Doral Doings

Oh the inmates are getting restless...we're only in week two of the Florida swing, and folks are already refilling their Xanax prescriptions.

Aces Wild - The guys were holing out from everywhere except the carpark, but it was the almost back-to-back aces on the 227-yard fourth hole that created what little buzz can be found at Doral.  First it was the recent returnee from a drug suspension journey of personal discovery Dustin Johnson:

Then, 24 minutes later, it was leader J.B. Holmes:

Good stuff, and as noted on both broadcasts (it occurred during the early Golf Channel broadcast but NBC replayed it for obvious reasons), thanks to ProTracer, we saw clearly that the lads hit virtually the same shot:

If nothing else, ProTracer has had a great week...as for the announcers, well not so much.  Jimmy Roberts was gushing after the two aces and a couple of bunker hole-outs that this was the gosh darn most dramatic thing that had ever happened in golf...I don't know, I though four aces on one hole in a U.S. Open at Oak Hill might have been more dramatic, but I'm just a lowly blogger.

Then when a player nearly holed his second on a Par-5, Jimmy shared that "They say a double eagle is even rarer than a hole-in-one, don't they?"  Yes Jimmy, they say that because it's true...

Elementary Thoughts on Course Design from Holmes and Watson - Maybe simplistic or entitled is more apt, but our subject is the new first hole at Doral's Blue Monster, a 606-yard Par-5.  Here's our tourney leader's take after his second shot deflected into the water:

"It's pretty bad that you can hit two perfect shots and the ball can go in the water because of just a ridiculous green design that's really just terrible," said Holmes. "The shape of the green is fine, but it's not that wide anyways. And why you would put a giant hump in the middle of it to make a ball go in the water is ‑‑ it's stupid. Golf course is hard enough. You don't have to do that." 

When the course was redesigned a couple of years ago under Gil Hanse, it was lengthened and water brought into play right of the green.

 Adam Scott takes a more nuanced view of it:

"The green is just incredibly difficult," said Scott. "It is not inviting to hit any kind of long iron in at all with this kind of firmness, and it almost would be foolish to because I can pretty much tell you the outcome of what's going to happen if you pitch a long iron on the green. It pretty much forces you to lay up and test your pitching game. 

"I think we often expect to hit a par 5 in two just because we can reach it. I'm not sure that's necessarily the right thought but you know, (course designer) Gil (Hanse) is certainly asking the question of you down the first if you want to have a go. Even with a wedge in there, it's a pretty tough shot."

Unmentioned thus far is the fact that Holmes played his second shot with a 6-iron....remember, the hole is 606 yards long.  I only hope that J.B. has sufficient self-awareness to understand the conundrum that presents for the architect...he's lucky Gil didn't put a damn windmill in front of the green.

Here's Shack's rant on the subject:

So to recap, a player is 9-under through two rounds, the hole is averaging under par, it's 606 yards and the first is terrible because you might have to not go for it in two shots. You might have to ponder another way to the hole. Worse, it may not let you golf your ball exactly as you want to golf it. Terrible!

Ummm Geoff, I hope that made you feel better, but you've got a little spittle in th corner of your mouth.  No, the other side...

Oh, and I promised you Bubba's deep thoughts, after the curious 69 on Friday that featured two kick-in eagles:

“I can't stand the golf course. It's way too tough for me,” said Watson, who is tied for fourth place at 4 under, five shots behind frontrunner J.B. Holmes. “Donald Trump, he put together a tough one for me and very difficult. Seemed like I was in sand all day, like I was back in Pensacola Beach [Fla.].”

Tugs at your heart strings, doesn't it?  The Bubbamesiter apparently didn't get the memo that The Donald is irked that the course has been set up to play too easily.

The World's Most Famous 3-Iron - Reactions to Rory's club toss have been many and varied, but first things first, as you'll no doubt be pleased to learn that the club has been recovered:

I'd hope that someone would auction it off and give the proceeds to charity.  Maybe an anger management program...

And here's someone named Donal Hughes teaching his son the finer points of our game:

As our Shack notes, it's not bad sportsmanship, it's an opportunity to grow the game.

The Editors at The Loop take the opportunity to share some funny and/or scary club-tossing stories here, and I'll add my own.  As a much younger man I was on a boys trip to Myrtle Beach, the typical 36-ho;es a day type deal.  One of our compatriots dubbed it Golf Prison...

The organizer of the trip was a former friend named Jim Randall.  Jim later got all uppity and dropped his old friends so we feel no remorse at publicly shaming him in this forum.  Jim could hit the ball a long way, but had no clue about the golf swing (not that any of us did) and was firmly in the long and wrong camp.  He had just a dreadful round one afternoon when nothing went right, and his tee shot on the 18th with a 5-wood (he had given up on his driver earlier in the day) was no better than it's predecessors...

As the anger and frustration of a long day came to a head, Jim went into a whirly-bird, discus-thrower motion with the clear intent that the 5-wood should follow the Titleist into the water fronting the tee box.  But in a lightbulb-over-the-head moment, we saw him realize that the current course of action was irreversible, process a sudden course correction, and send the 5-wood instead into a grove of tress from which it would be retrievable.

Except that this a grove of extremely prickly trees, and his playing companions rather quickly lost interest in lending a hand.... he soldiered on, but after ripping his golf shirt he also gave up the hunt, and the 5-wood was never returned to his bag.  Which just pissed him off that much more...  Good times!

But now we must get serious for a moment, as issues of social justice have been raised.  There's no rest for the community organizers of the world, but the oh-so-important existential question has been posed, what if Tiger had tossed the club?  I know, Tiger who?  Curtis Bunn had this:

There was no protests from players, no complaints from golf legends. No nothing—except platitudes to McIlroy, actually, that he showed himself to be a regular guy.

What’s wrong with this picture? 

Woods tosses his club back to his golf bag in anger, curses under his breath, and he’s the angry Black man. Tom Watson says, “He needs to clean it up.”

Angry black man?  Ummm..technically, it's angry cablinasian man.... but are we really going to play the racism card here?  

Bob Harig also piles on, but really should know better.  The reaction is different for reasons having little to do with skin pigment, and a side-by-side video would make it clear.  Rory was actually smiling as he tossed the club, not cussing.  And he also helped himself with his self-aware comments after the fact, which you'd never get from Tiger. 

I agree that praise is somehow inappropriate for the circumstances, but we don't want him happy when he's playing poorly, do we?  But in Tiger's case it's really the profanity that's the issue, and that's absent here... and Rory's form was really good.