Udder Stuff

We dealt with the Match-Play in the prior post, so let's close a few browser windows as well...

Anchoring Detritus - Golf Digest Equipment Editor Mike Stachura followed-up with his course-raters and yielded this result:

But it appears a small percentage of clubs and courses already have begun or have plans

to look the other way when it comes to the ban on anchoring. Golf Digest contacted members of its 100 Greatest Courses ratings panel of low-handicap amateurs and club professionals, and after 283 responses, 6 percent indicated anchoring would be allowed where they play. 

It’s not clear such action is being done out of ignorance, or even because there’s a belief that allowing anchoring is a harmless way to maintain enthusiasm for the game.

This is probably much ado about nothing for a number of reasons.  First, 6% is a fairly diminimous proportion to begin with, especially in the year of the rule-change.  But the more you dive in, the more you see the fault lines forming:

Others seem caught in the middle, which by USGA standards is no less an acceptable place than creating a local rule. Said one, “My clubs allow anchoring for daily play but do not allow it for tournament play and the ‘majors’—club championship, member-member, couples championship, senior championship, match-play championship, etc. Most of our players who play in the majors have converted to non-anchoring. The ‘old farts’ stay with anchoring because they only play recreationally.”

I don't even understand the concept of a club allowing it for "recreational play", as I've never encountered a club official on the first tee.  The ultimate authority for all things recreational is the guys (or gals) with whom you play... 

But on any subject people will devolve naturally to madness, such as this:

“Many people go to the long putter after trying everything else, and it's sad to see it being taken away,” Knoetze said. “One issue with people moving back and forth between the anchored stroke and regular stroke may be resolved by allowing us to have two handicaps—one for each putter stroke. This way we will always have a fair handicap tied to the putter stroke we use. We could use the long one at home if we have a local rule and could use the short one, with our higher handicap, for competitive events and clubs that don't have a local rule.”

Yeah, two handicaps, that's the ticket! 

Captain Obsessive - Oliver Holt files an interesting profile of Euro Ryder Cup captain Darren Clarke, including this important detail about his closet:

It does not reveal the man who cheerfully admits he has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Take the clothes in his wardrobe, for instance. Because his weight fluctuates, they are hung in size order and meticulously arranged in a line going from dark to light. ‘It’s completely messed up,’ says Clarke, laughing. Which is another way of saying it is obsessively ordered. 

If being organised can be measured on a sliding scale that runs from ‘Relaxed’ to ‘Bernhard Langer’, Clarke says he is much closer to the Langer end of the spectrum. Langer was the epitome of micro-control at Oakland Hills in 2004 and Clarke is already routinely studying data sent back to him from every tournament, recording prospective team members’ performances on par threes and par fives. Nothing will be left to chance.

But the gist of the piece is this:

Clarke knows he will face tough choices. Others have already wondered aloud whether he might be tempted to offer preferential treatment to old pals like Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter if they fail to qualify automatically for Hazeltine and need to rely on being among Clarke’s three wildcard picks. Clarke snorts with contempt about that idea.

‘An old pals’ act?’ he says. ‘How could I possibly do that? The Ryder Cup is much, much more important than an old pals’ act. That does not happen. Under no circumstances would I let myself... that’s not going to happen. No chance.

And the inevitable comparison to that paragon of European captainhood:

It is unlikely the 2011 Open champion will be scribbling potential pairings on scraps of paper during practice and trying to pass them off as a sandwich order, as Sir Nick Faldo did at Valhalla in 2008. Clarke will have a Plan A, a Plan B and a Plan C. He will organise. He will be involved. He will man-manage. He will know the characters of each of his players inside-out.

OK, that's completely unfair to Clarke, as Sir Nick had no need to worry about losing friends...

Masters Countdown - David Owen literally wrote the book on the Masters, and treats us to some stories from the early years of the event this time of year.  Who knew, for instance, that the man that hit the shot that made the tournament took a pass on the first one?

Gene Sarazen hit "the shot heard round the world" -- his epochal double-eagle on

Augusta's fifteenth hole -- in 1935, during the final round of the second Augusta National Invitation Tournament (as the Masters was officially known until 1939). He hadn't played the year before. Why?

Sarazen himself often said, years later, that he skipped the first Masters because the invitation came from Clifford Roberts, the club's co-founder and chairman, "and what the hell do I want to play in a tournament sponsored by a Wall Street broker?" -- as he told me in a telephone interview in 1997. He also said that he threw out the first invitation because it had a Wall Street return address, and he figured it must be some kind of financial promotion. 

Funny stories -- but they aren't true. His invitation came not from Roberts but from Alfred Bourne, who was the club's vice president and principal financial backer, and Sarazen responded in February with a nice letter in which he told Bourne that he was "very glad to accept." He backed out shortly before the tournament, though, because he realized that he had a conflicting commitment with Joe Kirkwood, an Australian professional and trick-shot expert (who had also been invited).

As a smart man once said, trust but verify....David also includes this great image:

The event wasn't officially called The Masters (which Bobby Jones deemed presumptuous) until 1939, but I didn't realize the colloquial usage dated this far back.

Wither Rory - The Tour Confidential gang addressed Rory's desultory play, but I'll suggest you skip the excerpt below if you're in the middle of lunch, or plan to eat again someday:

3. Rory McIlroy had six double-bogeys at the API—the most he's ever had in a PGA Tour event—and was 10 strokes better on Sunday (65) than he was on Thursday and Saturday. Is it officially time to start worrying about McIlroy? 

Shipnuck: That time was a while ago, actually. Rory has always been streaky, and he can have a great season with one hot stretch at the right time, as we saw in 2014. So it's far too soon to call this a lost year or anything of that sort. What's alarming to me is it doesn't seem like he's having much fun out there. He's always played with such an admirable insouciance and lately he's looked more dour than Jim Furyk with a raging hemorrhoid.

Thanks, Alan....It'll be a while be fore I get over that image...