Your Friday Frisson

The long weekend begs for a long, catch-all post, no?  We'll see how deep we get before I run out of steam...

Point-Counter-point - Alan Shipnuck and Sean Zak don the 12-ounce gloves over the most compelling issue dividing our great country.  Leading off and arguing in the affirmative is the former:

Of course Phil Mickelson should be on the team. Let’s start with the simple fact that this is the Presidents Cup. It is a low-wattage goodwill exhibition that exists purely to

entertain us, and does only a mediocre job at that. Mickelson is a Hall of Famer, a darling of Madison Ave., a lightning rod and a master showman. No current American golfer can match his force of personality, let alone the B-listers who are also under consideration for the two captain’s picks. Quite simply, Phil is one of the few reasons to actually watch this Presidents Cup, and that alone warrants the pick.

Hmmm...let's see if I have this right.  Your lead argument to pick Phil is that it doesn't matter?

But wait, Alan has more:

By the way, the location of the event is another tick in Phil’s column. First, he’s a member at Liberty, so he knows the intricacies of the course. Second, the New York City area has long been Phil Country. Big Apple galleries lap him up like a bowl of matzah ball soup.

OK, I'm pretty sure that that's racist...  And, of far greater import, who spells matzo with two "a's"?  Arguing for the anti-Phil camp....

It could be because he recently lost the trusted advisor (Bones) who handed him clubs

and strategized his every move for more than two decades. Or because he’s just in one of those funks that all Tour players go through. Or because he’s 47 and finally struggling to keep pace with supercharged players half his age. Whatever it is—the results just haven’t been there. 

P.B.P. (post-Bones Phil) missed the cut at the British Open. He limped through the WGC-Bridgestone. He showed up to the PGA with 11 top-12 finishes in his career at Quail Hollow and shot a stunning 79-74, which left him grasping for answers in the locker room on Friday evening in perhaps the most non-Phil moment of his career.

OK, I can make the case that either is the more ignorant slut, but perhaps we can find a silver lining within, especially as the chances of Stricker leaving Phil off the team asymptotically approach nil.  But perhaps this will give Captain Stricker the leverage to keep Phil on the sidelines during Foursomes, a format in which he has no business playing.  Win-win, Baby!

Please Come to Boston -  Did someone mention clouds?  This week's event faces an uncertain future:

To avoid competing with the NFL, the Tour Championship likely will move in 2019 from later in September to Labor Day weekend, the dates that the Deutsche Bank Championship popularized while hosting a PGA Tour event at TPC Boston the past 14 years. There’s talk of reducing the playoffs from four events to three and TPC Boston could be dropped. 

The PGA Tour owns TPC Boston, and PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan helped bring the Deusche Bank here and served as the first tournament director, but Dell Technologies signed only a two-year deal to take over from Deutsche Bank as title sponsor beginning in 2017.

Dell was prevailed upon to take one for the team, as their far greater interest is in the match-play event successfully relocated to their hometown of Austin.

The players are very supportive of the event, except when they're not:

As part of a renovation project that began in 2006 and now is finally complete, designers Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner have made significant changes to the 12th hole. The par 4

played at 461 yards during last year’s tournament, but now plays 510 yards with added split-level bunkering down the left and right fairway. That means the landing area off the tee will be limited to somewhere between 260 and 300 yards. 

It also could mean some pros will play their tee shot up the adjacent 13th hole (which was also tweaked with the fairway re-contoured and the green pushed back 25 yards) to have a more desirable approach into the green. 

“I thought [12] was a great hole before,” said Justin Thomas, who is one of the players who said he might hit his tee shot up the 13th fairway if there’s little wind. “I personally don’t think that it was a very good job re-designing it. I thought 12 was one of the better holes on the course, and 13 was a great hole, too.

Ah, the irony, she burns!  Seems like it was just last Sunday when we were criticizing a golf hole that allows the players to bomb it unconscionable distance....

 Now, Gil Hanse has some seemingly-reasonable reactions to the griping:

“The conversation we’ve had with three or four players is, 'Listen, just give it three or four rounds. Try to figure it out.' If we build a golf hole that the players can figure out after one round, then we probably haven’t done our job challenging them.”

That seems fair enough, as does this:

“This golf course, rightfully or wrongly, has always been characterized as a bomber’s golf course,” said Hanse, who lengthened the 12th by 50 yards. “So when you’re making alterations, you have that in the back of your mind, and you don’t want to be seen increasing that advantage. We felt like the positioning of these hazards gives the average guy room to hit the ball. But as you want to push around 330, it gets more narrow.”

I haven't seen the hole nor the play thereon, so I have no opinion on the matter.  Though, in a dispute between Tour players and Gil Hanse, my instincts are of course with the latter.... But, even I have to admit, on a 510-yard Par-4 length should be an advantage.  It sounds to me like they're trying to keep the players in the 280-yard area off the tee, leaving an awfully-long second shot.

Stay tuned....

Dateline: Flyover Country -  Here's a great item that surprises as much for the source as for the underlying story:

The Little Golf Course That Could 

Collins has an intimate understanding of success and failure. If you head a half-hour west of Chattanooga, Tenn., exit Interstate 24 onto a quiet country road, turn down a dirt

driveway, pull into a grass parking lot and see the locker room (a single blue port-a-potty) and the clubhouse (a 20-foot-by-10-foot aluminum shed), you may not immediately realize which category Sweetens Cove Golf Club comes under. 

Rob Collins, 42, is 6 feet 6 inches of unyielding self-assurance. He is the architect of Sweetens Cove and its owner-operator. He also has served as its head of construction, head pro, general manager and entire maintenance crew. Recently, he has acquired a newer, unlikelier title: golf cult hero. 

This spring, Golfweek listed Sweetens Cove at No. 59 in its top 100 modern golf courses, a ranking of American courses built since 1960. It is one of only two nine-hole courses included on the list, and it is ranked third among daily-fee public courses. Sweetens Cove is ahead of numerous sites that have hosted PGA Tour events and major championships, including Hazeltine and Valhalla. Quail Hollow Club, the site of the 2017 P.G.A. Championship, which concluded on Sunday, was just behind Sweetens Cove at No. 60.

Amazingly, I read the whole item without sensing even trace elements of sneering condescension....

Although their lack of knowledge about golf comes through in curious ways:

“If you leave Sweetens Cove smiling, don’t panic: golf is supposed to be fun,” wrote Ran Morrissett, the author of “The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses.”

Tom Doak could not be reached for comment.... OK, maybe that's a little too inside baseball.   Ran is the proprietor of Golf Club Atlas and one of Doak's three co-authors in the revised Confidential Guide.

But props to Pravda for treating golf fairly and admitting that it might have a future.  Not something one sees every day....

The Kids Are All Right - And will be on Golf Channel for a long, long time:

College-golf players, coaches and fans received big news Monday morning as the NCAA announced it has extended its agreement with Golf Channel, which will broadcast the NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Golf Championships through at least 2029. 

The partnership encompasses all media rights, worldwide, for Golf Channel’s presentations of the national championships. 

“This is an important day for NCAA golf, our student-athletes, coaches and fans,” said Joni Comstock, NCAA senior vice president of championships. “The partnership with Golf Channel has resulted in live broadcast of several milestone moments in both the men’s and women’s championships over the last several years, and we anticipate more exciting moments in the years ahead. Providing access and a media platform that gives our golf student-athletes more visibility and news coverage shows unified support for the game. This also allows others the opportunity to see the outstanding play of our student-athletes who excel in the classroom and on the course.”

On the one hand, where else could they take it?  On the other, it's a great example of using format and scheduling options to create a great event.  It's not just the team match play, which of course rocks, but doing the men and women back-to-back allows Golf Channel to invest in the production infrastructure.

Great work by all involved....  Do they have any extra time to give some thought to the Olympics?

You're Still Master of Your Domain, Right? - Alan Shipnuck with a cry for help:

I've pretended to be thrilled for my friends. Through gritted teeth, I've added jovial

comments to social media posts, and I have faked enthusiasm for all the latest in mahogany plaques. But dang it, I just can't pretend any longer: No, I'm not happy you made a hole-in-one. No, I don't want to hear the details. No, I don't even want a free drink…unless I can splash it in your face. I hate every one of you who has made a hole-in-one. I'm not jealous; it's much deeper than that—I'm bitter. 

In case you can't tell by now, I've never made an ace. I've never even seen one. On two separate occasions friends in the group in front of me have dunked one, but I had no view of either. One time at the old Kemper Open I followed Phil Mickelson for most of his round, then took a quick detour into the gents, during which he promptly made a hole-in-one. The roar of the crowd made my Porta-Potty vibrate.

 OK, Alan, that's way too much information....But wait, the whining continues:

I once moaned to Mickelson about my rotten luck in never having made a hole-in-one, and he offered some sage advice: "Try hitting it closer to the hole." Thanks, dude, but Ben Hogan might be the most precise iron player of all-time and he is reputed, in his lifetime, to have never enjoyed an ace during competition. Meanwhile, a gluttonous weekend hacker named Norman Manley—sorry, Norman— has made 59 of them, according to the National Hole-In-One Registry. So clearly there is more at work here. Mac O'Grady, the former PGA Tour pro from outer space, once observed, "A hole-in-one is amazing when you think of the different universes this white mass of molecules has to pass through on its way to the hole."  Indeed.

 And yet you're pumping him for the Prez Cup?  Phil, not Mac.... though the later would be more interesting.

Moonlight Sonata - The alliteratively-named Cy Cyr has developed a specialty of photographing glf courses at night, when it's so much easier to get a tee time.  If nothing else, it's the most spectacular photo of Hazeltine National I've ever seen:

Admittedly, that's setting the bar awfully low....

Have a great weekend.