Thursday Threads

Apologies for the unplanned 48 hour absence.  A family matter on which I was engaged spun out of control on Tuesday, necessitating far too much of my time.  On the bright side, if any of you have need of the services of the worst attorney currently practicing in the state of New Jersey, I've got you covered.

Yesterday was a travel day with Employee No. 2.  Now safely ensconced in UL Western HQ, let the blogging commence...

API Stuff - The boys are in Orlando and ready to peg it....wait...clarification.  Some of the boys are in Orlando per Adam Schupak:

Something seems amiss when the top 5 Americans skip the tournament bearing the name 

of the individual most responsible for the PGA Tour being the success it is today. 

No Jordan Spieth, no Rickie Fowler, no Dustin Johnson and no Patrick Reed. World No. 4 Bubba Watson and No. 15 Jim Furyk get passes because of injuries. But it isn’t even just the top dogs. All told, only eight of the 22 highest-ranked Americans are in the field: Brandt Snedeker, Zach Johnson, Kevin Kisner, Matt Kuchar, Billy Horschel, Ryan Moore, Robert Streb and Smylie Kaufman.

Adam uses Peter Jacobson to make his point:

Jacobsen listened to this litany of excuses for the absence of American stars before interrupting: “But you know what? It’s still just golf. It’s a game. What I always ask guys when they say they are skipping the API or the AT&T is, ‘Do you enjoy the career you’re in? Do you like the money you’re making and the life you live?’ They say, ‘Yeah.’ I go, ‘Would you sacrifice one week out of 52 just to do that?’ And they say, ‘Yeah.’ Then I say, ‘Go play API.’ ”

I listened to Peter Jacobson on Golf Channel trying to make the point that the API was the fifth, correction, sixth most important event of the year because, you know, Arnie!  But let's remember that Jake sits in front of a microphone largely on the basis of his impression of Arnie....

Now please don't take this wrong, but I love Arnie as much as the next guy.  And I believe that players should play his event as an homage, but not that they're required to be there every year.  And in this perfect storm of a year, with the schedule from Hades, I'm loathe to criticize any players that take this week off.

And this time it's not just my default template Olympic/FedEx Cup/Ryder Cup rant, it's also a function of slotting in the Dell match Play event, with its early start, next week.  Now there might be some good news for this event:

Perhaps sensing the schedule hasn't been kind to the Arnold Palmer Invitational or that criticism will continue of players for passing up the chance to pay tribute to The King (Ron Green in Global Golf Post filed this one Monday), the tour has announced even more "enhanced status" for the API. (In 2014 the event received a three-year tour exemption to the winner.)

Namely, an enhanced purse of $8.7 million. And there will continue to be a college golfer exemption coming for a Palmer Cup team member, voted on by peers.

I don't know....  I'm a fan of giving the college kids a tee time, but not in an invitational limited to 120 players.  I'm a law of the jungle kind of guy, let the events compete for the players' affections. but Commissioner Ratched has already put his pinky on the scale with that 3-year exemption, and when he helps one event, he necessarily hurts others....

This seems sadly analogous to the Byron Nelson, where the event's namesake is the only meaningful draw.  The course is the least interesting of the four Florida events, there's better and more important weeks surrounding it on the calendar, and Arnie is a frail 86 at this point.

And do enjoy this video of the players hitting Arnie's 1960 driver, though like Shack I can't believe they allowed THAT DRIVER to be hit.  But I find the panel discussion profoundly silly.  They're amazed that Arnie could drive that first green at Cherry Hills in 1960, whereas Bobby Jones could hit it 300 yards with hickories.  The evolution in equipment has mainly served to minimize the differential in ball-striking, but we'll leave that for another time.

Spieth Stuff - I can only assume that there's no professional golf tournament in American Samoa, because Jordan Spieth is taking the week off.  We kid because we love....or something.

I'm not the only one worried about our young hero, a few days back this knowledgeable source expressed his concern:

“I’m just worried ...I’m worried about him because I don’t know if he’s playing too much and he’s doing too many things with golf and sponsor obligations that he ... may get burned out and go through a rut where he doesn’t want to be on the golf course for awhile,” Day said at the Bay Hill Club and Lodge. “He has played a lot of golf, especially in the last few years. You can look at his world ranking and how many events he’s played over the last couple years, and you can see that he’s kind of wearing himself thing.”

That's of course grizzled veteran Jason Day, speaking words of wisdom that will be summarily rejected by young Jordan.  

And while everyone is going gaga over Jordan's SportsCenter promo that you can see here:

In honor of The King, I'll leave you with this classic of the genre:

Sometimes less is more....

Feherty Stuff - I maintain mixed feelings about his eponymous talk show, but the man himself is always an interesting interview subject.  In fact, perhaps he should interview himself, which I'd imagine would play out something like this:

 For my younger viewers, this was back when Woody was funny and before he was a sexual predator.  At least before we knew....

And sorry about those Spanish subtitles,,,  

This Rob Doster interview is well worth your time.  Shack picks his faves here,  but this got the biggest guffaw from your humble blogger:

You experienced it firsthand at the 1991 Ryder Cup, the famed “War on the Shore” at

Kiawah’s Ocean Course. What do you remember about that week? 

It was the high point of my [playing] career, being on a losing Ryder Cup side. I always think of it as high as I got. It was such an electric experience. I never felt anything like it before, and I’ve never felt anything like it since. Standing on that first tee and teeing the ball up and being part of that event.

That year, the European team flew in on the Concorde and landed in Charleston. I was sitting beside my best friend Sam Torrance [former European Ryder Cup player and captain who sank the winning putt for Europe in 1985], played with him for 20 years. At the airport, the fences were lined with people. It looked like people were trying to climb over the fence. And I thought, this event is huge, it’s amazing. And Sam said, “No, they’re here to see the airplane, you f---ing idiot.” That’s one of my favorite memories. The Concorde apparently doesn’t land too often at Charleston.

He's always been so self-deprecating about his golf career that you might be surprised to learn that he took down the then-reigning U.S. Open champion Payne Stewart 2&1 in singles.  But even in that, his most enduring achievement with a golf club in  his hand, he finds the humor and provides a wonderful eulogy for Stewart:

What about your singles win over Payne Stewart? 

Payne was a great friend of mine. In our match, I was 4-up with four to play. I was playing probably the best round of golf I ever played in my life. But I lost two holes in a row, 15 and 16, and I was in a complete full DEFCON 1 panic mode going to the 17th tee.

Crowd control had broken down, and we were trying to make our way to the tee. This large lady marshal poked her “Quiet Please” sign into my chest and said, “Where do you think you’re going?” like I was a heavily disguised spectator. I was about to go bats--t postal when Payne put his arm around my neck and put his face right against mine, and I could smell the Red Man [chewing tobacco] from the plug he had in his mouth, and he’s grinning that stupid schoolboy grin, and he said, “Ma’am, I’d love you to keep this son of a bitch right here, but he’s playing against me.” That’s who he was. Being 2-down with two to play, you’d love to see your opponent losing his pieces before you get on the hardest hole in the Western Hemisphere [the par-3 17th at Kiawah], but that’s just who he was. I managed to make 3 there and finish the match. He was very special to me, and the fact that I got to play him in that series of matches meant a great deal to me.

It really is worth a full  read.

Beyonce Stuff - This may be my favorite story of the day, because it's so damn improbable.... 

Our subject is Ha Na Jang, and her recent win in the HSBC event in Singapore.  Here's her victory celebration that's been compared to Beyonce:

Now, from an American perspective this is good stuff.... our biggest problem with the South Korean gals is our inability to tell them apart, so this kind of camera-friendly emotion helps in the regard.

But not so fast, there's a bizarre backstory and backlash:

Instead, Jang has become a controversial figure thanks to a recent freak accident at the Singapore's Changi Airport. A freak accident that involved her father and fellow South Korean star In Gee Chun. 

Golf Channel's Randall Mell first reported the unfortunate incident in which Jang's father dropped a 15-pound travel bag down an escalator the week of the HSBC Champions. The result was Chun getting hit in the lower back and having to withdraw from the tournament. 

Jang went on to win the event, celebrating by doing a Beyonce-inspired dance on the 18th green. In her Tuesday press conference for this week's JTBC Founders Cup -- the first LPGA Tour event since the HSBC -- the 23-year-old golfer said she was just having fun and and upholding a promise she made to the Singapore media before the week to do something special if she won. However, her victory dance rubbed many fans the wrong way since it came while the injured Chun sat out.

Egads!  You couldn't hit a person with a ricochet off an escalator if you were given ten tries, so that obviously had to be an accident.

And then there's this Olympic angle:

According to Mell, Jang found this out when she returned to South Korea following her victory. Chun supporters were mad about the injury, how it was handled, and that Jang's victory knocked the defending U.S. Women's Open champ out of the fourth and final spot (as of now) for the South Korean Olympic team. 

An emotional Jang didn't wish to talk about the controversy on Tuesday, but she did address the distress she's been experiencing of late. 

"Now every day crying in my room, last night, last week,” said Jang, whose first two LPGA Tour titles have come in the past four events. "A lot happening in Korea, big issue."

Shades on Tonya Harding, right?  Not really, but Korean society prizes conformity more than ours, as Ha Na Jang is now discovering.

But it's all so improbable, that I can't help be amused by it.  And it's something else that I can blame on The Olympics as well.