Thursday Themes - Balls In The Air Edition

I had almost convinced myself that a day off from blogging was in order, until I remembered that I have a rare Friday game this week.   Ergo, better give the non-paying customers something about which to muse.

Great Frost Delays In Golf History - Since ditching match play, the PGA Championship has been desperately searching for its identity, as U.S. Open-lite has certain limitations, not least when those U.S. Open-lite's are contested on hand-me-down U.S. Open venues.   Such as, yanno, Oak Hill.

But I don't think stealing the identity of another major is quite the ticket, and this sartorial choice is protected intellectual property of the Open Championship:

Pretty funny photo to this observer.  Matthew Fitzpatrick looks to be about fourteen to my eye, but put him in a beanie and that teal pullover and he looks more like he's about eight.

This was the state of last evening (I haven't found any updates as of 6:55 a.m.):

PGA Championship 2023: A frost delay seems highly likely for Thursday's first round

NOTE:  Just turned on ESPN and they are delayed more than an hour.  Michael Collins made a Winter X-Games in telling us that it's now 31 degrees with a wind chill of 26. 

The subject of May v. August came up earlier in the week, with Seth Waugh offering these seemingly judicious comments at that presser that Geoff amusingly caricatured:

Men In Loafers: PGA Of America Press Conference

“We think we’ve added more courses than we’ve taken away by moving to May,” PGA CEO Seth

Waugh said Tuesday.

When asked what he thought about the potential for Northeastern courses to host more PGA’s, Waugh gestured outside the interview tent and pointed to the blue skies.

“How are we looking out there right now? The course is perfect,” he said. “It’s an outdoor sport, and we’re obviously going to go back after this championship — we haven’t hit a ball yet, so we’ll see how it all plays out and then come back and think about it for ourselves and see what the club wants to do and other clubs.”

Fair enough, and God knows that May is far more agronomically interesting than August, although I'm not sure I love having to go from July to April without meaningful golf (although Unplayable Lies as a seasonal blog could be interesting, you don't mind giving up that bit of ski blogging I do). 

Not sure how Alan Shipnuck's endeavor at The Fire Pit Collective is working out, as there's been precious little new content.  There's a new Bamberger piece up just today, but Alan's mailbags have been the only new content since the Masters.  In any event, there is a new mailbag as well, and Alan tackles this schedule issue:

Which is more unpleasant: the PGA in August where it could be 100 degrees in Tulsa/Atlanta or the PGA in mid-May where it could be 55-60 degrees in Rochester? #AskAlan@BradleySmith328

Is this a serious question?! Swamp-ass versus having to wear a light sweater? Now, Wednesday at Oak Hill has been downright cold, but the tournament rounds should be a delight. I’m team May forever.

The overnight low was supposed to be 35 degrees, so I'm hoping that Alan and others threw in a fleece piece or two.

Waugh's comments were reasonable and he's relatively new in the gig, but this concept of tailoring venue choice for the May calendar date has your humble blogger doing spit takes.  Why?  Because when they were playing in August, this is where the PGA took us:

1.  Atlanta Athletic Club
2. Quail Hollow
3. Valhalla
4. Kiawah
5. Southern Hills
6. Shoal Creek
7. Bellerive
8. Congressional

Which of those are you dying to play in August?  Yeah, kind of a trick question.

For years I accused the PGA of America of a weird fetish of seeing Jason Dufner in a wet golf shirt..... I know, it'll take a while to get that image out of your mind.

Players - Just some odds and ends about a few of the guys, beginning with that guy trying to complete the career slam.  He dropped out of his home town event last week with a wrist injury and lush rough seem a bad combo, especially for a guy known to occasionally miss a fairway:

Jordan Spieth played nine more practice holes at Oak Hill Country Club on Wednesday, and the three-time major champion says his injured left wrist feels good enough for him to play in the PGA Championship.

Spieth, the 10th-ranked player in the world, pulled out of last week's AT&T Byron Nelson in McKinney, Texas, because of the injury. On Wednesday, he said he hurt his wrist at home in a "random" accident.

"I feel good," Spieth said. "I wouldn't play if I didn't think I was in good enough shape to be able to play."

What else can he say, but a bad wrist and deep, gnarly rough can only be made more painful by one additional factor:

"It's nasty," Spieth said. "There's nothing that separates this and a U.S. Open. This is the U.S. Open. It's gnarly. The fairways are firm [and] narrow and the rough is thick. As far as difficulty, it feels like a U.S. Open golf course, and par is a nice score is what it seems. Obviously, we played the last two days in a lot of wind, so that will make a difference."

Spieth is playing with Ireland's Shane Lowry and Norway's Viktor Hovland in the first two rounds in a featured group. The trio is scheduled to tee off in the first round at 8:22 a.m. ET. Temperatures are expected to be in the low 40s.

This isn't a venue that anyone thought would favor Jordan, but let's hope he comes out of the week no more damaged.

One interesting aspect to majors is that of course knowledge, whereby the more experienced players come in with perhaps a slight edge.  We saw Jason Day back in the winners circle last week, and that's gonna affect a guy's preparation for the following week.  So how is Jason preparing?  Interestingly, he isn't:

Jason Day on his practice round plan to not play a practice round. “I most likely probably won't see the course today. I'm just not fighting anything, I just want to make sure that I'm mentally prepared and mentally ready for tomorrow. No matter how well I prepare, even if I go out and play a practice round, if I come in tomorrow tired and exhausted, it won't do me any favors, so I'm just going to try and take it easy. It's not the first time I've come into the major championship not playing a practice round.”

He is, however, rocking the beanie.... 

Dinner At Six - It just might be the photo of the year, as the PGA has copied the Masters tradition of a Champions Dinner on Tuesday night, and a certain image has spawned a million memes:

Let's dispense with the obvious first reaction of, what the eff is Jay doing there?  Seriously, obvious the Five Families have long congregated (per Phil, colluded) at the majors, but would you have thought Jay would be invited to this dinner?

Geoff plays meme aggregator:

GolfMagic.com rounded up the best social reactions so we don’t have to:

"Collin looks like he's working on his 10th vodka soda."

"Phil: 'It's a sure thing, bet the over.'

"Divided by tours, forced by majors."

"Is Phil an Undertaker now?"

"Phil looks like some weird sports agent pitching his agency. I always feel like I need to wash my hands after seeing him."

"You could convince me every single person has been Photoshopped into this."

"Collin, once you buy in to the premium coffee subscription, you can find as many people you want to buy in and sell coffee for you. You'll be your own boss!"

"We're going to shotgun starts next year. Don't tell anyone"

"Jay and Phil look like sworn enemies who will eventually join forces to launch a speculative real estate venture."

"It's like Morikawa tried to crash a wedding but ended up at an accountants convention."

The undertaker bit was quite popular, though I think the visual bits work better:

 

Of course, the man is a five-tool athlete, so he's had his hand in financial indiscretions as well:

You Heard It Here First - Remember those more innocent days back in the late winter/early spring?  LIV (what, you thought we'd get through this without it coming up?) was holding events in the U.S. and Nielsen would announce ratings early the next week indicating two guys in Peoria tuned in.  Then later the same week LIV would announce that 3.3 billion people streamed their coverage, and we'd uncritically accept those estimates.  Something like that, right?

But I hinted a couple of times that it's gone awfully quiet on that front, which didn't make me at all suspicious about their viewership, because they are relentlessly growing our game.  So, obviously I've got some for you, but let's begin with LIV's commitment at the time the CW deal was announced:

Days after LIV signed its agreement with the CW in January, Staeger told GOLF.com the league would “certainly” provide publicly available viewership information, adding public data was “critical to all of our plans.”

Will Steiger is LIV's Chief Media Officer, and he certainly wouldn't lie to us, would he?

After viewership dip, LIV Golf has quietly stopped reporting TV ratings

No one seems ready to say where things are headed for LIV Golf. Apparently not even LIV Golf.

Six events and three months into its sophomore season, LIV has quietly stopped publicly reporting its TV ratings, reversing course on an early-season strategy, and a sign that the league could be struggling to generate sufficient viewer interest. The decision means there is no reputable viewership data on the upstart league, which has argued publicly available Nielsen data measuring its broadcasts is inaccurate.

LIV sources confirmed to the Hot Mic that the league would not be reporting viewership data from its U.S. broadcasts moving forward but declined to explain why. In LIV’s most recent ratings report in late March, the league showed audience numbers slumping by 24 percent week-over-week, from 537,000 average viewers in its season-opening broadcast in Mexico to 409,000 in its second event in Tucson, Ariz. LIV has conducted four events since Tucson, including a pair in Australia and Singapore that were shown on tape delay in the United States. LIV has not released data on any of those four events.

That refusal to explain why will just have to remain one of life's enduring mysteries....  But, can you feel the game growing?

LIV Redux, Ryder Cup Edition -  This was a bit of a howler from Zach:

Zach Johnson on Captain’s picks prospects this year. “It's funny you say that because I was talking about that just the other day with some of my vice captains. We're at a point right now where when it comes to -- it's not even a discussion item. There's maybe a couple guys that have come close to securing their spot in the top 6, but when it comes to picks, it's not even on my radar.” 🥴

Next thing is he has some swamp land you might be interested in...

But this was the more interesting bit, which Dylan Dethier gives the full forensic audit:

7. Zach Johnson

Admission: It’s tough to evaluate LIV golfers for the Ryder Cup

Quote: “Really difficult for me to judge that. Again, I don’t know the golf courses they’re playing. Never seen them. I’m not there on foot in person.”

What it means: Zach Johnson, this year’s U.S. Ryder Cup captain, was asked about Dustin Johnson — specifically whether he’s one of the top 12 American golfers at the moment. His answer was revealing in the sense that he seemed to key in on the idea that it’ll be tough to use LIV results to determine form ahead of choosing his Ryder Cup team.

In some ways it makes sense; Johnson’s admission lines up with the OWGR’s assessment that it’s difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison.

In other ways it’s a slightly odd admission given it’s not as though Johnson is watching every potential Ryder Cup candidate in person on the PGA Tour. I’m sure he gets snippets here and there, but plenty of insights will come from TV and from data. One site that includes LIV golfers, DataGolf, currently has Dustin as the 11th-ranked American. Koepka is slightly further down the list but his Masters T2 has him on some people’s radar, too. Captain Johnson was similarly non-committal about his chances.

“It’s one week, at a major venue, at the Masters Tournament,” he said. “[Koepka] played great. But there’s a lot of golf. There’s still a lot of golf between now and then.”

This header at Golf Digest was just as bad:

PGA Championship 2023: Did the U.S. Ryder Cup captain unknowingly hint at a surprising possible snub?

 Unknowingly?  Tough to evaluate?  Guys, they're not invited.  Am I the only one that gets that?

Alan's Got Mail - Just gonna riff on some Alan bits and then wish you an enjoyable weekend and PGA:

Given this course setup, I’m thinking we’re going to see many layup shots out of the rough. Do you agree, and how do you think this is going to connect with the players and fans? @ChuckAnfield

I have mixed feelings about thick, penal rough. I do like that it demands accuracy and puts some fear into the players. Across 72 holes it can become oppressive…and that’s a good thing, as major championship golf is supposed to push players to the breaking point. But the most thrilling shot in golf is the creative, do-or-die recovery shot after an errant drive, and juicy rough robs us of that. It takes no skill or imagination to slash a ball 100 yards down the fairway, and around the greens, tangly grass greatly reduces the variety of shots that can be played. Alas, there is not a golf course on the planet that is long enough to truly challenge the pros, so rough has become something of a necessity. There will indeed be a lot of layups this week and I don’t think that particularly serves the fans, but in a weird way all that long grass is necessary for the integrity of the tournament.

This is the modern dilemma, I'd only add green speeds and firmness to his discussion.  Remember, we had an Open Championship where play was stopped because of friggin' wind moving the balls on the greens, whereas play continued that day for recreational golfers.

This gets a tad bawdy, but a funny framing:

Marry, F*ck, K*ll: Oak Hill, L.A.C.C., Royal Liverpool. @luke_peacock

Marry: Los Angeles Country Club. It’s not easy, but you’d never get tired of playing such a thought-provoking design with thrilling green complexes.

F*ck: After walking around the revitalized Oak Hill I’m dying to play it…once.

K*ll: Royal Liverpool. I love links golf, but there are dozens of other courses in England alone I’d rather play than than this flattish, somewhat unimaginative track.

Yeah, I expect LACC will be great.

Honest answer… what are you firing if you were to tee it up at Oak Hill on Thursday?? #AskAlan @KQuinley

If the course was empty and I was playing with buddies, there’s no chance I, a rusty 8.1 index, would break 100 from the tips; 110 would probably be a good score. If I had to play in front of 30,000 people alongside disapproving pros, any number under 200 would be in play.

Winning score? I’m saying -6. @TonyAnd69299239

Close! If the USGA was setting up the course this week, I think plus-3 would win. The PGA of America is more merciful so I’ll say 5 under.

We always think the tracks are brutal, then they start firing at pins and gong low.

Have you seen this?

Can they get Jason Dufner a new plaque? @MGallagher1977

Are you kidding?! That plaque is more famous than Dufner his own self.

I agree that it's pretty damn epic:

 Although I'm slightly disappointed that his recent sponsor didn't get its due:

I kind of like the thought of Dude Wipes being immortal, but we should probably ask Duf himself what he thinks.

If Jason Dufner had been a good putter, could he have won 4 or 5 majors? I think he could have—he was as good a ball striker as any of the current players on Tour. (I realise he’s still on Tour.) @EoinMurphyej1

Four or five major championship victories is an epic total. It’s true that few major winners have ever looked as shaky over a 4-footer as Dufner. He was so pure from tee-to-green that if Duf had been even an average putter he’d have been dangerous at many majors. The golf gods are cruel.

Great ball-striker, 4-5 majors is crazy talk.

1 v. 1 this week. Brooks vs. Rory… who would you take? @JNickerson33

Koepka, in a heartbeat. He’s playing great, and this course and this setup feel a lot like Bethpage in 2019, when he won his second PGA Championship. I’m still reflecting on how emo McIlroy was in his pre-tournament press conference. He’s trying to cosplay as something he’s not: a dour, grindy, hyper-focused Tigeresque warrior. Rory plays his best when he’s jolly and loose and freewheeling. I get it, he’s tried all manner of reinvention during this brutal decade without a major championship, so might as well test out a new persona. But Brooks isn’t searching for anything—his game is locked in and he is comfortable in his own skin.

Geez, I wouldn't take Rory over those twenty club pros this week....

Beware the injured golfer?

Spieth? @GolfandFrog

I respect the brevity. Maybe this wrist injury is the best thing that could have happened to our star-crossed protagonist. Jordan is always so in his head, but playing hurt will hopefully free him up not to worry about his swing and just go out and grind for a number. Whether his wrist can withstand all the pounding is unknown, but if so, I think he’s dangerous .

Never liked this venue and it's U.S. Open roots for Jordan....

Will a Jon Rahm victory clearly establish him as golf’s #1 player? @scabel1956

He’s already there, but a Rahm win would turn him into a player for the ages. The only thing that would dislodge Rahm as golf’s big dog would be a Cam Smith victory: Taking a Players and two majors (and sundry other wins) in the span of 14 months would be an epic run.

Yeah, he's already there, now it's just about separation from Scottie.  But two majors in a season is a big ask, two in a row is crazy talk.... I think.

Favorite meal in Rochester so far? @RocGolfGuy

They’ve been mostly utilitarian, but I found one of my favorite coffee shops anywhere: Java’s Cafe. Super cool vibe, diverse crowd, comfy chairs, the music is not too loud and last night there was a barista whom I’m still thinking about. Place is open til midnight! I wrote most of a chapter on the LIV/Tour book sitting there and couldn’t have been happier.

Oak Hill looks ridiculously hard. Gil Hanse is currently working at Oakmont. Is there a new chase to be the hardest golf course? @JStewGolf

Gawd, let’s hope not. When someone calls a course hard and means it as a compliment, it makes me wonder about the course and the sanity of the golfer.

I agree with Alan, though I think we can make an exception for Oakmont, whose DNA is to be absurdly difficult.

The old story, possibly apocryphal, about Oakmont has a  Tour player speaking with an Oakmont member at a U.S. Open and goes something like this:

Tour Player:  Man, I can't believe how fast these greens are.

Club Member: Heck, that's nothing.  You should hgave seen how fast we had them for the Member-Guest.

I suppose this is inevitable:

Any thoughts on how Phil will do this week? @pjd570

The throwback performance at the Masters was massive for Mickelson’s confidence and sense of self. Oak Hill feels like a U.S. Open course, and Phil has one of the best U.S. Open records ever other than, ya know, failing to win one. These firm, fast fairways are hard to hit, which helps Mickelson, because he’s going to be in the rough anyway. And some demanding short-game shots are required as well. If his putter cooperates he’ll be dangerous.

I cannot remotely envision Phil being dangerous this week.  or is that just wishful thinking?

Over/under on LIV players in the top ten? @msainopulos

2.5. (Take the over.)

After DJ and Brooks, who?

Alan has some fun with this, though I actually think he drop-kicks the underlying question:

Do you think you’ll ever resign your position as lead PGA Tour honk of the corrupt golf media? #AskAlan @fakePOULTER

I appreciate the cheekiness of this question, but I’ve been taking shrapnel as a LIV shill for the non-controversial opinion that Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka should be on the U.S. Ryder Cup team. These are strange times. The only thing that makes the golf media corrupt is that we sometimes get to play golf courses for free. But it’s a victimless crime!

I have my quibbles with Alan's LIV coverage, most notably his contagious case of whataboutism.

But the golf media aren't corrupt because they play free.... they're corrupt (indeed, perhaps all  sports journalists are) because of their need for access.

One Last Bit - Longtime reader and friend of the blog Mark W. has been our go-to resource on all things R&A, but today he links us to a far more important update on a former Golf Channel personality:

FORMER GOLF CHANNEL HOST HOLLY SONDERS ANNOUNCES NEW TOPLESS SPORTS LEAGUE

Keep it classy, girl.  I have mixed feelings about the intersection of golf and porn, but perhaps you kids can discuss amongst yourselves.

Have a great weekend and we'll have much to discuss on Monday. 

Midweek Musings - Rust Belt Edition

A rare Wednesday morning at the keyboard, so what would you kids like to discuss?  OK, I didn't see that coming, but there is that little gettogether in Upstate New York.

The Course - Nothing but raves so far, along with obligatory tips of the hat to the course's difficulty, though that typically precedes a -22 winning score.  Don't really expect that this week, but you never know with these lads.

But the East Course, Donald Ross and Andrew Green are all ready for their close-up, Mr. DeMille.  As is my wont, shall we begin with the origin story?

In 1941, Frank E. Gannett, founder of the media company that still bears his name, made headlines of his own when he put forth a prize through one of his newspapers, the Times-Union, in upstate New York. Gannett was a proud member of Oak Hill Country Club, on the leafy outskirts of Rochester, and he hoped to draw top talent for a tournament there.

Dangling a $5,000 purse did the trick.

That August, a luminous field, highlighted by Ben Hogan, Walter Hagen, Gene Sarazen and Sam Snead, competed in the Rochester Times-Union Open, on Oak Hill’s Donald Ross–designed East Course, with Snead breezing to a seven-shot win. Photographs from the event show a smiling Snead accepting his winner’s check, while news accounts convey what he thought of the venue.

“This course is certainly one of the finest I have ever seen,” he said. “Fit for either an Open or a PGA.”

The 6th green.

This is a nice follow-up to our prior thoughts from Shack about allowing the Jones and Fazio families to mar architectural gems, but who doesn't like a happy ending?

The Oak Hill where Snead cashed in big in 1941 was not the same Oak Hill of 1968, where Lee Trevino claimed the U.S. Open, which was not the same Oak Hill of 1980, where Jack Nicklaus ran away with the PGA.

And those courses were different from what Oak Hill has become. In the latest phase of its evolution, the East Course has been restored, its Ross imprint revived with its championship teeth retained. When play gets underway at the 2023 PGA Championship, the world’s best will get their first crack — and fans will get their first glimpse — of a Golden Age great with a grand legacy, where everything old is new again.

It is a course with an interesting major championship history, seemingly the only club able to remain in the good graces of both families:

Does that help you pick a horse this week?  I guess you'll want that guy who most reminds you of Jack and Shaun Micheel, so good luck with that.

Andrew Green hasn't risen to name-brand status, but he's quietly built a reputation of note, though this is a tad hyperbolic:

This underrated architect could be golf's next "Open Doctor"

But the majors will also reflect the work and ideas of designer Andrew Green. Green’s profile as one of the leading renovation and restoration specialists in the profession has risen incredibly fast

—incredibly fast, that is, after working quietly for McDonald & Sons, a golf course construction firm based in the mid-Atlantic, for 14 years. After going out on his own about five years ago, Green grabbed one of the game’s most prominent commissions when he was hired to revamp Oak Hill’s venerable East Course, one of Donald Ross’s most industrious designs that had morphed into a vague reflection of its original brilliance. Green’s restoration of the Ross character and resurrection of other deleted architectural elements will be on display during the 2023 PGA Championship.

Green also conducted one of golf’s most unexpected transformations in 2021 at Congressional Country Club’s Blue Course, site of the 1964, 1997 and 2011 U.S. Opens, where he erased the property’s treelined fairways and greens and built new holes that flow broadly through fescue meadows into varied and imaginatively shaped greens. Congressional will exchange one type of major championship pedigree for another when it hosts the 2031 PGA Championship and the 2037 Ryder Cup.

Several other club’s he’s recently worked to revive, including Inverness Club (2020) and Scioto (2022), both past U.S. Open venues, could be on the short list for future majors, and his clients range from public courses like The Preserve at Eisenhower, a bunkerless redesign in Maryland, to the U.S. Naval Academy course, to America’s Second 100 Greatest regulars like Donald Ross’ Wannamoisett in Rhode Island and the Tour Championship’s East Lake in Atlanta.

Scioto, where Jack learned the game, would be a welcome addition back into the major rota, though there's precious few open slots during the remainder of your humble blogger's natural life expectancy.  

One feature of Green's restoration is the restoration of those closely-mown runoff areas, and Jack Hirsh takes a deep dive on the restored fifth hole:

The shortest hole at Oak Hill might feature the most intriguing shot-making on the entire course.

When the quartet of Bryson DeChambeau, Abe Ancer, Dustin Johnson and Padraig Harrington reached the 15th green for the first time on Monday, each one dropped a couple balls to the right of the par-3. It wasn’t coincidence. This was purposeful, because there’s nothing simple about pitch shots from this part of Oak Hill.

The last time Oak Hill hosted a PGA Championship, in 2013, the 15th was guarded by water on the right side. But now, that pond has been filled in, restoring Donald Ross’ original design of a postage stamp green — narrow, but deep — flanked by bunkers on the front and left sides. It was also shortened from more than 180 yards to just 155.

Shack had this photo of the hole avec and sans the dreadful Fazio pond:

 But while the header promises a "pick your poison situation, it doesn't seem there's any real choice:

That was the first spot Bryson DeChambeau visited. First, he tried driving shots into the bank but each of them died on the slope, which is just one cut longer than fairway height. DeChambeau’s new caddie Greg Bodine concluded the wall of turf was too soft to offer any chance of a bump-and-run shot, or even a putt. Everyone is trying to figure this place out.

“So they’ve taken the putter and the bump shot out of your hands for some reason,” Jon Rahm noted.

“That was the architect’s design,” PGA of America Chief Championships Officer Kerry Haigh said. “It’s fun. It adds a different dimension to how you play your approach there.”

There's similar issues on other holes, so that ability to hit soft pitches off tight lies will be highly prized this week, though so will actually hitting the greens.  

But as we revel in Oak Hill's return to prominence, not least because it's the result of restoring those Donald Ross architectural chops, as opposed to those dreadful bastardizations by the Jones and Fazio clans.  But, if there's a dark cloud hovering, it's the question of Oak Hill's major future:

For Beltz, who has been picking at the club’s history for two decades, this offers a watershed moment in 2023 with the return of the PGA Championship. He’s hoping this year’s event ushers in a modern era of major tournaments at a place that has seen its fair share of changes.

“This is a pivotal year, for sure,” Beltz said. “If the players like the renovations and the weather treats us right, this could be a place where major championships are held for a long, long time.”

I think we'll find it worthy this week, though I'm not sure it has a future that incorporates majors.  That bit about the weather is key, it's just one heck of a risk to be in Rochester in May, as even Mr. Beltz acknowledges.  Oak Hill does have the 2027 U.S. Amateur on its calendar, and Father's Day seems a better fit than mid-May, but there's precious few open years available.  Stay tuned, as the kids are won't to say....

The rough is another area of interest, with early reports indicating that, while not especially deep, it is sufficiently lush to ensure that hitting fairways will be rewarded.  One of the guys had these thoughts:

Finau on the dense rough. “The rough is long enough to where you're not going to be able to advance the ball to the greens. The reason I say long is if I remember right, there's four par-4s over 500 yards. Yesterday after hitting some really nice drives up the fairway, even with some roll, I was hitting 5-, 6-iron into these par-4s, which I'm really not used to doing unless it's a par-5.”

OK, but we always hear that on Monday through Wednesday, then they get to the green from everywhere when it counts. 

Rory 2.0 - That was quite the oddball presser yesterday, no?  A few takes, starting with this:

PGA Championship 2023: One-word answers show Rory McIlroy is changing his approach in battle against LIV Golf

Triggering reporters to ask, "Who are you and what have you done with Rory"?

Q. We're coming up on the one-year anniversary of the first LIV Golf tournament. If you could look into your crystal ball three years from now, where do you think the professional
game will be?

RORY McILROY: I don't have a crystal ball.

Q. You don't want to speculate?

RORY McILROY: No.

The first observation to make is that he looked angry when taking the podium, quite unexpected with Rory.  This guy isn't wrong:

The transcript doesn’t look all that different, but that was an entirely different Rory McIlroy at the podium today. Gone was the jovial spokesman. This was…somber. Tired. “Just here so I don’t get fined” energy.

That, and much more from Oak Hill:https://t.co/9Iyig4UXth

— Dan Rapaport (@Daniel_Rapaport) May 16, 2023

He didn't even warm up appreciably in talking about his ties to the local community, from which his wife Erica hails.   But, while everyone seems eager to attribute his Masters disaster to his anti-LIV activism, this seems more the issue:

Away from his press-conference scrum on Tuesday, with two reporters he was familiar with, McIlroy revealed that week was, in a word, shocking.

“I was never so sure that I was going to have a great week at Augusta,” he said.

He said it again.

“Never so sure.”

He continued.

“Then that happened and it was a great lesson. It was a great lesson for me to not put too much into feelings or vibes or — shot five-under on the back nine on the Wednesday afternoon and felt great and everything was in a great spot. But that’s golf. And golf can be an imposter at times, as you said, and yeah, I think that’s when — that’s the chat I had with [sports psychologist Bob] Rotella the night before. It’s like, I feel so good. How can I not get ahead of myself? How — the game can bring you back down to earth quickly.

“But I think the best way to deal with that is not let yourself get to that level of expectation so early, right? And that’s sort of what I’m trying to do. Just sort of take what the golf course gives me and hit good golf shots and, you know, just try to have a little bit more acceptance. Now that I think back to Augusta and maybe the last few months as well, the level of acceptance hasn’t been where it needs to be. And if I work on that and I do the right things, I know I’ll start to play some really good golf again.”

Acceptance?  The issue with Rory is that the more he wants it, the worse he plays..... 

Color me skeptical that this is the solution to what ails him:

McIlroy's coach, Michael Bannon, has spent the past week in Florida, and Golf Channel's Eamon Lynch revealed an even more interesting nugget: that Tiger Woods texted Rory saying he spotted an issue in his swing, and McIlroy went over to his house to work it out.

What did Tiger tell him? We don’t know for sure. Rumor has it was something to do with his setup and alignment, which itself was perhaps a compensation based on some golf swing stuff Rory has been working through. He went pretty deep on it during his press conference on Tuesday ahead of the 2023 PGA Championship, and for the golf nerd, it made for some fascinating reading.

Mebbe.  There's a deeper dive into his mechanics at the link, but Rory's failures have always seemed to me to be related to wedge distance control and the putter, as I always expect him to drive it great.

I also don't mind the one-word answers, as his message discipline has been dreadful.  As for the direction Tiger and he are driving the Tour?  I already don't watch LIV, so easy enough to add the PGA Tour to that list.

Phil 12.0, Still A Dick - Or maybe it should be Phil 1.0, because it's the same tired crap.  Joel Beall sort of hits on some of the duplicity with this offering:

PGA Championship 2023: The very thing that made Phil Mickelson loved is what makes him so polarizing now

 Was it actually love?  That's a tough one, but let's see what Joel's got:

Mickelson is playing his first PGA since that Kiawah triumph, having skipped last year's true title

defense at Southern Hills following the firestorm he created early in 2022 on his way to moving to LIV Golf, and he enters this major on the offensive against the very organization running the tournament. In a series of recent tweets, the six-time major champion accused the PGA of America, along with the USGA and Augusta National Golf Club, of colluding with the PGA Tour. This is the same tour on which Mickelson played for three decades, only to join other players in an antitrust suit against that circuit in the name of LIV Golf, the Saudi Arabian-backed league that Mickelson helped spearhead because he thought he and others deserved better.

In a vacuum, that makes sense, fitting for his maverick persona. It takes a rebel to take on the establishment, to fight for what you believe is a greater good, while taking the heat that comes with dancing in the fire. Only the very characteristics that made Mickelson so beloved then have made him so polarizing now.

Oh, this is all about the greater good?  Joel, have you considered that this is all about Phil's greater good?  Did anyone tell you that there are checks with many zeros involved?

How do we know Phil is lying?  No, can't reprise the lips moving bit, because so much of it is on social media these days:

Thing is, this time last year, Mickelson seemed OK to let that spotlight go. When he ultimately returned to golf in 2022 from his sabbatical, first at LIV’s launch in London and then the following week at the U.S. Open, Phil did not seem like Phil. He was muted, reserved, conservative. The golfer who had famously embraced the brazen promised to lower the temperature.

“I have had strong opinions and ideas regarding most of the governing bodies, and I've done a poor job of conveying that. I've made it public, and that's been a mistake,” Mickelson said. Going forward, he added, he would be "a lot more thoughtful with my words and actions and try to keep a lot of those things behind closed doors.”

Yeah, Joel seems so credulous that I wonder if he'd be interested in some swampland....

He seems to have taken Phil's fauxpology at face value, not realizing that the only actual apology was to the Saudis.  he pledged to work on being the man he wants be, and apparently the man he wants to be is that guy that accusers everyone else of dick moves..... And that from the man that inspired this very truncated Greatest Hits album:

Mickelson is not foreign to sideshows. Should there be any doubt, one only needs to remember him feuding with Detroit media and threatening never to return to the city following the revelation of Mickelson’s ties to a mobster. Or the Saturday at Shinnecock in 2018, when he hit a moving ball in an act of petulance and defeat. Or the defiance after an insider-trading scandal. Or throwing two Ryder Cup captains under the bus. And any number of other gaffes, including a prescient 2019 moment when he told fans “You do you, I’m gonna do me” regarding his first dalliance with the Saudis. It’s a thin line between self-assured and self-absorbed.

No Billy Walters?  No discussion of his frequent unpaid gambling debts?  He's doing his "me", but it's a repellent caricature.  And we exit with the light bulb over Joel's head:

It is why Mickelson’s latest rants against the PGA of America don’t hold up. Mickelson has argued he is standing up for players’ rights, that he’s fighting for a greater good against an establishment unwilling to change. Except, on closer inspection, there’s little evidence in the three decades he was on tour that he worked and collaborated with his colleagues to improve the tour. The only situation he ever worked to improve was his own.

Ya think?

Exit Note -  I'll leave you with this bit from Geoff that bodes well for the week ahead:

But the bigger news in major land and for your viewing pleasure starting Thursday came from the golf course. The firming status of splendid Oak Hill meant a noticeably crispier course to start the day, drying out even more after a windy day of practice rounds. Late in the afternoon the greens looked like they were still rolling over 13 feet on the Stimpmeter based on my deeply refined scientific method of throwing a few balls around on the revitalized Ross greens. (The PGA does not share Stimpmeter readings).

During Tuesday’s press conferences players mentioned the ball running in what a few deemed to be super-tight fairways. (The landing areas are a comfortable-by-modern-standards 26-28 yards.) Throw in that all-inportant first bounce onto the bentgrass greens growing higher and crisp temperatures due to arrive Wednesday, and the 2023 PGA venue could not be more ready to go. Even better, I don’t see the course conditions putting this PGA in the same uber-defensive mode that made the last two editions here a total, unequivocal drag.

Be still my foolish heart.

See you down the road. 

Tuesday Topics - Frost Delay Edition

May in Rochester; what could go wrong?  We'll tackle that and other PGA stuff, but first your humble blogger's spit-take of the day.  It turns out, that if a tree falls in a Tulsa forest..... well, who doesn't love their Tuesday schadenfreude.

Chief, Activate The Cone of Silence -  We take our Weekend Wrap obligations seriously here at Unplayable Lies, covering all of the weekend's action that I find interesting or notable.  Also, those that don't piss me off, which is most of everything these days.

Sunday night/Monday morning presented with artisanally crafted journalism such as this offering:

Dustin Johnson birdies first playoff hole to beat Cameron Smith, Branden Grace at LIV Golf Tulsa

It took an extra hole, but Dustin Johnson did just enough to earn his second LIV Golf victory.

Johnson, the two-time major champion, birdied his final hole in regulation to get into a playoff with

Cameron Smith and Branden Grace, and then he birdied the par-4 18th again to win LIV Golf Tulsa at Cedar Ridge Country Club.

Johnson knocked in his putt from just off the fringe, and he was the second player to go. Grace putted first, also from the fringe, and his narrowly missed to the left. Smith was the closest of the three, and his putt was off from the start, missing right.

It’s Johnson’s first victory since winning LIV Golf Boston last year. He led after 36 holes in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, at 14 under, and his 3-under 67 on Sunday was enough to get him in a playoff at 17 under.

There was a triple bogey by DJ on the tenth hole that brought the whole field into play, so pretty dramatic stuff, no?   As these things go, I'm sure every golfer in America was texting their foursome to tune in, so expect to hear about boffo ratings in the next few days.

What?  But I had been reliably informed that LIV had a TV deal....  Oh, I see, not that kind of deal.

James Colgan regrets to inform that he's unable to lunch (and anyone getting that Cole Porter reference is too old for my target demo) apparently Greg Norman missed some of the fine print in that contract, an inattention to reality being so out of character for our Great White Pilot Fish:

Abrupt LIV Golf broadcast ending outrages fans

Talk about a buried lede!  What fans?

But don't all sudden death playoffs end abruptly?  These guys are pros pros, so what could go wrong?

But even Colgan's framing is curious:

It all started as Dustin Johnson turned for the 18th hole early Sunday evening. Branden Grace and Cameron Smith, the tournament co-leaders, were in the clubhouse at one stroke better than Johnson’s 16 under and readying for a playoff. If Johnson, a member of the last group left on the course, made birdie on the 18th, he’d join Grace and Smith in the playoff.

Boy, am I confused.  Ever since those gentlemen in Leith laid down the original thirteen rules of golf in 1744, I had thought that the purpose of a shotgun start was so that everyone finished at the same time.  With Cam Smith on the range (as per another account), it seems the LIV organizers are every bit as good at their shotgun starts as they've proven to be at due diligence.

 My readers will know what's coming, as DJ is lining up his putt on the 18th hole:

But as Johnson’s birdie putt dropped, sending the tournament into a three-way playoff, LIV’s lead broadcaster Arlo White offered a quick note to the fans watching from home: the broadcast was also available to viewers on the CW app.

At the time, it seemed like a strange pronouncement. Why bother with a moment of self-promotion when everyone who planned to watch the tournament was already tuned in? But a few seconds later, as the clocks turned to 6:30 p.m. ET, a host of fans quickly learned why. As the playoff began, affiliates in major markets across the United States began switching off from LIV Tulsa, resuming normal programming while the tournament hadn’t been decided.

Normal?  If you wanna go with that, fine, but the LIV apologists were scrambling to wipe that egg off their face

You just know the podcasters and "journalists" are excited to talk about how the broadcast ended early on The CW as if it has something to do with LIV and isn't just an downside of TV contracts that have plagued all major golf tours over the years.

— LIV Golf Updates (@LIVGolfUpdates) May 15, 2023

Those coverage gaps are fair game, but you've been around long enough to know that, annoying as they are, the come at the start of the network coverage, with the last group typically still on the front nine.

Though the biggest howler is that it apparently has nothing to do with LIV, just an externality that doesn't reflect at all upon the appeal of that broadcast.  Think of it as a new installment of When Bad Things Happen to Good Bonecutters...

Colgan's close:

Quickly, LIV’s dream viewership situation had devolved into a nightmare. Fans on social media were angry with the network’s seemingly abrupt decision, and with LIV for allowing it to happen. LIV, for its part, was likely just as angry at the lost viewership from those key markets — a significant metric for the league in generating advertiser and sponsor interest.

As a few LIV-tied accounts pointed out, the CW’s decision to drop LIV was similar in many ways to the “coverage gaps” administered many weeks by PGA Tour broadcast partners. Except, of course, that unlike the Tour’s coverage gaps — which usually come before the beginning of weekend coverage — LIV’s happened to land during the tournament’s most pivotal stretch. That sort of coverage gap would be an extreme outlier for golf’s establishment broadcasters. In fact, just weeks ago NBC extended its coverage by more than 90 minutes to show the completion of the Chevron Championship, collecting record ratings along the way.

It will be difficult to know how many viewers LIV lost by virtue of the coverage decision, particularly considering the league’s own inconsistencies in reporting TV audience sizes. The good news, at least, is that LIV won’t have very long to stew on the audience gap lost in Dustin Johnson’s victory. The league’s next televised event will come May 26-28 in Washington, D.C.

LIV was angry?  Set aside your quibble with the concept of an inanimate entity experiencing an emotion such as anger, but one assumes that heads will roll.  Literally!

Ummm, folks, why is this a surprise.  Remember all the cognitive dissonance when the CW deal was announced?  Having heard this, why would Sunday's epic fail be the least bit surprising:

1. The CW does not pay to broadcast LIV, but rather will share ad revenues when, if and as collected;
2. The CW would not interrupt their Friday afternoon reruns of Buffy and Gilmore Girls, so LIV is streaming only that day.
3. The CW does not participate in the Nielsen ratings on weekends, which one assumes isn't because those ratings would be strong.

So, those programs deemed insufficiently strong to measure are of greater importance to the affiliates than a live sporting event going into OT.  This is tree-in-the-forest stuff, kids.

Alex Myers performs a public service by aggregating tweets on this subject:

The CW switched off LIV Golf's big Sunday finish, and the list of TV programs it aired instead is something else

Somehow they got this screenshot of two such aggrieved viewers:

Yup, this is a totally normal golf tour.  Can't you feel the game growing?

Dateline: Rochester, NY - When the PGA agreed to move its flagship championship from August to May, it had many of us sputtering, but what about 2023?  Not to worry, they told us, it's gonna be great.

Nothings says This Is Major quite like a frost delay....

In case you can't read it, the overnight low for Thursday morning's first round is a balmy 35 degrees.  Any chance that Southern Hills could squeeze you in again, Seth?

The Donald Ross Marching and Chowder Society - Geoff has lengthy Quadrilateral pieces on the venue, including this on the original tune-up doctors.  He takes us back to the old days of his blog, wherein he would always lede with a carefully curated quotation suitable to the subject, such as this one:

I’m going to start an organization called the Classic Golf Course Preservation Society. Members get to carry loaded guns in case they see somebody touching a Donald Ross course. Tom Weiskopf, after seeing changes made to Oak Hill

Wasn't that a time?

The ongoing effort to dust off, replenish and embellish classic courses cannot be traced to one

exact point of origin. But Oak Hill sure seems like a great place to start.

Just a year before the 1980 PGA Championship in Rochester, the world’s finest golfers turned up at the Donald Ross-designed Inverness to find four new holes that share little resemblance to the rest. They were dance remixes on Abbey Road. A Dominoes deliveryman crashing The Godfather wedding. And a giant stain on an otherwise classy old course.

The rationale for such a drastic rearrangement? Easing spectator congestion. Seriously. So George and Tom Fazio created the stink bombs and made sure the holes looked nothing like the rest of the brilliant Toledo design. Whether it was ego or general haplessness or both, who knows.

“I’ve never found a course where I couldn’t build a new par-three,” George is quoted as saying after adding the totally-out-of-place 15th at Oak Hill with its mini pond and stone wall.

Let’s go with ego.

Hey, at least for once it wasn't the Jones boys....

Less than a year after Inverness, pros discovered the same level of butchery at Ross’ Oak Hill for the PGA, prompting Lee Trevino, the 1968 U.S. Open winner there to wonder why anything needed to be done at all. And Weiskopf uttered his famous line about a “preservation society.” That would come to fruition nine years later when the Donald Ross Society was formed. (Tony Dear recently filed a terrific First Call story on the state of the group.)

Prior to the major championship-driven defacing of Inverness and Oak Hill, there had been som recognition of the role people like Ross, A.W. Tillinghast, C.B. Macdonald, George Thomas and Alister MacKenzie played in elevating the art form to craft America’s best courses.

Credit in many ways should go to Pete Dye for driving interest in architecture via his over-the-top designs based on old school ideas. He was inspired by ancient links golf and architects like Ross or more obscure names like Seth Raynor or Van Cleek and Styles. There was also former USGA Executive Director Frank Hannigan’s 1974 Golf Journal essay on the life and times of A.W. Tillinghast that was written when the organization realized they were bringing three championships to his designs in one year. Hannigan highlighted what fascinating characters the old architects were and inspired new interest in the rich figures mysteriously forgotten.

Not to worry, Geoff gets his licks in on you-know-who:

There was also the accumulated apathy ferom Open-doctoring of classics by Robert Trent Jones. While his Oakland Hills redo was the first to be jokes about in 1951 for its excessive tricking up in the name par preservation, his work at Oak Hill was the first to be openly lambasted. That didn’t stop the club from thinking it had to do more to get future majors. This led to the Fazio hire. We know how that turned out.

Forgive the lengthy excerpts, but we live in the golden age of golf course restorations, wherein folks like Gil Hanse and Bill Coore faithfully work to restore golden age classics.  Obviously fascinating issues of accommodating 100-year old designs to the modern game abound, but I experience such a thing first hand last week, and had neglected to blog it.

A week ag today, the Met. Golf Writers visited Montclair Golf Club, an iconic 36-hole club that features 27 holes of Donald Ross' creation, combined with a fourth nine-hole loop by Charles Banks (the one nine I've not played).  unusually, the four nine-hole tracks are referred to as The First Nine, The Second Nine, etc., leading to unnecessarily awkward terminology, such as this from a Golf Club Atlas message board:

Pat is right about the 36 holes and I concur playing the #2 and #4 nines -- that combo is among my personal top 10-12 courses in NJ. Simply some of the most unique and fun holes you can play. The green complexes -- particularly the 1st on the 4th nine -- are truly well done and fit the landscape quite well.

Any discussion of hole requires a citation of it's number as well as the nine's number, unwieldy to this visitor.

That landscape is notable, as all four nines are built on severely sloping land, too severe in reality for golf (not to mention walking).  But it's the greens I wanted to show, just a random selection of those I got photos of:

the challenge is that the slopes are so severe that they cant coexist with modern green speeds, as you'll see in this comment form that message board.

Other holes such as the 2nd, 3rd and 4th on the second nine and the 6th on the 3rd have been redone, mostly at the green end. Some of those greens became too severe for modern speeds, which is unfortunate as they had tons of character.

If I weren't so lazy, I'd link back to my post on Ashkernish, where we were playing greens as they existed in the 1890's.   Not only did I estimate that they would stimp at about 1 1/2 foot, but I had the first blind putt of my golfing life.  Lots of character....

Other interesting aspects of Montclair is that it was the home of our beloved Yogi:

I was lucky enough to have a business contact who belonged to Montclair, and on one long-ago visit saw a frail Yogi being helped into the clubhouse.

The other interesting aspect to the day is that I played with Gary Player's grandson, a very nice young man who, and this will shock you, hits it a bloody mile.  A nice young man except for the weird fact that he and I showed up in the exact same golf shirt.  All I could do was compliment him on his fashion sense, mostly not wearing all-black.

After golf the subject of Yogi came up, and it amused your humble blogger no end to try to describe Yogi to a South African.  I went through the expected stuff, that he'd be the last guy in lineup you'd pick to be a world-class athlete, and the full gamut of Yogiisms, those profound malapropisms that all make perfect sense.  But, lifetime Yankee fan that I am, I couldn't just leave it at that.  I tried to explain that Yogi produced a Hall of Fame career swinging at pitches no other human being could hit, and it so happens there's a word for a cricketeer (of course, a week later I can't remember the word) that swings at bad pitches.  Who knew.

Udder Stuff - Just a couple of loose ends, beginning with one of the weirdest takes on the ball rollback I expect to ever find:

The golf ball rollback could have this unintended consequence. A top golf physics expert explains why

And what might that unintended consequence be?

What if the proposed ball rollback doesn’t actually roll back performance among elite golfers? Sasho MacKenzie, among golf’s very short list of leading biomechanists, posed the question Monday to a panel that featured representatives from the USGA and R&A.

“If we roll the ball back on the tour level, there's going to be an explosion in clubhead speed that they're not predicting.”

Doesn't that pretty much describe the last period in our game?  But, much as I love that there's somebody on this planet incongruously names Sasho MaKenzie, I'm struggling to understand his sense of cause and effect:

Announced this spring, if adopted, the new rule would change the speed at which balls are tested for conformance, increasing it from 120 mph to 127 mph. That effect would require balls to fly 15-20 yards shorter than they do currently to be conforming to the test. Mackenzie believes that kind of rollback actually might have the unintended consequence of further emphasizing a pursuit for distance, or, more precisely, clubhead speed. And in Mackenzie’s view of the future of a rolled back ball, that potential for swing speed is monumentally higher than it is now.

"We're talking about the best of the best, a very, very small percentage of athletes," Mackenzie said, "but if you start playing with a ball that gets slower and slower in terms of the distance it's going off the tee, players will start swinging faster and faster, and all of a sudden players that cannot swing the club at 130 and 140 miles an hour will not be in the game. I think 160 is the limit that we're kind of working around with [in terms of] human potential. There is no reason to think that the top .005 percent of the golfers in the world won't figure out how to swing a golf club at 140 miles an hour in the next 10 years. I don't see it going any other way.”

Has anyone told Dr. MaKenzie (yeah, that name might ring a bell, though note the alternative spelling) that professional athletes are, yanno, competitive?  I think what the man is saying is that the proposed rollback of the ball will unleash a sustained assault on club speed, ignoring that they are more likely reaching physical limits whereby future gains will be inclemently harder to come by.

I have no idea what the heck this guy is talking aout, but has anyone checked whether he's cashed checks from Wally Uihlein?

On other fronts, why even hold the event?

PGA Championship 2023: John Daly pulls out of PGA Championship

In the PGA Tour v. LIV matter, perhaps the former's worst moment was allowing Mr. Daly to beclown himself at the Zurich.  Because nothing says high-level athletic competition like a fat man who can't walk shooting in the 80's...

Not sure I agree with this take:

Sungjae Im flying to Korea in between Quail Hollow and the PGA to win a golf tournament is as baller as it gets

I get that the next week Sunjae takes off will be the first, and I further get that there was nothing of interest happening in Fort Worth, but I still think one should wait to see how he plays at Oak Hill before trotting out the baller nonsense.... It reminds me of Jordan going to Quad Cities in lieu of a serious preparation for the calendar year grand slam.  because, yanno, those opportunities come around once a generation....

I don't even want to read this item, because the full story can't possibly improve on the header:

Tour pro loses hat to kid after cutthroat game of rock, paper, scissors

Hmmm, it's Mackenzie Hughes, so you know how cutthroat those Canucks get.... 

A nice look for a change:

What it’s all about! Fun week @attbyronnelson and looking forward to Rochester 💯 https://t.co/hJ1P2e1RC1

— Mackenzie Hughes (@MacHughesGolf) May 14, 2023

Please Jay:  More Hughes and less Daly...make that No. Daly!

We'll go out on this walk down misery lane:

PGA Championship 2023: When Oak Hill hosted history's most underrated Ryder Cup

It's underrated for what I think is the best of reasons, because it sucked so royally.  But it did feature the first of a U.S. archetype, the cocky yet incompetent captain, whereby Lanny Wadkins begat Hal Sutton and Jim Furyk.  So, we've got that going for us...

The golden age of the Ryder Cup, at least as defined by the closeness of the matches, fell between 1983 and 1999, with classics at Muirfield Village, Kiawah, and Brookline punctuating the drama. Often lost in that mix of tremendous golf is the 1995 match at Oak Hill. For three days in late September, the U.S. team captained by Lanny Wadkins (in Tony Jacklin's words, "the cockiest son of a bitch you ever met in 10 lifetimes … but in the nicest way") took on Bernard Gallacher's Europeans in an effort to maintain the American mo-jo from their’ dramatic comeback win in the Belfry in '93. What transpired was not only another nailbiter, but one that perhaps introduced the possibility of a wild Sunday swing—the kind that would reach its wildest form at Brookline and Medinah.

As a captain, Wadkins was a harbinger of the future—incredibly organized, efficient and seeing out every aspect of his job to the last detail, including, as Peter Jacobsen later noted, clothing and shoes and dinners and accommodations and scheduling. But there was a bit of the maverick in Wadkins as well, and he came under scrutiny when he selected Curtis Strange, then 40, and Fred Couples, 35, with his two captain's picks. They were 23rd and 34th in the points standings, respectively, but Strange was the more controversial pick since he hadn't won a PGA Tour event in six years. What he had won was the '89 U.S. Open at Oak Hill, and that horses-for-courses philosophy, plus the fact that Strange shared Wadkins' combative energy, seemed to drive the decision to leave out a red-hot Lee Janzen and that year’s Open winner, John Daly. This choice played a massive role in what was about to unfold in Rochester.

I think it's important that the captain be organized and efficient, the more so when the captain is the village idiot.  It's a long time ago, but Janzen was a big game hunter, and Curtis Strange was a shell of his former self, so Lanny was apparently the only guy that didn't see this coming.

I remember this moment as if it was yesterday:

Montgomerie beat Crenshaw, and in the eighth match came the most pivotal battle of all: Faldo vs. Strange, both captain's picks. Strange was 1 up on 16, but Faldo, knowing Europe had a legitimate chance to win, squared it up heading into 18. He pulled his drive, Strange hit down the middle, and the situation looked desperate. Faldo pitched out to 90 yards, but Strange came up well short of the green, and with the tension mounting, Faldo stepped up for his third.

"We had 93 yards to go," said his caddie Fanny Sunesson, "it was the middle-wedge, and he just got the most perfect stroke on it, pitched nicely and ran to about four feet just left of the hole with an uphill putt."

Strange's chip settled about five feet away from the hole, and to the astonishment of the crowd, he missed. Faldo lined up. "The pressure was immense," he said, "everything was shaking … everything except my putter." He sent it home, and Europe had another point. As he walked off the green, Ballesteros was waiting for him, tears in his eyes. He hugged Faldo and said, "you are a great champion."

I remember those drives, and with Faldo in deep trouble, my Spidey-sense was still telling me to short Curtis.  When the author says Curtis came up well short, he means that completely missed the ball.  Leaving us with this enduring image:

It's entirely fitting that Curtis couldn't watch that closing ceremony, because I was in a similar pose watching him play those final holes.

I'll be back with more tomorrow, as Wednesday golf will be in the afternoon.