Weekend Wrap

I got a little lazy over the weekend as relates to this blogging thing, but it was for good cause as I was out enjoying the best of late Fall golf.  Gotta grab it while you can, I'm sure you'll agree...

Shanghai Shenanigans - Wow, that was quite the finish, unfortunately at a time when no one in the U.S. could see it.  Here's a reasonably concise summary from Doug Ferguson:

Bubba Watson captured his first World Golf Championship with a stunning turnaround Sunday when he holed a bunker shot for eagle on the 18th hole to get into a playoff, and

How did that happen?

then made a 20-foot birdie putt to beat Tim Clark and win the HSBC Champions. 

The 10th edition of the HSBC Champions was the wildest one of them all. Watson had a two-shot lead with three holes to play until he appeared to throw it all away. He missed the 16th green with a lob wedge and made bogey, and then took two shots to get out of a bunker on the par-3 17th and made double bogey to fall one shot behind a five-way tie for the lead. 

The two-time Masters champion was fidgety and irritated at any movement around him, even stopping at the top of his swing from the bunker left of the green on the par-5 18th hole because of a camera click from the hospitality suite. But angst turned to joy when he blasted onto the green and watched the ball roll some 25 feet into the cup for eagle.

I walked into our golf shop after lunch as Bubba's group approached the 18th green on the midday replay.  I had a great time teasing our pro staff, who thought the tourney was a wild ride up until then...

Here's the video of Bubba's eagle and finish. It's that good!

Mississippi Half-Step - The Tour held an off-field event in Jackson, MS this week, but you'll be forgiven if you weren't glued to the screen.  Here's the headlines:

Very funny, now where's the real trophy?

Nick Taylor was down on his game over the summer, struggling with his putter as he fought to earn a PGA Tour card. 

So even he was a little stunned Sunday when he was holding a big bronze rooster and celebrating a comeback victory in the Sanderson Farms Championship.

At least that gave me my morning chuckle...  Imagine you're a kid struggling in this crazy game and you finally break through and win a Tour event and they give you a friggin' rooster!  OK, they also "gave" him $720,000, but you get my point.

These off-field events can be of some interest, as there's a mixture of old-times trying to keep the dream alive (see Toms, David; Rollins, John; etc.) and up-and-coming youngsters.  But this time of year it's hard to summon much enthusiasm, though a couple of stories of note to pass on.  First, have you ever heard of Roger Sloan?  Me neither...

But in the first round he made a double-bogey seven on the Par-5 third.  Not good if you hope to play the weekend, but in a bounce-back for the ages he then aced the Par-3 fourth.  You don't see many sevens out there and no one make too many 1's, but a 7-1 on consecutive holes is kind of the definition of inconsistency.  Here's a screen shot of the scorecard in living color:

The second item of note actually ties together two threads we've covered here previously, and the link is Lee Janzen, who was in the field.  First, the senior tour holds an annual event at Pebble Beach, which this year had the misfortune to serve as ratings fodder opposite the Ryder Cup.  Anyone remember this walk-off finish to the Pro-Junior event?

The second thread is this Golf.com gallery of the unluckiest breaks in golf history, which included this entry:

11. Jim Nelford, 1984 Bing Crosby National Pro-Am

The promising young Canadian had yet to win on the PGA Tour, but after Hale Irwin,pictured, hooked his shot into the Pacific Ocean left of Pebble Beach’s 18th hole, he thought he had notched a victory. Instead, Irwin’s ball hit a rock and bounced back into the fairway. Irwin would make birdie, then win the playoff on the second hole. A year and a half later, Nelford badly injured his arm in a waterskiing accident. He would never win a Tour event.

For my younger readers, that's a driver in Mr. Irwin's hands at right.  I know, it looks like an over-sized hybrid, but this game used to be, you know, really difficult.  So Lee Jnazen was the young man's partner at Pebble, but the announcer on Friday filled in a detail of which I was previously unaware.  I'm guessing you've connected the dots by now, but here it is:

After his tee shot on 18 ricocheted off the rocks and into favorable spot, Meyers hit a 4-iron second shot from 203 yards. The approach shot landed softly on the fringe, advanced with a few soft bounces and slowly rolled in.

Holy ricochet, Batman, the kid makes the first albatross in history on Pebble's iconic 18th, and that's not the truly amazing part.  There are good beaks and then are the other-worldly breaks, as the rock saved the kid no fewer than FIVE shots.  Imagine, as the ball hooks towards the ocean the young man reaches into his pocket secure in the knowledge that he's gonna make no better than seven... twenty minutes later he walks off the green with a two.

Can anyone top that?

Plankton - Shackelford informs us that TPC Sawgrass' iconic 17th hole as a new look these days:

I've always hoped we'd see more of the Pirates of the Caribbean aesthetic return to the

TPC Sawgrass.

But after hearing rumors of a weird contraption attached to the world famous 17th green, my hope was dashed because the pirate ship motif lands in the form of a temporary wooden plank-and-roped-walkway. This is designed to spread out walking wear-and-tear during the winter months and mostly, according to the PGA Tour's Ty Votaw, "might be able to use a back left pin placement during the PLAYERS." And you know that came directly from him because Players was in all caps.

That's obviously pretty darn ugly, and my first question would be whether there's a discount involved for those whose action photos on the 17th tee will be impaired?  In the alternative, Commission Ratched could offer them a photoshop service, i.e., send us your photos and we'll airbrush the planks out of there.  And, as a bonus, we'll keep it amongst ourselves that you put three pitching wedges in the water...

Could Be Awkward - Those Tuesday money games on tour might be a tad less chatty after this from our Rickie:

After an ugly six-week fall-out that has witnessed the savaging of captain Tom Watson’s reputation, not to mention the firing of PGA of America president Ted Bishop for his

“li’l girl” jibe at Ian Poulter, Fowler felt the time was right to defend a grandee of the game with some thinly-veiled criticism of Mickelson. Having shared his team-mates’ unease at the five-time major champion’s excoriation of Watson in the middle of a press conference, he said: “The unfortunate part, I believe, is that stuff that happens in the team room should stay there.

“I thought Tom did a great job of talking to the guys. He had been there plenty of times, and I enjoyed the time I got to spend with him. I respect him, he is a legend within the game. Some things may have got blown a little bit out of proportion. But obviously we didn't play as well as we needed to in order to win.”

So, as I understand your thoughts, Rickie, you're saying that Phil was whining like a...wait for it....little girl?  Noted.

Keiser Konquests - Mike Keiser is The Man, at least as far as I'm concerned.  So this is great news from Travelin' Joe Passov:

When it comes to transforming raw, tumbling coastland into world-class, seaside links golf, Mike Keiser has limitless energy. The man behind Bandon Dunes now has his sights set on Ireland. Speaking exclusively to Golf.com, Keiser said he’s close to inking a deal for a new course on Ireland’s southwest coast. Still, he’s realistic about the approvals process. 

“It could happen tomorrow,” says Keiser, “or it could take years.” In fact, Keiser has yet to acquire the land itself, a parcel owned by a U.S. family named Kennedy, though it appears to be a mere formality once the go-ahead on the golf course is in place. For such a special piece of property, Keiser is willing to wait. 

“When I first saw the property ten years ago, it looked like Pacific Dunes, but even better,” says Keiser. “There were big dunes, little dunes, big valleys, little valleys, lots of hillocks. What distinguished it from Pacific Dunes is that it feels like it’s on an island. Because it will be routed on a peninsula, you are practically surrounded by water.”

There's lots of good stuff in Joe's piece, including an unknown architect that's been involved with the site fro decades, the fact that he's bring in shaper-to-the-stars Jim Urbina (Pacific Dunes, Old Macdonald, etc.) to assist and that it's right next door to Dooks, creating a nice cluster of courses that will include famed Waterville.

My only quibble is the inclusion of a photo of Keiser (above) at Cabot Links.  How come no photo of the actual site under discussion, Joe?  You're supposed to be a professional journalist...

Of Stymies, Kick-in Birdies and the Like - David Owen is back in his Usual Game mode, with an update on his Sunday Group's local rules:

The golf world abandoned stymies in 1963, but the Sunday Morning Group keeps them

alive, sort of, by using them in playoffs, which we conduct on our practice green. On New Year's Day in 2013, we invented a new version, ball-marker stymies, in which the old stymie rule applies on every green, but to ball markers instead of balls.

David doesn't tell us whether there are constraints on the size of a ball-marker, with poker chips and the like having become the standard.  But wait, there's more:

On Wednesday, we invented yet another new version: leaf stymies. Gary, our terrific superintendent (shown stymied by my ball marker in the photo above, which was taken at Dyker Beach, in Brooklyn), keeps our course remarkably free of leaves, but when the wind blows hard he and his crew can't possibly keep up, especially on greens with overhanging oak trees. Removing leaves from everyone's line takes forever, and then the wind just blows them back, so we decided: screw it. From now on, the leaves stay where they are:

 Here's one of his buds attempting a birdie putt:

As David notes, leaves don't affect the roll of the ball all that much, though those whirly hard thingees that come down with the leaves do for sure.  

In fact, I had a positively delightful weekend of golf, playing both days with Bruce Berman, the best player at our club.  On Saturday Bruce made a great call, suggesting we wait until 11:00 to go out, and it was delightful.  The course was completely playable with the exception of the second green, which had so many of those things that you couldn't putt the ball five feet.  

But Friday was when we had some amusement, as I lured the bride out to play a few holes.  It was blustery when we started, but then it started spritzing and wind really picked up, an admittedly uncomfortable combination.  Theresa announced she was done as I contemplated my second shot on No. 15 from a grass bunker.  It's our No. 1 handicap hole, and plays across water with a viscous right-to-left wind at the time.

I had grabbed my PW to sensibly lay up, but when Employee No. 2 announced that we'd be going in, good sense decreased in importance dramatically.  I swapped the wedge for a hybrid, and punched a shot that I started some forty yards right of the green.  Just a whacky golf shot that I managed to pull off, and we laughed about it as we drove the cart around to pick up my golf ball, which was some twenty-five feet above the hole.

As I dodged the rain drops and ran onto the green, something playful made me feign a plumb-bob (mind you, I didn't have my putter) and then proceed to kick the ball towards the hoe.  Yup, you guessed it, she dropped.  That, my friends, is how you make a kick-in birdie.  Though as I noted in the golf shop to head off anyone else, in failing to remove the pin I incurred a two-stroke penalty, thus it was actually a routine bogey.