Weekend Wrap

Lots to get to today, so no formalities as we dive in:

Valero Views - The Tour's San Antonio stop has developed a rep as a place where strange things happen, though it seems this year that an actual golf event broke out.  From the game story:

SAN ANTONIO - Charley Hoffman made a 10-foot birdie putt on the final hole to win

the Valero Texas Open on Sunday for his fourth PGA Tour victory. 

The 39-year-old Hoffman closed with a 3-under 69 at TPC San Antonio for a one-stroke victory over Patrick Reed. Hoffman finished at 12-under 276 and earned $1,116,000. 

''This was my hardest one,'' Hoffman said after a vigorous fist-pump and drill-team leg kick when the winning putt fell at 18. ''Grabbing that lead and holding on to it - it's tough to keep the pedal down and give yourself birdie opportunities and win golf tournaments.''

The first thing I saw as I walked into the house late yesterday afternoon was Charley channeling his inner Rockette, and it must be an acquired taste.  Charley leads the league in first round leads (or so it seems), but after a recent missed opportunity heard him speak well of his desire to be back in the hunt to "Show us what he has."  We like good attitudes, so good on ya, Charley.  And, I must say, we like this reaction as well.... Hey, you need that kind of wind-cheater down there.

I should also note that Employee No. 2, pining for the rarely-seen Lumpy and with The Duf sticking to his SlimFast program, has become a big Charley fan.  Happy Days indeed, and while I'm no Lumpy, I'm doing what I can to conform to her idealized body type...

The Ko Killer - The ladies got some prime time love from Lake Merced last night:

DALY CITY, Calif. (AP) Haru Nomura held on in strong wind to win the Swinging Skirts LPGA Classic on Sunday for her second LPGA Tour victory of the year. 

The 23-year-old Japanese player closed with a 1-over 73 in wind gusting to 35 mph at Lake Merced to finish at 9-under 279 and beat South Africa's Lee-Anne Pace by four strokes.

Nomura won the Australian Women's Open in February, pulling away to beat top-ranked Lydia Ko by three strokes for her first LPGA Tour title.

Despite our Lydia fading badly over the weekend, this one was notable for the difficult playing conditions.  It was cold and windy, and by the latter I mean bent flagstick windy....Or, this windy... Note how much green is between the ball and the hole as she approaches it...

Nomura was staggering, having bogeyed four out of five holes, when she made a snake from the back of the green to a front pin.  Had the cup not intervened, that putt might well have finished utside the town limits of Daly City, and on such things turn golf tournaments.

This young lady was serenaded with Happy Birthday on the first tee:

Our little girl is growing up....

The Zealot - Your tolerance for Bryson DeChambeau might be ebbing, as his Magical Mystery Tour has sucked a lot of the air out of the room.  But in a sport where not long ago we were bemoaning the pre-fab nature of your typical Tour rabbit, he really is a pretty interesting fellow.  

So the timing of this profile is sub-optimal, especially in the week of an MC, but the byline most certainly is not... So hover your mouse and click through to this Jaime Diaz profile of The Professor:

DeChambeau knows he has a presence, and he has a mission. His most stated goal is to

influence the game's multitudes and bring more people to golf. He has been inspired by two meetings with Arnold Palmer, whose example of giving back on a large scale he expects to emulate. Because at this point in his life, Bryson DeChambeau is pretty sure he can do anything.

Consider his explanation for being able to write his full name backward with his left hand, which could be taken as the DeChambeau Manifesto. "It's not talent, it's just practice," he says in a voice that sounds like it belongs to an older person. "If I wanted to learn Arabic or Russian, I could. Or tie my shoes in a new way, I could. Why? Dedication. I'm not really smart, but I'm dedicated. I can be good at anything if I love it and dedicate myself. And I love history. I love science. I love music. I love golf. I love learning. I love life. I love trying to be the best at anything and everything." 

Yes, DeChambeau can come on strong, in a way that could easily come off as grandstanding to his peers. But it's telling that he's well-liked by the young amateurs he has long competed against and has been well-received by pros.

Many are finding him arrogant, which I completely get.  But that last graph is notable in that he seems well liked by those competing against him, and they know him far better than we do.  Just go read the whole thing and I'll wait until you get back...

There was also this guy that seems to like the young man:

He must really like Bryson, since it's the first time in ages we've seen him with a shirt on...

How The Other Half Lives - You'll enjoy this Alan Shipnuck feature on something of which we can only dream:

I began working as a cart boy at Pebble Beach Golf Links in the spring of 1991, when I

was a high school senior in Salinas, Calif., a dusty farming town 15 miles east and a world away from Pebble. My first weekend on the job happened to come a few days after something called the Swallows tournament had been played, and the Beach was still buzzing. I had never heard of the Swallows but quickly ascertained that it was a prestigious amateur tournament played annually around Pebble. (Hence the name — the invitees fly in every year for the last full weekend in April, as predictably as the swallows return to San Juan Capistrano.) Finally I asked a fellow cart boy, "Who gets to play in the Swallows?" I've never forgotten his answer: "Masters of the universe."

 What are you waiting for, just read the damn thing and you'll no doubt react as I did....The Bastard!  Any chance they'd like the event to be blogged?

Have You Seen My Shocked Face? - We've been all over the Olympics for sure, but haven't discussed the doping issue for a bit.  Dick Pound, the former head of WADA, called out our little game in a recent speech:

A vocal crusader on the subject of stricter drug testing of all sports people since his days

as vice-president of the International Olympic Committee, dating back to 1987, he said it would be naive to assume that any sport or nation is immune. 

“We have all seen the shape changes in golfers and the distances they are hitting now and we know that the equipment is better and the balls are better but it isn’t just that,” said Pound, who recalled a conversation with the commissioner of the PGA Tour, Tim Finchem, stating that the sport which “has a great reputation for calling faults on yourself” could set an example to others by outing the cheats. But, the reply he received was disappointing. “He said: ‘Ah, but if I do that then they are all going to think my guys are just like those baseball players and football players and I don’t want that’. But if you follow some of the shape changes in the golfers and follow how, at a certain point, if they happen to come off them, you see how many more injuries they get. There’s a problem there.”

First of all, I think it's very hurtful for him to speak of Lumpy that way....

But seriously, chiseled body with multiple injuries?  Hmmmm...does anyone come to mind?  But perhaps he's not aware that golfers call penalties on themselves...  and this has never been fully explained.

But how pitch perfect is that account of Commissioner See No Evil?

And while we're sort of on the Olympics, the reactions to the Olympic no-shows continues unabated.  One of the realities of the Olympics is that the smaller the country the greater the importance.  This Randall Mell piece on the battle to make the South Korean Women's Golf Team is quite compelling:

DALY CITY, Calif. – So Yeon Ryu knows what Olympic fever can do. 

It seems as if every golf fan in her native South Korea is stricken with it. 

She knows the brilliant 9-under-par 63 she shot Thursday to take the early lead at the Swinging Skirts Classic will lead folks back home to begin calculating what a victory Sunday could do for Ryu’s hopes of making the Korean Olympic team, and she dreads the feverish projections. 

It’s like the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro have become the be all and end all of Korean golf.

“That just makes me crazy,” Ryu said.

It's actually a fascinating look into Korean culture, though you'd have thought that Randall would have at least touched on Ha Na Jang and Beyoncegate and luggagegate.  But here's the gist of the problem:

There are no fewer than ten South Korean women in the top twenty world rankings as of last week, and only four can qualify for Rio.  It's a sixty player field and an individual competition, but we can't accommodate the ninth ranked player in the world.  So, remind me why I should care...

The there's this via Brian Keough from the Irish perspective:

When we spoke about the opposition of high profile golfers such as Scott to golf in the Games, he pulled out his phone to call up a piece he had written for a media outlet. 

"No matter how successful a golfer may be and how many majors he may have won, the majority in the world’s population could not name golf’s four majors. But they know what a gold medal at the Olympics stands for," McGinley read. 

"It is easy to dismiss golf as an Olympic sport and at the same time belittle the value of winning a gold medal compared to winning a major. To do so leaves one open to stand accused of being insular in a sport that is often seen this way. Are we happy with this stereotyping or do we want to be a part of breaking down and demystifying this great game of ours?"

Paul McGinley is a fine fellow and a strong supporter of Irish golf, so we're favorably predisposed to the man, but still... the value of an Olympic Gold Medal in golf remains speculative.  I would argue that the best analogy is tennis, and that doesn't exactly support Paul's premise.

But what in God's name does he mean about "breaking down and demystifying" golf?  The problem is that the players are acutely aware of two rather significant factors that McGinely and Mell ignore:

1. The format is a joke... Not only is 72 holes of stroke play a yawn, but the fields will be the equivalent in strength of the Hero World Challenge; and
2. None of golf's governing bodies was willing to sacrifice a single event to make the summer schedule manageable.

I'm mystified by the abject failure of the governing bodies (what Shack calls the "Five Families") to protect our game in negotiations with the IOC.  We've previously discussed some of the laughable moments in the negotiations, i.e., the IOC not understanding the need for caddies and the like...  But one comes away with the sense that it was more important to have golf in the games than to ensure a minimal level of integrity to the competition.

So, if the governing bodies are happy to stage a glorified exhibition in Rio, why should the players treat it as something more than that?  Discuss among yourselves....