Bonus Pre-Travel Content

I think we're in reasonably good shape...  Of course I have lists...so many that I need lists to keep track of my lists....

PGA Stuff - Mikey Bams has the week laid out for us, but first the weather and course condition update:

Consider this dispatch an early welcome and cheat sheet for the 99th PGA Championship, to be played at the Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte. We start with a weather and course-condition forecast: 

A prolonged period of storms and high humidity. A soft course. Expect big divots and low scores. The heat will not be oppressive, and if you're watching from the comfort of your air-conditioned media room, there might even be a hint of autumn chill.

Big divots?  I didn't even know that Lexi was in the field....

And making their debut on the big stage, the knobby knees and pasty thighs of your favorite Tour pros:

In a first for a major championship, the PGA of America allowed Tour pros to wear shorts during Monday's practice round at the PGA Championship. 

While it's great for the players and sensible given that it's the middle of the summer, it was still a bizarre sight given that we rarely see men's pro golfers in anything but pants on the course. The wardrobe change garnered lots of attention

At the risk of sounding like your grandmother, it's just not a professional look..... It will not happen on Tour because of Wednesday Pro-Ams, the most important day of the week for the sponsors.

But back to Mike, who uses it as a teachable moment:

You can also see something else you never saw in Lee Trevino's day. (He won PGA Championships in 1974 and '84.) The most athletic of the modern players swing into a 

His knees should hold up, even if he never wins anything

straightened left leg, as Trevino explained this to David Feherty in a recent Golf Channel interview for Feherty's eponymous show. Trevino and his long-panted Sansabelt crowd—the cloth was so thin and tight you could see some knobby knees protruding through it—swung into a left knee that was bent. And that is why, in Trevino's opinion, there are so many more left-knee issues and hip issues among today's players. In this regard, you might pay particular attention to Jason Day, Rory McIlroy and Dustin Johnson. You might compare them to Zach Johnson and Jordan Spieth and Davis Love III, who have softer left-leg positions. Except it is most unlikely that DLIII will play a practice round in shorts. He owns shorts. It's just impossible to imagine him wearing shorts at a major championship, even in a practice round.

Click through that second link for video of the 46-year old that shouldn't have.

And we'll let Mike break the big news:

WEDNESDAY

On Wednesday, the PGA of America's Big Three—Pete Bevacqua, Paul Levy and Kerry Haigh—are expected to announce that the PGA Championship, which has been played in August for decades, will move to May. The likely first year for a new springtime PGA Championship is 2020, when the PGA Tour's summer schedule and the Olympic golf schedule will again come in conflict. The 2020 PGA Championship is slated for Harding Park in San Francisco. May is often a spectacular time in San Francisco, dry and sunny and cool. The Summer Games are in Tokyo, starting in late July. 

If that move happens, the PGA Tour is expected to return the Players Championship to March and the Tour will play the FedEx Cup events in August, before the start of the NFL regular season. [Editor's note: It was reported on Monday afternoon the PGA is moving to May, and Bevacqua and PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan will be available for questions Tuesday.]

Yeah, May in SanFran is no issue....  In fact, that venue was chosen for 2020 to provide maximum flexibility in the Olympic year.  On the other hand, 2021 has been awarded to Oak Hill in Rochester, NY.   Forget the shorts, boys, bring the thermals....

I think this is a bit of an unforced error for the event itself, although it will help rationalize the golf calendar.  I think they will find their choice of venues limited and face agronomic challenges, and we'll also have the meaningful portion of the golf calendar over a month earlier each season.  Oh well, a first-world problem to be sure....

I'll also be curious to see if money changes hands....

Lastly on this subject is this promising header:

PGA Championship 2017: 11 venues that could now host a major in May

Of course the date change should open up some options, though the inclusion of these two is curious:

Shoal Creek, Birmingham, Ala.

Hosting two PGA Championships in a seven-year span (1984 and 1990), in addition to 

The 17th at Southern Hills

the 1986 U.S. Amateur, Shoal Creek fell out of the major rotation after racist comments from the club’s founder about its all-white membership grabbed major headlines. Since then, Shoal Creek has hosted a PGA Tour Champions event since 2011, and recently underwent an extensive remodeling by Jack Nicklaus. The time might be right in the not-so-distant future to become a major host once again, and May would make a lot of sense to be in Alabama.

Southern Hills C.C., Tulsa, Okla.

Already slated to host the PGA Championship some time before 2030, Southern Hills is the perfect host for a major in May. The Tulsa layout has held seven majors in the past, dating back to the 1958 U.S. Open, with the last major being the 2007 PGA.

Regular readers know my amusement at the PGA's penchant for steamy venues in August, such as these very sites.  I'm guessing that after the date change they'll lose interest in these worthy venues.  After all, if you don't have Charley Hoffman or Tim herron suffering from dehydration, where's the fun? 

Brad Klein has a detailed look at the transformation necessary to attract this major:

Fazio and his team went to work with a master plan that has taken 22 years to fulfill. Their first move was to spread out the first and 10th tees and ninth and 18th greens to

create more room for spectators and club events. Then they went about strengthening the holes, paying particular attention to the finishing stretch from the 14th hole in, culminating in the long, demanding par-4 18th that incorporated a stream down its entire left side. The work was enough to land a revived PGA Tour event starting in 2003 and draw rave reviews from players and media alike. 

Three years ago Fazio’s team literally picked up the long, par-4 16th hole and moved it 50 yards to the left, bringing the fairway and green along a flank of a 15-acre lake with a large slope. With typical Fazio bravado, his team simply reshaped the entire terrain. In the process, they created a massive spectator area that overlooks the 16th green and the over-water, par-3 17th hole. 

The latest – and for now, final – changes were undertaken in May to July of 2016 through golf architecture’s version of a land invasion. Extensive earthwork across the site included: regrassing of all greens; modest rebunkering and replacement of all sand with a compact white silica used at Augusta National; considerable tree work and the creation of three holes and the lengthening of another (the par-4 11th) through an inventive repurposing of existing corridors.

Obviously they had the budget to do anything they wanted, though I'm not exactly sure how you do this:

That included land that was being neglected and other areas that were not utilized well. More than two decades later, Fazio Inc. has reshuffled the deck at Quail Hollow in the bold manner befitting the firm’s design style. 

“You go find land you’re not using and put it where you want,” Fazio said on the eve of the 2017 PGA Championship at Quail Hollow on Aug. 10-13.

I'm a bit tired of the career slam angle, but Jaime Diaz takes his crack at it here, actually ranking the holders from 1-5.  I still think that Hogan's is under-valued, since he only played in the one Open Championship.

I don't know how much I'll see and blog of it from over there.

Masters Stuff - Despite several rounds of liars' poker, those great neighbors have reached an arrangement, as per this letter:

They are friends and neighbors, as every ANGC local member also belongs to Augusta Country Club.

They are basically selling the National their ninth hole, as can be seen in this aerial:

Here are Shack's comments:

Love seeing these "friends and neighbors" getting along as they always have...well maybe except for those days when the negotiations stalled. 

The inclination is to assume the 13th hole will be lengthened even though the governing bodies insist things have flatlined. Also look for a service road and stronger property buffer to be part of future changes to the Amen Corner portion of Augusta National.

ANGC has been aggressively acquiring properties around their perimeter for years, and this may just be part of that process.  There was also that incident from a few years back when Tiger was almost hit by a slice from ACC while on the 12th green....

But given where we stand with distance, this may take on outsized significance.   There's not a more perfect golf hole than the 13th, which has previously been modestly lengthened.  To my eye, the dogleg is so severe that the tee simply can't be moved back.  It would require changing the line of the hole entirely....  Better, in my mind, to leave the hole as it is and change it to a Par-4.

Media Stuff - Oddly strong ratings for the ladies at Kingsbarns:

HIGHEST-RATED OVERNIGHT TELECAST FOR WOMEN’S GOLF IN MORE THAN A YEAR 

The RICOH Women’s British Open Final Round coverage on NBC yesterday posted a .86 Overnight (11:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. ET), +15% YOY, making it the highest-rated

overnight telecast for women’s golf in more than a year (2016 U.S. Women’s Open; .98) and the highest-rated women’s golf telecast on NBC since 2014 U.S. Women’s Open (1.67). Final Round coverage, which saw I.K. Kim (South Korea) win her first major championship, also became the highest overnight rating at the event in more than 10 years (2006 on ABC; 1.30). 

This is the first time in the history of the Women’s British Open that it reigns as the highest-rated women’s golf telecast of the year, to date, despite its morning/early afternoon telecast window.

Interesting because the men's Open Championship also drew strong viewership, leading to a question as to whether the morning is as dead a zone as previously believed.  The men was more understandable, given Jordan and the most dramatic unplayable lie in golf history, the ladies had a runaway without name brand contenders.

 Maybe this links thing is catching on...

In other media news, Golf Channel expands its reach:

Golf Channel is far more than a 24-hour television network devoted to golf. Over the

past decade, Golf Channel has created the largest engaged digital audience in golf, and that following is now 15 percent bigger with the acquisition of Revolution Golf. 

With almost 2 million subscribers, Revolution Golf is the industry’s largest direct-to-consumer digital platform, delivering high-quality video-based instruction, travel content and integrated e-commerce. It joins Golf Channel’s portfolio of digital golf lifestyle products that includes GolfNowand Golf Advisor, increasing NBC Sports' digital monthly users to 15 million golfers across all platforms.

Who are these 2 million folks, and how do I get them to pay for this blog? 

And what's an acquisition announcement without the requisite MBA-speak:

In some respects, this new partnership is the latest step in helping Golf Channel become the Amazon Prime for golfers. Will McIntosh, the senior vice president of business and strategy for Golf Channel, says Revolution Golf fits in with the vision created back in 2007 when the network acquired GolfNow and began its transformation from a traditional media company into a new media technology platform.

“At that time, the vision was really to take this passionate audience that had been cultivated through Golf Channel and turn that audience into something that was more meaningful from a digital platform standpoint,” McIntosh said in an interview. “Our thinking at that time was -- any time a golfer is trying to connect with the game of golf, with their passion, how can we get involved in facilitating that relationship? GolfNow essentially became lightning in a bottle and took off. But in the back of our minds, we were always thinking about other ways that golfers are connected with the game.”

Ummmm, yeah, most of us weren't cultivated by Golf Channel, but rather by the game.

 Wales Stuff - Know much about the place?  Well, you can't know less than your humble correspondent, so how about a primer?  From Wikipedia:

Wales (/ˈweɪlz/; Welsh: Cymru [ˈkəm.rɨ] is a country that is part of the United Kingdom

and the island of Great Britain.[8] It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in 2011 of 3,063,456 and has a total area of 20,779 km2 (8,023 sq mi). Wales has over 1,680 miles (2,700 km) of coastline and is largely mountainous, with its higher peaks in the north and central areas, including Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa), its highest summit.

What have we learned?  Sartre famously opined that "Hell is other people", so it may be for the better that they don't have many of those....  But it's that 1,680 miles of coastline that beckons, pure linksland created by a higher power for the purpose of golf.

Of course, there is this:

The country lies within the north temperate zone and has a changeable, maritime climate.

Ah yes, that pesky changeable maritime climate....  Though I like a well-phrased euphemism as much as the nest guy.

Our more frequent destinations of Scotland and Ireland are poor countries, at least by American standards, but Wales is really poor:

At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, development of the mining and metallurgical industries transformed the country from an agricultural society into an industrial nation; the South Wales Coalfield's exploitation caused a rapid expansion of Wales' population. Two-thirds of the population live in south Wales, mainly in and around Cardiff (the capital), Swansea and Newport, and in the nearby valleys. Now that the country's traditional extractive and heavy industries have gone or are in decline, Wales' economy depends on the public sector, light and service industries and tourism. Wales' 2010 gross value added (GVA) was £45.5 billion (£15,145 per head, 74.0% of the average for the UK, and the lowest GVA per head in Britain).

When the first item on a list of the country's economic activity is the public sector,  you can draw the obvious conclusions.  

The place names can be a trip, and it's likely that photos of street signs will pop up on the blog during our stay.  Most amusingly, Wales is the home of a town with the longest name known to man:

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

How'd you like to have to write that as the return address on all your letters?  I'm most amused by the triple-"L", but according to the Interwebs it's 58 letters.

I'll see you next from the other side.