Catching Up

Did you miss me?  I do hope you found meaning in your empty lives whilst I was otherwise engaged....

Valsparring - The lads showed up at the recently-tweaked Copperhead Course at Innisbrook, which had allegedly been "softened" but proved plenty tough.  And it's just the track to stop the Adam Scott juggernaut, because, you know, he's not in the field.

But a possibly recognizable name shared the first-round-lead:

Keegan Bradley got out in front of the anchoring ban by replacing his belly putter for a regular putter at the end of 2014. The switch resulted in a 2015 campaign in which he made a career-low $1,565,079 thanks in large part to finishing just 127th in strokes gained/putting (Bradley had finished in the top 50 in that category the prior three seasons) on the PGA Tour.

Like everyone else, Bradley has been impressed by the recent play of Adam Scott, another golfer forced to change to a short putter with the anchoring ban taking effect on January 1. And after his round, Bradley pointed to Scott's wins the past two weeks as being the source of inspiration. 

"That got me motivated and made me feel good, so thanks, Adam," Bradley told reporters in Tampa.

See, I'm old enough to remember when sucking was sufficient motivation to improve...You'd think that all those weekends off might have delivered the message.

 And what to make of Jordan Spieth?  After an opening 79 at Riviera last month, he called it "just one of those days".  Now he had this after another surprisingly bad opener:

"It's so tough on some of these putts down the hill to hit them as hard as we have to hit them," Spieth explained. "... You don't see it. It's an adjustment. It's something you got to trust. It's one thing to practice on the greens and get used to it, it's another to actually do it. 

So Spieth shrugged and called it one of "those" days. He didn't plan to beat himself up over the round of 5 over. in fact, Spieth was looking forward to a nap. 

"What good is kicking the door other than hurting my foot and (having to) withdraw?," Spieth said good-naturedly. "I'm kidding. No, I'll be fine."

Let's see... One of those days + one of those days = a disturbing trend line.  I thought the guys in the Golf Channel studio had him dead to rights over his ball-striking.  It was a little gusty in the morning when Jordan played, but we're not talking Open Championship winds here... and when you're hitting it flush, the wind is a minor factor...

The invaluable Jaime Diaz lays out five possible explanations for Jordan's struggles, including one technical and one existential factors:

3. Golf swing. Paul Azinger has praised how “quiet” Spieth’s club is at the top of his

backswing. “It gives him a transition that seems unflappable,” says Azinger. “The pace of his swing doesn’t change.” But Spieth’s action looked quick on the West Coast. “Yeah, for whatever reason, my swing became extremely short,”

5. It’s golf. For all the comparisons, Spieth isn’t Tiger Woods. Or at least the prime-time Tiger of a decade beginning in 1999. When Woods was was 22, he wasn’t the machine he became. Spieth may get there, but at the moment, even for him, it’s a brutally hard game with ultra thin margins.

I'm on record as predicting struggles for the young man this year, under a variant of Jaime's No. 5, but  there's no reason to believe that these five are mutually exclusive....

And while we've all used some variant of "Jordan Rules" in covering his epic 2015 season, who knew that a Jordan Rule might be in the works:

Jordan Spieth's query seemed simple enough: could he wet his putter to help him with traction? The question came during the third round of the WGC-Cadillac Championship at Doral last Saturday. Though veteran players, analysts, and rules officials were present, no one had an answer.

The USGA got involved, and with no specific policy already in place, eventually came back with a ruling. Spieth would be allowed to use his towel to clean his putter if the towel already happened to be wet, but he could not, say, lick his finger and rub his putter.

The USGA added it would continue to mull the question further.

You two want to get a room?

Rio Loco, Our Continuing Series - Shack has the scoop on the Rio test event, including a wealth of photos, here and here. Spoiler Alert: Folks seem to like the golf course, for instance this reaction from Frank Nobilo:

I was never worried about the quality of the golf course.  The competition format, on the other hand... But this might be my favorite pic:

Wow, what kind of rakes do they use?

Brazil's most famous golfer, Alex Rocca, had the honor of hitting the first shot in the test event and his reactions to that and other thoughts on the golf course in an interview with Matt Ginella can be found here.  But, further to my point about the field, check out the world rankings of the Brazilian players that will qualify for the Olympics....So much for the concept of an elite field.

Fox Update - The Shark just can't help himself, as his serial violations of the First Rule of Holes provides a steady stream of actionable content for the blogging community.  Here's his take on the Fox ouster:

A: I have no idea what happened there. I guess I just didn't get along well with the producer (Mark Loomis). I didn't see eye to eye with the producer. To say I was not prepared was a bunch of baloney. I had stacks of info on the top 20 players in the world and the guys I thought would be in contention. I walked with (USGA executive director) Mike Davis in the morning for the setup and the hole locations. He said I was the first one ever to do that with him.

Well, I'm staring at stacks of bills on my desk...Under the Shark's logic, that's as good as paying them, right?  As for that last bit, here's Shack's rebuttal:

BTW, I spent one of the weekend morning days watching Mike do setup and you'll be shocked to know that if the Shark was present, he was doing his best impersonation of a ghost.

But wait, there's more...

I wanted to do a story on why the greens at Chambers Bay were so bad, but that didn't happen. When I was going through negotiations, the USGA said it was so excited because I was a course designer and I could talk about agronomy. I never had a chance to do that. They hired someone else to talk design and agronomy (architect Gil Hanse). 

It irritates me the way Fox misrepresented what happened. I'm not ranting or raving.

Heavens no.... No doubt they hired him for his knowledge of agronomy... and perhaps he could have shared such agronomic insights with us, such as after DJ's three-jack on the final green.

But wait, there's still more comedy gold:

Q: A lot of golf companies have struggled in recent years, but you have kept Great White Shark Enterprises successful and growing. How have you done that? 

A: I made a conscious effort to change the direction of the company. GWSE was a marketing company for many years because I was a player. As I started to develop the business, I knew I had to make a transition. It's not an easy thing to do. I slowly started to change the foundation of the company. Not many people noticed it, and that's the way I wanted it. I wanted it to stay private.

It's an operations business - a lot of things outside of golf, but they still pertain to golf. I sold the production company because I felt like we hit the ceiling. Our company became younger. I've got a group of 30-year-olds who buy into my vision. I give a 30-second idea that creates 30 months of work. I'm making sure we are all drinking the same Kool-Aid.

Errr Greg....This is awkward, but do you by any chance know how that Kool-Aid thing turned out?

In a perfect world, the only kind of fox allowed on a golf course would be, you know, the real ones... Do take a look at this video of a Fox that is truly "Money"....

I'll take a bow for that world-class segue, and also note tat it took place at County Louth Golf Club, better known as Baltray, where the bride and I hacked it around with Lowell Courtney in 2014.

Unfriended - Going away quietly just isn't Ted Bishop's style, so this shouldn't come as a surprise:

No surprise in the Millennial-friendly title, as it was his command of social media that got him in that spot of bother.... but this bit of big-footing is amusing if true:

What does the PGA of America think about you writing this book?

You’d have to ask them. I’ve had virtually no contact with the PGA of America since October 2014. I did have a brief conversation with Derek Sprague [Bishop’s successor] in November 2014 and [PGA CEO] Pete Bevacqua in February 2015. Those are the only conversations I had with people "inside" the PGA and they were not related to my book. I have had some conversations with the PGA's outside legal counsel requesting a review of my book before it was published. At one point they threatened "judicial intervention" if I didn't cooperate. I have no plans to let the PGA's outside legal counsel see the book.

Well, you cross the five families at your own peril....

Life Imitating Keegan -  I completely missed the weekend at Doral, including this homage to Keegs:

Steven Bowditch: The Presidents Cupper turned in one of the worst weeks in PGA Tour history, becoming the first player in the last 30 years to fail to break 80 in four rounds at the same event. On the bright side, Bowditch still took home $48,000 for his efforts. Yep, $48 Gs to not break 80 for four straight days. There are a lot of golfers out there wishing they could get paid for bad golf like that.

He can always fall back on his day job of being a Bond villain....at least he kept his sense of humor:

"I think there was four dozen golf balls at the start of the week in my locker. And I'm down to my last one." – Steven Bowditch.

Wow.  Imagine if it had actually been windy...

The above is from Alex Myers' weekly feature The Grind.   Alex is recently married but hasn't lost his eye for the lasses.... Click through for a couple of Paige Spirinac photos (I do like her nerdy look), but he also introduces us to Chelsea Lynn Pazzola, a former college golfer who you're not going to like at all:

Have you ever previously felt the urge to be a Titleist driver?  You're welcome, Mags...

That'll have to keep you all for now....