You all know how it goes....just a couple of days away from the office and you come back to a desk piled so high with paper that you don't know where to start...
Ladies Day - We'll be sure to give the ladies their due this week, as they have they have the spotlight to themselves. Beth Ann Nichols is impressed thus far:
RYE, N.Y. – There’s a certain energy here at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship,
The Big Wiesie with Matt Lauer during the Pro-Am. a strong curiosity as the LPGA takes center stage at Westchester Country Club. Everything about the place feels grand.
“You can’t hope to be on a better golf course than this,” said New York resident Cristie Kerr. “I’m not just saying that because it’s a little bit of a home game. I’m saying that because it is such a scenic, beautiful, tough-as-nails golf course that we deserve, as a tour, to be on.”
Inbee Park said the course reminded her of a U.S. Women’s Open venue.
That last bit squares with my sense of the place. It's 6,670 yards on the card though playing as a Par-73. While for the men it played as a short, tight course favoring the more accurate players, it's a long, forced-march for the gals...though still fairly tight.
The girls are of course all business:
Jessica Korda appreciates the courtesy Kia cars. While other majors – ANA Inspiration and USWO – offer cars, the LPGA Championship did not. Half the field this week gets a free ride.
Korda also noted the array of Gatorade flavors, in their own box, on the golf course.“Not only Gatorade,” said Martin, “they have Snickers and apples. I don’t know why that’s such a big deal but it is.”
Well, where were you gonna go in Rochester, anyway? But easy on those Snickers, Mo, they're not great for the tempo...
Someday I'll find a teenager willing to help me learn how to embed Instagram videos, but go here for a cute video of Jessica Korda calling out caddie Kyle Bradley for leaving her stranded in the rain. She did much the same by the third green yesterday such that a couple of us joined in to try to get Kyle's attention from behind the ropes. Korda, I'll remind folks, provided one of the funniest sound bites from last season when she referred to her ball as ovulating on the green, but then had fun with it on Twitter after the fact.
Other social media moments can be found here as well.
Lastly on this topic is today's required reading, this wonderful Bill Fields profile of Lydia Ko's New Zealand roots. There's far too much there for me to do it justice, but I'll excerpt a couple of the more surprising bits, such as this:
When they worked on Lydia's long game, Wilson -- in contrast to a popular teaching philosophy that says junior golfers should learn to hit the ball hard, then learn to control it -- discouraged her from "trying to create more power than she could." Influenced by physiotherapists at the Institute of Golf that he co-founded after leaving Pupuke, Wilson believed such an approach would have wrecked her swing and eventually her body.
"If our goal from day one was to get her to hit it as far as she can, she wouldn't be playing golf anymore," he says. "She'd be busted, her back would be done. We always said that rhythm was good."
You can see that in Lydia's game to this day, as she's always choked down on the grip and hitting at three-quarter tempo... I simply don't know what to make of this:
When Ko grew a bit older, those valuable Sunday sessions gave way to formal training
Lydia with Niethe with someone else, mental performance coach David Niethe. Ko saw Niethe -- who has degrees in neurolinguistic programming and hypnotherapy and consults with athletes in various sports -- for an hour once a month for approximately seven years."Lydia has been hypnotized many a time by me," says Niethe, 46, a large brick of a person who used to compete in strong-man competitions. In using hypnosis during her formative years as a golfer, Ko has that in common with Tiger Woods, who as a teenager was hypnotized by Dr. Jay Brunza, a friend of his late father, Earl, as one tool to better his play.
"We would use hypnosis if we deemed we needed to," Niethe says. "There was a lot of action, reflection, deciding strategies. We'd talk about something, then try to make it a habit."
I was unfamiliar with the Tiger story, but Fields attributes Lydia's preternatural calm to Niethe's coaching.
She's quite the talent but I'd suggest keeping expectations in check for her this week, as she's still one of the shorter sticks out there. Watch play later today at the five Par-5's to properly assess her chances....if they're all hitting wedges in, then she's got as good a chance as any. But it seemed to me that the longer hitters can reach them (especially Nos. 9, 12 and 15), and that will put our young lady at quite the disadvantage.
Wither Tiger - The ironic aspect of the item above is that I could see Tiger turning to hypnosis now....Where's Jay Brunza when you need him most?
Golf Channel's Brandel Chamblee has recently staked his career on second-guessing Tiger, and these comments were certainly not a surprise to anyone:
Tiger Woods, who carded a career-worst 85 on Saturday, and on Sunday finished in lastplace at the Memorial, "destroyed" his "great golf game" by fiddling with his swing too many times, according to Brandel Chamblee.
The outspoken Golf Channel analyst has taken the winner of five Memorial tourneys to task over a variety of issues over the years. So it was hardly surprising that he had a few opinions to share about Woods’ wayward shot-making last week at Muirfield Village.
"Time hasn’t robbed Tiger Woods of his game, he’s done this to himself," Chamblee said of the oft-injured 39-year-old former world No. 1. "He’s traded his genius for the ideas of others. He’s changed his body in the gym for bulk. Everything that we see here is the result of what he’s done over the last four, five, six, seven, eight years."
Plus this:
The revolving door of swing coaches is what has wrecked Woods’ career, Chamblee averred.
"His complete and utter belief in the ideas of others, turning over that great game of his, that’s mysterious to me," he said. "His desire to build a great game and destroy it, and build a great game and destroy it ... destroyed the method that led to his dominance."
We certainly can leave that piece without the thoughts of Tiger crony/enabler Notah Begay:
Tiger intimate, Chamblee’s Golf Channel colleague, and the person who persuaded his Stanford teammate to hire his new swing consultant, Notah Begay III, conceded there were "some shortcomings" in Woods’ game over the last few days. He was not, however, ready to pull the plug on the Como-Woods experiment, which has yielded only six starts (including the Hero World Challenge) but looks rather shaky with the U.S. Open looming in two weeks."We sort of need to defer to a person who’s done the things that he’s done in his career and see how this thing materializes over the next two to three months," Begay said. "I don’t know how this thing’s going to turn out, but all I’m saying is, let’s give a little bit of time for this to materialize."
While there's little need for us to be insufferable purists regarding journalistic ethics in sports, Notah's position as chief-Tiger analysts on Golf Channel has long been problematic. Now he's contorted into a pretzel since he was the link between Tiger and Chris Como.
Shack makes a case with which I agree about the next two major venues:
At Chambers Bay and St. Andrews for the next two majors, Woods will have to play crafty wind shots and may even be forced to stinger-his way around if he's lucky. The lack of confidence in the driver will hurt him more at Chambers, but what does it say that when he hits recoveries or shots forcing his artistic sensibilities, he's still one of the best in the world and far superior at such shots to someone like Rory McIlroy.
Anything that forces Tiger to hit golf shots has to be a good thing... he's still got short-game chops and seems way too robotic in playing point-to-point golf. Though Geoff's conclusion isn't exactly upbeat:
The problem with that thinking is clear: the worse it gets with days like The Memorial 85, the more Woods looks to science and analysis to solve his problems instead of to his immense creativity. Maybe the natural instincts are all gone, but I suspect not.Why is all of this worth contemplating?
Because golf is the one sport more than any other where anyone who has played long enough can relate to some of the thoughts and reactions an elite player has when trying to solve problems. Worse, it's so easy to see from the outside looking in what plagues him. But there really is no way around the "release pattern" issues for Woods other than to take a few years off to clear his head. Or, he can be forced to hit shots that set the base swing aside and require him to revert to the patterns that made him a once-in-a-lifetime talent.Yes, he has jeopardized his career and because of his singular talent, he can even get his game back.
It really is quite fascinating, no?
Tiger, Reevaluated - New friend Mark Broadie has a long piece up at Golf.com that is well worth your time if you're interested in the statistical side of our game, which is far more interesting than it sounds. The tent-pole of the piece is that Tiger holds an amazing record of which no one is aware:
As a passionate fan of golf and analytics, I was struck by the paucity of documented records and streaks in golf, especially compared with other sports. Thanks to the PGA Tour's wealth of scoring data, which dates back to 1983, I was able to do some digging—a lot of digging. (There have been about 1,500 Tour events played since 1983.) The stats yield all kinds of fascinating streaks and records (see pages 94-96). Discovering a streak of DiMaggio-esque significance was the last thing on my mind. Yet, out of the blue, there it was.From August 1999 through November 2000, Woods beat the field's average score in an astounding 89 consecutive PGA Tour tournament rounds. That is roughlythree times the length of the streak posted by his nearest competitor. (Only official PGA Tour stroke-play events are counted for this streak, so the WGC-Match Play, for example, is not included.)
I'm usually not a fan of records created by virtue of the rear-view mirror, but this does capture the amazing consistency of Tiger's play in circa 2000. And pace Brandell Chamblee, why you would change ANYTHING at that point is hard to imagine...
It's true that we don't really need to be reminded of how great Tiger was in that era, but exhibiting that greatness on a day-to-day basis in our game is just staggering.... Everyone has an off day in our game, right? I'm less than excited about the comparison to Joe DiMaggio's streak, though Mark makes all the right points in that regard. It's just an amazing data point to me, but that's really good stuff.
Mark also provides a number of interesting graphics with the piece. For instance, curious about who had the best week in any tourney?
Well, he did win by 15...But I also well remember the Phil (the week before his second Masters win) and Calc entries, though regrettably Duffy's great week never registered with me.
More amusingly, want to know who had the best ever putting week?
I am not a statistical analyst nor do I play one on TV, but can you say small sample size?
You've Been Trumped - This report surfaced of our Donald being admitted into polite society:
Trump International Golf Links at Balmedie will host the Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Open in 2017, 2019 and 2020.
Donald Trump’s course near Aberdeen has landed the honour of hosting the event after impressing European Tour officials.
An announcement on the future host venues for the tournament, which will be played at Gullane next month before moving to Castle Stuart near Inverness in 2016, is imminent.
I had long speculated that these parties would end up in each other's arms, as the course was built in hopes of luring an Open Championship. The issue to me is to wonder what became of the Tour's and sponsor's intention to move the event around Scotland, which seemed a perfect idea.
But don't yet abandon yourself to despair, as tournament director Peter Adams attempts to throw cold water on the report:
‘Trump International is one of a number of clubs with which the Tour has been in conversation,’ he said.
I can't imagine that The Donald would have leaked such a story to force their hand...because that would be wrong.
Book Review of the Week - By far my personal favorite story of the week was the release of excerpts from Shane Ryan's new book, Slaying the Tiger - A Year Inside the Ropes on the New PGA Tour. Well, not so much the release of the excerpts, but more Shack going medieval on Mr. Ryan in response...
Here's Geoff's lede:
Thanks to all who emailed your concerns over my inclusion as one of the manycalculating, shady people who pervade this stuffy and righteous sport oppressing those seeking to expose its human-rights violating ways. While most of you know I'm all for anti-establishment voices and questioning authorities who run the game, I do believe that in order to carry weight such a book should reveal the author to actually like golf.
Anyway, I wasn't privy to a review copy like the rest of the sports media world, but the released chapters ooze the sensibility of a movie trailer that goes on too long and gives way too much away. And all created by someone who wanted to direct a different script.
The takeaway from these excerpts: if you have been in a coma for the last 10 years and hope to get back to a state of vegetative bliss for the ultra low price of $29.00, this is your book.
OK, I'm guessing that our Geoff is not a fan... it's quite understandable that Geoff would take it personally when he's personally called out by a Tour player:
“He’s done it before,” he said intently. “He’s picking me out to be a villain because I’m an easy target.”
The subject was Geoff Shackelford, a blogger who covers the sport with an irreverent tone. But since this is golf we’re talking about, with all its claims to propriety, Shackelford toes the line, choosing his victims strategically in order not to offend anyone with real influence.
You'll no doubt sense why Shack is pissed, as the claim is almost impossible to refute. But let's get to the incendiary part:
Earlier that month, Every caused a minor stir when he complained about the state of TPC Sawgrass. He called it “the worst-conditioned course in Jacksonville” and compared the greens unfavorably to “Miami munis.” (This rant later earned him a “talking-to” from Tour officials.) However, he also took pains to blame himself for his 76-77-CUT performance, leaving the conditions out of it. Shackelford ignored that last part, and suggested that Every was merely making excuses for himself.
“And why is his opinion so *&%$#@! important?” Every continued, still chafing at the perceived dishonesty two weeks later. “I told you I don’t like Geoff Shackelford, and you can write that in your book.” He lowered his head inches from my tape recorder, speaking slowly and loudly for emphasis: “*&%$ you, Geoff.”“That will go in the book,” I promised.
Wow, still spraying saliva two weeks later? Sounds like an anger workshop could be in Matt's future. Do read Shack's amusing Fisking of Ryan, in which he of course links to his original post. It doesn't help Ryan's case that the bit about Every blaming himself is very much in evidence in Geoff's post, nor do I consider the tone of the post to be especially off-putting.
But do read Shack's long post as we all love a good rant. And by the time he gets to the subject of Augusta National, he's worked up quite the head of steam. How about this hyperbola:
In this kind of oppressive atmosphere, how could I be expected to appreciate the surroundings, stunning though they may be?For most of the week, I felt like a tourist in North Korea, watched with suspicion by armed soldiers. One false move, I thought, and I could be thrown in the underground bunker where they keep all the dead birds.
I must say, comparing the admittedly tightly-controlled environment at ANGC to a North Korean gulag seems the very definition of millennial solipsism...it's the kind of over-the-rop metaphor that tells us far more about the writer than about the subject.
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