Tuesday Trifles

Utah is getting pounded with snow.... a bit early but I can barely keep my mind on this golf thing.

GMAC, Exhumed - In a great tribute to that iconic tree falling in the forest, the PGA did actually complete their event yesterday morning:

Graeme McDowell ended one of his worst years with one of his best shots.

Fortunate to even get into a playoff, McDowell ended it quickly with a 5-iron that grazed the edge of the cup on the 18th hole and settled 3 feet away for a birdie to win the OHL Classic at Mayakobaon Monday. 

''I hit as good of a 5-iron as I could hit,'' McDowell said. 

McDowell closed with a 5-under 66 to finish at 18-under 266, and he had to make an 8-foot par putt on the final hole for that. It still looked as if it would only be good enough for second place when Russell Knox had a one-shot lead going to the 18th hole at El Camaleon Golf Club.

Alas, this will also serve this weeks schadenfreude installment, as I had no sooner received this e-mail from friend-of-the-blog and Askernish travel buddy John Coupland:

Scott why no mention of our local boy Russell in the blog? Ross and Mark used to play with him on the Junior Open circuit in the highlands.

Then this happens:

Knox pulled his tee shot into a bunker, came up just short of the green and his chip-and-run came up 12 feet short. He missed the par putt and had a 66, to join McDowell and Jason Bohn in a playoff. 

I'm assuming, as per our usual logic, that we'll blame that mishap on Russell's American mother?  I'm good with that as my people have a longstanding tradition of blaming pretty much everything on their mothers...

But for the record, I did pay sufficient homage to Knox's scramble to get a visa and resulting win here, and John's homie was also featured in my post on Brora back in the formative days of this blog here.  But both of John and Elsie's sons are good players and it's always cool when someone you played with as a junior goes on to fame and fortune... 

Of course our ties to McDowell, b/k/a Rainsuit Man, go back to Ballyliffin in 2008, so we can't help but enjoy Graeme regaining his form.  Though he credits a surprising source:

“Funny anecdote for you,” McDowell said. “I got a text message lesson from Greg Norman on Saturday night and he said he watched some of the coverage and he thought I looked a little short and a little quick. He said complete my backswing and be a bit more relaxed at address.” 

The two went back-and-forth with text messages, McDowell gave his backswing extra attention Sunday and Monday, and voila.

As Shack notes, any time that Norman spends on swing tips and therefore not on posting bare-chested photos on Instagram is win-win, baby.

Veej on the Couch - Jaime Diaz has an obvious soft spot for our Vijay, and takes a shot at explaining the logic behind his lawsuit against the Tour.  Here's the gist of his premise:

Veej at the 1996 PGA in which he finished 5th.

But despite a powerful game marked by a still majestically rhythmic swing, the 6-foot-2 Singh has never been a charismatic star. Though he can be gregarious with fellow pros, he has been diffident with the media. Clearly he resented inquiries about being suspended from the Asian Tour for two years after allegedly changing his scorecard at the 1985 Indonesia Open. Singh has disputed the charge, but never in any depth, and it hovers over him, unresolved. 

In his recent book, veteran caddie Steve Williams, who worked for Terry Gale in the Indonesia event in question, wrote: “I think you have to man up and admit your mistakes. Vijay has vehemently denied he did anything wrong, and I’m still angry to this day he hasn’t admitted his error.” Williams added that he believes Singh “should have been banned from golf completely.”

Our Stevie can be a tad excitable, but John Garrity is not, and I highly recommend his 1996 feature on our Veej.  It's a great story of Singh overcoming a rocky start to his career and you'll be remiss if you don't read it in its entirety, but his take on the Indonesian incident will not please our hero:

But his progress was halted in the
 second round of the 1985 Indonesian Open in Jakarta,

where he 
was in a threesome with Canadian pro Jim Rutledge and Ruswin
 Ali, an Indonesian amateur who was keeping Singh's score. The
tournament director of the Indonesian Golf Association, Rudy 
Lisapaly, ruled that Singh improved his score by one stroke
 before signing his card and was therefore disqualified. Edmund 
Yong, the secretary general of what was then called the
 Southeast Asia Golf Federation, notified Singh that he was
 indefinitely suspended from the Asian tour. 

In recent years Singh has described the incident as a
"misunderstanding" and blamed Indonesian golf officials for
punishing him unfairly. Ardena, who is far more outgoing and
 spontaneous than her husband, takes the same line, saying that
 Vijay repeatedly wrote letters to Yong pleading his innocence
 but got no indication when the suspension might be lifted. "Now
 that Vijay's somebody," Ardena says with a hint of a smile, "Mr. 
Yong comes up and says, 'Hello, how are you?'" She adds, "We are
 extremely courteous but very cold." 

Yong suffered a serious illness and cannot comment, but an 
American pro who played the Asian tour at the time contradicts
 Singh's account. "I was there," says the player, who asked not 
to be identified. "It was not a misunderstanding. Vijay was
 accused and suspended for altering his own card. All of us who
 were around are very upset that Vijay denies this."

Veej is far from the first youngster to make a mistake during his struggles to succeed in our game, and it seems there's more than a passing resemblance to Patrick Reed's own issues.  Unlike Stevie I don't think that these should entail lifetime bans, especially in light of the cultural environment in which it occurred.   But it is difficult for us to accept and move on when the individual can't or won't acknowledge their error in judgment.

I can't help but believe that Vijay has unnecessarily complicated his life in so doing... And while I'm a fan of his lawsuit as a means of forcing transparency into the PGA's disciplinary processes, he'll not come out of it having done anything but further tarnishing his reputation.  I mean, Deer Antler Spray?  What were you thinking, Veej?

The Tour Confidentilistas batted around the Tour's behavior in this matter, and I learned a few things, such as this:

Gary Van Sickle, senior writer, Sports Illustrated: The revelation that Mark Calcavecchia was given only a warning for the same thing was eye-opening, as was the fact that the punishment required a test that indicated the presence of the drug, and there isn't one. If I'm betting, my money is on Vijay.

I didn't know that Calc was similarly foolish.  Nor did I know this from Mike Bamberger:

Doug Barron got some sort of settlement from the Tour, likely because the Tour did not want to go down the deposition road too far on his suit. What he got I don't know, but it had to be something.

And Jeff Ritter added this:

That Singh lost a presumably lucrative deal with Cleveland explains why he appears bent on pushing this lawsuit as far as he can.

Now that speaks to damages which for me had always been the missing piece of the puzzle.

Stay tuned, there should be more interesting details to come.

A Happy Ending - Color me surprised by this:

ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. – Turns out there are times when the PGA Tour has a sense of humor. 

John Peterson’s “Happy Gilmore” tee shot to begin his final round earlier this month at the CIMB Classic did not result in a fine from the Tour, Peterson confirmed Monday at the RSM Classic. 

“I spoke with [Andy Pazder, the Tour’s executive vice president and chief of operations] twice and explained I was just trying to get 20 more yards [out of the tee shot],” Peterson said.

That's certainly a first for the Tour, but he did shoot 66 that day.

Justice, Delayed -  When Employee No. 2 played Pelham Country Club a couple of months ago, there was no reason to think much of it....at least until this:

Michael Cousins, 48, is expected to be in a suburban New York courtroom on Monday,

the report says. Cousins had been pursued for nearly two decades following the murder of Jason Campbell in 1996. 

According to authorities, Cousins was working at Pelham (N.Y.) Country Club when he got into a fight with Campbell outside the pro shop that ended with Cousins stabbing Campbell. He fled the scene and the murder weapon was later found in some nearby bushes across the street from the course. Cousins, originally from Jamaica, has been a fugitive ever since, using numerous aliases.

Those caddie yards can be a tad rough, as we had a knife fight in ours only 3-4 years ago.

And perhaps there's something in the Pelham water supply, as when house hunting we found a seemingly below market opportunity there, only to have the seller for reasons that remain unclear disclose that there had been a grisly murder in the house.   We passed.

Keep Your Day Jobs - In his Forward Press feature this week, Shack tackles the debut of two well known loopers as on-course analysts:

Golf announcing will introduce a fresh perspective this week when two of the PGA Tour’s most introspective and savvy caddies work parts of the RSM Classic broadcast. While former players are generally the go-to for networks looking to introduce viewers to new voices, the addition of veteran loopers as on-course reporters should give us fun insights into player-caddie thinking and a better sense of those delicate on-course moments. 

Jim (Bones) Mackay, the longtime caddie for Phil Mickelson, and John Woods, soon to be picking up Matt Kuchar’s bag, have been hired by Golf Channel to work Friday's and Saturday’s RSM Classic telecasts from St. Simons Island. (Why not all four days, who knows.)

Why not, since no one will be watching in any event?  But the best part is that after an exhaustive search he found video of an actual Rossie.  Don't know what that is...check out the 3:00 mark of this from the 1994 Senior U.S. Open:

Wasn't that a time?   Shack also previews the finishes for the ladies (could be a great duel between Lydia and Inbee), the Euros coda (yawn) as well as the Australian major season (worthwhile, but difficult to watch here on the East coast).