Irish Times

The second best nine in golf might be the front nine at Pine Valley or the back at Ballybunion or Cypress Point. Or even the back nine at Augusta National. The best, however, is surely the front side at Royal County Down, as exhilarating a stretch of holes as exist in our game. 

THE CONFIDENTIAL GUIDE TO GOLF (Tom Doak)

Day One - We sure didn't see that one coming, did we?  It started poorly and continued spiraling down, as Host/Favored Son Rory McIlroy through up a no-good, gosh-darn awful 80 in the first round of the Irish Open.  Derek Lawrenson surveys the wreckage:

Rory McIlroy hopes he can give disappointed fans who watched his nine-over horror

first round at the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open something to cheer when they return to the course on Friday. 

The world No 1 suffered more than most on a morning punctuated by vicious squalling showers as he carded a round of nine pars and nine bogeys. 

It was his worst round in Europe since the 2010 Open at St Andrews, when he followed up an opening round of 63 with an 80.

Yes, his play yesterday had us all reminiscing about that second round at St. Andrews, but those conditions were far more severe.

McIlroy blamed his poor score on being caught in two minds on his iron shots. 

‘I had a good warm-up on the range hitting knockdown shots with my irons but when I got out on to the course the wind didn’t seem so bad and so I tried to hit normal shots,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t get the ball close and left myself a lot of eight to 10ft putts for par and none of them went in.’ 

McIlroy was out of luck as well. The last place you wanted to be when a squalling shower hit was the forbidding par-three seventh, and McIlroy duly missed the small target by fully 40 yards, finishing in the middle of the sixth fairway.

I was on this yesterday, and his attempt to at least try to play the correct shot is a step in the right direction...that 7th hole belongs on anyone's list of terrifying short Par-3's, along with the Postage Stamp, the 7th at Pebble and the 12th at Augusta.

But you know who I feel most sorry for?  Chloe Hyndman and Alex Kernaghan of course, because their custom-designed shoes will likely not see the light of day...

I'm watching second round play as I hunt and peck, and most of the players are in ski caps, so it's a fine day in Ulster.... and it must be getting to Shane Lowery, because he's putting with his sand wedge (his putter having met his knee on the prior hole).

Larry Bonahan informs us that Vegas bettors don't seem to understand the subtleties of our game:

It can be no surprise that Rory McIlroy, the No. 1 player in the world and a winner of

four majors including a U.S. Open, is the favorite to win the Open at Chambers Bay this month. At the moment – and frankly Las Vegas odds rarely are dramatically different from one sports book to the next – McIlroy is 9-2 to win the championship. That means if you bet $2 on McIlroy to win and he does win, you win $9. 

That's not quite the same kind of low payout as Woods had at the peak of his career, when he was at times 2-1 or close to even money to win a major. But McIlroy is a heavy favorite, even over the other red-hot player of the moment, Jordan Spieth. Spieth is 8-1 and the second choice among the bettors who care to put money on the event.

Rory needs the weather to cooperate at Chambers Bay, and even then I'm not crazy about his chances...Phil Casey focuses his game story on overnight leader Padraig Harrington:

Harrington, whose victory in the Honda Classic in March was his first on a major tour since the 2008 US PGA, was one over par after 10 holes before carding five birdies in the next six to finish one shot ahead of former Ryder Cup team-mate Soren Hansen.

"After nine or 10 holes I thought to myself 'C'mon, we've got to hit a good shot, no need to be afraid,'" said Harrington, who lasted just two holes at Wentworth before pulling out with a shoulder injury, but received intensive treatment and narrowly missed out on qualifying for the US Open four days later.

Early days, Phil.... Alas, Paddy's pact with the devil lapsed on the short walk from the first green to the second tee...he was three under for the day (starting on No. 10) when the devil exercised his opt-out, and played his last eight holes in five over.

The Girls, An Appreciation - Ryan Herrington sums up the ladies NCAA championship from earlier this week:

BRADENTON, FLA. -- Everywhere you turned late Wednesday afternoon at The Concession G.C. you saw the usual emotions on display from coaches and players and family that accompany the conclusion of the NCAA Women's Championship.

Cheers, tears, elation and relief. 

That they used match play to decide the women's team champion for the first time in NCAA history didn't change any of that. On the contrary, it only amplified it. Baylor senior Hayley Davis' missed par putt on the first extra hole of her deciding match with Stanford junior Mariah Stackhouse was all the more gut-wrenching because of the finality of the moment set up uniquely because of the new match-play format.

It was all that and more... Losing coach Jay Goble had this to say. similar to his comments after the equally-gut-wrenching semi-final win:

"I was the first one to be hesitant about it originally," said Goble moments after watching his squad painfully lost the championship. "I didn't originally believe that it was a format that was broken. But you know, again, going through the last two days, it's really exciting. It's really fun. It's an emotional roller coaster out there, but I think that to go out there and to fight it out the way you have to do in match play, it shows a lot of guts.

By all means go back to stroke play...unless you want people to watch.

Ryan had a previous item about the sudden ending:

BRADENTON, FLA. -- For as energizing as the final 40 minutes of the NCAA

Women's Championship played out Wednesday at The Concession G.C., it was the last 10 seconds that were the most stunning. 

All that excitement replaced with chilling silence. 

No one -- players, spectators, officials, Golf Channel commentators -- knew exactly how to react when Hayley Davis, the senior leader of the Baylor women's golf program and arguably its all-time best player, missed her five-foot par putt on the 19th hole of what turned out to be the deciding match of the championship. When her ball slid right of the hole, it allowed Stanford junior Mariah Stackhouse, already in with a par, to win her third straight hole and complete a comeback from 2 down with two holes to play to give the Cardinal and coach Anne Walker their first NCAA women's golf title.

That's true enough, but I do object to his headline writer's use of the word "buzzkill."  The intensity of the forty minutes is created by the possibility of a mistake by a player, so let's not complain when under that kind of excruciating pressure a player hiccups...

And that Mariah Stackhouse?   She's gonna give me a bushelful of strokes:

Jack's Stuff - The USGA has opened a Jack Nicklaus room at their Far Hills, NJ museum, and Max Adler takes us on a brief tour.  I'm familiar with White Fang, but this one was new to me:

"I bought this putter in North Berwick, Scotland shortly before the 1959 Walker Cup. It helped me to more than a dozen amateur titles, including both my U.S. Amateur wins."

Easy to forget that Jack Nicklaus actually used a hickory shafted putter. With it, he holed what he's said is the most important putt of his career; the final putt in the final match to defeat Charlie Coe in the 1959 U.S. Amateur.

I might need to make a pilgrimage to Far Hills.... But I also liked this from Alex Myers:

Of all Jack Nicklaus' accomplishments -- 18 professional majors, 73 PGA Tour titles,

etc. -- one number might stun golf fans more than any: 37. As in the 37 years Nicklaus used the same MacGregor Tommy Armour 3-wood.

The magical club is on display with other artifacts from Jack's storied career at the USGA's new Jack Nicklaus Room in Far Hills, N.J. Nicklaus used the 3-wood from 1958 through 1995, meaning he won all of those majors (beginning with the 1962 U.S. Open and ending with the 1986 Masters) and PGA Tour titles with it in the bag.

Wow..and to think we live in era when TaylorMade thinks we need a new driver every 37 days.

That'll have to keep you all for now...