Odds And Ends

Still more from the Players, planning your weekday TV viewing and other loose threads from the golf world.  Pour yourself a cup of coffee, we'll be here for a while:

Pontefications - Lots more reactions from that great Sunday.  Batting lead off as usual is Shack, who had this on the winner's driving:

The five birdies in six tries at TPC Sawgrass’ 17th will always be remembered from

Rickie Fowler’s Players Championship win. Shoot, just hitting the green five out of six times is a nice accomplishment. 

However, less talked about but equally as impressive were Fowler’s two drives on the 18th hole. (331 and 335 according to ShotLink.) 

Long viewed as just above-normal distance-wise, Fowler averaged 295.6 off the tee for the week. And more impressively, he overpowered the 18th hole with two clutch tee shots at that wickedly tough driving hole.

The Golf Channel guys were all over this , as he striped it 331 yards in regulation and five yards further in the playoff.  OK, it was downwind, but since when do they hit wedges into that hole?  Must be all that time they're putting in at the gym...

Did it feel like we saw an amazing volume of golf on Sunday?  Turns out that we did, per this guy that clearly has way too much time on his hands:

I tracked the televised strokes by player during the NBC airing of the final round of the Players Championship. NBC showed 381 regulation strokes from the Sunday round. The telecast began at 2pm ET and regulation play ended at 6:48, so this worked out to 1.32 strokes per minute - the highest average of the six events I have tracked.

Remember, that's just during the fourth round itself, excluding the four holes of playoff golf.   That in and of itself is interesting, but care to guess how many shots of the winner were shown?  Anyone?  Bueller?

Only twelve of those shots were from the winner...how's that for a proxy for how out of the tournament he was until he wasn't.  Amongst the player getting more air time than the victor (remember, excluding the playoff) were stalwarts such as Brain Harmon, Chris Kirk, Rory, Kevin Na, Justin Thomas, Bill Haas and Ben Martin.  Wow!

And while we're on Kevin Na, did you catch Peter Jacobson predicting that he'll put it together and win a big event soon?  You know, I could see that happening....though I could also see his head exploding on national television, hopefully on a hole with ProTracer coverage... I just think the public needs a Kevin Na-Keegan Bradley pairing soon...

Ch-Ch-Changes coming soon....we heard that they're going to rip up the greens after next year's event, and now comes word from Rex Hoggard as to their plans:

According to those sources, the Tour has a tentative plan to lengthen some holes – including the par-5 second and par-4 sixth - in an effort to put driver back into the players' hands. 

Perhaps the most dramatic change the Tour and architect Pete Dye are considering is a dramatic makeover of the par-4 12th hole.

At just 350 yards, the 12th is historically one of the Stadium Course’s easiest holes, with a small green and large mounds left of the fairway meant to create a blind approach shot. 

The plan is to make the hole a drivable par 4 by knocking down the mounds, creating a water hazard, and repositioning the green, and playing it between 270 and 330 yards.

My immediate reaction is to note that Sawgrass needs another water hazard as much as Keegan Bradley needs more intensity...but while the hole played fine for amateurs in my opinion, it's pretty forgettable during tournament week and televises particularly poorly.  So a driveable Par-4...why not?

As usual, the Tour Confidentialistas had some good stuff, including this response to the whither Sergio question:

MORFIT: I saw enough from Sergio today to restore my belief in him. He refused to just go away quietly once he dropped to two behind Fowler. I maintain that Sergio's best chance to win a big tournament is at the British Open, where the greens are slower and where he feels the most love from the fans, but he clearly loves TPC Sawgrass.

As someone who called all five of Sergio's Open Championship wins, I couldn't agree more....but always you must consider the source.

And while the underlying question was inevitable, they packed a lot of data into it, no?

Again the positions look perfect.

3. Tiger Woods carded his worst total score for his career at the Players and finished 69th. He made plenty of birdies all week long, but also recorded four double-bogeys along with a triple-bogey and hit drives that didn't pass the forward tee boxes. What did we learn about Tiger’s game this week?

VAN SICKLE: Tiger's game is still in transition, not only from adjusting to his injuries, but from his coaching changes. All I know for sure is as a golf student, he seems like a slow learner.

And this on the aggregate three-hole playoff:

MORFIT: I liked the aggregate format. It teases out the drama a little, which is great, and it sort of precludes a single gust of wind from deciding the whole tournament. I'm just glad they got done before it got too dark.

That's really the issue, isn't it?  The powers-that-be are so insistent that the event finish exactly at 6:00 that they risk a Monday finish.  

Poults, An Appreciation - Writing in the Independent, Kevin Garside makes the case that, far from being over-rated, that our Ian is one of the most under-rated players in the game....

Only 21 players in the history of European golf have a better ledger than his. At the

All credit for the perfect photo, with the mouth in its default position.

Masters this year he was 10 under par across the weekend, carding a pair of 67s, the best finish by anyone who made the cut. Rubbish, eh? 

As ever with these things, the haters are looking in the wrong direction. Instead of comparing Poulter with McIlroy, Tiger Woods and the uber elite, his detractors should look the other way at all those who have played the game professionally and returned a fraction of Poulter’s bullion. 

How many careers began as inauspiciously as his, off a handicap of four while selling Mars bars in a pro shop? And that’s not plus four by the way, the kind of polished accoutrement boasted by the graduates of the American collegiate system. No, that’s a dear, old, single handicap four, the kind you see battling it out for the Sunday medal. 

Poulter learned the game a million miles from the gilded country club scene in the United States. There was no money for private lessons. He progressed through bloody-mindedness and hard graft, making the most of what talent he had.

I'm guessing that graft has a different meaning across the pond, as does dickie bird, used in the article as well.  Elsie, care to help us out?

Kevin doesn't share with us the basis of his first contention, but the reference to bullion makes me suspicious that he's basing that on career earnings, whereby Poulter would be ranked above, just for one example, Tony Jacklin.  

But basing an appreciation of the Poults on two rounds is kinda thin gruel, and I would just ask in response what exactly has the man won? 

Back To The Future -  I thought Marty Hackel's involvement in our game was limited to ruling on the use of white belts and the like, so imagine my surprise to find him posting at The Loop. 

Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to have the requisite knowledge to understand the historical source of his subject matter, as he shares with us this lovely poster created for the coming U.S. Open at Chambers Bay:

It's a lovely poster, but it's clearly an homage to a prior era in our game, and is there no one at Golf Digest that knows that?  British Rail issued a series of posters promoting rail travel to golf resorts that wonderfully capture that era, in fact I have a few of them rolled up in a tube somewhere in our house.

An example below:

The Chambers Bay poster is perfect in incorporating the rail line that runs along the property, I just think that the readers might want to know that little bit of history.

TV/DVR Alert - Yes, the Yankees and Mets are hot and the Rangers still alive, but for the next two nights I recommend you find where Fox Sports 1 is hidden on your cable dial, as they'll be televising the ladies' inaugural fourball from spectacular Pacific Dunes.

Here's Tom Doak speaking about the course:

Not usually given to hyperbole, Doak has said that the Pacific Dunes course at Bandon

Your favorite blooger playing his second to the 13th.

Dunes Golf Resort “may well have been the best site for a golf course that any designer has been given since the 1920s.” But what factors made it such an ideal location? 

“Three-quarters of a mile of ocean frontage was a good start, but it was really all the dunes on the inland holes that made it such a great site,” Doak said in an email. “The most dramatic section of dunes encompasses the first green, the second hole, the seventh and eighth, and then the short par-4 16th, all of which are among the best holes on the course. The other great thing about the site was the palette of vegetation we had … tawny fescue grasses, yellowish beach grass, dark shore pines and dark green gorse bushes that bloom bright yellow in the spring. It’s a beautiful, colorful setting.”

He doesn't even mention the massive blowout bunker picture above, so spectacular that you barely notice the Pacific Ocean to the left.

My other favorite thing about PD is the wacky routing, wherein the back nine has only two Par-4's.  

And still in field as of this morning, as America's sweetheart Lucy Li (the ice cream-loving 11-year old from Pinehurst).  Let's hope she and her partner make it through the morning match.

Fingers Crossed - Like me, I'm sure that you find Chris Berman perfectly suited to the golf commentary business.  Without Bubba, modern culture would have to survive without such classics of the genre as "Ground Control to David Toms".  So fingers crossed, because word comes today that the R&A is auctioning off the telecast rights to The Open Championship beginning in 2017.

The source is a Sports Business Journal article that's behind a paywall, but here's Shack's take:

While Ourand and Lombardo report that ESPN is interested in retaining the rights, I've been hearing the opposite: that the worldwide leader wants to focus their rights fees elsewhere and are prepared to walk away from their $25 million a year deal. 

SBJ reports that Fox Sports is interested, which I wrote in Golf World last year makes sense considering the potential synergy with Sky Sports, which is is 39.1% owned by News Corp. However, given the financial losses Fox is expected to experience on their USGA deal, the interest is not as strong as it might have been last summer.

NBC Sports Group also plans to be aggressive in pursuing British Open rights in a deal that would put a major golf championship on Golf Channel for the first time. 

The R&A has had talks with Turner Sports and CBS Sports, as well, sources said, but those channels are not considered by those same sources as likely to be serious bidders.

I'm hearing the opposite: that CBS/Turner plan a robust bid and that this may end up a two-horse race with NBC/Golf Channel for the entity most likely to land the rights, though don't count out Fox closing down the middle!

Color me perplexed as to why TNT would want to stay involved in golf in such a half-hearted manner.  ESPN is at least a sports network...

Fox way over-paid for the USGA package, but on assumes they would only do that as part of a larger strategy.  I just have to believe that the availability of a second major would be too much to resist...