Weekend Wrap

This will be blogging as therapy, so can I ask you to adjust your standards accordingly?  I understand that it might have seemed apparent that they could go any lower...

Hall Pass - It's sad to note the mediocrities that were honored before her, but at least they've finally found a spot for the great Marion Hollins:

Marion Hollins’ contributions to golf largely have been historical footnotes deserving greater recognition given her roles in Augusta National Golf Club and Cypress Point Club. 

Hollins in St. Andrews in 1929.

Hollins, who died in 1944 at the age of 51, will finally get her due with the announcement today that she has been elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame, joining Tiger Woods in the Class of 2021. Woods’ election was announced on March 11. 

An accomplished player who won the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 1921, Hollins was working for Samuel F.B. Morse, a distant cousin of the inventor of the telegraph, and helping him develop property he bought on the Monterey Peninsula, including Pebble Beach. 

She was given the task of developing Cypress Point Club, which Seth Raynor originally was hired to design. When Raynor died early on in the project, Hollins hired a British course architect virtually unknown in the United States, Alister MacKenzie. With a notable assist from Hollins, MacKenzie designed a masterpiece.

Cypress Point, Pasatiempo and Augusta National as footnotes?   Even here note the disservice, burying her selection behind that Tiger nail-biter.... I'd like to see the physical ballots on that one.

Some mangled background on how these important personnages hooked up:

“Here enters Bobby Jones,” Dave Kindred wrote in Golf Digest in 1999. “He came to Pebble Beach that fall [1929] to compete in the U.S. Amateur. During preparations, he played at the new Cypress Point and found it ‘almost perfect.’ 

“So while Jones knew of MacKenzie—and shared his admiration for the unadorned subtleties of the Old Course at St. Andrews—he was seeing the architect’s own work for the first time. It was fortuitous because he needed an architect to build a great national course in Georgia.” 

Jones also played Pasatiempo on that trip. “So, the Hollins-MacKenzie-Jones connection was formed when Jones set foot on Cypress Point. From there events moved as if inevitable,” Kindred wrote.

Enters?  More like exits, as the key event might well have been Jones' shocking loss in the first round of match-play in the 1929 U.S. Amateur.  Though there's long been speculation that Jones and MacKenzie may have met previously in St. Andrews.

Our friend David Owen, who literally wrote the book on Augusta National, wrote an engaging profile of Hollins for the New Yorker that I've linked to previously, but it's the header that informs most:

The Woman Who Invented Augusta National

Often times we assess golfers based upon that which their peers think and say about them.  Similarly, the case for Marion Hollins is worthy of a summary judgment based merely upon what Bobby Jones and Dr. MacKenzie thought of her.

Beth Ann Nichols recounts this from David's book:

As reported in David Owen’s book “Making of the Masters,” MacKenzie sent Hollins to

Augusta National in his place after co-founder Clifford Roberts felt that MacKenzie wasn’t spending enough time at the development. 

“I want her views and personal impressions in regard to the way that the work is being carried out,” wrote MacKenzie, later adding, “I do not know of any man who has sounder ideas.”

Nichols argues that Hollins is among the five most important women in golf history...  I'm of two minds on these sorts of things, as I find the category itself a tad demeaning.  But, as the Good Doctor's quote makes clear, it is a higher order of accomplishment given women's lesser opportunities in that era.   For what it's worth, you'll want to know the other four:

Annika Sorenstam: The winningest player in the modern era not only dominated the LPGA but elevated everyone around her, particularly when it came to fitness. The only player in LPGA history to shoot 59, Sorenstam’s appearance on the PGA Tour at Colonial catapulted her into a new level of acclaim among sports stars. 

Mickey Wright: That swing. Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson called Wright’s swing the greatest they’d ever seen – man or woman. Such respect helped to elevate the women’s tour in those early days. There was time when tournaments threatened to cancel if Wright, a 13-time major winner, didn’t play. 

Babe Zarahias:The early LPGA was built to showcase Zaharias, one of the greatest athletes in American history. She wasn’t just a sports star, but a bona fide celebrity. 

Se Ri Pak: The South Korean single-handedly changed the face of the LPGA, inspiring countless others to pick up the game throughout Asia. When the LPGA faced an uncertain future a decade ago, it was the Asian market that largely propped up the tour financially.

A pretty good list, but with a huge catch.  To see who might have been slighted, I reviewed the listing of inductees, and it's not for the faint of heart.  People, have we no standards?  Does anyone really consider Hubert Green a golfing immortal?

Wither Golf, Professional Division -  There's not a lot that's new here, but the Tour Confidential crew takes a shot at the probabilities of that June restart:

1. The PGA Tour announced its new schedule this week, as it attempts to return from its hiatus due to the coronavirus. Up first is the Charles Schwab Classic in Fort Worth, Texas, on June 11. The first four events will be played without fans, and Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said that the Tour will not play without coronavirus testing or clearance from health officials. How realistic is the Tour actually resuming in June? 

Sean Zak: I’ll call it a 50/50 chance right now. Many models would tell you that the death rate of the coronavirus will (hopefully) be under control by late May, which would lend you to think that life could make moves toward “normal” again. Could the Tour create a bubble of sorts at the Colonial, where only the most essential people would be? Perhaps. I think the more pressing question that we’ll have to answer in late May is “Should the Tour do this?” 

Alan Shipnuck: I think 50/50 is optimistic, to say the least. I deeply hope widespread testing is available by the beginning of June, but right now we’re barely scratching the surface nationally. Can that change in five weeks? I’m dubious.

To me this has value, but that has nothing to do with the game of golf.  For instance, Sean cites the models, and if there's one thing we all should have learned by now it's that we should never make policy based upon an epidemiological model....  The best thing you can say about those models is that at least they didn't hold a Chainsmokers concert....

 I did develop an interesting thought about those events to be played without fans, which I thought was still TBD.  One aspect of the modern game that has always frustrated your humble blogger are TIO's, and the extent to which they affect scoring and outcomes.  While the correlation between the quality (really, the lack thereof) of a golf shot and it's outcome has always been weak, we can all agree that most of the drops given from grandstands are overly-generous.  Hopefully no grandstands have been built and we can see how the modern golf professional reacts when he actually has to play it as it lies....

Steve DiMeglio sees the possibility of a hybrid 2020-21-22 season:

But if there are further cancellations and/or postponements, a credible season would be in jeopardy and force the PGA Tour to make major status adjustments, including the possibility of a hybrid season covering 2019, 2020 and 2021. 

“If there is a scenario where we carry eligibility from the PGA Tour over to the following season, that will likely have a profound impact on the Korn Ferry Tour eligibility system and could go as far as preventing promotions from the Korn Ferry Tour and their eligibility would then have to merge into their following season in 2021,” Pazder said. “We’ve had extensive conversations, and at this stage I can tell you that if we are able to resume at the Charles Schwab Challenge, playing nearly three-fourths of our season does give us great comfort in considering it a credible season. But we have not defined that threshold if we fall below X number of tournaments, then Y will happen.”

His focus is more on the Korn Ferry level and the process of graduation its graduates to the big tour.   

But back to the TC panel for some howlers:

Zak: The wraparound season is the biggest winner! Some of those events can’t dream of drawing a top 10 player, but you’d have to imagine more pros might tee it up at the Safeway Open with a major lurking one week in the future. I think the Mayakoba event is unfortunately a loser having to play during the same weekend as Tiger’s Hero World Challenge.

Oh yeah, Sean, that wraparound is going to look like a charm when the FedEx Cup kicks off...

But in a year with no Players and no Open Championship, by all means go the mattresses to preserve the Hero World Challenge.  This is a bit of a nightmare for Jay Monahan, because it forces him to prioritize, and we won't like much of that which we see.

Shipnuck: If things go on as planned, no doubt many non-glamorous will get a huge bump as bored/cash-strapped pros are dying to play more after this enforced off-season. To cite one example, the 3M Open should attract a strong field, as players try to round into form ahead of the PGA Championship. But I think the WGC in China will take a hit as many top players decide to stay home, rest up and try to peak for the ensuing Masters.

Wow, Alan, you think that's why they won't go to China?  No other reasons pop into your mind?

There are a couple of interesting pieces focusing on sports in general, but with obvious golf implications.  First, Sebastian Audoux, a veteran of sports broadcasting, takes a crack at the sports landscape post-Covid.  I'll limit myself to obvious golf-related themes:

1- The sponsorship crisis will expose fundamental business model flaws for many sports leagues 

ROI is often a dirty acronym in sports sponsorship. This global crisis is already forcing companies to drastically cut sponsorship spending. If a league cannot provide evidence for the direct value they create, with analytics to support their claim, chances are they will lose their sponsors. In sports, sponsorship has often been mistaken with patronage. Patronage will mostly disappear, at least for a few years, post crisis. I see big-time sports leagues suffering from this, and new leagues emerging with innovative sponsorship ideas.

My only problem with this is that I've been predicting it for twenty years in the absence of a pandemic.  It seems obvious that the value of sponsorships and TV rights will crater, because they pretty much have to.  More interesting is to consider how golf will fare on a relative basis.  Golf has long punched above its weight class because it's participatory, and those who play are invariably seduced by the game.  Those CEOs that sponsor Tour events so they can play with Phil in a Pro-Am will still presumably want to, the question is whether they'll be able to justify it in reduced circumstances.

9 - Consolidation among sports league will be triggered 

The need for a world tour in golf is something the industry has been talking about for more than 30 years now. The Premier Golf League might not happen but the PGA Tour will use the crisis to take over its European counterpart and it will happen quickly. The PGA Tour of Australasia, Asian Tour and others would benefit from being regrouped under the same umbrella, as well. We might see other mergers and consolidations happen, NBA and Euroleague? UCL becoming a semi-closed league in a new joint venture with the biggest football clubs in Europe?

Obviously the lesser circuits will be under severe pressure, we need look no further than the European Tour.  While the PGA Tour is the best positioned in our game, I would just caution that I don't expect that the Tour's product will seem all that important as play resumes.  I might be suffering from a fever, but I think we've all developed herd immunity to FedEx Cup fever.

The more interesting part of Audoux's musings relate to the general sports broadcasting world, and are worth your time if that's of interest.

This Wall Street Journal item, sadly behind their paywall, lays out another obvious risk:

Why a Second Wave Could Be Even Worse for Sports 

The darkest shadow hanging over the future of sports, concerts and other mass gatherings is another spike in coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths

 Ya think?  Here's an excerpt that Shack had grabbed:

Scott Gottlieb, the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner who is advising the Trump administration on its coronavirus policy, says he sees a high risk of a second

wave in the fall. He’s been pushing for a staggered return of activities. His plan calls for gradually scaling back up again, based on the size of the gatherings and their significance, and monitoring the effects at each stage.

Mass gatherings for sports games are at the bottom of his list. The sight of fans in stadiums is contingent on a “quiescent” fall and robust system of testing and contact tracing to identify and isolate new cases— as well as measures that include fever guns, hand sanitizer handouts and masks inside stadiums.

“We could bring lawn maintenance crews back at the end of the month with very low risk, but we can’t fill up stadiums,” he said Wednesday. “I think the entertainment venues are going to be some of the last things we bring back… Sports are going to be played with no fans for a while.”

Sure, it's easy to picture disaster scenarios, and I don'y think any of us relish being in large crowds anytime soon.  Though the recent analyses that I've seen have tended towards greater numbers having been infected and accompanying lower mortality rates, consistent with the seasonal flu.  

But if you're the PGA, NFL or MLB, perhaps the bigger risk is that you open your stadia and no one comes?

Scenes From The Twitterverse - I'm winding down here, so how about a couple of amusing bits from my Twitter feed?

First, you'll no doubt agree that Shipnuck's is the more credible case:

A competitive category for sure...

But perhaps of greater import, do we think Whit Watson has ever met Tiger? After all, I don't remember Tiger ever playing an LPGA event.

Care for some great moments in golf course ratings?  I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall of those editorial meetings:

Timeless design is way over-rated.... Little reason to ever take these ratings seriously, but who doesn't like so-called experts being reminded of their bizarre decisions.

Be well, friends, and we'll talk again soon.

Late-Week Lethargy

But is it really late in the week?  I mean, this is far from how a Friday used to feel:

Though you could use that...

Schedule Stuff - Saw a funny riff where folks were discussing their most unneeded purchases.  The hands-down winner was that 2020 Planner....  I treasure mine, as I'm counting the hours since my last haircut.

The PGA Tour put out some kind of press release on the revised schedule, that from a socially-distanced vantage point doesn't seem to change anything that we had seen previously.  The only actual news seems to be this confirmation:

The first four events will be held without fans, but the Tour will “closely monitoring the situation at the federal, state and local levels, and ultimately we are going to follow every single recommendation that they make,” Tyler Dennis, chief of operations for the PGA Tour, said in a conference call.

But this is the buried lede:

The Greenbrier will no longer host a PGA Tour event, officials from the West Virginia resort announced on Thursday. Golf Digest's Dave Shedloski first reported the news

Wednesday night. 

"A Military Tribute at the Greenbrier" was originally scheduled for the second week of September, but that date has been taken by the Safeway Open. Additionally, The Greenbrier and the PGA Tour have elected to cancel A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier for the remaining years of the contract, which was previously planned to run through 2026.

So, what went wrong?

In a statement, Greenbrier officials said the tournament moving to the fall had not gone as well as hoped compared to its Fourth of July date. The Greenbrier said attendance and the attractiveness of sponsors "dropped significantly."

So, you effed up...you trusted Jay!  Because, really, who coulda seen that happening?

This from the AP is pretty telling:

The yearly tournament, A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier, has struggled to draw fanfare after moving from summer to fall. Last year, attendance dragged as the matches went up against college football home games, even as one of Justice's family mining companies bought 30,000 tickets to give away to fans.

This is a pity, as it's one of the more interesting golf courses they play.  But this from Geoff indicates a profound discomfort with elemental theories of cause and effect:

Just a reminder here that the PGA Tour rearranged it’s calendar schedule to the dreaded wraparound for two reasons: to avoid football season and to elevate the fall events into tournaments with FedExCup points status. The Greenbrier took a year off to accommodate a leap to the fall and now, is no more with seven years left on its deal.

That's some pretty tortured logic there...   The PGA Tour plays in the Fall for a very simple reason... so that no one else can.  The rest are just the accommodations necessary to keep the train moving.  The Fall Finish was originally a portion of the schedule for the have-nots of the PGA Tour, but those events couldn't be sustained.  Nurse Ratched was forced to elevate them to full status just to keep them going, hence the dreaded Wraparound Schedule.

The bit about not competing with football only ever applied to his precious FedEx Cup playoffs....  as for other events, it;s long been apparent that once the ink dries on your contract to hold an event, then you're pretty much on your own.  Just ask the guy that used  The International....  In deference to Mark W., I will exercise restraint and specifically not reference the Western Open.

Am the only that thinks there's some math to be discussed?  See if you can pick it from this tweet from Curmudgeonly James Corrigan:

Apparently they will award a FedEx Cup on September 3rd that will include at most one major, that PGA Championship scheduled for early August on the Bay.  But will the 2021 FedEx Cup include two each of the U.S. Open and Masters?  Now, I've never cared much for the event, as the astute reader might have noticed, but I am always in the marker for additional reasons the hold in contempt.

You'd be only logical for thinking that we just hit the high-water mark in stupidity, but you'd be premature.  Even with the disclaimer that they're contractually-required to carry water for the Tour, this might just eviscerate any remaining trace elements of self-respect:

Biggest winners (and losers) from the new PGA Tour schedule

RBC Heritage 

The RBC Heritage looked to be on the tough luck side of things after the Tour put a halt to the season following the Players Championship, but the new schedule found a spot for the Hilton Head event. The tournament is scheduled to be the second event after the restart and though it will be played in the absence of fans, it is in a far better position than being skipped over altogether.

Really?  You're declaring victory because Jay wrote some things in on a calendar?  Shouldn't we actually wait and see if it, I don't know, actually happens?  I'm actually thinking that the biggest winner is The Greenbrier, because they no longer have to take Jay's phone calls.

Here's an interesting thread as well, dealing with the issue of players concerned that the Tour might be pushing the enverlope:

Q. What about the players who don't feel comfortable? There are going to be players who don't feel comfortable coming back. What happens to those players if

you start and they're not comfortable coming back playing again? 

ANDY PAZDER: That's a question I think you need to direct to individual players. My only experience with anything like this I guess would be the first few tournaments following 9/11. We had players that were uneasy about air travel. That's one of the beauties of being a PGA TOUR member; you're an independent contractor. You're not required to be at any PGA TOUR event. So they have that discretion to play tournaments where they favor the golf course or tournaments in this instance, to your question, they may or may not feel comfortable. But that's an individual player decision. 

So I would direct you to reach out to some of the players that you know to get their direct perspective. I can't speak on their behalf as it relates to that.

An answer that the libertarian in me would usually embrace.  But...

This is where Jay's disgraceful Players' Championship performance comes home to roost.  He demonstrated himself to be Under Par™ in both leadership and competence, and all too focused on protecting the Tour's feedlot.  Whether players will trust him remains a very good question...

And let me add, though it should be obvious, that golf performance is measured on a relative basis.  These are world-class athletes, and they're not genetically predisposed to let others rack up points and money with them on the sidelines, so Pazder's comments will garner pushback.

But, shall we take a specific look at that schedule?

The RBC Heritage in Hilton Head, South Carolina, which had been canceled, was put back on the schedule and will follow the Charles Schwab Challenge on June 18-21. The Travelers Championship in Cromwell, Connecticut, would be next in line June 25-28, followed by the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit July 2-5.

If you're looking for a point of conflict, methinks that Detroit event makes as much sense as any.   Why?  Because that's the Motherland of Governor Half-Whit, who is showing no hesitation in allowing her Stalinist freak flag to unfurl.  That's why I always take care to maintain my strategic popcorn reserve...

Brooksie, Mi Amigo - I haven't actually listened to it, but I'm plenty surprised (and pleased) to see this:

Quick hits with Brooks Koepka: 'I could play St. Andrews every day for the rest of my life'

I've never considered Brooks much of a thinker about the game...  In fact, he's never shown any real insight or interest in architecture or the history of the game, as far as I've noticed.  But if he gets the Old Course, then that speaks well of him.

In fact, my initial reaction was to wonder when he had managed to play it, but I was able to confirm that he did, in fact, play in that 2015 Open Championship.  

Brooksie also did an Instagram Q&A with Clause Harmon, and I'll leave you to decide what you think of the porn 'stache:

Does anybody else find this...well, curious:

Koepka also almost created what would have been an epic Masters moment. Koepka was in the mix late on Sunday despite dropping a ball in Rae’s Creek and doubling the 12th hole, but he eagled 13 and had a chance to grab the solo lead at 15 when he faced another eagle putt. He couldn’t believe it when he missed. He tapped in for birdie and made it a five-way tie for the lead at 12 under. Thing is, Koepka was so confident he was going to make that eagle putt, he even told his caddie, Ricky Elliott, a celebration strategy before he hit it. “I remember saying to him, ‘I’m going to point at Tiger if I make this thing,’ and I still to this day can’t believe that putt missed.” Koepka finished one shot behind Woods, in a three-way tie for second.

So, as I understand things, Rory's MO is to focus on process to the exclusion of results, whereas Brooks focuses on his celebration....  I'm gonna go with Rory here.

This is very true, though:

Koepka says it’s harder to get onto the Tour than it is to keep your card. Opportunity is a big difference, he says, as is the ability to feel comfortable in those uncomfortable situations. “There’s not really much of a difference between guys playing mini-tour golf or whatever it might be and the guy who is just keeping his card,” he said. “It’s a little bit of a break going their way.”

That's because, to a certain extent, the Tour is set up as a protection racket....  

Existentially Yours -  A couple of strange reads today on a common theme.  First, Brad Klein is typically thoughtful on subjects of an architectural note, but this Morning Read piece is quite odd.

Shall we begin with a civics lesson?

The pattern of closings across the country is a function of decentralized decision making. Federal policy has ceded day-to-day management of the crisis to the states, with governors largely making decisions based on input from their health experts and public-policy advisers.

If by "federal policy" you mean the Constitution, sure.  The term of art is Federalism.... 

In most states, local authorities also retain the authority to make judgments about allowing golf to continue. In Connecticut, where golf is allowed, Hartford County’s public courses reported booked-out tee times all weekend. But in Fairfield County, adjacent to New York City, golf courses have been closed to limit opportunities for social gathering and to keep workers at home.

Wow!  How crazy is that?  It might sound so, but that's only if you fail to look at the underlying data, which shows that Hartford bears little resemblance to Fairfield:

And for those wondering about the constitutional underpinnings of the imposition of Marshall law, there will be blood litigation:

The story is not without its legal complexities, particularly when a course operator resents being told to shut down. After Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf deemed golf to be a non-essential activity and thus subject to closure, the owner of Blueberry Hill Golf Club in Russell, in the state’s northwest corner, took umbrage with the decree. Now, the club has filed a lawsuit against the state, claiming violation of due process because the governor lacked the proper legislative authority. It likely won’t be the only suit of its kind that is filed in the coming weeks.

As they should.  When the Stae forces your business to close it should be deemed a taking, and require just compensation.

I'd be curious to know what points Brad thinks he's making, because I could discern exactly none.

But now comes the thumb-sucker of the day:

Playing golf during a pandemic might be safe. But is it right?

 How I wish he were kidding...  To be fair, though, there's some thoughts of interest in here, mostly because he solicits thoughts from three interesting individuals, one of whom your humble blogger knows of.  

Calling Rabbi Marc Gellman the funniest rabbi on the planet is doing him a profound disservice, as he's one of the funniest Jews on the planet (a category in which my peeps dominate).  He used to speak at the Met. Golf Writers annual awards dinner, and the man can work a crowd:

Gellman says: “Once exceptions are made to the ‘stay home’ rule, we must all agree that there are several morally defensible reasons to get out of your home. Securing food and medicine are obvious exemptions because they are necessary in a morally intuitive way. 

Rabbi Gellman

The case that opens up this issue is the question of whether it is ethically defensible to go for a walk away from the world of other people but inside the world of nature,” Gellman says. “If it is clear to everyone that people walking dogs are not committing an ethical offense, then we must ask, is this not discrimination against non-dog owners?”

Critical to remember, Gellman says, is that “true ethical dilemmas are always a conflict of good things and hardly ever a conflict between the totally good and the totally evil.” The social distancing that alone seems to hold the promise of reducing the number of infections is good, and personal recreation in fresh air to relieve stress is also good. Gellman thinks the underlying issue is privilege. “This virus has scratched the scab off the anti-golf prejudice that still exists in the United States.” In times of no crisis, people with disposable time and money can be dismissive of those who envy them. But in a time of crisis, should golfers show solidarity? Enjoying our silly, stupid, wonderful game when so many others are suffering from grief or are home-bound with underlying conditions could be seen as rubbing these poor peoples’ noses in it.

That answer comes in the philosophical distinction between non-malevolence and benevolence, Gellman says. “Put simply, you are always obligated not to hurt someone. But you are not obligated on the same level to help someone. You could help a lot of people by giving away all your money, but you don’t have to.” Showing solidarity with your fellow man by not playing golf then, becomes something like a good deed.

OK, admittedly not his funniest bit.  And I could use a reminder of how someone not playing golf actually helps others.  It's really just virtue signalling, typically imposed by an authoritarian non-golfer.  

But the author saves his best for last:

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, known to his followers as Sadhguru, is a spiritual leader and frequent speaker on stages such as the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. When he changes his flowing robes for modern golf clothes and knots his long beard so it won’t interfere with his golf swing, it is one of the greatest metamorphoses of style in the world.

The U.N. and Davos seem quite the feeble appeals to authority in the current moment, and I feel certain that a sinecure from the WHO is imminent.

But what about solidarity? For what it’s worth, my rock-climbing brother who lives in

Utah reports the local climbing community has ceased activity entirely. While the chance of transmitting COVID-19 on a remote cliff might be even be less than a blade of grass to a golf ball, the climbers there don’t want to risk stressing an overwhelmed hospital system with an injury. But more so, there’s a strong sense of “demonstrating that we’re all in this together,” Dave says. Climbing is far from a sport of privilege (in its purest and cheapest form, there’s no rope), and so are climbers one-upping golfers in the benevolence department? 

Sadhguru says: “If this is one’s idea of solidarity, then football players should not play football because most people cannot play the game. Swimmers should not swim because most people don’t have a swimming pool in the world. Welcome to deprivation, then! This is not the way to handle life.

Sir, just one niggling detail.  To wit, that our so-called leaders keep reinforcing the fact that we are not, it so happens, in this together.  And when you've lost The View, you've lost America...

Never Let a Crisis Go To Waste - Joel Beall and Christopher Powers use the temporary flexibility in USGA rules (think raised cups) to argue for the following:

Which golf rules need to go?

I might need a bigger blog.

The real problem is the format of the article, a back-and-forth discussion, seems to get in the way of concise arguments.

 As far as the matter goes, here are their candidates:

Powers: How about both the new drop rule and the caddie-lining-up-their-player rules, which were both implemented in 2019. The Rules of Golf were supposed to be

simplified, and all the USGA did with these two is make them more complicated. Within two months, there were multiple infractions of both these rules. Had those rules not been tweaked, there would have been no issues. Does that sound “simplified” to you? 

Beall: By the tone of your remarks and use of quotation marks, I’m going to say no.

Powers: Simple solution: Instead of having an exact height to drop from, like the knee or shoulder, just make it anywhere above the knee. You want to drop it shoulder height? Go for it! From the waist? Have at it! But let’s not get the microscope out to see if a player is dropping in direct line with their kneecap. 

For the caddie-lining-up-their-player rule, I can see both sides. It’s a distinct advantage, especially for world-class players, to be lined up perfectly by their caddie. But where it gets silly is when Haotong Li is lining up a two-footer and he gets penalized and loses six figures on top of it because he simply didn’t step away after his caddie just happened to be behind him.

See what I mean?  First, has there been a subsequent tweak to the drop rule?  I tend to agree with his solution here, but this failure to understand the real world is a mainstay of the USGA.  In this case, guys have been dropping from shoulder-height since the days of Old Tom, so those habits die hard....  Since a shoulder-height drop is disadvantageous (except in those case when the player wants to place his ball), a mechanism to avoid penalties for instinctual behavior, perhaps a short-term local rule, would have been wise.

The bigger problem is that second rule, because they're too busy on tangents to actually tell us whether they think caddies should be able to align the players.  There's little doubt that the USGA/R&A screwed up the drafting of the rule, see Li, Haotong, but I strongly believe that they were right to ban the practice.

This one would seem to be their biggest issue:

For me, the first change is the obvious: Relief from a fairway divot hole. When they rolled out its revisions last year, the USGA and R&A knew the divot question was

coming, so much that they had a prepared statement for it: 

“One of the primary objectives for the overall initiative is to make the rules easier to understand and apply, but to also make sure we maintained the traditions and principles behind the game,” said Thomas Pagel, USGA senior director of rules & amateur status. “And the principles are to play the ball as it lies and the course as you find it. So to write a rule that allows a player to sort of deviate from that, was not something we were wanting to do.” 

The problem is, golf already deviates from that principle, and often. A Tour player can go off the grid but if their ball is behind a grandstand, congrats, relief. An errant shot finds the cart path? Boom, free drop. Same if you shank it into a flower bed or feel there’s casual water beneath your feet.

Remind me never to debate with these guys, because they have obvious difficulty staying on topic.  Grandstands are an interesting issue, but one that only applies to the game at the professional and elite amateur levels.   But let's stay focused on this issue, one which involves the dreaded F-word.

I've been pondering this one for years, and there's no easy answer.  Before we get too carried away with the injustice of a divot hole, let's remember that "Play it as it lies" is the most basic rule of our game, dating back to those hearty souls at Leith Links in 1744.  I would argue strongly that we should be reluctant to weaken this core tenet, come hell or casual water.  As Mike Clayton was arguing earlier in the week, that basic ebb and flow of luck in our game is among its greatest charms, and I do think it becomes a less interesting endeavor to the extent that we legislate perfect lies.

But do not abandon hope, as I'm here with the an obvious solution.  Think about that stream of consciousness above, specifically the reference to relief from a cart path.  That's an unnatural change to the turf and we don't expect (though we do allow) play from such a surface.  If turf is torn up and the area re-sodded, we similarly allow free relief...  So, isn't the placement of divot mix into a divot the same concept?  In order to maintain this delicate balance, I would grant relief when the divot has been treated, which I find the most difficult lie to handle.

Women Hardest Hit -  Scott Michaux writes for the Augusta Chronicle, but at his new blog makes the case for a change of dates:

Here’s my suggestion – have the Masters finish the first Sunday in April. That’s just one week earlier than the current locked-in dates, but it’s a week that could have a profound effect not only on the Masters but the rest of the sports calendar. 

From the Masters standpoint, it’s more likely to be at its most colorful best. Daily high temperatures are comparable to the ensuing week (this year the highs ranged from 69-82 compared to 76-86 a week later), but it’s more likely that the spring blooming season in that part of Georgia will be at its most optimal. 

But the biggest benefit for golf would be breaking up a logjam of “big” events that have clustered in the weeks leading up to the Masters. The PGA Tour has wedged in two WGC events and the Players Championship in a six-week stretch, which puts a strain on player scheduling and often dilutes the quality of fields in the surrounding regular tour events. 

By moving the Masters up one week, that would create an opportunity to move the WGC Match Play event from its cramped date between the Players and Augusta to perhaps a place in May leading into or immediately following the PGA Championship. For many years, the WGC event at Firestone was conducted immediately before the PGA in August and the marquee players seemed to like that arrangement just fine.

let's see if I have this right.  The Masters date sucks because of the extent to which Nurse Ratched cluttered the calendar, but it's the Masters that should move?  What's wrong with this picture....  And he thinks that March Madness will move as well.

But can anyone see the fatal flaw from the hint in my header?  Anyone?  Bueller?

The date he just happens to select is occupied by the ladies' first major, and that's already been adversely affected by the Augusta ladies amateur event.  By all means, guys, bigfoot their date and see how that look suits you.

Shockingly, this is not from the N.Y. Times:

Coronavirus: Financial chasm between men's, women's tours even greater in tough times

You know what chasms also increased?  Those between the PGA Tour and the Korn Ferry and Euro Tours....  This is what happens in the bad times, folks.  Of course we could mitigate it by, you know, letting people go back to work...  

I'll hope to see you folks early next week.  Until then, stay safe. 

Midweek Musings

You'd swear they're playing golf, at least from the quantity of open browser tabs.  We've got a little news, but also some really good longer reads.  Perhaps a fresh pot of coffee?

The State of Play - The PGA Tour seems to be operating under the flawed premise that we miss them:

PGA Tour officials are expected to announce this week their intention to resume the tour season, halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, on June 11-14 at the Charles Schwab

Challenge, multiple sources have told Golf Digest. It’s also expected that fans will not be allowed to attend that first tournament at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth. As the Tour looks to follow health and safety guidelines set by government and health officials, other early tournaments also are expected to be played without spectators. 

The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak on the Tour’s behalf. Tour officials discussed plans with the Players Advisory Council during a conference call on Tuesday. 

Late last week, the Tour sent players a memo saying that it was targeting a return at Colonial. The memo cited the tournament’s original date on the tour calendar of May 21-24, but also said the Tour was evaluating options to “preserve the maximum number of events we can while giving us more time as the crisis evolves.” Sources previously told Golf Digest those options focused on moving the Charles Schwab Challenge to June. The RBC Canadian Open, originally scheduled for June 11-14, will not be played, sources have said, freeing up the date for another event.

I don't have a problem with this per se, though it certainly concentrates the mind on the inconvenient fact of how little these events matter...

Shack continues to be a harsher critic than I, initially blasting the Tour for releasing the news during the week during which we were all supposed to die.  That didn't play out as predicted, but Geoff now has this to say:

Yes, postponed or cancelled events like the Olympic Games, U.S. Open and Open Championship will be replaced by PGA Tour events. It’s a little hard to picture, but we’ll go with it and watch how this is rolled out. Namely, will there be any suggestion of measures taken to ensure all can safely travel to and play in these events?

What precautions are being taken for everyone else besides players? 

One big change from rumored concepts: the RBC Heritage Classic that would be played this week will now move to the end of June as the second stop after Colonial. Travel between states remains a huge concern, while the U.S. has a travel ban on visitors from many parts of the globe.

He obviously thinks this is being rushed, though we need to distinguish between the timing of announcements and the timing of actual events.  Geoff also harps on the irony of Tour events filling the void of cancelled events such as the U.S. Open and the Olympics, though why that would surprise anyone is a mystery.  Obviously holding an event in Texas or Hilton Head vs. Westchester County is just an entirely different matter, especially to the extent that it might happen without spectators.

Though here we can credit him with a bullseye:

On a lighter note, no word yet on the Wyndham Rewards points ramifications, though layoffs, salary cuts and other struggles for the hotel chain might influence that.

Except, of course, for his making fun of it....  Your humble correspondent has long believed and occasionally articulated the premise that golf sponsorship could not survive much scrutiny.   One assumes the day of scrutiny is upon us, and a travel company such as Wyndham is purpose built for this moment of reckoning.

Unsurprisingly, the folks in Europe have been more forthcoming:

The Telegraph published a memo from Euro Tour CEO Keith Pelley to players on 

As long as Keith can remain the leader in eyewear fashion...

Tuesday, in which Pelley outlined what players should expect when their sport returns.

“Our tour has enjoyed a significant period of growth in recent years, in terms of prize funds, playing opportunities, and the overall standard of our events, as well as our broadcast product," Pelley said. “The impact of coronavirus has stopped this rapid momentum in its tracks and it will, in fact, require us to reassess many elements." 

Some of those alterations could include the elimination of "top class players' lounges or courtesy car services," but the biggest involves the cutting of tournament earnings. 

"Prize funds will also most likely be different," Pelley said. "The reality is, the pandemic is going to have a profound impact on the Tour financially, as well as many of our partners, both in the sponsorship and broadcast areas.”

Ya think?  The Euro Tour, lower on the golf food chain, will logically feel this first and hardest, at least as compared to Ponte Vedra Beach.  But it is amusing that Keith cushioned the blow in dealing with perks first, only then dropping the hammer.

This alternate report on Pelley's comments buries a couple of items of potential curiosity:

The BBC reports it has seen an email that European Tour CEO Keith Pelley sent in which he says players should expect reduced purse sizes and potentially two events in the same week. The Tour may also institute 14-day quarantine periods for players traveling to events.

Two events a week?  I've no clue as to how that would work in the age of television, not to mention spreading already weak fields over multiple events.  But who will sign on for the Andalusia Masters if it comes with a mandatory 14-day self-quarantine?  I guess it's a pity to run a Tour where the players actually fly commercial...

In related news, Seth Waugh spent some time with the folks at SiriusXM, though they naturally didn't ask him the obvious question on most American's minds.  But he did have these comments about the PGA Championship:

Waugh appeared on SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio Tuesday morning to discuss plans for the PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco, which was originally set for

May but has been rescheduled to Aug. 6-9 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He remains optimistic that Harding Park will be able to host a “fairly normal” championship in August, but acknowledged the possibility that plans could change, noting that the association is working on contingencies if needed.

“If the safest and/or the only way to [hold the PGA] is to do it without fans, we’re fully prepared to do that,” Waugh said. “We believe that having it as a television event is worth doing regardless of whether there’s fans there or not. 

“Obviously that’ll change the experience, but we think the world is starved for entertainment—particularly in sports—and we think golf has the unique ability to be first out among sports in that we’re played over a couple hundred acres.”

So, a fairly normal PGA without fans?  Got it....

So, here's my question for that man-of-the-people Seth.  According to the National Golf Foundation, 48% of U.S. golf courses are open for play (though I also saw a 44% estimate as well)..   

According to Geoff:

A member of ten golf clubs—including Seminole in Palm Beach near PGA headquarters where he spends his winters—Waugh serves on various boards and still works in the finance sector. He’s also one of the managing partners of the Pebble Beach Company.

A simple question for Seth... How many of those ten are open for play?  C'mon, Sethie, this is important.  Save the NGF some money, as you alone can offer them a statistically significant sample size.

Upon Further Review... - I felt that my Doug Sanders obit didn't do the man justice, and apparently John Feinstein agrees.  So do read his tribute, as apparently Sanders was his first interview:

Ten years after I watched that Bob Hope playoff—six years after St. Andrews—Sanders was the first golfer I ever interviewed. I was a college junior, and in those days, the

Greater Greensboro Open would send credential forms to student newspapers around the state of North Carolina. I filled one out and showed up for Saturday’s third round at Sedgefield Country Club. 

I wanted to write two stories: One on what it felt like to be at a professional golf tournament for the first time, the second on Doug Sanders—if he’d talk to me.

I walked the back nine with Sanders and, after he signed his scorecard, I nervously walked up and introduced myself. 

“Student newspaper at Duke, huh?” he said. Then, before I could think of a clever response, he said, “Come on inside. I’ll buy you a beer and we’ll talk.” 

And so, we did. I illegally sat at the bar (I was 19) with Sanders, and he regaled me with stories for a solid hour. When I told him I was sure he was sick of being asked about St. Andrews, he laughed and said, “Not nearly as sick as I get when I think about missing that putt.” 

I spent an hour with Sanders that day and had enough material for three columns. He explained to me that his phone-booth swing had come about because of a neck injury that made a fuller swing impossible. My only complaint was, after the time in the bar I had to hang around the media room for an extra hour before I dared get behind the wheel of a car.

How can you not like the guy?

Between the nature of that loss at St. Andrews and his "Peacock of the Fairway" reputation, we somehow lost sight of the fact that he was a really good player.  The putter was his nemesis, as it is for so many, but twenty Tour wins is a great career, and his honesty in discussing that moment on the 18th green of the Old Course is the model for others to follow.  

He was just a unique character and awfully good at the game.  He'll be missed.

Scenes From Crail - As  new overseas members of the Crail Golfing Society, we obviously receive the club's e-mails to its members.  It's an interesting contrast to our home club, as they've been communicating more frequently and in more detail than Fairview.  

Most of this has come over the signature of the club's Captain, Jim McArthur, immortalized in these pages for a certain birthday phone call.  As you are no doubt are aware, golf in the UK is in full lockdown, and they are under strict guidelines that allow only the most basic of maintenance.  That said, sometimes our minds wander and contemplate what else can go wrong.  Here's one small entry in that category:

On Good Friday there was a gorse fire on the Coastal Path adjacent to the 7 Green Craighead which required the attention of the Fire Brigade who responded very quickly bringing the fire under control very effectively and staying on for a while to ensure that the fire didn’t start up again. However, what a waste of valuable resources in the current difficult times.

Special thanks to them for responding so quickly and preventing the fire spreading onto the golf course.

 As some folks might not know, gorse is highly flammable.  In fact, the Bandon Dunes resort might well not exist but for that fact.  It just seemed a perfect story for the current moment.

Architectural Musings - As noted above, I have some great long-form reading for you, pretty much all via Shackelford.  First, as part of our focus on Masters week, Geoff links to a number of really interesting items via noted MacKenziephile Josh Pettit.  First and foremost is this 1932 piece from the Good Doctor:

PLANS FOR THE IDEAL GOLF COURSE

The Architect of the Augusta National Writes of Its Promise

This is before the completion of the golf course, which MacKenzie never saw.  But he obviously never learned about setting low expectations...

He does, however, lay out his standards for judging the quality of a golf course:

Seeking to create the “ideal” course, the question naturally arises as to just what the “ideal” course should be. Bob and I found ourselves in complete accord on what we conceive to be the essentials of such a course: 

1. A really great course must be a constant source of pleasure to the greatest possible number of players. 

2. It must require strategy in the playing as well as skill, otherwise it can not continue to hold the golfer’s interest. 

3. It must give the average player a fair chance, and at the same time, it must require the utmost from the expert who tries for sub-par scores. 

4. All natural beauty should be preserved, natural hazards should be utilized, and artificiality should be minimized.

We can only wish that they had taken the Good Doctor's admonishment regarding the greatest number of players literally.  It is an enduring tragedy that two of his most famous creations, and I include Cypress Point here, are inaccessible to most of us.

In support of his first and third tenets, MacKenzie cites the old standby:

Now to get back to the golf course. Doubt may be expressed as to the possibility of making a course pleasurable to everyone, but it may be pointed out that the “Old Course” at St. Andrews, Scotland, which Bob likes best of all, very nearly approaches this ideal.

Next comes an argument we've previously discussed, one that seems to involves a settling of scores:

It has been suggested that it is our intention at Augusta to produce copies of the most famous golf holes. Any attempt of this kind could only result in failure. It may be 

MacKenzie and Jones.

possible to reproduce a famous picture, but the charm of a golf hole may be dependent on a background of sand dunes, trees, or even mountains several miles away. A copy without the proper surroundings might create an unnatural appearance and cause a feeling of irritation, instead of charm. On the other hand, it is well to have a mental picture of the World’s outstanding holes and to use this knowledge in reproducing their finest golfing features, and perhaps even improving on them. 

At Augusta we are striving to produce eighteen ideal holes, not copies of classical holes, but embodying their best features, with other features suggested by the nature of the terrain. We hope for accomplishments of such unique character that the holes will be looked upon as classics in themselves.

We'd benefit here from someone better versed in this era, as I can only understand these comments to be critical of the Macdonald/Raynor template holes.  Of course what he's actually dismissing is a straw man version of those templates, as Macdonald himself argues in virtually identical terms of applying the design principals of said great golf holes to terrain at hand.  As we like to say here, the Good Doctor is noting a distinction without a difference.

Of great interest is that MacKenzie takes us through his Augusta National routing, sharing his inspiration and thoughts on each hole.  But note the thinly-veiled disdain for Macdonald's  versions:

Hole No. 4 “Flowering Crab Apple” — Regular Distance 160 Yards — Championship 170 Yards

This is a very similar hole to the famous Eleventh (Eden) at St. Andrews. There have been scores of attempted copies of this famous hole but there is none that has the charm and thrill of the original. Most copies are failures because of the absence of the subtle and severe slopes which create the excitement of the original, and also because the turf is usually so soft that any kind of a sloppy pitch will stop. Previous failures, followed by, comparatively speaking, increasing success may have given us sufficient experience to warrant us in hoping that here at last we may have constructed a hole that will compare favorably with the original.

His argument seems to devolve to "Mine is better than yours".  Or, given the timing, mine will be better than yours...  

But his discussion of the next hole might just surprise you:

Hole No. 5 “Magnolia” — Regular Distance 445 Yards — Championship 470 Yards

This will be a similar type of hole to the famous Seventeenth, the Road Hole at St. Andrews. A group of tress forms a corner of the dog-leg instead of the station master’s garden and the green itself will be situated on a similar plateau to its prototype.

Did you know the fifth was a "Road Hole"?  And by the way, what is a Road Hole?  That's actually a daunting question because it's a very difficult hole from which to deduce the design premise.  Anyone want to take a stab at this one?  Bueller?

It just so happens I've had this browser tab open for a while:

What makes a road hole one of the most iconic holes in all of golf?

Part of the diffiuclty in analyzing this template is that there isn't a hole in golf more affected by external elements than the original.  Not only do you have a damn hotel affecting your tee ball, but at the green we have a cinder road and a stone wall.  Call me crazy, but those are all irrelevant to the strategic values of the hole, but equally hard to ignore.

In that item linked above, here is the decsription of a "road hole":

The road hole template is one of the most iconic and well-known in the game. Taken from the 17th at St Andrews, the hole is tough with no reprieve or way to avoid the danger. 

The hole usually features an option on the tee. One side of the fairway is wide open and easy to find. The other is guarded by a hazard or bunkers, possibly with a forced carry (a hotel at St. Andrews). Taking on the hazard does give a much better angle of attack into the green. 

Up at the green, there is a large pot bunker guarding the front portion of the green, angled to the easy side of the fairway. The green is shallow between this front bunker and a hazard (the actual road at the Old Course) that runs along the back opposite side of the green. 

If you play to the safe side of the fairway, you will have a longer approach in, over the pot bunker, and balls will often roll into the back bunker or the hazard. It is an immensely difficult shot. Keeping the ball up the tough side of the fairway makes for a much easier approach shot where you can avoid the pot bunker. The problem is, the road hole makes finding the strategically beneficial side really hard. 

As with most of the other template holes, CB Macdonald found the idea while at St. Andrews University (he didn’t have to travel far to find this one) and brought the idea with him when he started designing courses in the U.S.

I'm not sure he quite captures it, though I'm equally unsure that any of us truly have.  His description of the tee shot seems to me wasted effort...  It is an unusual tee box for sure, one that will discombobulate most players because of the proximity of the Old Course Hotel.  But on repeated play that discomfort will fade, and the test is fairly conventional as the author notes.  The hotel grounds (most importantly, the Jigger Inn) feature OB right of the landing area, which is the better angle into the green.  The author also fails to note that this might be the earliest instance of a double dogleg, the tee shot favoring a fade but the approach better suited to a draw.

To me, the design principal is the severe right-to-left angle at which the green sits, with that dastardly Road bunker perfectly positioned to do land office business.  But the green is also quite narrow, and features unique hazards to the player protecting against the dreaded bunker.  It's those features off the back of the green that prove to be the hardest to replicate, at least in the examples I've been able to play.

This schematic of the fifth at ANGC does not evoke memories of St. Andrews to this observer, though your mileage may well vary.

One seems very much unlike the other, no?  But this is the fun of it all, and Road has by now evolved to cover just about any and all brutally difficult Par-4's.  Of course, Road used to be a Par-5, and most of us would be wise to play it as such (though we're always looking to pull off the heroic shot), and play our second shot short-right.  We'd make many more fours that way, and way fewer sixes....

You'll want to scroll through that entire MacKenzie piece, if only to see how different many of the greens look.

Also from Josh Pettit comes this on the MacKenzie short course, ironic since we just had that tease about the Seth Raynor routing of Cypress Point:

Just as any architectural layman will know the name Frank Lloyd Wright, such is true of most golfers and the name Alister MacKenzie -- if for no other reason than The Masters and the Augusta National Golf Club. But few know about the guest house at Fallingwater. Even fewer know of the “little course” at Augusta National. Moreover, in the same way Wright scrupulously labored over the design of the auxiliary structure, so too did MacKenzie with the Augusta National Approach & Putt Course. The key difference: Fallingwater's guest house was actually built (in 1937) two years after the completion of the main house, but MacKenzie’s plan for a short course never came to fruition. Nonetheless, supplemental features of works by significant architects are fraught with great interest, at least to the lionizing historians that work to document their careers. 

Stored away within an archive of work from the landscape architecture firm of Frederick Law Olmsted in Brookline, Massachusetts, sits the only known copy of MacKenzie's plan for the Augusta Approach & Putt Course -- a document that has remained unknown to the golf world for the past eighty years:

A rendition of MacKenzie's plan laid over a 1938 aerial photo of the site that remained undeveloped until 1958 when the club built the Par 3 course (Courtesy of Pacific Golf Design)

 This was MacKenzie's actual 1932 plan:

Far more interesting than the version that actually was built in the 1950's.  

In this same Augusta-centric context, Geoff linked back to this wonderful 2015 Karen Crouse profile of the legendary Herbert Warren Wind.  Wind is most famous for naming Amen Corner, though that to the man himself was just a bit:

The widely held belief is that Amen Corner has sacred roots. It made sense to the

Australian Jason Day, who said, “You pray to get around it without running into disaster.” Day’s countryman Adam Scott, the 2013 champion, chipped in, “Otherwise it can be the Blasphemous Corner.” 

Wind’s inspiration, though, came from a 1930s jazz recording, “Shouting in the Amen Corner.” In an article for Golf Digest in 1984, he said that he was aiming for “some colorful tag like those that Grantland Rice and his contemporaries loved to devise: the Four Horsemen, the Manassa Mauler, the House That Ruth Built and the Georgia Peach.” 

“The only phrase with the word corner I could think of (outside of football’s ‘coffin corner’ and baseball’s ‘hot corner’) was the title of a song on an old Bluebird record,” Wind wrote. 

He used “Amen Corner” only six times in the next 31 years, according to an online search of The New Yorker’s archives. Wind’s nephew, Bill Scheft, a staff writer on “Late Show With David Letterman,” was not surprised. 

“Herb was like a comic who comes up with a bit and delivers it to an audience once,” Scheft said. “It was nothing he was going to repeat because he was always striving for better bits.”

And a bit written on deadline to boot.  I used to love his long-form New Yorker pieces, and his North, To The Link of Dornoch  helped kindle my love of the links...  So, what are you waiting for, just go read the damn thing.

Lastly, please pause to pay homage to another of those seemingly effortless segues for which I enjoy renown.  In this case, Australian course designer Mike Clayton makes his case using the Good Doctor's words:

In the early 1930s, Alister MacKenzie wrote The Spirit of St Andrews. It expanded on Golf Architecture (1920) and became one of the great golf books. 

MacKenzie died not long after he finished the manuscript, which lay dormant among a pile of family papers until the mid-1990s. To the sport’s great fortune, his stepson discovered it and arranged for its belated publication. 

For those who administer the game – and those who worry about its future – MacKenzie remarkably addressed several of the problems facing today’s game. 

He railed against the use of long rough as a penal hazard. He forcefully argued the ball was going too far. He told us why people gave up golf. He spoke of the role of committees. 

Unsurprisingly for one with such strong and well-articulated opinions, MacKenzie had little patience for committees and those he perceived as having little knowledge of the subject of his expertise: “It is strange that a committee consisting of doctors, lawyers, architects and engineers who, no doubt, recognise the importance of mental training and experience in their own profession, attach so little importance to it in golf course architecture.”

Shamefully, that very tome sits unread on my credenza.... Maybe sometime when I'm under house arrest at home..

But what is Clayton's case?  He's making a rousing argument for the merits of.... get this, unfairness:

What changed was the introduction of the concept of “fairness” and the idea formulated primarily by Americans and adopted largely by Australians (and most others) that you had to be able to see where you were going. The notion of the “blind shot” was seen as somehow silly, poor design and something to be avoided by course architects at all costs. 

Bunkers in the middle of fairways came to be viewed as poor hazards catching “perfect” drives. Yet if the measure of a perfect shot is its position in relation to the one following how could a drive into a bunker possibly be seen as perfect? 

That two players could hit almost the same shot and come up with two quite different results also was seen as being unfair and the result has been a sanitisation of the original game. Architectural quirks, the luck of the bounce and multiple ways of playing a shot and a hole make the game unpredictable and offend the “predictable” crowd.

I agree completely, but you know how folks are.  That's why in Tom Doak's Grand Rapids, MI office, fair is often referred to as the "F-word".

Closer to home, we have a perfect illustration of this mindset at Fairview.  Ours is a 1968 Trent Jones design, and over the winter Rees Jones rebuilt all of our bunkers.  The ninth hole isn't one of our strongest, a short (+/- 300 yards), uphill Par-4 playing to a raised green.  The severe slope of the green is it's primary defense, but the fairway pinches in from the right at about 200 yards.  Over the years there have been a variety of hazards in this spot, from a tree to a bunker, long fescue and, most recently, severe mounding.  The logic seemingly being that you need to at least give the player something to think about off the tee of such a wee golf hole.

Our plans for the bunker restoration called for adding the bunker back in this spot.  However, during construction, the Jones organization elected to not build that bunker, because it can't be seen from the tee box.  That sound you hear is Dr. MacKenzie spinning in his grave, given that approximately none of the bunkers on the Old Course can be seen when playing towards them.  Yet, somehow that little golf course retains its enduring appeal...

I would urge you to give Clayton's argument serious consideration.  There's little in our game that beats the thrill of watching a golf ball react on the ground, but the appeal thereof involves the widest variety of outcomes.  So, it's long past time for us to rally behind the intrinsic unfairness of golf.

I shall release you to get on with your day and we'll hopefully catch up again later in the week.