Weekend Wrap

With my Yankees peaking at just the right time, it's a wonder that I have any time available to focus on golf....

Dunhill Doings - Anybody watch any of it?  If I had a bucket list and if there were a golf Pr-Am on said hypothetical bucket list, this would be the one.  Played over three great links mostly in the Kingdom of Fife (OK, Carnoustie is technically in Angus, but I just like saying Kingdom of Fife), it features the greatest display of ski hats anywhere in the world.  The guys were in short-sleeves for much of the week, though the weather did regress closer to the mean on Sunday.

Here's your headline:

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland (AP) -- Thorbjorn Olesen overcame a shaky start Sunday to 

The obligatory winner's pose.

protect his overnight lead and win the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship by two shots. 

Olesen had a double bogey on the second hole and a bogey on the third but recovered for a 1-under 71 at St. Andrews to hold off a late charge by Brooks Koepka of the United States. 

Koepka shot a 67 to finish tied for second with fellow American Chris Stroud (68). Olesen, who entered the final round with a three-shot lead, finished with an 18-under total of 270.

Of course Mr. Koepka should have been on a plane for Seoul, but that's not important now...

 Olesen was one of those can't-miss prodigies that then disappears from sight.  Martin Dempster reminds us of his travails as recently as July:

Olesen’s third European Tour title triumph secured his card for next year, having come

into this event sitting 124th in the Race to Dubai but leaving it in 25th position, and also made amends for the bitter disappointment he suffered in this season’s Scottish Open at Gullane, where he held the outright lead after an opening 63 only to then miss the cut following a second-round 77. 

“When that happens, you are very disappointed and angry at yourself,” said Olesen, who was sidelined for three months earlier in the year after undergoing surgery on his left wrist. “You just try to get on with it and I really had some good people around me to help me with that.”

“I remember that night,” he added of finding himself out of the event in East Lothian, killing off his hopes of getting into the following week’s Open Championship at St Andrews in the process. “I shared a house with Thomas Bjorn and Soren Hansen and we had a few drinks. We were all a bit sad, so we talked a lot of s*** and just had a few drinks.

Shack had this little micro-rant about Oleson's career arc:

What was spectacular: at 25, Olesen was declared a next big thing not that long ago but has struggled to post a breakthrough win. Now he has one over a quality field and on the best of all links, but this is still a good reminder that in the rush to declare various youngsters the Golf Gods' gift to Golf, that this weird sport can derail even those who are so physically gifted (like Olesen). Oh, and that you aren't over the hill if you haven't won by the age of 22.

Though, to be fair, Thorbjorn had won twice previously on the Euro Tour, he just had the misfortune to win smaller events that carried only a one-year exemption.  The Euro Tour highlight video is here, worth a click if only for the stunning overhead shots that were a highlight of the TV coverage all four days.

By unanimous consent, Ernie Els has been awarded Miss Congeniality for his reaction to this embarrassing moment on Thursday at Carnoustie:

Here's his explanation:

“I made an adjustment, obviously,” he said regarding his move up the leaderboard. “The putter I used on Thursday is a longer putter. It has the counterweight. It’s got weight in the grip and weight in the head. I was a little bit jumpy, to be honest with you. I don’t even want to see it. I knew what it felt like. It was a disaster. So I went to my other putter, a shorter putter, a 35-inch putter and all the weight’s in the head. I feel I can get the putter head through to the hole easier. The other one didn’t want to move past the ball. 

“Anybody’s ever seen the yips, obviously that was the perfect yip stroke you’ve ever seen in your life. It is what it is. The game of golf you’ve got to do some silly things when you play long enough. Obviously I had my moment there. Hopefully I won’t have too many of those again, because you can’t play golf like that.”

Yes, Ernie, we know agonizingly well those silly things of which you speak.  Kudos also for getting himself into the mix, though he must have finished poorly coming back into the wind.

Grillo Loco - To be clear, it's not Emilliano that's loco:

It took a clutch birdie at the 18th and a fourth consecutive sub-70 round, but Emiliano

Grillo finally captured his second professional win. 

The 23-year-old Argentine fired a final-round 69 on Sunday at the Web.com Tour Championship to finish 14 under and take the title by a shot. Chez Reavie, with a last-day 2-under 68, was one short of Grillo's mark. Sam Saunders (67) finished another stroke back at 12 under. 

Grillo won the title with a dramatic sequence on the final green. Tied for the lead with Reavie, and facing a 25-footer for birdie while Reavie had a better look 12 feet from the cup, Grillo met a test of nerves as he set over the putter. 

He promptly rapped the putt into the back of the cup.

Quite the drama for the final green of an event, and I'm quite certain that the six viewers enjoyed it immensely.  Back to Shack for the loco bit, in rant that's anything but micro:

Tim Finchem's brainchild of finishing the season in October and starting it again in October, as $upported by his employers (the players), now has a week off. That's before the madness begins at the Frys.com Open, where the newest members of the PGA Tour would be wise to appear, even if they've played something like 11 of the last 13 weeks. 

"I've played 11 tournaments in 13 weeks and I'm tired," Tom Gillis said Friday after withdrawing midway through the Web.com Tour Championship. "I want to see my family. I'll be back for the tournament in Jackson (Mississippi)." 

Gillis, who lost to Jordan Spieth in the John Deere Classic playoff, did not have to complete the Web.com Tour Championship to ensure his 2015-16 card. Nonetheless, when players are burning out and being asked to turn around and start all over again, or pulling out of the playoff championship, is this really a quality product being put out by the PGA Tour? 

Not that emotion was lacking, as John Strege noted, but compared to the annual event that was Q-School, the Web.com Tour Championship is not really coming close to registering.

Q-School was the ultimate in golf drama, six days of guys puking out their guts on national television.  Good thing we're not tempted by anything that's actually that interesting any longer... Nope, wouldn't be prudent...

But I would also argue that those four events were better off as part of the so-called Fall Finish, a place to allow that next generation of players to play in Tour events, though Tour events purpose designed for late-season, ladder-climbing drama.  Yanno, as opposed to calculating the 2016 FedEx Cup standings in October 2015 with a score of resets ahead.

And Shack doesn't even get into the negative effect of this nonsense on college and amateur golf....And it will all come to a boil in 2016, where the Olympics and Ryder Cup will create scheduling havoc....

Oh, and those lucky fifty guys who won Tour cards?  Better use them at the earliest opportunity, regardless of how weary the bones, because as we've seen in the past, sometimes those Tour cards are kind of virtual...

Asia-Pacific Blues - Everyone hates when this happens, but it's not like they had a lot of choice in the matter:

It may not be a 72-hole victory, but it doesn't matter. Cheng Jin is going to the Masters. 

The final round of the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship was cancelled Sunday after a lengthy suspension of play due to high winds and heavy rain. The conditions were precipitated by a typhoon moving through the southwest coast of Hong Kong near the Clearwater Bay Golf and Country Club. 

The typhoon started to wreck havoc Saturday night, and although the final round commenced as planned at 6:40 a.m. local time Sunday, played was suspended about an hour later amidst nasty conditions.

Just to be clear, it's less about the 54 vs. 72 holes than it is about the retroactive aspect of it all.   We feel that players deserve their rewards when they survive the crucible of final round pressure, but if you think they could have played, give a look see to the video here.

Jin won by one shot over a couple of players, including highly-touted Aussie phenom Ryan Ruffels.  It would have been great to see Ruffels at Augusta in April, but do remember that name and where you heard it first.

Meanwhile, China remains the salvation of the golf world, because.....ummm, well, it's a little vague.  They have that billion plus population that sounds appealing, until of course you realize how poor the country remains.

But China's schizophrenic relationship with the game of golf remains intact, with this latest installment:

The official Xinhua news agency said , vice mayor of Wuyishan in Fujian province, belonged to a golf club but was paying much less than other members to play, Xinhua news agency said. 

When a campaign against membership of private clubs for provincial officials kicked off in 2013, he changed the name of his membership to somebody else and carried on playing, the report said. 

Between June 18, 2013, and August 16, 2015, Lin played 163 rounds of golf at his club, 12 of which were during work hours, Xinhua said, citing a report from the local anti-graft watchdog. 

He has now been sacked for breaching anti-corruption and clean government rules, it added.

So salvation for our game lies in The Middle Kingdom, where belonging to a golf club gets you fired.  Good luck with that...

Presidents Cup Fever - Our cup runneth over, though to be fair it should be good fun, as team match play usually delivers the goods.  It's not the Ryder Cup, and if you come to it looking for actual animosity between the teams, you'll be sorely disappointed.  I've long said it's one nice group of guys from Orlando playing another, the Tavistock Cup if you will... somewhat mitigated by good venues and a roster selection process that allows for the matches we'd want to see.  For instance, it's highly probable that we'll be treated to a Jordan Spieth-Jason Day singles match, and if that doesn't interest you, then how did you happen upon this blog? 

Golf Channel is advertising that the event will be broadcast in prime time, which seems like quite the stretch to this early-to-bed kinda guy.... they come on at 10:00 p.m. on the East Coast, so it's prime time in L.A. perhaps.

Golf.com has an item featuring the top ten moments form the Presidents Cup, and you'll quickly note that fully nine of them are a stretch.  Not to say that they weren't fun at the time, they just don't linger in one's mind... the Presidents Cup is the Chinese food of golf.  Here's the exception:

1. THE TIE: The best Presidents Cup is the one nobody won. The rule for 2003 in South Africa was if the matches ended in a tie, each team would pick one player for a sudden-death playoff. Ernie Els and Tiger Woods were picked, and the tension was thick. Els made a 12-foot putt to halve the second extra hole. On the next hole, when it was so dark it was tough to read the break, Woods made a 15-foot putt that broke two directions for par. Els faced a 6-foot putt with both teams camped around the green. He made it for a halve. Instead of returning Monday morning, captains Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player agreed it was best to end it as a tie and let the teams share the cup. Woods said it was one of the most nerve-racking putts he had ever faced, to which Robert Allenby replied, ''Thank god.''

Yeah, that was dramatic, though of course there was no provision under the rules for that tie... they just made it up on the spot.

I'm sure I'll have more on this as the week progresses, and my thought is that the Americans had best be ready to play.  The other guys seem to fall off dramatically after Jason Day, though I think it's actually a much deeper team than is typical.