Weekend Wrap

It was a week for our game to cede the stage to the NFL, but for those that know where FS1 is on their cable channel lineup, there was no shortage of golf.

Walker Walkover - For once a U.S. team played up to it's lofty reputation, and the ref really should have stopped it Saturday afternoon:

The United States won back the Walker Cup from Britain and Ireland in an unprecedented runaway that atoned for a big loss two years ago. 

Collin Morikawa, Doug Ghim and Maverick McNealy each went 4-0 - a first for a team in Walker Cup history - to lead the United States to a 19-7 victory Sunday in the biennial amateur matches at the super exclusive Los Angeles Country Club's North Course. 

Norman Xiong, at 18 the youngest player in the competition, came painfully close to also going 4-0 before halving his match with Scott Gregory. Xiong, one of three Southern Californians who had huge performances this weekend, had been up 2 with two holes to play before Gregory caught him. 

It was a big turnaround from two years ago, when Britain and Ireland won 16 1/2-9 1/2 at Royal Lytham & St. Annes. The 19 points for the Americans matched the most ever in Walker Cup history. That came in 1993 when the United States won 19-5 at Interlachen.

 OK, so no sooner do you tell us it's unprecedented, then you give us a precedent.....  

But after a 2-2 halving of the morning foursomes on Saturday, the U.S. team rallied late in the singles session for a 6-2 margin, and lost only thee of fourteen available points on Sunday.

Of course the real star of the week was Los Angeles Country Club, the hyper-private club that will also be hosting the 2023 U.S. Open.  It was visually stunning and seemed to play great, and Having Gil Hanse on the broadcast team proved invaluable with so much dead airtime to fill.

The most discussed hole all week was the wee 15th, which Shack preview in this video before the event:

And, as you no doubt heard if you tuned in, the hole played at a yardage that seems like a typo for one session:

The slightest bit of excess moisture or firmness might have turned Los Angeles Country Club’s 15th hole into a freak show Saturday at the Walker Cup. So how perfectly did the 78-yard par 3 play? 

With the 2023 U.S. Open in mind, USGA executive director Mike Davis ordered the

USGA’s agronomy and setup team to document firmness readings for reference six years down the road. Because at 78 yards, it’s probably the first sub-90-yard hole played in a significant championship and definitely the first under 80 yards. 

As short as the steeply pitched green played, the slightest bit of excess moisture or firmness would’ve made the hole a beast. Instead, it was a beautiful – sometimes zany – exhibition of wedge play into a green area just eight paces wide and pitched at 3-percent slope. 

The players not only performed beautifully – four birdies, nine pars and one bogey (by LACC’s own Stewart Hagestad) – but the thrilling dynamics introduced into match play made it the epicenter of Saturday’s singles matches. Besides Davis, setup man Jeff Hall watched anxiously to see if the decision to play the shortest hole imaginable would work. As did architect Gil Hanse, who oversaw the restoration of George Thomas’s wily par 3, and even most of the senior members of LACC’s maintenance crew, who came out to see if the hole location would succeed.

I'm not exactly sure how excess moisture would have been a problem, but it must be incredibly important for them to mention it twice....

The Tour Confidential panel took on this 78-yarder as well:

5. Walker Cup competitors were met with a 78-yard par-3 during afternoon singles play on Saturday. Love it or hate it? 

Sens: Seventy-eight yards on a course that isn't subject to wildly varying winds is cutting it close, but I like the change of pace. Tournament golf already puts plenty of primacy on power. A subtle three-quarter shot under intense pressure is a pretty cool showcase of skill, and great fun in a match-play format. 

Wood: I love it. Golf-course setup is so much more interesting when you don't have to protect par. Everyone ends up playing the same holes, so why not? 

Passov: I thought it would be goofy—until I saw it on TV on Saturday. With the hole cut on a little tongue of the green, and with the putting surface as firm and fast as it was, and with the rough as dense as it was, and with nasty bunkers lurking front and back, it turned out to be brilliant. On such a tiny shot, there's nowhere to hide, and amid the intense pressure of competing for your country, it served as a great gut-check.

Well played, lads:

One last note before moving on.  Golf Digest had a fun slideshow of old photos of Walker Cuppers.  Of course it included the famous Pouty   Rickie and Jowly Rory photo from County Down, but also some that might puzzle you:

That's Padraig Harrington on the left, and Paul McGinley on the right.

Anyone got this one?

Anyone?  That would be Luke Donald....

Top 100 Afterthoughts - We had some thoughts last week on the Golf Magazine World and U.S. lists, as did everyone else in the world.  Shack took 30 seconds from his flood-the-zone Walker Cup coverage to add this:

The real standout for me: Prestwick cracking the world Top 100, a fantastic exclamation point to the aforementioned trends.

And nice to see this week's Walker Cup host at its highest ranking ever, arriving at 13th in the U.S. and 22nd in the world, even edging out that South Korean masterwork, Nine Bridges.

Stop showing off, Geoff.  Prestwick was built by a bunch of dead white men and has no relevance to the diverse world of today.

What?  Oh, sorry, wrong blog for that....  I was not aware that Prestwick had been previously excluded, but that's prima facie evidence of the meaninglessness of such lists.  

Golf Magazine is milking it to the nth degree, first with these 8 takeaways:

2. The easiest way for a new course to crack the list may be to build near an ocean. Tara Iti in New Zealand, Cabot Cliffs in Canada and Cape Wickham in Australia all boast outrageous waterside views. All are new to the World's Top 100. All make me want to click my heels and be magically transported to their first tees.

Well, duh!  But those wily Scots figured that bit out back in the 1800's.... they also obviously agree with Geoff:

7. Speaking of throwbacks, how about Prestwick? Built in 1851, it's currently out of the British Open rota but has hosted the second-most Opens of all time, behind only St. Andrews. This year the classic links checks in at No. 100, cracking the list for the first time in its illustrious history.

Sheesh, I think we can concede that Prestwick is permanently out of the rota, but it's not just a museum.  It's an exhilarating course to play, and a vibrant club as well.

Prior to the reveal, they actually released Nos. 101-110:

101. Harbour Town, Hilton Head Island, S.C.

102. Royal Melbourne (East), Melbourne, Australia

103. Rye, Camber, England

104. Bandon Trails, Bandon, Ore.

105. Streamsong Resort (Red), Streamsong, Fla.

106. Royal Aberdeen (Balgownie), Aberdeen, Scotland

107. Valley Club of Montecito, Montecito, Calif.

108. Peachtree, Atlanta, Ga.

109. Old Sandwich, Plymouth, Mass.

110. Medinah (No. 3), Medinah, Ill.

111. Sand Valley, Nekoosa, Wis.

112. Pasatiempo, Santa Cruz, Calif.

113. Spyglass Hill, Pebble Beach, Calif.

114. Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

115. Yeamans Hall, Hanahan, S.C.

Boy, there's a ton of worthies in that list..... the top U.S. "bubble" course is Quail Hollow, but given the lack of enthusiasm at the PGA Championship, I'm not sure that its star is ascendant.

Prez Cup Preview - Those TC guys were asked to adjudicate this timely issue:

1. Presidents Cup captains Steve Stricker and Nick Price finalized their teamswith

wild card picks last week, so the rosters for the biennial event to begin later this month at Liberty National in New Jersey are set. The U.S., however, is a heavy favorite (-400) to top the Internationals (+300), and the Americans haven't lost in this century and are 9-1-1 overall. The Presidents Cup will always be the Ryder Cup's little brother, but with the event becoming so lopsided is it in danger of becoming irrelevant?

Becoming?  When was it ever relevant?

Of course, this guys metaphor has me smiling....

Josh Sens: Growing up a Red Sox fan, I spent my days consumed with our "rivalry" with the Yankees, until I visited relatives in New York and realized they didn't think of it as much of a rivalry at all. The Red Sox were just another team the Yankees routinely dusted. You can't have an intense rivalry if one side never gets its butt kicked, which is why the Ryder Cup wasn't really an electric event in the States until the Europeans started winning.

Yes, back when things were as they should be....

John Wood: How soon we forget. Two years ago in Korea, if Anirban Lahiri makes a 2 1/2-footer on 18, or if Chris Kirk doesn't make a 15-footer for birdie in front of him, the Internationals win. So while the overall record may be lopsided, the competition itself has been getting closer and closer. It's folly to think the U.S. will win in a walk. They have 12 great players too, and in match play anything can happen. I don't think it will ever be irrelevant. Like you said, it will always be the Ryder Cup's little brother, but I think golf fans love to watch this caliber of play in the team atmosphere. It's just different.

It has to be important if guys are choking, right?  But it's always fun to see our Travelin' Joe get things completely wrong:

Joe Passov: Some really good points here from both Josh and John. From the beginning, I thought the Presidents Cup was ridiculous—some kind of early 90s fevered dream from the PGA Tour brass because they needed a way to get the game's best two players at the time, Greg Norman and Nick Price, involved in some Ryder Cup-style hysteria.

That's a good one, Joe!  The PGA Tour made horrible decision in allowing the Ryder Cup to remain with the PGA of America when the organizations negotiated their divorce.  Of course, it was a loser back then, but once the Euros started kicking some butt, it morphed into a bonanza...

The Prez Cup is best understood as Commissioner Ratched's  attempt to grab some of that team event magic...  And really, why not?  The only people who don't like the event are those that tune in expecting to see a Ryder Cup.

They were also asked about Strick's picks, with the result being a split verdict:

Sens: I was hoping he'd go right along with the Prez Cup point system, which would have meant Hoffman and Brian Harman. But it's hard to argue too passionately against Mickelson, especially with the life he showed in Boston last week.

OK, that's fine example of the soft bigotry of low expectations....

Wood: I think he did, yes. I know there will come a time when Phil doesn't qualify for either a Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup team, and that will be a very sad day for U.S. team golf. For me and many others, though, as long as he is close, his 23 teams made, 42 wins, five majors and unbelievably positive influence in the team room eclipses any rationale to leave him off. And by the way, the last time we saw Phil in a team competition he was making 10 birdies vs. Sergio at Hazeltine. So yeah, if you think Phil shouldn't have been a pick, then it's either personal or you're just a contrarian.

There was never a chance of him not being picked, so let's not waste too many pixels on it.  Probably the most telling bit is that they weren't asked about Nick Price's picks....  Because, well you know that...

Tim Rosaforte filed this item on Charley Hoffman, including this rather weak testimonial:

By all accounts, Hoffman has been a real asset to any team he’s ever been on, whether it was the UNLV national champions in 1998 or Poway Titans soccer squad that won the

California Interscholastic Championship in 1994. In ways tangible or intangible, whether in the team room or on a team bus, the golf course or soccer pitch, Hoffman by all accounts is a guy you wanted on your side. 

“Charley is just one of those guys who’s a free spirit, a fun loving, laid back Southern California guy,” says UNLV teammate Jeremy Anderson. “He’s a guy you just want to be around. I think that will resonate with the guys on the Presidents Cup team. He’s certainly been around long enough so he’s got those relationships, but a lot of guys have not been around him in a team environment, so he will be great. He’s a guy you want to be partners with because he’s a gamer. Like we saw in Akron, he’s fearless. He’s not out there to finish second. That’s what you need when you’re playing for country, not somebody who will fold under pressure. He’s certainly not that guy.”

I'll have to take your word for it, Jeremy, because all he's seemed to do as a professional is to finish second.... 

FedEx Phun - Those TC scriveners were also asked to solve this conundrum:

3. With a break in the FedEx Cup Playoffs and a new schedule on the way in 2019 (which will push the playoffs forward into August), it's a good time to re-imagine a new format for the series. Give your pitch.

Sens: Hmm. I know this is the age of discontent, but I don't have any huge gripes with the format. But just for fun, let's eliminate the week off and make the guys play for each other's money. Payment due in cash on the 18th green.

OK, Josh, you lost me at hello....

Wood: Keep it all the same. But start the Tour Championship on Wednesday and finish it on Saturday. Only the top four in the FedEx Cup standings then play on Sunday: 1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3 in the morning, and the two winners meet in the afternoon. Medal play.

Just a little bit outside....  Change that last thought to match play, and you might be onto something....

I like the cut of this guy's jib:

Ritter: I agree that the week off is a buzzkill. The format mostly works for me until the end—too much math involved at the Tour Championship with projecting a winner. The scenarios involved in crowning a champion should be obvious in the final round of a playoff. So I'd invite 32 to East Lake and set them in match play brackets, winner cashes $10 million.

The common thread of the sensible answers point towards a high-stakes shootout without the necessity of algorithms and resets.

Of course, Travelin' Joe goes off on his own idiosyncratic tangent:

Passov: Dump one of the tournaments and skip the week off. With new sponsors for the first two playoff events, it lost me a bit in the prestige department this year. And let's come up with some better names—something with some permanence to attach to the corporate sponsor. Barclays? Gone. Northern Trust—Riviera, right? Dell Technologies—they're the Match Play, correct? Oh, they replaced Deutsche Bank. When all these supposedly big-time tournaments have interchangeable names, it makes me think it's nothing more than a cash grab, akin to a limited-field exhibition. Perhaps let's honor Deane Beman and Tim Finchem this way. Call it the Deane Beman Northern Trust — or the Deane Beman whatever the future host is — so that the first tournament of the playoffs will have some meaning and relevance, no matter who the sponsor is or where the venue is.

Joe, don't ever change.  Of course he's right, the names do connote a senseless moneygrab, but that wasn't the question....  I'm gonna hold out for The Nurse Ratched Cialis Invitational, which I think sums up the modern Tour perfectly.