The boys are assembled at Torrey and we'll have actual golf on whicvh to opine later today. But here's what's of interest to your humble blogger today:
What Will Tiger Do Next - Credit to Shack for that header, riffing on the old Phil bit. We have no idea what's coming from Tiger, but based upon yesterday's footage the ranks of optimists has been culled. Let's stick with Phil for a moment, who had this to say about his rival:
That’s why he said Wednesday at Torrey Pines that he believes that Tiger Woods will“have the last laugh” when it comes to his short-game woes.
“I don’t think he’s going to have any problems, I really don’t,” Mickelson said. “I think we all, myself included, have had stretches where we feel a little uncomfortable, we don’t hit it solid, and usually it’s just a small tweak. Because it’s such a short swing it’s not a hard thing to fix. I just don’t see that lasting more than a week or two.”
Good on him for being supportive of his good friend.... But....and it's kind of a big but (as distinct from a big butt, for which Phil is also known), he has very specific thoughts as to the link between a player's long and short game, to wit, he thinks there's none:
Mickelson had a different view, however: “You can swing it a million different ways and be effective. I think that you can putt a million different ways and be effective. But there’s only one way to chip effectively.
“So regardless of how you swing the club, regardless of how you putt, there’s only one way to chip, because the leading edge on a 60-degree wedge is coming into the ball first. And everything you do in chipping is to keep the leading edge down.
“There’s three or four fundamentals on chipping that everybody has to do to chip well – no matter who you are – and it has nothing to do with your swing.”
This goes back at least to the transition from Hank to Sean, and has never made a lick of sense to me. As the old adage goes, if it ain't broke don't fix it, Here's how Shack characterized the scene on the range at Torrey:
But for those on site at Torrey Pines, where fog shortened the pro-am and had folks crowding around Woods waiting to tee off, the scene of the former world No. 1 taking tips fromBilly Horshel and Pat Perez while his new swing "consultant" could only look on in horror, recalled the later years of Seve Ballesteros who would listen to range attendants if he thought they could help him.
And here's a Vine of the hosel-rocket:
To be fair, I must sadly inform you that Shack stands accused of journalistic malpractice, though as always you must consider the source:
Profile
Bad Shack! If I want false narratives, I'll read the N.Y. Times....
The funny thing is that as I'm drafting Golf Channel is showing video of Horschel, Perez and Tiger on the tee from yesterday, and Horschel is absolutely showing him something about his shoulder position that Tiger is trying ti mimic. So we'll allow Shack to cop a plea limited to time served....
Golf Channel had video of Tiger during his Pro-Am rounds and it wasn't pretty. But the most striking feature was the severity of the rough around the greens. If you didn't arrive with the chipping yips, this rough is a carrier.... Good call by Shack last week.
Before we move on, Alan Bastable goes to a most interesting source:
In 1979, Jack Nicklaus finished a lowly 79th on the PGA Tour money list. He hadn't won
Jack and Phil at the 1964 Open Championship. a tournament in a year and a half, his driver was bleeding yards and his short game was so shaky that one revered teacher compared it to that of “an eight- or 10-handicapper.”That might have been a generous characterization.
“I started almost putting the ball around bunkers I was so bad,” Nicklaus recalled the other day.
Big Jack had the chipping yips, or, if not, a close relative. Desperate, he turned to his old pal Phil Rodgers, a brash San Diegan who never lived up to his much-hyped potential as a player (five wins, no majors) but who thrived as a swing Yoda to the stars. Over two weeks in the run-up to the 1980 Masters, Nicklaus and Rodgers hunkered down at Jack’s compound in North Palm Beach, Fla., to reengineer Nicklaus’s short game. They talked mechanics. Experimented with swing aids. Chipped ball after ball onto Jack’s backyard practice green.
“Phil got me in his figure‑8 swing, which is sort of take it outside, drop it inside, and hit it from there and then flip to an 8 coming back the other way -- complete the 8,” Nicklaus said. “My short game totally changed because I had something to work on positively, and I worked on it.”
Of course, Jack's short game was always more commercial than inspired. So what does Phil think about Tiger?
Rodgers says that if had Tiger’s ear, he’d try to help Tiger rediscover his old short-game fundamentals and feelings, which is what Woods has said he’s trying to do with his fullswing under Chris Como’s watch.“I have a routine that I send people through, and it almost always works,” Rodgers says. “You have to see the shot, you have to feel the shot, you need to rehearse the shot and then you need to do it. It’s a four-step deal, because if you don’t believe in it, then it’s harder for you to form that picture and execute it.”
Doesn't that pretty much take us back to where we began, which is why did he think the short-game needed to be changed in the first place?
This Week in Aces - Everyone has gone ga-ga over this Richard Green gole-in-one in Australia:
The 43-year-old was playing in the pro-am for the Oates Vic Open at host Thirteenth Beach Golf Links when he arrived to the par-4 15th. Typically around 390 yards on the card, the tees were moved up for the pros. Green blasted a drive toward the green, which landed short and appeared headed for the greenside bunker. However, when it lands in the bunker, it rolls around and catches an amazing, unseen bounce out of the sand and right into the cup.
No word on the actual yardage involved, but here's the video:
That's just a great, wacky bounce....no word on whether the monster ground hook was all turf or if there might have been a rake involved. To the best of my knowledge there's only been one ace on a Par-4 on the PGA Tour, by Andrew Magee at the 17th at TPC Scottsdale. This was mentioned on last week's broadcast by Curt Byrum, whose brother Tom played a critical role. There's no video, but listen to Andrew Magee describe it here.
Not All Publicity is Good - This Yahoo article informs us that former Olympic decathlon fold medalist Bruce Jenner is "in transition... and if you want the details, do click through. But the golf angle is this photo:
It's partially obscured, but that's an Augusta National logo on the golf shirt, and of course the jokes write themselves. I'm reminded that back during the run-up to the R&A vote on admitting women, that one wag proposed Jenner as the initial candidate under the theory that once having had a penis would make him appealing to the R&A's membership.
And it just so happens that we have news to break on the R&A front. I'm reliably informed by an R&A member that seven women have been selected to form the 2015 rush class, including two Americans. One of the Yanks is predictably Carol Semple Thompson, the former highly ranked amateur and USGA prez, an entirely worthy candidate.
Anniversary Watch - Sean Martin posts an interesting reflection on the founding of the Hogan Web,com Tour twenty-five years ago. It's most interesting for the reflections of players including Tom Lehman, Brandel Chamblee and others, butt Sean gives us this measure of how things have changed:
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| Dean Beaman with the Man. |
The 1990 Hogan Tour offered five PGA TOUR cards; now 50 cards come through the Web.com Tour. There were 30 events in that inaugural season. All of them were 54 holes and offered a $100,000 purses. Each winner received $20,000. Jeff Maggert was 1990’s leading money winner with $108,644.
Don't get me started on those fifty Tour cards, which we've discovered don't necessarily allow the lucky recipients to tee it up on the Big Boys Tour. But it's worth a read, especially if you're snowed in.
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