Actually, we'll test every tense of verb that you know, with a little past (LACC), present (Baltusrol) and future, well, you'll not need a parenthetical there.
Open Leftovers - Geoff has his typical post-mortem, filed under the awkward "Champions, Cut-Makers and Point-Missers" rubric, but who wants to tell him that there's no points in golf (unless, yanno, you're using a Stableford).
He did remind of one of the more interesting aspects of the winner:
Wyndham Clark. He arrived early, convinced himself the course fit his emerging game, didn’t whine about blind shots or 65 yard wide fairways that were easily holdable, and best of all, exuded alook of determination no other player seemed to have. Aggressive and bullish can often turn fatal in a U.S. Open but a couple of miraculous up-and-downs Sunday made up for any reckless plays. The 29-year-old used all facets of the game to finish -10 and does not feel like a one-and-done type after offloading the big agency and name instructors to find his swing in the dirt. Maybe that’s why his onions never morphed into shallots down the stretch. And look at the stat line for the week: 19 birdies, 41 pars, 11 bogeys, NO doubles, 2 three-putts. Clark played the difficult par 4’s -4 and the par 5’s -8 to McIlroy’s -5 on the three-shotters. A stunning performance and earned victory.
In an era when his competitors can't get three words deep into an Amanda Renner interview without saluting their "team", Clark figures out that ne needs to do it on his own.... That steely individualism is refreshingly welcome to this observer. Am I the only one that thinks that might explain why his game held up in the cauldron, whereas other, more pampered souls, lost theirs.... Rory, that was for you.
Perhaps Geoff could use an Intro to Statistics tutorial?
Rory McIlroy. Gracious in yet another painful defeat where he played so well over a course he had not seen before Monday, McIlroy’s Sunday was eerily similar to St Andrews last year where the solid, smart and seemingly wise play seemed like what a veteran trying to win another major should do over less experienced competition. Once again, someone else somehow played a touch more aggressively, somehow got up and down from a few impossible spots and seemed weirdly unencumbered in contrast to McIlroy, who knows how hard these are to win. “Wyndham was pretty much rock solid all day, and that was a great two-putt at the last,” the runner-up said Sunday after leading the field in Strokes Gained Off The Tee and Putts per Green In Regulation, usually a pretty deadly combination. Ultimately, a three putt off the fringe at 8 and an understandably aggressive third at the 14th were his undoing. The margins in this stupid came can be so cruel sometimes.
When bad breaks keep happening to good people, you might want to ponder whether they're actually breaks at all.... Correlation may well not imply causation, but it's a good place to start.
Lots of thoughts to be had on that 6th hole, including these from Geoff:
6th Hole. Things could have gone a lot of ways with this one: blind tee shot, slim green surrounded by dense fescue, and decisions all around. That tends to add up to trouble in a modern game where players label something broken if there is not one clear way to attack. Though the green held better than expected from well back—and players did lay shockingly far back in the fairway more than expected—the scatter chart is pretty dreamy in terms of giving players width and a hole that’s only a 275 yard straight shot holding its own. The dispersion is beautiful, though also perplexing players did not ever try to nudge one down to the very far end for a better angle of attack.
The Golf.com writers purged their notebooks, with James Colgan penning this homage to No. 6:
The perfect golf hole?By James ColganIf you find yourself in a certain cross-section of the golf community — under 40, overly active on Twitter, with any sort of opinion on the number of commercials shown during a golf telecast — it’s likely you also find yourself a fan of the drivable par-4.The hole template has found itself in the main vein of golf architecture in the 21st century; a beloved choice among those building (and caring about) golf courses. And though LACC was around long before course-design Twitter, the 300-yard 6th hole at the North Course gives those who gush over the short 4 reason to fully swoon.It took me nearly all of tournament week to get out to the 6th, but I finally plopped down atop its massively raised fairway as the leaders strolled through on Sunday afternoon. What I found was what I believe to be the perfect golf hole: a true, do-or-die challenge with any number of potentially fatal options.Those who attempted to carry the trees and drive the postage-stamp green were faced with two options: make it have a good shot at eagle, or miss and scramble hard for par. Those who laid up were faced with a difficult shot from the bottom of the bend in the fairway, with only five yards of margin for error on either side of a baked-out green.On Sunday, I watched the final two pairings come through. Scottie Scheffler and Rickie Fowler laid up but couldn’t wedge it close enough to make birdie. Rory McIlroy missed too far right and couldn’t get up and down for a 3. Wyndham Clark had the best shot of the bunch, landing it just short of the green in the heavy rough. He was lucky enough to escape from it and made birdie.That, to me, is a perfect strategic hole: easy to make bogey, hard to make birdie, and lucky to make par. Too bad it didn’t come closer to the closing stretch.
NBC’s portrayal of the 6th. From the early round explanations by on course reporters helping viewers understand the options, to camera angles from all perspectives, the little drivable gem got the rock star coverage from NBC. This graphic on tee shot lines was fun:
He's got this as a Cut-Maker, which seems about right:
15th Hole. The little 80, 81 or whatever yardage it was Saturday did not produce the same drama as it did during the 2017 Walker Cup. But stroke play is a different beast than match play. The players showed wisdom and restraint in not going at the hole which played beautifully to all hole locations. But given the Saturday cautiousness, perhaps it would have made a better Sunday hole location to wring a little more risk-taking out of the field.
The 2023 U.S. Open just wrapped up in Los Angeles, but the United States Golf Association quickly made plans to return to Southern California.Riviera Country Club, site of the PGA Tour’s Genesis Invitational in Pacific Palisades, California, will host the 2031 U.S. Open. It will be the second time Riviera has hosted the U.S. Open after the famed club became the first in Los Angeles to host the championship in 1948, when Ben Hogan won the first of his four U.S. Open titles.
One can understand the USGA's interest in LA, although taking 75 years to return there beggars explanation. One can also appreciate the USGA's love of West Coast venues and that prime time TV windows, but do all their venues have to also hold PGA Tour events (Pebble, Torrey and The Riv)?
Apparently LACC is now slotted back in for 2039, so mark your calendars accordingly. I look forward to blogging that return at age.....quickly doing math, 86.
Distaff Doings - If golf is to be watched this weekend, it will be this event:
Major championship golf is back yet again this week. After a thrilling tournament out in Los Angeles for the men, the women take center stage this week in New Jersey for the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.For the first time since 1985, Baltusrol Golf Club will host the top ladies in the game for a major championship. Balty’s Lower Course — home of 2005 and 2016 PGA Championship — will be on display as the likes of Nelly Korda, Rose Zhang, Lydia Ko and others compete for the crown.
You don't have to look hard for the biggest stories:
Rose Zhang tries to keep the momentum rollingRose Zhang took the golf world by storm earlier this month when she won the Mizuho Americas Open in her professional debut. This week, the 20-year-old budding superstar returns to pro golf looking to keep the momentum rolling.This won’t be the first time Zhang has played in a major. As an amateur, she made nine starts in majors, including winning low amateur honors at the Chevron Championship and AIG Women’s Open. However, this will be the first time the 20-year-old has teed it up in one of golf’s biggest events as a pro.So far in her pro career, Zhang has a 1.000 winning percentage, and she enters this week as one of the favorites. If she can replicate her success from Liberty National, it will take her stardom to a whole new level.
And this young lady that's had some setbacks:
Nelly Korda returnsNelly Korda’s health has been a big story for the last several years, and for all the wrong reasons. She withdrew from the Women’s PGA in 2020 and missed more than two months dealing withthe ailment. Last season, she had surgery to remove a blood clot in her arm that also forced her out of action for several months. And, just four weeks ago, Korda was forced to miss the Mizuho Americas Open with another back ailment.She returns to action this week for the first time since the latest injury, and even hinted that the time off may have been a good thing. But without the competitive reps heading into the year’s second major, it’s impossible to say how she’ll respond. She’s got six top 10s in eight starts so far this season, but she’s yet to secure a victory. Will this be the week she returns to the top of the golf world?
You'd think this would be a tough track on which to make one's return.
I have terribly mixed feelings about this bit of conventional wisdom:
The opportunity to compete on these venues is something Stacy Lewis, a two-time major winner and the U.S. Solheim Cup team captain, has been longing for since joining the LPGA Tour in 2009. Since KPMG and the PGA of America came on board to help run the former LPGA Championship nine years ago, the venues have become more high profile: Hazeltine National, Aronimink, Atlanta Athletic Club, Congressional and now Baltusrol.
Ya got that? The future for these ladies is dependent upon Hazeltine and Atlanta Athletics Club, venues most of us hope to never suffer through again.
Look, they crave respect, so I don't want to sound too harsh, but this strikes mne as profoundly silly:
For the LPGA to compete on these stellar courses provides a unique opportunity to showcase the women’s game. Casual golf fans may be more apt to tune into the coverage to see how the women will fare on courses they’ve seen the men play previously. The curiosity factor is bound to attract more viewers.
What is this elusive "casual golf fan" and have we actually found one in the wild? A casual golf fan is a guy watching baseball or basketball....
It's not that I have any interest in excluding the ladies from these venues, it's just that they seem to be in a little bit of denial. Strike that, it's a far more serious case of denial, because they seem not to know what they're selling. The problem is simple, to wit, they fare incredibly poorly in that comparison to the men, which they can't acknowledge.
Success for the ladies has to come from other factors, appealing and approachable players, a better fan experience and the like. They also need to develop their own venues and play in smaller markets, the sadness being that they had a perfect exemplar of this in Mission Hills. I know that was abandoned due to outside influences, thank you very much Augusta National, but that's a far more viable model than expecting Hazeltine to draw viewers.
LIV In The Time of Cholera - It's been a while, so shall we catch up?
I'm not even sure I ever blogged Jay's disappearance, which even I have to admit was a PR masterstroke. last seen, Jay was taking "ownership" of his hypocrisy in that wonderfully post-modern manner in which ownership has been de-coupled from consequences. but the vanishing act was quite the mic drop, no? I'm sure we'll get a complete accounting of that, right?
If you'll indulge a short browser tab closing moment, I've had this open for far too long. It amuses me simply because these aggressively-entitles players seem to have found the perfect commissioner, based upon tis reaction to potential Congressional hearings:
You might want to have a strategically-positioned hankie for this tale of woe:
“Over the past two years, the PGA Tour has fought an intense and highly publicized battle as theSaudi Arabian PIF-backed LIV golf league attempted to ‘buy’ PGA Tour players and take over the game of golf in the United States and beyond, creating a fractured golf ecosystem and fomenting a heated divisiveness into the game,” Monahan wrote. “We believe that we did everything we could possibly do to defend what we stand for, including spending tens of millions of dollars to defend ourselves from litigation instigated by LIV Golf – significant funds diverted away from our core mission to benefit our players and generate charity. As part of the litigation, we were successful in securing a court ruling that the PIF was not protected under sovereign immunity with respect to litigation discovery and potentially liability, something which had never been done before in the United States.“During this intense battle, we met with several Members of Congress and policy experts to discuss the PIF’s attempt to take over the game of golf in the United States, and suggested ways that Congress could support us in these efforts. While we are grateful for the written declarations of support we received from certain members, we were largely left on our own to fend off the attacks, ostensibly due to the United States’ complex geopolitical alliance with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This left the very real prospect of another decade of expensive and distracting litigation and the PGA Tour’s long-term existence under threat."
Hmmm....a bit curious, no? because if your members and you wanted to hold off this Saudi threat, all they had to do was turn down the offers..... Yeah, hard to see why Congress didn't act on that.
Congressional hearings will be the usual performance art, though that ongoing Justice Department antitrust investigation could be an issue, not least because of the political undercurrents of a presidential election year. he elephant in the corner is that they were investigating the PGA Tour as a monopoly before the merger, yet...
Of course, the best argument against the PGA Tour as monopoly is that LIV got off the ground, but after the deal closes?
Of course, that makes the rookie mistake of applying logic.... what an incumbent administration will do in the midst of an election cycle,. especially if oil prices tick up, remains speculative, though fortunately we're blessed with a Justice Department that is completely unaffected by politics.... Yeah, I know.
No doubt you've heard the pushback from Jimmy Dunne and others, to wit, that Jay will be in charge so there's nothing to see here. They seem immune to irony, in that putting full faith and credit in a man that:
- Just betrayed his membership, and;
- Just disappeared with a mystery "medical issue".
The Times reports that the Saudi investors in the game will financially compensate the PGA Tour players who turned down LIV Golf
However, according to The Times, players who rejected the overtures of LIV Golf will receive a payment under the plan so they "level up" with LIV Golf players, who will keep the money they were paid to join LIV Golf even if they return to the PGA Tour.The report also states that no agreement has been reached on the amount of money players will receive, while they remain in the dark on how the new partnership will work. Players including Tiger Woods, Jon Rahm, Hideki Matsuyama and Will Zalatoris reportedly rejected huge amounts of money to stay put.
Rory, who has allegedly been fighting for Truth, Justice and the American Way told us in the aftermath of the deal announcement that there has to be consequences for the LIV defectors, but that argument will hold up about as well as his wedge game on a Sunday.
But Rory seems well on the way to accommodating this new reality:
Before last week’s RBC Canadian Open, Rory McIlroy was asked if loyal PGA Tour players should be made whole financially, and he replied: “I mean, the simple answer is yes. The complex answer is how does that happen, right. And that's all, that's all a gray area and up in the air at the minute. But, yeah, there is, it's hard to, it's hard for me to not sit up here and feel somewhat like a sacrificial lamb and feeling like I've put myself out there and this is what happens.”Later, he reiterated the point to Sky Sports, saying: “There has to be something for those guys,” before adding that they probably felt that they were now “questioning that decision” to turn down LIV Golf.Asked whether he was referring to some form of financial compensation, he added: “Yeah, I think so. Ultimately I think that’s what we’re talking about, yeah.”
Well, all righty then.... This apparently is supposed to make feel better about the sell-out?
During the interview, McIlroy also confirmed he was not one of the players in question as he “was never offered anything from LIV.”
Brave Sir Rory! He's got his PIP money and he'll make serious bank in those limited-player fields next year, ignoring the source of funding for those purses, but I think more empty virtue signaling is just the ticket.
So, what does this data point tell us? First, what might the price tag be? Starting with Hideki, who turned down $300 million large, it has to be a nine-digit number at the very least, no? And, set aside that funding of Newco, this is the funding of the Tour, or at least its remaining members.
In addition to this funding, we've also been told that PIF will become the major commercial sponsor of the Tour, and we've simultaneously been told that sponsors are balking at funding these enhanced purses. On a combined basis, it sure sounds like we get to a number beginning with a "B" pretty damned quickly, no? This is funding the Tour, not the for-profit Newco, and I'm left with this nagging sense that the Saudis might want something for their riches.....
No doubt you've heard of Tom Watson's open letter to Jay, the incendiary bits including this:
I still await Saudi acknowledgement of their role in the attacks of 9/11, which resulted in the loss of the innocent lives of 3000 of my fellow American citizens. I support 9/11 Families United andtheir efforts to release supporting exculpatory U.S. Government documents (See9/11FamiliesUnited.org/KeyDocuments). That day, forever among the darkest in our nation’s history, is sadly not alone among the human rights violations we have seen employed by Saudi Arabia. I ask the Tour, how is a non-negotiable point for us one day one we negotiate around the next?
My loyalty to golf and this country live in the same place and have held equal and significant weight with me over my lifetime. Please educate me and others in a way that allows loyalty to both and in a way that makes it easy to look 9/11 families in the eye and ourselves in the mirror.
Tom, I think you've lost connection to the current zeitgeist. You're still living in a Never Forget world, whereas these crazy kids have moved on to this:
'Nobody's perfect': Bryson DeChambeau defends Saudi Arabia in spirited CNN interview
Translated into English, that means that, because no one is perfect, we'll not have any standards at all....Noted.
To, me this is the bigger issue:
My overarching questions remain. Is the PIF the only viable rescue from the Tour’s financial problems? Was/is there a plan B? And again, what exactly is the exchange? We need clarity and deserve full disclosure as to the financial health of the PGA Tour and the details of this proposed partnership.
Yes, when you rule out the layers taking less..... But why exactly did we rule that out, when many seem willing to do so?
While Jay is likening Tom Watson to a meddlesome priest, one of the usual suspects has stepped up to defend Jay's sinecure, though the header is spit-take funny:
Outspoken LIV Golf critic writes open letter preaching ‘patience’ over Saudi partnership
Really? Who is this brave soul willing to put his good name on the line?
One of the more vocal critics of LIV Golf has made an about-face after the PGA Tour-PIF deal was announced two weeks ago.Just last summer, Davis Love III said that a “nuclear option” could be required and that tour pros might need to boycott events if LIV Golf players were able to challenge their indefinite bans. That’s certainly no longer the case as the World Golf Hall of Fame member is now asking for “patience” in a new open letter addressed to PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, players, sponsors and tour
staff.
“Our three commissioners have one critical, common trait: the unwavering goal of basing all decisions on what’s best for the players, sponsors, loyal fans and the game, as well as generating millions of dollars for charity,’’ Love wrote. “This growth has only been possible because our commissioners and the Independent Board Directors have always guided us to sound business decisions, and player input has been central to those decisions, as the Player Directors have an equal voice and votes, to approve or deny our path forward.’’
Love, a five-time PGA Tour Policy Board member, went on to write that “if we are patient and work together we will achieve the best result for our Tour, and our partners and fans.”
Wow, that's some kind of journalism you guys practice at Golf Digest. Let me see if a review of the videotape helps elucidate what just happened here:
- From early 2022 through June 6, 2023 Jay Monahan and all right-minded folks decried the moral turpitude of the Saudis.
- Jay does an about face that has his members screaming betrayal;
- Tom Watson, a man with actual gravitas, writes an open letter highlighting that obvious betrayal, and;
- A serious critic of the Saudis is so swayed by jay's logic that he has a genuine change of heart.
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