Monday Mishegoss

It's a miserable day out there, and of course it would be in these conditions that we had to trundle into the big bad city.  But we made it home with a minimum of inconvenience, so let blogging resume...

Goose, Gander - From this news it appears that Rory McIlroy's lawsuit with his former management company is no closer to settlement than when Court-ordered mediation failed last month:

Golfer Rory McIlroy's father will be asked to produce documents as part of his son's

legal dispute with a sports management company, Dublin's Commercial Court has heard.

McIlroy's counsel, Rossa Fanning, said his side was "very surprised" by the application by the sports company to see Gerry McIlroy's documents. He is not a party to the case. 

The Co Down golfer's caddy, JP Fitzgerald, has also been ordered by the court to produce documents by the management company so it can defend Mr McIlroy's claim that an agreement he made is invalid.

If I were Rory's counsel, I'd have JP submit every pinsheet from every round in which he caddied for the youngster.  Joking aside, no details provided on the nature of the documents requested, so it seems to be quite the stretch.  It might be the first sign of weakness from Horizon Management, or perhaps just payback for Rory's side serving papers to spoil; Graeme's wedding.

Now That's a Partner - This actually reminds me of something I saw first-hand, but holy cow:

Brent Grant

When Bill Walbert was called into surgery on Nov. 12, he never expected to make USGA history. 

Walbert managed to qualify for a national championship without ever hitting a golf shot, thanks to a career round from his partner. 

In an interesting twist to sectional qualifying for the inaugural U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship, Walbert’s ticket was punched to the competition because his partner, Brent Grant, shot a bogey-free, 9-under-par 63 on his own ball at Honolulu Country Club. 

Grant’s score was one stroke better than two other teams. With 35 sectional qualifiers completed to date, Grant is the only competitor to have earned a spot in the field May 2-6 at The Olympic Club in San Francisco without a partner.

 That's really something...my first year at Willow Ridge I played in Govenor's Cup qualifying, which is our major two-man event of the season.  Bruce Berman, the best player at the club, was partnerless due to some kind of communication snafu with the notorious Colin King, and missed qualifying on his own ball by a mere stroke or two.  Of course that was a handicap event, but Bruce, with whom I was playing for the first time, shot 72 or 73 and almost bailed out Colin's sorry butt.

DJ Gone Missing - I don't know how much this means, but Shack had this post at the Loop:

While the situation hasn't moved to Stage Anthony Kim yet, there is another sign that

Dustin Johnson’s “leave of absence” from golf is a genuine head-scratcher even for those closest to him.

Taylor Made-Adidas, the company that has elevated Johnson’s image as one of the game’s premier athletes and has made him one of the primary faces of the brand, has not heard from Johnson since he took his leave in August.

OK, given that the contract runs through 2015, one could argue that as long as the checks clear there's really not much to discuss, as long as he's wearing his TaylorMade/Addidas swag in those quiet rounds at Sherwood.  But wouldn't you think that by this point they'd have an out in their contracts for this kind of circumstance, as the Yanks at least didn't have to pay ARod while he was suspended.

But lots of AK references these days, though mine in the Christina Kim post was oblique.

And, mostly because I can, I offer the famed Taiwanese animators take on DJ's drug use and the like.  Spoiler alert, it ends badly for Tiger.

Ummm...No It Isn't - OK, this is just plain silly:

Rob O'Neill is the Navy SEAL who shot Osama Bin Laden during the raid on his compound in 2011. As a way of getting over his post-traumatic stress from the whole episode, a military psychiatrist told him to take up golf. It didn't go so well.

"The last psychiatrist I spoke to recommended golfing to relieve stress -- and that’s a bad idea," O’Neill said in an interview with the New York Post. "Golf’s more stressful than combat."

You don't need me to tell you that's hooey, though I suppose there's a point to be made about a Seal's training allowing him to operate on instinct, muscle memory as it were.  But what kind of shrink recommends golf to reduce stress?  I could tell them it's a carrier...

The Down Side of Public Records -  We had news a few days of Ginni Rommetty being invited to join Augusta National Golf Club.  Now it turns out that Rometty, an extremely successful business executive, isn't a great golfer as Sam Weinman explains:

Yet in a strange way, Rometty's 35.4 index reflects favorably on her as well.

Take a look at the card for a second. It's really quite remarkable. Of Rometty's 20 most recent scores listed between July 2012 and July 2013, her best in that period is 105 at one of her home courses (since it was in March, we're going to assume it was her Florida course, Shadow Wood Country Club in Bonita Springs). There is only one other score lower than 110.

And remember, those are her good scores. There are eight scores higher than 120. There are four scores higher than 130, including a whopper -- a 144 in December 2012.

 I have trouble relating to this mostly because it's hard to imagine how one could enjoy the game while shooting such scores.  But admiration is due for her math skills and discipline, and for, you know, actually maintaining a valid handicap.

Tree, Forest - Nick Zacardi has his panties in a twist over the concept that Tiger might not qualify for the Olympics:

Tiger Woods has fallen outside the top 20 in the Official World Golf Ranking for the first time in nearly three years, increasing scrutiny as he tries to qualify for the Olympics over the next 20 months. 

Woods, who will be 40 years old during the Rio 2016 Olympics, is No. 23 in this week’s rankings. He hasn’t played since missing the cut at the PGA Championship in August.

Nick, have you always been this high strung?  You do realize that not a shot has been played that will determine the Olympic rosters, which will be based upon the next two full seasons of play.

Plus, maybe you didn't get the memo, but most of us aren't worried about the Olympic Team in an event we're not going to watch in any case.

Elephant, Duf - Don't worry, this isn't an updated Separated at Birth feature, it's merely video of an extremely well-trained Duf:

Well, it is the Silly Season.

The Serious David Owen - We love David's posts, the silly playoffs at his home club, the reader's trip reports from exotic ports of call and the unpaid shillmanship fro golf products.  But this got a tad more serious than I expected:

As I drove home from my dermatologist’s office, I felt more than slightly annoyed.

Slicing two bumps from the side of my nose had taken the doctor roughly eleven seconds, from Novocain to Band-Aid, yet had cost me more than a thousand dollars. With five minutes of instruction, I figured, I could have performed the operation myself, using tools I already own. But I calmed down a few weeks later, when I went back for a follow-up appointment. One of the bumps was just a harmless old-guy surface enigma, the doctor said. The other, though, was something I really did need a licensed physician to deal with: a basal cell carcinoma -- skin cancer.

Every gofer's nightmare, right?   I gather from the piece that he'll be fine, but that's an inference and I kinda wish he'd come out and said it more plainly.

The purpose of David's item is to recommend Golfer's Skin, a New Zealand product that he strongly recommends to our kind.  I will be looking into it, though I won't need it for a while.