Thursday Threads

A little of this, a little of that.....

Today's Controversy - here's a bit from the straight news story:

A topic once thought of as fantasy fodder for watercooler debate is set to become a reality for Steph Curry.

Curry—who carries a 2 handicap—will compete among the pros in the Web.com tour's Ellie Mae Classic in early August as a sponsor’s exemption, according to a report from the San Francisco Chronicle. The event, which benefits the Warriors Community Foundation, takes place Aug. 3-6 at TPC Stonebrae, just east of San Francisco.

And one last bit before we get to the opining part....

As the Chronicle pointed out, former 49ers receiver Jerry Rice played in the event three times, performing miserably in comparison to the professionals.

I hate these stories because there's no easy right or wrong... 

Steph at least seems to understand that these guys are seriously good:

He played alongside Justin Thomas (now ranked No. 12 in the world) at Silverado Resort 

in October 2015, and with Harold Varner III (now No. 135) this past October. After the Varner round, Curry acknowledged the disparity between tour pros and accomplished amateurs.

“These guys are ridiculous,” he said. “Their misses are good shots for me. It’s just a different type of expectation. You see their ball flight and it’s something you’re not used to."

There's an old saying on Tour ranges that "Scratch ain't s**t", meaning that a guy with a zero index at his club wouldn't make cuts in professional events.   

Brentley Romine spends a few minutes on Twitter to present the obvious counter-point:

But after scrolling through Twitter, I quickly realized that not everyone was excited about the opportunity for an NBA champion and MVP to tee it up with pro golfers.

“Steph Curry, a 2.2 handicap, is getting a sponsor’s exemption into a Web event,” former Georgia standout Lee McCoy tweeted. “So many great players could use that chance. Sad.” 

Said PGA Tour player John Peterson: “So when is @ALoupe6 gonna get a start in a D league game??!? This is awful all around. Takes a spot from a pro trying to make it.”

 Shack makes the case for this invite, including the romance angle:

It's a debate that will forever dog the sport and has arisen since the days when Babe Didrickson, a priest and George Zaharias got LA Open sponsor's invites. (Didrickson later married Zaharias thanks to that round!)

The Ellie Mae Classic (July 31-Aug. 9) gets to invite any player they want with their exemptions, including college players like Maverick McNealy, who are also taking away a playing opportunity. For 2017 they've chosen a hometown global superstar and low single-digit handicapper that will bring enormous attention to a tournament that otherwise would have gone largely unnoticed. Yes, they probably reached too far when Jerry Rice played given his abilities, but Curry is a both a legitimate golfer (2.0 index) and at the height of his allure.

There is also an opportunity to highlight the Warriors Foundation, and while we should always suspicious of sports teams and their foundations, this one seems more active and player-supported than most.

Well, I believe that Steph is married, so any budding romance we'll consider a bug....

It's obvious that the event is trying to boost its profile, and the ties are strong enough for the attempt to be credible.  If successful, that increases purses and playing opportunities for all...  But the people making this decision are the same folks that invited Jerry Rice back two more times after he embarrassed himself....Not exactly confidence inspiring...

But I am legally required to call BS on Joel Beall, responding to Lee McCoy's twwet:

That includes Lee McCoy, who's been particularly vocal against Curry's inclusion. For the former Georgia Bulldog's highlight of his fledgling career was spurred by an invite to the 2016 Valspar Championship because, well, he grew up at Innisbrook. He ultimately proved his mettle, finishing T-4 as an amateur. However, a lot of viable, established tour veterans sat at home that week, and though McCoy may ultimately become a presence at golf's top level, he's failed to produce anything of note at the tour outside Copperhead. 

This is not to pick on McCoy (especially accounting for his off-the-course injury), and he boasts an exponentially-better golf pedigree than Curry. But, while golf is the ultimate meritocracy, the philosophy is not found in every aspect of the game. No matter the circuit, each event simply won't have the best x-amount of players in its field. Hell, a fourth of Masters' competitors don't have a shot at the green jacket, and that tournament seems to be doing just fine.

Excuse me Joel, it IS to pick on McCoy....  You seem to have a gripe against his exemption, on the strong grounds that it was only because of who he knew....  But he finished T4, so I'm gonna say that that was a great use of a sponsor's exemption....

The point is to acknowledge the high cost of granting an exemption, a scarce resource, to a golfer that can't possibly be competitive.  The bar should be extremely high and they should be used sparing for such purposes.

As for this from Brian Wacker, one wants to root for his name to be in the next round of layoffs:

Because it's so hard to understand guys fighting for survival bemoaning a wasted exemption....  Sheesh!  Write better, Brian.

Balls Said the Queen.... - Mike Bamberger with a radical proposal:

What is threatened by the modern golfer playing modern equipment is the sanctity and the identity of the four men's majors. There's talk of lengthening the iconic 13th hole at

Augusta National, so that it continues to be a meaningful risk-reward par-5. The course itself, with all the lengthening and tree-planting over the years, has lost its singular identity, as a sui generis inland links, over the past 30 years. The U.S. Open at Erin Hills, even when the course measured in the vicinity of 7,800 yards, played short. When British Opens are played on parched courses and windless conditions, players club the courses to death with irons off the tee. 

My proposal: The best minds at Augusta National, the USGA, the R&A and the PGA of America working with the top golf-ball manufacturers to produce a ball that would be used only in the majors. Maybe it would be a wound balata ball, I wouldn't pretend to know, but the basic goal can be easily stated: it maxes out at about 300 yards. That's it. The nutted three-wood in still conditions would max out at about 260.

There was a time when folks hoped that Augusta National would save us by using a lower-distance ball, the thinking being that they were the only folks in the game with the, please excuse me, the balls to do it.

But let's remember how different our game is, as it's the only one where the players bring their own balls.... Mike Davis has gone so far as to not rule such a possibility out, but there doesn't seem be close to enough belief that the game needs such a move.

Shack had an interesting take on this subject from the world of tennis:

It turns out, to the surprise of many close to the game, that men use different balls than

women during their Grand Slam tilts. 

According to the United States Tennis Association, the balls — manufactured by Wilson — are identical in every respect except for the yellow felt coating. 

“Men and women use the same ball in terms of size, pressure and design,” according to a USTA statement. “The sole difference is that the men compete with an extra-duty felt ball while the women compete using a regular-duty felt ball.”

But this slight difference can have huge effects on speed and ball action, experts says.

Everything old is new again, as I'm of such an age that I can remember that American players going to The Open Championship had to adjust to the smaller British golf ball....

But it's all idle chatter without governing bodies equipped with a spine....

If Millennials Hate Golf.... - From the press release:

Sports fans and concert-goers seeking pre- and post-event entertainment will soon be able to play Topgolf® once renovations of Philips Arena are complete for the 2018-19 season. The Topgolf Swing Suite – Topgolf's first permanent amenity in a major sports arena – will feature two Topgolf simulators, comfortable lounge seating, HDTVs and food and beverage service. 

"As we began to discuss transforming our arena into a premier sports and entertainment venue for next generation Atlantans, we realized there was no better potential partner than Topgolf," said Atlanta Hawks Basketball Club CEO Steve Koonin. "They provide a one-of-a-kind experience that appeals to millennials and people of all ages. We are thrilled that they will have a home in our arena."

Here's Shack's take:

What an interesting move for Topgolf and the Atlanta Hawks even if it's stated as a blatant millennial play. But hey, the M's love their Topgolf! Yay! 

However, I'm not sure sports fans need something else to distract them from the game on top of their phones. (That's precisely what two of them are looking at in the demo image of the Hawks Topgolf bay.) More encouraging though is the re-imagining of the amenities available at an arena, and that golf is being included.

But I had been reliably informed that golf is officially uncool....  Didn't Steph Curry get the memo?

At Monday's Met. Golf Writers Awards Dinner I sat with two employees of GolfZone, a Korean company preparing to roll out their simulator technology in the U.S.  I guess they as well didn't get the memo...

Not A Financial Genius - Phil Knight talks about Nike's role in the golf world.  This is the bit that's getting attention:

Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike Inc., was so enamored with a young Tiger Woods that the company began recruiting him three years before signing him to an endorsement deal at 20. 

“You could see him coming from way back,” Knight said in an interview on Bloomberg Television that airs Wednesday at 9 p.m. New York time. The young golfer would occasionally play in the the Portland area, near Nike’s headquarters, “and we’d always invite him and his father out to lunch.”

But this is the important part:

Woods went on to become the greatest golfer of his generation, and Nike sought to benefit by selling clubs and equipment. But even the celebrity of Woods and his legion of fans weren’t enough to make it break even, said Knight, who left the company’s boardlast year. Nike exited the category a year ago amid Woods’s fading star power and the sport’s declining popularity. 

“It’s a fairly simple equation, that we lost money for 20 years on equipment and balls,” Knight told interviewer David Rubenstein, host of “The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations.” “We realized next year wasn’t going to be any different.”

And why, praytell, did it take you twenty years to come to that rather startling conclusion?

I get the Tiger relationship, because .... well, it requires no explanation.  But that Rory contract seems particularly unwise....

Rio Dividends - Bill "Olympia" Fields drew the short straw, and is at that dreadful Chicago venue pimping women's golf:

"Golf was a massive success in Rio, and we're continuing to support having golf on the platform because it is a global sport," said board member Angela Ruggiero, a four-time

United States women's hockey Olympian who spoke Wednesday during the Women's Leadership Summit at the KPMG. "It has equal men and women in terms of [competitors]. So I think the IOC felt this is a no-brainer." 

Ko called the news an "amazing step forward," given her positive experience in Brazil.

"It was just great to be in that vibe of being alongside some of the other best athletes in the world, not just in golf," Ko said. "You never really get to meet all these people in sailing or shot put. It the biggest range of sports." 

Whan said he believes that the number of elite golfers from an increasing number of nations -- 45 countries were represented at 2016 LPGA Q School, compared to 26 in 2015 -- is rooted in part to the October 2009 announcement that golf was going to be played in the Olympics, which caused many countries to invest in the sport.

A massive success?  That's just a tad hyperbolic....

It always made sense that the Olympics would be more important to the ladies, because they have the far greater need for the exposure....  The problem with the back-patting is that it takes the pressure off to improve the format and increase the field size...We all remember the Dream Team in B-ball, but after the novelty of the first wore off, it became quite boring...

But this is the more significant news from Chicago:

That's great....  But how in God's name did the PGA of America not have a women's event until three years ago and avoid being cast as misogynists?  Oh, and can you please put a bit more thought into your choice of venues....

Shark Sighting - We love our topless Shark photos more than life itself, so you'll know I was intrigued by this post from Shack (need to type very carefully to distinguish Shark vs. Shack):

Because this is a family website, I won't be embedding the Living Brand's latest Instagram post, but let's just say, it really, uh, covers, the state of the brand.

This doozy came after several weeks of fairly textbook brand-building posts for the living icon: Greg fixing a Range Rover flat tire flashing some bicep, Greg drinking booze, Greg congratulating maybe-buds George Clooney/Rande Gerber on the Casamigos sale, Greg in the gym, Greg fixing heavy equipment, etc... 

More disturbing: the shot of Shark shooting this on his phone, but opting for a different angle from someone else. Quite a production for something that no proper horse owner would dare shoot or promote. That's your living brand!

I'm not on Instagram because I'm 62 years old, but I do maintain my Google account.  So, what the heck is Shack not linking to:

This one seems appropriate:

But perhaps we have a winner:

I don't want to know....

Midweek Musings

We've got a rich, full line-up for you today....  You'll laugh a little, cry a little, and perhaps even learn something about securities law....  I know, but stay with me for a minute.

The Escape Artist - Jeffrey Toobin isn't my cup of tea, but he's been working the legal beat for CNN and others for quite some time.  He makes this guest appearance in Golf Digest to explain the insider trading case in which Phil Mickelson had a cameo, and let's let him frame the issue:

50 Shades of Phil

Phil Mickelson has long been known as golf's consummate escape artist. His signature flop shot has turned innumerable misdirected approaches into tap-in pars. When his drive on the 13th hole at Augusta National in the final round of the 2010 Masters settled on pine straw, Mickelson fired a 6-iron between two trees and onto the green, setting up a birdie that would lead to his third green jacket. Yet all of those salvaged pars and dazzling birdies might pale next to the way Mickelson extricated himself from legal trouble earlier this year. In a trial that unfolded in a Manhattan courthouse, Mickelson was implicated in a three-way insider-trading scandal that ended with the two other principals facing many years in prison. Mickelson's fate? He just walked away—and he didn't even have to testify.

Do tell.

Toobin takes us through the history of Billy Walters, and Phil's association with the man should have sent tremors through Fortress Ponte Vedra Beach.  Here's just a sample:

During his long tenure in the public eye, Mickelson has never been coy about his love of

gambling, especially on sports. His love of the long shot somehow seemed fitting for a player who also relished risk on the golf course. Over the years, Mickelson has been happy to let the word out that he made some major scores. Mickelson and a group of partners are said to have put $20,000 down on a preseason bet on the 2001 Super Bowl winner and won a reported $560,000. He also supposedly won big by betting on the Arizona Diamondbacks to beat the New York Yankees in the 2001 World Series. But these successes, clearly, were only part of the story. According to people familiar with Walters' practices, he allowed Mickelson to keep an account for sports bets with him; Walters operated, in effect, as a big-time bookie for Mickelson. For example, according to a sworn statement by Mickelson's business manager, on Sept. 19, 2012, Mickelson paid Walters $1,950,000 to cover a debt "related to sports gambling."

This is the dark side of Phil, a side the Tour seems to want to sweep under the rug.  If MLB or the NFL found that one of its players was running up multi-million dollar gambling losses, there would be a long suspension in the offing.  How, you ask, can this be ignored by the PGA Tour?

The crux of the case revolves around Tom Davis, the CEO of Dean Foods with, shall we say, a checkered past as relates to gambling debts:

Indeed, where Walters was strategic in his gambling, Davis was merely compulsive—and his life turned into a cautionary tale. Davis made millions in his business career, but it was never enough to make up for what he kept losing at the tables. After Davis lost $200,000 playing blackjack at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, he stole $100,000 from a shelter for battered women, in Dallas, for which he had raised funds in the past. Davis used the money to pay for a surprise party for his wife. Later, Davis took another $50,000 from the shelter.

 The perfect guy to run a publicly-traded company, eh?

I'll give you Toobin's conclusion, but you do want to read the entire piece.  It casts our Phil in a very dark light, as there's no way to excuse his actions.  But this excerpt will also highlight how unbelievably lucky he was:

But Mickelson's legal odyssey had a final twist. The Newman case, decided by the Second Circuit in December 2014, effectively prevented a criminal prosecution against Mickelson. But while the criminal prosecution of Walters was pending, the United States Supreme Court took up another case from California, which had limited insider-trading law in a nearly identical way that Newman had done in New York. In a unanimous decision in December 2016, the Supreme Court rejected the Newman rule and held that recipients of inside information could be prosecuted even if they didn't know what the original tipper received. In other words, Mickelson might have been prosecuted if his case had arisen before December 2014 or after December 2016. But because the Newman case was the law in New York when his case came up, Mickelson dodged trouble on either side—just as he did between those two trees at Augusta.

I'm still curious as to why the relevant gambling losses, unlike earlier amounts, weren't paid.  

Alan, Asked -  Shipnuck's weekly mailbag feature continues to amuse, though this week he has the good sense to save the best for last:

Who are the worst 5 golfers when it comes to social media? -@ShaneRyanHere

FYI, I'm basing this almost entirely on Twitter.  I find Snapchat impossible to take seriously and don't spend that much time on Instagram, because I prefer words to pictures. 

5. Brooks Koepka. His product-placement tweets right after winning the U.S. Open were unbecoming to the point of embarrassment.

4. Ian Poulter. He's actually toned down the self-indulgence lately, but the endlessly bad grammar and spelling earn him a spot here.

3. Smylie Kaufman. Like living in a bad dream where spring break never ends, every sporting event involves LSU and the only thing to drink is Natty Light.

2. Grayson Murray. Where to even begin?

1. Steve Elkington. He has retired the category.

First, take a moment to enjoy the postmodern inanity of the question....  I remember the good old days when we only worried about how they play.

But those top two are social media train wrecks, and it never gets old.

And since we can't get enough of the Divorce of the Century, here are a couple on that topic:

Are Jordan and Greller going to be the next Phil and Bones? -@SamLehman0

They already have a similar chemistry and, crucially, Jordan values his man as much as Phil did. And like their forebears, Jordan and Greller are both hyperverbal golf nerds who love nothing more than talking through the intricacies (and mundanities) of every shot, which makes for riveting TV. Can they sustain the partnership and brotherhood for a quarter-century? That's a big ask. But when it comes to current player-caddie combinations, I don't think there's any question that Jordan-Greller are now the most compelling and compulsively watchable.

It's easy to find a good match for Bones: Rory, Jordan, Rickie, Brooks, etc. How about a good match for Phil? Stevie, Kip, LaCava, Wood? -Max (@hawesmax)

Phil is an arthritic 47, hasn't won in four years and is now prioritizing family events over major championships. Don't assume that any caddie with a top-tier bag is going to be beating down Mickelson's door. Really, the only guy who makes sense is Joe LaCava. Part of the reason he left Dustin Johnson for Tiger Woods was the appeal of a more limited schedule. Well, he's had most of the last three years off. LaCava is Bones's best friend and so over the last 25 years he spent a ton of time in Phil's orbit and they have a strong friendship, too. And you just know Mickelson would relish taking something away from Tiger.

On the first, while I can see Alan's point, the missing ingredient is the imaginative shot-making and riverboat gambler mentality.  The hyper-analysis worked because Phil would do things like thread a shot through the trees from that bunker on the left of the tenth at Sawgrass without Bones knowing the line.  In fact, Jordan and Greller had gotten quite tedious last year, though they seemingly have dialed it back a notch (though that may be because we're not seeing Jordan on TV as much).

On the second query, he's spot on.  But I'm more intrigued by the questioner mentioning Rory, because there's not a guy out there that needs a caddie upgrade more.  But he may well be too stubborn to admit it...

Busted - This story won't surprise any of you, but you'll be amused all the same:

The framed copy of Time magazine was hung up in at least five of President Trump’s

clubs, from South Florida to Scotland. Filling the entire cover was a photo of Donald Trump. 

“Donald Trump: The ‘Apprentice’ is a television smash!” the big headline said. Above the Time nameplate, there was another headline in all caps: “TRUMP IS HITTING ON ALL FRONTS . . . EVEN TV!” 

This cover — dated March 1, 2009 — looks like an impressive memento from Trump’s pre-presidential career. To club members eating lunch, or golfers waiting for a pro-shop purchase, it seemed to be a signal that Trump had always been a man who mattered. Even when he was just a reality TV star, Trump was the kind of star who got a cover story in Time. 

But that wasn’t true. 

The Time cover is a fake. 

There was no March 1, 2009, issue of Time magazine. And there was no issue at all in 2009 that had Trump on the cover.

I'm so disillusioned....  What's a fellow to believe in this crazy, mixed up world?

Of course, I may not be the perfect messenger for this story, given that this Sports Illustrated covers features on my office wall:

In this case, there was an actual issue of June 29, 1987.

Lexi No-Show - This bothers me not the least:

With the KPMG Women's PGA at Olympia Fields, the women's second major would seemingly be a good spot for Lexi Thompson to return to some normalcy after her brutal penalty strokes at the last major. 

Instead, Lisa Cornwell reports for Golf Central, Thompson is declining all media requests. This is especially a shame given Thompson's likability, star qualities and age. Hopefully it's a short term situation.

Lexi should meet with the media, just to avoid such stories.  But she was the least interesting participant in LexiGate, as the victim often is, and has little to add to the discussion.

Stating The Obvious - It was a good week in Hartford with a memorable finish, as Doug ferguson explains:

What the Travelers Championship had was noise. 

It had atmosphere. 

“I mean, the ground was shaking it was so loud,” Spieth said. “What a tremendous last four holes, finishing holes, where you can get the crowd super involved with an amphitheater setting. If I were a fan, I would pick this tournament.” 

He also mentioned the Phoenix Open, and the list would have grown had he had more time to think, such as of Muirfield Village or TPC Sawgrass. 

The U.S. Open had 652 acres of Wisconsin pasture.

Crazy that we have to have this discussion, no?  Of course Chambers Bay was even worse, featuring one hole with no spectators....

Doug connects the remaining dots, though noting that the next few years will feature more traditional Open venues: 

That's the biggest risk the USGA is taking by going to big, new courses. 

The U.S. Open returns to traditional courses with a smaller blueprint over the next decade. Even after a soft, calm year, it should not lose its reputation as the toughest test in golf. 

But setting up the courses involves more than the length of the rough, width of the fairways and speed of the green. 

It also includes where to put the ropes.

That's the one thing the TPC courses seem to get....   

Quick Hits -  Sometimes all you need is the header:

Nostrathomas: Justin Thomas on how he called Spieth's clutch bunker shot

Gotta admit, that's clever.... 

For some time I'm guessing:

Jack Nicklaus: Tiger has 'life problems' now, not 'golf problems'

This is oddly compelling:

Watch Jordan Spieth's walk-off hole-out from every conceivable angle thanks to this cool collection of cell phone videos

And while we're on the subject of golf celebrations, Joel Beall provides the definitive ranking thereof.  Though as much fun as it was, I don't think our Jordan quite grasps the concept of the chest bump:

On the other hand, for a white guy that's an impressive vertical....

Tuesday Trifles

Just a couple of quick notes today, then you can get on with your day....

Brand, Detoxed - This one will have certain heads exploding:

European Tour officials are understood to have visited Trump International on several occasions as they assess the site’s tournament viability. Such checks are standard,

especially for an event as high profile as the Scottish Open. Royal Aberdeen, which hosted the 2014 Scottish Open, is among alternatives being considered, given the level of backdrop noise that will be attached to any Trump plan. 

Martin Gilbert, Aberdeen Asset’s co-founder and chief executive, is close enough to Trump to have attended the president’s inauguration in January. With the Scottish Open broadcast live on the other side of the Atlantic, there is a growing link between the tournament and the US. 

Any such move would, however, be highly controversial. Among those who would need to be happy about it are Rolex, who have included the Scottish Open in their new and enhanced series on the European Tour. The Scottish government is also a partner in the tournament but did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment regarding it being held at Trump International.

How's that La Résistance working out?

Shack skips the dramatics and makes some good points here:

It's a partnership that makes obvious sense for Aberdeen Asset, especially if Royal Aberdeen is believed to be lukewarm on hosting again. However, of greater concern is the sheer difficulty of Trump International and how that aligns with former Commissioner George O'Grady's desire to play the Scottish Open on a fun, not-excessively difficult links test the week prior to The Open.

This is a tough one, as the guys logically don't want to reenact The Bataan death March the week before a major... always a risk with the dreaded haar.  

Ratings, The Good & The Bad - The former was this week at Hartford:

The ugly was, of course, the U.S. Open final round:

The comparable number for the Open's final round was 3.6, consistently bad all four days.  Ratings have been consistently bad this year, with Hartford a pleasant exception.  One has to conclude that Jordan Spieth can drive some traffic, but alarms should be sounding in Fortress Ponte Vedra Beach.

Call of Duty Calls - After his no-show at Riviera, what's to say about this:

Attending this week’s Quicken Loans National? Don’t expect to see Tiger Woods, the tournament’s host, at TPC Potomac (Md.) at Avenel Farm near Washington, D.C. 

According to Rick Singer, CEO of the Tiger Woods Foundation, Woods will not attend the tournament this year as he continues treatment for how he manages his pain medication. 

“As Tiger said, he is receiving ongoing professional help, and because of that, he cannot attend this year’s Quicken Loans National,” Singer said in a statement. “Tiger will stay in touch with the tournament and receive regular updates during the week.”

As long as he's updated....  Look, if he's seriously in rehab, then he gets a pass....  It's just that he doesn't seem to go out of his way for those funding his foundation....

My Kind of Town -  Let's just note that Kevlar is optional....  Folks are talking about Tiger's design for the Southside project that includes the Obama Presidential Library:

The supreme challenge for any golf course designer is to serve the extremes in golf. 

Confronted with a piece of property, the designer must have the vision and imagination to create a course that will test the best of the best players in the world, the .0001 percent of the elite. At the same time, the layout must be made fun and enjoyable for players who dream of breaking 100, and all points in between. 

And oh yes, the designer also must deliver an 18-hole experience that is truly memorable, leaving golfers of all abilities longing for a return round. 

Tiger Woods’ TGR Design has achieved those goals, and then some, with its design for the 18-hole renovation of the Jackson Park and South Shore courses. The Chicago Parks Golf Alliance and TGR Design representatives unveiled the proposed layout Wednesday night during a public meeting at the South Shore Cultural Center. 

Let’s just say 2020, the year of the targeted debut for the course, can’t come soon enough after seeing TGR’s plans. A golfer’s imagination truly is in overdrive in trying to envision the final result.

Hmmmm...Am I alone in finding that a tad breathless over a draft routing?  He's got lots of details and I'll concede that it's a site that designers would drool over, but I'd like to focus you on the first couple of sentences in the excerpt.  That "supreme challenge" is entirely self-inflicted, and completely unnecessary in my view.  It will add to the course's long-term maintenance requirements, and nowhere does the author grapple with the effects of converting two courses currently played by locals into one behemoth.

And the determination that TGR has achieved those goals from a draft routing plan?  Let's be charitable and declare that judgement premature....

This local jorno is concerned that the golf course hasn't been coordinated with the park in which it lies:

Before he became America's foremost landscape architect, shaping Chicago's Jackson and Washington parks as well as New York's Central Park, Frederick Law Olmsted was a 

fervent abolitionist. So it's easy to imagine Olmsted reveling in the fact that Jackson Park will be home to a center honoring the nation's first African-American president. 

But the planning process for that park, which took on new layers of complexity Wednesday with the unveiling of a design for a $30 million Tiger Woods golf course in the park's southern end, almost surely would have given Olmsted pause. 

He believed that all elements of a park should be subordinated to a greater whole. That's what the designers in charge of a Chicago Park District push to draft a new plan for Jackson Park said at a public meeting Wednesday. 

Yet such an all-encompassing vision is not yet evident. Latent conflicts between different priorities for the park have not been brought to the surface and thrashed out. The designers of the golf course have yet to talk to the designer of the landscape that will surround the planned Obama Presidential Center. The lack of coordination threatens the promise that the center and golf course will endow Chicago's south lakefront with a park equivalent in quality to Millennium Park or Lincoln Park.

That appeal to authority citing Frederick law Olmstead is quite deft, though it cuts both ways.  Anyone familiar with the demographics of the South side of Chicago?  How do we think FLO would feel about depriving these folks of their two low-cost golf courses?  

Another Trib writer sees many positives, and at least gets within gimme range of the issues:

Ciji Henderson, president of the Chicago Women's Golf Club, said she believes in the project "because it is something that the city truly desires and needs."

"We've been here when the bunkers were filled with water and you really couldn't play," Henderson said. "Being an avid golfer in this community, we deserve it." 

Jackson Park is the home base for the club of African-American women, and Henderson hopes the new course will remain affordable and accessible for her group. She also hopes golf carts will be permitted. 

The routing does not include cart paths as organizers hope players will choose to walk and support the caddie program. But the cart issue remains unsettled.

I get it, she has the audacity of....errr, you know what.  But I've been reliably informed that hope is not a strategy....  

But look at the yardage and those six sets of tee boxes, and what do you think the chances are of this course remaining affordable for Ciji's constituency?  In a city that can't protect its citizens in state that's an economic basket case....  Never mind, what could go wrong?

Phil, Unplugged - Phil spent some time with Dan Patrick, mostly confirming the obvious, first with this:

Was Jordan Spieth’s celebration after holing a bunker shot in a playoff to win the Travelers Championship on Sunday the proper decorum for the moment? Phil Mickelson 

is among the majority that believe so. 

Mickelson appeared Monday on “The Dan Patrick Show” to discuss several topics. Among them: Spieth’s hole-out and the ensuing celebration that included an excited club throw by Spieth, rake toss by Spieth’s caddie Michael Greller, and chest bump between the two.

Of course, most golf fans loved the reaction, which certainly ranks among the best golf celebration moments in recent history. But then again, there always will be some naysayers. To those people, Mickelson provided his defense of Spieth’s actions. 

“I think the proper decorum is what happened,” Mickelson said. “You want to show emotion like that. And their jump, and their leap and chest bump together, I certainly am envious of that because they pulled it off like they had been practicing it – and maybe they have, he’s won so much. But I loved the celebration. I think we all did.”

Phil, you're now condoning club tossing?  

Joking aside, who exactly objected to the emotional outburst?  Certainly not Daniel Berger....  Mind you, his use of "decorum" is passing strange, but it goes without saying that Golf needs more of these moments....

This one will equally shock you:

Where will Jim “Bones” Mackay end up? According to his former boss Phil Mickelson, it will likely be with a top player. 

“I think that he’s going to have opportunities to be on the bag of some great, great players,” Mickelson said Monday as a guest on “The Dan Patrick Show.” “I think a lot of the top players are going to want him on their bag because of his experience, his knowledge, his ability to think clearly under the gun, his Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup experiences. Knowing and having such a high golf IQ, I think he’s going to be able to bring a lot to the table for a number of players.”

I get that, though not a high enough Golf IQ to keep you from putting that second ball in play in Korea and performing the impossible feat of losing two holes at once.

But who knew that Bones quit merely to allow Phil more time with his family:

Mickelson said the change will give him an opportunity to spend more time with his brother, Tim, who will caddie for his older brother the rest of the season. It will also potentially be a great career move for Mackay if he can land a top young talent. 

“I think that’s going to be exciting and give him a new energy to have an opportunity like that,” Mickelson said. “And for me, like I said, to have time with my brother is going to be exciting for me, as well.”

I thought only politicians use that line... 

Good thing it's a slow day, as I need to be on my way....See you tomorrow.

Weekend Wrap

Hope you all had a good weekend once the rain cleared out....

More Jordan - This header kind of captures it:

'Just Jordan doing Jordan things': Spieth wins Travelers with stunning shot

Reminds me of a story from a few years back.... It was the semis of the President's Cup at Willow Ridge, and it was the other match in our foursome that was of interest.  It feature two guys that, in order to preserve anonymity, we'll call Bruce and Steve.

Bruce was the best player in the club, a one-handicap whose only weakness was his putter.  Steve was a 7 or 8, but felt over-matched, and when Bruce left himself a couple of short putts, he felt he needed to make Bruce hole them.  The putts were downhill sliders to be fair, but not long enough to really test him, and he holed them without any issue, though I could tell he was a bit peeved....

Then we got to the seventh hole, an 165-yard Par-3, where Bruce proceeded to jar his tee shot.  As we walked to the green I said to Steve, "You had him a little on edge there, though he seems to have come up with a work-around".

Well, Jordan Spieth couldn't hole a four-footer late yesterday, so he needed a work-around:

Make no mistake – Jordan Spieth holing out from the bunker to win the Travelers Championship was a historic moment. 

The type of moment that will be remembered not only for what it was, but for the greater narrative to which it contributed. The type of moment that, years later, will be recalled with a descriptive, “I remember where I was when …” 

Just as we remember Tiger Woods’ mythical feats in vivid detail, we’ll remember the shot, the club toss, and the soaring chest bump with caddie Michael Greller as Spieth became the only golfer in history to match Woods’ total of 10 victories before his 24th birthday. 

All Daniel Berger could do was stand and watch.

OK, it's "an" historic moment, where are the proofreaders when you need them...

 And Berger did more than watch, he gave his buddy a nice low five.... and Jordan then assisted in settling the crowd, so good stuff all around.

But the Tour Confidential panel goes off the deep end with this:

1. Jordan Spieth holed out from the bunker on the first playoff hole to beat Daniel Berger and win the Travelers Championship on Sunday, claiming his 10th career PGA Tour victory. In the modern era, only Tiger has won at least 10 times before turning 24. Spieth turns 24 next month. Has Woods's dominance unintentionally forced us to overlook, and perhaps underappreciate, some of the things Spieth has accomplished in his young career?

Pullleaze, who writes these questions?   I'm not sure I've ever seen Jordan's name in the same sentence with the "U-word".....

Josh Sens with the tip-in:

Josh Sens: Jordan Spieth is a remarkably accomplished golfer for his age. Check that. For any age. But underappreciated? He has earned enough money for many lifetimes; gets bucket-loads of media attention throughout the season; has sponsors fawning over him left and right; is greeted like a demi-god at almost every green he approaches. If only we were all fortunate enough to be so woefully underappreciated.

Thank you, Josh. Actually, part of me wonders if he isn't a tad over-rated.... Not his record. for sure, ten wins, including two majors, by twenty-four is just that good. But the expectations for the future may be a tad over-hyped, though his obvious ability to pull off these dramatic shots may make up for the lack of length in his game.

Jeff Ritter: Tiger absolutely shattered the scale by which all current Tour careers are

measured. Spieth may not be on a Tiger-like winning pace, but as I learned today on Twitter, his career arc so far is Mickelsonian. And Phil never had a 73rd-hole celebration like Jordan on Sunday. Not too shabby. 

Michael Bamberger: Tiger's personality added to his career to create an aura of Worldwide Golfing Dominance. Plus, Tiger won with a power game. It just looked more dominating. But 10 is 10—incredible, really.

 I think the Tiger comparisons are a red herring, as Brandel Chamblee reinforces:

What he's doing is amazing, but it's not Tigeresque.

You know that tradition in which the winner's caddie grabs the flag from the finishing hole?  Greller had different ideas:

Jordan Spieth's caddie hangs on to bunker rake from Travelers win

Wouldn't you?

And how about this called shot?

It's always the Indian, not the arrow, right?  On Saturday we had this:

Rory McIlroy tried out FIVE putters before his third round, still putted terribly

I think it's refreshing that the guys can still get excited about demo day....

And then the inevitable:

Rory McIlroy, using 3rd putter in 3 days, posts final-round 64 at Travelers

Hey, the man wrote the book on back-door Top Tens, so nothing in this is the least bit surprising....

And can we just agree that this is one of life's illy memes?

One has little to do with the other, and in many ways is a disservice to the folks in Hartford.  They seem to have created a good event in a difficult schedule slot, and put themselves in a position to benefit from the Tour's scheduling rules.  All good stuff, and Shack had kind words for them as well:

The Travelers is always fun at TPC River Highlands, but the combination of leaderboard, field and venue's ability to create excitement made today a long overdue reward for some of the hardest working folks in tournament golf. Couple in how great the latest renovation looked and the golden natives contrasting with the green turf, and it was off-teh-charts visual eye candy. 

And Spieth, like Tiger, brings out a certain adrenaline in observers. Still, I thought some of the comparisons to Erin Hills were unfair given different pars (70 vs. 72) making it easier to post lower red numbers. Nor would ever discourage anyone from bemoaning the scale of a 7,800 yard course versus the more intimate setting in Connecticut...

That difference in Par is telling, but Geoff also can't help himself:

There is little question that the scale of this week's venue versus Erin Hills created more realistic golf, better spectating and more energy at the end when fans were on top of the action. 

Imagine if the scale were even a little more condensced, just how much more democratic and energetic we could have things? Does this mean we all agree to a distance rollback?

Whew, that was easy!

Hey buddy, I see what you did there....

But it's all in the service of providing you with this, which we can agree is one of the worst appeals to authority ever:

Well, it's certainly not the answer for Luke.... And by the way, Luke, what are you doing these days?

More Sandy - A touching tribute from the great Jaime Diaz, including this nugget:

I was lucky to have a few special moments with Tatum. It wasn’t that I was around him very much. It’s that just about every time I was it, it was special. 

There was a round at Cypress Point, where on the 13th fairway Tatum’s description of what he’d observed in his several rounds with Ben Hogan gave me a more palpable sense of what Hogan was like than anything I have ever heard. 

“When it was Hogan’s turn to play, it was on the basis that he had been accorded the privilege of playing that particular golf shot,” he said. “And that privilege carried with it a responsibility. And that responsibility was to give that shot all the thought and effort that he could, and to make it as effective as he could. It was a very distinct characteristic.”

 Any of us should only be lucky enough to have Jaime pen these words about us:

“It adds up to this,” he said. “You no longer are able to do a lot of the things that made life so very satisfying through the years. So what you have to do is be able to accommodate those stages so that you don’t lose the essence of what you have left in your life.” 

Herbert Warren Wind once wrote of Tatum’s idol, Bobby Jones, “Of the people I have met in sports—or out—Jones came the closest to being what we call a great man. Like Winston Churchill, he had the quality of being at the same time much larger than life and exceedingly human.” 

So did Sandy Tatum.

Now that's what I call an appeal to authority!

And while everyone knows of his involvement with The Massacre at Winged Foot and with the revival of Harding Park, I didn't remember his involvement with The Hinkle Tree:

At the airless 1979 U.S. Open at Inverness, the journeyman Lon Hinkle found a first-round shortcut on the eighth hole by playing a tee shot with a 1-iron into the neighboring 17th fairway and then a 2-iron to the green. He turned a three-shot par-5 into a par-4. Tatum, then in the second year of his two-year term as USGA president, oversaw the overnight planting of a 15-foot spruce in an effort to block that route to the green. Telling me about it years later, Tatum said, "The players complained. 'You're changing the course, you're changing the course!' I said, 'We're rectifying a problem.'" He was a Stanford-educated lawyer and a dean of the San Francisco bar. He could make words dance. The Hinkle Tree is a footnote in the game's lore.

Lon Hinkle... Wow, what I always remember was what must have been his greatest indignity, assuming he knew about it.  In the first PGA Tour video game, one that had actual PGA members names on its faux leaderboard, they had a Lou Hinkle.  They probably paid him a buck-thre-eighty for that, but I'm guessing the guys gave it to him pretty good about what a fine playert his brother Lou turned out to be....

More Bones - The TC panel takes on the divorce of the century with this:

2. So long, Phil and Bones. After 25 years perhaps the most famous player-caddie duo ever mutually announced they're splitting up. Three questions: (1) Might Phil's game suffer without his loyal sidekick on the bag? (2) Will we see Bones on another bag by the 2018 Masters? (3) Which golfer would most benefit from Bones's services?

On the first query, this sounds about right:

Sens: 1) If anything, I expect we'll see a bump in the quality of Phil's play. Not because of anything Bones was doing wrong but because change can often have that effect, like when a baseball team swaps managers and suddenly goes on a winning streak.

Although that rule is void as relates to Rory and putters.....  But they were obviously not working well as a team, so it's likely just a relief to have the pain of the divorce behind him.

As for the middle query, there's too much that we don't know:

2) I sure hope so. I'm actually more interested to see how Bones fares away from Phil than how Phil fares away from Bones.

2) I would guess yes but have no special insight into that other than to know that Bones lives and breathes the game, so it's hard to imagine him staying away from it.

I have no insight as to what Bones might do next, but he's a proven commodity and I'd guess he'll have work next year at Augusta if he wants it. But at this stage of his life, would he want to join a young Tour grinder and hit the road 25 weeks a year? I see him pairing with someone laid back with a limited schedule that includes the occasional major. Fred Couples springs to mind.

I'm not sure we have a clue as to Bones' desire at this point, including how those knees are feeling.... But this reaction to that last question made me laugh:

3) As Michael Bamberger pointed out well in his obit for the Phil/Bones business relationship, Bones played more than a tend-the-flag-and-rake-the-bunkers role. I'd like to see him step in along a promising but not-quite-where-they-could-be player. Someone like Charles Howell III.

Unless Bones is going to putt for Chucky Three-Sticks, that ain't in the realm of possibility.... It all comes down to how much he still wants to be out there....  There's no shortage of young players looking for a strong presence on their bags....  Bryson DeChambeau, anyone?

The guys didn't break new ground when asked for their favorite Phil-Bones story, though this was new to me:

Bamberger: You wouldn't call this a story, but I love that Bones often flew Southwest home even when Phil was offering him a lift. Caddie and player should only spend so much time together. Maybe that's why they were able to go 25 years.

More Seth -  Don't worry, you're not supposed to know who he is, especially as he's all of ten year's old.  The hook is this week's Web.com Tour event, won in a playoff by Adam Schenk, who was using a yardage book partially created by the aforementioned Seth Damsgard (link is to Shack, because he failed to link to the original and I'm too lazy):

The drawings for all 18 holes of the course are a combined effort. Seth, of Brooklyn

Park, Minnesota, takes satellite images of courses from Google Earth and graphically designs its layout. 

Scott Brady of Precise Yardage Books visits each course in person to walk the entirety of it, measuring things like slopes of greens, depth of bunkers, manhole covers and changes in elevation. 

Those measurements are then sent to Seth, who completes the drawings. Then the yardage books are printed. 

Before Seth teamed up with Brady, he was making the books for courses he would play in junior golf tournaments. 

“I wanted to get tips from another yardage book maker,” Seth said. “We called Scott Brady with Precise Yardage Books. We wanted to get some tips from him. We told him how we did our graphic designing. He was just drawing them by hand, so he hired us.”

Enjoy your moment in the sun, young man, because those guys in Far Hills are coming after you.... 

More Drug Testing - From you-know-where:

4. The PGA Tour announced that beginning next season blood testing will now be administered along with urine testing to detect HGH. On top of that, the Tour will also make public player fines and suspensions, even for recreational drugs. What do you suspect triggered these policy shifts? And is there reason not to like these changes?

Zak: I can't think of a more obvious trigger than international golf star Rory McIlroy saying "I could use HGH and get away with it," last year at the British Open. Rory's one of the two most important golfers on the planet right now, and because of this, it seems his voice has carries plenty of weight. I also can't think of a reason to dislike the changes. If it leads to a cleaner game or—if nothing else—the perception of a cleaner game, it can only be a positive.

But Mikey Bams with the layup:

Bamberger: The Olympics had to have forced the Tour's hand, but also Jay Monahan may simply have a different approach and philosophy than Finchem. It doesn't work, not to announce suspensions, because it just muddles things for fans and sponsors and reporters and encourages an environment of gross misrepresentations, as when Dustin Johnson failed a third drug test in 2014 (not that the Tour ever said anything about that) and claimed that he was taking his own leave of absence from the PGA Championship and the Ryder Cup that year. I don't know anybody who believed that. So this is welcome. It should go beyond drugs. If somebody is banned for other types of conduct that is unbecoming of the gents, that should be announced, too. Gambling in sports, including golf, will likely become far more common in the coming years. We will need to know that the players are giving it their best effort. Suspensions for consorting with gamblers, or other issues related to gambling, should be announced as well. It's also an excellent deterrent.

And he doesn't even mentioned the faux jet-ski accident.....  To reiterate, I have no problem if the Tour decides to stop testing for recreational drugs, since they don't assist performance.  But there should be complete transparency as to disciplinary actions, as anything else is unacceptable.

More Tiger -  Mom will be so proud:

Sadly, one of Tiger Woods' lasting images has become that ubiquitous mugshot following his Memorial Day DUI arrest. But in Australia, the unfortunate portrait is really on full display. 

Melbourne-based artist Lush has created a mural of the moment. Yes, a mural. A big mural.

OK, I know he blew a 0.000, but how perfect is that artist's name?