Flotsam and Jetsam™ - Catch-Up Edition

Lots to muse about, so let's dive in on a few items of interest:

Wither Tiger, A Continuing Series - How to interpret his T10 at the Wyndham?  I shant let the fact that I saw not a shot of it dissuade me from guiding you through this difficult moment...

First go read this Jaime Diaz Golf World assessment, which is unfortunately unexcerptable...Jaime's the best, and seemingly covers the good, the bad and the fugly, the latter being that chip on Sunday.

Then, as a counter-weight, do read Coleman McDowell's account of the highs and lows of Tiger's 2014-15 season, including this bit that seems like it was a decade ago:

TIGER TOOTHGATE

While watching his then-girlfriend (more on that later) Lindsey Vonn in a skiing competition, Woods had his tooth knocked out by a cameraman and wore a weird bandana over his face on the slopes.

Good times, man....

The Tour Confidentialistas kick the question around here  and Shack offers his take as well, and you'll likely nod your head at times in reading all of these.

It would be churlish to argue that a T10 topper to Tiger's Annus Horribilis isn't progress of some sort, though I do think Shack over-interprets the positives in playing venues where he doesn't have scar tissue.

But we also need to be reminded of the field against which he competed, in which the winner's greatest accomplishment occurred in the 1990's and the high water mark of the second place finisher's career was winning a fiver off Retief Goosen after they'd both played themselves out of contention in the final round at Pinehurst a decade ago.

I'd also posit that we saw far too many of the recurring problems that precede this original Wither Tiger post from January 2014 remain operative...you remember the list:

1. Short-game woes;
2. Weekend woes;
3. Body woes, and;
4. Driver woes.

Yanno, just to mention a few.  We will see Tiger at The Fry's, as he has an obligation to play there as a result of his playing in grabbing a large appearance fee in Turkey a few years back.  That will be on a golf course where he has no scar tissue, so we'll just have to wait and see how that goes...

The good news though is that he now has something to fall back on and in this case seems to have solved No. 2 above:

Unlike its owner, Tiger Woods’ new restaurant has been killing it on weekends. So the hostess tells me, and I don’t doubt it. Even early on this Thursday evening, the crowd around the bar is as thick as a Tiger gallery. 

It’s 5 p.m. -- discounted calamari! -- but to call it “happy hour” is an understatement. The vibe at The Woods Jupiter: Sports and Dining Club (catchy, right?) verges on euphoric. A pop soundtrack pounds from unseen speakers. Cocktails clink. Flatware clatters. Conversations swirl around a single subject, which is not the blue cheese crumble on the deep-fried squid.

Though this seems a tad disconcerting, at least if you were hoping that the man's hound days were behind him:

I squeeze my way up front, through a scrum of silver foxes and platinum blonds. The scene is moneyed Florida in microcosm, as if a nightclub mated with a country club. Many of the men look like Ted Bishop. Many of the women have that new-wife smell. 

“Think he’ll be here tonight?” I ask the bartender, a comely twenty-something who, like all the staffers, wears sports attire adorned with swooshes. Hers: a Nike golf skirt and black Nike top. Natalie Gulbis would play her in the movie.

She cups an ear. I repeat the query.

“Who’s he?” she answers coyly, and hands me a margarita that’s only a shade smaller than the Claret Jug.

We all love that new-wife smell...

They Never Learn, Volume XXXVIII - No sooner do I tout Tommy's Honor to you, than word comes that it's being made into a movie.  I believe it was George Plimpton that said as relates to sports literature, the smaller the ball the better the book.  Unfortunately, when it comes to movies it seems that the inverse is true, as the next great golf movie will be the first.

The somewhat promising aspect is that the movie is the project of Jason Connery, son of you-know-who, and he seems to be treating it as a labor of love.  But the book, which is so rich in detail and filled with memorable moments in the evolution of our game, will have to be distilled into a tighter storyline that will appeal to civilians, as happened with the Francis Ouimet story.

Then there's this as referenced in my title:

Oxton’s rising star of stage and screen, actor Jack Lowden, is finding that the plum roles now coming his way often require specific new skills. 

Just having finished six months’ filming for the BBC’s new major six-part drama, War and Peace, in Russia and eastern Europe for which he had to learn to ride a horse, Lowden has now had to become proficient enough at the royal and ancient game for his new film. 

“This is a completely different project for me, requiring yet another new skill.

“I’d never played golf in my life before,” Lowden told us from his home in London this week. “But someone had told Jim Farmer, the honorary professional at St Andrews who is instructing me, that I was a single handicap player. 

“So you should’ve seen how the colour drained from his face at our first meeting and I had to inform him I’d never played the game before!”

Yeah, that's always a problem.  Do yourself a favor and read the book... you'll thank me.

A Hall Of Fame Rant - No, I mean literally... I would have expected that Shack would be at Whistling Straits, but his epic ranting about the Omega ad featuring Rory makes me think he must have been forced to watch the CBS broadcast like most folks (and he had an unflattering post on that here as well):

Poll Question: Does The Constant Playing Of Omega's HOF Ad...

Make you want to jump out of a helicopter without a parachute? Want to have a mute button chip embedded in your brain? Want to go buy a luxury time piece that your kids will sell on ebay? 

These are the kind of important questions that must be posed as we move into a Weather Warning mode and, inevitably, soak up Omega's ad created for last year's PGA Championship. But for reasons only the Madison Avnue minds can explain, the piece featuring the screaching sounds of will.i.am singing to The Script's music is making an ubiquitous return across all major media platforms. Constantly.

And here's his scientifically-vetted poll question:

My only issue with Geoff is that he's so reluctant to share how he really feels about things...then there was this item, which is barely amusing but allowed Geoff to vent his spleen once more:

There are a few ways to view this Fox6 News report out of Sheboygan.

You can throw your hands up, you can beat the clock, you can move a mountain, you can break rocks, you can be a master, but you better not steal fake Omega clocks! 

Because the news of 24-year-old Hugo Nguyen making it a half-mile with one of the large Omega clocks on site at Whistling Straits has only two explanations. 

Either he was so enamored with the Guantanamo-ready hooks of will-i-am's caterwauling that he just had to have one of the oversized clocks as a way to remember the worst ad in television history.

Or... 

Nguyen planned to hold the clock hostage while threatening to smash it into smithereens and perhaps take out other members of the oversized Omega clock community if the ad was not immediately pulled from the airways. 

We may never know. But what we do know is Nguyen faces up to six years of prison time should he be convicted. 

Free Hugo now!

And lastly comes news of a petition to save the planet:

Now this is what I call breaking rocks and moving mountains! 

A big hat tip Luke Kerr-Dineen for the best news you'll read today: a petition to ban Omega's "Hall of Fame" ad! 

Somebody started a petition to ban Rory McIlroy's heinousOmega commercial from the airwaves. Sainthood is next for Tron Carter of the United States, who hopes to get 500 signatures to take to networks. 

He writes:

For the last two years the golf community has been subjected to an endless onslaught of the Omega Watches Rory McIlroy "Standing in the Hall of Fame" commercial. Regardless of the event, tour or network, this commercial plays during every commercial break. The spot has ruined historic moments, a half dozen major championships, and countless psyches. And yet, we continue to be bombarded incessantly every time we turn on the television to watch golf. It's time to take a stand. Let's boycott Omega Watches SA, and it's parent company Swatch, until this commercial is pulled off the air and we, the golf community, are afforded sanity and closure. 

Sign away!

I'd be surprised if he hasn't blown past 500 signatures by now.  

Hall-Worthy? - Under Armour has come out with a new ad and it's kinda cool for our game to see one of our own featured with Steph Curry, what the kids would call a real athlete.  It's pretty good for what it is, though I think you'll agree the Shack is way over the top in his praise for it, though will-i-am seems to have triggered some repressed childhood trauma in our Geoff:

Now this is what I call cool. And not because Under Armour refused to set their new big-budget ad against the heinous yowling of will.i.am. Nor did they set the golf against the backdrop of prop office buildings created at the expense of slave labor. 

No, it's just a fun ad visually with captivating music from the soundtrack to "Glass".

Slave labor?  Geoff, who do you think makes Under Armour's schmatas?  Here's the ad, you make the call:

Playoff Fever - I was concerned that this might be a puff piece, but Joel Beall pulls off a helpful Q&A styled piece on everything we need to know about the FedEx Cup Playoffs year-end money grab.  Here's a snippet:

Q: So the 125 players will be competing in these four events?

A: Well, the top 125 are eligible for in The Barclays. After that, the top 100 advance to the Deutsche Bank. That field is cut to 70 players for the BMW, with the Tour Championship hosting the 30 players with the most points.

Q: Not a bad idea! I'm guessing that condensed field produces only marquee winners?

A: Sure, let's go with that.

Q: You mumbled. One more time.

A: Well, the last four winners -- Bill Haas, Brandt Snedeker, Henrik Stenson, Billy Horschel -- have never won a major, let alone won one in their respective FedEx Cup championship campaigns. It's kind of the elephant in the room: How can you crown someone the playoff winner when they failed to compete at one of the four main tournaments of the season? This was especially true of Horschel in 2014, whose best finish at a major was T-23. So, the point equation is a work in progress.

Now class, as we've discussed innumerable times, the alleged playoffs are just a mess, a neither-fish-nor-fowl camel designed by a committee with no one strong enough to tell Nurse Ratched that she's out of her gourd.  How much of a mess?  Well, Rory and Sergio see no need to show up at the first round of the playoffs, and when's the last time you saw the Patriots or Spurs do that?

Shane Ryan does a pretty good job of exposing the FedEx Cup nonsense, especially since he's on the same page as your humble blogger about the mess being about trying to have it both ways.  He suggests a match-ply finale which I think would be unfeasible to the networks, just think that last year the final match might have been Billy Horschel v. Chris Kirk, appointment television to be sure.  But he's on the same page as I in advocating for a high-stakes shootout for the ten million large, and to just give up the illusion that it's a season-long event and that these are "playoffs."  

But the individual events are high-money tourneys with decent to good fields sometimes played at interesting venues, the key word being "Sometimes".  But we have one of those this week as The Barclays is back at Plainfield, the Donald Ross classic that was unfortunately a mudfield the last time they visited in 2011.  Shack has a good post on the venue with links here, and word on the street is that the course is in great shape.  Well worth a look...

Life Imitates Louis Jordan - The famous jump blues pioneer (you do know him, right?) famously said, "Everyone gets a share after I get mine."  The Clinton's are the real world manifestation of this worldview, though they never push back from the trough to let others eat.  So this item comes as no surprise:

For a long time, as Hope wanted, the Eisenhower Medical Center was the main financial

recipient of the Bob Hope Desert Classic. It stayed that way when it became the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic. 

The hospital can hardly complain too loudly if, indeed, its piece of the pie has dwindled since Humana and the Clinton Foundation came to town. Since Hope put his name on the tournament in 1965, the Eisenhower Medical Center has received $34.7 million from it.

In 2013, it received zero. Last year, it received $225,000. This year's allotment is scheduled for November, with no guarantees. 

Foster says that, in the beginning, "Eisenhower was a pleasant little hospital and we were fairly vital." He also says, "We have not been as successful as we want to be in recent years, raising money for the hospital." 

The numbers are interesting. Amateur slots for the tournament are down to 156. Foster says the reduction from past amateur revenue is about $1 million. The Clinton Foundation has an annual guarantee of $1 million, confirmed by Foster. The current annual shortfall of the Eisenhower Medical Center from the golf event is $1 million.

The reality is that the Clinton Foundation is a political slush fund, and I've previously speculated that future donations might end up tarnishing the Tour's association with it.  I do understand that the event was in deep distress, desperate times and all... Though I've long thought that the better strategy was to embrace their history and ties to the local community, I mean it's friggin' Palm Springs in January.  How can that not work?

And yes there was some superficial synergy between Humana and the Wellness Summit that at the headline level bought them some time, but CareerBuilder,com?  The only career that money is building is Hillary's...

What If They Held The U.S. Am In A Forest? - It saddens me how our oldest event, the U.S. Amateur, has so diminished in stature that it's an afterthought.  Yes some of this is inevitable in a world dominated by professional golf and we'll agree that a 36-hole final is death for broadcast television, but even so... Lost in the hooplah over the Tiger-generated boffo ratings for the Wyndham was this depressing news:

It wasn't all great ratings news as Fox Sports's first-year coverage of the U.S. Amateur saw record lows across the board, averaging somewhere between .03-.04 for weekday matches on Fox Sports 1. 

On the Fox network Saturday, the U.S. Amateur semi-finals drew a .23, down 43% over Saturday last year on NBC. Sunday's final match on Fox drew a .28 overnight, down 35%. 

Both were the lowest ratings for the U.S. Amateur since Nielsen documented network television coverage started in 2003 (the weekend coverage appeared on cable in Olympic years 2004 and 2008).

And that's in a year with an interesting winner matching the NCAA-Am. double achieved previously by guys named Nicklaus, Woods and Mickelson (OK, Ryan Moore as well).  And a guy with an entirely eccentric approach to the game:

In the late 1980s, Tommy Armour Golf pushed a set of irons called E.Q.L., based on the idea of a single swing. These clubs were built to 6-iron length. That set never gained real traction, perhaps in part because the company’s 845 irons were exceedingly more popular. While there is something of a technology lull in the iron market today, Dechambeau’s method is at least getting some buzz. 

But before you head out and cut all your iron shafts to 7-iron length, you better recognize that you’re going to need more than one adjustment to make it work. And it might be an adjustment that standard golf clubs can’t possibly make. 

“We are all used to swinging a golf club that’s basically D0 to D4,” Choung says. “So if we just arbitrarily cut these things down and didn’t have the ability to adjust the weights on it, you could end up with a 3-iron that’s super stiff with a swingweight of C3.”

I could see hitting a 5-iron with a 7-iron shaft, after all there's a reason why the pros typically have shortish shafts on their drivers.  But a PW with a 7-iron shaft?  I'm thinking this game is hard enough already...

Homage, St. Andrews Style - We've not checked in with David Owen in some time, and he filed a reader's trip report today that's right up my alley:

“At midnight, we joined him and a group of his friends for a misty walk to the graves of Old and Young Tom Morris. The cemetery gate was locked, so Phinney and Elliott had to help Nantz, Mark, me and all the other old guys get over the fence.

The him is Jim Nantz, who comes across as regular guy, even recording a cellphone outgoing voice mail message for one, which he had also done for a guy named Mickelson.

There was also this:

The Cohens and Sachses went back to the cemetery during the daytime, when the gate was unlocked. There was lots of death in the Morris family:

Well yes....that's what had my eyes tearing on the plane home, as Old Tom buried all five of his children as well as his wife.  So will you please read Tommy's Honor, I don't want to have this discussion with you again..