Weekend Wrap

The traditional Monday wrappage, notwithstanding that things didn't, you know, wrap up...

The Long March - Wow, what a bizarre day in televised golf....  The irony, of course, is that the LPGA is always delighted to share the stage with the big tour...  Except, they were dissed by Golf Channel and made themselves seemingly deserving of said dissage.

Here's Geoff's take on it:

The LPGA had a chance to share the spotlight with a rain-delayed Zurich Classic on Golf Channel, and while the network (in my biased view) did a solid job managing a real

traffic jam, they could not overcome the LPGA product failings.

Namely that the tour, even after criticism following past deja-vu-all-over-again fiascos, insisted on conducting a sudden death playoff on only one hole. That would be Las Colinas's less-than-perfect 18th hole. 

This meant eventual winner Haru Nomura and slow-poke Cristie Kerr played the 18th hole six excruciating times.

So, here's the background....  The Zurich PGA team event in New Orleans was hit by a six-hour weather delay, with play resumed some time around 5:30 East Coast time.  As is typical, the network will run over to cover the finish, but not if it goes deep into prime time.  C'mon, golf vs. 60 Minutes?  

In those cases, coverage is handed back to Golf Channel, which presumably has concluded its coverage of the ladies or round bellies....  Except, that the ladies hadn't concluded because it was Groundhog Day, watching two women missing the 18th fairway repeatedly....

So, ladies first:

IRVING, Texas (AP) -- Hara Nomura outlasted Cristie Kerr with a two-putt birdie on the 

sixth playoff hole to win the windy Volunteers of America Texas Shootout for her third LPGA Tour victory.

Nomura, the 24-year-old from Japan who lives in Hawaii, also birdied the par-5 18th hole at the end of regulation to force the playoff after giving up the lead for the first time with a double bogey at No. 17. 

Kerr and Nomura finished regulation at 3-under 281 at Las Colinas Country Club, then played the 518-yard 18th six more times.

Of the twelve people watching, thirteen were shouting at their TV's to put Christie Kerr down....  Christie has never been my cup of tea, but venom from Geoff excerpted above seems spot on.  Her pre-shot routine reminds one most of Ben Crane slowed to 33 1/3 rpm, and there was simple drop from a TIO that lasted as long as the 100 year war...  But, perhaps I exaggerate...

Now, one's perspective was affected by the manner of GC coverage, which evolved in a curious manner.  At first they seemed content to cut back to the playoff as the ladies were hitting, but stay mostly with the lads.  But then some genius decided to go to a split-screen presentation, but the audio feed exclusively from the Zurich.  At a few points the ladies played shots with no audio, making it difficult on the small split-screen to discern the action, while watching players in New Orleans strolling down the fairway as Nick Faldo free-associated one of typically acute observations.  Well done, GC, you managed to piss off both audiences.

I'd speculate that this might have been Christie-related, as they thought they were cutting to a live shot, whereas Christie was only in Act I of Anna Karenina... Seriously, it was that bad...

How bad?  Well the b***h was called out by Judy Rankin:

When you've lost Judy....

But we're not done yet, as that 18th hole was destined to deliver such uninspiring play.  Las Colinas was regarded as the worst track on the PGA Tour, though the finishing hole kind of worked for them because they could all reach it.  In this case, not so much, so watch the girls make par after par after par...

Per Will Gray:

It didn’t help that the hole in question seemed poorly designed, with both players struggling to keep the ball in the fairway off the tee. But the situation also recalled

frustrating images from a playoff between Paula Creamer and Jiyai Shin at the 2012 Kingsmill Championship where the two played the same hole nine straight times. 

The LPGA should have learned from that particularly monotonous ending, but apparently they did not. So let Sunday’s anticlimactic conclusion outside Dallas serve as final reinforcement that any playoff rotation that calls for the same hole over and over needs to be thrown away and promptly re-written.

The only good news in the whole sordid mess was that it seemed that the more time Kerr took, the worse her shot turned out.  

We'll let Geoff lede on the lads as well:

The first team event since 1981--did you hear that enough?--was looking like a bit of a

dud. A six hour delay, gray skies on soggy Bermuda and only Jordan Spieth left among the headliners were hardly the ingredients to success.

But in that classic bit of team play irony, Cameron Smith appeared to seal the victory and you could practically hear the screams of joys from the CBS truck. Furthermore, Smith and partner Jonas Blixt did not make a bogey all 72 holes, an amazing feat with 36 holes of foursomes. 

Then Kevin Kisner brazenly holed out for eagle to send the event to a Monday playoff and the first Zurich Classic as team play will have a highlight we'll see for years to come.

It was really quite the jolt to the system, especially since the announcers thought it was over and weren't prepared to know whether there was enough light to play on.  Cameron Smith's shot will get lost in the hullabaloo over the hole-out, but quite the exciting finish for the day, though too late to have many eyeballs on it.

 Jeff Babineau tees up today's playoff:

Not one of the four finalists (Blixt, like Kisner and Brown, is 33, and Smith is 10 years younger) was born the last time the PGA Tour conducted an official team event (1981 Walt Disney World National Team Championship). There is a good deal at stake on Monday morning: The winners will receive an official PGA Tour victory and two-year exemption, 400 FedEx Cup points and divide a winner’s check of more than $2 million. A victory also would get Smith, a Web.com Tour grad, into the Players Championship and PGA Championship. 

Smith and Blixt were the only team in the field to get through the week without a bogey on the card, and they didn’t go away once they fell behind on Sunday. They ran off three birdies to start the back nine, cutting the deficit to one.

I'll disagree with Shack to the extent of the event needing saving, though a six-hour delay would hurt even The Masters.  Here are some comments from the Tour Confidential panel:

Jeff Ritter: It was a hit. Loved guys cheering on their partners, the awkward high-fives and the goofy two-man press conferences. And Kisner's clutch chip-in on 18 to force a playoff amplifies the positive buzz. Weather aside, it was a fun week. Let's do it again one more time in the fall, but as a co-ed event. 

Alan Shipnuck: Ritter, you forgot the precious matching outfits! It was a blast and the strong field, big crowds and overall enthusiasm for the whole thing will hopefully spur other events to think more creatively. 

Michael Bamberger: Completely agree. Double your pleasure, double your fun. I find myself rooting for Jordan Spieth. I like the guy. But I liked the unlikely team of Spieth and Ryan Palmer even more. The course seemed more interesting, the on-course chit-chat seemed more interesting—it just seemed more … sporting.

And the guys had fun, which will get around.  Really good stuff from a second tier event on a third-rate course.... Or maybe that's the other way around.

Math Is Hard - Didn't we all enjoy Ian Poulters gallant, yet ultimately unsuccessful, effort to regain his playing privileges under the major medical exemption?  Well, sucka, you've been played:

Turns out the months-long melodrama of Ian Poulter’s unsuccessful attempt to hang onto his PGA Tour card was all for naught: Poulter is now fully exempt for the remainder of

the season, all thanks to Brian Gay’s balky thumb and a rare bit of common sense by Tour bureaucrats. Gay gave the Knockdown an exclusive peek at how the story played out over the last two days.

Gay began digging into his FedEx Cup totals for his 2016-17 finishes and only then noticed a lightly publicized change to this season’s points breakdown. The Tour has restructured the distribution, giving fewer points to finishes below 14th. For instance, a 20th-place finish last season was worth 51 points, but this season it brings only 45; 30th place has been devalued from 41 points to 28. Major medicals extensions are not pegged to a specific season; indeed, Gay had accrued his $917,000 across the 2015-16 and 2016-17 seasons. But thanks to the Tour’s new math, his finishes this season were worth fewer points.

There's 114 VP's in Fortress Ponte Vedra earning six-figure salaries, could one them perhaps focus on stuff like this?  It's beyond bush league, but like rooting against Christie, I'm now compelled to hope that FedEx doesn't renew...

Shack has more in it here, in case you've got a higher threshold for pain than I....

And perhaps that explains this?

Chickens, Roost - It so happens that this golf thing isn't the only area where Ben Crane is unconscionably, insufferably, agonizingly slow:

Wagering plays a large role in golf. Just ask Michael Jordan. 

So when a betting situation goes wrong involving a player on the PGA Tour – where the amount of money wagered can get quite high – matters aren’t going to be too civil. 

Tom Gillis, a 48-year-old who took a job as a high school golf coach earlier this year after posting 188 career starts on the PGA Tour, took issue publicly Tuesday with Ben Crane, accusing the five-time PGA Tour winner of not paying out on a $6,000 bet.

Gillis’ public comment came via Twitter, and the message also included a snipe at Crane’s reputation for slow play.

It appears that Crane has now payed up, calling it a misunderstanding that somehow also involved Daniel Berger.  But that obviously didn't happen until Gillis started the Twitterstorm...

Golf In The Middle Kingdom - That's an evergreen header around here, as this is only the latest dispatch covering golf's tortured relationship with China:

BEIJING—The PGA Tour China is caught in a sand trap. 

The U.S.-based organization said it has been unable to get any Chinese tournaments

approved for its upcoming season, which last year began May 9 and featured more than a dozen events. 

“We’re stuck moving forward,” said Greg Gilligan, managing director of the PGA Tour China. “There’s a lack of clarity over how to get approved.” 

The impasse comes after a falling-out between the PGA Tour and its Chinese partners, and amounts to another bogey for golf in China.

Sorry, should have provided a metaphor alert, though I'm disappointed that they failed to get up-and-in from that particular bunker...

If you think that China is the future of golf, perhaps you'd care to think again....  It remains a very poor country where our game has never taken root.  That's not a recipe for success...

As the man who literally wrote the book on this subject says:

Chairman Mao “labeled golf the sport for millionaires, and, honestly, that’s still what golf is to this day in China,” Washburn said. “No government official should be able to afford to play a round of golf, let alone own a golf-club membership. It is out of reach of all but the very wealthy.”

Though I still like my title better...

Friedman Frolics - Tom Friedman is a longstanding candidate for Woody Allen's Academy of the Over-rated....  I know, he might be the initial inductee, unless it's the Woodman himself.  In fact, this is how predictable:

Thomas Friedman Op/Ed Generator

Because this is what his writing actually looks like.

Spend a little time there, you'll thank me later...  The reson we're going there is that Friedman turns his attention to golf in a recent column:

So a Hindu, a Muslim and a Jew are playing golf together in Dubai … 

Sounds like the first line of a joke, right? Actually, it’s the first line of one of those serendipitous stories that often happen when you play golf abroad. In my case, I was invited to play at the Emirates Club with a U.A.E. education expert and the famed Indian mystic, poet and yogi Jaggi Vasudev, who goes by his reverential name, Sadhguru. 

When I got to the first tee, I realized this was not going to be a normal round. Sadhguru is the founder of Isha, an Indian-based humanitarian and environmental movement with millions of followers (and some critics, too) — several of whom I could tell were at the course, because caddies and staff members kept coming over for selfies with Sadhguru and offering the traditional Hindu greeting, “I bow to the divine in you.”

Here's the nut graph:

Sadhguru got addicted to golf while visiting followers in America. With about a 15 handicap now, he can hit a drive 220 yards. 

As a yogi, it was not surprising that he had probed the deeper meaning of the game: “The simplicity of it makes everyone attempt it, but the subtlety of it makes almost everybody get frustrated with it,” he once observed in an interview with Isha’s magazine. Golf was also just like life (and yoga), he added: People mess up at both when their “interior is not settled.”

Perhaps that explains yesterday's desultory play.....  But wait, he shares the promised joke with us:

He was also up on all the jokes about Jesus and Moses playing golf together. So as we waited to tee off on a par 3, I offered him and our Muslim partner my favorite Jewish golf joke: This threesome is at a public course and the starter comes over and says, “Do you mind if this rabbi plays with you?” They say, “No problem.” The rabbi walks up on the tee with banged-up clubs, a tattered golf bag and a yarmulke instead of a golf hat — but then proceeds to shoot a 69. 

At the end of the round one of the other players asks, “Rabbi, how did you get so good?”

“You have to convert to Judaism,” he answers. So, a year goes by and the same three guys arrange to play with the rabbi again. He shoots another 69, but they all still shoot in the 90s. At the end of the round, one says: “Rabbi, I don’t get it. We all converted like you said, but you still shot 69 and we all still shot in the 90s. What’s wrong?” 

“What synagogue did you get converted at?” the rabbi asks earnestly. 

“Temple Beth Shalom,” they answer in unison.

“Oh no,” says the rabbi. “Temple Beth Shalom? That’s for tennis!”

I dare anyone to compare this actual effort with those randomly generated and identify any difference other than the fact that he uses a long joke as half of this column.  Tom Friedman, mailing it in since the days of the Pony Express.