see an LPGA player go full Bryson: bulk way up and try to fly it past everyone? Clearly there are some physical limitations, but some of the new guard have to be thinking about it. Thank you, #AskAlan @TBromfman

Well, Annika Sorenstam kind of did this around the turn of the century, and the distance she picked up helped transform her from a great player to a legend. But she didn’t go full Bryson. There are powerful forces preventing any female golfer from packing on 20 or 30 pounds, beyond physiology: societal norms and peer pressure. But if winning is all that matters, I’d love to see an LPGA player go for it. The advantage would be profound.

 Besides every other possible answer, the Bryson experiment is currently under booth review....

I got 15th in the Championship flight (17 strokes out of first place) of my City Mid Am, but would have been tied for first in the first flight. Should I work more on my game or my handicap management moving forward? @Golfingbrock

Juicing the handicap is the more surefire way to nab a trophy, but I think improving as a golfer would be more satisfying. Just to be safe, you should probably do both!

We might not be able to stop it, but we sure don't want to be encouraging it either...

 Have a great weekend, and we'll catch up on Monday.