Unplayable Lies: "ate-Week Lamentations

Happy to be home with my three loved ones, all of whom seem equally pleased. It won't last, but we have to savor it until that inevitable regression to the mean.

The Players - Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it:

It's been said that "you're still away" are the three worst words in golf. "Monday finish likely" might take exception.

That's precisely what’s staring at the field at this week's Players Championship, something that hasn't happened at TPC Sawgrass since 2005. That year, play was suspended in the second, third and fourth rounds because of rain and unplayable conditions. The only reason it didn't extend all the way to Tuesday was because Fred Funk holed a six-foot par putt at the 18th hole to win, avoiding a four-way playoff with Tom Lehman, Luke Donald and Joe Durant that would have had to been completed on Tuesday morning.

This time, we might not be so lucky. A horrendous weather forecast for Thursday, Friday and Saturday has loomed all week, with the Thursday part coming to fruition when tee times got pushed back a full hour in the opening round due to overnight rainfall and thunderstorms. Once play began, it lasted all of two hours and 15 minutes. At 11 a.m., play was officially suspended due to dangerous weather, a delay that lasted four hours and 15 minutes. All told then, five hours and 15 minutes of weather delays played out and that was before most in the morning wave even came close to making the turn. When play ended due to darkness on Thursday, only 69 golfers had finished their rounds, Tommy Fleetwood and Tom Hoge leading with six-under 66s. Meanwhile, 12 players from the original afternoon wave didn't tee off on Thursday.

What a coincidence, 5:15 being just about what it takes these guys to play eighteen these days...

But a Tuesday finish? It's suggested in the header, but that would be Jay's worst nightmare... OK, second worst. But they can't really cut this one to 54 or 36, can they?

One of our faves had an interesting day, one he took with his characteristic graciousness:

The reason you like HV3 — how can you not like the dude? — is that he finished his long day’s
journey to 69, here in the first round of the Players Championship, with a triple bogey and a bogey and still he exhibited his customary good cheer.

Your mind immediately went to that muggy Long Island Sunday — mid-May, 2019 PGA Championship, Bethpage Black — when Harold Varner III went off with Brooks Koepka in the final day’s final twosome. Koepka won. Varner signed for 80.

And then he signed for fans, talked to reporters and cooled his jets. He knew the sun would rise come morn. He knew his T36 paycheck for $48,000 was going to clear.

“Tough game, isn’t it?” a reporter said to Varner when he came in, trying to soften the blow.

No softener needed.

HVIII had a big moment recently, though I couldn't help but wish that it had occurred anywhere else. But see what you think of this bit:

Varner, 31, won last month in Saudi Arabia, the PIF Saudi International, an Asian Tour event. He made a bomb on the last for an eagle and a one-shot win over Bubba Watson. He has not won on the PGA Tour. Because he won in Saudi Arabia, there was speculation that he would be recruited to join the golf league reportedly being planned by Greg Norman and funded by the Saudi ruling class.

“My name went right to the top of the list, and I do have to commend [PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan] for sitting down and talking to me and being totally open about,” Varner said. It wasn’t entirely clear what he meant, but the message he conveyed is that his fealty is to the PGA Tour.

There's that word again! Is there a sports JournoList? Seriously, it's no longer enough to play on or belong to the PGA Tour, one needs to sear fealty to Ponte Vedra Beach. UIs an exchange of blood required?

The Hall - I caught the end of Tiger's speech, and found it.... well, curious. But Mike Bamberger had hos own reactions, and a few good bits such as this:

The people were starving.

Golf people tend to arrive early to their functions, so when the sleek glass doors at the PGA
Tour’s chic headquarters opened at 6 p.m., golf’s glittering class — plus Joe LaCava — was ready to move on in, with the promise of a pre-ceremony hors d’oeuvres and, before the night was out, Joe’s boss being inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. That is, Tiger Woods his own self.

The folks in their finery were hungry to resume their public social lives after two years of pandemic restrictions. They were hungry to see Woods in person, because his public outings are far and few between. And they were hungry period, as the ratio of milling guests to circulating food trays was approximately 85 to 1.

The LaCava reference is a bit odd, don't you think? Mike took his new bride and went to caddie on the European Tour, so he's the last guy I'd accuse of an "Not of our class, Dearie" perspective, but still....

To me it reminds of one of those awkward moments during Tiger's speech, when he spoke of how he didn't get there alone, included specifically his great caddies. Well, yeah, but of the big three, Fluff, Stevie and Joey, to the best of my knowledge he's on speaking terms only with the latter. What does this tell us about Tiger?

This has wide consensus:

Berning had the line of the night:

“And by the way, Tiger, of my three U.S. Opens, the total winnings was $16,000. I was wondering if we could swap checks. If not all, we could do one.”

Woods laughed. So did his girlfriend, Erica Herman, sitting to his right. And Finchem, sitting to his left. Her truth-to-power joke was a trenchant reminder that professional golfers play golf (library voice here, please) for money.

Gee, Mike, the events of the last few months have left most of us pretty clear on the role of moeny in our game...

But then Mike makes the point that jumped out at me:

Woods won U.S. Opens in 2000, ’02 and ’08. His checks were for $800,000, $1 million and $1.3 million, respectively. The winner of this week’s Players Championship will earn $3.6 million.

Which is that Tiger could say the very same thing to Bryson or Jon Rahm (yanno, the guys that won the last two U.S. Opens).

I didn't see Sam's introduction, but it had to have been a sweet scene:

Woods was introduced, charmingly and confidently, by his 14-year-old daughter, Sam. Sam
Woods, already on the varsity soccer team at the Benjamin School, in South Florida, read her remarks, printed out on a single piece of paper, single-spaced and using all of one side and half of another. She reminded her listeners that the day before she was born her father had a putt, at the 2007 U.S. Open, at Oakmont, near Pittsburgh, to force a playoff. Instead, he flew to Orlando in time for Sam’s birth. “He may have lost that day, but he won the greatest gift of all,” she said. Oh, Sam Woods plays the violin, too. Who knew?

More importantly, we now know what happens when you mate a Cablinasian with a Swede, the wonder being that we don't do it more often.

Her father closed out the night, more than three hours after it began. He was never more appealing. Wearing an ill-fitting gray-plaid sport coat — a Peter Millar number given to all the male World Golf Hall of Famers — Woods spoke without notes. He knows we know everything he did as a pro and in his final years as an amateur. The revolution was most certainly televised. In his remarks, he wisely took us to places we have never been, inside his childhood home and on the public Southern California courses where he first learned the game that eventually made him rich and likely more famous than he ever wanted to be.

The suggestion here is to watch it if you can. Woods speaks as he never has before and spends about 18 minutes doing it. He talked about playing golf at night, hunting for balata golf balls, putting for quarters. Public golf. His mom, driving. His dad, lecturing. When he talked about his childhood putting, Crenshaw leaned in.

I should perhaps heed Mike's advice, because I felt like Tiger was just checking boxes. And when he delved into anecdotes there were a couple of call-outs to settle old scores that I thought landed with an audible "thud".

Perhaps I'm being overly cynical here, but this is a good note, if true:

He spoke of the modest circumstances in which he grew up, how his parents took out a second mortgage on their home, to finance their only child’s golfing ambitions.

Not that millions of parents throughout the country don't do the same, but Mike elides the strangest note of all, the call-out of Phil Knight and Wally Uihlein. Wally Uihlein, for God's sake! He dumped Titleist about an hour-and-a-half after the check cleared, but he was of use for a while.

Perhaps the oddest bit of all is that Phil's name shows up in Mike's piece. Go look for yourself, but perhaps Mike could use a stronger editor?

The Tour - Eamon's back! Yeah, he brings the goods, though this effort could be more focused:

Success stories in sport often owe as much to the ineptitude of the vanquished as to the brilliance of the victor. When future generations of Tweeters analyze the past few years in golf, PGA Tour
commissioner Jay Monahan will be credited for deft backroom diplomacy in building crucial alliances both public (key players) and private (Chairman Ridley). Yet a thorough accounting should note the extent to which Monahan has benefitted from the bumbling of those pushing a Saudi-financed rival league, a mutiny of clowns that could make Bozo seem Churchillian by comparison.

Monahan’s confidence was apparent in his opening remarks at a Tuesday press conference at the Players Championship, during which he projected the mien of a boxer who knows he has his opponent on the canvas, if not quite counted out.

“The PGA Tour is moving on,” he began, a declaration designed to irk his erstwhile correspondent, Greg Norman, whose February 24 epistle to Monahan had promised that things were only beginning.

“We are and we always will be focused on legacy, not leverage,” he continued, wording immediately obvious as a targeted drone strike on Phil Mickelson.

Yeah, I didn't give that last bit it's due. That's why all the fluff about whether Jay and Phil had spoken was so silly. The may not have had a conversation, but they've certainly communicated to each other.

But folks are coming around to points I've been making, if I may be allowed to beat mine own chest;

Other tangential troubles circling Monahan’s once impenetrable fortress in Ponte Vedra Beach were evident in his comments too. It passed almost unnoticed that the head of the most politically squeamish league in sports announced that players, caddies and staff had been given ribbons in the colors of the Ukrainian flag to signal their support for those currently being bombarded by the forces of Vladimir Putin. (Some players who will don ribbons this week would balk if the colors were those of Yemen, where their Saudi suitors are equally guilty of war crimes.)

The gesture and accompanying humanitarian fundraising drive seems superficial, but it tentatively enlisted the Tour in a growing movement that demands sporting bodies not remain silent on matters of human rights. That chorus even spurred action from FIFA, arguably the most venal organization in sport (admittedly a competitive category). Monahan knows this wave of sentiment will probably wash up on his own shores soon enough, perhaps forcing a rethink of the Tour’s China business.

Sigh! I truly hate this crap.... Why should I care what folks who run golf tournaments think about Ukraine? Winston Smith, call your office!

The R&A did the same, going so far as excluding any Russian golfers that mat show up at its events. Moral preening is never pretty.

Of course, we now have a clear set of rules, as per this trenchant quote:

Professional golf will be forced to reassess where and with whom it does business. As a senior golf industry executive said to me recently, “You are either in business with people who chop off heads, or you’re not. We should not be.”

Ummmm, waving hand, have a follow-up. Are we in business with people who send ethnic minorities to concentration camps? How about people who seize the bank accounts of those peaceably protesting their own government? I believe the cool kids call this a slippery slope...

Monahan attempted to sidestep another issue that will force a fundamental change in how the PGA Tour operates. When pushed on transparency, he addressed it in the context of how he communicates with his members, not what he communicates about those members to the outside world. An organization hungry for its share of sports gambling dollars will soon realize how untenable it is to maintain a culture of secrecy around disciplinary action that bettors feel entitled to know about.

“It’s a criticism that has been lobbied against the PGA Tour through the years, and I think we always have to be open to evolving. That’s something that we are open to,” he finally conceded.

They won't even be open about injuries, Eamon. They're "open to evolving", but "Shut Up", they explain.

Two years after the Saudi scheme burst into public view, Monahan finds himself with a dominant edge, but not yet a decisive one. What happens next will depend largely on his putative rivals in Riyadh. And if their aptitude thus far is any indication, Monahan won’t expect to be staring at an empty lunch plate anytime soon.

I think what Eamon ignores is that the very fact that this offer came from the Saudis was Jay's luckiest break. The nightmare scenario is not that the Saudis keep trying, it's that a similar effort comes from cleaner sources. Of course, the counter to that, which requires only a brief review of the TV ratings, is that no one but the Saudis would overpay so much, given their rather unique needs.

In addition to Eamon, Dylan Dethier must also be reading this here blog:

One of the problems with the PIP is that it leaves 10 players happy...and everyone else unhappy. Thoughts:pic.twitter.com/M3YmxhfRpD
— Dylan Dethier (@dylan_dethier) March 8, 2022

You read it here first.

One more related bit from Alan Shipnuck, who has a new Ask Alan up, which includes this completely unnecessary self-defense:

The Tour previously said that PIP results would not be announced. Last week they were. Was this a deliberate shot across Phil’s bow to paint him as a liar? #askalan @kevin_demsky

I love a good golf conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but the PIP results were not publicly announced. They were privately revealed to the players, as they had to be. Because the PGA Tour is basically high school with money, the secret was kept for about 13 seconds. But you bring up an interesting point. Mickelson purposefully made a false statement about winning the PIP, and he was just as sneaky when it came to his secret dealings with the Saudis. If he were, hypothetically, to get involved in a dispute with a veteran reporter in which fans had to weigh which one was more likely to be telling the truth, Mickelson’s recent behavior would suggest he is not always entirely transparent. Just spit-balling here.

We knew. Decades of Phil's nonsense, including his transactional relationship with the truth, are coming home to roost (pretty sure I mangled a metaphor, but you guys know what I mean).

Alan had this one other bit on this topic:

Is the Saudi Golf League dead? @kevinp613

Not even close. The firestorm surrounding Mickelson’s blunt and callous comments were a mild setback, but to say the least, the Saudis are used to bad publicity. In fact, I’m hearing from well-placed sources they have doubled down and are accelerating their timeline, now hoping to launch the SGL in early summer. The thinking is they want to force the hand of the PGA Tour to follow through on its threat to suspend players who compete in the SGL, touching off a legal challenge the Tour very well could lose and thus make it much easier for the SGL to do business. The insidious thing about sportswashing is that it works, and the Saudis know it. Sure, they’d love to have launched with Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau in the fold, but the key is to get the SGL off the ground. If they can, the objections and moralizing will slowly dissipate, and in Year 2 or 3 they can buy more and better players. Fealty has an expiration date.

Interesting, although I could use some more details. I'm not sure what it means to launch the SGL, are we talking new events without the cover of the Asian Tour. Or, which seems more likely, are we talking about beefing up Asian Tour events using appearance fees to lure players of whom the public has heard?

As a wise man once said, you are either in business with people who chop off heads, or you’re not.

Alan, Asked - Lord knows I have more to address, but I also need to get my day started. So how about some low-impact blogging?

By the time this youngest crop of superstars closes out their prime (let’s say 2040), what number of majors does the top guy in that group have? Hard to imagine anyone getting to 5 anymore, with as much competition as there is (and as much as is around the corner, too). @luke_peacock

It would have been helpful if you defined your terms more precisely, but I assume we’re talking about players currently under 30? It feels like Jordan Spieth has been around forever but, at 28, he’s only a year older than Jon Rahm and three years older than Collin Morikawa. Wait, does Brooks Koepka, 31, count? What about Rory McIlroy, 32? They are simultaneously aspirational and cautionary tales. Koepka has pushed his body so hard he is now golf’s most brittle superstar, and over the last three years he has squandered a handful of golden opportunities to burnish his resume. Eight years ago McIlroy owned four major championship victories and there was talk he was headed for a dozen. He is proof that a lot of life can get in the way: high-profile breakups, business lawsuits, injuries, sponsor divorces, ennui, marriage, kids, existential crisis. Still, I refuse to believe Spieth won’t summon the magic at least one more time during the right week, which would get him to four majors, tied with McIlroy and Koepka. Can Rory and/or Brooks figure it out again and win one more? That would tie them with all-time geniuses like Seve Ballesteros, Lord Byron Nelson and Peter Thompson. Phil Mickelson has been a keynote player for three full decades, and this unmatched longevity got him to six majors. That’s a big ask. The game has never been deeper, or younger; at this moment the top five in the World Ranking are all under 30, the first time that has happened. Winning majors has always been hard. Greg Norman and Ben Crenshaw are two all-time (albeit flawed) talents, and they only copped two apiece! Every major is precious, and increasingly so. The answer to your question is five, and Morikawa is the guy who is going to get there.

Rahm's going straight for nineteen, so this is chump change. But Alan's larger point, that it's hard to conceive of anyone really racking up big numbers, seems right.

With the new style of bomb-and-gouge, have too many players abandoned the safe play, especially when it is warranted? Watching Woodland take dead aim at the pin on 17 was mind-boggling. @opinionsvary328

More than a decade ago, Mickelson distilled his entire worldview into one quote: “Sometimes you’ve got to take risks to win the golf tournament, and a lot of times people will wedge that out and play safe, and they don’t put themselves in position to win. If you want to win tournaments against the best players in the world, you’ve got to take some chances. The weeks I’m able to pull them off I have a chance at winning, and the weeks that I don’t, I get ridiculed. But you have to take chances to win.” After his double bogey-bogey finish, Woodland said of his tee shot on the par-3, “I felt good about 17. It was a good number.” He had a perfectly flat stance, his ball was on a tee and he had only an 8-iron in his hands. He knew one more birdie would slam the door. He was playing to win, and he knew other contenders were playing the reachable par-5 16th, a hole he had just eagled. Of course, in hindsight, a par-par finish theoretically would have been enough to get it done. But I don’t fault Woodland for trying to put the tournament out of reach.

That I think is an underappreciated change in the game. Whereas consistency used to be prized, cashing a check each week, the game now seems more about a handful of bid weeks. On the larger question of why that is, I'm not exactly sure. As Kevin Kisner noted in a different context, 20th place pays pretty well.

More likely major winner this year: Scottie Scheffler or JT? @shea_verbush

Ooh, good one. It’s funny how quickly we’ve forgotten about Justin Thomas, who is, in fact, the defending champ at the Players this week. But he laid an egg in the ensuing majors, which too often has been the case since his breakthrough at the 2017 PGA Championship. Thomas (below) still has a ton of game, but he seems edgier and more fragile in the tournaments that matter the most. (Let us not forget his egregious triple bogey on the 13th hole of the third round to blow himself out of last year’s Masters.) Coming off his rousing win at Bay Hill and spectacular play at the Ryder Cup, Scheffler clearly has more momentum and more confidence. He seems to relish the big moments. Scottie is my answer to this question, but it would be folly to count out Thomas long-term.

the actual question doesn't much interest me, because right now I'm having trouble imaging JT winning the Antarctic Fourball. Second most important question, what was Bones thinking?

What is better golf to watch: a sunny, beautiful Riviera or carnage at Bay Hill? (Based off this year.) @Jame5F

They were both wildly entertaining, but Riv offered much more interesting golf. Bay Hill asked the same question over and over: Can you fit your ball into this very narrow, proscribed opening? It demanded execution but left no room for imagination or improvisation, both of which are required at Riviera. There were no real decisions to make, and around the greens, the brutally thick rough negated talent and touch and forced players to play the same slashing shot over and over. So I loved watching the pros get their teeth kicked in at Bay Hill, but Riviera is more my cup of tea.

I think that rough at Bay Hill was nuts, but my basic answer is that it's good that we have both. Florida golf is inherently limiting, but Riviera might just be the best track they play all year. venues matter, and the Tour could use a whole bunch of upgrades in that department.

Who are you taking for the next 10 years?

1- Spieth and Thomas or

2- Viktor and Collin. @HighFades

Two.

Obviously Collin is a big game hunter, the poster child for that point about consistency above. I'm still not sure about Viktor, though. I can't remember a more suspect world ranking, as he's the No. 3 player in the world without a single top-ten in a major or Players Championship. Maybe he'll fix those short-game weaknesses, but his wins have all been of the soft variety. A point made in this later question:

Big talent, Viktor… but with that sand game no way he was going to the Saudi League. Zinger mentioned Viktor needs to change his coaching/technique—do you think he will? Or double down with his current team? @WayneOW66L67

Hovland is the rare Tour pro who has some self-awareness. His game is so rock-solid from tee-to-green, and he has been candid about his struggles with a wedge in his hands. Bay Hill has to be a tipping point for him to reassess everything. It’s clearly time for a fresh perspective.

He'll adapt to some extent, and he may not need more than a Tour-average short game, given the rest of his skill set.

I watched a lot of J.Y. Ko this week. Incredible back-nine charge to be sure, but am I crazy or did she just win with her C-game most of the week? Nelly (Korda) and Danielle (Kang)
and Lydia (Ko) can win with their A-games. But if J. Y. can win with her C-game they are all playing for second. @gmsolomon

Ko is the quintessence of a player who just appears to be puttering along and it feels like she shot 71… but it was actually a 66. She is so smooth and efficient she almost makes it look too easy. So what you think was her C-game might have been her B-game, or maybe even her A-game. But it’s hard to tell!

We have Tiger to thank for all this A-game and C-game nonsense. Though I think it's silly to imply that Nelly can't win with her B-game as well. Maybe J.Y. can win with her C-game, but maybe only when Nelly's not there.

But now we veer into siliness:

Not so much a question as a statement: J.Y. Ko would make the cut at the Masters and finish top 10….. discuss. @YGlyn

Augusta National is the wrong example because it’s 7,500-plus yards and rewards power like few other courses. But put Ko (above) in a U.S. Open field at, say, Pebble Beach—where precision, patience and finesse are rewarded—and she could hold her own against the guys.

There's a reason that Annika chose Colonial. But, even there or Pebble, she wouldn't hold her own because, and I say this with love, she's a...<reducing voice to a whiusper>...woman.

Unplayable Lies

Friday, March 11, 2022

"ate-Week Lamentations

No comments:

Post a Comment