Friday Frisson

It's a bit on the quiet side, but we'll turn some rocks over and see what crawls out...

The King's Court - Jason Day's sympathy for Jordan Spieth makes more sense in light of him seemingly turning the corner:

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- Jason Day felt he was playing better. He finally had a score to

show for it Thursday at Bay Hill. 

Day one-putted his last seven holes, including a 10-foot eagle putt on the par-5 16th to take the lead and two tough par saves at the end for a 6-under 66 and a one-shot lead in the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

Among those one shot behind was Adam Scott, which was no surprise. Scott is the hottest player in golf, coming off two straight victories at the Honda Classic and the Cadillac Championship at Doral, and he played bogey-free in benign weather and on a course where no blade of grass seems to be out of place.

I watched maybe ten minutes of the golf, and there wasn't so much as a wee breeze.  It's almost a surprise that the guys didn't go lower....

Day looked lost earlier in the year, but it was after an extended layoff, partially the result of the arrival of their second child.  Later in the summer he may be glad for that time off.  But this guy remains completely at sea:

On St. Patrick’s Day, the luck of the Irish was not with Ulsterman Rory McIlroy at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. He struggled mightily with his ballstriking, tugged his opening tee shot out of bounds and deposited three other shots into water hazards at Bay Hill. When he said he felt pretty fortunate to walk off with a score of 3-over 75, you believed him. 

“It’s funny. I started missing it left off the tee, and I hadn’t been doing that at all over the recent weeks, or at home in practice, or even the pro-am yesterday,” McIlroy said. “I hadn’t really been missing anything left. To miss one left like that at the start (en route to double bogey) ... I just thought it was a bad swing. 

“Then I hit one left at 3 (into water), hit one left at 4. I mean, I missed a few left. I need to go on the range and work on something and figure out what’s going on.”

Well, he was missing all those short putts on the left, so now I know what they mean when they talk about matching the release points of their full swings and short games.

And while no one said there would be math, one OB and three balls rinsed makes a 75 quite a good score, no?  And he did finish that jigsaw puzzle, so in the immortal words of Carl Spackler, he's got that going for him... 

And while I thought Bubba was home in Bagdad resting his aching back, he's more gone than forgotten.  I'm not sure where this occurred, but he's fingering Kooch as the perp:

These guys are good!  And I did like this one from NoLayingUp:

When did St. Patrick's day become an occasion for pranks?  I must have missed the memo...

Lastly, today's Rodney Dangerfield moment is brought to us by the usually sensible Jaime Diaz:

Adam Scott is the last guy who would ever ask for praise. He’s inordinately modest and

soft-spoken, and probably feels self-conscious (maybe even a little guilty) about all the outsized gifts he’s been given, from his Hollywood looks to his Platonic swing to his innate likability. 

But the 35-year-old Australian honestly hasn’t been given enough credit for what he has accomplished to date in 2016. It goes beyond winning two straight PGA Tour events, which sets him up this week at Bay Hill to become the first player ever to win three times on a Florida swing. 

In the process, Scott has done something very rare. At an advanced stage of his career, in the midst of a long period of underperformance—last year was his first since 2000 in which he went winless worldwide—he has reversed a persistent and often debilitating tendency to melt in the cauldron of a tournament’s crucial moment. The failures usually came from the putter, but in big moments, Scott was prone to big misses with any club. It all pointed to an inner fragility that, for all his physical talent, seemed to put a ceiling on Scott’s capability. Although he had won 11 PGA Tour events coming into this year, including the 2013 Masters, it was hard to project Scott winning much more.

Platonic swing?  What on Earth do you mean by that, Jaime? 

pla·ton·ic

pləˈtänik/

adjective

(of love or friendship) intimate and affectionate but not sexual.

"their relationship is purely platonic"

I'm in partial agreement with Diaz, though Scott remains mostly an underachiever.  I do think he deserves credit for accepting the anchoring ban with grace, though that praise is tempered by the fact that it came at a time that he was putting like a butcher with the broomstick.

But mid-career walkabouts are not an aberration in our game, and he's hardly so old that a comeback is unexpected.  I also agree that his ball-striking had become a bit erratic, though once again it's not unusual for poor putting to spill over into other parts of a player's game.  

He's a nice player, but little more than that at this stage of his career.  

Founders' Frolics - While the men pay homage to The King, the ladies are celebrating their Founders, one by going low:

Mi Hyang Lee scorched the back nine (her front nine) at Wildfire Golf Club on March 17, posting seven birdies and an eagle for a 9-under 27. Lee, who leads the JTBC Founders Cup after posting a 10-under 62, became only the second player in tour history to shoot 9 under for nine holes. Amy Yang birdied every hole on the back nine at the 2015 LPGA KEB Hana Bank Championship in South Korea last October. 

Lee is only the fifth player in tour history to shoot 27, joining I.K. Kim, Jimin Kang, Paula Creamer and Yang. 

The 22-year-old winner of the 2014 Mizuno Classic began her round with a tap-in birdie putt and holed out for eagle from 30 yards on the 11th hole. She parred the No. 12 and then birdied the remaining six holes on the back nine. Lee needed only eight putts on her first nine holes, hit all seven fairways and eight greens. She recorded one sand save.

A 27 is just sick, and I'm surprised that it's been done that often....

Other Stuff - First, the one that started it all is taking a victory lap:

Se Ri Pak is leaving the LPGA Tour at the end of the season. She's hopes she can

continue to inspire and mentor South Korean players for generations to come. 

"It's pretty hard to make decision to be retiring, but it's a time for me to be," Pak said. "At the same time, I learned a lot and I'm trying to share all my skills and all these dreams. So that's where I plan to be the next step of my life. I just want to make dreams come true."

The 38-year-old Hall of Famer broke the news Thursday after an opening 3-under 69 in the JTBC Founders Cup, her first event in nine months. Hampered by left shoulder problems, she made only eight starts last year.

There's a reason the next wave that dominates the LPGA all call themselves Se Ri kids... She showed them what was possible.

Today's feel-good story comes from Spain:

In Spain, 7-year-old Yago Horno Mateo won a golf tournament last weekend thanks to a score of 50. However, when Yago got home, he realized he had actually shot 51. 

But, instead of keeping quiet about the incident, Yago wrote to his local golf association. 

"My dad told me that to accidentally sign a card with fewer strokes is grounds for disqualification," the letter read. He explained the error and his desire to return the trophy so that it could "be given to the player who deserves it."

Yago is welcome in our game at any time, as is his Dad.

Our Just Desserts feature is this item:

The heckler who hoped to ruin one of Ian Poulter's shots at the Valspar Championship

last week and then continued to harass the golfer on Twitter has been fired by his employer, according to a report in The Ledger, a local Florida newspaper.

J.J. Downum was an assistant athletic director for development at Florida Southern College, but the school's director of athletics told The Ledger "(Downum's) no longer employed at the institution."

His termination was apparently the result of a very visible spat that began whenhe boasted to Barstool Sports about heckling Poulter on the course. He yelled, “You will hit it in the water!” and “You will not make the Ryder Cup team!” as Poulter walked from 12 to 13. Poulter, who tried to get tournament officials to remove Downum from the gallery, responded after his round on Twitter.

I'm torn on this one....the firing seems a bit much as a reaction to the offense.  On the other hand, he's proven himself to be a first class jerk and shouldn't be anywhere's near young people.

Our Not Well item of the day concerns a likable Spaniard:

Two-time Masters champion Jose Maria Olazabal will not play in the Masters for health

reasons that have kept him from competing for an entire year. 

He did not specify his health problems on Friday, only that tests show "some improvement."

"I am sorry to announce that I'm unable to attend this year as I am not feeling well," Olazabal said in a statement. "The Masters is very special to me, and walking up Magnolia Lane gives me a peace of mind like nowhere else." 

The 50-year-old Spaniard won the Masters in 1994 and 1999. His second green jacket, which he won over Greg Norman, followed a debilitating ailment in his foot that he feared would end his career. Olazabal is in the World Golf Hall of Fame, and he was the winning Ryder Cup captain for Europe four years ago.

I do hope he's OK and that he's able to attend the champions' dinner.

Our Even Less Well item is here:

The PGA of America has decided to permanently cancel the Grand Slam of Golf.

The four-man, 36-hole event had been played annually since 1979 and typically brings together the four major champions from the previous calendar year. 

After eight years in Bermuda, the event was slated to shift to Trump National in Los Angeles last year. It was abruptly pulled from the site following controversial remarks about immigrants from course owner and presidential candidate, Donald Trump, and ultimately canceled. 

While that decision was billed as a one-year hiatus, PGA officials have now decided to make the change permanent.

Debate settled:  It turns out that Donald Trump is good for the game...

This event was fun back when Tiger and Phil showed up at Poipu Bay.... But the amazing part of this story is that they kept playing it when no one was watching...