Thursday Threads

OK, where were we?  There's lots to discuss, so without further ado...

Fox's Mulligan - I stole that from an anonymous headline writer, but if only... because a mulligan negates that unwanted first shot, whereas we'll always have our precious Chambers Bay memories:

Paul Azinger will become the new lead analyst for Fox Sports golf telecasts in 2016,

replacing Greg Norman, according to sources. 

Azinger, 56, won 12 PGA Tour titles including the 1993 PGA Championship during his playing career, and captained the winning U.S. Ryder Cup team in 2008. He was an analyst for ABC golf telecasts, where he teamed with Nick Faldo, and has most recently been an analyst for ESPN’s telecasts of the Masters, the U.S. Open and the British Open.

Azinger will sign a multi-year contract and will partner in the booth with Joe Buck. Their producer is Mark Loomis, who as the coordinating producer at ABC made the decision at the 2004 Tour Championship to team Azinger and Faldo, along with anchor Mike Tirico. The trio worked together through the 2006 season, when ABC lost the rights to telecast PGA Tour events. According to sources, Azinger will work the U.S. Open, the U.S. Senior Open, the U.S. Amateur, and the U.S. Open Women's Open this year.

We knew that, as Zinger's name was floated in the original story.  But this, from Fox's press release,I think is also for the good:

New York – Paul Azinger, winner of the 1993 PGA Championship and veteran broadcaster, has joined FOX Sports as lead analyst for its golf coverage, beginning in 2016. Azinger joins seven-time Emmy Award-winning announcer Joe Buck and analyst Brad Faxon in the 18th Tower for FOX Sports’ USGA Championship telecasts. The announcement was made today by John Entz, President, Production & Executive Producer, FOX Sports and Mark Loomis, Coordinating Producer, USGA Studio & Event Production.

The risk of course is clutter, with the guys struggling to find empty air time to offer their thoughts.  But Fax is good, perhaps every bit as good as Zinger, and I'm guessing will spar well with the highly-opinionated and occasionally unfiltered Zinger.

Mark Loomis, the guy responsible for it all, had this to say:

"When you think about a team, you get the best people you can get, you play a season, and you say 'How do we get better?'" Loomis said. "We've made hundreds of changes people don't know about, and what they do know is we changed Greg. It's no more than changing some pieces around."

So we're to conclude that he doesn't consider Joe Buck to be in his top "hundreds" of problems?   More likely that's a place Loomis can't go, so hopefully Joe will take a Valium and tone it down when surrounded by competent talent.

Torrey North - We've covered the strange renovation project at this municipal facility, but with the Tour decamping in La Jolla you no doubt knew it would be on our menu.  First, Tom Weiskopf seemed to have mostly sensible things to say, but I can't help but start with this rather curious exchange from the transcript:

Q. Having played the TOUR and having had great success, there's the great debate as it relates to the U.S. Open and your designing this for the average fan, but you're designing it also for the U.S. Open. Where do you draw the line between building a "obstacle course" versus a golf course to save the integrity of par for the U.S. Open? Is it a big debate? 

TOM WEISKOPF: Well, no, that's a very good question. I think any good design -- it wouldn't be difficult to build the world's hardest golf course. It wouldn't be difficult for me to make that so hard at 7,100 yards. But you got to remember again, let's go back to the purpose of it. It's to make people come here, enjoy themselves with a round of golf where the pros play, and it is what it is. I'm not going to compare that to the South Course. I mean that has great length. That has, what is it? 7,600 from all the way back now. We don't have room to do that. That's not the purpose of this golf course.

Tom's answer goes on for many more 'graphs, which is hard to understand given that one assumes he's aware that the U.S. Open is NOT played on this golf course.

This piece captures the best of Tom;s thoughts, to wit that this is a public course and should not be as difficult as the South Course, especially since the big boys play it exactly once a year.

Now, what should be done with this course is a far broader subject than we'll get into at this point, though the process by which Weiskopf was selected was certainly suspect.  Shack, who's forgotten more about course architecture than I'll ever know had these reasonably positive comments:

A plan was shared and I have a copy, posted below. It's not going to bowl you over in the sense that the course will remain very similar to what is there now, perhaps missing a few opportunities to better incorporate the sage scrub canyon edges. But it's very exciting in the sense that it is respectful of the existing layout, which is still a wonderful, playable, interesting course. We'll see how the bunkers and greens are executed, but the bones are being respected. 

The only bummer? The dreadful pond added post-William F. Bell is still in front of a new 17th green that will be built behind the current hole.

Here is said plan:

Does that clear things up?  There's very little of interest in the routing, with the exception of the downhill Par-3 sixth hole and uphill Par-4 seventh (pictured above), and that's pretty damning for a golf course built on a bluff above the Pacific Ocean.

Phil obviously had some thoughts to share with us at his presser:

"I don't understand the politics of it at all," Mickelson said of the impending redesign of Torrey Pines North, which Mickelson had hoped to direct but which instead will be overseen by Tom Weiskopf. "It makes no sense. I think it's terrible business practices, but it's what we live with here." 

Mickelson was one of the first designers to consult with the City of San Diego about Torrey North, perched on the cliffs above the Pacific Ocean, and had said he would even waive his design fee. But because he was part of the preliminary talks, the California Fair Political Practices Commission forbid Mickelson's design group from submitting a formal bid. 

"I'm not bitter about it," Mickelson said. "I just kind of learned to accept that as being one of the sacrifices of living in California. It is a personal place, it is a personal thing for me because of the memories, the history, the nostalgia that I feel every time I walk on the grounds here.

I'm gonna suggest that he does understand and is bitter, but what else can he say?  For anyone unfamiliar with the cesspool that is governmental contracting, this is a common anti-corruption provision to prevent those designing the specs of a project from inserting provisions that will favor themselves or specific other parties in the bidding process.

But this is the graph from Phil that has people suing the term "missed opportunity":

"I see the potential," Mickelson added. "It's the greatest site in the world. I see the opportunity to bring the canyon back into the golf course, to eliminate acres and acres of unnecessary grass that require water and maintenance, and to make it even more playable for the average guy where they can run shots up, and yet have tucked pins for the Tour players."

That you'd go forward without seeing what that might look like is truly unfortunate...

Feathers, Ruffled - There's little doubt that the Torrey story is the more significant, but this this Phil bit is the more likely to leave you with a smile...

Phil had to apply some tough love, but we'll get to that in  a sec.... First, a little background.  Ryan Ruffles is a 17-year old Australian that recently turned pro in what seems like the Justin Rose model.  he's a tremendous talent but awfully young even by Spiethian standards.  No one's asking, but you'd think a couple of years in a strong college program might be a good idea...

Phil and the youngster played a "friendly" match in December and here's what you need to know:

As the printed story went, Tim Mickelson, Phil's younger brother and the

Arizona State men's golf coach, was the third member of the group after Phil Mickelson called Ruffels to set up the game. The stakes: If the five-time major winner Mickelson won, he would get $2,500, to be paid once Ruffels turned professional. If Ruffels won, Mickelson would pay him $5,000. 

Ruffels is quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald saying he birdied six of the last seven holes and "took his money, so that was pretty cool." 

The Mickelson camp says the $5,000 number is way off, and that the Mickelson quote that made the rounds -- "I don't wake up this early to play for any less than $2,500" -- never happened. Ruffels's management team has gone on record saying the story has been "overdone," and on social media Ruffels has tried to downplay the episode, complaining of inaccuracies. He and his agent also have said he'd decided to turn pro long before the match with Phil, lest anyone accuse ASU coach Tim Mickelson of recruiting him.

You get where this headed, no?  The first rule of Fight Club and all that....  So, here's Phil from his presser:

Q. You've been such an inspiration for younger players. Talk about Ryan Ruffels and your relationship with him. 

PHIL MICKELSON: Well, that's an interesting one. He's a very nice person. I met him a month ago, and we played for the first time. He, he's young, and he's got some things to learn. 

One of them is you don't discuss certain things. You don't discuss specifics of what you play for. And you certainly don't embellish and create a false amount just for your own benefit. So those things right there are -- that's high school stuff, and he's going to have to stop doing that now that he's out on the PGA Tour.

That's a lot of damage control for one morning...  I'm assuming it has to violate NCAA guidelines as well as putting Ruffles amateur status in peril.  But that's all hyper-technical stuff compared to the fun of the story.

But it also points to why a 17-year old shouldn't be out there...  there's an understandable lack of maturity and I suspect that the young man is going to have a difficult few years ahead of him.  Not the path I'd suggest for anyone similarly situated...

Today in Grooming - We've had fun recently with Boo Weekly's bodacious beard, shorts during practice rounds and other stories touching on the appearance of golf professionals.  The amusing irony in these stories is that it makes us sound like our grandparents when we opine that the guys need to look a certain way.

Commissioner Ratched has taken the Potter Stewart approach to this subject, the I know it when I see it school of thought.  This is one of those times when I'm not too tough on the Commish, because it's actually hard to write rules that make sense (and there's also the complication that the lads are not actually employees of the Tour).

But it turns out that I was unaware that the Tour had some....well, what shall we call them?  self-help remedies?  Take a look at this Thomas Pieters tweet:

 Heh.  How funny is that?  The Tour issued this statement from Tom Hagen Ty Votaw:

"In the standard process of prepping new headshots for broadcast TV, electronic scoreboards and other uses - which always requires a bit of retouching and color-correction - our vendor was a bit too heavy-handed in the editing of Thomas Pieters' photo. The image has been returned more closely to the original photo - although some editing is always required - and reissued to our database. We regret this sequence of events and meant no disrespect to Thomas. We think he has a great head of hair."

Ty, we see the color correction and all, but you gave the guy a haircut...Stay tuned, because this is Boo Weekly's current headshot:

Whereas, this is Boo 2.0:

Insert your own Grizzly Adams joke....