A quick scheduling note to for readers. Tomorrow I'll be heading out to formally open the Unplayable Lies Western Regional Office in Park City, UT.
No doubt I'll find time to check in on Tiger's play and anything else that pops up. But should you dial up this humble blog and find no new content, please console yourself with the thought that I'm likely to be in intense physical pain. There, I thought that might cheer you up just a bit. Oh, and did I mention that they're forecasting a good-sized storm for Wednesday?
The Merry Mex, A Birthday - It's tough when the great ones, those we grew up watching, hit milestone birthdays beyond comprehension. And we have one of those, as Lee Trevino just celebrated his 75th birthday. Adam Shupak has a nice tribute atGolfweek, notable especially for the remembrances of players such as Peter Jacobson and Paul Azinger of kindness from Trevino that they remember decades later. Also, because it's Trevino, there have to be funny bits, such as this:
These days, Trevino is known more for his jokes than his strokes, and that’s a shame. For all his accomplishments on the course and ballstriking ingenuity, Trevino says the younger generation knows him best for his cameo in the movie “Happy Gilmore.”
Golf.com also has a gallery of photo highlights from Lee's career. with Lee himself providing the captions. Here's one sample:
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| PGA again, '74. I had a two-shot lead but I bogeyed the 17th hole. On 18, Nicklaus teed off with a 3-wood, I hit driver and out-drove him. He hit 5-iron to 18 feet left of the hole, I hit 6-iron to about 20 feet behind the hole. I putted the ball down to about a foot and a half short. I was choking so bad that I couldn't swallow. It's customary if you're leading to mark, so you're the last one to putt. But I said, "Jack, do you mind if I putt?" He said, "Not at all." He knew I was nervous. So I made the putt. There was no hoopla. Jack and Hubert Green still had to putt. As we were walking off I said to Jack, "Thank you for letting me putt out, because if you wouldn't have, I'd have passed out." That's why he's laughing. |
Now, I have trouble giving Trevino his due, because I came of age as a Nicklaus man. I'm OK with someone beating my hero, that's sports, and I've made my peace with Merion, snake and all. But I can't forgive him for this from the 1972 Open Championship:
Lee Trevino was in trouble in 1972 as he tried to win his second consecutive Open Championship. Jack Nicklaus had shot a final-round 66 to roar into a share of the lead. England’s Tony Jacklin, who was playing alongside Trevino, had a 15-foot birdie putt for the outright lead on the par-5 17th while Trevino still hadn't reached the green with four shots. He hit his tee shot in a bunker, then hit his third into rough short of the green and pitched strongly to the upslope behind the putting surface. Trevino was so upset with that shot that he didn't even set his feet on his chip shot back to the green, but it went in.
I'm sorry, you don't get to beat my golf God (and deny him a Grand Slam) on a shot on which you're not even, you know, trying. I guess that was a long time ago, so Happy Birthday, Mex.
Course Closings - Glen Gardens Golf and Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas will soon close its doors, strangely enough to be re-purposed as a bourbon distillery. Lots of courses close, but you know there's a hook for me to devote scarce pixels to it, as this place has a wee bit of history. Curt Sampson files a wistful eulogy for the place, and while it's in dreaded e-mag format, from which I'm unable to copy-and-paste an excerpt, don't miss it.
It was there sometime in the mid-1920's that two hardscrabble non-golfers showed up to work as caddies. We know them well now as Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, but the chances of two future golf Gods showing up in the same caddie yard in Cow Town still strains credulity.
I'll also note that Hogan and Nelson faced off in the 1927 Glen Gardens Caddie Championship, far from the last time they would meet on the field of battle. Alas, no word on who won that first match...
Aussie Rules - I've neglected to blog Jordan Spieth's impressive win at The Australian Open. His
final round 63 separated him from a bunched field by a hefty six shots, and has garnered all sorts of critical acclaim, most notably this tweet from a party that knows a little about going low:
I believe that if you Google the phrase "Praise from Caesar," the first result takes you to this tweet. Mike Clayton, a former Aussie player and Geoff Ogilvy's design partner, had this to say about the effort:
Player won seven opens, one more than Nicklaus but this week it was Jordan Spiethwinning his first with a final round score almost beyond comprehension.
The Australian is the most difficult championship course in the country. The greens are small; they are surrounded by bunkers difficult to play from and defended by steep banks of short grass feeding the ball away from the flags.
Such was the quality of his shot-making, that Matthew Ruddy filed this on Spieth's "Wind-proof golf swing":
"Jordan Spieth doesn't have the most conventional swing in terms of what you see on the PGA Tour, but the name of the game is controlling the ball, which is something he does very well," says top Louisiana teacher Shaun Webb, who is based at the David Toms Golf Academy in Shreveport. "Jordan makes a full turn at the top of his swing, but he does it without swaying his lower body to the right. This lets him transition correctly into the downswing and move in good sequence."Spieth's elite ball-striking comes in part because he rotates both his upper and lower body so well through the downswing. "Most amateurs have the tendency to stop their body rotation leading into impact," Webb says. "That hurts accuracy and power and leads to mis-hits. Here, you can see how much more he's turned at impact than the average 20-handicapper, on the right."
I can't focus on this kind of thing right now. Don't they know it's ski season?
But as I've noted before, the only knock on the young man to date has been some obvious difficulty in closing out tournaments. This can't be a bad development.
Golf Criminals - Not to worry, this isn't another post about Colin King's outrageous handicap. Golf is a game for gentlemen we hear, apparently except when it isn't. Alex Myers with the...errr...skinny:
Police are looking for a man who stole golf clubs from Pelican Point Golf Shop in Gonzales, La., according to the Gonzales Weekly Citizen. If authorities catch him, they should consider adding a charge for wearing a hideous Hawaiian shirt.Surveillance video from Nov. 16 caught an older man wearing such a shirt -- along with an equally obnoxious hat -- red handed. Or in this case, black slacksed.
The man bought a few small items, but stuffed golf clubs down his pants and walked out of the store when the clerk went to help someone else. He pulled the same stunt again a little later. Here's a screen shot of him from the video:
Sir, is that an SLDR Driver in your pants, or are you just glad to see me? Seriously, how do you deftly stick clubs down your pants and still walk? This is Myers' close:
Apparently, the man isn't as clueless as we thought. The four clubs he took are worth a whopping $1,448.97, and despite dressing like Chris Berman, he has yet to be apprehended.
Given that he had the cujones to come back and do it a second time, it's the guy in purple with his back to us that should be grateful for the anonymity.
American Golf, Carbon Dated - This is pretty fascinating, admittedly in a dweebish, don't get out enough kind of way. Luke Kerr-Dineen informs us that golf in America is older than we thought:
The earliest signs of golf being played in America actually came in 1739, not 1743, aswe previously thought.
The earliest piece of evidence linking golf to the United States had previously been a document detailing a shipment of 432 balls and 96 clubs from Scotland to Charleston, S.C., in 1743. But suspecting there was more information out there, Dr. David Purdie of the University of Edinburgh decided to go digging -- and he was right. Purdie found a document describing how a man named William Wallace shipped 1 pound, 18 shillings-worth of golf clubs to Charleston on June 29, 1739.
I'm a tad surprised that the name William Wallace didn't elicit a comment from Luke, though of course THAT William Wallace had been dead some 400 years at that point. But Charleston seems to be the key here, though I'll venture a guess that nether Yeoman's Hall nor the Country Club of Charleston were going concerns at that point. Luke adds this last graph for perspective:
And just to give you an idea of what was going on in 1739: The first train was nearly 100 years away from being conceived, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews was 15 years away from being founded and George Washington was just 7 years old.
No word on who signed for the package.
How's That Task Force Working Out? - Shack apparently watched all of incoming PGA President
Derek Sprague'sappearance on Morning Drive earlier this week, taking one for the team so we didn't have to endure it.
Lots of buzzwords, in fact lots of worlds of all types, ultimately signifying little. But the key bit is that the Ryder Cup task Force has yet to meet and will not be meeting this week at Tiger's event.
Ahhhh, the utter predictability is strangely comforting, as the Fierce Urgency of Now ultimately gives way to, as the kids are wont to say, Whatevah.
Welcome Aboard, Provisionally? - This is so, so amazing...Shack links to this PGA Tour press release touting the five players that have been awarded Web.com playing cards based upon their season-long performance on the PGA Tour's Chinese development tour:
SHENZHEN, China -- Hao Tong Li, winner of the final two PGA TOUR China Series’
Order of Merit winner Hao Tong Li. tournaments and a three-time PGA TOUR China winner overall, captured the Order of Merit title and leads a group of players who finished inside the top five on the money list and earned 2015 Web.com Tour status. The other players are Australia’s Brett Drewitt, China’s Xin Jun Zhang, the United States’ Sam Chien and South Korea’s Todd Baek. The players received their membership cards during a ceremony following the Tour Championship presented by CTS Tycoon.
Good stuff, right? What could I possibly find objectionable in such a heart-rending story, I hear you asking...
Well, does that third name ring a bell? Zhang, as we covered here, is under a six-month suspensions for signing incorrect scorecards, and I'll encourage the reader to focus on the fact that all accounts of the matter use the plural form of scorecard. I have some pretty harsh thoughts on the matter, but since Geoff went to the effort of venting at his place, why put added stress on my 59-year old spleen:
When contacted by this website to find out of Zhang's six-month suspension by the China Golf Association for signing incorrect scorecards would be recognized when Zhang is eligible for his first Web.com event in late January, PGA Tour Executive Vice President Ty Votaw said the Tour would have no comment.So to review: a player may be suspended for issues related to his behavior in competition, behavior which may have impacted his fellow competitors, and the PGA Tour still will not comment on possible discipline even after a partnering golf association (in that home of transparency, China!) released a letter announcing the suspension.
Amazing.
They assure us that ethical standards in the game are impeccable, and we know this to be true because they keep saying it.
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