Odds and Ends

The ladies still need to finish their third round, a rugby scrum has broken out in LaJolla, with twelve players withing two strokes of the lead.  Just a couple of items for you today, and a head's up that tomorrow is a travel day, thus our weekend wrap will likely be delayed until Tuesday.

R.I.P., Billy Casper - They seem to come in bunches, don't they?  We've now lost the protagonists in two of the King's bigger disappointments with the loss of Kell Nagle and Billy... If I were Jack or Gary, I'd be very careful the next few days.

Casper is widely considered the most underrated player of all time, and by widely I really mean by people who should know....folks like Jack Nicklaus and Johnny Miller.  Tod Leonard of the local San Diego press provides the circumstances of his passing:

In an email, Bob Casper said his father had suffered from pneumonia after Thanksgiving, 

spent five weeks in the hospital and then returned home. He was doing rehabilitation four days a week, but last Thursday became weak. 

“He went downhill quick,” Bob Casper said. “It was quick. But he didn’t have any pain. It was peaceful.”

Ryan Herrington succinctly sums up Casper's career accomplishments:

Statistics are the simplest way to measure the legacy of Billy Casper, who died Saturday evening at age 83 in Utah. During his impressive playing career, the San Diego native amassed 51 PGA Tour titles, won two U.S. Opens (1959 and 1966), one Masters (1970), five Vardon Trophies and two player-of-the-year awards, which paved the way for his 1978 induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Casper was the best putter of his era, the Bobby Locke of the U.S.  In fact those two similar players share a strategic parallel.  Locke at the 1951 Open Championship famously played each of his tee shots on the 14th ("Calamity Corner") at Portrush into a collection area to the left of the green that ever since has been known as Bobby Locke's hollow.  Of course he made four pars.... In 1959 Casper similarly laid up all four rounds on the third at Winged Foot and made four pars.  The obvious problem is that it's a great strategy when you putt like Locke or Casper.  For mere mortals, mileage may vary...

Rex Hoggard sums the man's career up with this:

Dubbed “the most underrated golfer of all time” by Johnny Miller, Casper’s 27 Tour victories from 1964 to ’70 topped every player during that timeframe, including Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player.

 Jack posted this comment to Facebook:

“Billy Casper was one of the greatest family men—be it inside the game of golf or out—I have had the fortunate blessing to meet. He had such a wonderful balance to his life. Golf was never the most important thing in Billy’s life—family was. There was always much more to Billy Casper than golf. But as a golfer, Billy was a fantastic player, and I don’t think he gets enough credit for being one. I have said many times that during my career, when I looked up at a leaderboard, I wasn’t just looking to see where a Palmer or a Player or a Trevino was. I was also checking to see where Billy Casper was.

Am I the only one that finds the thought of Jack on Facebook amusing?   I'm guessing that he has people that do that for him, but still...

I'd always wondered why The Big Three wasn't a foursome, a question Jaime Diaz answers in this 2012 profile of Casper:

Generously and appropriately, the nominal Big Three all pay homage to Casper. "There was another player who was winning as often as we were," they say in the foreword, "a

Casper was famous for practicing his putting in the dark.

player we kept an eye on and worried about just as much, if not more, than each other. His name was Billy Casper. It could have been the Big Four." 

That it never was had much to do with Casper's playing style in his prime: taciturn, unspectacular, intentionally Hogan-esque. But the biggest reason was Mark McCormack. After Casper won the 1959 U.S. Open at Winged Foot, the pioneering agent asked Casper to join his emerging stable of clients, which included Palmer, Player and later Nicklaus. Casper signed up, but within a couple of years became uncomfortable with McCormack's aggressive and sometimes polarizing style and left for another agent who had been McCormack's original partner. McCormack never forgot, making a point of cutting Casper out of his deals. It was the master marketer's version of the snide locker-room brushoff: "Sorry, we've already got three." 

Casper says there was a surprise reconciliation with McCormack in the late 1990s, when the two men talked after running into each other on a cruise ship. But Casper would like a do-over for not playing in the British Open until 1968, when he was 37. Indeed, he wishes he had put more importance on major championships (his total of three keeps him on the fringe of the pantheon) and perhaps less on the steady money to be earned by consistent week-to-week play in regular events.

Read the whole thing, I wouldn't steer you wrong.

Shouldn't That Be Present? - John Strege ponders a future without Tiger and Phil, an item that seems to this writer to be at least a couple of weeks old:

Nearly a year ago, Dottie Pepper, via Twitter, posed an interesting question: Is it time to look beyond Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson?

Eventually — sooner rather than later? — we won’t have a choice. The question then becomes, where do we look?

Seriously?  I'm thinking Rory, Kaymer, Koepka, Spieth, yada, yada, yada.... It's been a while since we've had as deep a roster of young talent, and these kids are fearless.  Yes, as Strege notes, Tiger is irreplaceable....until he's replaced, that is.

First World Problems - I'm unclear which is the more unexpected, Ian Poulter in contention or this:

Poulter and caddie Terry Mundy went to a Korean barbecue restaurant Friday night

during the Farmers Insurance Open, and when they left the restaurant, Poulter first thought that his courtesy car had been stolen. 

"There were 60 spots in the car park. We walked 40 yards to a restaurant, but apparently that restaurant that we ate in wasn't quite in the vicinity of where I should have parked," Poulter said Saturday after moving within three shots of the lead at Torrey Pines. "The kind security guard who was standing by my car as I parked waited until I left and then called a tow truck to tow it away so he could make some money.

It really tugs at one's heartstrings, doesn't it.... but character is revealed under stress, and you'll no doubt be shocked, shocked I say, to find out that Poults has blamed it on his caddie.

It's Time Has Come - Ryan Herrington is shocked to discover gambling in Casablanca, focused on the timing of the USGA's announcement of its newest event:

NEW YORK — It seems too much of a coincidence that the USGA, in the first year of

its 12-year, $1.1 billion TV deal with FOX Sports, would announce the debut of the U.S. Senior Women's Open, a championship whose financial viability had previously been considered a stumbling block in its creation. Yet as the economics of introducing the new championship, which will be held for the first time in 2018, are certainly more favorable, USGA executive director Mike Davis maintained the decision to add a 14th national championship to the USGA calendar was predicated on more than dollars and cents. 

"We looked at it many times [over the years] and it always got back to making sure that if we were going to start it we knew it was going to be successful long term. Not just one year, but long term," Davis told GolfDigest.com prior to the start of the USGA Annual Meeting in Manhattan. "And what's changed now is we have just seen this continued consistent growth in women's golf."

We can only hope that Fox gives it the full crashing robots treatment.  I'm perfectly happy that the ladies have such an event, but I don't feel any need to watch it, and as loyal readers know I'll watch anything golf-related.

Can I Short Him? -  This is interesting, but can't possibly end well:

The golf ball market is starting to get a lot more interesting.

While most golfers have been paying attention to the recent introductions of tour-level balls from major companies (Titleist's latest Pro V1/Pro V1x, Callaway's Chrome Soft

and the Srixon Z-Star family), there’s been a recent influx of smaller manufacturers that have developed some success in marketing golf balls directly to consumers (3UP.com, INeedtheBall.com, Hopkins Golf and Vice Golf). In many cases, these are balls with not insignificant technologies at prices significantly below the national average. Now comes news that for the first time one of the more notable figures in golf ball technology over the last few decades is getting into the business on his own.

Dean Snell, most recently the vice president of golf ball research and development at TaylorMade, is the force behind Snell Golf. The company announced two new products today, one of which includes a multilayer, urethane-covered construction the highest-priced technology currently on the market. Like these other companies, Snell Golf will market its golf balls exclusively online, direct to consumers.

Color me skeptical that you can sell enough direct-to-consumers to cover the high R&D costs, and no word on whether the balls will be on the USGA conforming list.