In a world where seemingly everything deemed important is posted, analyzed and streamed through cameras, two pivotal moments of Rory McIlroy’s dominant 2022 are left strictly to the imagination.No one saw the first.It came in San Antonio, at the Valero Texas Open, where McIlroy played for the first time in nine years. He missed the cut by two and struck it so questionably that he changed his golf ball the next week. An average if not solid (by his standards) season had culminated there, one week before the Masters. He was desperate to get out of town. Only he couldn’t get out of town. For travel reasons left unclear, the man worth more than a hundred million dollars — who literally pays to nullify the carbon footprint of his private flight habits — had to spend an extra night in the JW Marriott.
“Got back up to my hotel room and went to order room service and they said it will be a two-and-a-half-hour wait,” McIlroy said Sunday night. “So I basically missed the cut, went to bed on an empty stomach and I was like, let’s just wake up tomorrow and start again.”
OK, I'll take virtue signaling for $1,000, Art.... Seriously, yanno, Sean Zak links back to an old item penned by, checking notes, Sean Zak, in which he ununcritically accepted this blather:
What does Carbon Neutral actually mean? It means simply neutralizing the harmful output. Pulling greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere at the same rate you put them into the atmosphere. McIlroy does it by spending extra money — 150,000 pounds this year, according to Golf Digest — so that on New Year’s Eve, he’s treated the environment in a neutral way. Or at least in a non-negative way. McIlroy didn’t expound upon where his 150,000 pounds goes.
Of course he doesn't, none of them do, because it's one of modern life's more obvious scams... But did Rory "not expound" or did the brain-dead journalist not ask? These questions never get asked, because how exactly do you pull those greenhouse gasses out of the environment?
Sorry for the early rant, but I'm not the only one that thinks this way:
Carbon offsetting is truly a scammer’s dream scheme.It’s a bookkeeping trick intended to obscure climate wrecking-emissions. It’s tree planting window dressing aimed at distracting from ecosystem destruction.It is the next big thing in greenwashing — and we must not be fooled.
And when Greenpeace is the voice of sanity..... But greenwashing, I love it.
As for the golf portion of the programming, here begins Sean's hagiography:
As he takes a step away from all those cameras for the majority of the next three months, it’s worth noting just how much McIlroy delivered as a pro golfer in 2022. He gave fans a healthy dose of everything we really want. And what is it we want? Firstly, we want to see success. McIlroy literally has played statistically the best golf of his life the last few months. His golf since that fateful, hungry Friday night in San Antonio has been consistently better than his previous peaks (2014, 2020).We want to hear from our golf heroes, and we haven’t heard from any pro more than we’ve heard from McIlroy. He declared LIV Golf “dead in the water” back in February and ate his words months later. He dunked on Greg Norman when he won in Canada, reciting how his career win total was now one better than Norman’s. During the summer of pro golfers actually sharing what they really think, McIlroy shined. He gave us his true thoughts a lot of the time. He made a point to seek out reporters and tell his truth while plenty cowered away from contentious topics.
Fair enough, but has Sean considered the point on the calendar in which Rory showed his best golf?
We heard from McIlroy so much that he inspired vitriol from LIV Golf supporters. We like seeing that, too: confidence in what you believe. McIlroy accepted the bullseye on his back, speaking at length and endlessly about the civil war within the game. He’s never flipped his core position, like so many pros have done this year. McIlroy has publicly stiff-armed the Saudi money for years now, dating back to March 2020. But he hasn’t shied away from admitting where compromise should take place. He’s not bipartisan by any means, but on the spectrum of some debate topics — see world ranking points — he can be pulled toward the center. An inspiration for us all this time of year.
He did express concern over the source of the money form the get-go, and has been the most stalwart defender of golf's status quo. And, of course, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.... So, the high marks are justified, although Jay must be cringing at some of what comes out of the young man's mouth. There was this from September:
Rory McIlroy said he believes the time might be near for the PGA Tour and LIV Golf to speak because the “game is ripping itself apart.’’
Really? What would they speak about? The terms of surrender of the PGA TOur HQ in Ponte Vedra Beach? Can't imagine Jay liked this one either:
“If Dustin Johnson is somehow 100th in the world it’s not an accurate reflection of where he is in the game,’’ McIlroy told reporters at the Dunhill Links Championship, a DP World Tour event which takes place this week across three courses in Scotland—the Old Course, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns.
If it's the moral equivalent of war, didn't he just give aid and comfort to the enemy?
Even these more recent comments seem, well, unhelpful to the cause:
"I think it is the first time in my life that I have felt betrayal, in a way," McIlroy added. "You build bonds with these people through Ryder Cups and other things. Them knowing that what they are about to do is going to jeopardise them from being a part of that ever again?"I would like to think the Ryder Cup means as much to them as it does to me. Maybe it does. But knowing what the consequences could be, I just could never make that decision."
You're telling them that they're getting to you.... I've consulted my Sun Tzu and that stratagem is nowhere to be found....
Everyone and their brother want to see a deal struck between the warring factions, but should FDR have negotiated with Tojo on December 8, 1941? Perhaps a slightly melodramatic analogy, but LIV's business model called clearly for the destruction of the PGA Tour, and one ignores that at one's own peril.
I think Rory complaining about the fracture in golf is providing succor to the LIVsters, and he really should be shutting his piehole on that subject. The operative position should be that the world of golf continues to move forward unaffected by the absence of certain players mostly near the end of their useful life.
Alan Shipnuck has a new Ask Alan up for our delectation, and he goes quite a different direction on Rory's run of success:
Has LIV (to the detriment of fellow PGA Tour players) lit a fire under Rory where we may see what we expected all these years? @TBromfmanIt certainly feels that way. Remember a few years ago, when McIlroy was underachieving on the golf course but professing to be content because he was in love and enjoying a nice life? That was a healthy perspective, but it also felt a little bit like a copout. The golf gods bestow talent like Rory’s only once or twice a generation, if that. For him to just coast along would have been a little sad—not just for the fans but especially for McIlroy, who deep down knows what he is capable of. It seemed then that Rory lacked purpose as a golfer, and he has certainly found it in this ongoing battle for golf’s soul. It’s a bummer that the Masters is still six months away, but this doesn’t feel like a hot streak; rather, McIlroy has found the secret sauce, with his driver, in his wedge game and his overall approach to preparing and competing. This run feels sustainable for a good long while, and it will be a thrill to watch.
A secret sauce with his wedge game? Sustainable? Gee, Alan, haven't you watched this golf thing for a while now? Apparently, Rory playing his worst golf in the most important events is just some rando piece of bad luck. Good to know.
Readers of these pages will recall that I've been ranting about Rory's wedge play (distance control, especially) and putting since at least 2014. His distance control with the wedges has seemed better recently, although there are the usual sample size issues at play. Will that secret sauce still be in evidence the second weekend in April? I for one accept Alan's contention that it's sustainable, though I think we should go ahead and play the event just to, yanno, be sure.
Has Rory's role in fighting LIV contributed to this run of strong play? The golfer's mind is the ultimate black hole, so it's possible that there is some cause-and-effect in play, although that theory struggles to explain Sunday in St. Andrews, no?
As long as we have Rory under the strobe lights, there was also this Q&A (in which Alan at least mentions that other guy):
Doesn’t Rory’s World No. 1 designation need an asterisk? Because the communist (maybe elitist? or even fascist?) UNofficial World Golf Ranking have yet to assign points to my annual Spooky $70 Halloween Weekend Chip-off? And I’ve already mowed, so I need some good press… @ANTIFAldoRory himself noted the OWGR is in danger of becoming meaningless with the exclusion of so many accomplished players, though he inexplicably failed to mention the competitors in the Halloween Chip-off. But his place at the mountaintop is unimpeachable because for the last six months he has been by far the game’s most dominant force week in and week out; being No. 1 is really about consistent excellence, not a couple of triumphs mixed with a bunch of middling results. Obviously, McIlroy’s failure to win a major championship weakens his case, particularly when he got blitzed at the Open by Cam Smith, who is the clear world No. 2 no matter what the computers say. There is very little meaningful golf left this year, so we can all exhale and then rekindle the debate next spring.
Is there anything in our game less significant and less interesting than changes at the top of the OWGR? Seriously, why is this even a thing? OK, Rory just passed Scottie Scheffler, but the latter hasn't even looked like a top ten player since his five-putt on the 18th green at Augusta. So, yeah, points are awarded and roll off week-to-week, but if it changes your assessment of these guys, you're really easily distracted by shiny objects.
Twelve Is The New Eighteen - Everything old is new again.... Remember when Bryson and Brooks played their cage match? Did you happen to recall how many holes they played? Did you perhaps find that number random?
Shack does a deep dive on a wonderful homage in Ayrshire:
Jealous!On Sunday evening Prestwick Golf Club finished two weeks of play around its original 12-holedesign. The decision to put the course back to the original Open Championship layout by Tom Morris took years of planning, trained marshals, modern mowers, LED lights, and a risk that all of the effort might backfire. But as a special year of 150th Open celebratory events wraps up, the Scottish club recognized a rare chance to commemorate the first professional golf championship.Prestwick’s original 12 had been somewhat re-created in 2005 when a noble-but-compromised effort did the job. But to give golfers a chance to enjoy the 12-hole version played between The Opens of 1860 and 1881, the club secured additional details about the original layout, decided to re-install key greens and pieced together many necessary pieces. They even sought local council approval where, remarkably, some residents complained about limited coastal access points for what would be a two-week celebration.Led by club secretary Ken Goodwin, keeper of the green Dave Edmondson, and professional David Fleming, Prestwick embarked two years ago assuming the 150th Open was to take place in 2021. While pushed back a year by the pandemic, the club always knew the purpose of such a return should be done right.
Care for a history lesson?
Before we get to that coverage, a few facts regarding the original 12-hole course:
- The Open was born at Prestwick 162 years ago on October 17th, 1860 as a tribute event to Allan Robertson (who died in 1859).
- The Open carried on 24 more times at the Tom Morris-designed links.
- The first 12 Opens were played on the 12-hole version (1860 to 1872).
- No championship was contested in 1871 after Tommy Morris won three straight Open’s, giving him permanent retention of the “belt” and a lot of head-scratching about what to do next.
- Young Tom’s three-peat led to a year-off before the clubs at Prestwick, St Andrews (Royal and Ancient) and Musselburgh (Honourable Company) each put up £10 to create a new trophy.
- Young Tom won again in 1872 at Prestwick. Sadly, the Claret Jug was not yet ready and he never got to hoist it due to his passing in 1875
- Old Tom captured four Opens on his Prestwick design.
- Young Tom also won all four of his Open Championships at Prestwiick.
- Willie Park Sr. won four times on the 12-hole version, while Andrew Strath (1865), Jamie Anderson (1878) and Bob Ferguson (1881) each captured one.
- The 12-hole was home to the first recorded hole-in-one and par-5 “eagle.” Young Tom Morris was responsible for each.
- The course record of 47 by Young Tom came in the 1870 Open. He was also the first to shoot 50 on Old Tom’s design and was first to break 50 there.
- Six of the original greens from the 12-hole course were retained by Old Tom in his redesign and are still used today (the 2nd, 3rd, 13th, 15th 16th and 17th).
I might just have to excerpt it all:
About the course? Based on the accounts of those who played the last two weeks, it could be somewhat confusing if you weren’t sure where you were going. But the 12-hole version was Old Tom’s idea of design before he had fully formed his understanding of what “golf architecture” might be.The original Prestwick covered just under 35 acres. Morris used a narrow swath of extreme dunesland and played the holes over and through the most extreme terrain. He was not worried about moving a full field around or injury attorneys questioning the sanity of criss-crossing holes. (Morris became a width advocate as his design career continued and he became obsessed with gorse removal at St Andrews despite it being bad for his ball-making business.)The original Prestwick presented golf in the wild. Morris made players of the day take on cruel carries with implements ill-suited to the task. But no one was turning in a score for vanity handicap purposes. They just tried to advance their unpredictable golf balls in fewer strokes than their competition.
To make 2022’s reboot work, the club instituted a fascinating marshal and LED-light system to ensure golfers knew when they could play the various blind shots without the rounds turning into antagonistic combat. The original Open was comprised of just 8-players and they likely moved around just fine. But as the fields grew larger? The need for such a system today suggests those early events must have been pretty zany affairs. FORE!
Including one hole with a cutesie nickname:
Cookie Jar Golf’s Tom Mills was one of those who couldn’t stop talking about the 6th hole, dubbed the “killing zone” by Secretary Goodwin.“The only hole it doesn’t interact with is the 8th,” Mills said. “It either plays over, around or touches the other 10 holes. Mental stuff.”Thanks to the team of marshals for the full two-week tee sheet, the club earned raves for the efficiency of getting around the bizarre course. Cooper also said the unusual routing highlighted another key way The Open has changed.“Eight men played the entire Championship in less time than a single round took this year in St Andrews,” he said. “The evolution of our game is astonishing.”
The killing zone? Not a term often associated with our genteel game.... Read the whole thing, it goes without saying.
Orange Is The New.... - I don't know nothing, but this showed up in my Twitter feed, typos and all:
Please don’t be true pic.twitter.com/dYSSAHbTTI
— PGA TUOR (@PGATUOR) October 24, 2022
On the one hand, he's old and bad enough to fit their profile perfectly, and the rumors have been out there forever. On the other hand, why the wait? I suspect this is fake news, but the rumor itself is of interest....
Alan, Asked - A little anaerobic blogging as I head for the exit:
#askalan What’s worse, LIV showing an entire tourney start to finish and few caring OR people caring about the CJ Cup but the PGA Tour doesn’t allow fans to watch it? @wesleywhamondThis is not a positive development for either tour, or golf in general. This whole season is a beta test for LIV Golf. I don’t think we will be able to fully assess the product until this time next year, when LIV will have had an offseason to tweak everything and then have played a “full” schedule with the roster and team elements more baked out. So we’ll see if LIV can get more fans to care. But the Tour’s pathetic TV presentation of a compelling tournament is inexcusable. Why is it so hard to give golf fans what they want? Especially right now, when the PGA Tour is in an existential battle for its survival, you would think the lords of Ponte Vedra Beach would be doing everything possible to display their product in a dynamic, innovative way, not blacking out coverage, as happened to chunks of time at the CJ Cup. It’s maddening.
I'm sorry, what's your problem with the LIV events being ignored? Win-win, baby!
To be honest, Alan has been on this LIV beta test thread for quite a while, and I really don't know what wacky tobaccy he's been smoking. I know they're planning some kind of tweaks to their team format but, otherwise, isn't what we (don't) see just about what we get?
But what does he mean about them blacking out coverage of the CJ Cup? Unless being broadcast on Golf Channel is now the moral equivalent of being blacked out.... But isn't it useful to be reminded that, even with a deep field, no one is going to watch golf in October.
How awesome will Max Homa be as a dad? @procaddiecoachThis is such a cute, wholesome question. None of us are ever really prepared to be parents, you just gotta learn on the fly. I trust Homa will be an excellent dad because, in the way he relates to people and lives his life, he has already displayed much empathy and sensitivity and good cheer. These are key ingredients to being a good dad. Also, if the baby needs a cozy place to nap it can burrow into Homa’s arm hair.
Gee, maybe. But I could also argue that his focus on social media could be a concern in that regard... Homa seems like a fun dude, though we should all probably stop assuming that we actually know the guy.
Really?
Does Phil ever win a tournament again? @DLP1968Oof, good one. Getting banned from the senior tour certainly hurts his chances. But I’ve detected more pep in Phil’s step lately. He has too much pride and ego to be an afterthought; I think he’ll be more of a factor at LIV events next year. (Do LIV wins count?) And he’s still dangerous on a baked-out Augusta National or a fiery Open links. It seems like a lifetime ago, but Mickelson’s PGA Championship triumph was only 17 months ago. The guy has nine lives, so I’m never gonna say never when it comes to Phil doing the improbable.
Isn't the more pressing question, "is this the man Phil wanted to be?" Because that's what he promised in his fauxpology, so seems like a reasonable follow up question, ignoring the fact that Phil avoids microphones these days like I avoid cockroaches.
But Alan's reaction to Phil, especially in light of his most recent tweet about scandals not in his book, remains puzzling to this observer.
When will Augusta National and other majors make their decision for LIV in the field ? #askalan @radiolimamattThey don’t have to make a decision: The majors’ criteria is already set, and they can simply choose to do nothing. For 2023, that will knock out a handful of LIV golfers based on their slippage in the World Ranking, but for both the U.S. and British Opens these competitors are free to go through open qualifying and try to play their way into the field. If LIV doesn’t get World Ranking points throughout next season, the ’24 majors will suffer more attrition, but you have to figure some kind of compromise will be reached before then. Also, the governing body behind each major championship can independently decide its own criteria. Nothing is stopping Augusta National or the USGA from, say, creating an exemption category for the top 10 players on LIV’s individual money list. Or the majors can use each other as the yardstick for each other: If a player is top 15 or top 20 at the Masters, he is invited to the PGA Championship, and the top 15 or 20 at the PGA are exempt into the U.S. Open, etc. Lotsa ways to fill out the fields with LIV players independent of the World Ranking, if that’s what the minders of each major want.
Yeah, they can and probably will mostly just slow-play them on the OWGR front.
This is a good one, though perhaps too inside baseball for many. But Alan does name check quite a few worthies:
Can you disclose your writing muse, if any? @todgerstoneThe newspaper writers I read growing up had a profound effect on me: Jim Murray’s syndicated columns, Mark Purdy in The Mercury News in San Jose, Ray Ratto in the San Francisco Chronicle. Murray was in a class by himself, but the others also had such distinctive voices. When I was around 12 I discovered SI and those writers blew my mind: DeFord, Nack, Kirkpatrick, Fimrite, Wolff, Reilly. Giants! I would reread the stories over and over to inculcate the rhythms of the language and the way the articles were structured. Among the authors I read in school, Vonnegut’s zaniness, Joseph Heller’s sardonic irreverence and Fitzgerald’s elegance made the biggest impression. When I was an intern at SI, at 20, I spent months doing nothing but reading old back issues and borrowing golf books from the library. That’s when I came to appreciate Jenkins, Wind, Darwin, Diaz, Bamberger, Garrity, Kindred and Callahan. I became interested in the New Journalism of the 1960s and ‘70s and devoured Talese, Wolfe, Breslin, Halberstam, Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson and sundry others. There was a time when I subscribed to around 20 magazines, and I was inspired by modern practitioners like Tom Junod, Gary Smith, Chris Jones, Wright Thompson, Scott Price, Lee Jenkins and Chris Ballard. But at some point you have to filter out all these influences and find your own style. That, to me, is the muse: When the ghost of every other writer leaves your head and all you can hear is your own voice.
Of course, the disconnect between the questioners use of the singular form of the noun and Alan listing every guy he ever read is pretty comical, no? Pretty sure that Gay Talese has never come up in tis blog before...
I'll use one of Alan's recurring bits to exit. Alan had famously never had a hole-in-one, and he's milked it amusingly in his writing. Joy is at hand, as Alan is off the schneid, though with an asterisk the size of Texas:
How did it feel to finally dunk one? @ESPN_SwingCoachCathartic. In the moment I didn’t even feel that much joy, just utter disbelief mixed with relief. But for days afterward I was kind of floating along in a haze of bliss.Did you buy a round of drinks for everyone in the clubhouse after the hole-in-one? @philengle21There was already an open bar provided by Youth on Course for those of us partaking in the 100 Hole Hike. I highly recommend making an ace when free alcohol is readily available!Are people really calling a hole-in-one on a par-3 course or a simulator a “Shipnuck.” I’m hearing murmurs. @fakePOULTERLook, I fully understand that me holing a sawed-off lob wedge on a 61-yard hole I had already played eight times that day invites a little scrutiny. And, yes, it would be more majestic to make an ace with a 1-iron on a 242-yard hole over water. But after a lifetime of lip-outs and balls expiring just short and tee shots clanging off the pin, I ain’t apologizing for shit.
Ya think? Look, I'm happy for you, but about those three Phil scandals....
That's it for today, kids. See you again on Friday.
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