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.