Lots for your delectation this morning, with an emphasis on the Prez Cup of course...
Give Me Liberty (National) - New York, Baby, the city that never sleeps. An awkward fit for golf, to be sure, the one sport that must be played in daylight.
Oh, where to begin? Perhaps with this triumph of hope over experience:
The Americans have won more tournaments. They have better world rankings. They are playing before a home crowd. They are big favorites.
“We’re tired of losing. There’s no doubt about that,” Price said last month under grandstands that were being constructed around the first tee at Liberty National Golf Club from the Statue of Liberty.
“Adam Scott has been on seven teams in a row and he hasn’t won one yet,” Price said. “That’s an awful lot of golf shots to come up empty-handed.”
The International team — 12 players representing eight countries from every continent but Europe — gets yet another crack it when the 12th edition of the Presidents Cup begins Thursday across the river from America’s most international city.
The good news is that they're obviously due and that they almost pulled it off last go round in Korea... The bad news? Well, there's no shortage of that, as this year's roster seems far inferior to the 2015 version.
Tim Rosaforte catches Captain Nick Price slapping lipstick onto that pig with this:
The 17-hour journey home from South Korea following the 2015 Presidents Cup wasn’t as long as one might imagine for Nick Price. The International team captain kept thinking back to the 1983 Ryder Cup, when the Europeans turned the tide of American domination with an incredibly hard-fought one-point loss at PGA National against a U.S. team captained by Jack Nicklaus that included major winners Tom Watson, Raymond Floyd, Ben Crenshaw, Lanny Wadkins, Curtis Strange, Lanny Wadkins and Tom Kite. At least that’s how Seve Ballesteros framed it in the European locker room.
“All the guys were glum and down,” Price said in a conversation we had recently. “But Seve went in and said, No, no, no. This was big for us. We can compete now.’’
I asked Price how he felt on that flight home, and it took him 20 seconds before responding. At one point he said, “I’m trying to find the right words here.” Finally he said, “I think with a lot of enthusiasm for the upcoming Presidents Cups.”
You'll see the issues with this analogy as well as I, most notably the absence of guys named Ballesteros, Faldo, Woosnam and Langer.... As for the well-liked Mr. Price, this is his third stint as captain, largely because of the dearth of alternatives...
The other obvious flaw in the argument is that Europe had a chip on its shoulder against the big, bad US of A, being very much a secondary tour. But their key players were invested in that tour, unlike today's International team members that all reside at either Isleworth or Lake Nona. What else ya got, Tim?
That was not the feeling I got talking to players on Price’s team. Have things changed?
“Yeah, definitely,” said Marc Leishman. “My first Presidents Cup [in 2013] compared to my second Presidents Cup [in 2015], I feel like we bonded earlier that week as a team. The feeling around the team room was just a lot better. Hopefully it will work better this time. We’ve got more guys that have played before. We know each other. Everyone on the team knows each other well. It’s going to be very tough to beat the Americans, but I feel like this is a good opportunity for us. There are a few guys in good form that have bonded well, so I’m really excited for the week.”
Lahiri was part of the thrilling finish at Jack Nicklaus G.C. that most of America’s golf audience didn’t see live because of the 13-hour time difference on the East Coast. His four-footer for birdie on the final hole of his match against Chris Kirk lipped out, otherwise the match and the matches would have ended in a tie.
Things have always changed, at least until balls are in the air... But my sense is that 2015 was a fairly weak American squad on the road in Inchon, and that the Internationals will rue letting that one get away.
The focus on Lahiri is the tell, because he unfortunately gagged horribly on that 4-footer, and was only selected as a captain's pick this time because there wasn't another viable candidate. Not a sign of strength...
There are quite a few backgrounders on Liberty National, none of which make me more favorably disposed to the place. First, the estimable Brad Klein:
You won’t see any of the site’s toxic past during the Presidents Cup. Instead, viewers willbe treated to emotional images of the Statute of Liberty, Upper New York Harbor, the Manhattan skyline and the Freedom Tower. As a backdrop to a golf match pitting 12-man teams from the U.S. and the rest of the world outside of Europe, that makes for a powerful setting.It’s not just the sense of history hanging in the air. It’s also a knowledge of what lies buried deep below. Such as a century of industrial and petrochemical waste, thanks to a history that included an oil refinery, rusted rail tracks and warehouses, and stints during World War II as an ammunition dump and prisoner of war camp.
Liberty National, a 2006 design by Bob Cupp and Tom Kite, is a 160-acre engineering miracle of land capping, venting and reclamation. Owner Paul Fireman of Reebok fame spent $250 million to rehabilitate the wasteland for golf. Construction by the firm Heritage Links involved covering the wasteland of oil and industrial debris with four million cubic yards of fill. (That’s enough to fill an entire football field to a height of 1,875 feet.) The hauling required “200 truckloads of dirt per day for two years straight,” Fireman said. Reclamation enabled tidal marshlands to thrive. Twenty acres of nativized fescue areas now teem with wildlife.
I guess it's all for the good, though one really doesn't want to focus on what's beneath the surface. Brad has lots of good stuff, including this as relates to the event:
Two curiosities of the revision result. The course will now end with a par-3 – though fewer than half of all matches will get there. There’s also something of an asymmetry in the par-71 course, measuring 7,328 yards. The nines total par 38-33, with the front measuring a stout 4,232 yards and the back only 3,096.
The undisputed gem out here is the 10th hole, only 150 yards to the smallest (3,000 square feet), most tightly bunkered green on the course. The hole has all of the intimacy and subtle terror of Troon’s famed “Postage Stamp” eighth or Merion’s miniscule 13th hole. Aligned south to north, it’s exposed to winds from either side and bears special attention because of the proximity of the harbor along the right side, with the Statue of Liberty providing a stirring emotional presence just over the shoulder of approaching golfers and right in front of stands for 4,000 spectators. It’s possible in a golf tournament to overuse certain beauty shots. Not here.
Err....OK. The routing change I find curious, as it ensures that non-competitive matches will reach the best holes only by ensuring that the better matches will be decided on the lesser holes... Does that make sense to you?
Klein gives a detailed rating of the course on all appropriate metrics, with this conclusion:
Overall: 6.7An amazing setting in which to play golf, with the story and imagery more impressive than the shotmaking.
Yeah.... about what I figured.
Stephen Hennessy offers up things we don't know about the place, again not helping in any respect:
1937 and 2002. terminal infiltrated with petroleum, lead and toxic waste, almost 90 percent of that $250 million comes from the cost of a Superfund clean-up, reported by our Architecture Editor Ron Whitten. Taxpayers took most of the cost.
- Yes, the cart paths are really worth more than $1 million. Unlike most golf-course cart paths made from asphalt or concrete, Belgian block pavers were imported for use here at LNGC. Each paver was individually installed around the entire golf course, driving up the cost of construction and complexity of installing it.
I'm certainly pleased to have paid my fair share.... But the first thing I look at when visiting a new course is the quality of the cart paths....
In case you're suffering from a lack of enthusiasm, here's a slideshow of things that happened at previous installments of the event, including this one-off:
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That time the Internationals won (1998) That's not a misprint. The Internationals won this event once. This photo is proof. |
It's all there, from Aquaman to Sammy the Squirrel.... My fave, of course, is "Tiger Who?", the one caddie that Veej didn't have the good sense to fire.
But given that photo above, this will not shock anyone:
Liberty National is the site of this year's Presidents Cup. But on Monday, the big news
Although Melbourne was named the venue in 2015, officials announced that the biennial celebration will be moved to December. Though the Presidents Cup is typically played in early fall, it's a date that has historically worked well with other Australian tournaments. Moreover, the 1998 Presidents Cup—which served as the lone victory for the Internationals—was held during a similar spot on the calendar.
"Australia has proved to be an incredible host for the Presidents Cup in the past, and we expect nothing short of the first-class hospitality and welcoming culture that our fans, players, their families, our guests and staff have received in each of our previous two events in Melbourne," said Matt Kamienski, PGA Tour executive director.
I think that's a great move.... Interesting that this will be the first year of the new PGA Tour schedule, but it further declutters the calendar and will hopefully encourage more of the lads to play an event or two down under. Plus, from the standpoint of the host team, a better chance of catching the Yanks off-form....
Alex Myers has lots of fun with the inevitable "WAG's of the Prez Cup" feature. Yeah, he leads with Paulina, but been there, done that. Of greater interest are the Rookie WAG's, for instance Rickie finally has a date:
Her name is Allison Stokke and her choice of bathing suit makes it clear that she's a patriot. Mercifully, we won't have to endure another scene like this from Hazeltine:
This probably wins for most awkward photo:
Looks a little DJesque there, no?
Mickey At The Bat - Guy Yocum has written exactly 111 installments of his My Shot feature, the last page of each Golf Digest on Dead Trees. I know that, because he counted them up, such was his excitement at this get:
The greatest female golfer of all time has rarely spoken at length since her mysterious retirement in 1973, but at long last she opens up in a compelling conversation
Mickey is now 82, so this was nice to hear:
I STILL LOVE SWINGING A GOLF CLUB more than just about anything. For years after my last competitive appearance in 1995, I'd hit balls from my porch. When the USGA Museum put together the Mickey Wright Room in 2011 and needed a few mementos, I sent, among other things, the little swatch of synthetic turf. I hit balls off it one last time and figured that was it. Then some good friends of mine in Indiana heard about it and sent me a brand-new practice mat. You know how it works: Put out a mat, some balls and a club in front of a golfer, and the temptation to use them is going to be too much. So I keep my hand in, five or six balls at a time. Just enough to remain a "golfer."
She's still a fan of the game, though this seems on target:
I'VE BEEN TRYING the new swing ideas I keep hearing about, things I see players doing on TV. They leave me cold, to be honest. I watch the way players keep their feet planted, their backs perfectly straight and rigid with their lower bodies hardly moving at all, and just know they're going to get hurt. They look overly "leveraged," not the perfect word perhaps, but one all those angles bring to mind. It's just the opposite of how I learned, which is the swing happening from the ground up. I guess I just don't understand the modern way. One thing's for sure, I see an awful lot of players wearing medical tape. Hands, arms, legs, back, everywhere. That can't be a good sign.
No it can't....and this:
IN 1954, while still an amateur, I was paired the final 36 holes of the U.S. Women's Open with Babe Zaharias. I was 19 and scared out of my boots. Can you imagine suddenly competing against the greatest athlete of all time? Babe was larger than life, almost like something from another planet. She was coming back from surgery a year earlier for colon cancer but still was phenomenally athletic. Her arms and legs had a muscular quality I had never seen before. She was a showman and completely owned the galleries. On one hole she called her husband, George, over to shield her while she removed her girdle. I was naive and blushed when she did that, but Babe thought nothing of it. She showed it to the gallery and said, "Just watch me hit it now." She was rough and tumble, competitive, and kind. And my, could she play. She's often remembered as a long hitter, and maybe it was true before I saw her, but at that U.S. Open it was her short game that stood out. She won that championship by 12 strokes. I finished tied for fourth, 17 strokes back. It seems like such a privilege to have seen her play close-up. Only two years later, she was gone.
But this might be my favorite bit of all:
WHEN I SEE A YOUNG PLAYER standing with her hand on her hip after missing aputt, I feel like jumping through the TV screen and giving her the talking-to Betsy Rawls gave me shortly after I came on tour. I was an exceptional ball-striker already, and it annoyed me to no end to get beaten by someone who didn't hit it as well but chipped and putted better. I had this arrogant attitude that if I hit it better I somehow deserved it more. After I'd complained for the umpteenth time to Betsy about this, she finally had heard enough. First she reminded me that the basic premise is to get the ball into the hole in the fewest number of strokes. A simple fact, but one lost on a lot of good ball-strikers. Then she told me to start taking responsibility for every shot and stop feeling sorry for myself. When the pity parties stopped, I immediately started winning. I would have won some tournaments, but I'm certain the total wouldn't have reached 82.
What about tamping down imaginary spike marks?
Why are you still here? Its Mickey Effin' Wright, go read the entire thing.
Wally World - One of the titans of the golf world is moving on:
Acushnet Holdings Corp. announced today that current president and CEO Wally Uihlein is retiring effective January 1, 2018. Uihelin has been with the company since 1976 and asenior executive (and major player in the golf industry) since 1995. According to the company's release, Uihlein will continue with the company as a member of the Acushnet Board of Directors and Advisor to the Chairman.During Uihlein's run a number of exceptional products were developed at Titleist, most notably the massively successful Pro V1 franchise, which started in 2001 with the original Pro V1. Scotty Cameron putters and Bob Vokey wedges also came to the forefront during the Uihlein era.
A consequential figure for sure, he also saw the brand through its sale by Fortune Brands and subsequent IPO. He also avoided some of the excesses of his era, letting players like Tiger and Rory walk when they commanded nine-figure endorsement deals.
Probably the best testament to his role in the game is that son Peter, pictured above who has just earned his way onto the PGA Tour, will be forever known to those in the biz as "Wally's kid".
Hide Those Cameras - It speaks well of him that he'll do this:
Steve Williams is starting a new chapter in his caddying career—looping on the LPGA. And another chapter, with Adam Scott, won't last much longer.
Williams will be on the bag for Danielle Kang at this week's New Zealand Women's Open. Kang explained how the two teamed up at her press conference on Monday.
"I needed a caddie, a local, because my caddie isn't able to be here," she said. "Someone said, 'Would you mind having Steve Williams on your bag?' I thought it was a joke at first. Eventually I emailed him, and that was that. I had hopes of finding a local caddie, and he's as local as it gets. I think I did pretty well there."
Williams, a New Zealand native, has never caddied in a women's event before."It'll be a good experience to see if I can learn something from how they do things," Williams told the New Zealand Herald. "Danielle is a good player, and once you start the tournament, you want to win, so nothing will change there."
On second thought, maybe this is a better fit than I first realized., because there won't be any of those pesky spectators for him to bully....
Today In Rules Fiascos - Do we love this game because of or despite it's inherent cruelty? Did you hear about that unfortunate soul on the Web.com Tour?
A leaf led to one player's four-stroke penalty — and even worse — it might cost him a PGA Tour card as well.
Matthew Southgate was one over through 14 holes during the final round of the DAP Championship on Sunday, which is a part of the Web.com Tour Finals.
While Southgate was putting on the 15th at Canterbury Golf Club in Ohio, his ball was struck by a leaf that blew across the green, and it pushed the ball off line ever so slightly.
Do watch the video, because it was a short putt and the change in direction is rather dramatic. In fact, I'm guessing that Mickey Wright would find no fault with his reaction...
But the key bit is that the leaf was moving..... Ouch!
Matthew's putt was deflected by a leaf in motion and the putt was missed. Rule 19-1 requires for the stroke to be cancelled and replayed. Matthew proceeded to tap in his next putt and continued on with his round. The committee was made aware of the situation after Matthew signed his scorecard and prior to the close of competition. The result was the following: Two penalty strokes for a breach of 19-1 (Matthew did not cancel and replay the stroke, see Decision 19-1/3) plus an additional two penalty strokes for a breach of 6-6d (see the exception for Rule 6-6d).
This all led to a quadruple-bogey 8, and it got worse when he bogeyed 17 and tripled the 18th to shoot 79 and fall into 66th place. Now he has even more work to do to jump into the top 25 at next week's Web.com Tour Championship to secure his PGA Tour card.
The author attempt to link this to Lexigate, which is quite unnecessary and only distorts the matter. Players should understand the rules, though this one is admittedly a bit obscure and I assume that on their Tour rules officials aren't quite as ubiquitous.
But the two-stroke pile-ons seem unnecessarily cruel, no? Especially in this case as it seems we're penalizing the young man for signing for a higher score than he would have made.... I get that he technically did not proceed as required under the rules, but had he followed the rules his score would have been lower than or equal to that which he signed for, no?
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