'Dis and 'Dat

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maximima culpa...Apologies for my absence, but a combination of family business and an outing-heavy week left me no time to sate your need for those random musings you so crave...  So buckle in, we could be here for a while.

Spieth, In Perspective - Wonder Boy turned 22 earlier in the week, and Stephen Hennessy compared his achievements at that tender age to that other guy.  As you no doubt are aware, Spieth has five Tour wins at this point:

Tiger won six times before he turned 22. (1996 Las Vegas Invitational, 1996 Walt Disney World Classic, 1997 Mercedes Championship, 1997 Masters, 1997 Byron Nelson, 1997 Colonial, 1997 Western Open.) 

World ranking: No. 2. Spieth trails Rory McIlroy by one point after the British Open. Same as Tiger, who trailed Greg Norman by less than a point.

 A fun comparison, though I found this a bit churlish:

Hairline tracker: Almost a wash. Maybe the key to being really good at golf as a young gun is starting to lose your hair?

Yeah, but at least Tiger didn't try to arrange his hair every time he removed his cap.  Deal with it, Jordan.

And Golf Channel celebrates with a slideshow of Spieth Through the Years....You mean both of them?  Actually, it covers six years, including this from 2008:

About That Other Guy - If you still count yourself among the dwindling Tiger Woods fans, then I'd encourage you to clear your calendar to watch him play this weekend, as he's like that dinosaur in the ubiquitous Golf Now commercials, he just can't buy a tee time.

First, this from yesterday's presser:

“I've gone through this before and unfortunately sometimes I have to get a little bit worse before I can make a giant stride to get forward and get better,” Woods said Tuesday after a practice round. “Has it been fun going through this? No, it hasn't because I'm not scoring obviously.

A little bit worse?  Heh! Tiger, you funny...But here's the situation in a nutshell:

Unless Woods wins this week, he won’t be in the field for next week’s Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio, where he’s won eight times. If he doesn’t win, his next start would be the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits in Sheboygan, Wis. If he doesn’t do well there, he won’t make the FedExCup Playoffs and will turn his attention to the start of the 2015-16 season in October.

But, and this will shock you, he thinks he's really close:

“I didn’t touch a club for a week,” Woods said Tuesday from Robert Trent Jones Golf

Club, site of this week’s Quicken Loans National. “When I geared back up, I started doing tome testing and found a couple little things, but it wasn’t anything major, which was nice. 

“Some of my swings just weren’t quite right and I worked on a few things and feel pretty good now.”

Tome testing?  Anyone know the heck that is?  Anyone....Bueller?  Joel Beall posts Five Things That We Hope Are True from that presser, including this:

2. He believes his woes are ephemeral

According to Woods, his slump is the byproduct of his short game.

"I didn't think it would take this long because I thought I would have my short game earlier, which I didn't at the very beginning of the year,” Woods said at his presser. “You can cover up a lot of different things when you are chipping and putting well."

Really?  That's what you're going with?  OK, there's little doubt that without the shanhs he could have turned his Friday 85 at Phoenix into, let's say, a 79.... It seems more likely to this eye that while wondering if Tiger had contracted the "S" word that we were distracted from the bigger picture issues with the driver and putter.

The strongest defense of our hero comes from DJ Gallo in The Guardian, who argues that...well, the header really tells you all you need to know:

Tiger Woods, like Robert De Niro, has earned the right to be terrible

The sub-header is just as good, likening the 2015 Tiger more to Little Fockers than Godfather II.  He cites some sources calling on The Striped One to quit, and mans the barricades with this:

It’s a remarkable phenomenon that is unique to sports: a working media that believes it has a say on when someone should stop their career, their life’s work.

Errr DJ, this is more of a birds gonna swim, fish gonna fly thing....they say that he should quit because they can, without any repercussions....  They have columns to file and there's zero chance that anyone is heeding their advice, and provocative gets clicks.

Trumpettes Blare - Ron Sirak eagerly awaits The Donald's arrival at Turnberry for the Women's British Open:

Well now, this should be interesting. 

Donald Trump is going to face the media Thursday at the Ricoh Women’s British Open, held at Trump Turnberry, and according to the ground rules, questions from reporters will be limited to golf.

I wonder if he’s ever faced the British tabloids before, the guys and gals Sir Nick Faldo called “Rotties,” short for Rottweilers because of their doggedness.

Probably not, as it turns out:

“Donald Trump will make himself available to meet the Championship’s accredited media at 1.30pm on Thursday, 30th July. We will confirm where this meeting will take place tomorrow morning. 

“Questions must be restricted to the subjects golf, Turnberry and the tournament.

Why?  What else could they possibly inquire about?  I do have to wonder if Ron was perhaps the victim of an overzealous editor with this, as he's far too knowledgeable about the ladies' game:

Commissioner Mike Whan was able to disavow Trump’s comments, but with the statements on Mexican immigrants coming just three weeks before the Ricoh Women's British Open there was simply not enough time to change the venue of any tournament, let alone a major championship.

Well, that and the fact that is isn't, you know, his event...it's run by the Ladies' Golf Union.

Ewan Murray covers the European perspective on things with this:

Disappointingly the European Tour, which hopes to host the Scottish Open at Trump’s

course on the outskirts of Aberdeen, has been silent. So, too, the Scottish Government which ploughs £1.4m a year into that event. 

The R&A would also happily have dodged the issue until it was put to it immediately before the Open Championship. Turnberry remains part of the Open rota and could host the tournament in 2020. When asked if the R&A’s position had been compromised by Trump’s comments, its chief executive, Peter Dawson, said: “Well, it’s had a lot of publicity, hasn’t it? We don’t have any decisions to make about Turnberry for quite some time and I think we’ll just let a bit of time pass and future championship committees will deal with them at the time.”

In other words: “We hope this issue vanishes.” Equally disappointing was that it shouldn’t have even been the outgoing Dawson’s question to answer. The chairman of that championship committee, Peter Unsworth, sat on his hands alongside him.

No bias there, eh?  I just love the assumption that R&A venue decisions should be determined by the political vies of the properties' owners... As for that last 'graph, to whom does Murray think Unsworth reports?  

It was entirely appropriate for Dawson to duck the question, but for different reasons.  Dawson has presided over his last Open Championship and is to be succeeded by the amusingly-named Martin Slumbers.  Dawson has simply followed protocol in leaving such decisions to his successor, who will have to deal with any fallout such a decision entails.

"Pro" Seems To Be The Wrong Word - What's better than a trick-shot video?  I'd submit a trick-shot video gone bad....horribly bad:

On the YouTube page he maintains that he shot 90 that day, though no word on how he did on the back nine.

Check This - Shack has an oh-so-timely (for me) post on shipping ones golf clubs ahead on travel to Scotland, on my current to-do list as we'll be shipping the bride's weapons because she's making a side-trip through London.

But the broader interest in this is the spate of ladies at Turnberry without their clubs, per this roundup at The Loop by Stephen Hennessy.  It's mostly in the form of tweets, but Stacy Lewis and caddie actually drove to Heathrow to pick them up, suffering a black-of-night flat tire that her caddie was able to change by the light of her cell phone.

Also affected were Brittany Lincicome, Jessica Korda and Heeyoung Park.  And Graham DeLaet got his clubs back at St. Andrews looking like this:

Apparently that's some kind of protein powder adorning the bag....

Heathrow is notorious as the Bermuda Triangle for golf bags, but the folks there seem to be really upping their game.

Bandon All Hope - For unstated reasons, it's Bandon Dunes week at Golf.com.  Yesterday they gave us insiders' tips on planning your hadj, including this:

“Go into town to the Italian restaurant [Alloro Wine Bar]. And get to the beach to watch a sunset."

Amen, as Alloro was really quite excellent.  Maggot and the Bride Thereof also enjoyed it despite initial skepticism.  And the beach is not just for sunset (best enjoyed over dinner at Lord Jim's restaurant), but for daytime stroll to enjoy the Bandon Stacks:

Which include Face Rock:

This poll came out pretty much as I'd have called it:

They're all great, but the votes are inevitably going to accrue to the two courses with the best ocean views.  And today they have up a wonderful Q&A with the three principal architects of the resort's courses.  It's all good, I especially liked that they asked each of the three to list their favorite hole on the other guys' courses, but here's just a snippet:

7. If you could give one piece of advice to a first-timer playing at Bandon, what would it be?

COORE: Play the (par-3 13-hole) Preserve first. It’s a fun way to introduce yourself to the turf conditions and how the ball reacts. Most people who come to Bandon have never putted fescue and have never played off the kind of tight lies you get out there. The Preserve helps you get acclimated. Relative to the Preserve, it also has greens that are not identical but which I would say are in the same family of what you’ll find when you play the 18th hole. There are several of them I’d say have echoes of one another. Interestingly enough, the first green of the Preserve used to be the putting green at Trails, so that should tell you something.

That's certainly good advice for a links newbie, and especially since so many arrive a bit tuckerd from an arduous journey.