Monday, June 19, 2023

Weekend Wrap - U.S. Open Edition

The USGA kept me up way past my bedtime, so yhour humble blogger is pecking away on fumes...  On fumes, I tell you!

This is a pretty good lede from Geoff:

Hollywood wanted Holywood. They got Wyndham.

The joke being that Rory hails from the Belfast suburb of Holywood, one "L:, though I'm thinking that Hollywood and everyone else really wanted Rickie, but would have abided the Ulsterman in a pinch.

For all the Golf God cursing coming from the U.S. Open grounds, grandstands, member pavilions, chalets, corporate clubhouse suites and the polar press tent, there were signs all along that Wyndham
Clark might have been guided by more than just his steadfast display of confidence, skill and courage in winning the 2023 United States Open.

Those big string-pullers-in-the-sky must have already known what we only found out when the 2023 champion sat with the trophy by his side after a final round 70. The first-time PGA Tour winner just a few weeks ago at Quail Hollow, Clark had been trending with a mix of power, touch and, it turns out, a quiet bond with the host city.

On a soft June day at Los Angeles Country Club when the pesky marine layer lifted to allow the city views to shine and the greens to turn into bricks, everything came together. Clark held off Holywood, Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy by one stroke and 22,000 or so in attendance rooting for the the four-time major champion. The improbable win cancelled any plans to briefly rebrand the city’s signature sign minus an “L”. Along the way as crowds pulled for McIlroy, Clark had to have heard the bias. But the 29-year-old never seemed offended.

I would posit that the Golf God is actually sending us an important message, to wit, that regardless of our attempts to control the outcome of events by limiting the participation of the great unwashed masses, golf will continue to be golf.  

This is an interesting take on that curious hiccup on the 15th:

Throughout the day when a huge influx of final day fans were reacting to a near-disaster hiccup
at the 8th and a miraculous save on the par-3 11th, he countered by unleashing bold drives at the 12th and 14th holes while McIlroy kept skirting the edges with putts.

Whether the information came via corporate tent television screen reactions, hideous on course scoreboards that only briefly flashed usable information, and even the first glimpses of a giant tracer loop of showing Clark’s 18th tee shot headed for trouble, he never flinched from the star-crossed yelps of optimism. Instead his only ire came at a brief mental lapse at the short par-3 15th where he admitted to Golf Channel’s Live From team that he took his mind off the mission.

“I checked the leaderboard at 15 for the first time and wasn’t focused,” he said. “I swung without any purpose.”

Even though the yardage was ideal and the back right hole location suitable to his eye, Clark placed his tee shot on the back collar where he attempted to wedge over the steep slope. A missed 10-footer for par left him two ahead of McIlroy.

Fascinating, because we could all senses that loss of concentration.... He had been nails all week, then suddenly knew he could win the Open and felt the collar tighten.  Walking off the 16th one though he might be pulling an Adam Scott (or Ed Sneed for those older readers), but he summoned the resolve to get it to the clubhouse....

I was asked over the weekend to react to the player's gripes about LACC, which seemed to me perfectly predictable.  But does this surprise us?

Moments later the winner revealed several details that confirmed this was a victory of destiny. A self-declared “mama’s boy,” Clark was reminded of his late mother’s presence by Angelenos.
Several approached him during the week with photos and stories of how they’d been inspired the same self confidence and poise Lise instilled in her son before succumbing in 2013 to breast cancer at 55.

“That just happened this week, so it was kind of a special vibe all week being here in LA,” Clark said. “My parents got married at Riviera Country Club. I have some roots a little bit in this area.”

He immediately bonded with L.A. North the Tuesday prior to the championship. After walking off the 18th with a friend and member, “I said this is a course for me. It’s distance biased. You needed creativity around the greens.”

I have no clue as to what he means by "Distance biased", but am unsurprised that someone that embraced the challenge prevailed, whereas those carping about blind shots (Brooksie, call your office) finished well back.  As Jack always said, the majors are the easiest events to win, because so many players remove themselves from the mix.  

Shall we spend a moment with the supporting cast?  First, that One-L guy:

John Huggan, fortunately, is too curmudgeonly to be completely in the bag, so acknowledges the reality at least in part:

Just when he needed to keep his eyes on the prize, he blinked. Again. This time with just five
holes to play. This time with just one man to beat. This time against an opponent 29 places lower in the world rankings. A triumvirate more gruesome than great.

And so, when he arrives at Royal Liverpool for next month’s Open Championship, nine years will have passed since Rory McIlroy, perhaps the game’s most naturally gifted performer, last won any of golf’s four major championships.

At first it was a blip. Then it became a puzzlement explained by the vagaries of golf. And now? Full-blown habit comes to mind. That is a harsh conclusion though. A bit of good luck at the right time has certainly been absent for some time now. And yet. This is happening too often for one so gifted, happening in ways that resonate. And not in good ways.

Yeah, nine years of not getting the right bounce?   Here he explains the inexplicable:

Inevitably, McIlroy was forced to focus on what went wrong rather than right. The short birdie putt missed on the eighth green wasn’t too pretty, but who hasn’t failed to find the cup from that range? It was the wedge that plugged in the face of the greenside bunker that, more likely, will haunt the Northern Irishman’s attempts to sleep over the coming days.

"As I was walking up to the ball, it felt like it was a perfect full sand wedge,” he said. “Hit it hard, get some spin on it. Then while we were getting prepared for the shot, the wind started to freshen a little bit. A full sand wedge wasn't getting there, so I said to Harry, 'three-quarter gap wedge would be perfect.' But I didn't time the shot perfectly. I hit it when the wind was at its strongest and the ball just got hit a lot by the wind, and obviously it came up short. If I had it back, I think I had the right club and the right shot. I might have just had to wait an extra 15 or 20 seconds to let that little gust settle.”

Got it, except for that niggling detail that we've been watching him struggle with distance control with his wedges since, checking notes, August 2014.  Another niggling bit is that everyone else faced that same challenge yet none of them buried their ball in the face of that bunker.

But he'll soldier on...

“When I do finally win this next major, it's going to be really, really sweet,” he said. “I would go through 100 Sundays like this to get my hands on another major championship.”

When?  At a certain point it's more a matter of if....

And this just looks weird with the benefit of hindsight:

He's likely joking (apparently it's an Anchorman reference), but that animosity of the last year seems to have dissipated rather quickly, no?  

How do we feel about that man in orange?  The old adage in our game is that for is fleeting, whereas class is permanent, and we saw both sides of that play out on Sunday.  Of no great import, but did you catch that strange scene on the 18th green?

As the final putt dropped and the U.S. Open concluded and the crowd exploded, one man stood still.

Some 30 feet away, Wyndham Clark raised his arms in triumph. He began bawling before the ball settled in the bottom of the cup. A cameraman arrived by his side, and then another, and then another. Clark buried his face in his hat for a moment, hiding his tears from the world, but when he uncovered his eyes the world had come to him. All week the Los Angeles Country Club crowd had been critiqued for a lack of energy, but now the green was surrounded by a group of marauders that had snuck under the ropes and charged up the fairway. They roared their approval for golf’s newest major champion.

Rickie Fowler watched the celebration from the back of the green, hat in hand and smile on face. After a couple minutes with his friends and family, Clark ran out of people to hug and turned to walk towards the back of the green. That’s where he found Fowler, who welcomed him with open arms.

Wives, families and the like are welcome on the final green, but they typically allow the players to exchange their pleasantries first.  Weird to make Rickie wait like that, though of course he took it wit his usual grace.

Of course, as you've had drummed into you, these two know each other quite well, and I'll spare you repeat of the putter story.  When they did speak, Rickie reminds us of why he's such a popular figure out there:

Fowler pulled Clark in tight, yelling his congratulations. And then, just before they walked away, he leaned in for a quieter message.

“Your mom was with you. She’d be very proud,” he said.

Pure class.

Given the late finish, there's a paucity of content up at this point, you might have sensed the absence of Tour Confidential to pad the post.  I'll mostly leave things here for4 today, just adding some random bits that amused your humble blogger.

Whose Brilliant Idea Was This? - Both Rickie and Rory have beautiful young daughters to take the sting out of their disappointment, so one hopes they took comfort therein.  Alas, not much time afforded for that:

“I was excited she stayed up. We pushed her past her bedtime,” Fowler said with a grin. “But to have her there, and then we’ll travel to the Travelers [tournament] tomorrow morning … it just kind of makes you realize and understand golf is special and it’s what I love to do, but it’s definitely not everything.”

Why is he headed to Hartford?  Because the Tour is run by eejits, who think making these guys haul ass across the country and play when they don't want to is the key to growing our game....

Answering Employee No. 2 - She was curious on this topic, and it seems she wasn't alone:

If you’ve been following Rickie Fowler the last three days at the U.S. Open, you’ve probably
noticed him carrying a dark gray metal water bottle tricked out in several exotic stickers, as he has made his way around Los Angeles Country Club. Its ubiquitous presence led to a natural question after Fowler wrapped up his third round Saturday night, posting an even-par 70 and holding a share of the 54-hole lead with Wyndham Clark at 10 under.

Does the water bottle have some kind of special meaning?

Turns out the answer is basically yes, although we’d stop short of calling it a kind of security blanket. Let’s let Fowler explain.

“I started carrying it at the beginning of this year,” Fowler said. “I drink more if I'm carrying it, and it's also heavy when it's full, so I don't want to necessarily throw that on Rick [Romano], my caddie, to tote that thing around.”

So, it turns out that the reason that Rickie has a water bottle is, well, the water.  Boy, who coulda seen that one coming?

Scenes From Golf Twitter -  What do we think of Zinger these days?  I once found him astute and candid, but he seems to have morphed into a late-career Johnny Miller, where the sounds bites emerge seemingly unconnected to objective reality.  This was a particularly bad moment for him, and that's exactly why we have Golf Twitter:

It happened on the ninth hole after leader Wyndham Clark missed the par-3 ninth with his tee shot and wound up in the rough facing a tricky stance with the ball above his feet. Clark decided
to play away from the hole for safety and use a slope, which prompted Azinger to assure viewers he wouldn't be able to get his ball within 10 feet. As you can probably guess, Azinger was completely wrong, but it gets even worse.

After striking his chip shot torwards the center of the green, Azinger said that Clark missed the slope. Wrong again. Then he doubled down—as the ball was rolling toward the hole!—by saying it wouldn't get much closer to the hole. But it did. In fact, it rolled all the way to about five feet and Clark made the putt moments later to preserve his lead.

I'll throw out just the one tweet:

I can only assume that, if he hasn't heard this kind of thing before, that he doesn't watch much televised golf...  I'm reminded that one of the funniest things I've seen as Rocco Mediate watching the tape of his playoff against Tiger at Torrey and  his reactions to the stuff that Johnny just made up.... Who knew that every shot Rocco hit wasn't a trap draw?

Things That Make Your Humble Blogger Laugh - A few of the boys had the weekend off, and used it in a wide range of manners.  These guys apparently tried to do the equivalent of a Manningcast, which seems to have been better in theory than in execution.  Of course there's no sport more in need of a second audio track, but that's for another day...

This guy took his disappointment with a touch of grace as well:

So, what is it that made me laugh?



Keegs, no need to use the Aim Point grind, it's a straight putt.  But thanks for the chuckle...

That's it for today.  We'll have more in the coming days.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)