Weekend Wrap

Fortunately, it's not necessary to have watched the action to opine thereon....

Colonial Times - Kevin Kisner is a budding superstar I'm reliably informed,  Good thing I'm so assured, because his actual results haven't made that case:

FORT WORTH, Texas -- Kevin Kisner birdied the first three holes on the back nine to take the lead and held on to win at Colonial despite a Sunday charge by defending 

Whoever designed the trophy seems to be over-compensating...

champion Jordan Spieth. 

Kisner shot a 4-under 66 to finish at 10-under 270, including a clutch par save on the 18th hole after a wayward tee shot and an approach that was off the back side of the green and well below the hole. He finished a stroke ahead of Spieth, Sean O'Hair and Jon Rahm. 

Spieth shot a bogey-free 65, and was standing on a chair to see over the crowd at the 18th green when Kisner putted up the mound to 5 feet of the cup and then made the winning putt. That came right after Rahm's 10-foot birdie chance skirted just to the left of the hole.

That linked piece sums up the litany of his near misses, and we'll grant that it's hard to win out there.  The biggest surprise to me is Rahm's performance at one of the more claustrophobic venues on Tour, though I saw none of it.  Did he leave the driver in the bag or overpower her?

Kyle Porter grades the contenders, starting with the winner:

You can erase all of that, though, as he gets win No. 2 over what will probably turn out to be two of the five best players of their generation (Rahm and Spieth). It wasn't their turn on Sunday, however, as Kisner held court and took a trophy out from under a litany of studs. It was only a matter of time, it seemed for Kisner, and that moment finally arrived on Sunday. Overall grade: A+

Hmmmm.... seems like we should be saving the A+ for scoring records and the like, but he did win.

Phil Mickelson (T29): Lefty was undone by a single bad day (75 on Friday) in his first appearance at Colonial since 2010. He played solidly on the weekend, though, and it appears that he will play every week through the U.S. Open now. That seems insane for a soon-to-be 47-year-old, but Mickelson isn't a normal soon-to-be 47-year-old, apparently. He gets a B- for his play on the course, but an A+ for the high kick. Overall grade: B

Yanno, this isn't figure skating where they toss the high and the low.....

Jordan Spieth (T2): Last year's champ nearly willed himself into a playoff, but he lacked a bit of a closing kick. Still, his 65 on Sunday (and performance all week) should quiet the folks talking about how off he's been all season. Spieth was locked in, and if anything, the last month has proven that there are just certain courses he doesn't feel comfortable on. Grade: A

Jon Rahm (T2): I'm in awe. The numbers tell a startling story for the 22-year-old who just moved into the OWGR top 10, but they don't tell the whole thing.

He was hammering 340-yard drives coming home, and touching them off with absurd paintings like this one on the par-4 17th. This should be illegal for anyone, much less somebody who hits it as far as Rahm. Grade: A

Obviously we're grading on the curve....why don't we just give them all participation ribbons?   Both had good weeks, as Spieth was worried about the cut line midday Friday.  But I'll give the nod to the Spaniard, since this isn't a track on which he should excel.

Shack has on odd take on the week's action, that it it helps clarify our betting options for Erin Hills.  Color me skeptical, though he does drop a bombshell here:

At Colonial, Kevin Kisner held off a fun array of players (Spieth, Rahm, Simpson) and styles to win the a very entertaining Dean and Deluca. Not only did the historic venue and leaderboard help, but CBS seemed especially on its game with production values and announcing.

Their announcing?  Now that's a welcome change, though I'll admit to a concern that it's more the result of the systematic lowering of Geoff's standards. 

Bernie Rules - You knew this before they teed it up on Thursday:

STERLING, Va. -- Bernhard Langer played near-flawless golf and took advantage of

Vijay Singh's late mistakes to win the Senior PGA Championship at Trump National on Sunday for his record ninth senior major.

The Senior PGA was the only major that had eluded the 59-year-old German star during his dominant decade-long run on the 50-and-over circuit. He tied Jack Nicklaus' senior major record last week with a comeback victory in the Regions Tradition in Alabama. 

Despite a few dozen protesters, the drama remained on the course at President Donald Trump's club on the shores of the Potomac River. Trump, coming off a nine-day trip abroad, did not attend the final round.

On the one hand, it's pretty amazing given that senior golf is ironically a young-man's game....  On the other hand, do we care?  The Tour Confidential panel led with this question:

Bernhard Langer outlasted Vijay Singh at the Senior PGA Championship and picked up a record ninth senior major title. Though Langer's 32 career wins on the senior circuit still trail Hale Irwin's 45, is it time to consider the German as the best senior player of all time?

But when Travelin' Joe is the voice of reason...

Joe Passov: I'm awed by Langer's consistency and will put him in Hale Irwin's class right now for prowess on the senior tour. Sam Snead, however, gets my vote as the best senior player of of all time, in a close race with Gary Player. Snead didn't have the benefit of a full slate of regular Champions tour events with which to compile old-guy wins and majors. He was nearly 70 when the senior tour took off. The one "major" he could and did play in was the PGA Seniors -- which he captured a record six times. But look what else he did as a "senior:" He shot his age (67) at a PGA Tour event, the 1979 Quad Cities, then beat it in the same tournament (66). Anybody else done that? At age 61, he made the cut at the U.S. Open (1973), the oldest to do so. He finished THIRD at the 1974 PGA at age 62, behind only Lee Trevino and Jack Nicklaus. I could go on. This guy was good -- even when he was old.

Langer is a wonderful character for many reasons, including his recurring battles with the yips and his gracious handling of his difficult role at Kiawah in '91.  I'll also note that he's the one guy that's adapted to the anchoring ban without skipping a beat...  

Noren Time - Respect must be paid:

VIRGINIA WATER, England – Alex Noren didn’t have victory on his mind when he

began the final round of the $7 million BMW PGA Championship. The Swede was just looking to get some mojo for next week’s Nordea Masters. 

He got that in spades with the best round of his life. 

Noren fired a course record 10-under-par 62 to come from seven shots off the lead to win the European Tour’s flagship event.

You have to like a guy like this....  After years as a tour rabbit on a secondary circuit, something clicks in his early thirties and he starts piling up the wins.  

But back to Shack's take vis-a-vis the U.S. Open:

Whew! 

If we went another week without some names showing signs of life headed to Erin Hills, the hardest prognostication U.S. Open was not going to get any easier. But, after some pre and post Masters lulls, we can see glimmers of great hope in Jordan Spieth, Jon Rahm, Alex Noren, Henrik Stenson and yes, Kevin Kisner's game. The Memorial this week should also give us insights into the likes of Day, Johnson, Matsuyama and Mickelson. But first, in Europe...

Noren's win will move him to the 8th spot in the OWGR, where the air is awfully thin.  But while Shack sees Noren as a U.S. Open contender, he himself is focused on the Nordea Masters.  Somehow I think I'll lean towards the player on this one....

But before we leave this event, the TC panel was asked about the two rules issues that arose on Thursday that we dissected in the post immediately below:

The European PGA Championship at Wentworth provided a couple of interesting rules situations in the first round. After chipping in for eagle, Ernie Els called a penalty on himself, saying he feared he might have improved his lie after checking to see if his ball was embedded. Branden Grace was granted a dubious free drop after his ball plugged near the lip of a bunker, after saying his feet were touching the rubber lining when he took a stance. Grace had the lead early on Sunday, but he faltered on the final nine. Were the golf gods talking?

Here's a couple of their responses :

Ritter: Grace brought in a ref and was given the drop. These 50-50 decisions happen all the time. It's Grace's right as a competitor to bring in the official if he feels something

amiss, and the official made the call. Nothing to see here.

Sens: Maybe I'll be struck down from on high for saying this but I don't believe in the golf gods. We alone are responsible for our play and no one and nothing else. If Grace felt a nagging conscience (and I'm not suggesting that he did) then that was on him. Not some made up being or beings.

Most interesting to me is that none of the five writers had a word to say about Ernie....  I totally get why Grace's situation is the more compelling, but not a word of praise for Els?

But none of us can know whether Grace actually caught the bunker lining when taking his stance, or kept digging until the earlier of reaching China or catching the liner....

Rut Roh, Part II -  I'm reliably informed that it's not the weight lifting....

DUBLIN, Ohio (AP) -- Rory McIlroy is skipping the Memorial Tournament next week

because of a nagging rib injury that also forced him to miss the European Tour event this week in England.

"It's disappointing to miss the Memorial Tournament," McIlroy said Friday in a statement released by tournament officials. "This tournament attracts such a stellar field, and I was excited to try and better my fourth-place finish from last year. The Memorial Tournament is one of the best tour stops of the year and I hope everyone involved has a great week" 

The second-ranked McIlroy sustained a hairline fracture during the South African Open in January, causing him to miss four tournaments over seven weeks. He played four times in six weeks upon his return until taking a post-Masters break to get married. The injury surfaced again from long practice sessions leading to The Players Championship.

You see, it wasn't the lifting, it was those long practice sessions before The Players....  Yeah, that's the ticket!

Asked and Answered - Alan ledes with this programming note:

Welcome to another edition of #AskAlan. These are now going to be a weekly thing. (Consider yourself warned.) I want the Knockdown to be an ongoing conversation between me and you, the lunatic fringe of golf fans. Please keep the thoughtful questions coming…

Between me and you?  Sigh!  You're a writer Alan, is basic grammar above your pay grade?  That said, it's always a fun feature, even if it has my mother, a grammar Nazi of the first order, spinning in her grave.

Here's my fave from this week's installment:

“One a scale of 1-10 how nervous is the Tour that parts of Vijay's lawsuit were allowed to proceed? How nervous should they be?” -Jeremy (@IndyJerome) 

11. This is akin to the situation in Washington—Robert Mueller may not find a smoking gun on Russian collusion, but if he digs into Trump’s taxes and business dealings who knows what will be uncovered? Likewise, Singh’s lawsuit could pull back the curtain on decades of the Tour’s top-secret disciplinary matters, and regardless of what a judge decides about Vijay’s case, there may be all kinds of juicy revelations. Here’s hoping!

That's one more than 10, no?  Bonus point for the Nigel Tufnel reference....

Any juicy revelations will be good fun, but the real hope is that this will lead to a less opaque process and a more rational drug-testing regimen.

“If Phil & [Patrick] Reed both stay out of the top 10, are they automatic President's Cup picks? #AskAlan” -Brian (@brianros1) 

I think they have to be. Reed (currently seventh in points) has proven he can raise his game in team events, and Phil (16th) is the heartbeat of the squad and a de facto playing captain who, by the way, was last seen in one of the greatest Ryder Cup singles matches of all-time. Billy Horschel just moved up to 18th, and he would bring a lot of firepower and a lot of Reed’s grittiness, but who would you rather have? Among the rest of the bubble boys no one else has a really compelling case except maybe Daniel Berger (ninth), simply because he’s a young’un and the U.S. team needs to start grooming replacements for some of its aging stalwarts.

Inconceivable that either won't be at Liberty National.  While Phil's game is a little suspect, the reality is that it's more suitable for match-play than stroke-play.  Let's just hope that Captain Stricker limits his appearance in alternate shot.

“Do you think the move to Trinity Forest will give the Nelson some juice next year? Or will the bomb-and-gougers hate the course too much?” -@public_golfer 

Among the many ways pro golfers are different from us is that most of them don’t really care about how “good” a course is; their overriding interest is how it synthesizes with their game, and if they can maximize their idiosyncratic advantages. I haven’t been to Trinity yet but love the minimalist look. Dustin Johnson is more interested in making birdies, and over the years he made so many at TPC Las Colinas that he came to love the course, even though most everyone else was lukewarm at best about it. I spent some time with Dustin and his brother and caddie, Austin, last week, and both were lamenting the move. Beyond the course, the players, caddies and wives loved the logistics of the Nelson: everyone would stay on-site at the Four Seasons, which has an awesome gym and a basketball court that was populated by the Tour types. Meanwhile, the wives swarmed the lovely pool and spa. So the move to Trinity will end this camarderie and convenience, and it’s another reason the change of venues is risky for a tournament that has struggled to define itself since Lord Byron’s death in 2006.

Interesting take, but given that the players regularly voted Las Colinas their least favorite venue, DJ may be an outlier.....

But in the forthcoming contraction Olympics, this event is desperately in need of some buzz and it would have been far riskier to stay where they were.

“Which junior or college golfers are you most excited to see on Tour? Are there any prodigies on the horizon?” -@handsomeburglr 

Maverick McNealy at Stanford, for sure. He has a such a mature game, and I’ve been enjoying the will-he-or-won’t-he questions about whether he’ll turn pro or go into the business world. Of course he’s going to go pro! What’s more fun, traveling the world playing golf or sitting behind a desk? And he can always go the Joe Ogilvie route and retire from the Tour early and pursue a second career in the straight world.

No doubt Alan penned his response before this:

SUGAR GROVE, Ill. – Maverick McNealy’s college career ended quietly Sunday, with few fans left at Rich Harvest Farms and the top teams back at their hotel and the leader

17 shots ahead. 

For the third consecutive year, No. 2-ranked Stanford failed to survive the 54-hole cut at the NCAA Championship. It was the final chapter of McNealy’s fascinating career, as he rose from overlooked No. 5 man to Player of the Year to, now, the will-he-or-won’t-he? star who earlier this week won the Hogan Award as the nation’s top amateur and college player.

Just a reminder that Golf Channel coverage of the men's NCAA's starts today at 4:00, though Rich Harvest Farms has to be quagmire by now.

“Will anyone ever enforce a slow play penalty on Jason (All) Day?” -@PaulRWilkinson 

Well, if the Tour rules officials didn’t do it on Sunday, I think we can safely say it’s never going to happen. Coming down the stretch at the Nelson, Day was repeatedly timed at a minute to a minute and and a half to play his shots, and on one occasion he took nearly two full minutes. Forty seconds is supposed to be the maximum. I think public shaming is the only possible solution, but unfortunately, Day isn’t a social media creature. Perhaps golf fans should go full Flav and wear shot clocks around their necks?

I din't see any of it, but the clock is irrelevant if the group is in position on the golf course....  Whether that should be the case is a different matter entirely, but I also think we need to allow a little flexibility for the heat of battle on Sunday.

This is why I may have seemed dismissive of Geoff's search for U.S. Open form:

“Who else has missed 4-5 cuts the past few weeks that I can put my money on?” -@PhilipGallo 

That’s the big lesson from the last two weeks, when S.W. Kim and Billy Horschel won on the back of some very desultory play: All of these guys are one swing thought or one small tweak from catching fire. Yet it’s impossible to say who’s next, which is what makes it so fun for the rest of us.

 It's golf, need I say more?

“Do you think the European tour's Rolex Series will weaken PGA Tour fields/attract Americans to come over and play?” -Jurre (@MisterJurre)

These are separate issues. With the exception of Patrick Reed, top Americans have shown little interest in joining the European tour, and the Rolex Series isn’t going to change that—there’s still more money and World Ranking points available in the U.S., not to mention a Cracker Barrel on every corner. But top international players are now being enticed to leave their homebases in Florida and play a few more times on the Euro tour, so that will certainly impact the PGA Tour events that fall on the same week. Would Colonial love to have Justin Rose, Henrik Stenson, Ernie Els, Beef, Thomas Pieters and a handful of others who instead are playing at Wentworth? For sure.

Alan is exactly right, this is about keeping the hole team at home.  The status quo ante is that the cream of Euro talent is playing the minimum number of events necessary to keep Euro Tour membership and Ryder Cup eligibility.

The only place you'll see Yanks is at the Irish and Scottish Opens in the run-up to the Open Championship, because they now offer three consecutive weeks of links golf.  That said, you'll see far fewer Yanks than you'd expect....

Exit Question - From the TC panel:

Tiger Woods gave us an update on his recovery from his latest back procedure, calling it a success but adding he won't be rushing back to the PGA Tour anytime

soon. Let's focus on this comment from Woods: "I want to say unequivocally, I want to play professional golf again." Does this sound like a guy who will play competitively again?

Shipnuck: I was most struck by the the honest tone of this diary entry - it felt like the most candid Tiger has ever been talking about his body. I think his time is up as a competitive golfer but if he can expand upon this openness I'd love to see Tiger as a TV commentator, if such a things interests him.

Sens: I'm with Alan. Seemed like Tiger at his most forthright. Tiger as an announcer is an intriguing idea. Lord knows he rarely reveals anything interesting about himself. But his insights into the game would be interesting to hear.

Can anyone point out exactly where this candor can be found?  I hope he's pain free and that he still has the desire to play again, but doesn't he sort of need to say that to keep the sponsors happy and maintain his relevance?  After all, I'm reliably informed that Call of Duty can get old....

But Tiger as a TV talking head?  That's not gonna happen...Evah!

I Lied - One last bit from the TC panel:

Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times tweeted this a couple of days ago: My father-in-law calls a so-so golf shot a "son-in-law" shot: "Not what I was hoping for, but it will do." What's your favorite such golf term?

 The surprising thing here is how little they come up with....  this is the best of the bunch:

Passov: The best ones I've heard can't be mentioned on a family website. However, I did once play with a disc jockey from Dallas who seemed to have one of these expressions for every shot. I remember laying the sod over and taking a huge divot on a fat shot, which he called an "Al Gore" -- (Earth first) and later I left a putt teetering on the edge of the hole, which he called a "South America" -- (One more revolution).

OK, we call that last one a third-world putt, but I'll also note that if it falls it becomes a Rockefeller.....  You'll have to intuit the reason.

I heard a new one over the weekend, a Ray-Ray round...  Playing the front side like Ray Floyd and the back like Ray Charles.....  

My favorite of this genre is a non-golf term.  I had the good fortune to be seated next to the writer Calvin Trillin at a charity dinner many years ago.  Trillin famously used his family extensively in his writings, including his two daughters.  He'd refer to the boys they dated as Kerenskys, after this guy, who led the Russian government for an hour-and-a-half in 1917 after the Tsar's abdication but before the October revolution in which Lenin seized power.

Delightfully obscure, though he wasn't terribly optimistic about his future son-in-law's, was he?