Midweek Musings

The Bear Big Cat is out of hibernation...With apologies to Verne Lundquist, of course, or maybe he's just yanking our chain...

The Tiger Tease - How many a side did Charlie give him?

What started as hopeful rumors among the most ardent supporters of Tiger Woods became a reality Tuesday as Woods set foot on Augusta National.

According to reports from Sports Illustrated’s Bob Harig, Woods is playing the course Tuesday alongside his son, Charlie, and world No. 7 Justin Thomas.

There has been much speculation about whether Woods will play in the 2022 Masters, which begins next week, and that is sure to continue in frenzied fashion now that he has taken a scouting trip. Woods has made similar trips in the lead-ups to past Masters, fueling the discussion that he’s seriously considering competing for the first time on the PGA Tour since his car accident 13 months ago.

Sean Zak seems a little disconnected from reality, as the rumor he breathlessly ponders is that Tiger will peg it on April 7th, whereas the reality was a March 29th practice round.  Sean, you're aware that yesterday's score doesn't count, right?

The photo is of Tiger's plane at the Augusta airport, which according to this broke the Internet.  Of course, Will Smith wants Tiger to hold his beer....

Mike Bamberger does Mike Bamberger things in his latest Bamberger in Brief (which is the former but not the latter), including reminding us of Tiger's last competitive round:

Everybody knows that Tiger Woods, 46 years old and recently inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame, went to Augusta on Tuesday. Everybody knows because most everything Woods does

beyond the confines of his house is observed. Most everything he says gets scrutinized. Every tournament round he posts gets analyzed. Golf is addicted to Woods, and Woods is addicted to golf. And so we are now posing the same question Woods is posing to himself: Will he make his return to tournament golf next week at Augusta National?

The last scorecard he signed in a PGA Tour event was at Augusta. In fact, it was one of the most remarkable scorecards of his long career, even though he signed for 76. It came on Sunday, Nov. 15, 2020, the year the Masters was pushed to football season in deference to the pandemic. Woods was the defending champion.

In that fourth round, hopelessly out of contention, Woods made a 10 on the par-3 12th hole, the highest score he has ever made on any hole as a pro. Then, from there to the house, Woods went birdie, par, birdie, birdie, birdie, birdie. What we witnessed that day was not a cosmetic back-nine 39. He was showing his extraordinary do-not-quit will. He was showing it to all of us, including his son, Charlie, a promising junior golfer, who was on the Augusta premises Tuesday with his father.

Doesn't that seem like it was decades ago?  perhaps because those two weeks to flatten the curve should be wrapping up any day now...

And now we want to know: Will Woods play in the 2022 Masters? He could easily wait until Monday before the tournament, before the groups for the first two rounds are announced, before announcing his intentions.

What we know with certainty is this, not because of anything Woods has said, but because we’ve been watching him for more than 25 years: If he can play, he will. That’s in his DNA.

If he thinks he can shoot 140 for the first two rounds, he’ll play. He knows how to play weekend golf at Augusta National. There is nobody in the field who knows more about it.

Maybe, though after the Father-Son we're pretty sure he can hit those 140 shots.  The real issue is whether he can walk the golf course for four consecutive days, though that will obviously affect his play.  I'm far from the first to make this analogy, but the logical comparison is to Hogan.  

I've been reliably informed that art imitates life, or is it the reverse, but this little cosmic convergence seems to require viewing through a fun-house mirror:

You may know that Woods did not play in a single 72-hole, full-field event last year. He didn’t play in January and February of 2021 because he was recuperating from back surgery, his fifth. He hasn’t played in a single 72-hole event since Feb. 23, 2021, because of his single-vehicle crash that day, one that, by his own admission, could have cost him his life.

The previous day, as part of his contract with the Discovery network, Woods gave a playing lesson to the actor Jada Pinkett Smith, wife (the whole world now knows) of the actor Will Smith. During the taping, Pinkett Smith said to Woods, “Your last Masters that you won, Will calls me and he says, ‘Turn the TV on right now, Tiger’s about to make history.’ I just get so emotional just thinking about it all. I’m like, ‘Tiger’s back! He did it!’”

“I don’t look at it like that,” Woods said. “I just look at the fight.”

You're making this up, right Mike?   I've checked the blog's bylaws and apparently I'm contractually required to insert a G.I. Jane joke here.

I'm holding off on the Masters coverage to ensure I don't hit the blogging wall before the Champions' Dinner, but there is one story I've overlooked in the last few weeks, one related to Charlie's bestie.  That story can best be presented with a pic:

I'm not the best tour guide for golf fashion, as I still think it looks ridiculous when they wear no-show socks with long pants.  Alas, I can't tell you what I think this looks like, because ironically that's what cost JT his Polo contract.

Here's the fashionista take:

It is 2022 and the younger generation is playing more golf than ever. These joggers are keeping up with a youthful lifestyle trend while maintaining a tasteful appearance with its performance fabric and belt loops.

The ankle socks complement the pants as joggers are meant to accentuate the ankle and increase a taper fit. The jogger pant promotes an athletic build and helps add more shape to the lower body.

I think we will begin to see this style of pants more on the tour from a variety of brands in 2022.

Haven't we suffered enough?

But isn't the real question whether he'd risk wearing them at Augusta?  Or whether Augusta would allow it.  Over to you, Fred.

Last Dance At The Dinah - I hate the tendency of our game to needlessly squander their birthright, especially when the take is considerably short of thirty pieces of silver.  The good news?  As of Sunday night, you will never again have to hear that all putts break to Indio....

A couple of items note that we're saying goodbye to more than just this golf course and event, though as house organs they can only go so far:

Perhaps it’s fitting then that as the LPGA prepares to leave Mission Hills at the conclusion of this year’s event, bound for Houston and the promise of more, the golf world celebrates not only the impact of a tournament – but one woman in particular, too. Adding to the bittersweet nature of these final laps around the Dinah Shore Tournament Course is the knowledge that the voice in the booth, the First Lady of Golf as television colleagues have dubbed her (she won a PGA of America award by that name in 1999), will be stepping aside, too.

Rankin isn’t exactly retiring at age 77. She’ll still work a handful of events in 2022. But this week’s Chevron will be her last as lead analyst for Golf Channel as she makes room for another desert darling – Morgan Pressel – to take her place.

“I wish it weren’t,” said Rankin. “I wish I felt 10 years younger.”

Desert darling?  Geez, I really wish they wouldn't try to be so clever....  This feels about right:

Graham calls her a “warm listen,” noting that viewers think of her as someone they’d be friends

with if given the chance. They’re probably right, too.

Terry Gannon, a colleague and close friend of Rankin’s since the mid-90s, said the trip from the compound to the set often goes down to the wire before going on air given the number of stops made in the golf cart to talk to fans. Gannon said Rankin is incapable of being anything but authentic and will answer a fan’s question the same way she would answer his on air.

“I’ve never met anybody who is so absolutely the same off camera as she is on camera,” said Gannon.

That's a great way of phrasing it, but perhaps the best testament to Rankin is that she was quickly accepted as a voice for the men's game.  Unfortunately, as much as she's an impressive individual with a heartbreaking personal story, the voice itself is regrettably squeaky.  We used to speak of performers that have a face made for radio...Morgan unfortunately has a voice made for the silent film era.

Here's a similar take, but from there I'll let Judy make my case:

It’s fitting that Rankin and “The Dinah” go out together. The tournament started well before Rankin’s broadcast career began, but before she picked up a headset, she was a heck of a player.

She won 26 times on the LPGA Tour, and one of the biggest victories of her career came at Mission Hills — the 1976 Colgate-Dinah Shore Winner’s Circle.

At a time when male celebrities attaching their names to tournaments was in vogue — Crosby Clambake, Bob Hope Classic, etc. — Shore gave women’s golf a similar luminary.

“Her name on this tournament did a lot for us,” Rankin said. “I don’t know that anyone in the entertainment world could’ve done for us what she did in exactly the way she did it.”

Shore had plenty of clout in the entertainment industry, and she brought that influence with her to women’s golf. Although Shore originally thought she was being asked to host a tennis tournament (yes, really), she quickly took to golf and helped elevate the women’s game.

When the event began in 1972, its purse was double that of any other LPGA tournament. Shore’s celebrity friends filled the pro-am tee sheets, and with sun-splashed Mission Hills as the venue, the event became one of the tour’s hottest spots.

“The tournament here was a kickstart for my generation,” Rankin said. “The Colgate tournament here, Mission Hills, and the addition of Dinah, was the thing that drove the tour forward and drove it to bigger heights.”

But Chevron's writing a check!   Progress!

Under Mike Whan's stewardship, the LPGA created an event to honor its founding members such as Babe Zaharias, Louise Suggs and Patty Berg.  No disrespect to any of those ladies, but Dinah's contribution to women's professional golf arguably dwarfs that of those thirteen ladies, not that this is intended to be a competitive category.

Our next tribute is unintentionally hilarious, but bear with me as I set the scene.  It's 1935 and Gene Sarazan is surveying his second shot from the 15th fairway at The Masters.  Three shots behind leader Craig Wood, he pulls his trusty 4-wood and hits what became known as The Shot Heard Around the World, holing it and tying Wood, whom he beats in a playoff the next day.  

Sarazan is celebrated in newspapers around the world as the first man to complete the Professional Grand Slam, having previously won the U.S. Open, The Open Championship and the PGA Championship.  Ticker tape parades followed, as did immediate enshrinement in the Golf Hall of Fame in St. Augustine.

So, am I any good at this historical fiction thing?   As my astute readers undoubtedly know, while Sarazan had won those prior professional events, but his 1935 win was in something known as the Augusta National Invitational, and the first known references to a Professional Grand Slam have been carbon-dated back only to 1960 when, having won both The Masters and U.S. Open, Arnold Palmer made the trek to St. Andrews to try his hand at Open Championship.  Alas, Kel Nagle did not receive a copy of the scripts, and beat The King by a stroke that year (though Arnie did return and win the next two Opens).

The men's and women's game seem to have approached this quite differently.  For the men, The Masters and Open Championships seem to have been accorded retroactive major status, witness my Sarazan parable above.  Reaching peak silliness, the 1860 Open Championship, contested over 36 holes among eight players, is officially a major...er, make that MAJOR.  I bear those eight men no malice, but you see the folly....

The women, on the other hand, have taken the opposite tack, not retroactively majorizing their Open Championship or the Dinah.  Oh, those Golf Channel dweebs continue to introduce Karen Stupples as a major champion, but she knows, we know, and she knows that we know.  Of course, these are the same clowns pretending that the Evian is a major, so their standards are transparently transactional.

But the other trendline that now intersects is the protocol that says, after a sponsor change, that the event has always been known by that current sponsor's name.  We saw this to best effect with the dearly departed Western Open, which tradition was initially abandoned but then, seeing the error of their ways, was reclaimed comically when the event (now known as the BMW) was held in...Philadelphia.  

Forgive me, as I know this has been unduly long, but here's the item that has me simultaneously outraged and laughing out loud:

Bohannan: Designating early years of Chevron Championship as a major would be a proper tribute

With this pic topping the item:

If you want to amuse yourself, right-click on that photo and check out its name.  The file name wins the argument... It was an always will be The Dinah!  Even with a Colgate guy in the photo...

Larry Bonahan writes for a Palm Springs paper, so one assumes he gets it.  But Chevron doesn't get to insist on moving the event's location and dates, yet still claim the Dinah legacy.  If it wasn't sufficiently important to preserve, you don't get to bask in its reflected glory.  

Bonahan's piece is actually interesting, in that it actually makes the opposite case, that it would be an empty gesture that wouldn't move the needle for any of those eleven winners (there actually aren't eleven, because Sandra Post won two of them).  What he does actually do is make the case for preserving this piece of LPGA history, but he's probably realizing that they're not smart enough to listen.

What's ahead for this event?  It'll be another made-up major to presumably be held in Houston in the heat of summer that no one will watch.  they will at some point realize that they've squandered actual history, but the world will have moved on.

From Geoff's Quadrilateral comes this news of profoundly silly social media memes:

And don’t say I didn’t warn you, but they’re saying goodbye to Mission Hills and the Dinah in lame social media campaign called “The Last Splash.”

The Last Splash Sweepstakes – Ahead of the final round of coverage NBC Sports and the LPGA will execute a social media sweepstakes encouraging fans to tweet their favorite splash from Poppie’s Pond using #TheChevronChampionship and #TheLastSplash for a chance to win a piece of history. Fans will have the opportunity to win pin flags from Mission Hills and limited-edition posters signed by some of the best golfers in the world.

The Last Splash Challenge – Following the tradition of tournament winners taking a jump into Poppie’s Pond, NBC Sports will engage with a select roster of content creators including Josh Mayer Golf and other select influencers to kick off #TheLastSplashChallenge across Tik Tok.

Can't we just hold a good old-fashioned wake?  I fully expect that Chevron (and I don't hold them responsible, this is on the LPGA) after a desultory tourney or two, they'll trot out a Dinah statue and maybe a little kiddie pool, but hopefully the girls will just say no.

Small Minds, Big Issues - Daniel Rappaport ponders the existential issues of life, golf edition:

Why pro golf can't figure out match play

Much as we want alternate formats to stroke play, it's still difficult to pull off.

I simply don't have the available pixels to respond to all that's hopelessly misguided in this single paragraph:

Still, poor golf is palatable if the intensity is high—like at the Ryder Cup, where each session

creates legitimate buzz because the players care deeply. It’s their one opportunity to represent a cause bigger than their own bank account or World Ranking, and each match counts for one point no matter the participants or hole-winning scores. The same is true for the NCAA team championship, or the U.S. Amateur, where life-changing exemptions into three major championships are at stake. The 2018 Tiger Woods vs. Phil Mickelson showdown, which ushered in a recent influx of made-for-TV matches, overcame spotty golf because it featured the two best players of their generation, who are far from best friends, playing for $9 million dollars. Every player in this week’s WGC is doing fine financially, and each will leave Austin with a solid paycheck. This isn’t exactly career-defining stuff, and the player’s muted reactions speak to that. You won’t see anyone raising the roof or shotgunning beers this week.

Just to be clear, this was written prior to the Dell as an e-mail from Golf Digest, but posted on their website more recently.

He seems to be fundamentally confused by the distinction between match play and TEAM Match Play, two very different animals.  But perhaps his biggest howler is his take on that Tiger-Phil debacle, which pretty much failed to "overcome" just about everything.  If there's been a more painful golf broadcast in the last decade, I'm unaware of it.

He further buries the lede by mentioning both the NCAAs and the U.S. Amateur, but failing to understand how the former has diminished the latter.  Left unmentioned?  That would be the Prez Cup, a Ryder Cup wanabee that doesn't quite deliver the goods.  There's some harsh realities to our game, but Rappaport is obviously not the guy to ponder them.

His coda is as bad as the rest of the price:

Then there’s the quasi randomness of it all. Golf Twitter loves a good breakout performance, but the general public wants to watch the players it knows. In last year’s event, just one of the 16 top seeds advanced past the group stage. The finals featured Horschel and Scheffler. The other two men in the semis: Matt Kuchar, who did not post another top 10 all season; and Victor Perez, now No. 124 in the World Ranking.

This isn’t to denigrate match play; it’s simply to underscore the difficulty of implementing the format in modern professional golf. There is, after all, a reason the WGC-Dell Technologies stands alone.

Don't know much about history.....and apparently not inclined to ponder it.

Daniel is amusingly dealing with the existential issues of The Dell, blissfully unaware that the PGA Championship was a match-play event until 1958.  What happened to make them change?  TV!

The Dell is a wonderful event, it just fails to be what folks require it to be, which is guarantee a final featuring Tiger and Phil.  The problem is that the desire for such a final is inconsistent with the nature of our game, so deal with it, kids.  So, yeah, you're gonna have cluker finals, and that's a problem because the only other match is a consolation match, and not even the players involved actually care about that.  But Wednesday to Friday is fun, and we even get some intriguing matches over the weekend, think Scottie vs. Billy Ho on Saturday morning this year, a rematch of last year's final.

But no shotgunning of beers, which must be a great disappointment to Jay.

Catch you guys down the road, Friday seeming most likely.