The Week That Was

The loyal reader (and I'm speaking to both of you) will have noticed the real world interrupting blogging this week, a deplorable and unsustainable circumstance.  The silver lining is the long list of subjects and items which we need to discuss, and as a bonus we might actually add to your vocabulary.  But don't panic, that service is included in your annual subscription fee.

First Word of the Day:  Bollard - Is this word in your lexicon?  It certainly wasn't in mine, so let's give you a little context:

Augusta National Golf Club has beefed up security to the most famous entrance in golf.

Bollards – short, vertical posts used to control traffic – were installed across Magnolia Lane while the club was closed over the summer. 

The five posts are retractable and can be controlled by security guards at the front gate off Washington Road if they need to stop or divert a vehicle....

They always speak about driving down Magnolia Lane, though one can't actually do that during tournament week.  Apparently there was a recent breech of security that prompted the bollards (and of course ANGC has more money than God, so naturally they popped for the retractable ones - is there an app for that?):

Augusta National Golf Club banned a South Dakota couple from club grounds Monday after the duo trespassed and was involved in an altercation at Gate 3.

Golf fans, no doubt... Either that or relatives of Martha Burke that missed the story about the admission of Condi Rice and Darla Moore.  But I'm sure I heard this story, though I'd long since forgotten it:

Augusta National's security concerns are not unfounded. In 1983, when President Reagan was playing the course, a local man crashed through the gates and held hostages at gunpoint in the pro shop for two hours while demanding to see the president. The Secret Service later subdued him.

I hate to be a cynic, but it seems the Secret Service hasn't been really good at this security stuff for quite a while...

 Embracing His Critics - I still love to watch Bubba play golf, as he's quite the throwback.  How can you not love a guy that never sees a straight golf shot and has never bothered to watch himself on video?  But he's a weird, somewhat tortured soul, as his behavior during all 2014 majors not held at the aforementioned ANGC demonstrated.  

But I do like that he attempts to embrace his critics, as per this:

“Any time that somebody writes bad press, the only way I’m going to improve as a human being, improve as a husband, improve as a dad, is when you get people that call you out,” he told reporters. “When I make mistakes, when your friends call you out, when the media calls you out, when my wife calls me out, when my mom calls me out, when those people call you out and tell you you’re doing something wrong, it’s not to punish you. It’s not to get on you. It’s to help you improve later in life."

Yeah, when your Mom calls you out, that's thw definition of a wake-up call.  Bubba just turned 36, so  it might be time to grow up.   or not...

Checking in with David - That's David Owen, my second favorite (and presumably your third fave) golf blogger, whose My Usual Game blog is now a part of Golf Digest's The Loop blog.  David has three items to touch on in passing.  First, his usual game has instituted a local rule as follows:

The Sunday Morning Group gives an extra handicap stroke to anyone who wears shorts

Other photos include wind-blown outdoor furniture.

after November 1 (and two strokes after December 1). It was so cold and windy on Sunday that Gary, our terrific superintendent, lit a fire in the clubhouse for us after he and his crew had finished mowing the greens.

Much to Colin King's displeasure, I didn't even tee it up last Sunday, it being so cold and windy.  So for anyone that actually wore shorts, that extra stroke was well-earned,  

Next up, they've made a threshold contribution to the game of golf with a waterproof scorecard.  OK, they didn't exactly invent it, as per this:

Our waterproof scorecards were printed for us by PrintWorks, the official stationers of

 He drove home with his Drycard on his windshield.

the Sunday Morning Group. We didn't actually invent them; we stole the idea from Todd Petrey, a caddie at Bandon Dunes. Petrey graduated from the University of Florida 1992 with a degree in sports therapy, and tried to play golf professionally for a while. He began caddying when he was short of cash, and one of the places he worked was East Lake, in Atlanta, where the weather is so disgustingly hot and humid that scorecards sometimes dissolve in perspiration. To deal with that problem, and also with rain, he invented Drycards. (“Like a normal scorecard, only better because you can use it as a coaster.”)

 Lastly, David addresses a problem endemic to our age group:

During the Sunday Morning Group’s recent golf-only trip to Atlantic City, we played one course that made me extra sympathetic to women golfers, because there were so many houses right next to the fairways.

You mean women play golf?  Settle down Employee No. 2, it's just a little joke....So here's his certification suggestion:

David's friend is showing good form, but I'm concerned that he might not have enough club.

 David also deals with golf courses hostile to walkers, which is far more important but way less amusing....

Egads! - Via Shackelford, here's late-breaking Halloween news:

We don’t know if this is cute, disturbing or both. 

Jonathan Trunk entered his two-year-old son into Rock Bottom Golf’s competition to dress like John Daly for Halloween. The little boy pulls off the look magically, complete with Loudmouth Golf pants, the 1991 PGA Championship winning mullet and, yes, a cigarette hanging limply from his lips.

You'll need to see this in more than a thumbnail, won't you?

I'd stick with disturbing... the good news is that at age 2, he's probably too young to be emotionally scarred for life.  The bad news is that I certainly am...

George, We Hardly Knew Ye - News came this week that George O'Grady will be stepping down as head of the Euro Tour:

George O’Grady is to stand down as the chief executive of the European Tour. O’Grady,

who has been in office since 2005, has been a notably peripheral figure in public recently, including during Europe’s comprehensive Ryder Cup win over the USA in September. 

The Guardian can reveal he has decided that both he and the Tour are in need of a fresh start, with a formal announcement thought to have been scheduled for the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai this month. The European Tour refused to comment on Tuesday but may be forced to issue clarification before this week is out. The Singapore-born O’Grady is here for the WGC-HSBC Champions event, which gets under way on Thursday.

That second sentence seems a tad harsh, though there's little doubt that the Tour he leaves behind is somewhat at low ebb.  The Ryder Cup reference points the way, as the stalwarts of that team are all plying their trade in the U.S. these days, and not surprisingly sponsorship issues, such as Volvo's recent non-renewal are a fact of life.  

Unfortunately, O'Grady's legacy will included this:

O’Grady was also dragged into the controversy surrounding Sergio García’s “fried chicken” jibe towards Tiger Woods before the 2013 PGA Championship at Wentworth. A day after the García remark, he pointed towards the Spaniard’s “coloured athlete” friends in what proved to be an ill-fated attempt to defuse the row during a live television interview. 

O’Grady is known to have been hurt by the fallout from that incident. He described it as “very sobering”.

I prefer to remember George for a semi-serious point he made about drug testing, back in the era that I call Peak-Tiger:

Just test Tiger Woods and be done with it. 

“From what I understand, he would be the first in line to volunteer for testing,” O’Grady said. “If Tiger Woods’ test comes back negative, what does it matter what the rest of them are on?

It made good sense at the time, though after revelations about Dr. Galea I kind of wish they had, in fact, tested him.

 Second Word of the Day: Bifurcation - This one you probably already know, as it's been bandied about in our sport for quite a while.  Shack also points us to this terrific post by ex-Tour pro Phil Blackmar, which includes this conclusion:

It’s now time for the rules to catch up with the game and with the reality of the 21st century. The game is no longer growing; it’s a hard game for the average player and it takes a great deal of time. The time has come to create two sets of rules, one for professional and national amateur competitions and one for the average player. Let the average player enjoy the aid of technological advancement but require the best players to develop the skill sets required in years gone by which have been replaced by technology. The game will not be damaged by two sets of rules! Any person, or any golf association conducting a contest could still chose to play under the more stringent set of equipment rules if they so chose. Forcing everyone to play under the same set of rules doesn't make the game better, it makes it out of date and eventually out of fashion.

I have tremendous misgivings about this "B" word, though just to be completely non-committal I also well understand the case for it.  It's just that golf is the one sport where the pros play essentially the same game as we do, and that linkage is very special.  

But the real appeal of Phil's post is his trenchant history of the evolution of golf club and ball technology and how it's affected the game.  Here's one small excerpt:

Prior to groove technology, players who could spin a wedge consistently had a tremendous advantage over many of their peers. Good players called it “trapping” the ball. A “trapped” shot allows the player to impart consistent spin on the ball and control the trajectory, both of which are necessary to “dial” in a distance and take advantage of a wedge shot. When the shot “runs up the face”, as good players term it, the ball jumps up quickly and acts like it has topspin when it lands on the green making it difficult to get the shot close to the hole. I remember my first year on tour being mesmerized by watching Tom Weiskopf hit sand wedges on the range at Hilton Head. The grass on the range was fairly long for a tour range with sandy soil underneath which made it very difficult with the grooves of that era to control the spin and flight. Tom put on a demonstration that I still remember today as if it happened yesterday. Today’s grooves, on the other hand, displace this talent and make it easy for any player to hit controlled wedges.

True that.  I remember a golf shop conversation about five years ago with Bruce Berman, a repetitive club champion at Willow Ridge about the relative level of competition faced by Nicklaus and Woods.  His point was that Tiger faced no one with the closing skills of a Trevino or Watson, and my counter to that is that the current fields are now much deeper.  What occurred to me later was that I had missed the more important point, that the technology had dramatically lessened the importance of ball-striking in the modern game, making Tiger's separation from the field that much more impressive.

Regardless of where you come down on Berman v. Simpson, don't deny yourself the pleasure of reading Phil's post.

Top Five Wordplay - As a world renown golf blogger, you'll understand my love of wordplay.  After all, this is my art, as pathetic as it can be on certain days...

I've also admitted to my love of alliteration.  From our Weekend Wraps to Monday Mishegoss to Perthshire Perorations, I milk that parlor trick unmercifully...

Well, guess who else likes the odd alliteration?  None other than our favorite Top Five player, Patrick Reed.  Deadspin had the goods, though I dawdled long enough that the video has been taken down.  It turns out that our Shusher-in-Chief missed a short putt, and had this bit of honest self-criticism caught on a hot mic:

The WGC-HSBC Champions is underway in Shanghai, and things aren't going so well for golfer Patrick Reed. His reaction after three-putting the course's opening hole: "Nice fuckin' three-putt you fuckin' faggot."

Now Patrick, there's much you need to learn.   First, you need to get yourself a thesaurus, because using the same adjective twice in one sentence is just not up to professional standards.  Secondly, two-word alliterations are nice, but if you had worked another "F" adjective in there, you could been a contenduh!  Can I suggest "Flamin' in this context?

But listen folks, after the events of the last couple of weeks I'm just relieved that he didn't call himself something really objectionable and hurtful...yanno, like "a little girl."  'Cause that would be wrong and trigger all sorts of self-esteem issues for Suzy Whaley.

Sam Weinman, in his item on the incident, reminds us of this playful post-Ryder Cup photo that seems quite appropriate to the moment: