Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Weekend Wrap - A Day Late And A Dollar Short

If you feel that I've been ignoring this blog, it's only because I've been, yanno, ignoring the blog.  That's not going to improve much in this holiday-shortened week, so let's grab what little time we have.

Sam Burns Scottie - I didn't see any of Burns' round, but the guys behind him looked like the, as Jim Nantz put it, the D-flight:

Everyone was winning. Then no one wanted it.

And the guy who was sitting back and watching it all — for some two hours! — ended up on top.

Wild? You bet. In the end on Sunday at the Charles Schwab Challenge, Sam Burns dropped a 38-footer for birdie on the first playoff hole, Scottie Scheffler couldn’t match from 36 feet on the 18th at Colonial Country Club, and Burns is your winner for the fourth time on the PGA Tour, and third time this season.

Only, after starting the day a whopping seven shots out of the lead, no one, not even Burns, saw this coming.

No, Nantz really did call it the D-Flight, so I'd imagine he'll get some pushback from our pampered lads, but I had the H-Flight, for what it's worth.  But, while Harold Varner has shown trouble with the lead before, Sunday's reaction was positively biblical:

Scott Stallings and Harold Varner

We need to combine Stallings and Varner, who played together, because there may be some cause and effect here.

4 p.m. Stallings is trying to figure out where he can drop after hitting his ball 40 yards over the
12th green.

4:08 p.m.: Stallings drops — and, from 40 yards away, hits it 10 yards short.

4:11 p.m.: Varner, after waiting for Stallings, misses a 19-footer for par after hitting out of a greenside bunker — and misses from 3 feet for bogey and 3 feet for double bogey before making from 2 feet. That’s four putts. He falls out of the lead, which two now share.

“All that waiting,” analyst Ian Baker-Finch said on the CBS broadcast.

Later, Varner doubles 13, triples 14, birdies 15, pars 16, doubles 17 and bogeys 18 — for a back-nine 45.

4:13 p.m.: Stallings taps in for a bogey, and he falls out of the lead, which now only Scheffler holds.

Stallings bogeys 14 and 17, too.

Said Stallings afterward: “Man, I would like to see a video of my putt on 14. We read it kind of outside right, and just like the ball comes off the putter and just goes straight left. Everybody had to deal with it. The course was definitely very fair. But man, just kind of like I said yesterday, you kind of got some of those holes kind of up on top, some of the flat spots, and you could hear the tent — we were putting in that.”

I hate to be cruel, but the only reason to combine these two is to obscure that which befell Varner, one of the better-liked guys out there.  For instance, the rather dry account of this:

From there it got ugly...Though his scorecard is a rainbow coalition:


Hard to read, but Harold is just lucky they use the same color for doubles and triples... Don't want to heap on too much abuse, but that was a +10 back nine, something we don't see every day.

The Tour Confidential panel was more concerned about another's desultory play:

1. As it turns out, Scottie Scheffler’s “slump” lasted all of nine holes. One week after missing the cut at the PGA Championship, where he shot a back-nine 40 during his second round, Scheffler nearly won his fifth event of the season on Sunday, losing to Sam Burns in a playoff at the Charles Schwab Challenge. What is it about Scheffler’s game, or headspace, that has made him such a consistent/reliable performer, and on such a variety of courses?

Josh Sens: He’s got all the shots, obviously. But he’s also got golf in perspective. At this point, at least, for all the expectations around him, he’s not putting excess pressure on himself. He’s got enough killer instinct to dominate without being the kind of guy who defines himself by golf. That’s how it comes across anyway. His third round at Colonial was, dare I say, Woodsian. He was all over the place and still didn’t make a bogey until the 17th.

Alan Bastable: As you’d expect, there are no real weaknesses in Scheffler’s game, statistically speaking, anyway. But one of the big keys to his success is that he rarely misses greens, hitting about 72 percent of them in regulation, which is third best on Tour. That takes a lot of pressure off his short game and instead lets him focus on jarring birdie putts. I also think the importance of Ted Scott’s role can’t be overstated. Scheffler and Scott share much in common: hard workers, family men, devout Christians, and each has a ton of respect for the other. The relationship just works, and I think it’s no coincidence that Scheffler’s run started soon after Scott took his bag.

Nick Piastowski: He’s an easy-going, aw-shucks’er who hates — hates — to lose. So ice and fire. That’s tough to beat.

Satisfying the two guys who were worried about Scheffler, after the one bad week.  But note that Golf.com is able to rustle up all of three writers for this weekly mainstay, consistent with the nature of their recent coverage.

This, however, does venture alarmingly close to a serious topic:

2. Colonial Country Club, the storied Schwab venue and a mighty mite at “only” 7,200 yards from the tips, held its own once again this week, with just zero players finishing the tournament double digits under par. Does the PGA Tour need more courses like Colonial — where accuracy trumps brawn — on the schedule, or would the players not have it?

Sens: The Tour could use more great designs as part of its regular rota. Great designs make for more interesting golf. If a few players gripe, so be it. It is, to use the parlance of the corporations that rule all professional sports, a better product.

Bastable: The lack of diversity in Tour setups is stunning. You would think the world’s best players would demand more interesting slate of tests, but sadly they seem content with bomb-and-gouging. Rory McIlroy summed up that sentiment last year when he said: “A lot of the golf courses we play are uniform and you get the same conditions each and every week, and players like that. I like that. I like that you don’t have to come and spend three or four days at a golf course learning it every week, and if you’re playing week to week, to have setups like this is a good thing.” Colonial, like Harbour Town, is such a breath of fresh air on the calendar, mostly because players can’t smash it into submission. So … yeah, I’d love to see more courses of its ilk in the mix.

Piastowski: More please! If you believe the players, most of them like the tracks that test the entire game, too. Though I can’t imagine after next week the mental shape of those who go Southern Hills-Colonial-Muirfield Village.

The Tour product is a pretty dreary thing, with precious few venues of actual historic interest.  But one of the tragedies of the Phil-Saudi axis of evil is that the needs that get addressed might be Phil's, but certainly won't be ours.

Dylan Dethier, in his Monday Finish feature, pens an Ode to Mito:

For a moment, Mito Pereira was the talk of the golfing world. He stood on the tee of the 72nd hole at the PGA Championship with a one-shot lead. Six strokes later he walked off that green
one shot outside a playoff. The golfing world ached at his heartbreaking finish. He spoke to reporters, opening up on the moment. And then that same golfing world moved on — to the Justin Thomas-Will Zalatoris playoff, and then to the Charles Schwab Challenge, and soon to the Memorial and LIV Golf announcements and various other shiny bits coming across our news feeds.

But how would Pereira respond? That was far less clear. It’s impossible to leave something like that immediately behind — right? I was particularly curious in his next move because I spent PGA week trailing Pereira (for this story) and was amazed how, at the end, he had to clean out his locker and pack for a flight and get ready to head to the next stop. The circus goes on.

Pereira spoke to Golf Channel ahead of the Charles Schwab, but his most meaningful response would ultimately come on the course. He opened with a steady 70, went low on Friday with 66, played his way into the edge of contention with a Saturday 68 and hung tough on Sunday with a round of one-over 71 in demanding conditions. He made nine consecutive pars to finish, including a 22-footer to save his 4 on No. 18.

He didn’t speak to reporters after the round (I wasn’t there but I don’t think anyone requested him) but he didn’t need to. His T7 finish spoke for itself. And the way he did it — methodically, patiently, leaning on superior ball-striking — suggests this isn’t the last we’ll see him.

Pereira hit the ball well enough to win, in fact. He gained 4.15 strokes off the tee, No. 1 in the field. He was third in strokes gained from tee to green. If his putter had gotten hot (he was 51st in SG: Putting, losing 0.71 strokes) it’s easy to imagine he’d have been on the edge of another playoff. His consolation prize? More points, more money, more confidence. He’s up to No. 44 in the world, a lock for the U.S. Open and well on his way into the Tour’s upper echelon.

Since that ill-fated drive on No. 18 at Southern Hills, he's given more interviews than Bryson has in two years.  So, yeah, hope the kid beaks through soon.

The Kida Are All Right -  Your humble blogger has become a big fan of the NCAAs, though I crashed before this playoff got started:

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Twelve players were within four shots of the leaders as they made the
turn in the final round of stroke play at the 2022 NCAA Div. I Men’s Golf Championship on Monday, setting up for a frantic finish in the desert.

Five players were tied for the lead at even par, with two players in the clubhouse – Parker Coody (Texas) and Ryan Burnett (North Carolina) – and the final group of Eugenio Lopez-Chacarra (Oklahoma State), Chris Gotterup (Oklahoma) and Gordon Sargent (Vanderbilt) on the 18th tee. Chacarra and Sargent each made par to advance to a playoff with Coody and Burnett, with Gotterup making bogey to fall back into a tie for fifth at 1 over with Arizona State’s Cameron Sisk, Pepperdine’s William Mouw and North Carolina’s David Ford.

Sargent, a freshman from Birmingham, Alabama, made birdie on the first playoff hole to claim medalist honors and become the ninth freshman to win the individual national title since USC’s Jamie Lovemark in 2007. Sargent is the second freshman in the span of a week to claim medalist honors at the NCAAs, following Rose Zhang of Stanford.

But the real fun remains ahead of us:


 Need I say more?  Starts at noon today on Golf Channel.

To this observer, this is the match that jumps out at me:

No. 2 Oklahoma vs. No. 7 Arizona State 
9:20 a.m. ET – Patrick Welch vs. Mason Andersen
9:30 a.m. ET – Drew Goodman vs. Jose Luis Ballester
9:40 a.m. ET – Chris Gotterup vs. Preston Summerhays
9:50 a.m. ET – Logan McAllister vs. David Puig
10 a.m. ET – Stephen Campbell Jr. vs. Cameron Sisk

If you're looking for a train wreck, that middle match might be up your alley.  Gotterup should have won the individual yesterday, but missed at least three short putts down the stretch, and missed them badly.  The last, a 3-footer on No. 18 to join the playoff, never sniffed the cup.  Summerhays is, of course, a familiar name to you, son of Boyd Summerhays, Tony Finau's longtime coach.  Good match-up.

The Ladies - Their U.S. Open is this week, and the TC panel spared a couple of questions that relate:

3. The U.S. Women’s Open tees off this week at Pine Needles in North Carolina. Among the storylines to watch are the return of Nelly Korda and the defense of Yuka Saso. (We’ll tackle Michelle Wie West separately below.) What are you most looking forward to seeing play out?

Sens: Lydia Ko. Always Lydia Ko. The coolest professional golfer in the world.

Bastable: I’m excited to see Pine Needles in action. The Donald Ross gem has long taken a backseat to its storied Sandhills neighbor, Pinehurst, so it will be fun to see it in the spotlight. Pine Needles devotees will tell you it’s every bit as fun as any of Pinehurst’s offerings, No. 2 included.

Piastowski: Nelly. Let’s hope she’s good to go. She’s a star, the budding rivalry with Jin Young Ko is fantastic, and she’s must-watch golf. It’s great she’s back.

Don't know what kind of form she might be in, but most curious to know more about the blood clot, so atypical for such a young woman.   

Am I the only one that has found her continued presence tiresome?

4. On to Wie West. This week, she told Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols that she plans to play the U.S. Women’s Open, then step away from the LPGA Tour. How would you sum up Wie
West’s legacy?

Sens: I don’t have anything to say that hasn’t been said a million times before. There’s of course a woulda, coulda, shoulda element to her story. And yet, in the ways that matter most, she did.

Bastable: It’s easy to get fixated on the fact that she didn’t live up to the immense expectations that were placed on her, but what should never be forgotten is how much attention and excitement she brought to the game when she was literally just a kid. At 10, she played in the U.S. Women’s Am Public Links; at 12, she played in an LPGA event; at 14, she came a stroke shy of making the cut at a PGA Tour event, thanks to a second-round 68 (yes, at 14!!) That week sticks with me. It was truly captivating; I vividly remember being glued to the telecast not wanting to miss a single shot of hers. What a talent.

Piastowski: She’s a star. And will continue to be; according to our story this week, she’s not leaving the game; she’s just not playing it. That tells me something. She’s making an impact on the game. Not many can say that.

It's sad when anyone's life seemingly peaks at age 14, though I believe this says more about us than about her.  We just can't seem to quit her, but that's always seemed to be to the detriment of the women's game, ironic given that she's theoretically its biggest advocate.

There Are No Bad Ones, Only Misunderstood Pins -  Sadly, Payne Stewart was unavailable for comment:

If you recall that Olympic pin on No. 18 referenced above, you'll recall that the putts from directly below the hole did not roll back, unlike what these girls had to deal with.

It's not really explained where the pin was, but presumably it was in one of the red zones:


Strikes me from the graphic as a green that needs to be rebuilt, because I don't see many logical spots for a pin.

No doubt it's set-up malpractice, and we don't even know to what extent it affected the outcome.  But see if you react as I did to this comment:

On Saturday morning, Billy Horschel, never shy to express himself, joined in.

“Feel bad for these girls!” he wrote on his Instagram story. “Absolute joke by these officials to embarrass these young ladies. These officials should be banned from setting up a course in the future. This isn’t a accident … they knew what they were doing when they set up that hole location. I bet these young ladies handled it better than I would!”

This is high school event, and Billy wants a lifetime ban....  But he knows they did this intentionally!  However, the fact check of that final assertion has been issued, and it was found to be "Sadly true".

Your LIV Update: Were you sitting by your phone awaiting word?

Yes, they were supposed to release this on the Friday before Memorial Day, the Holy Grail of Friday news dumps.  How bad must it be?

Given that the event starts a week from Thursday, it wouldn't seem that they could keep us in suspense too much longer....

Eamon Lynch has pretty much owned this story, though his latest offering strikes me as somewhat dubious:

Lynch: PGA Tour's 'nanny' approach to players being exposed as a liability by looming Saudi event

Maybe, but Jon Rahm seems to have had a gun at his head when he pledged fealty to Kubla Jay...

The PGA Tour prides itself on its values and there is much to be proud of, like sportsmanship and charity. Yet the most enduring of its precepts isn’t one touted in public but rather practiced in
private: secrecy. In his more than two decades as commissioner, Tim Finchem created—and his successor, Jay Monahan, has not dismantled—a culture grounded in confidentiality and coddling. Players assume the Tour will circle wagons to protect them from scrutiny or criticism, and there’s a parallel determination at headquarters to never disappoint in that respect, regardless of whether the issue is profanity overheard by a handful or bunker misadventures witnessed by many.

Veterans of the Ponte Vedra politburo will tell you this is the nature of member-led organizations, which is fair. The PGA Tour is government of the players, for the players (not for fans, it scarcely needs pointing out). But next week’s LIV Golf Invitational near London—the first in a series of sportswashing events funded by the Saudi Arabian regime—will reveal if that protectionist mentality is so ingrained that the Tour will inadvertently assist its would-be rival. There’s already evidence to support such a suspicion.

How so, Eamon?

An aggressive response by Monahan would mean not just the immediate suspensions of those players, but the public announcement of such. Doing so would signal decisive action—support for which exists among a wide swath of his membership—but also delegitimize the Saudi tournament before any inflated checks are handed out. Yet it would also represent a seismic strategic shift for an organization long accustomed to acting as the sole judge in camera, not as a prosecutor in public.

Hewing to the norm—not announcing sanctions and conducting its disciplinary proceedings at a leisurely pace in private—serves only those players who want to act as knowing (or witless) apparatchiks for the Kingdom without having to face the public consequences of doing so, from either golf fans or their corporate partners. There is no reason the PGA Tour should enable them.

I basically agree with Eamon that the Tour's refusal to disclose disciplinary actions is objectionable, I'd even go further and call it counter-productive.  I'll save that argument for another time.

But it seems to me that Jay has made it clear that the gloves are off.  But the issue seems less the coddling than the issue of whether Jay will enforce that red line against defectors.  I think he will for the simple reason that he has to, otherwise all bets will be off.  I also think he will because he's pretty clearly winning, at least against Norman and the Saudis.

That will be it for now.  The remainder of the week has no shortage of scheduling issues, but I'll resurface at some point.

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