Midweek Musings

I'm actually starting this post on Tuesday morning, but sufficiently late that I've titled it in anticipation of a Wednesday publishing date.

PNC Fever - Dylan Dethier devotes his Monday column (which for some reason does not carry the Monday Finish title) to this event, including many reminisces about last year's version thereof.  As the header implies, there's lots of reasons above and beyond Tiger & Charlie (or should it be Charlie & Tiger?) to tune in.  Not sure your humble blogger agrees:

John Daly, Southern Santa

The golf world may have no better avatar than that of John Daly to celebrate the Christmas season. He has the beard. The figure. The white hair. The fondness for red clothing. Sure, the cigarette habit may be a little off-putting for youngsters, but they’ll know an icon when they see one. Bad Santa is back.

— Dylan Dethier (@dylan_dethier) December 18, 2020

That's one lap I'm guessing Charlie will never sit upon... Hey, at least it's an event where he's not taking a spot that would be better saved for an up-and-coming young player, and I've no objections to his golf cart...  And yet, I'll still instinctively recoil from the screen in horror.

 What else ya got, Dylan:

Mark O’Meara’s hipster kid

An actual quote from Mark O’Meara’s son Shaun at last year’s event: “I told Dad, ‘You handle playing well and I’ll handle looking good.’”

Mark O’Meara has spent his golf career very much blending into the PGA Tour’s aesthetic. Shaun, on the other hand, would prefer to shake things up a little bit. That seems to be his personality as well as his profession; he’s the Director of Sales for Duvin Design, which probably lends itself to a slightly more avant-garde look on the course. Like, say, this:

 

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A post shared by Shaun O'Meara (@shaunom)

OK, well that's at least fun for thirty seconds or so, which means I prefer it greatly to the Dalys...

 Dylan also reminds us of a few bits from last year that may have escaped your memory banks.  First, I was indeed happy to see Mom out there last year:

Charlie’s fan club

Tiger Woods wasn’t the only parent on hand to watch Charlie during the PNC’s final round. His ex-wife Elin Nordegren was among those following from outside the ropes, taking in the action

with their daughter, Sam. We’ve heard Tiger talk about his role as Charlie’s father for years, but Elin has (understandably!) removed herself from the public eye over the last decade. It was fantastic to see her there with her daughter, supporting her son, watching some golf at the fan-free PNC.

How do you handle complex family dynamics on a live TV broadcast? Golf Channel tried to strike the balance all week, and when it came to discussing Nordegren’s appearance they turned to former teammate and longtime Woods friend Notah Begay III, who shed some light on their parenting dynamic.

“It’s been incredible,” Begay III said. “You never know how a parent separation is going to affect the kids and both Tiger and Elin have made it such a huge priority to protect the interests of their kids and their privacy. Tiger talked about it yesterday in his post-round comments, making sure he takes the brunt of the media requests here, trying to make sure that both Sam and Charlie, from both Elin and Tiger, have a nice quality childhood like anybody else out there.”

I'm a big fan of Elin's, which has little to do with her being a scalding hot Swedish babe (not that there's anything wrong with that).  But we always hear parents talk about how its' about the kids, then act in childish and emotionally destructive ways to exact revenge.  Elin seems to have walked the walk after an especially public humiliation at the hands of her ex, but seems to have remembered the point.

In my experience, very few remember this from a year ago:

A less-than-healthy Tiger Woods

This is something we’re dearly hoping not to see this year. What has been lost to the sands of time is the fact that Tiger played last year’s competition at less-than-perfect health, notably wincing after some full swings, captured nicely by Eric Patterson below:

— Eric Patterson (@EPatGolf) December 19, 202

A pessimistic column would point out that this was pre-crash, pre-surgeries, pre-rehab. There’s no way he can walk, move or swing as well this year. This is not that column. Instead, while we know he’ll be limited both walking and swinging, what about the possibility that Woods is actually going to be on a better health trajectory this year than he was in December 2020? His entire life is currently devoted to recovery. What if it all works?

We’ll find out how that progress is going this weekend.

I remember that he couldn't bend over to retrieve the ball from the hole...

A couple of notes about the schedule, including that Tiger will be pegging it Friday:

But refresh your social media starting early Friday.

At 9 ET that morning, at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Orlando, Fla., some 10 months after

sustaining multiple injuries in a car crash, the 15-time major winner is playing golf in public again. In front of fans, too.

While Woods said last week that he was pairing with son Charlie for Saturday and Sunday’s parent-child PNC Championship, the event announced Monday that the elder Woods will also play in Friday’s pro-am. He and Matt Kuchar tee off at 9 a.m. off tee No. 1 (12-year-old Charlie is not playing ahead of the event), and with the gates opening at 7 a.m., you can expect a tweet or 10 from the grounds at the now-sold-out event.

Is this wise?  I mean, he won't be able to use Charlie's drives in a Pro-Am....

Maddingly, they're also doing the split-tee thing on TV coverage:

TV coverage begins Friday, too, albeit about six-and-a-half hours after the last pro-am groups are off, as Golf Channel will have a “Pro-Am Special” from 5-6 p.m. ET. From there, Golf Channel will show Saturday’s first round from the PNC from 1:30-2:30 p.m. ET, and NBC will pick it up from 2:30-5:30 p.m., and for Sunday’s final round, the coverage slot is an hour earlier — Golf Channel from 12:30-1 p.m., and NBC from 1-4:30 p.m.

Whatever.... But it's more network coverage than the LPGA gets in a year, so take that, Mike Whan.

I'm sure we'll have more as the week goes on....

The Year That Was -  Golf Digest has continued to roll out their Newsmakers of the Year feature, and they've gotten as far as No. Six.  We haven't check in a bit, so let's just grab some items (seemingly) at random, including this guy that had quite the wacky year, ending literally in tatters:

No. 17: Rory McIlroy

Somewhat ironically, but perhaps not too surprisingly, Rory McIlroy’s final competitive

appearance of 2021 ended up closely resembling much of what constituted the Northern Irishman’s year on the links. McIlroy’s four rounds at the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas added up to a mediocre finish, the 72 holes containing an inconsistent mix of really fine play, some so-so stuff and, here and there, a few really big numbers. It was that sort of season for the man many see as the most naturally gifted of golf’s elite. His generally desultory play in the Ryder Cup provoked tears of frustration. And in the majors the pattern was familiar. A T-7 in the U.S. Open was good, if ultimately disappointing. The T-46 and T-49 finishes in the Open Championship and the PGA were as close to anonymous as McIlroy gets. But the missed-cut at the Masters—the missing piece in his career Grand Slam collection—represented the most disappointing aspect of a year that nevertheless boasted two victories on the PGA Tour (bumping his career total to 20) and earnings close to $4.5 million. McIlroy is held to a higher standard than most, of course. Those statistics would sound OK for the vast majority. But not for a four-time major champion. So it is that 2021 will surely go down as one of the more disappointing years of McIlroy’s already Hall of Fame career. How could it be otherwise? Seven summers have passed since that fourth major victory was added to McIlroy’s collection. And at one point during 2021, the dip in the 32-year-old’s performance level saw him descend as far as 16th in the world, albeit he will end the year just inside the top 10. Still, with McIlroy there remains a sense of anticipation. The flashes of almost peerless brilliance forever provide hope of better things. But at least one thing needs to change in 2022. The more than occasional making of doubles and triples is a habit that needs to be eliminated, or at least reduced. —John Huggan

Have we ever discussed the art of the accompanying photo?  It's its own art form, occasionally offering opportunities for sly digs or sub rosa jokes.  In this case, it's quite the missed opportunity, as one specific shirt figures prominently in Rory's 2021.  But it's of a piece with Huggan's anodyne description of Rory's year, focusing on his mediocrity at Albany in lieu of his epic meltdown the week before.  Yanno, which led to his ad lib modifications of his shirt:

If we're filtering for 2022 impact, this one should be far higher:

No. 8: Nelly Korda & Jin Young Ko

For all the hot air and hand-wringing exhausted over the feud between Bryson DeChambeau and Brook Koepka in 2021, the best on-course rivalry in golf was happening elsewhere. On the LPGA Tour, Jin Young Ko and Nelly Korda had separated themselves from their peers over the

course of the season. The 26-year-old South Korean and a 23-year-old American traded the No. 1 spot in the Rolex World Ranking as both players won four times on tour before the season’s final event, the CME Group Tour Championship. When they arrived at Tiburon Golf Club in Naples, Fla., the tour’s biggest honor was still up for grabs: Rolex Player of the Year. Each had gotten to this point following different paths. Korda’s wins spanned from February to November and included her first major championship, the KPMG Women’s PGA (she also could boast having won the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics). Ko packed her four victories into an eight-tournament stretch (one that also included a tour-record-tying 14 straight rounds in the 60s) just before the finale, the early part of her 2021 season slowed as she mourned the death of her grandmother. It came down to Sunday’s final round, both players in a four-way tie for the tournament lead with 18 holes remaining. In the end, Ko’s late-season momentum continued. Despite nursing a wrist injury that limited her practice routine, Ko shot a statement-making nine-under 63 to win the tournament, claim the $1.5 million first prize and earn POY honors for the second time in three years. Over her last 63 holes, Ko hit every green in regulation, a bit of perfection that proved necessary to fend off Korda. “I was really sad early in the year. I couldn’t think that I could win again,” Ko said after the round as she spoke emotionally about her return to competition. Meanwhile, Korda had no regrets about her performance in 2021. “You may come out of this thinking, ‘Hey, I didn't win an award. It wasn't that good of a year.’ If I look back, it's like, ‘Jesus, I've done a lot.’” Best of all, both Ko and Korda appear motivated to continue their duel into 2022 and beyond. —Keely Levins

The Match VI?  I kid because....well, you know.   They'll have to work some women in, but you just know that Lexi will be one of them... Of course, even with Jin Young's understandably limited English, they couldn't be less engaging than those frat boys.

Shockingly, Bryson barely eked out a top ten position and this one ended up a disappointing sixth:

No. 6: Challenges to the PGA Tour

The arrival of the pandemic in 2020 did not just put a pause on the PGA Tour schedule and quiet the galleries, it also hushed the maneuvering and public speculation around disruptor leagues that

threatening the tour’s existence. But the return of a full schedule and some noise outside the ropes brought those challengers out of the shadows again in 2021. Mind you, there were new wrinkles to these power plays, with the Premier Golf League, the challenger garnering all the attention in those weeks leading up to the pandemic, splitting with its Saudi funding. Instead, the Saudis created their own venture, which moved beyond media reports and driving-range gossip into an official press release announcing its name, LIV Golf Investments, and CEO, Greg Norman, before the year was out. The re-emergence of these challengers, publicly, started in early May, with a Telegraph report of offers for $30 million or more to players like Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Phil Mickelson. At the time, the deals were understood to be from the PGL, but it quickly became clear there had been a Saudi split. Agents met with Saudi representatives during the PGA Championship, and PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh came out in support of the PGA Tour, threatening a Ryder Cup ban for defectors. Later in the year, Andy Gardiner, the original (and still) architect of the Premier Golf League, returned to the scene on the No Laying Up podcast, emphasizing their separation from the Saudis and proposing a partnership arrangement with the PGA Tour. The challengers forced the PGA Tour to react in ways that may or may not improve its product to fortify itself against these threats. The Player Impact Program (PIP) entered our lexicon and will probably never leave it. With a new television deal kicking into effect, the arms race continues with dramatic purse increases coming down the pike. The year closes with a staring contest over waivers to play in the Saudi International, but the PGA Tour still safely the king of its hill. Still, that doesn’t mean the status quo remains, as they have been and will continue to adapt to external challengers trying to reward their top stars with a greater piece of the pie. —Brendan Porath

How's the processing of those waivers going, Jay?  You don't want to be leaving them for the last moment.

Dan Rappaport sums up the year in quotes, including one of our favorite pinatas:

"It's an unfortunate situation, obviously but at the end of the day when you finish a round, and the head rules official comes up to you and has the video and shows everything that went down to the whole group and says that you've done this perfectly, you did this the exact right way, the protocols you did were spot on—at that point, I feel great about it." —Patrick Reed, Jan. 31

It may feel like a decade ago, but Reed’s latest rules imbroglio did indeed fall in 2021. On Saturday of the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, Reed claimed his second shot on the par-4 10th embedded into the wet turf, which would entitle him to a free drop. The only problem is, television cameras quite clearly showed the ball bouncing in the rough, which would’ve made it virtually impossible for the ball to embed. Reed also picked up the ball before calling a rules official, so the official wasn’t able to see the lie before making a determination. By the letter of the Rules book, Reed did not break any rules (players are allowed to determine on their own if a ball is embedded or not) and was not penalized. He went on to win the tournament by five shots with a breathtaking short-game display, but all anyone wanted to talk about were his active fingers. People simply don’t forget.

Well, it seems far more likely that he called you a perfect a*****e, but whatev.  It's just troubling how bad things just follow this nice man around...

I didn't catch this one at the time, but who doesn't like a life-changing moment:

“I get LPGA? Are you kidding me?” —Yuka Saso, June 6

As Lexi Thompson struggled on the back nine Sunday at Olympic Club, Saso at 19-year-old from the Philippines, held steady to join Inbee Park as the youngest-ever winners of the U.S. Women’s Open. This moment, caught by a cellphone camera after the life-changing victory, perfectly conveyed Saso’s unassuming nature—she legitimately had no idea that winning perhaps the biggest title in women’s golf gave her playing privileges on the LPGA Tour. On that chilly afternoon in San Francisco, a star was born.

See, Lexi is a giver....

Crow, eaten:

"I made some comments before that were probably uneducated and impulsive, but coming here experiencing it, seeing, feeling everything that goes on, not just Olympic golf but just

the Olympics in general, that sort of Olympic spirit's definitely bitten me and I'm excited how this week's turned out and excited for the future.” —Rory McIlroy, Aug. 1

Five years after Zika sucked the fun out of golf’s return to the Olympics, another, more infamous virus threw a wrench in proceedings once again. A number of top players opted against making the trip to the COVID-delayed games in Tokyo, and the ones that did—including McIlroy and Xander Schauffele, the eventual gold medalist—expressed ambivalence toward restrictions. There was hardly any buzz … until the tournament started. Something about national pride seems to always ratchet up intensity, and Sunday’s battle took on a major-like feel. McIlroy’s comments after the tournament finished (and he’d nearly won a bronze medal) captured the new mood: the Olympics were awesome, and I can’t believe I almost didn’t come. Something tells us Paris will be a star-studded affair.

This one amuses your humble blogger, because he was forced to eat virtually the same crow over the Ryder Cup as here about the Olympics.  But the thing is, we believe him about the Ryder Cup.... That talk about the Olympics might have hit me differently had they been able to leave their hotel rooms in Tokyo.

But, and this is an important point, we should give Rory a pass on the Olympics for all the usual reasons, plus one.  The one being that only for a handful of people is the choice of country to represent such a no-win proposition.

i do hate when one of my faves says something stupid, but there we have it:

“On course, the top guys don’t get enough. Look, I’m not selling a single ticket. Maybe to a couple buddies, but I probably gave them free tickets anyway. I’m not bringing anyone here. I’m not adding a ton of value outside of maybe some Twitter stuff. The top guys who actually move the needle, who get people to watch, absolutely do not make enough.” —Joel Dahmen, Nov. 3

The PGA Tour’s challengers—yes, plural, for there is Greg Norman’s LIV Golf Investments and the Premier Golf League—have shined a light on the tour’s payment structure. What Norman in particular hope to exploit is the tour’s debatably outdated payment structure, which rewards Tiger Woods the same as Joel Dahmen the same money for finishing eighth. Dahmen thinks that’s ludicrous, and the Tour has begun to concede to the stars’ wishes by establishing the PIP and reportedly kicking around an idea for a newer, richer version of the World Golf Championships.

What I love most is that everyone makes this point without feeling the need to prove it.  Given that, in a recent analysis, Tiger was the second highest yielding athlete of all time after Michael Jordan, why are we holding the man a rent party?

They also fail to understand that this irretrievably changes the relationship between the Tour and the players (the latter of whom ostensibly own the former), which without fail will create an underclass of disaffected players.

Shotlink, The Future - Something we ignore 99% of the time, noticing only when the rich vein of data fails to materialize, most recently when we discovered that it's too expensive to implement in Mexico.  It's an amazing process, but one that's highly labor intensive.  Finally, they seem to get it:

Ken Lovell, the PGA Tour’s senior vice president of golf technology, has been thinking about

how to shrink the demands of ShotLink and make it easier to gather data. Ideally, he wants to use fewer people, make the system easier to set up and deliver it all at a cost that makes it viable for organizations that do not have the PGA Tour’s deep pockets.

At the AWS Golf Invitational pro-am, every player, including the pros, wore a small black device clipped to his or her belt or waistband. The 3D-printed box contained a GPS sensor and other electronic components. Using data collected by the device and information collected by a walking scorer and TrackMan launch monitors, the goal was to see if TourCast-style information could be gathered.

Each pro in a Korn Ferry or Champions Tour event would need to wear one of the new sensors for the system to work. Would the numbers be as to-the-inch accurate as the PGA Tour’s ShotLink system? No. But according to Lovell, the system could determine a player’s position within one club length, which is more than what is currently collected.

Which would make the system feasible for the golf ecosystem below the PGA Tour, meaning everyone.  the surprising thing, at least to this observer, is that it took so long.

Fairview In The News - There aren't many sleepier places than our Fairview Country Club, fortunately most of us prefer it that way.  But Superintendent Jim Pavonetti scored this glowing account of Fairview as nature sanctuary in Golf Digest:

Jim Pavonetti is expecting a visitor. This guest hasn’t booked a tee time, but for the past five years, around May 31, he has materialized—even accounting for leap year. Pavonetti checks his desk calendar: May 31. Sure enough the black-crowned night heron shows up.

Pavonetti is the superintendent at Fairview Country Club in Greenwich, Conn., about 30 miles north of New York City. The only sounds of life here are natural ones: cicadas humming, dragonflies whizzing, bees buzzing, ducks splashing. Tucked away along the state’s border, the 18-hole course’s enchanted flowering bushes appear animated by an opera of duskywing butterflies and beetles. A glossy black lake completes the fairytale setting. Pavonetti estimates Fairview has 86 wildlife species, not to mention an array of flora. “You can walk over to some of our viburnums when they’re blooming, and the whole bush is buzzing,” he says. “There’s a honeybee in every flower.” But 14 years ago, you would have found it difficult to spot a lone mallard. What changed?

Our first stop is a pollinator garden behind the second tee box, an example of a popular move among environmentally conscious supers: converting the estimated 70 percent of land that goes unplayed into native plant enclosures. On each side is a nesting box, one with a family of eastern bluebirds and one with barn swallows. Even though they are “supposed to be enemies,” under Pavonetti’s watch, they are neighbors. Bordering the garden, Pavonetti has replaced turf with a bluegrass meadow, the perfect hideout for mammals like rabbits, deer, coyotes and foxes.

A lapis swallowtail pauses, just as we do, on the path ahead. I’ve been told that a butterfly passing your cart is an auspicious sign on a golf course. A friendly foursome nearby says hello before teeing off. Excitedly, they start listing off the creatures I might see. “There’s a coyote who hangs around 8 . . .a wild turkey with her young . . . and don’t forget the heron on No. 5 . . . ”

I've actually learned a few things about my own home course reading this, especially since both Employee No. 2 and I would say we saw more wildlife at Willow Ridge, a much less isolated piece of property.  But it's like that's just what we've noticed when we've been there, and I should add that I used to spend more late day hours on the course at the old place, which might be a factor as well.

Our fifth hole is many members' favorite, a beautiful downhill Par-5 that entices with the possibility of an eagle even for old guys like your humble blogger.  But this I didn't know:

Back at Fairview, we’re coming up on hole No. 5, a long fairway encompassing a variety of habitats from boulders to wetland. It’s Pavonetti’s favorite hole. “Half the time, your cellphone doesn’t work back here,” he says. “I joke that you could basically be in northern Maine.” Colloquially, No. 5 is known as the Wildlife Highway. We count three green herons skirting across the lake and a great blue heron. Pavonetti points out a long log on the other side of the water with dozens of sunbathing turtles. Fairview has box, snapping and painted varieties, as well as the elusive red-eared turtle. There are six species of frog and schools of fish (bluegills, pumpkinseeds, large-mouth bass, carp, bullfrog catfish and shiners). He says there are snakes, too. “I hate snakes. I’m sure they’re beneficial, but I stay clear of them.” As for what else goes on below the pond’s surface, one can only imagine. Every Friday, Pavonetti dyes the lake black. This, coupled with an ancient management technique involving barley straw, which releases natural algae-inhibitors during decomposition, ensures the lake’s health. Pavonetti has gone the entire year without applying chemicals to the lake. That’s $16,000 to $25,000 in savings, plus an invaluable bonus for nature. “I buy a couple bails of barley straw and a couple of cases of black dye for a few thousand dollars, and I’m done,” he says.

“Wildlife Highway” is Fairview vernacular, but it reflects a technical term: wildlife corridor. Although the supers do what they can to take a course with its specific quirks and make it more hospitable to flora and fauna, architect Hurdzan designs courses to be wildlife-friendly from the start. He and his team do this in a variety of ways. First, they survey the land, often on foot, conducting a hand-count of the plants and animals. They rely on archival documents as well—maps, blueprints, water tests—and even aerial footage. Essentially, he tells me, it’s the same technology that could be used to hunt for Bigfoot: drones, infrared—the whole shebang.

Given that I'd never heard the term, Fairview vernacular seems over-stated but, then again, I'm still the new kid there.

I shall release you at this juncture and we'll catch up later in the week, likely on Friday.