Mid-Week Musings

The course lies among the sandhills under the shadow of Slieve Donard, the tallest of the Mourne Mountains, and so close to the sea that we may reach the shore with our first tee-shot...trouble lurks at the sides as well as in the centre of the fairway, and for all the boldness and bigness of the hazards it is really a straight rather than a long driver's course. BERNARD DARWIN on Royal County Down

County Down Syndrome - Shack finds this to be the Luck of the Irish, though I'd guess it's more the result of the hand of man, specifically a man with a basic grasp of the dark arts of public relations:

World number one Rory McIlroy will play with Rickie Fowler and Martin Kaymer in the

pick of the draw at the Irish Open. 

Walker Cup rivals turned Major rivals, Fowler and McIlroy, who is largely responsible for the stellar names littering the draw at Royal County Down, will tee off at 8am on Thursday.

I'm shocked...shocked, I say, at such a craven pairing of marketable names.  Are they prepared for the repercussions, i.e., that people might actually tune in?

They'll go off at 8:00 a.m. local time, 3:00 a.m. on the East Coast, which in another who woulda guessed it moment is just when Golf Channel comes on the air.  If you noticed the TV times in yesterday's post, that second window on Thursday was there for a reason...

Now I don't know if Sergio was one of the players lobbied by Rory, but he's the victim of this week's "No Love Lost" pairing:

There is little love lost between three-time Major winner Padraig Harrington and Sergio Garcia and the two will start together from the 10th tee along with 2014 winner Mikko Ilonen at 12.50pm.

I wasn't sure if they'd use split tees, but the tenth is a Par-3.  Always unusual too see them start their rounds on a one-shotter...

Royal County Down is notoriously the stuffiest of the Irish clubs and are one of the few clubs to completely segregate visitors from the facilities utilized by the members.  They're not rude in any way, it's just that they're not as graciously welcoming as most of the Irish clubs are.  Because of that, this sign from the basement of Slieve Donard gave me such a chuckle:

Match Play Madness - Despite a lack of familiarity with any of the players, the Women's NCAA Championship semi-finals provided terrific, gut wrenching drama, as the two dynasties (USC and Duke) were knocked off.  Jay Coffin with the game story:

Stanford is ranked 13th by Golfstat; Baylor is 18th. The Bears collected four victories this season, including their last two starts at both the Big 12 Championship and the NCAA Regional, while the Cardinal only won once. This is the 30th time that Stanford has qualified for the NCAA Championship. It’s only the third time that Baylor has been here. Better put, Duke has won twice as many NCAA titles as the Bears have appearances. 

Sure, it’s not Duke vs. USC – perennial heavyweights who have won nine titles in the past 16 years– but Baylor and Stanford both bring their own brand of power and precision.

It's match play, so it's your basic crap shoot...Ryan Lavner covered the most compelling of the matches between two players struggling mightily with their games:

Whyte’s high scores kept piling up at Concession: An opening 81. Followed by an 85.

Lauren Whyte

And then a 94. And an 82. Four days of stroke play, and not once did her score count toward Baylor’s team total. 

Of the 84 players who finished four rounds here, Whyte was dead last, 54 over par, 57 shots behind winner Emma Talley. 

“She was down,” head coach Jay Goble conceded. 

“It’s really been hard for her,” Davis said. 

The closest to Whyte in the individual standings was Duke freshman Lisa Maguire, who has endured her own struggles this season. And incredibly, both Baylor and Duke’s fates came down to those two players Tuesday during the semifinals of the NCAA Women’s Championship.

 So naturally these two go out in the first match, and are the last to finish as their 24-hole match, won with a bogey by Whyte, settles the matter.

And in the days strangest moment, Duke's Leonia Maguire was suspected of improperly communicating with teammates, caused by ...well, let Lavner tell it:

After playing her 10th hole at Concession in the afternoon semifinals, Maguire said she motioned back down the fairway that the hole location was in a different spot on the green than what was shown on the pin sheet. 

The rules staff had marked that the cup was 21 paces deep and 10 from the right. It was actually cut 9 on and 7 from the right. 

“We just screwed that one up,” NCAA director of rules Jerry Lemieux said later. “We just gave players the wrong paperwork.”

They're out there without caddies (although permitted to use distance measuring devices), and the committee gives them a bad pin sheet... Sheesh!

My favorite moment was the post-round interview with Baylor coach Jay Goble, who said (from memory) that he was initially skeptical of team match play (it's the first year of that format for the lasses), but wow is this fun!  Well, Jay, it's certainly been fun from the other side of the flat screen...

English Translation Required - New TaylorMade CEO David Abeles sat for an interview with Golf Digest's Stix E-mag, and the MBA-speak flowed like wine:

What did you learn in your time that away from TaylorMade? (Abeles left in 2014 to become CEO of Competitor Group Inc., an operator of marathon and half-marathon races.) 

I learned that running and golf are different. Running is an inspiring sport to those who run. They run for health and wellness, for charity, for personal records. Golf is a very aspirational sport. When we see Dustin Johnson, Jason Day or Justin Rose hit a shot, we want to hit that shot -- and from time to time we actually do. So we aspire to that level. But the biggest learning for me was the interaction of brands and how it can elevate your business practices. One of the things we'll do at TaylorMade moving forward is build out an experiential platform. To engage golfers on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month basis so they can experience our brands and products in new ways.

Once you stop laughing about the smack-your-forehead revelation that running and golf are different, perhaps you can help me understand what an "Experiential platform" is and how it differs from people using your products.  And does anyone want to experience TaylorMade drivers in different ways?   Maybe I'm short-sighted, but hitting golf balls with them is the extent off my experiential aspirations...

This is probably the most significant Q and A from the sitdown, though it's all, what's that word, aspirational:

What is the perception of the company right now, both in the industry and with consumers? 

When you're a company that bases its product strategy on innovation -- which is design and development to optimize performance -- there are things you do very well to excite consumers and there are times you do things quicker than most would appreciate or understand. And that's fair, that's definitely fair. But we're in a good place. We move forward and bring exciting products to market so consumers will get off the couch and buy them. We also have an obligation to work with our retail partners in managing some of the inventory challenges they face as a result of us bringing the products to market. We're cognizant of that. It's not a simple fix, but we have good ideas as to how we want to work with our customers. When you pursue innovation as a strategy -- and that is our strategy -- great things happen. But you take a lot of risk. We're very creative, we use technology to optimize performance and we use the world's best players to validate it. We're not perfect, I'm the first to admit that, but no company is.

That veiled reference to "Inventory challenges" is rich, as they buried Dick's in inventory by releasing three new drivers in a single year.  Since I've always heard that the first step in solving a problem is admitting its existence, we've at least got that going for us...