This and That - Mid-Weekend Edition

The holiday schedule at Willow Ridge places the Mixed tournament (a/k/a the season's first major) on Sunday afternoons, allowing for, nay requiring, some rare Sunday morning blogging...

Colonial Times - You really can't beat Fort Worth in late May, and it's setting up for a....errr, well it's setting up to finish today, the Good Lord Willin' and the Creek don't rise:

Kevin Na regained sole possession of the lead with a late birdie Saturday at Colonial,

taking a one-stroke lead over Ian Poulter into the final round. 

Na's 1-under 69 in the third round included a couple of bogeys. He is at 11-under 199 at a very damp Hogan's Alley. 

Poulter, who shot 68, had dropped out of a share of the lead after starting the back nine with a four-putt double bogey. But he was again tied with Na after making a 32-foot birdie at No. 15, the same hole where his playing partner two-putted from 6 feet after his approach missed the green.

Sheesh, Na and Poults...kinda reminds me of Henry Kissinger's pithy comment about the Iran-Iraq war...but that Poulter 4-jack should have carried a viewer warning.

Dateline: French Lick - I don't even need an item here, it's just fun to say French Lick... but in a seeming replay of last year's event:

While others all around him found a land mine at one point or another in Saturday’s third round of the 76th Senior PGA Championship, Montgomerie, the defending champion, kept his stumbles to a minimum. With an opening-hole bogey the lone blemish on a 2-under-par 70, Montgomerie finished the day at 5-under 211, good enough for a three-shot edge over Bernhard Langer, whose 69 was highlighted by an eagle at the par-4 eighth. 

“I was delighted with the day’s performance,” said Montgomerie. “I’m very proud of what I achieved today because you had to play chess with the course. ... You’ve got to think about things. You’ve got to course manage your way around.

"But I came here to be in contention on Saturday evening and I am."

It's an amusing pairing, as Monty likes to get on with things and Bernhard, well our Bernhard likes to take time to smell the flowers.. that typically works to the advantage of the slower player, but our Monty seems to have found something and won last year despite being paired with Langer all four days.

Wentworth Woes - Presumably somebody is leading that event, you can Google it if you care... Rory missed the cut, hopefully allowing him to get some rest and gather himself for his home game at Royal County Down next week.

The event has given us some good moments, as another week, ho hum, another Miggy ace:

And Mick Tommy Fleetwood treated us to a rare albatross as well:



And from the first round, Englishman Andrew Johnston has an advanced case of Phil Mickelson disease in his inability to get airborne during the requisite caddie chest bump:

And in dog-bites-man news, the players are talking up another mulligan for the former Harry S. Colt classic:

Two-time winner Luke Donald carded a second successive 70 to finish four under par, but suggested that the greens needed replacing for the second time in six years. 

"I guess the only way to fix them is to redo them again," said Donald. "If there's one tournament you should expect them to be perfect, it's this one.

Shack uses his wayback machine to provide ready links to this annual discussion:

If you must, the opportunity a sampling of past redesign controversies involving Wentworth can be viewed here, here and for giggles involving Ernie pouting, here.

Ernie is a man that has absorbed the disappointments and humiliations of the game of golf with uncommon grace, and is one of the best-liked men in the game.  But the abuse of his redesign of this treasure, that proved to be more than he could bear...

My God, We Could Lose Monty In There - A few weeks ago we saw the round-bellies play their Bass Pro Shops event at the Top Of The Rock Par-3 course.  Now comes news that the earth moved for them, and not in a good way, with a large sinkhole geological event:

“We discovered at about 6:30 this morning a geological event at the Top of the Rock,” Sapp said. “We reported it to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. Our team and their geologic survey team were doing a geologic assessment of the area. 

“Safety measures were immediately initiated. Sinkholes in this area of the Missouri Ozarks are not uncommon. They can occur because of the type of rock we have. But it did not affect any of the buildings and we’re draining the entrance pond,

We do love our euphemisms... here's what it looked like:

A Fescue Primer - There are few words as consistently misused in our game as fescue, typically taken to mean long, stringy grasses sometimes used on golf courses.  But fescue is actually the name  used for a variety of grasses utilized on links courses, including fairways and greens.

Craig Smith provides a timely public service in the Seattle Times on this subject:

USGA executive director Mike Davis can sound like the president of the Fescue Fan

Club. 

“It’s a great grass to play golf on because it doesn’t have any tackiness to it,” Davis said at the tournament’s media day in April. “It’s a thin blade of grass, round, and when the ball hits it — while a lot of other grasses will kind of grab it — on fescue it skids.

“And what that means is, when you’re playing golf you’ve got to think about what happens when your ball hits, where it’s going to bounce and roll to. So it’s a fascinating grass on which to play.” 

Larry Gilhuly of Gig Harbor, the West Region agronomist for the USGA, said fescue thrives best in three locations — the British Isles, New Zealand and the marine zone of the Pacific Northwest.

And that, my friends, is why there are precious few links in the U.S. (and also why Mike Keiser was so attracted to the Oregon coast).  

Because fescue doesn’t grow fast, it doesn’t require frequent mowing. That’s one reason British courses, particularly those on tight budgets, like it.

However, the No. 1 concern with fescue is that “it is susceptible to traffic stress,” Bevard said. 

In other words, too many feet beat it up.

Too many feet and especially too many tires.... But the other issue with fescue is that it can't survive in heat.  That's why tracks like Shinnecock and Kiawah are definitively not links, and in fact sometimes these hybrid courses play a bit strangely.... 

One last note of what to expect:

One trait of fescue is that it doesn’t stay green in hot months. It can turn brown but still be playable. Chambers Bay was brown in 2010 when the U.S. Amateur was played in August. June is a transitional month, so it should be more green than brown. Still, don’t expect fans to say, “I want my lawn to look like that.” 

Gilhuly noted that fescue isn’t as dense as other grasses and said, “You can’t mow this grass low.”

It doesn't need to be mowed low, and I assure you that "Hot month" is very much a relative concept.  But the beauty of it is that it provides for greens that are not particularly fast yet are quite firm.  As I always note, in my opinion links golf is the greatest form of the golf on the planet.

So, Dear Reader, you've been educated....please use the term fescue accurately from now on.