Weekend Wrap - Tuesday Edition

I know, a day late for sure...  though, to be fair, it wasn't much of a weekend...

The absence was a result of the Met Golf Writers' annual pilgrimage to Bethpage Black, which resembled nothing so much as the Bataan Death March.  A wind-swept misty rain, occasionally escalating into a hard drizzle, turned the always-challenging track into a Par-90...

We comically drew the 17th as out starting hole, and I was half-jokingly debating between hitting driver or laying up....  You know the rules of this establishment, the blogging of the golf, as important as it may be, shall never impinge upon the playing thereof....  So, bygones?

Weekend After Action Report -  First, the big boys:

IRVING, Texas (AP) — Billy Horschel won the AT&T Byron Nelson with a par on the first playoff hole Sunday after Jason Day pulled his 4-foot par putt left and past the hole. 

That miss by Day almost wasn't even needed for Horschel, whose 36-foot birdie chance was rolling straight toward the center of the cup before stopping just short. He won for the fourth time on the PGA Tour and for the first time since taking the 2014 Tour Championship for the FedEx Cup title. 

With a 1-under 69, including a 60-foot birdie putt at the 14th hole, Horschel matched Day at 12-under 268. Day had a 68.

The Tour's resident Mouth That Roared, Billy Ho needed desperately to do something with his clubs...  More significant might be the Aussie's showing some actual form.... 

As for the ladies, this header misses the point:

Lexi Thompson 'puts a lid' on rules flap with record win at Kingsmill

You don't make up for a major being taken from you at Kingsmill....  The TC panel falls into the same cliche with this question:

4. Lexi Thompson won the Kingsmill Championship for her eighth career title and first since the rules debacle at the ANA Inspiration. Is this a sign that Lexi will be fine, or will we not learn anything until she contends at another major?

Guys, did you not see Lexi take about 30 seconds to absorb the absurd penalty and fight her way into the playoff?

It's like the guys that were waiting for Lexi to speak on the matter, when she was the least interesting part of the story, as victims often are.  It was about our governing bodies inability to control their own processes.....

But I'm glad for her, as it's one less reminder of the incident.  What is interesting about Lexi is why she doesn't win more often, given her obvious physical advantages over the other girls.  The putter is, of course, the culprit, but when she runs away from the pursuit pack it reminds that it should happen more frequently.

College Girls Gone Wild - Are you aware the the NCAA Women's Golf Championship is in progress?  Did you watch any of it?  Why not?

OK, having a life is an acceptable response...  Apparently people don't watch golf 24/7.... who knew?  Mirth aside, it is very much worth watching if you're so inclined or being held involuntarily for a psychological evaluation.  So, first we need to cover a little background....

The NCAA's have threaded the needle with their format and scheduling, having the ladies and gents go back-to-back at the same venue, with each competition staged from Friday through Wednesday.   And for those still irked by Pinehurst 2014, the girls go first....  But that requires a venue willing to turn away its own member for two straight weeks at the height of the season....  Few clubs are lined up at the door to do that.

So, we can't fault them for going to Rich Harvest Farms in Sugar Grove, IL, which has hosted a Solheim Cup and Western Amateur.  From FriedEgg.com:

Unfortunately, golf needs fewer courses like Rich Harvest Farms, which is a perfect example of amateur golf course architecture. I liken its design to what would happen if I was tasked with building a bridge. 

Built on an expansive plot of land with a limitless budget, Rich Harvest boasts a brawny 7,700-plus yard setup with tight tree-lined driving corridors, an abundance of bunker acreage, lengthy walks from greens to tees, massive green complexes and hole designs you will see at no other venue in the world. 

Rich Harvest’s unusual design will present college golf’s best players with an added test of patience this week. A player’s ability to get over bad breaks and move on from disappointments will be critical. Big numbers are nearly impossible to avoid and can be made even when perfect shots are executed. This will be especially critical during the stroke play portion of the competition, where every hole and shot are crucially important.

The hole descriptions are well worth your time:

Hole 5 - “Amen - Holy Stone” 191 yards - par 3

This hole is Jerry Rich’s attempt at mimicking the famed 12th at Augusta. The only problem? The green complex is terrible. Shaped like a bowtie, it has severe undulation in nearly every corner, making many pin placements highly questionable.

If you're going to mimic ANGC's 12th, the first thing you might do is check the actual yardage of that hole.  

Then the weather decided to not cooperate, causing Saturday's play to be cancelled.  That may have been a bad call, as detailed in the linked piece, but it caused the stroke play event to be shortened from 72 to 54 holes.

Oh, and lots of chatter about this:

SUGAR GROVE, Ill. – History was made Friday at the NCAA Division I Women’s Golf Championship. But it wasn’t a player or coach rewriting the books. 

No, for what is believed to be the first time ever in the championship’s history, an artificial-turf tee box was put into play. The 407-yard, par-4 fourth hole at Rich Harvest Farms featured a turf mat, about 10 feet by 15 feet, that sat off the cart path, in a heavily shaded area just shy of a creek.

Ick!  

However, as Lindsay pointed out, it was the right thing to do. With the tee shot being into 

the wind on No. 4 on Friday, players would not have been able to reach the corner of the dogleg-left fairway from the next closest tee box. Shorter hitters might have even had trouble carrying the hazard.

In other words, there was no other option than to use the tee box, located in an area where growing grass is challenging. Instead, it was the players who were challenged. 

“I thought to myself, some kids probably have never hit off a mat in their whole life,” said Ohio State head coach Therese Hession.

When I first saw the header about mats, I thought they were whining about the range....  But great course design for sure...

We caught the last hour or so of yesterday's play, and got immediately swept up into the enthusiasm of it all:

Jennifer Kupcho, playing as an individual for Wake Forest, was cruising along Monday at Rich Harvest Farms as she was going to win the NCAA individual title – shortened

from 72 to 54 holes as delays wiped out any play Saturday. The sophomore was bogey-free through her first 13 holes of the final round, 2 under for the day and overall. She was four shots ahead. 

Even a bogey at 14 little mattered. Kupcho was going to win. 

And then it all came crashing down. 

After finding the fairway at the treacherous par-4 17th, likely all Kupcho had to do to win was get the ball over the fronting pond. Arizona State’s Monica Vaughn had just recorded back-to-back birdies on the other side of the course to move to 1 over, but Kupcho was still two ahead with a par 5 to play. 

And then the inexplicable. Her pitching wedge approach shot from 127 yards hit the bank short of the green and rolled into the water. 

“I got over it and hit the ball just how I wanted,” Kupcho said on Golf Channel. “It just hit a few feet short.”

Kupcho is a good player that we'll hear more from, though the hardest part of her transition to the professional game might be learning to blame her caddie for things like this.  You'd of course think that she'd have taken enough club to ensure the carry, but it's also not clear whether she knew where she stood.

 Now comes the really fun stuff, two days of team match play....  Do watch if you can, as it's always dramatic.  Beth Ann Nichols with the strong play of two teams from Ohio:

SUGAR GROVE, Ill. – Therese Hession threw her right fist down toward the 18th green

as a final birdie putt dropped to put the exclamation point on the Buckeyes’ banner day.

Roughly an hour later, Kent State coach Greg Robertson stood off to the side of the 18th green as Michaela Finn faced a 4 1/2 foot par putt to give the Golden Flashes the eighth and final spot in the match-play portion of the NCAA Championship. 

When Finn’s putt fell, Robertson dropped with it, crouching down with a flurry of fist-pumps as he looked over with a big smile toward the rest of his team. 

Two Ohio-based teams, well-versed in brutal weather and tough tracks, made history at Rich Harvest Farms, qualifying for match play for the first time in school history.

One last Item that I saw just before publishing this post.  Had enough rules nonsense lately?  perhaps this one deserves more coverage:

When you’ve got to go, well, you’ve got to go. Just don’t use a golf cart to get you there.

That’s the lesson learned by Northwestern’s Sarah Cho and Kent State’s Kelly Nielsen,

who during the weather-delayed second round of the NCAA Women’s Championship on Sunday at Rich Harvest Farms were each assessed two-stroke penalties for … using the bathroom. 

OK, so technically the penalties weren’t specifically for using the bathroom—the Rules of Golf can be harsh, but they’re not that harsh. Rather, it was for the method in which they got to the bathroom. Under the conditions of competition for the championship, players are mandated that they “must not ride on any form of transportation during a stipulated round unless authorized.” 

Players have been authorized to take carts to speed up play on the otherwise long walks from the third to the fourth tee, ninth to the 10th tee and 11th to the 12th tee. However, Cho (hold the flag in the photo above) was not authorized to jump into a cart to visit the ladies room after finishing up the 18th hole to avoid delaying her group from teeing off on the first hole. 

Similarly, when Nielsen got a ride from a Kent State staffer to find the facilities coming off the 13th green, she too had breached the rules.

Holy bladder control, Batman!  Can't these girls just find a tree like the rest of us do?   Guys, can't we see our way to a local rule, if only for the ladies?  The only saving grace is that both penalized teams qualified for match play....

Coverage starts at 9:30 a.m.  Give it a look-see, you'll thank me later.

Everyone's A Critic -  To be fair, this critic has a right to opine, though she'd be wiser to keep her thoughts within the confines of their living room.  Our subject is Alice Dye, and she just doesn't like what they've done to Pete's song, specifically the new 12th at TPC:

"It’s an awkward hole," says Alice Dye. "It doesn’t fit the course. He OK’d it, but it’s not a Pete Dye design."

Nobody said it was, but let's let Alice have her say:

"Pete has never believed in drivable par 4s," says Alice. "If a player is supposed to reach the green from the tee and you’re always allowed two putts, well, that’s a par 3." 

Alice, who watched the tournament with Pete all week, on a course that is one of the most iconic of the Dye’s 100-course portfolio, was not impressed with the new 12th.

"Even for the players who laid up, they were left with an awkward shot to a target that was angled across their body, the pins were hidden and weren’t accessible and the green sloped away from them, towards the water. The players who laid up weren’t able to be on the offensive. Either TV didn’t do a good job of presenting it or the hole didn’t create the excitement or the drama they were hoping for."

Now is perhaps not the time to argue about the artificial construct of Par.... But we can all agree that Pete's old No. 12 wasn't much of a hole for these guys, though it was fine for the paying public.  

Shack has some more interesting takes on it from being on site during the week:

Did it achieve perfection on the first attempt? No. But few of the great short par-4s were perfect from the get-go. Shoot, Riviera's 10th only ascended to its current place atop

most lists when technology (and all of that core work) allowed more players to go for the green. 

Did the new 12th achieve the goal of adding intrigue to the early back nine holes and some much needed nuance at what was previously not a good hole?

Definitely. 

Did it take one of the most one-dimensional, unimaginative and strange short par-4s on a great course and improve it?

Absolutely.

More importantly, a couple of suggestions to improve the hole:

Actually, the visibility issues were for those who played back in the fairway. Those who sneaked their lay-ups closer to the green got better views, a great nuance to the hole that developed as players got to know the features better.

As for any issues, I think there are two small tweaks that would encourage more aggressiveness without turning it into the automatic-driving situation that Alice laments: keep the lake bank at a higher cut and flip the tee over to the left so that the angle better fits the right-hander's draw-shot eye. Currently the players are hitting across themselves a bit. The angle probably accentuates the narrowness of the hole opening and the lefthand lake bank that was declared too severe by many.

A move of the tee so that the hole to set it up more like a long Redan could mean more enticement to attack.

The irony, she burns.  This sounds very sensible on both counts, but the beauty of redn greens is in the sue of natural land forms to dictate the line of play.  The concept of a bulldozer-created Redan might just cause me head to explode....

The Holy Trinity - The best part of this week's Byron Nelson?  That's easy....looking forward to seeing Trinity Forest.  The Tour's website has a great deep dive into the creation of this new venue:

As Crenshaw stood on the piece of property for the first time, though, he still wasn’t sure. He was struggling for a vision. The land was relatively flat and covered in tall

grass, with just a few mature trees and shrubbery dotting the space. What he and Coore had seen on the maps wasn’t evident in person. 

So they asked for the grass to be mowed. 

That's when everything came together. 

A completely different property emerged that featured natural rolling terrain with subtle elevation changes — the perfect canvas for a course that next year will become the new home of the AT&T Byron Nelson. 

Compared to the countless tree-lined golf courses that dot the landscape in North Texas, Trinity Forest Golf Club stands out from the crowd — a links-style, treeless layout bordered on all sides by towering hardwoods from the 6,000-acre Great Trinity Forest. Its history as a former landfill – which went unused for decades before the City of Dallas put the tract through environmental remediation – made it more challenging.

The entire process left a one-of-a-kind space for Coore and Crenshaw to create an 18-hole layout that tested their creativity and forced them to think outside the box — due in part to restrictions placed on the landfill that made it illegal to dig into the ground at any point during the project. The City of Dallas, by Texas Commission of Environmental Quality rules, also was required to remove any remaining trees that had voluntarily grown on top of the landfill, which completely put the property at the mercy of the elements. 

Crenshaw called it “a landfill with character.”

Read the whole damn thing!  Please?  

My take is that the PGA calendar will son be experiencing shrinkage and, metaphor alert, tournament sponsors better have their eyes on a chair for when the music stops.  There's no easier fat to cut in the schedule than in Texas, with four indifferent and indistinguishable events.   

This specific event, until nest year, had only two things going for it, the ties to its namesake legend and strong sponsorship.  But the flip side is equally apparent, do they really need to be in both Dallas and Fort Worth?  Plus, do today's coddle Tour pros even know who the event is named for?

You Think PXG Clubs Are Expensive? - Gotta love it... behind the scenes at a $2,000 wedge fitting:

Clouds and a cool breeze blew over Oceanside, Calif., last Monday as JP Harrington conducted the first fitting for a client into his new line of wedges at the Titleist

Performance Institute. A small area to the right of the practice range – where Titleist performs ball tests and other golfers can be fit for the latest gear – has been set up for him, allowing Harrington’s client to hit wedge shots across manicured turf. 

Most golfers never will have a chance to go through a fitting with Harrington, who plans to conduct two per week. That means he will do 50 to 60 more in 2017. And then there is the price: $2,000 for the fitting and three wedges. Each additional wedge costs $500.

That's $2,500 for me, since I carry four wedges....  What makes them special?

First, the heads are forged from 1025 carbon steel before being milled to precisely the

desired shapes. Internal weights made to fit each specific wedge head help raise or lower the center of gravity based on loft, then a large, highly polished tungsten weight is attached in the toe to pull the CG into the center of the hitting area. All that weight can be added because the back plate is made from brushed titanium, which is exceptionally light.

While the grooves are identical to those of Titleist Vokey Design SM6 wedges, the soles of JP Harrington wedges are CNC-milled. Most have aggressive heel and toe relief for increased versatility, but if there is a buzzword Harrington loves to talk about, it’s camber. His wedges tend to have a lot of curvature from the leading edge to the back of the sole, as well as from heel to toe. Harrington believes this helps players maintain speed through the turf for improved consistency.

Perhaps when Golf Digest purchases this blog?  Or not....  Honestly, though, I can't say that I love the look of them...  But, perhaps I'm rationalizing?

Is All Well With the Shark? -  I understand that he hurt his ankle playing tennis, but is he otherwise OK?  I ask because it's been ages since he shared a topless photo with us....  

Ask and ye shall receive:

 Thanks, as always, for Sharing, Greg.