Thursday Thoughts

Sorry for the blogging hiatus yesterday, but we had 11" of the white stuff over the last two days and your humble blogger had a new pair of skis to point down the hill.... and it was pretty great.

So, where were we?

Dateline: Austin - I watched a couple of hours of the golf, and liked what I saw of ACC.  A driveable Par-4 (almost) for a finisher is a cool idea, especially in match play.  The local hero had a nice day:

Navigating the windy, undulating Texas Hill Country course he frequently played during

his year and a half at the University of Texas, Spieth heard plenty of ''Hook'em Horns!'' cheers and high-fived a toddler in the home crowd excited to the see the 22-year-old return to familiar ground. 

''It's fantastic,'' Spieth said about his return to his college town. ''I'm in love with Austin. It's maybe my favorite city in the world.''

He looked very much in control all day, though he of course was the only guy in the field that had seen the joint before Monday.  In fact, all of the Big-3 won, though huge question marks attach to the other two.  Day channeled his Inner Tiger:

Jason Day was cruising along at 3-up over Graeme McDowell when he informed caddie Colin Swatton on the 15th tee that something was wrong. 

“He grabbed his back and said, ‘Oh, I just tweaked it,’” Swatton said outside the clubhouse after Day limped in to an impressive 3-up win in the WGC-Dell Match Play Championship. 

Day dropped his driver upon finishing an aggressive 16th tee swing, leaving Swatton to pick the club up as the world No. 2 clutched his lower back in obvious pain. Day, who won last week's Arnold Palmer Invitational, gingerly strode down the fairway before attempting to walk down a steep, 12-foot deep bunker face. He avoided further injury and carded a match-ending par.

He was lucky to close the match out early and get to the physio...Kudos to Graeme MCdowell for not only conceding a short putt, but also picking up Day's golf ball for him.  

As for the final member of the triumvirate, he got some unexpected help from his opponent:

Yet through 13 holes, Olesen was in line to pull off the upset of the day: McIlroy, 2 down at the time, was struggling with approach shots in the Texas wind. 

But McIlroy battled back with consecutive birdies on the 14th and 15th to erase the deficit. Both men parred the next two holes, sending the match to the 18th.

It was here that Olesen, one of the better short-game players in Europe, hit a shot usually foreign to the pros: 

The dreaded shank.

I do hope Rory said shank you. 

The most interesting story of the day might have happened off-camera, as per this Shack post:

Even better, the match play already had more energy on day one than it's seen any day when played at previous venues. On Friday with the Spieth-Thomas match late and the forecast good, it should be downright sizzling! 

But the tournament operators, PGA Tour's Championship Management, adore saving a few bucks for their sponsor by not allowing the public on grounds for practice rounds. As longtime readers know, I feel this deprives aspiring players and dreamers the chance for more informal encounters with their golfing heroes.

It also deprives shuttle drivers, volunteers, security, planners and other important operational folks a chance for a casual dry run-through. A practice round, if you will.

Yeah, I agree with Geoff on both points, as I enjoy practice rounds far more than competition rounds for the reasons he describes, as well as the fact that one can't follow the progress of the tourney on-site.  But a practice round with spectators makes all the sense in the world for a new venue, and you'd think the Tour would be smart enough to require it, especially here where the early rounds are so important.

Dateline: St. Louis - My feelings on Olympic Golf are be now well-known to you, as showcasing our came with a dreadfully dull format will result in a lost opportunity.  And you know who apparently agrees with me?  Al Lambert, that's who.....of course, Al is no longer with us:

The only known Olympic gold medal in golf.

In 1900, the Paris games had two golf competitions: a 36-hole stroke-play event for men and a nine-hole event for women. A grand total of 22 players from the United States, France, Great Britain and Greece competed. Americans Charles Sands and Margaret Abbott won their respective events. 

There was also a third event in Paris, played with handicaps. It didn't count as an official Olympic event, but St. Louis businessman Al Lambert won it. Lambert, founder of Listerine-maker Lambert Pharmacal Co., was overseas on a business visit to his company's Paris office. Lambert returned to the United States and told his story to father-in-law Colonel George McGrew, who was founder and president of Glen Echo Country Club in St. Louis. In Fall 1902, McGrew announced he intended to host a world championship at his club, one of the finest 18-hole facilities in the U.S. at the time, in 1904. 

In 1903, St. Louis landed the Olympics. McGrew decided to turn his world championship idea into the Olympic golf tournament.

1904 was even better:

The team contest started the program, with three, 10-player teams competing over 36 holes. However, Day 1 didn't count toward the Olympic contest. Rather, it was a money match. The Trans-Mississippi Golf Association team bested the Western Golf Association and the United States Golf Association teams to win the day's Nassau.

A team Nassau....way cool.  But that's not even the best part:

Right after the end of the team competition, Glen Echo hosted a driving contest in front of the club, adjacent to the 18th green. There's some conflict as to whether or not it was a long-drive contest.

Lyon, who was a cricket star before taking up golf when prodded why he didn't play a "man's sport", made it all the way to the final, meeting up with Egan, who, at barely 21 years old, was the star of the week.

Yanno, Long Drive would make a good Olympic event, maybe even better than real golf.  But note how more then a century ago they instinctively knew how to make the event fun, whereas today's honchos provide a soul-numbing 72-holes stroke play event.

Dateline: Never-Never Land -  Not gonna ever happen, but people won't let it go:

TIGER WOODS has been told he only needs to pick up the phone and the man who 

The couple in a more innocent time.

made him the greatest player in golf is willing to help get him back into the game.

Butch Harmon first took Woods under his wing in 1993 when the young prodigy was only 17 years old and over the next nine years moulded him into the greatest force the sport has even known, winning eight Majors in five years - two more than Woods has managed in the 14 years since the pair split, somewhat acrimoniously, after a disappointing US PGA tournament in 2002. 

Since then the pair have returned to nodding terms and have regularly passed each other on the driving ranges of the world tour.

If there's a man that made Tiger the greatest, his name was Earl, taking nothing away from Butch's contribution.  It's worth a read for Butch's thoughts on Tiger and the game, but that's a dime that will stay lodged in Tiger's pocket.... He doesn't go back, just ask Fluff or Stevie.

Dateline: Kissimmee, Fl - I don't which is odder, the underlying story or that fact that the Mackenzie Tour, d/b/a The PGA Tour-Canada, holds its Q-School in Florida.  I know, it's a six week season up there, but still...

Anyway, here's the story:

The scorecard shows what the Tour's Twitter account bemusedly referred to as "the ol' quintuple bogey-albatross here at Q-School." Johnston recorded an 8 on a par-3 and then immediately followed it with an albatross on the next hole. If nothing else, this amateur clearly has mettle. In the end, he battled back and ended Tuesday tied for 13th. His play was a bit more even-keeled on Wednesday, but he's currently tied for 27th. There may be something to the wild rollercoaster style of golf.

Yeah, not so much....He was still 2-over for the two holes, and that can't help.  here's his rainbow coalition front-nine scorecard:

No word on how a professional makes an eight on a Par-3...

Dateline: Harrison, NY - More specific GPS coordinates would lead to your humble blogger's personal mancave, for this auction item that Shack calls "dreamy":

It was discarded by Augusta National many decades ago, but was (thankfully) saved by an Augusta, Georgia resident. That original owner didn't understand its value to the collecting community until he briefly posted it on eBay six years ago. That auction sent collectors into a flurry (and we would know, we immediately heard about it and had every intention of buying it), but the sign was quickly pulled from auction and quietly sold to a collector that made a substantial offer. Though we missed out on this historic sign in 2010, we are overwhelmed with the opportunity of finally offering it for public auction.

Not hard to visualize how that would spruce up mt own personal ecosystem.... But back here on Planet Earth, the item is currently at $17, 261.00 at Green Jacket Auctions, so I'll leave it for better-endowed readers....

Dateline: Pinehurst, NC - It's the fifth birthday of the dramatic restoration of Pinehurst No. 2, and Lee Pace was lucky enough to walk the course with Bill Coore.  Here are a couple of interesting excerpts from his piece:

Slipping beneath the radar, though, was the 5-year anniversary of the course’s reopening on March 3. The restoration project was never about adjusting Donald Ross’s No. 2 course for the U.S. Open. The purpose simply was to restore the width and bounciness of the fairways and remove the “bermuda creep” of four decades and return the perimeters of the holes to the native hardpan sand, wire grass and pine needles that reflected the look Ross left upon his death in 1948.

I love the term "Bermuda creep" and will no doubt claim it as my own.... it's a perfect term for the sorry state of No. 2 when I first played it in the early aughts.  There were simply no lines visible off the tee, just a vast expanse of green.  And this:

Indeed, there were plenty of cynics early on. Members and resort guests in 2010 in the backwash of the 2008 financial collapse simply thought Pinehurst didn’t have the money to maintain the course. Some in the design and maintenance business said you might get an interesting look out of the gate, but the vintage aesthetics would be difficult to maintain. All were wrong. 

“Five years is a long time,” Coore says, gazing at the jagged bunker outlines up near the ninth green. “Look at those bunker edges, some people said they wouldn’t hold up. I’d say they’ve held up pretty well. The biggest fear we had was it would not be maintainable. Some people said the bunkers would fall in, you can’t maintain them. I guess it worked. They’re still there.

It seems such a simple concept.... if you build a golf course in the beautiful sand hills of North Carolina, why wouldn't you want that rustic feel evident in the golf course.  Donald Ross certainly felt that way, but his successors got sold a bill of goods.  

And do yourself the favor of watching this short video on the restoration:

Memo to Self:  Since you bought this video documentary of Donald Ross, you might want to watch it.  Of course, that's not gonna happen during Match Play week.