Morning Mishegoss

A few minor items for your perusal this morning, as we fill the gap before the Doral kick-off tomorrow.

• DJ Singh - Shack links to this Golfworld piece on Dustin Johnson at the crossroads.  It's a good overview of DJ's career trajectory (even his life trajectory) from troubled youth to The Great One's future son-in-law.  He's had a good career to this point, with 8 career wins and currently ranked 10th in the world, but it comes with the nagging sense that he's under-achieved given the talent and athletic ability.  

I always thought the telling moment in his career was when he brought in Joe Lacava, Freddie Couple's longtime caddy, for adult supervision after bunkergate, missed tee times and the inexplicable OB shot at Royal St. Georges.  But when Tiger's bag became available, he dumped DJ in a New York minute, even though at that time it wasn't clear that Tiger offered the greater upside.  I took that as a sign that perhaps DJ wasn't, you know, the sharpest knife in the drawer.

But my interest here, as you'll guess from the punnish title, relates to Vijay's ongoing  lawsuit against the Tour, in which he has specifically demanded access to DJ's disciplinary file.  The Tour calls this a fishing expedition and DJ swears he's never been suspended, but that raises the question of whether there's something, shall we speculate that it might relate to a failed drug test, that should have, in the opinion of the Veej, resulted in a suspension.  Stay tuned to this station...

• The Most Interesting Man in Golf - Under 25 Division -  The newest golf sensation, the mysterious Victor Dubuisson, has arrived at Doral, alas without his sticks.  This happens surprisingly often to professional golfers, who we never think of as flying commercial.  Not sure where they are or whether they'll be there in time, but Victor has continued his International Man of Mystery act by politely begging off answering questions about his childhood.

But Titleist sprung into action, manufacturing him a complete new set of wedges:

Gotta love the personalized cactus logo, paying homage to his miraculous escapes from the desert.

• Fame, Defined - Golfweek's digital mag includes this Adam Schupak piece on changing Golf Hall of Fame's election criteria.  Word is that they'll go an every other year process, and expand the membership committee.  Lots of strong words from Nick Price and Lanny Wadkins (sorry, it's a digital mag so I can't copy and paste), the latter of whom believes that he didn't deserve election.  I'm pleased to see that Lanny and I at least have that as common ground.

It was the election last year of Freddie and Monty that provoked this soul searching, though they are both admittedly hard cases.  Freddie was for a time considered the best player on the planet, though his win and major totals are surprisingly small.  Monty is an even tougher case, as a reasonable person can make a strong case that a guy who never won a major shouldn't even be on a ballot.  But then there's those seven straight Order of Merits, at a time when the Euro tour was quite strong.  

• Anchors Away - For Real - Shack delivers the devastating news that the PGA of America's Ted Bishop has been denied his proposed delay in the anchoring ban for amateur players.  I'll do you the favor of not quoting from his press release, as you've suffered enough.  Ted never did get around to explaining what the hacks of the world could accomplish in four years that they couldn't in two, so we were appropriately dismissive of this from the get go.