Weekend Wrap

It occurs to me that this is a weekend for which you might actually need a wrap, as it's not like any of us were watching any golf...

Shanghai Surprise - I know, something else no one saw, a mid-80's bomb featuring newlyweds Sean Penn and Madonna.  But that's not important now... As for the golf:

Russell Knox of Scotland took full advantage of his opportunity in winning his first World Golf Championships title by two shots over American Kevin Kisner in Sunday’s final round of the WGC-HSBC Champions at Sheshan International Golf Club.

To me that's quite a shicking outcome, as I can't imagine any scenario under which Know should have been in the field... and, well there was perhaps this one:

Knox, who got into the field as an alternate before sharing the third-round round lead

with Kisner, was never seriously pushed, staying in control on Sunday by shooting a 4-under 68 to finish at 20 under. 

Kisner was slow to get started, but a 2-under 70 got him to 18 under and his fourth runner-up finish in 2015. 

England’s Danny Willett shot 10-under 62, tying the course record and finishing at 17 under along with fellow countryman Ross Fisher, who shot a final-round 68.

How do you like that scintillating leaderboard?  Knox turned thirty last June, so that does end our run of twenty-something winners...  I guess the youth movement, like the Jordan Spieth Era, has ended.  He was already in Malaysia before the spot opened, but it was still a near-miss thing:

Russell Knox went to Malaysia unsure if he would be flying east to the United States or north to China on Sunday night. It turned out he did neither.

Knox, a Scotsman, was hoping he would get a spot in his first WGC-HSBC Champions when he left the U.S., but as an alternate he had to wait for a spot until J.B. Holmes pulled out on Thursday. 

That started a chain reaction that sent Knox’s wife, Andrea, to the Chinese embassy in Kuala Lumpur on Friday to get the two visas, which they would not get until Monday, delaying their trip to Shanghai by a day. 

“My wife was a superstar and she filled out all the forms for us,” Knox said after firing a second-round 65 on Friday.

Knox has been with us for a while, occasionally knocking on doors but doesn't really have the skills to be more than a face in the crowd.  I had assumed from the headlines that it would be Kisner's week, but in the rush to get to China it seems that Knox didn't get the memo.  And Danny Willett is making a name for himself, and don't be surprised if you see him in the lineup at Hazeltine.

But it's perhaps a shame that we all missed the event, as a new sensation announced himself:

SHANGHAI (AP) - Li Haotong practically grew up with the HSBC Champions. He took part in its junior golf program, watching over the last decade as players like Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els competed at Sheshan International.

“This tournament is so big - it’s too big,” Li said after a 6-under 66 that left him one shot out of the lead going into the final round. “I know that the final day, a lot of people are going to be making a lot of birdies. That’s why I thought my goal of this tournament would be making the top 10, because making the top 10 will already be a highlight and a milestone for my short career. 

“I hope that tomorrow I can do well and finish at the position where I want to.”

It didn't go as the young man hoped, but it rarely does the first time.  He had one of those multi-colored scorecards going early in the forth round, posting three bogeys, a double and two birdies for his first six holes.  Think he might have been a tad nervous?  But he settled down and finished T7 at -15...

The talk of the week was the Li roars, though it doesn't really come through in this video:

In Which I Take the Side of Nurse Ratched - Mark this date on your calendar, folks, 'cause we're going a place we've not been before.  

The subject is the Happy Gilmore shot of John Peterson in the final round in Malaysia last week, which we covered here.  In our time together we've seen instances of the PGA Tour asserting intellectual property disputes in order to remove video from YouTube, for instance when Henrik Stenson shanked a shot.  God forbid anyone see a professional golfer hit a poor shot, because that never happens...

So, here's Shack's rant about the Peterson video:

Maybe this will just make the shot that much more legendary? 

Either way, John Peterson's Happy Gilmore moment last week in Malaysia has vanished from Jason Dufner's Instagram account. 

One witness who refused to go on the record says men clad in pleated pants, light blue Oxford shirts (extra starch) and Footjoy Classics rolled up to Dufner's home in black BMW X5's in the wee hours this week. After having found Dufner's cell phone believed to be the same one used to record the Peterson video, the agents were heard yelling "Geronimo secure, Geronimo secure!" 

The account matches previous stories from tour players and caddies, hinting that the raid was conducted by the PGA Tour Fun Police, a super-secret outfit headquartered in the basement of TPC Sawgrass' 198,000 square foot clubhouse.

Dufner was not immediately available for comment.

But much as I love Shack's vivid imagery and agree with his assessment of the Ponte Vedra Family, I'm a little squeamish at siding with him on this one.  Oh, it was no doubt churlish to remove the video, but the Commish may well be in the right on this one...

Peterson pulled his prank during the tournament, meaning that he is guilty of failing to give maximum effort.  At the risk of sounding like Nurse Ratched myself, that's kind of a no-no in professional sports...  in a perfect world, they would grind to the end regardless of scores or deficits.

Now we all understand that reality features  many shades of gray, and we see this issue take many paths in professional sports, including putting in the scrubs to avoid injury to the first team or allowing infielders to pitch when an individual contest is out of hand.  But in golf we expect the players to give it their best until they're in the clubhouse, because there's no reason not to...

I've been very critical of John Daly, who is the poster child for dogging it at the first instance of frustration, and Peterson should not be flattered by that comparison.  Mind you, I'm not comparing the two... Peterson recognized that he was going nowhere in the event and tried to please the gallery, the latter of which the Tour could use more of.  Daly just can't be bothered to exert effort and feels no obligation to the spectators or sponsor that gave him a valuable exemption, but he serves as the necessary cautionary tale...

Finchem or his henchmen may feel that Peterson has to be fined, and I can see that point of view.  But I do hope that they can at least understand why we all found it funny (yeah, what am I smoking?), and keep the fine reasonable.  I'd also like to think that they'd explain that reasoning to Peterson, because he's earned it.

Anchors Away - The headlines involve Billy Andrade winning the Schwab Something and Bernhard Langer winning the Schwab Other Thingee, as per this:

Billy Andrade won the season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship on Sunday, beating Champions Tour points winner Bernhard Langer with a birdie on the first hole of a playoff. 

Andrade two-putted from the back fringe on the par-5 18th, holing a 2 1/2-footer for his third victory of the year on the 50-and-over tour.

See what Mr. AP did there?  He called it the CTPW to avoid using its given name, The Charles Schwab Cup.  I know, it's hard not to get emotional... But this week will be remembered....check that, if this week is to be remembered it will be for a certain swan song:

Sunday's conclusion of the Charles Schwab Cup Championship was more than just the final event of the Champions Tour season. With Bernhard Langer and Michael Allen battling Billy Andrade down the stretch, it was also a last hurrah for the anchored putting stroke, which will officially be banned starting Jan. 1, 2016. 

Langer and Allen are both broomstick-wielders who must find an alternative method to putt next year. They don't have to give up their long putters, they just can't anchor them against the body anymore.

I like that last bit, don't you?  It exposes the soft underbelly of the "There's no advantage to anchoring" crowd quite effectively...  I remain supportive of the ban, though I of course wish they had addressed it somewhere between ten and eighty years earlier.

Interestingly, you know who else is betting his bottom dollar that the sun will come out tomorrow?  Yeah, that Langer fellow:

Langer has anchored his broomstick putter for 17 years, but he says he's not worried about making a change.

"I've thought about it a little bit," he told reporters in Scottsdale. "I've gathered a few putters, different styles, different lengths, different grips. My first thought is I'll probably go back to what I did before I went to the long putter, which was what [Matt] Kuchar does, holding the putter against the left forearm that way, and Soren Kjeldsen in Europe does the same thing. 

"I putted that way for seven years and I won a number of tournaments including the Masters, and if you can putt on the Masters greens and win with a grip like that, I would think I could do it in other tournaments, but we'll see. There's other options."

Bur appreciate the rational scheduling, whereby the season ends and then the new rules go into effect...what a concept!  As opposed to the big tour, where the first four events of the new season are played under different rules.   Stupid is as stupid does, though I may be conflating Boo Weekly and Forest Gump.

Wither Casey - One area in which I will not be defending the Commish is anything remotely connected to the golf calendar.  But the fruits of this insanity will ripen in 2016, when the combination of the Olympics and Ryder Cup create the schedule from hell, or at least it will if relief is not granted.

Nurse Ratched won't move because she needn't, but poster child for this issue is Paul Casey:

Englishman Paul Casey is the highest-ranked European player who is not a member of

the European Tour, but that could change. 

At No. 24 in the Official World Golf Ranking, Casey is the second-highest Englishman in the rankings, but his lifestyle with a wife and two kids in Scottsdale, Ariz., is more important to him than golf. Casey didn’t want to deal with the rigors of trying to maintain two tour cards, so he gave up his European card.

Has it gotten so bad that wanting to be with your family is a lifestyle choice?  OK, perhaps a poorly chosen word, but here's the news:

Sources have told Golfweek that one option is a five-tournament requirement, not including the four major championships or four World Golf Championships. The current requirement is 13, including the majors and WGCs. 

“This five thing makes a lot of sense, to be honest,” Casey said. “If it’s just play five European Tour events, not co-sanction, not WGCs, that starts to make a lot of sense. That’s something I’m interested in.” 

Martin Kaymer agrees with Casey that the change could benefit the tour and the players.

“I think it’s a good idea to do on the European Tour, to give a little bit more freedom for the players,” Kaymer said. “The PGA Tour, they do the opposite for us. They make it tough.”

They do because they can.  You err in thinking that Commissioner Ratched is your friend, the difference being that he's doing it for him self whereas the Euro Tour is doing it to protect their Ryder Cup team.  Ratched has no such worries...

Blackjack - I don't force you to suffer through too many dissertations on our weekly fourballs, since after all, you've suffered enough.  But golf is truly an amazing game, and when circumstances conspire, no reason to not share tales of the unusual.

On Saturday we were down to a threesome, Colin King Ted Rosenzweig and your humble correspondent.  Threesomes are an awkward number for setting up matches, but at Colin's request we invited that old Irish slattern, Mrs. Murphy, to join us.  I learned this game from the estimable David Owen a few years back, and he uses a round at a resort with two strangers as his set-up:

Is this Mrs. Murphy? (Result No. 4
from Google Image search.)

There were just three of us, and the dentists’ handicaps were of uncertain provenance. So how could we gamble? Fortunately, my father had taught me the perfect game for just this situation. It’s called Mrs. Murphy. 

In my dad’s game, you turn a threesome into a foursome by adding an imaginary fourth player, named Mrs. Murphy. She’s a kindly old Irish grandmother, who wears a big hat and a long skirt, and she can’t hit the ball more than a hundred and thirty yards, but she still manages to shoot par on every hole. Either that, or she’s a recently divorced former exotic dancer who took up the game just a couple of years ago and is kind of shaky on long putts but still manages to shoot par on every hole. Your choice.

Well, handicaps don't come of more uncertain provenance than Colin's, but I mention Mrs. Murphy because it's a game in which the players receive their full handicaps.  So we came to the fifteenth hole, a Par 4 of 415 yards that is our No. 1 handicap hole.  Colin was in the water off the tee and with the Gaelic Grandmother as my partner, I had no worries...so when I made my rather commercial four-for-three, you'd think I'd be in clover...  But Ted was sup to the task and eked out a win on the hole.

By two.

Using a 5-hybrid, he holed out from the fairway for a two-for-one, thank you very much...  on the bright side, he beat that bitch by three.

DJ, Consoled - With all his misfortunes, I don't know how our DJ gets out of bed each morning....Strike that, I know how, it's the why that eludes me...

So in China this weekend DJ was the recipient of one of those bad breaks, described thusly:

Dustin Johnson had one of the worst breaks of the week during the final round of the WGC-HSBC Champions on Sunday in Shanghai, and it cost him a couple of spots -- and a bunch of cash -- on the leaderboard. 

Hitting his approach shot on the par-5 eighth hole, Johnson’s shot ricocheted off the flag -- Apparently it was too accurate? -- and spun off the green. To make it worse, it spun all the way off the putting surface, rolled down a hill and into the water.

But DJ's life is not without its blessings, and Alex Myers is on the case to inform us of how DJ's girlfriend and baby Momma provided comfort in his darkest hour:

That's rough. Johnson double bogeyed the hole and wound up finishing T-5. Despite the bad break, though, most men would still agree he's one lucky guy to have Paulina Gretzky as his fiancee. And during this latest dark moment on the golf course, she reminded DJ -- and everyone with access to the Internet -- of this fact. 

At about 2:30 a.m. ET (A more reasonable 11:30 p.m. where Paulina probably was), shortly after DJ's bad bounce, Paulina posted this:

You'll want to see it, won't you?  I knew you would...

Dirty Diana?  Inquiring minds want to know...

And while I've no information as to whether this provided the intended solace to our hero, I'm reasonably certain that it will but a spring in Maggot's step.