Monterrey Musings

Do I know my Furyk or what?  Alan Shipnuck with the highlights from his game story:

Remember Brandt Snedeker? Sweet putting stroke, active tear ducts, the disposition (and

hairdo) of a golden retriever? 

Well, Sneds is back, with a vengeance. On Sunday he wiped away a year and a half of mediocre golf with a dominant performance at Pebble Beach, earning his seventh career victory and reclaiming his rightful place among the elite of American golf. 

For Snedeker, 34, the key to the win was reconciliation with his putter, with whom he has been in an abusive relationship. 

“Sometimes you’ve got to use some harsh words with the putter if it's not paying attention and bench them -- leave them in a hot trunk for awhile and let them know that they can be replaced,” Snedeker said. “And luckily she understood and got back into working form.”

I couldn't agree more with Sneds, as my putter goes into time out at least twice a season.  But the hot trunk is a nice touch... Now I don't know about the vengeance bit or the "sweet" putting stroke.  I'd only use the "V" word if he can stay at this level of play and there's way too much pop in his putting stroke to use that "S" word, but you might differ.

This is misleading, but amusing all the same:

Brandt Snedeker's winning bag of clubs has a couple of interesting sticks, namely his driver and putter. Sneds' driver is a TaylorMade Burner SuperFast -- a driver introduced in 2010 and one with a current trade-in value of $20.34. The putter is an Odyssey White Hot XG Rossie, a club that the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am champ has used primarily for nearly a decade. At 34 inches in length it is approximately an inch shorter than standard.

Misleading because I'll venture a guess that the shaft is not a stock twenty dollar item in the sale bin...the win has significance to Sneds:

Snedeker fell out of the top 50 at the end of last year for the first time since 2011 and was guaranteed of playing only one major and no World Golf Championships unless he turned his game around. One great week at one of his favorite spots in golf changed everything. 

The victory assures him a spot in the Masters and PGA Championship (he already was eligible for the U.S. Open). And he moves to No. 31 in the world ranking, which most likely gets him into all the WGCs, starting with Doral in three weeks.

And let's quickly dispense with our Alas, Poor Furyk item of the day:

Since the third round of the 2012 Transitions Championship, Furyk has led or had a

share of the 54-hole lead nine times, including after Saturday’s third round of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, but has failed to get the job done. 

“It was frustrating six or seven tournaments ago,” Furyk said of the streak. “It's always frustrating. It's just a really weird week. I show up after three and a half months off, I don't expect to go out there. My mind was about as open as it's ever been. I had a bad practice week last week. I really was just trying to get my feet under me and get grounded and see where it took me. All of a sudden I get on a roll on Thursday and get on a roll yesterday and I wasn't shocked, but I was surprised.”

 It's unfortunate, but he's become a really bad at this closing thing.  But see if this sounds like anyone you know?

Pebble Beach has the odd distinction of being perhaps the PGA Tour’s best venue and the site of its worst tournament.

So last week you had a great course hosting a completely unwatchable golf tournament. And here’s the thing: Those of us who have been watching Pebble for decades know it’s going to be unwatchable even before we turn on the TV. If ever there were a tournament where viewers should mute their TVs and just look at the pretty pictures, this is it.

Any resemblance to your favorite golf blogger is purely intentional....It's actually Martin Dempster at Golfweek, so let's see what else he has:

We know that CBS is going to give viewers an unhealthy dose of Chris Berman and

Kenny G and Craig T. Nelson and Michael Bolton and Chris O’Donnell and Huey Lewis and Ray Romano and more. These guys are like Masters champions – they apparently have lifetime exemptions into the event. Huey Lewis noted Saturday that he’s been playing in the tournament for 25 years. Has he even had a hit in the past quarter century? 

And we also know we’ll have plenty of fawning praise for entertainers who probably didn’t get fawning praise even when they were in their primes. At one point Friday, Golf Channel’s Matt Gogel referred to “the great Tom Dreesen” as the comedian was putting. Now, I vaguely recall that Dreesen, who made his bones as a warm-up act for Frank Sinatra, could be mildly amusing in some of his appearances on late-night talk shows. But that was more than 30 years ago.

After using an apt Guantanamo Bay analogy to assess the pain level, Shack had this to say:

Always a lightning rod for criticism, I think I heard more vitriol than ever because of the epic weather (blimp shot Heaven!) and a solid leaderboard considering the dated vibe of the field (Vaughn Taylor!). Throw in so many celebrs with C-list vibe who run for the CBS cameras like a fly spotting a poodle turd, then contrast with the NBA's slick presentation of All-Star weekend, and you have a perfect storm of criticism.

Though Shack does go out of his way to defend his favorite D-list celeb:

Easy there. Heart of Rock ’N Roll has aged just fine, thank you.

I'll just say that it could be worse....I'd still rather see Chris Berman chunking chip shots than have him behind a live microphone (Ground control to David Toms).  Alas, Mr. Dempster leaves us on a bit of a down note:

I’m not sure how the Clambake got this bad or how to allot blame. If you want to point fingers at the culprit, you probably would need a lot of fingers, aimed at, among others, tournament organizers, AT&T and other sponsors, the Tour, CBS and perhaps a few other entities that I’m forgetting. 

Years ago, the Pebble Beach Pro-Am was one of the biggest events of the season. Now, for TV viewers, it’s just a white-hot mess of utter unwatchableness. Can it ever recapture its former glory? Perhaps, with some fairly obvious changes, such as more fresh faces and less corporate backslapping. Will it? Probably not. Sadly, at this stage, I suspect there are too many entrenched interests – the sponsors, the Tour, CBS – that like it just the way it is.

To attract better celebs you'd need to have a stronger professional field, and Commissioner Ratched has given the pros far too many reasons to give this event a miss.   But if we're assigning blame, and that's a cote competency here at Unplayable Lies, I'd start with CBS.