Tuesday, June 25, 2024

Tuesday Tastings - Motown Edition

Thank God hockey season is behind us, so I can focus my sports viewing on.....well, upon further review, what's on Netflix these days?  I mean, have you seen the Yankee's lineup lately?

The Biggest Loser - This is the moment, having completed the last of their super-special money grabs, when it becomes clear that the remainder of the Tour's schedule belongs in the, well, remainder bin.  Their attempts at hype will seem kinds futile:

Serious firepower, no?  At least Rickie bears mentioning as the defender, though that will only serve to underline how weak the last year had been.  As for Cam, a 59 will never hurt you, but when that 59 isn't even the course record, it tells us something useful.

From the same source:

Only 20 percent of top 50 making way to 2024 Rocket Mortgage Classic

There wasn't supposed to be any math....But I'm sure they've got plenty of big names to tout:

The tournament, returning to Detroit Golf Club for the sixth time, will be held from June 25-30, with the 
first round teeing off Thursday. Among the top ranked golfers coming to town are Cameron Young (No. 23 in the world), Tom Kim (No. 26), Chris Kirk (No. 30) and, of course, Rickie Fowler, ranked No. 49 and the defending Rocket Mortgage Classic champ after last year’s epic three-way playoff victory. (Young on Saturday at the Travelers Championship became the 12th player all-time to shoot 59 or better on the PGA Tour.)

Other previous winners returning to Detroit are Cam Davis, who took the trophy in a 2021 playoff, and Nate Lashley, who won it as the third alternate in 2019, leading wire-to-wire.

 This is a good move, though won't move the needle:

The tournament, returning to Detroit Golf Club for the sixth time, will be held from June 25-30, with the first round teeing off Thursday. Among the top ranked golfers coming to town are Cameron Young (No. 23 in the world), Tom Kim (No. 26), Chris Kirk (No. 30) and, of course, Rickie Fowler, ranked No. 49 and the defending Rocket Mortgage Classic champ after last year’s epic three-way playoff victory. (Young on Saturday at the Travelers Championship became the 12th player all-time to shoot 59 or better on the PGA Tour.)

Other previous winners returning to Detroit are Cam Davis, who took the trophy in a 2021 playoff, and Nate Lashley, who won it as the third alternate in 2019, leading wire-to-wire.

Maybe they'll get some studs coming through Monday qualifying?  Yeah, just kidding, but it does tee up the header of the week:

Golf Galaxy employee qualifies for Rocket Mortgage via playoff after downing three beers

Only three?  It's actually a fun story as the guy was just nervous as could be.  

And how about this bizarre scene?

At least Tom Kim wasn't in the group ahead of them....

Not sure this will happen, but perhaps a practice round?

Whatever he was drinking I'd have as the logo on his cap this week.  I mean, is it the Drink of Champions or what?

Rory, A Deep Dive -  Are you sure this is a good idea?

The confusing case of Rory McIlroy's golf swing, explained

Blogger is still quite the hot mess for hot links, so you'll have to find this one on your own at Golf Digest.  It's by Luke Kerr-Dineen, who immediately undermines his credibility with this:

The gutting loss that will forever haunt Rory McIlroy has nothing to do with those missed putts.

Rory is a good putter who runs hot and cold, and the two short putts he missed on the 70th and 72nd holes of the U.S. Open are indicative of a small glitch McIlroy himself says he fights under pressure.

Do good putters run that hot and cold?  But Luke's interest here is in Rory's full swing, and he has some hot takes:

But it's not the most important question facing McIlroy now. The more interesting, and frankly, confusing one is about his golf swing.

Whether it's better or worse is subjective, but what is a fact is that Rory's golf swing is different now. Different from the last time he was winning majors. Different, even, than a year ago.

Swing-watchers know it. People close to Rory's world know it. Rory, himself, even knows it.

"My technique is nowhere near as good as it used to be," an exasperated Rory said after his T-7 finish at last year's PGA Championship, caught by Netflix cameras as part of Season Two of Full Swing. "I almost feel like I wanna do a complete reboot. I do, I do. Because I feel like it's the only way I'm going to break through. It feels so far away."

Well, if it felt far away a year ago, I can't imagine things feel any better after Pinehurst....

Luke has a lot to say and a plethora of side-by-side photos, but even he admits he's not sure any of this matters.  I would just not that those two short misses are getting all the attention, but that flying the 15th and 17th greens might have been even more in character for Rory.

LIVing Their Best Lives -  Apparently Nashville was a hit:

LIV Golf’s Nashville tournament set the attendance record among the league’s United States events to
date, according to LIV.

More than 40,000 spectators attended the tournament at The Grove over three days, according to LIV communications. That included sellout crowds of 14,454 people on Saturday and Sunday.

LIV Golf’s Washington D.C. tournament at Trump National Golf Club in May had owned the high attendance mark. No official figure was released, but estimations had close to 40,000 fans attending.

LIV Nashville was on pace to break the record, a league spokesman said, before Bryson DeChambeau won the U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2. But interest increased with DeChambeau playing in Nashville just days after his dramatic victory over Rory McIlroy. On-site merchandise sales for the first two days alone surpassed any three days of sales for a U.S. event, per LIV.

Perhaps complicating ongoing negotiations, but I wonder about cause and effect:

Seeing red: The LIV Golf ‘curse’ strikes again

Amusingly, the author uses the rap music industry as his framing device, even including a photo of Eminem.  Not exactly the How To Guide I'd recommend for golf....

The so-called “hot mics” at LIV Golf events have offered a myriad of wonderful insights into the minds of the Saudi-funded league’s players. It also seems they are collectively trying to break the record for the number of F-bombs in a single sporting event. And, in the last few days in Nashville, that has been taken up a notch.

A couple of weeks ago, Ian Poulter was filmed telling a fan to “f**k off”, and the same player was caught in the broadcast this week referring to himself as a “f**king prick” not once but twice in the
space of seven seconds after a particularly poor approach shot.

And, of course, taking a lead role in this foul-mouthed charade are Legion XIII team-mates Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton.

Now, we know both are famed for their questionable temperaments. Even in their PGA Tour days, either player looked like they were about to explode at any given time. But it was somewhat diluted – bottled, even – and almost always came across as funny rather than aggressive. Think Hatton’s regular middle-finger salutes to the golf course, for example.

This time it was the weather feeling the wrath of Englishman’s tongue.

“F**k you, wind!” he said, before uttering another expletive which is drowned out by a quip from analyst David Feherty. “Two in a row it’s absolutely f**ked me.”

It's reached the point where the author is considering its intentionality:

Largely because it seems like it’s almost deliberate.

Players on other tours are fined if they breach the rules regarding conduct – including swearing – and Hatton himself recently said he’d been stumped for “a lot of money” for his outbursts on the DP World and PGA Tours.

So, have they been told to do it? Or, more specifically, have they not been told not to do it? If you catch my drift.

The subject of Rahm’s ire in Nashville was a drone hovering near him as he lined up a shot.

“Every tournament,” he bellowed after double-crossing one into the drink. “It’s f**king incredible. Right on my backswing. These f**king drones every time.”

But Jon, this is “Golf, But Louder”, remember? Or, as my colleague Bryce Ritchie put it: “Annoyed by drones but not by Drake.”

You need to get over it, Jon. And I can think of 450 million reasons why.

Almost?  But it's LIV, so who really cares?

Cup Fever -  Control your excitement, kids, as it's a Prez Cup year and we know that emotions can therefore get out of hand.  Have you spent any time wondering about the composition of the U.S. team?  Of course, not, you have a life.

It's amusing in the context of that famous 2018 Alan Shipnuck Ryder Cup prediction, the one that visualized a recurring U.S. juggernaut, to see how things have actually played out.  Alan was focused on those fading Euro stalwarts, but this was his take on U.S. prospects a mere six years ago:

Meanwhile, just look at the big steps taken by the U.S. players since the last Ryder: Jordan Spieth, 24, won another major and reasserted himself as golf’s alpha male; Dustin Johnson, 33, spent almost all of 2017 at number one; Brooks Koepka, 27, won the U.S. Open. You know who has never even played in a Ryder Cup? Justin Thomas, 24, merely the reigning player of the year. Throw in Rickie Fowler, 28, and Patrick Reed, 27, and you have a rock-star core for the next decade or more — not to mention the fact that these guys will be augmented by wily vets (Phil! Kuch! Zach! Bubba! Sneds! Duf!) and some spicy young comers (Daniel Berger, Kevin Kisner).

Ironically, it's possible that not a single player mentioned in that graph will be on the U.S. team in Montreal.  Perhaps the only one with a chance is Koepka, and how strange is that?

Golfweek has update the current qualification standings, although not in a manner that makes for an easy copy and paste, so we'll grab it from ESPN instead::


For months I've been suggesting that the U.S. team might go to Canada without either JT or Spieth, which seems quite possible.  Thomas only climbed into the top 15 by virtue of actually making a cut in Hartford, but has looked lost for most of the year.

For the Jordan dead-ender, here are the next ten guys that could in theory play their way onto the team:

16. Keegan Bradley
17. J.T. Poston
18. Cameron Young
19. Eric Cole
20. Denny McCarthy
21. Harris English
22. Taylor Moore
23. Lucas Glover
24. Jordan Spieth
25. Adam Schenk

All this only serves as a distraction from that which matters most, our hopes that Patrick Cantlay can find a hat that fits properly.  But the Internationals are due to win one of these at some point, and a weaker U.S. roster leads me to wonder whether the stars are aligned....  The other reason that Shipnuck comes to mind is that 2018 Ryder Cup, specifically the many egregious errors of that U.S. captain.....  Based upon Love and Furyk, it appears that the primary qualification to be U.S. Prez Cup captain is to have made a mess of a Ryder Cup.  Thank God we have a Task Force to handle such important matters.

That's all for today, folks.  I shall see you later in the week.

 

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)