Ski Season Interruptus

Strange times, no doubt.  The bride is on sump pump duty as a result of biblical rains in NY, meanwhile the thermometers will be brushing up against 80 degrees in the Salt Lake Valley.  So we're making lemonade today, specifically heading to the aforementioned valley to tee it up, and we'll be in shorts and applying sunscreen.

RIP, James Finnegan - Known to everyone in the biz as Jim, he was an accomplished player but best known for his books about the great courses of Great Britain and Ireland:

Alongside Herbert Warren Wind, no other American writer captured the windblown,

rugged beauty of golf in the British Isles with such wild enthusiasm. Three of his books about golf in Ireland, Scotland and a third combining England and Wales are indispensible guides not only to the shrines of the game but to lesser-known courses where a visitor is apt to fall in love all over again. If you know the names Golspie, Machrihanish and Cruden Bay, Mr. Finegan's infectious writing may well have something to do with it.

Infectious is a good word for it, as his books are equal parts travelogues and course reviews.  Jim was a big part of my coming to love those windblown, rugged links, as I would Xerox the relevant sections to caryy with on my travels and read about that day's course over breaky.

Via Shack, I'll leave you with this fine tribute from Gil Hanse:

"Jim Finegan was an exceptional gentleman, as committed to golf as any person I have ever met. With a true flourish for both the spoken and written word, he could keep you hanging on his every thought and the payoff was always more than you could hope for. We will miss him dearly. A great voice for our game has been silenced, and on every golf course he ever graced with his presence it is a truly sad day."

RIP.

Tiger, Not -  Color me modestly surprised, as I thought we'd see Tiger at Bay Hill because he's logically want at least the one start, reps, you know, before the big one.  But it's not to be and I'll spare you the pain of his official statement on the matter, and instead let's see what buddy Notah Begay has to say:

Frank doesn't seem as amused as the other two.

"I spent quite a bit of time the last couple of weeks down at Tiger's house, trying to be a good running mate and going through workouts and practicing with him,'' Begay said during Golf Channel's Friday telecast of the Valspar Championship. "I can attest to the fact that things are improving and that he is putting in some solid workdays. It is just not at the status that he wants it. 

"Sometimes it is difficult when you want to get out there, and your heart tells you that you want to be playing competitive golf because you want to see your friends and he's won so many of these events. At the end of the day, if his game isn't going to hold up from tee to green and around the greens -- especially with the question marks around his short game -- I think it is a good decision to hold off until he is 100 percent."

Am I the only one that finds Notah's duel role as "Running mate" and golf journalist increasingly strange, especially as Tiger approaches parody?

Shack for a while had a running gag at The Loop of translating official statements into English for the rest of us, and Alex Myers has picked up the gauntlet of parsing (or is it Fisking) Tiger's statement:

I've put in a lot of time and work on my game and I'm making strides, but like I've said, I won't return to the PGA Tour until my game is tournament ready and I can compete at the highest level. 

Translation: "I don't feel like shooting another 82 on national TV at this time." Side note: It's pretty frightening he doesn't feel comfortable playing at a course where he's won six more times than anyone else.

 Now it's anybody's guess whether we'll see him at Augusta.

In Which Ernie Gets The Shaft - Just a couple of notes about the events in Tampa,... If you missed this shot by Ernie give it a look, and make sure your audio ifs functioning properly:

I'll just note that this is how a classy guy like Ernie grinds to try to make a cut, unlike some others.  The other note of interest is that Adam Scott missed the cut for the first time in a while:

Scott missed four putts inside 5 feet in the second round and shot a 4-over 75 to miss the cut at the Valspar Championship, ending the longest active streak on the PGA Tour. Scott had gone 45 straight PGA Tour events - and 57 events worldwide - without missing a cut. 

"It had to happen eventually," he said

Most of the attention was focused on his use of the conventional putter with a modified claw grip, with which he was quite futile this weekend.  Yesterday in particular, he was -4 strokes-gained putting, and it's really difficult to putt that badly.

While he was putting well in the early going we correctly predicted that he's regress to the mean, but in this case I think he overshot it entirely.

Hope For Golf Retailers - If this doesn't amuse you then I'm not comfortable having you as reader.  Two golf shop salesmen ("R-Rabbit" & "Q-Tip" from Bobick's Golf in Fort Wayne, Indiana), a subset of the population not known for much of anything memorable, have out together this great sales video:

As the proud owner of a new G30 driver, I've got a couple of questions.  First, where can I get myself one of those necklaces?  Second, can you tell me more about those turbulators?