Bonus Weekend Content

We're pacing ourselves this long holiday weekend and you, Dear Reader, are the beneficiary...

Wither The Quicken - The ubiquity of their hole-in-one commercials belies the short-term nature of their commitment:

POTOMAC, Md. — Nearly 10 years ago—July 5, 2007 to be precise—that 120 players teed off in the first round of the inaugural AT&T National at Congressional Country 

The event's signature moment

Club. The buzz around the event was only slightly below what one might expect at a major championship. After all, the tournament host was Tiger Woods—the No. 1 player in the world who had already won 12 major championships at age 31. 

Congressional was a major-championship-caliber site, having held two U.S. Opens and a PGA Championship. And the Washington, D.C., market, which had been thirsting for a big-time event after years holding what locals perceived as a second tier (at best) PGA Tour stop, finally had the sort of tournament it believed it deserved. In turn, Congressional was overrun with fans, and sponsors couldn’t sign up for corporate tents fast enough. A year after abandoning Washington, and the former Booz-Allen Classic, the PGA Tour came back to town, led by Woods on his white horse.

Whatever happened to that Woods guy?  Never hear much from him any more....

Flash forward to Thursday morning, June 29, 2017, when the 11th playing of the tournament with a different corporate sponsor (Quicken Loans) began. Woods was not only unable to play, after undergoing a fourth back surgery, but not even on site, dealing with the pain-killer issues that surfaced after his arrest for DUI over Memorial Day weekend. 

The tournament site isn’t Congressional, but rather TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm (a name most people say incorrectly), a revamped course that hosted the previous tour event for most of 20 years to decidedly mixed reviews. “It isn’t as if Avenel is a bad golf course,” Davis Love III once said. “It just doesn’t look very good if you have to drive by Congressional to get to it.” 

In a twist, it was Love who was hired to renovate the golf course in 2006. Now, players like it much better. But not THAT much better.

Now Congressional is some kind of gold standard?  For what, heat stroke?  See if this bit doesn't make you laugh?

The field that teed off for round one Thursday had four major champions in it: Geoff Ogilvy, Lucas Glover, Keegan Bradley and Jimmy Walker. The highest-ranked player among the 120 is Rickie Fowler (ninth), here at least in part because he’s under contract to Quicken Loans. A week ago, the Travelers Championship outside Hartford drew 13 major winners, among them Rory McIlroy, Jason Day and the eventual winner at TPC River Highlands, Jordan Spieth.

What, Doug Ford wasn't available?  It's technically true that each of those guys won a major, but they were in galaxies far, far away... It turns out that neither Congressional nor Quicken are in for the long-haul:

While the members agreed to the deal, it was only to host in alternating years — 2016, 2018 and 2020. And once that contract is up, the tournament won’t return to Congressional. The board is now pursuing a U.S. Open, with USGA executive director Mike Davis telling it flatly that the association won’t even consider the course unless the tour event goes away.

With the contract up after this week’s event, there has been no sign from Quicken Loans officials that it plans to renew. There also has been talk that company CEO Dan Gilbert wants to take his money to Michigan, where he lives, to bring the tour back to his home state, which hasn’t had a tour event since the Buick Open outside Flint went away in 2009.

Congressional isn't a horrible golf course, it's just that the time slot isn't conducive to firm and fast conditions.  We heard a lot about Rory's -16 winning score this year, and those conditions would likely recur with a return visit in June.  Let's hope that Mike Davis was just letting them down gently...

 Ryan Balangee nominates this event as a candidate for the "C-word":

At first glance, the only events on the schedule that appear vulnerable are the Quicken

Loans National, with an expiring deal, and The Greenbrier Classic, which is locked up through 2021. 

Meanwhile, Tiger Woods' TGR Live now runs the Genesis Open at Riviera near Los Angeles, a tournament with an established, legendary pedigree of winners and located in Woods' home state. The field is also imminently better than the National each year. 

Quicken Loans, if they choose to remain a title sponsor, could latch on to the as-of-now sponsor-less Houston Open or taking over the Tournament of Champions from SBS (which sublet their deal to Hyundai before this year), both with better schedule slots and fields.

I'm saddened to see The Greenbrier on that list, as it's the only C.B. Macdonald course you'd ever see the Tour play....

But D.C. in late June/early July?  No one will miss it...  But while New Orleans may have received a stay of execution with their timely change in format, I don't think that the Nelson should consider themselves out of the (Trinity) Forest just yet...

Mommy Issues - This is pretty funny....  As an unidentified woman wades into some unappetizing water to retrieve a tossed putter to the amusement of the Euro Tours marquee pairing of Tyrell hatton, Thomas Pieters and Alex Noren.

Go ahead, give it a look see, I'll be here when you get back.

It turns out that it isn't just any random woman, per Shack:

This is all-timer! The mother of 21-year-old Haotong Li waded into a less than inviting Le Golf National lake in an attempt to retrieve the club her son had thrown into the lake.

The world No. 129's mother set her purse and phone down on a nearby railroad tie, went inside the ropes and attempted the rescue effort as the star threesome of Tyrrell Hatton, Thomas Pieters and Alex Noren were attempting to play the hole where . 

Eventually mom did reach the floating club in question, only to find that her son had broken the dastardly weapon. Her dropping of the grip end back into the lake is a particularly special touch that turned the laughter to all-out hysterics for the group.

And it's not just any venue, it's the site of the next Ryder Cup.  Noted club tossers should be sure to be on their beta blockers....  or bring their Mums.

While I'm known for my best-in-class segues, this one might strain your patience....  But were I to tab a Euro player to have Mommy issues, it would be none other than Sergio, a man whose break-up with Greg Norman's daughter caused a decade-long career tailspin.

Alan Shipnuck has a timely profile of the Spaniard that ledes with this scene from Medinah:

In the shadow of Medinah Country Club's majestic clubhouse, at a PGA Championship long ago, Ben Crenshaw waited for his audience with the boy king. Crenshaw was a

month away from serving as captain of the 1999 U.S. Ryder Cup team, so he was closely eyeing the final round of the PGA, watching to see how both teams might gel. Just moments earlier, Sergio Garcia had run out of holes in a thrilling duel with Tiger Woods, failing to claim the Wanamaker trophy but securing a spot in his very first Ryder Cup. "Boy, that kid is gonna be a handful," Crenshaw said. Finally, the young Spaniard materialized, and Crenshaw offered him a manly hug and some down-home consolation: "You didn't get this one, but you're gonna win so many of these you're gonna get tired of lifting trophies.”

Here's the gist of Alan's premise:

It was when we finally gave up on Garcia that he became the player he was meant to be, winning the 2017 Masters in one of the grittiest, most satisfying performances ever. Decades from now they'll be singing songs in Spanish taverns about Garcia's par out of the hazard on the 13th on Sunday, and his flag-hunting approach shots on 15 and 18, to say nothing of the decisive birdie in sudden death. That putt caught a piece of the hole and tumbled in. Back in the old days, when Garcia saw himself as a dogged victim of inexorable fate, his ball would have done a power lip-out and trickled off the green.

Much was made at Augusta of how Garcia has been changed by his fiancée Angela Akins, the former Golf Channel talent. Her father Marty is an underrated part of the story. Just as Dustin Johnson is benefiting from the hard-won wisdom of his future father-in-law, Wayne Gretzky, Garcia has fallen under the thrall of Marty, an All-American quarterback at the University of Texas who was such a schoolboy legend that LBJ personally recruited him on behalf of the Longhorns. On Saturday evening at this year's Masters, I found Marty on a couch in the Augusta National locker room. He had tired of battling the crowds and was plopped in front of a large TV. "I want to see his eyes," he said of Garcia. And what did his future son-in-law's visage reveal? "I see confidence," he told me. "He's not afraid of anyone or anything.”

I don't actually think that "We" giving up on the man had much to do with it......  Perhaps it was Sergio giving up on himself?

And, lest you think that the Euro Tour is all fun and games, how about this little bit of treachery:

Bernd Wiesberger shot a respectable 2-under 69 Friday in Round 2 of the HNA French Open at Le Golf National in Paris. Problem is, his equipment wasn’t where it needed to be. 

Wiesberger posted on Facebook that someone had changed the settings on his Titleist driver, something he didn’t discover until midway through the round. 

“Struggle at the end but happy to have scored in the 60s,” Wiesberger said. “Found out during the round that settings on my Titleist Driver have been changed by somebody (this also happened (sic) to other Players today apparently.) Never happened to me before.” 

It would be easy to shrug this off as an honest mistake on someone’s part, but the fact that Wiesberger says other players had their equipment altered as well is extremely strange. We do not know of any other players who have spoken publicly about equipment tampering issues, but if correct it’s an alarming issue with so much at stake.

As always, I'll go with Professor Plum in the library with the candelabra....  But that is seriously mean to do to a guy, and I'm hoping we'll get to the penalty phase.

Another Hidden Killer - I'm not sure I know what do with this provocative header:

Confidence Kills: What If Everything You've Been Told To Think Is Wrong?

 I completely get that Billy Horschel shouldn't be anyone's role model:

Even the best in the world can filter the game this way. Consider the eventful September

that Billy Horschel had in 2014, when he won the BMW Championship and the Tour Championship, which also meant the FedEx Cup and its $10-million bonus. A lucrative hot streak made all the more impressive considering what had immediately preceded: The week before the BMW, at the Deutsche Bank Championship, Horschel hit one of the worst shots imaginable under pressure when he chunked a 6-iron into a hazard on the final hole and lost by two. 

When it came time to make sense of what happened, Horschel's strategy was to dismiss it as mostly rotten luck. He knew he played well, had put himself in contention, and says the sidehill lie was tricky enough that he caught more turf than he anticipated. It happens in golf, and he didn't see the point in dwelling. That he won twice in the next two weeks suggests he was right. "Just a really bad swing at the wrong time," Horschel says.

 Except when he is:

Fast-forward to November 2016, though, and Horschel committed another tournament-ending blunder when he missed a two-foot putt to remain in a playoff in the RSM Classic. This time the redemptive follow-up didn't come until much later (coincidentally, he won the 2017 AT&T Byron Nelson when Jason Day missed his own short putt in a playoff), but here, too, Horschel says he immediately profited from the experience. Revisiting the sequence at the RSM, he recognized he had rushed through his routine, and that a weak left hand on the putter kept the clubface open at impact. It was a crucial mistake, but at least he understood why. 

"It's a tough way to learn something, but I learned it," he said days later.

So, what's a fellow to do?  Here's the nut of the argument:

"Confidence is a garbage term in that it induces illusions of competence," Pirozzolo says. "What you really need is a passion to work hard to get the best answers about why things happen the way they do." 

Even at the game's highest rung, this is a tough place to go. Of 200 players or so on tour, Horschel estimates maybe only 30 are willing to spend time truly digging into the deficiencies that cost them. "Everyone else is scared to look in the mirror," he says. "They shield themselves from it. That's what makes guys like Rory and Spieth so great. They never shy away from their mistakes."

Sorry, but I'm not buying that argument.... First of all, Rory would be the guy with the lamest caddie on Tour, because he's either to lazy or stubborn to see the weakness....

The concept of learning from our mistakes is not rocket science, especially where those mistakes can be readily identified as in the good-Billy example above.  The hard part is that we also need to accept that we're fallible, otherwise we'd never be able to take the club back....

Show Biz For Ugly People - That's how some wit described politics, which makes this person seemingly unqualified:

Rep. Natalie Gulbis? It’s a possibility in the future. 

The Nevada Independent reports that Gulbis, 34, met with Republicans in Washington

D.C. this week to discuss a potential run for the seat of Rep. Jacky Rosen (D) in Nevada’s third Congressional district. 

Yes, it appears Gulbis is considering a run for the U.S. House of Representatives. 

Gulbis lives in Las Vegas and the the spot should be open in the next election cycle (2018), as Rosen has already said she plans to run for the U.S. Senate.

 I see two pointed qualifications for such a run, neither above the neck line....

Defending McEnroe - In an ill-considered posting at The Loop, Sam Weinman takes John McEnroe to task for a lack of....well, I guess we'll let him make his case:

Multiple choice question: In a discussion with NPR about where Serena Williams ranks among the greatest tennis players of all time, John McEnroe's response should have been:

A) That Serena is absolutely the best player ever, male or female. 

B) That Serena ranks as the greatest female tennis player of all time, but if she played the men's circuit, it would be "an entirely different story" (this was McEnroe's actual answer, by the way).

or ...

C) That he didn't hear the question, something's wrong with this mic, and oh shoot, I totally forgot I'm late for a dentist appointment.

In case you were unclear, the correct answer is C. For McEnroe to broach how Williams, winner of 23 Grand Slam titles and 72 titles overall, would fare against male competition is what's known an "unwinnable argument." It diminishes Williams' standing as one of the greatest athletes of her generation (no qualifier, full stop). It repositions McEnroe, just weeks removed from a fairly enlightened stance defending LGBT players, as some tone-deaf old coot. And it reintroduces comparisons between male and female athletes, which we've seen time and again, are quantifiably impossible.

That's cleverly done and I have no objections to most of (except that very last bit about being quantifiably impossible), but it ignores the reality in which Johnny Mac found himself.  An actual interview with an NPR SJW who wouldn't let it go:

Garcia-Navarro: We're talking about male players but there is of course wonderful

female players. Let's talk about Serena Williams. You say she is the best female player in the world in the book. 

McEnroe: Best female player ever — no question. 

Garcia-Navarro: Some wouldn't qualify it, some would say she's the best player in the world. Why qualify it? 

McEnroe: Oh! Uh, she's not, you mean, the best player in the world, period? 

Garcia-Navarro: Yeah, the best tennis player in the world. You know, why say female player? 

McEnroe: Well because if she was in, if she played the men's circuit she'd be like 700 in the world. 

Garcia-Navarro: You think so? 

McEnroe: Yeah. That doesn't mean I don't think Serena is an incredible player. I do, but the reality of what would happen would be I think something that perhaps it'd be a little higher, perhaps it'd be a little lower. And on a given day, Serena could beat some players. I believe because she's so incredibly strong mentally that she could overcome some situations where players would choke 'cause she's been in it so many times, so many situations at Wimbledon, The U.S. Open, etc. But if she had to just play the circuit — the men's circuit — that would be an entirely different story.

What was the guy supposed to say?  The perfect riposte would have been to turn it on her and ask who these "Some" were, but that's from reading the transcript in my pajamas....  He was understandably shocked by the question, because nobody actually thinks that except at NPR.

Sam also submits this from Serena to support his argument:

I'm not sure of her point, perhaps that she'd be more like 500th in the world rankings?   But Sam ignored this from Serena that seems more on point:

“Actually it’s funny, because Andy Murray, he’s been joking about myself and him playing a match. I’m like, ‘Andy, seriously, are you kidding me?’ For me, mens’ tennis and womens’ tennis are completely, almost, two separate sports. If I were to play Andy Murray, I would lose 6-0, 6-0 in five to six minutes, maybe 10 minutes. No, it’s true. It’s a completely different sport. The men are a lot faster and they serve harder, they hit harder, it’s just a different game. I love to play women’s tennis. I only want to play girls, because i don’t want to be embarrassed. I would not do the tour, I would not do Billie Jean [King] any disservice. So Andy, stop it. I’m not going to let you kill me.”

Got that Ms. Garcia-Navarro?  Serena eliminates herself from those who would not use qualifiers...

But Our Sam finally gets to the golf connection, but way over-interprets this:

One of the landmark sporting events of the last two decades was Annika Sorenstam, at

the height of her LPGA dominance, competing on the PGA Tour at Colonial in 2003. I was there, and it was a riveting two days, the fairways lined with inspired little girls and throngs of media chronicling one of the greatest female players ever playing against her male contemporaries. Sorenstam was a model of grace and grit. Her ball-striking was superb. But she also shot 71-74 and missed the cut by four shots.

There was still much achieved by Sorenstam's PGA Tour experiment, if only to show the gap between men and women wasn't as wide as some might think. But it also risked contriving a complex topic about the differences between men and women, and it fueled one of McEnroe's other statements in his NPR interview. "Maybe at some point a women's tennis player can be better than anybody," he said. "I just haven't seen it in any other sport, and I haven't seen it in tennis."

A quick show of hands for anyone still thinking that Annika at Colonial was a landmark sporting event?  For those precious few, this must be awfully disillusioning....

Stacy Lewis has been whining on this subject far too much as well, and she can't even beat the girls...  I'm a pretty reliable fan of the women's game, but not because their physical skills equal that of the men.  Men are better athletes than women in all respects, deal with it.  Who knew the SJWs at NPR were such science deniers?