'Dis And 'Dat

It's very disorienting having this bright round object in the sky... Anyone know what they call it?

Better Than Most - I'm so old that I can remember when we only celebrated the anniversaries of actual sporting accomplishments.  Because, as you no doubt have circled on your calendars, 2016 is the 15th anniversary of Gary Koch's famous call of.... well, we've sort of lost site of what triggered the call, haven't we?

Spoiler Alert:  It was this:

Not surprisingly, Shack uses the anniversary in his header, and also dispenses with the obligatory fifth of four reference:

A year removed from Rickie Fowler’s playoff win, even veterans Johnny Miller and Mark Rolfing have declared it their favorite Players Championship. Ever! And why not? 

For all of the talk about how democratic the TPC Sawgrass is -- and who is to argue with the range of champion playing styles -- the fifth of four majors has had its share of not-particularly memorable finishes and disappointing identity crises. 

So don’t begrudge NBC/Golf Channel for devoting a decent amount of their 80 hours to reminding us how epic the week was. Throw in the the 15th anniversary of Gary Koch’s “Better than most” call and the replay truck will be earning their keep.

Geoff also has some details on technological developments, but of greater imprt is that he takes a new moniker out for a test drive:

there are several interesting endeavors we'll learn more about in Commissioner Czervik's final Players before handing the keys to the Taj Tim to Jay Monahan.

It feels wrong, don't you think?  Tim is the anti-Czervik in my humble opinion...  But of greater import, the only option that Blogger's spellcheck can identify for Czervik is, no shock, cervix.  We cover the important issues here...

Back to Shack, though we're all going to need a teenager to translate them into English:

Microsoft and golf sabermetrics

The week is also expected to feature an announcement of a new Microsoft partnership that should quiet the sabermetrics crowd longing for more advanced use of stats. An additional project with Microsoft, a demo of the 17th hole built into a new “HoloLens” product.

Ummmmm, any guesses on what a HoloLens might be?  Get back to me on that, wouldja?

But this made me think they might be a tad jealous of a certain Scottsdale tourney:

Speaking of the infamous island green, the Qkr! app will allow grandstand-seated fans there to order food and drinks for delivery to their seat thanks to the good folks at MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Is the ten shot drink rule in effect this week? 

Sean Martin catches up with Gary Koch and it tunes out that it has legs:

PGATOUR.COM: How often do you hear about that call? 

GARY KOCH: “I hear about it, surprisingly, quite a bit. Even yesterday, I’m down getting coffee in the hotel lobby at 6:45 in the morning. I’m wearing a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. A guy comes up to me and says, ‘Better than most! Better than most!’ And I said, ‘Yes sir, thank you.’ He goes, ‘I use it as the motto for my pee-wee baseball team that I coach every year.’ You know, that’s kind of cool. That’s kind of nice that people remember it and appreciate it.”

Just last week I got a "Better than most" from Kunta Kente for a difficult chip from the back of the twelfth green to a front pin.  Sweet of him to notice...

One last plaintive note from Shack:

Now, if Monahan could be convinced in the coming years to recapture some of Pete Dye’s artisanal, small batch, gloriously inorganic swampy course design vibe, the Players could become the coolest tournament on the planet.

Maybe Jay Monahan will bring in Coore/Crenshaw to restore Pete Dye's original vision....  If you've ever seen photos of TPC Sawgrass in it's original iteration, it had that unkempt, sand hill vibe to which Pinehurst No. 2 was restored.  Now it's far too manicured for the purists, but Trump will no doubt love it...

Peace In Our Time - Our long national nightmare is over:

Kiz is back … on good terms with his home club, at the very least. 

A stir was created last week when Kevin Kisner made it known that he had beensuspended from Palmetto Golf Club, his home course and one that he’s played since he was a child. (He also has lived in a house right off the Aiken, S.C., layout’s 17th fairway.) 

What was the source of his temporary ban? Apparently Palmetto wasn’t too happy about a Vice Sports video Kisner filmed with himself and friends cart racing, drinking beer and gambling on the golf course.

But, worry no more! Kisner is back on good terms with Palmetto.

A stir?  Only in our little fishbowl for sure...

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia - That peace in our time thing never seems to work out, does it?  

The residents of Wentworth are getting their revenge.

Just two months after Wentworth Club’s Chinese owners climbed down over plans to cull the membership and charge a £100,000 re-joining fee, hostilities have resumed.

This time, the private estate’s residents - many of them members of the prestigious club - have gone into battle over the staging at Wentworth of the BMW PGA Championship, one of the biggest tournaments in the golfing calendar.

The row puts the future of the tournament at Wentworth in jeopardy - although organisers rushed on Saturday to insist there was "zero chance" of this year's event being cancelled. They also accused the residents of making "extortionate and unreasonable" demands.

If only folks were this concerned about the serial desecration of their Harry S. Colt classic.... Perhaps the funniest thing is how laughably small the numbers are:

Currently, the European Tour, which organises the tournament, pays just £14,000 a year

for the right to use the land for the golf tournament.

But the Wentworth Estate Roads Committee (WERC), which runs the private estate on behalf of residents through an act of parliament, wants in the region of £300,000 a year. 

It made clear that the Wentworth Club membership dispute had soured relations and prompted the new wrangle.

Thank God for that last clarifying bit.... I never saw it coming.

If You Lie Down With Fleas... -  We've seen the Ponte Vedra Family's view of partnerships, most recently in the scheduling of the Brdigestone snoozefest opposite the Euro's French Open.  Tim wants a collaborative environment, provided that at the end of the free exchange of views you do what he says....

So, when the LPGA gets in bed with the PGA Tour.... well, perhaps that's not the best way to put it, but Shack had this as well in the above-linked item:

More on the PGA Tour-LPGA partnership?

There are rumblings that the next phase of this partnership, seen largely as a bundling play for future TV negotations, will be announced this week. Or at least, better understood after all the tournament week networking has been activated.

Point of order:  Doesn't there have to have been a first phase for us to discuss the next? 

I also caught a glimpse of Tim Rosaforte discussing this on Golf Central... He assured us that it was a good thing that these parties are in discussions, without helping us understand why that might be.

A mixed team event would be good fun, but Commissioner Ratched would schedule it opposite the Women's U.S. Open....  

A Future Of Scarcity - This is quite the head-scratcher, though we know how the state has mismanaged its water resources:

The future of Pasatiempo Golf Club-- one of the game's treasured Alister MacKenzie courses -- has been secured, at least for the next three decades. 

The club, located in Santa Cruz, Calif., recently signed a 30-year agreement with the neighboring community of Scotts Valley for the rights to use recycled city water previously pumped into the ocean. Pasatiempo General Manager Scott Hoyt says the club has been working on the proposal for 30 years. 

"It is an absolute historic event for Pasatiempo," Hoyt says. "It is a huge celebration for us. We don't know of any other courses that have three water sources like us. This started out as water security. It turned out to be beneficial cost-wise.

As an aside, Pasatiempo is the only one of his gems that MacKenzie lived long enough to see the finished product.  He saw quite a a bit of it, as he lived there, but he never saw Augusta National, Cypress Point or Royal Melbourne completed.

Hoyt says the financial implications of the deal will be difficult on the club in the short term. He says Pasatiempo will pay for the entire cost of the water up front -- $1.6 million spread over the next five years -- leaving no payments the final 25 years of the agreement. The club has also taken out a loan to pay for an $8-million project to build a 500,000-gallon storage tank and its own pumping and filtration station. Ground will be broken May 17 with scheduled completion in May 2017.

First, that's quite a price tab for water they were pumping into the ocean, no?  But secondly, what happens if there's a municipal bankruptcy?

You're Dead To Me - Alan Shipnuck has gone from mildly annoying to odious with his continued string of plum gig, the latest being a piece on the best basketball team on this rock:

"Golf is a big part of the team culture," Iguodala told me at the team's practice facility in Oakland. He's only been playing for about two years, but is a self-described "junkie." He can rattle off the top five players in the world—female players. He hits the range every non-game day, and routinely shows up at practice in his golf togs. A fast learner, he shot a nifty 86 at Augusta, but he's quick to add, "I've got a long ways to go to catch up to that guy." 

"That guy" is Curry. On this day, he was engaged in a putting contest on the hardwood with Lydia Ko, who had dropped by a Warriors shoot-around as part of an LPGA publicity tour. "I haven't seen Steph that excited in a while," said a Golden State front-office official. "And if he's excited, then all of us get excited." 

Curry grilled Ko on everything from the degrees of loft on her wedges to the tenets of the "A Swing," the method promulgated by her teacher, David Leadbetter. Little wonder the NBA's reigning MVP calls himself "a golf nerd."

All these great athletes from other sports love our game, yet we're the ones in an existential crisis.... What's wrong with this picture?

How Do We Count The Ways? -  That same Shipnuck guy had this epci whine:

Why Aren't More Players Excited About Golf's Olympics Return?

Really, Alan?  OK, let's let the man make his arguments....  I think this is the crux of it:

A popular canard trotted out by detractors is that the Games are supposed to represent the pinnacle of the sport and that will never be the case, given the long history of the major championships. But the Olympics is not the pinnacle for soccer, tennis or basketball, and these sports have all been enriched and elevated by being a part of the Games. As another individual sport, tennis offers the most useful comparison. Andy Murray's gold medal at the 2012 London Games was as big a deal as any Wimbledon final. Roger Federer's carrying the Swiss flag in the opening ceremonies in '04 and '08 was a more indelible moment than anything he's done at the Australian Open. It will be a career-altering moment for whoever wins gold in Rio, no matter what else he or she accomplishes going forward.

I agree that tennis is the best example, but with nothing beyond that.  How has tennis been enriched?  Yes, there was a brief buzz over Andy Murray because he specifically and Brits in general finally won something, but Roger Federer carrying Summer-Olympics powerhouse Switzerland's flag at the opening ceremonies?  I know, it changed my life...

Then there was this:

Lately it has become trendy to kvetch about golf's Olympic format, which is funny given that the 72-hole stroke play competition was announced in 2009. Ty Votaw is the PGA Tour official who spearheaded golf's reentry into the Games, and he is happy to reiterate the reasons why the Olympics will look the way they do: "Golf is blessed to have many formats, but stroke play is always the standard of excellence at the biggest events. With match play many nations would have been eliminated early in the competition, which we didn't want. And a team format reduces the competitiveness of many countries."

So what, we did it for Finland?  remember, it's not just that it's another dreary stroke play tourney, it's also a ridiculously weak field.  Here's your pro-am field as of today:

You're going to grow the game by making us watch Roope Kakko?  But no room at the inn for Matt Kuchar....

They're not serious, but they expect the players to be...