'Dis and 'Dat

I give myself a Monday off, and all sorts of interesting stories break....none of them of thge happy, upbeat variety, but one has to play the cards as dealt...

That's Our Phil - Phil has always loved a good punt, famously making money on everything from the Baltimore Ravens to Jim Furyk.... but as with the story a few months about his involvement with Billy Walters, there's a dark side to this gambling it seems:

Nearly $3 million transferred from golfer Phil Mickelson to an intermediary was part of

"an illegal gambling operation which accepted and placed bets on sporting events," according to two sources and court documents obtained by Outside the Lines. 

Mickelson, a five-time major winner and one of the PGA Tour's wealthiest and most popular players, has not been charged with a crime and is not under federal investigation. But a 56-year-old former sports gambling handicapper, acting as a conduit for an offshore gambling operation, pleaded guilty last week to laundering approximately $2.75 million of money that two sources told Outside the Lines belonged to Mickelson.

If Phil played a team sport, one where players were employees of their teams, he undoubtedly would have served a rather lengthy suspension by now (or, in the alternative reading, would have modified his behavior accordingly).  For those unfamiliar with the Furyk reference, here's the background:

The left-handed golfer is known for rarely shying away from a money match, and his affinity for sports gambling is no secret, either. In 2001, he was reprimanded by the PGA Tour after winning $500 from Mike Weir in the players' lounge at the NEC Invitational: Mickelson had wagered $20 at 25-1 odds that Jim Furyk would hole a bunker shot.

That took place in an epic 7-hole playoff against Tiger, so Phil was clearly betting with his heart... The challenge is that the Furyk story is the appealing side of Phil's love of gambling, the equivalent of a $5 Nassau to keep things interesting.

However, when you're transferring $2.75 million to a "gambling intermediary", what are the odds that said intermediary will be a Boy Scout?  Exactly....Mr. Silveira (and I use that honorific in the loosest possible sense) is being fitted for an orange jumpsuit (insert your own Orange is the new Black joke here) and Rick Reilly had the goods on him back in this article from 1991.

Commissioner Ratched cannot be amused by these associations and will be reluctant to take on such a popular figure as Phil... But I'll just lay a marker here, that this story will not end well for Phil and our game.

I Hate When I'm Right - When longtime CBS golf commentator Peter Oosterhuis suddenly retired, I had a sense that perhaps all was not well... Because who retires form that kind of cushy gig?  So I wasn't shocked though I'm certainly saddened by this news:

Longtime CBS golf announcer and seven-time European Tour winner Peter Oosterhuis has revealed that he has early-onset Alzheimer’s disease,according to a Golf World report. 

Oosterhuis, 67, retired from the broadcast booth earlier this year, ending a 20-year run that included stints on Golf Channel, CBS and BBC. In addition to his seven European Tour wins, Oosterhuis competed on six Ryder Cup teams and compiled a 14-11-3 record. He also led the European Tour Order of Merit four consecutive seasons from 1971-1974.

As Jaime Diaz informs in Golf World, Oosty actually announced this back in May at a private fundraiser:

Oosterhuis is revealing his story publicly because he wants to do what he can to help Alzheimer’s treatment and research. That means joining the major fundraising efforts of Nantz, who in 2011 founded Nantz National Alzheimer Center at Houston Methodist Neurological Center. Nantz’s father, Jim Jr., was afflicted with Alzheimer’s for 13 years before he died in 2008, an ordeal his son chronicled in his 2009 tribute book, Always By My Side.

Since December, Oosterhuis has been treated by specialists at the center and has been in a program for an experimental drug in its third trial that is designed to break down the formations of plaque in the brain that cause Alzheimer’s, and which has given scientists hope that a breakthrough might be near. Last month, at a fundraiser for the center played at Pebble Beach, the Oosterhuises each took the microphone during a Saturday-night gathering of 140 invitees and revealed that Peter was suffering from the very disease they were all there to fight. (Click here to watch a video of their announcement.) They received a standing ovation, and Nantz was later told that the money raised represented the most ever by a private fundraiser at Pebble Beach.

I'm not sure at this point that I know a family not affected by this scourge, so we wish Oosty and his family all the best.   John Garrity makes the case for Peter's professional duties, with which I concur.  Theresa's mother has Alzheimer's and we consider ourselves among the lucky in that she has remained happy and laughing the whole journey... I wish no less for Peter and his family.

A Whole Mess O' Crazy - We spoke Sunday of Keegan Bradley's rather crazed pre-shot routine, and the Golf Channel folks had some fun with it...it's a form of video that I can't ember, so I'll just send you here.

As  any self-respecting statisticians will tell you, correlation is not causation...but what to make of all the crazies in our game (and let me acknowledge I've made my own unique contribution).  Does the game make us crazy, or does it attract those with crazy in their gene pool?

Submitted for your approval is this video of Victor Dubuisson, the Most Mysterious Man in Golf, err....well, our Geoff thinks he's adjusting his loft and lie angles.... but I know that can't true because it would be a violation of the rules:

As Shack notes, the best part is that he waits calmly while Michael Hoey putts out, then does what needs to be done...

Trump This - Have you been following the Trump story?  Our hero is in the midst of his quadrennial threat to run for President, which he won't, but in the process thereof opined on U.S. immigration policy...  of course in the sensitive manner for which he has become justifiably famed.  Univision found his comments beyond the pale and have declined to televise his beauty pageants, and he responded by banning Univision executives from Doral...Now the stakes have been raised:

NBC is dumping Donald Trump.

In a press release on Monday, NBC said it was severing business ties with the real-estate mogul and GOP presidential candidate Trump because of statements in which he called Mexican immigrants rapists and drug runners. 

"Due to recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants, NBCUniversal is ending its relationship with Mr. Trump," NBC said in the statement.

Of course I'm happy for this turn of events just to have that photo above, which will have a permanent spot in the Trump rota...

Now a digression...I try not to go all political in this blog for obvious reasons.  It's not what folks come here for, or so I assume.  But setting aside one's beliefs or opinions on the subject, the amount and nature of immigration to the U.S. should be an appropriate subject of debate among those running for national office.  But if you look to Europe, you'll find that the pro-immigration left has created an environment where no reputable party can advocate for limitations on immigration.  The result is that disreputable parties have taken up the cause, some such as Britain's UKIP and Greece's Syriza to considerable success.

Now the U.S. has not yet reached that point, but it is absolutely where the left wants to take things.  And The Donald, wittingly or un, has put himself in the middle on this issue, but unlike a run-of-the-mill politician, he has business interests that make great hostages....  And if NBC is subject to such interest-group pressure, why not the PGA Tour, the PGA of America, the USGA and other governing bodies.

The current state of play is that Trump has his annual WGC event at Doral, sanctioned by the major golf tours.  he's also been awarded a U.S. Women's Open and PGA Championship at his Bedminster, NJ club, and recent rumors surfaced of his Aberdeen course being awarded multiple Scottish Opens.  Then there's the big enchilada, and Open Championship potentially returning to the recently acquired Turnberry.... one assumes all of these will become increasingly contentious.

If, like your humble correspondent, you assume that the blue bloods of the sport would rather not share the platform with the self-aggrandizing Donald, hasn't he just made it easy for them?

U.S. Open Reax - John Huggan mans the golf desk at The Scotsman, and is usually a reliable arbiter of all things golf.  But see what you think of thus nut 'graph:

This column is all for making golf more interesting and fun by encouraging the “ground game” that is so often absent from the PGA and European Tours. But there is a fine line between fun and farce. And last week Davis travelled too far down the right road. The combination of goofy greens, firm turf and sometimes-daft pin positions at times diminished the championship to a point where luck was all but everything and skill was close to nought. Too much of a good thing too often threatened to spoil the spectacle.

No doubt mistakes were made, but the quality of the leaderboard argues otherwise... But John seems a tad stingy with the credit for the final day's play, which was also Mike's doing:

On the other hand, USGA executive director Mike Davis, the man in charge of course set-up at the US Open since 2006, did not emerge with much credit from a championship that at times veered pretty close to nonsensical. Only at the last minute – no doubt fearful of a Shinnecock Hills-type disaster where, in 2004, four-foot putts were finishing up in bunkers – did Davis pull back from the brink. The exciting final day’s play was a direct result of heavy overnight watering and more sensible “hole locations”, to use the USGA’s particular brand of pedantry.

I had never heard of Jimmy Gunn before last week, but John also fills in the background there:

Perhaps the best feel-good story of the week was the emergence of the 34-year-old Dornoch-native. Currently a regular on the almost anonymous eGolf Gateway Tour in Arizona – where he makes his home – Gunn played 132 holes en route from the obscurity of local qualifying to a cheque for more than $64,000. 

No one in the field at Chambers Bay made more birdies than the Scot’s 18. Not Jordan Spieth. Not Dustin Johnson. Not Rory McIlroy. And, over the 36 holes it took for the 14-time major champion to play his way out of the US Open, Gunn out-scored Tiger Woods by 11 shots. Not too shabby and something to tell the grandkids.

When it comes from the USGA, John, it's a check.  Nice story and of course he's from Dornoch, which for those unfamiliar is spelled H-E-A-V-E-N.

 Were you upset when DJ 3-jacked on the 18th green?  Perhaps not to the extent of this guy:

Dustin Johnson’s U.S. Open heartbreak didn’t belong solely to him. A man named 

David Kaplen shared it.  

According to an ESPN story, Kaplen would have won DraftKings’ U.S. Open Millionaire Maker and pocketed its $1 million prize had Johnson made his 4-foot putt for birdie on the 18th green at Chambers Bay. Instead, Johnson missed, and his three-putt gave Jordan Spieth his second straight major championship.

The 41-year-old Kaplen, a San Antonio resident, told ESPN he had trouble sleeping the night of the tournament, but he’s looking on the brightside. Out of nearly 144,000 teams, he won $100,000 for second place.

It could have been worse, he could have purchased a TaylorMade driver at a PGATour Superstore....

Maggot-Supplied Content - I find the Zurich Insurance golf commercials to be highly annoying, and on golf telecasts that's an extremely competitive category.  But in this video sent by the aforementioned Maggot, they show a deft comedic touch and the player's answers and reaction shots are amusing:

More Bonus Sunday Content

Do you want the good news or the bad news?  The former is that due to afternoon golf (or, more likely, no golf, due to flooding) I'm at the keyboard on a rare Sunday morning.  The latter is that I've an early golf outing tomorrow, so you'll see me again when you see me....

Stat So?  - Josh Berhow plays with numbers without adult supervision and comes up with this:

Jordan Spieth's keys to unlock the Grand Slam this year will be driving at St. Andrews and approach shots and scrambling around the greens at Whistling Straits. 

That's according to how the last two major winners at each of those courses fared during their victorious weeks.

Here's how Spieth ranks overall in those categories after his win last week in the U.S. Open. He's T69 in driving distance on Tour (291.1) and 80th in driving accuracy (62.62). He’s also sixth in scrambling (65.23) and T47 in GIR (67.78).

This is all based on numbers from the most recent events held at the venues, but of course is nonsense on stilts.  The key at the Old Course is not so much hitting fairways as it is missing bunkers... and if high totals of GIR's are a good thing at Whistling Straits, their a poor man's excuse for proximity to the hole, as we've learned from Mark Broadie's work.

So, to sum up, hit it long and strait and hit more greens than the other guy and you too can win a Grand Slam.  Got it...

A Moment In Time - One of Fox's many miscues was not having a camera on Jordan when DJ gifted him the second leg of the Slam.  I know, you'd think they'd teach that in Sports Broadcasting 101, but the guys at Fox think they wrote the book...

In a post at the Loop, Shack helpfully points us to some poignant Darren Carroll B&W photos of the moment:

 Jordan does look like he's in shock, no?  Lots of really good work by Carroll, so do take a look.

In The Present, That's A Good Thing -  Cheyenne Woods, yanno the Woods that still regularly breaks 80, takes to Derek Jeter's Player's Tribune website to bare her chest (down Maggot, it's just a figure of speech) about being HIS niece.  This is the nut graph for most folks:

I mean, I get it — he’s one of the most famous human beings on the planet and we share a last name as well as a profession. But let me clear something up once and for all: I love my uncle, and I treasure the advice he gives me when we speak every few months, but I am not Tiger Woods.

I actually found this to be the more interesting part:

On that same note, my grandfather Earl (Tiger’s father) and I were very close, but I was never his protégé. In fact, I only went out on the golf course with him twice. Yes, golf provided a great connection for us. I remember talking about the game with him frequently and waking up early with him to watch Tiger play on TV. I even picked up my first club when I was just three-years-old at his house, playing around in the same garage where Tiger got his start. My grandfather always spoke like he knew that I would play professionally one day. He was so sure of it, too — that’s one thing I’ll always remember. In so many ways, he taught me how to truly love golf and instilled an important confidence in my game, but he was my grandfather, not my coach.

Earl got a lot of things right, most notably his prediction while Tiger was still an amateur that his son would win exactly fourteen professional majors.

Doin' The Keegan -  For reasons that elude me, my friend Glenn is a big Keegan Bradley fan... Glenn looks far more like Novak Djokovich than Keegan, but he's not giving up anything in the intensity department.  So Glenn, it seems you'll have to up your game:

You might hate it or be amused by it. But odds are, you've had trouble taking your eyes away from Keegan's signature up-and-back, club-twirling dance steps before hitting a shot. 

This week at the Travelers Championship, Keegan may have displayed his most absurd moves yet. Before addressing his approach shot at the par-4 14th hole at TPC River Highlands on Friday, Keegan took almost a full minute before addressing the ball.

We counted 19 mini-practice swings in this rendition of the Keegan. He's playing well this week at the Travelers -- currently T-8 after rounds of 64-69 -- so apparently the refined routine is working. Do what you need to do, Keegs. But for your practice partner's sake, you might not want to do this every time you walk into a shot.

Alas, no video....

Ya Think? - Next thing you know, they'll be telling me that there's gambling in Casablanca....But shockingly, Under Armour is happy to be in the Jordan Spieth business:

Under Armour founder Kevin Plank was understandably thrilled about Jordan Spieth, the face of his golf business, after this year’s Masters win. 

“Thanks to Jordan, our company grew up today,” Plank told ESPN.com at the time. “He was challenged by the greatest players in the world on the biggest stage, looked them straight in the eye and never blinked.”

 Hmmmm.....wasn't that a blink I saw on the 17th tee?  Obviously it's all working out quite grandly for Under Armour, but Shack also has this excerpt but with a broken link:

“Look, culture eats strategy for breakfast,” he said. “Culture isn’t something you just

wake up and decide you’re going to be one day. It’s like trust; it’s built in drops and it’s lost in buckets. And you know the kind of people that will help add to that, that will add drops. And Jordan was one of those special, unique people who was a team sport athlete. 

“When him and his father came up…two or three years ago, and we sat there having a conversation about how would you like to turn pro and be an Under Armour guy, he just said look I am an Under Armour guy. I am an athlete. He goes, ‘I’m your golfer.’ “

OK, I am my mother's son and she, a grammar Nazi, is now spinning in her grave.  Him and his father?  Repeat after me... When his father and he..... Sheesh!

But culture eats strategy for breakfast?  Next you'll be telling me that paper covers rock....

Worst, a Highly Competitive Category - I very much liked this gallery of worst major championship venues, as it hit most of my suggestions.... Bellerive, check.  Olympia Fields, check.   Medinah, check.

The also nail Congressional, which on a recent Morning Drive Kara Robinson proposed as the place she'd most like to see get a major....because of, you know, all of its great architectural features.... Please Mr. Kotter, I have a follow-up question for Kara....

Not Just a River in Egypt - Bernhard Langer has grebbed himself a share of the 54-hole lead in the U.S. Senior Open, so you'd think he'd be in a good mood.  But he's got troubles ahead, and he just doesn't understand:

Rule 14-1b sounds obscure, and it doesn’t take effect until Jan. 1, 2016. But the new

United States Golf Association rule that prohibits amateur and professional players in USGA events from anchoring a putter against any part of their bodies continues to reverberate throughout golf, with one top player in contention at the U.S. Senior Open frustrated.

“I just don’t 

understand,” said Bernhard Langer, who shot a 4-under-par 66 in Friday’s second round at the Del Paso Country Club and is 3 under for the tournament. “I’ve been using (the long putter) for 18 years, and it’s a real issue. If it’s easier, then why are we not seeing more players use it? I don’t see anyone using persimmon woods. And who is using hybrids now? Everyone.” 

Langer had some issues with yips in his putting stroke almost two decades ago and switched to a long putter that enables him to grip the top of the club to the center of his chest, with his right hand on the middle of the club. The club then looks as if it’s on a hinge, resulting in a more consistent stroke.

Bernie understands perfectly well, as the solution for his yips was to jam the putter into his sternum.  Now the USGA and R & A waited far too long to address this, and there's plenty more they've gone all see no evil on, But Bernie has had a great run.  I feel far worse for the younger guys that came up using anchored strokes, but glad they developed a little back bone in this one area.

Outing Follies - I'm not a huge fan of Member-Guests or charity outings, as the combination of bad golfers and alcohol consumption is off putting.  For instance, at Willow Ridge's Member-Guest last week I almost got hit by an 80-yard wedge that ricocheted off the terrace awning and whizzed by my ear, then ended with an incident that resulted in a three-week suspension for a club member.

But this one from a charity outing is a tad difficult to explain:

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/sports/golf/article25626547.html#storylink=cpy

Obviously it's the pants that should have gone into the garbage receptacle....

GPS Follies - I prefer a GPS watch to a hand-held laser, as it's one less item to stuff into my golf bag... our caddies carry lasers, so the watch is mostly for evening golf and its less precise feedback is sufficient for that purpose.

Based upon the recommendation of Unplayable Lies reader Phil Drogin I bought a Bushnell new generation watch last season but had become increasingly frustrated by it.  One problem is that the mechanism to change holes is somewhat awkward, and evening golf involves much hole jumping.... but I was also getting yardages that just had to be wrong, most notably standing on the 72-yard sprinkle head on our ninth hole and having my watch read 82 yards to the center of the green.

So I popped for a new Garmin S6, which is way more watch than I need but has the longest batter life.  It's got some useful functions, but it's mostly way overkill as I really just want yardages... So I was out Friday playing a match and hitting my third into the Par-5 ninth from near that sprinkler head.  After hitting a tasty little wedge to 8-feet (and yes, I made the putt) I decide to check the Garmin against the Bushnell and stood on the sprinkler...and my watch read 81 yards.  That's a very expensive way to pick up one yard of accuracy, but it gets worse...

On Saturday I played with buddies Bruce and Colin and our caddie was Nick, who also wears a Garmin watch.  I had told them the story and as were walking up No. 9 (our finishing hole) I decided to give it another go...this time standing on the very same sprinkler head my watch said 76 yards.  WTF!

During the round we also noticed that our watches had different yardages, though wouldn't you think that all Garmin watches would use the same satellites?  I knew they were imperfect, now I'm wondering if they're so imperfect as to be useless...

R.I.P. Golf - Volume XXVIII

We've seen every flavor of the R.I.P. Golf meme, but what's most curious is that Shackelford liked this thumb-sucker from Karl Taro Greenfeld at Men's Journal... Here's Geoff's take on it:

Unlike many of the recent golf-is-dead stories, Taro Greenfeld likes the game and has a daughter who is intrigued, but the time and difficulty issue is at the core of his examination, and he gives plenty of time to the development model of the 80s and 90s which left us with no shortage of bad, long, unsatisfying courses.

OK, that's fair enough, and this is the excerpt in Geoff's post:

Lake Las Vegas could be the poster development for an entire era of American excess — 

the real estate boom, the subprime mortgage crisis, and the exuberant overinvestment in golf courses as bait to sell property. The 3,600-acre community built around a 320-acre artificial lake in Henderson, Nevada, featured two Jack Nicklaus–designed golf courses and one Tom Weiskopf course, the primary selling points for homes ranging from $500,000 to $5 million. Ritz-­Carlton opened a resort on the lake, which was declared a "Hot Spot" in 2004 by the Washington Post.

One of those three golf courses has since closed, the Ritz-Carlton is long gone (it's now a Hilton), and some of the luxury houses have hit the market for as little as $150,000. The golf course has been converted to scrubby trails, and it turns out that homes on a desert are a lot less desirable than homes on a golf course. "For so many years, golf was a tool for developers to sell property," says Phil Smith, a golf course designer who worked with Nicklaus and Weiskopf during the boom. "There wasn't a sense of long-term viability in some of these developments."

Ummmm...seems to me this is less the dreary 80's and 90's than the late aughts that led to the 2008 real estate meltdown.  Yes, they built too many golf courses in Las Vegas, but then again they were building too much of everything.

The author attributes much of this distress to the demise of Tiger, which he attributes to him "triple-bogeying his marriage"... cute phraseology, but the case that Tiger drove an increase in anything but TV ratings is really thin.  here's the gloom and doom 'graph:

By any measure, participation in the game is way off, from a high of 30.6 million golfers in 2003 to 24.7 million in 2014, according to the National Golf Foundation (NGF). The long-term trends are also troubling, with the number of golfers ages 18 to 34 showing a 30 percent decline over the last 20 years. Nearly every metric — TV ratings, rounds played, golf-equipment sales, golf courses constructed — shows a drop-off. "I look forward to a time when we've got the wind at our back, but that's not what we're expecting," says Oliver "Chip" Brewer, president and CEO of Callaway. "This is a demographic challenge."

Somehow, he doesn't figure this data point into his analysis:

Overall sales of golf balls in April at on- and off-course shops were up 4.9 percent in units and nearly 10.9 percent in dollars, compared to April 2014. According to Golf Datatech, it was the best April for golf ball sales in terms of dollars (just over $48.5 million) since the research firm began publishing monthly sales figures in 1997.

Look, you can find data points to support any premise, but rounds played are essentially flat and those "lost golfers" cited above tend to be folks that played about two rounds a year...

I do agree with Geoff that the best part of this piece is the author discussing his daughter's and his own struggles with the game, which are oh-so-real.  He throws the usual bone to foot golf and Frisbee golf, and I'd propose to stipulate that anything that doesn't involve a golf club in a human's hand is not going to grow our game....

Which brings us to TopGolf...  <sigh>:

Nearly everyone I spoke with at the convention pointed to one company as the potential savior. "Maybe Topgolf is our Tiger," says Callaway's Brewer, which owns just under 20 percent of Topgolf, the company that has devised a simulated version of the game by putting microchips into balls at high-tech driving ranges. Players hit into the target area as a computer screen keeps score based on how accurate the shots are. In between drinking, eating, and listening to the house DJs, they stand on an Astroturf mat and play 20 balls. It's golf's version of bowling. The company was formed in the U.K. but was acquired by a U.S. investment group in 2005. Topgolf has 13 locations in the U.S., and will have 20 by the end of the year and as many as 50 by the end of 2017, including a 105,000-square-foot facility adjacent to the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. It's golf as karaoke, with crowds of young people sitting in hitting bays and partying between taking their hacks. And the company is booming, with revenue far exceeding $100 million this year. Most important for the golf industry, 54 percent of its 4 million visitors last year were between the ages of 18 and 34.

Savior?  Color me skeptical.... golf is dying because of five-hour rounds, but it's going to be saved by a place where there's a four-hour wait to get to a hitting bay?  Good luck with that...

I've no ax to grind here, and per our agreed-to stipulation above, actual golf clubs are in the hands of human beings, so we've got that going for us.  But get this from the TopGolf TopGuy:

"We're not in the golf business, or, OK, we are, but we're really in the hospitality business," says Ken May, 54, the Topgolf CEO. He was the chief executive who presided over the merger of FedEx and Kinko's and joined Topgolf in 2013.

OK, so we're going to be saved by a guy who's not in the golf business....Now there's just too much in here to have fun with, so forgive me for going long... see what you think of this:

I went back to my hitting bay, waved my 5-iron in front of a sensor, and a microchipped ball already tagged with my name for scoring purposes came rolling down the ramp. I was hitting 'em OK, fading a little but making 200 or so yards, scoring 75 after 20 balls. (I have no idea if that's a good score or not.) At one point a guy in khaki pants interrupted me during my backswing to tell me I was picking at the ball instead of scooping. Jeff Johnston was a PGA professional who offered a half-dozen little tweaks and pointers for my swing — unwanted advice, in other words, after which my game completely fell apart, just like it would have on a real course.

OK, I'll give you second to stop laughing about the guy "making 200 yards" with his faded 5-iron... but our game is to be saved by a PGA pro telling a novice to scoop his 5-iron... what could go wrong?

The there's this gem:

A week after the golf show, my daughter, Esmee, and I drove to a local course to cash in one of my vouchers. Esmee hadn't had a great season on her team, becoming progressively demoralized as the season went on. I understood why: Golf is a difficult, humbling game. Our nine-hole round that afternoon was the classic good walk spoiled: lovely sun, cooling breeze, shimmering eucalyptus trees, and poorly hit balls zigzagging back and forth across the fairway.

On the seventh hole, a straight par 4 up a little hill and then an elbow to the right, Esmee botched her 2-iron off the tee, sending the ball skittering up the fairway. But her second shot, a 3-iron from the rough just left of the fairway, was magnificent, her swing a rightward path from three till nine that followed through, the contact a satisfying thwack, and the ball soaring some 200 yards, coming to rest just shy of the green. She stood for a moment watching it, and then she looked at me and smiled.

Letting your 15-year old daughter learn the game with a 2-iron in the 21st century is de facto child abuse...where are the child welfare agencies when you need them?

Folks, we've laughed, we've cried and we've made fun of folks, satisfying all the key tenets of our mission statement.  We play a niche sport that is not dying, but has no shortage of challenges... we need to put more Esmees into the situation described above, out on a beautiful day with her patient (if measurement-challenged father) to experience that feeling of a purely-struck golf shot.  That, not Foot-Golf or TopGolf, is what will bring her back.

In Defense of Fox

Not many defenders of Fox after their Open coverage, but Shackelford offers a modified limited hangout in defense of the Fox, though on a portion of the coverage I'm guessing none of you saw:

This year's U.S. Open featured three streams. As the network broadcast struggled to keep

up with live golf or embed innovative touches, the streaming options ofFeatured Group, Featured Hole and 360 largely delivered on Fox's pledge to deliver fresh twists on golf coverage, with only the 360 lacking a little clarity in what it was trying to accomplish. 

The difficulty of the network to match the streaming's use of fun stuff was predictable to longtime TV folks who warned that certain graphics and effects would be too difficult to incorporate into a network broadcast that is trying to show many players and pay bills too. But when the focus is on two holes, one group or one topic, the digital feeds deliver a more satisfying and up-to-the-minute experience.

Per Shack, Fox used more techie bells and whistles on the streaming coverage, and he gives us several screen shot examples, such as this:

That looks much like graphics I've seen on Golf Channel's Euro Tour coverage, but for some reason not on PGA Tour broadcasts.  But we've seen different iterations of this:

 And this...

I think these are all valuable if used in the right circumstances, and their limited use on the flagship broadcast is curious....

And, again per Geoff, there was personal growth during this process:

The first day of the digital coverage was rocky and even entertaining in a Best In Show way. The Featured Group's Tim Brando and Mark Brooks sounded like two Fred Willard'stalking over each other, but by round three they and Natalie Gulbis had meshed to deliver enjoyable, insightful and opinionated analysis. Buddy Marucci sounded like he was lost the entire time. On the Featured Hole coverage, Shane Bacon brought a confident but relaxed presence lacking in May's Four-Ball telecast, while folks like Debbie Doniger, Morgan Pressel and Joe Ogilvie all stood out with the kind of candor and energy that was lacking on big Fox. Robert Lusetich should have been used more to break up Fox's overuse of players and under-reliance on reporters. 

Announcers aside, the storytelling really worked best because of the bells and whistles that the different feeds had time to employ. Below are a few screen grabs from the week starting with Fox's best contribution to golf coverage, the use of small graphics to show you some of the key numbers golfers and their caddies faced.

I'm glad Geoff posted this because I certainly didn't watch much streaming coverage, but I'm struggling with where he sees this going:

Could this mean that the entire concept of trying to cover a golf tournament must be re-thought? We hear all of the time how golfers just want to see shots like the CBS Chirkinian days and show as many players as possible, etc. Yet for serious golf fans, the European Tour feeds and Australian coverage often resonate because they focus on a few groups and incorporate more course graphics that allow us to follow the anatomy of a round.

Fox's digital offerings proved to be more compelling watching an elite group work their way around Chambers Bay or to seeing how the field tackled one hole while the network tried to tell so many different stories.

I'm gonna go with No, Geoff.  

Here's the thing, you can roughly break the broadcast down into two separate broadcasts, Thursday-Friday and the weekend.  The importance of streaming is to show things that the broadcast can't capture, whether it's due to a limited broadcast window (though Fox's wasn't very limited) or because there's too much happening in too many locations on the course.  

But by Saturday and especially Sunday the field is seeded with the leaders going last, and we're all focused on who is going to win the darn thing...  In fact, by a Sunday they're focused on a small number of groups, in the case of the Open it was really two groups.  Obviously there were guys out ahead that made runs and got picked up, and they'll always show a guy at +12 holing out from the fairway, but they had [plenty of time to use their wizbang graphics to their heart's content.

Additionally, for major sporting events we want to be be watching the same broadcast.  When Greg Norman says something particularly egocentric, I want to be able to laugh at with the boys the next  day or around the water cooler on Monday morning (for the record, there's actually no water cooler at Unplayable Lies world HQ).  Given their liberal use of tape, there's little reason to not show anything worth seeing on the network feed.

Anybody disagree? 

This and That

Back to regularly scheduled programming....not that RSP doesn't still include some Open-hangover items...

Heir Jordan - He's halfway to the Grand Slam, right?  Well not in the opinion of those that crunch numbers... though there are differences of opinion as to how long a shot it is.  Alex Myers quoted this in his weekly feature called The Grind:

-- Jordan Spieth will complete the calendar Grand Slam: 25-to-1 odds (actual odds)

The boys at fivethirtyeight.com, Nate Silver's old place, put some statistical meat on the bones with this:

That’s why the betting markets consider McIlroy, and not Spieth, the favorite to win

each of the season’s final two majors. After adjusting for the house edge built into betting odds, the sportsbook Bovada.lv assigns McIlroy a 13 percent probability of winning the British Open and an 11 percent chance of winning the PGA Championship; the site gives Spieth a 9 percent shot at winning each tournament. 

Those numbers are similar to the ones you’d see if you looked at how past back-to-back major winners did in their next two major tournaments. Of those who won back-to-back majors, only Tiger Woods — who won his “Tiger Slam” by capturing the 2000 U.S. and British Opens and the PGA Championship, plus the 2001 Masters — went on to win any of the next two majors, giving the group an 8.3 percent success rate per major.

First and foremost, note the quality of those names.... and also that Jack only won two in a row the one time.... Also a reminder that Phil stood on the tee of the 72nd hole of the 2006 U.S. Open with a one-stroke lead....  Bottom line?

No matter how you cut it, the odds of Spieth finishing off the Grand Slam are still fairly low — about 1 percent, if the probabilities above are any kind of guide.

Well, they certainly are unless they're not.... but lest you be worried, they do add this:

Even if Spieth doesn’t win the Slam, however, his future looks exceptionally bright. Back in April, we developed a model (based on the historical performance, by age, of people who won majors) to track Woods’s progress in his pursuit of Jack Nicklaus’s all-time majors record. If we plug in Spieth’s expected major count at year’s end — roughly 2.2, using the odds from Bovada — he’s currently on pace to finish his career with just under 12 major titles, a total that would rank third all-time if it came to fruition. (And remember, that’s just a mean projection — the variance around it means there are plenty of scenarios in which he wins more than 12.) 

Either way, it’s been an incredible start to Spieth’s career, Grand Slam or not.

Whew, you guys had me worried there for a bit...good to know that a guy that wins two majors by age 21 has a career in front of him.   Now those are generic odds, not taking into account anything specifically about Jordan himself.  Patrick Kiernan answers one obvious question:

-- Spieth has never finished better than 36th in the Open. In 2014 at Hoylake, he placed 36th at two under par, and in 2013 at Muirfield, he placed 44th at 10 over.

Now that's a sample size of two, so it means absolutely nada, nil, zilch.... and in both of those cases he played in Quad Cities the week before and didn't get to the Open site until late Monday.  With a Grand Slam in the balance, you can be sure that he won't do that again...What?

Now there is good news on this front, as apparently Jordan played quite well and took notes on his one time in the Auld Grey Toon:

"What blew me away about Jordan and Patrick Rodgers is they took notes and carried a yardage book. I’m sure he (Spieth) still has that today and has already looked at it." 

Spieth certainly learned those lessons well, as he stood 5-under-par on the 12th hole at The Old Course under sunny skies and calm winds, according to Holtgrieve assistant Robbie Zalzneck

That's all well and good, but if two is a hopelessly small sample size, how should we feel about one?  

We'll Be Back....Perhaps -  That's the question on everyone's mind, though these things play out on a very protracted timetable.... Shack assesses the golf course in a longish post here:

As the Chambers Bay U.S. Open continues to generate discussion, the course is a source of consternation for many. After all, there were those world-class holes like the 6th, 10th (pictured left), 15th (played from the proper tee) and the Puget Sound-side 16th. The 18th is a beautiful finisher when it's played when played as a par-5.

These world class holes give a sense of permanence that elicits a desire to walk, play or take in great players tackling their intricacies.  

And then there are so many holes that could not be looked past. They are the ones playing uphill toward the old gravel pit shell: the 4th, 7th, plus the 8th hole shelf and elevated 9th.

His basic gripe about the place, which seems on the mark, is that they (and we should include both the architect and the Pierce County folks in this) were excessively focused on using the elevation changes to create dramatic views of Puget Sound.  Here's his take on No. 10 pictured above:

Take Chambers Bay's beautiful tenth hole, cut through a huge dunescape and offering a small hint of water. No wonder the artists gravitate toward this hole for a painting. There is only a hint of water in the background, yet it's more beautiful than an in-your-face elevated view. It's a hole any golfer would be thrilled to tackle.

And do give this Mike Bamberger piece a little time, as he sums up the pros and cons:

Let’s go back to Andy North's comment for a moment, that the course is "a joke." North,

an ESPN analyst, is a measured man. But he has a notion, shared by millions of others, that a U.S. Open should be sui generis. He grew up, just as Jack Nicklaus did before him and Tiger Woods did after him, on fairways-and-greens U.S. Opens. You know the drill: narrow fairways lined by trees and heavy rough, and small, fast pure greens with tucked pins. That's not the Masters. That's not the British Open. But that's the traditional U.S. Open. And it has done an excellent job of identifying golfing greatness. A U.S. Open at Chambers Bay, to North, was like moving a British Open to an inland, parkland course. The USGA was messing with North's memories, and many others' as well. Nobody likes that. 

But here's why you can be certain the U.S. Open will return to Chambers Bay. The tournament finished in prime time on the East Coast. The weather was beautiful. The course is on the water, with trains running between the course and the shoreline. The locals are the nicest people you could ever want to meet. The problems can be fixed by hiring the right people to tweak the course and giving them enough money to do the job.

It also made Ian Poulter's head explode, so that's something we can all unite behind...

The course has it's virtues, but as both Geoff and Mike made clear it's just a bit over the top...Mike reminds us that several of the great links have significant elevation changes (he cites Dornoch, Balybunion and Cruden Bay), but they're nowhere's near as severe (220 feet in the case of Chambers Bay) and, perhaps more importantly, those routings are very judicious in their use of downhill shots.  Links turf and downhill shots are an obviously dangerous combination, that's why you'll rarely find a downhill Par-3 like the ninth pictured above.

But I also think this is what happens when you purpose-build a golf course for a U.S. Open, which is why this is so potentially distressing...

Say It Ain't So, Jim - Jim Justice has done a great job in revitalizing The Greenbrier, but is this really necessary?

Try this one: Recruit golf legends Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Lee Trevino to jointly design a mountaintop course, one noteworthy enough to get on the U.S. Golf Association’s radar. 

And perhaps one day, attract the U.S. Open to West Virginia. 

Nothing mentioned above has ever been thought of, much less attempted. Leave it to Greenbrier resort owner/gubernatorial candidate Jim Justice to chase the dream.

“What do we have left to do in life?” he asked. “If we can do something that’s fabulous for our state, we could bring a U.S. Open here someday, we could do all this stuff, my goodness gracious!” 

Yanno, there's few worse ideas than building a golf course just for U.S. Opens... If you succeed, and that's a pretty substantial if, you have a venue appropriate for its use one week every fifteen years.  The pity is that he's got one of the few authentic C.B. Macdonald tracks open to the public, but that's not enough....

Do You Want The Good News or the Bad? - Assuming that like your humble blogger you've little interest in the Hartford-based Travelers Championship, the good news is that they're playing the U.S. Senior Open at Del Paso Country Club in Sacramento... The bad news?  Well, it's on Fox....

And this was unfortunate news:

Fred Couples has withdrawn from the U.S. Senior Open because of a back injury.

Couples, 55, has a long history of back trouble. He missed the cut at the Masters and has not played in two months. Couples also pulled out of qualifying earlier this month for the U.S. Open, held outside his hometown of Seattle.

When I heard he was trying to qualify, I thought that imprudent of a man with his back history.  I'm not sure how deep into the 36-hole event he got, but seems ill-considered. 

Ka-Ching - I'm old enough to remember the days when winning an Open Championship didn't pay enough to cover the travel costs, so this is good news:

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland (AP) -- The British Open champion at St. Andrews next month will win 1.15 million pounds ($1.8 million), an increase of 175,000 pounds ($275,000) from 2014. 

The R&A announced on Wednesday that overall prize money for the third major of the year has soared by $1.42 million to almost $10 million. 

R&A chief executive Peter Dawson says ''this increase is appropriate for an event with The Open's global appeal.''

Which makes Alex Miceli muse (hey, musings are my gig!) as to whether golf's major winners re, you know, underpaid:

In tennis, the 2015 French Open offered a total prize fund for men and women of more than $30 million. By comparison, the sum of the men’s and women’s U.S. Open golf purses will be $14 million. 

The male and female tennis winners at Wimbledon this year will pocket more than $3 million. At tennis’ U.S. Open, the winners will receive even bigger slices from the richest of the sport’s four Grand Slam events, with a purse expected to top $40 million.

OK, let's acknowledge that you can look at this from amny angles, including that a tennis major covers two full weeks.  But I'm not much interested in Alex's line of reasoning, as it's simply way too difficult to compare the revenue streams of different sports.  

But how about a more trenchant comparison, between last week and this:

 Total Purse:

     U.S. Open - $10,000,000

     Hartford -    $  6,400,000

Winner's Share:

    U.S. Open - $ 1,800,000

    Hartford -    $ 1,152,000

My take is that Mr. Spieth has been hosed...all joking aside, a U.S. open win should be worth at least double that in a third-tier Tour event, but Socialism rules.

Just When I Thought I Was Out...

Forgive The Godfather homage, but I had intended to return to our regularly-scheduled programming... But like the ill-fated Michael Corleone, the longer-form pieces are now appearing, and I'm being pulled back in.  It seems everyone wants a piece of the Fox....

Chris Chase trashes the USGA very harshly in his USA Today piece, as per this lede:

How much is bad publicity, critical reviews and ratings worth? What price can you put

on becoming a laughingstock because of a television partner that was so awful and inexperienced that its mere presence sunk one of the most thrilling golf championships of the past few decades?

Thirteen million dollars, that’s what. That’s the difference between what Fox offered per year to the USGA for rights to the U.S. Open ($93 million) than longtime partner NBC ($80 million). Was the extra money worth it? Was turning its back on NBC the right call?

C'mon Chris, tell us how you really feel...  Chris continues to spray spittle with this:

In that announcement, the USGA wrote: “The game is evolving and requires bold and unique approaches on many levels, and FOX shares our vision to seek fresh thinking and innovative ideas to deliver championship golf.”

If that unique approach was losing the ball off the tee, misidentifying players’ home countries, staying completely silent before Jordan Spieth and Dustin Johnson were hitting makable eagle putts on No. 18 for the win and completely ignoring Spieth while Johnson was putting for a victory, then to force a playoff, then, yes, Fox did something unique. If the goal was to become more popular than The Masters, don’t count on it. And only national pride and time zones will keep the Open ahead of its British counterpart.

Heh!  I do think he's being unduly harsh here, as it's not like NBC never lost a ball in the air or didn't know where a shot ended up, and the terrain at Chambers was far more hostile an environment for coverage...and one last bit, which mirrors my initial concerns regarding Fox:

Not this year, as Fox had too many people on air and microphones everywhere, making the proceedings sound as loud as a showing of Jurassic World. It was unbearable. Golf is a tranquil sport. Fox doesn’t do tranquil. Golf isn’t sexy. Fox wants it to be. You see the issues?

Yeah, the universal response to the announcement of the contract was along the lines of, "Fox?  Really?"  But I'm going to call BS on this conclusion:

After its self-inflicting damage to the U.S. Open brand, maybe the question isn’t whether the USGA made the wrong cash grab, but whether Fox overpaid for a brand it had to know it would tarnish?.

I'm as critical of Fox as the next incredibly astute and influential blogger, but the U.S. Open is as valuable a property today as it was a week ago.  he's giving Fox far too much credit... 

Richard Sandomir writing in the Times is also critical, though it's all the more devastating for its temperate tone:

For Greg Norman, it was a moment to define himself in his first United States Open as

the lead analyst. Dustin Johnson was on the 18th green on Sunday with a chance to win if he sank an eagle putt. What was Norman’s assessment of the putt? Would it go left or right? What sort of speed should he put on it? Norman said nothing. Johnson missed. 

Now, Johnson had to try for a birdie to tie Jordan Spieth and set up a playoff for Monday. What did Norman say as Johnson prepared to putt? “Not an easy one.” That was all.

This is spot on, given that the players were complaining all week that it was difficult to hit the putts with enough speed to hold their line.  As I explained in the moment to Employee No. 2, the more he tries to make the eagle putt the more resigned he'll have to be to a 5-footer coming back.  A real missed opportunity for the Shark.

Sandomir provides a bullet-point list of flaws and, while there's room to quibble, most are well argued and fair.  I'm much more willing than he to give Fox some slack on the audio side, as while it's true that they messed up by allowing some inadvertent audio to be heard, the mic in the cup allowed us to hear Jordan explaining to Greller why he missed a putt.  And who doesn't want to hear that?

This is the close of Sandomir's piece, a rather prescient Johnny Miller quote:

Miller predicted in 2013 that Fox would have, at best, growing pains. After hearing that Fox had outbid NBC, Miller said, “You can’t just fall out of a tree and do the U.S. Open.” Early in Round 1, Buck said, “We’ve dropped out of a tree onto your TV.” And too often, that was precisely how it looked.

I'm well-known as a glass-half-full kind of guy, but it seems to me the lingering question is how are they going to improve, given their limited broadcast schedule?  

Shack linked to both these pieces, and has some interesting commentary.  I may actually quibble more with Geoff than with the two authors above.  But first, he gave Fox's streaming coverage high marks:

Furthermore, the strong performance by the digital streams and record viewer response to those alternative broadcasts revealed some fun Fox innovations and forward-thinking that were hardly seen on the network broadcast.

That's fair enough, though I'd like to know what those innovations were and how substantial the increases were.  But using the streaming coverage to test technology isn't a bad call methinks.  This next bit is entirely fair, as there was a tone of hubris evident in the broadcast:

The social mediasphere was harsh, but Fox invited some of the vitriol by allowing Joe Buck to declare in pre-championship hype that they would bring a fresh, innovative approach. Buck opened the broadcast with a jab at Johnny Miller’s remark upon learning that Fox would be starting its golf broadcasting foray at the U.S. Open. The brief bit of humility displayed at last fall's Shark Shootout was no where to be seen.

But see what you think of this rant:

Yet the anger expressed toward the USGA and Executive Director Mike Davis by the likes of Billy Horschel, Ian Poulter and others was clearly a response to Fox's sugarcoating of the effort by their "partners" at the USGA. Other than a refined explanation of the putting surface issue by Gil Hanse on Sunday and some forthright comments on the digital streams, hosts Buck and Norman went into hard sell mode on the great setup efforts and generally downplayed the turfgrass issues. They were chatting with Davis during Friday's telecast for one of his three lengthy in-booth visits as a former U.S. Open champion and a pre-tournament favorite, Justin Rose, was making a triple bogey at the par-4 18th. The audio featured discussion of fescue grass and Norman's suggestion that he'd like to play heather on the property, all set to visuals of Rose taking himself out of contention. The episode gave the impression that messaging for the USGA took priority over the playing of the national championship.

Shack has been highly critical of Fox for their kid gloves treatment of the USGA, and that's a fair subject.  I'm not going to pretend to remember whether NBC's tone was any more critical at Shinnecock or indulge in guessing about how Johnny and Co. would have treated the greens.

But the anger of Horschel and Poulter had little to nothing to do with Fox... they were pissed at Mike Davis for sure, but Mike also appeared in the press room for the rest of the golf media to question.

And Geoff, are you serious about the Justin Rose comment?  Mike is a busy guy and they picked a time for him to stop by the set...  It was entirely appropriate to devote the time to his set-up decisions, and there's nothing short of a lightning storm that strikes Rory McIlroy that can't be adequately covered a few minutes later...

And yes, this was a most curious example of the USGA admitting to error and having Fox play lapdog:

Another example landed during Tom O’Toole’s in-booth visit where the outgoing USGA president conceded adjustments would have to be made to Chambers Bay so that fans could see play at a future U.S. Open there. To which Norman launched into a declaration that there was 100% approval for the U.S. Open at Chambers Bay from the “masses” he queried during a walk of the grounds.

Before we go, I'll just juxtapose this Shack rant:

The importance of USGA "brand identiy" as focal point over our national championship was reinforced by the absurdity of a stark red USGA logo on screen (sometimes in two spots), always at the expense of “U.S. Open” mentions on the lower right leaderboard. The USGA branding overpowered the player names and even the Fox logo. Backdrops for interviews and other moments empahsized the USGA logo, not the U.S. Open name or logo. The overall look cemented the impression of Fox being asked to sell the “brand” of the USGA. With a mess of a telecast, the USGA brand obsession distracted from celebrating the history, people and story of America’s national championship.

Yet this was exactly the partnership vision set forth by the those who orchestrated the move to Fox: former USGA president Glen Nager and (brief) Executive Committee member Gary Stevenson. Starting with the 2015 U.S. Open telecast, they got exactly what they wanted in a partner. But as the first telecast revealed, having a partner selling the USGA brand came at a huge price to the U.S. Open's image as a premier sporting event.

And to think a week ago we were responding to allegations that Shack only criticized peons like Matt Every because they had no power.  But Geoff also reminds us of  this important comment from the late-great Frank Hannigan:

As the late Frank Hannigan warned, the USGA wants to be loved and that's not their core mission. The resulting product put forward by Fox at Chambers Bay, where the USGA's brand became the focal point over the championship, confirmed his worst fears.

I'll concur that a governing body that's loved is probably weak on the governance thing...  but think of that every time you see the USGA brand commercials, and especially of how much of their $13 million windfall is so consumed.

But be of good cheer golf fans, only eleven more Fox U.S. Opens... 

Open and Shut

We're about thirty-six hours removed from DJ's 3-jack, and it still seems surreal, doesn't it?  So, let's see how our post-Open plot lines have evolved...

Last Shot - Brian Wacker captures the details on Jordan's last full swing, the 280-yard three-wood that left him putting for eagle:

“I hit it right on the middle of the face and I looked up and it was bleeding right, I just

asked for the wind to hold it up just a little bit,” Spieth said. “And it looked like it did, just on the last second it stayed out of going in that bunker and instead found the rebound and stayed up on the top ledge. In midair I was going to be pleased anywhere on the green. And then with the roar I knew it stayed on the top ledge. I'm sitting there thinking, how in the world did it stay up, but I guess it was just my day.” 

And his week. 

Where the ball landed on the green was the same spot that he’d hit it during a practice round with his coach Cameron McCormick and caddie Michael Greller, who had the experience of about 40 loops around Chambers Bay during summers when he was a sixth grade math and sciende teacher at nearby Narrows View Intermediate School before circuitously landing on Spieth’s bag at the start of his career.

Yeah, he didn't seem to like it much, but then he's been known to over-share his feeling with his golf ball and the rest of us.... and where was the Fox on-course reporter to tell us the line the shot was on?

I was more frustrated by Fox's interview of King Louis that derailed any air time to set up DJ's second shot on No. 18, but it was all pretty bad...

A short highlight video of Jordan's finish can be watched here.

Don't Know Much About History - These kids today don't know much about anything that happened before Tiger, so this is encouraging:

Spieth was a freshman at Texas when he first went to St. Andrews with the rest of the Walker Cup team. They played the Old Course, soaked up the vibe at the home of golf and then headed north for their matches at Royal Aberdeen. 

“It’s one of my favorite places in the world,” Spieth said Sunday evening. “I remember walking around the R&A clubhouse and seeing paintings of royalty playing golf, and it was dated 14-whatever. I’m thinking, our country was discovered in 1492 and they were playing golf here before anyone even knew the Americas existed.” 

That was only four years ago, when not many outside golf circles knew Spieth. He’ll get more attention next time he arrives at St. Andrews.

OK, I'd have preferred that he did that homework before going over, but at least he looked at the pictures and drew some quite reasonable inferences.  And he seems to get that the Grand Slam could be kind of a big deal:

“I’m just focused on the claret jug now,” he said. “The Grand Slam is something that I never could really fathom somebody doing, considering I watched Tiger win when he was winning whatever percentage of the majors he played in. And he won the Tiger Slam, but he never won the four in one year. And I figured if anybody was going to do it, it would be him, which he still can.”

I did like how he caught himself at the end there, as there's no sense in venturing into Stephen Ames terrain.  On the other hand, Tiger would actually have to make a cut before we can talk Grand Slam, but I digress...

Curmudgeonly Corrigan sets the scene for us:

The scene is set up perfectly. Spieth and McIlroy hold the four majors between them going into the event and that has not happened since 1972 with Jack ­Nicklaus and Lee Trevino. On that occasion, Trevino denied Nicklaus the treble by a shot. Spieth is determined to avoid the same fate.

So, the key words are historic and almost unprecedented....that's why this is just so.... not sure what to go with here....how about ill-considered:

But, before he shoots for his third major of the calendar year, he will be playing for his second John Deere Classic title. 

Halfway to one of professional golf's most lauded – and yet to be attained – accomplishments, Spieth still is planning on playing in the July 6-12 JDC at TPC Deere Run. He is, apparently, sticking to a commitment he made to the tournament that gave him opportunities to break into the pro game during his college and first pro year.

Yanno, loyalty and honoring commitments is a great thing, but to everything there is a season.  Exactly how many chances do we guess that Jordan will have to go after the third leg of a Grand Slam at the home of golf?  

Quad Cities is played the week before the Open Championship, and Sunday night they run a charter to the location of the Open Championship.  All well and good, but that means you're not on the golf course until Monday afternoon at the earliest, and there's jet lag for even a 22-year old...

And The Old Course is not just any course....there's probably no place where the extensive study is as required or rewarded, especially if they get a week with variable winds.   Shack has similar thoughts here, but I'll add that this would be the perfect year to play the Scottish Open the week before at Gullane.  We've recently seen Rory play and travel too much for all the right reasons, but not with history hanging in the balance...This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, he shouldn't put himself in the position of deciding later that he wishes he had gotten there earlier...

Mikey Likes It - The USGA's Mike Davis is a good guy, having rescued its flagship event from the dreadful Tom Meeks years.  The Open under Mike's watch has become far more interesting, without sacrificing anything in the way of challenge or shotmaking....

Mike has been willing to take risks, both in terms of his set-ups as well as in his choices of venues.  And those risks aren't always going to pan out, as we saw at Merion two years ago and to a certain extent this week.  And if I were a player and showed up to find issues with the greens I'd no doubt be upset, and the last thing I'd want to hear is an obscure blogger telling me to calm down...  That said, Ian, you really need to calm down a bit....

The Seattle Times scored a sitdown with Mike, and there was much of interest.  First his global take on the week:

Davis doesn’t want the excitement of the past week — and the buzz over this event that engulfed the Northwest golf community the past two years — to be buried under any controversy, and he doesn’t think it will. 

“Fifty years from now, they’re going to look back and say, ‘Do you remember the end of this 2015 U.S. Open, how it went back and forth?’ ”

Obviously that's what he wants, but it also seems reasonable.  What more could we have wanted, especially from the final day, with wild charges up the leaderboard, low rounds as well as disasters and a winner that finished birdie-double bogey-birdie?

As for the greens, Mike had this to add:

Davis agrees with the criticism but only to a point, and he promises to do better if the U.S. Open returns to Chambers Bay. 

“In some ways, they weren’t as good as we would have hoped,” Davis said of the greens, “but some people would make it out that they’re putting on broccoli. I completely disagree with that assessment. That’s an unfair assessment to say they were that bad because we have had bad greens before that were bumpier than these; we just have.”

So, how did it come to pass?

Davis said Chambers Bay encountered some agronomic problems last fall when the fescue greens were invaded by poa annua. 

Getting rid of unwanted poa annua has been a challenge for decades. No chemical is available that produces consistent, positive results. Handpicking poa out of greens has been tried, but it’s mostly a losing battle.

“Having done a lot of these things (conducting Opens), I look at it and say, ‘Yes, we had bumpy greens,’ ” he said. “But at the end of it, we’ve had bumpy greens many, many, many times at the U.S. Open. We’ve played this event 115 times, and the vast majority of them have been on poa annua greens. Later in the day, there’s a bounce to them. If you have ever looked at that famous putt Tiger Woods made at Torrey Pines on the 72nd hole, that ball was in the air 30 times.”

That's a good bit of perspective, even though we should likely acknowledge that these greens (or at least the worst of them) were bumpier than the Torrey greens.  Unfortunately I couldn't find the video of Tiger's putt from behind him, but I do remember it being bobbly....

As for the future, optimism prevails:

The two main entities of this Open — the USGA and Pierce County, which owns Chambers Bay — will have their post-championship assessments, but statements from both parties indicate a desire for the Open to return in another 10 years or so. 

“Getting smooth greens, that will happen,” Davis said. “Listen, that will absolutely happen. That will absolutely, positively happen.”

As for the former, it ain't Pierce County's call and, if it happens, it will be at least fifteen years.  By then I can't see Poulter qualifying...so we've got that going for us.

Of Career Slams -  Patrick Kiernan is bearish on Phil's chances:

Memories....

Phil Mickelson second chance to complete the career Grand Slam got off to a promising start, but the six-time U.S. Open runner-up wound up leaving Chambers Bay with a disappointing T-64. With a back-end finish like that and just five more years before he becomes eligible for the Champions Tour, what's next for the aging star in his pursuit of golf history?

Unfortunately for Phil, it doesn't get any easier.

Kiernan goes through the venues, but it's a pretty moot analysis, as he could have hit "Publish" after this one-sentence caveat:

For starters, Mickelson will turn 46 on Day 1 at next year's U.S. Open, meaning a win would make him the oldest-ever winner of the tournament.

He doesn't even mention the psoriatic arthritis... sorry Phil Phans....Not.  Gonna.  Happen.

Haven't We Suffered Enough? - John Hawkins takes us behind the scenes with the Shark... I know, but does anyone know if this is true?

It was an easy call for those who care about such things: Shark + Fox = Outside the Box.

In theory, without query, Norman’s outspoken nature and attack-life mantra were an ideal fit for the network’s golf model. His longtime friendship with fellow Australian David Hill, whose tenure as chairman of the sports division coincided with Fox’s leap into Americana, made the April 2014 hire a no-brainer, so to speak. 

“I’m glad I turned down CBS [in 2006] ,” Norman says. “I was offered the job before [Nick] Faldo took it and knew why I turned it down—I didn’t want to be gone on weekends for another 12 or 14 weeks. This opportunity to stay connected with the game was perfect for me.”

Wow, that was a close call.... but this sounds about right:

One shouldn’t expect anything less, of course, but then again, you’d be surprised. “He certainly goes about the job differently than some of the others,” says USGA executive director Mike Davis. “He’s very perceptive, very into the process behind what’s going on.” 

The two men ran into each other on Wednesday morning while Davis was finalizing first-round pin positions. “He asked me what I thought about a couple of them,” Norman would say that afternoon, “and I gave him a tour player’s viewpoint.” Davis would not confirm or deny that he asked for Norman’s opinion, but an informed third party can easily envision the Shark’s volunteering his thoughts on such matters.

The good news?  Fox only has eleven more Opens under their contract.