'Dis & 'Dat

A melange of items for your delectation this morning....

Wrap-around Follies - Forget the Yanks v. Twins, are you approaching fever pitch for the start of the 2017-18 PGA Tour season?  I know, the off-season really dragged....  It was only an hour and a half, but it seemed more like three.

How might the suits in Ponte Vedra Beach come to understand the absurdity of that which they've created?  This might help:

ATLANTIC BEACH, Fla. — Heavy rain Sunday postponed the final round of the Web.com Tour Championship at Atlantic Beach Country Club until Monday. 

Five-time PGA Tour winner Jonathan Byrd shot a 7-under 64 on Saturday in rainy, windy conditions to take the lead in the last of the four Web.com Tour Finals events that determine 25 PGA Tour cards.

Those "lucky" 25 guys have an early tee time Thursday morning in the Napa Valley....  Their off-season is literally measured in hours.

Shack goes on a first-rate rant on this subject:

Meanwhile the feeder tour that has been designated as the only way to the PGA Tour played its final and arguably most important event against the Presidents Cup. Even more amazingly, the Web.com Tour Finals finished the week prior to the start of the next season.

Asking Web.com players to compete for their livelihood over two months, then turn around and play for their new status before the PGA Tour's eligibility re-shuffle in November is not a rational way to develop new stars.

Oh, is that its purpose?  Because much of what I see looks more like a protection racket....  But it gets worse:

While the PGA Tour brass and some players will continue to defend Tim Finchem's"wraparound" vision for the PGA and Web.com Tours as the proper proving grounds, the emphasis has lost sight of what makes most sense for all parties. 

Besides developing talent, the Web.com Tour is also a tour that should help serious golf fans get familiar with emerging players. Playing against the PGA Tour Playoffs and Presidents Cup certainly won't help on that front. When the PGA Tour had a week off during the playoffs, so did the Web.com Tour. Oy. Vey.

And our Shack doesn't "Oy Vey" lightly, though I do recommend an exclamation point for emphasis.

 I do think Geoff is ill-served by combining the end-of-season fatigue issues (which I especially noticed in Korea in 2015) with the silliness of the wraparound season.  The guys that ran out of gas at the Prez Cup have a legitimate gripe, it's just not related to the Fall portion of the schedule.

Geoff gets at it with this:

The many compelling card-chasing stories we would have learned via the old Fall Finish race or Q-School are getting lost. (This year there was a traditional heartbreaker of a finish for Matt Harmon that was covered because he missed short putts coming in, snapped his putter and missed out on a chance at his card). 

The wraparound was created to save the fall events at the expense of the PGA Tour's very attractive natural January beginning. I just can't see how, given some of the signs of fatigue, the wraparound's impact on players from both circuits is offering a logical ebb and flow for anyone. Nor is it working for anyone but the fall events that get to say they are offering FedExCup points.

I'll begrudgingly concede that the one positive of the Phil Mickelson Ryder Cup Task Force has been to strip these events of Ryder Cup points...  And you thought it was all about the pods.

More importantly, while it's of course important to sponsors to have big names in the field, it's more interesting to a potential viewer such as your humble correspondent to have the guys playing for something important.  That was more the case back in the Fall Finish days, with lesser-knowns playing to bootstrap themselves up into enhanced playing privileges....

Even with the NFL trying to make its appeal increasingly selective, no one will be watching regardless.

A Bad Hair Day - The LPGA had its own epic fail, though since they were playing in New Zealand you might have missed it:

The conditions in the final round of the McKayson New Zealand Women’s Open

produced plenty of drama, and not in a good way. 

After a series of stops and starts Sunday at Windross Farm Golf Course, play was suspended for the day at 5:16 p.m. local time. But some competitors felt that the handling of that final delay potentially put them in danger. 

Heavy rain halted play for two hours early in the day and dangerous weather made for a nearly two-and-a-half-hour delay in the afternoon. Play would then resume at 4:53 p.m. local time before being shelved for the day 23 minutes later. 

What was the issue? The moniker “dangerous weather” was fitting. Brutally high winds began whipping across the course, dislodging signage and forcing players to duck and huddle for safety.

The girls were not amused, as debris was flying all over the place.  I'm sure the organizers were pressing to try to finish on Sunday, but still...

Prez Cup Leavings -  Lots to ponder in the aftermath of the "Romp by the Swamp", including this fine bromance:

Much has been made of the alleged simmering rivalry between Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods over the past two-plus decades, but you certainly wouldn’t know it by their actions this week. 

As an assistant captain to Steve Stricker, Woods attended this year’s Presidents Cup in a supporting role—and support he did. 

There he was, smiling and raising his fist in celebration when Phil drained a clutch putt on the 18th hole on Friday afternoon to win his four-ball match against Marc Leishman and Jason Day 1 up, with partner Kevin Kisner. 

He was there again when Phil put away Adam Hadwin in his Sunday singles match, 2 and 1, and this time it was with a warm congratulatory embrace.

Winning cures almost anything, and there's little doubt that it's in both their interests to make nice while the U.S. is on a roll.  It doesn't mean we have to buy all of this:

"Tiger and I have been good friends and have gotten along very well in these team events for many years now," said Mickelson. "Just because it doesn't get reported or shown, is irrelevant. We've worked very well in these team events, and to share in our success has been really fun for us." 

"I think the press has made it out to more than what it has been," Tiger added, referring to his supposedly acrimonious relationship with Phil. "We've been friends for a very long time. We've gotten very close by being on these teams. We've played against each other a lot down the stretch, and we have both enjoyed it."

You can't make the other guys uncomfortable, and it's not hard to make nice when there's winning to be done...  We'll see how it plays out when they take one on the chin.

But in writing the piece Jessica Marksburry's coda reveals her inner ignorant slut:

Well, count me among those still holding out hope for a Tiger/Phil four-ball pairing in Paris in 2018.

Sigh!  I know she's young, but has she even heard of Hal Sutton?

Moving on, Shack begrudgingly writes that LIberty National "worked" as a venue for the event:

Match play served up a miracle cure for Liberty National.

The Bob Cupp-Tom Kite design, once so loathed by pros that it finished last in a 2012 PGA Tour player course ranking, succeeded as a match-play venue. The course Tiger Woods cracked wise on eight years ago in the first of two PGA Tour hosting gigs, made an international name for itself at the 2017 Presidents Cup. Just don’t ask the International Team to recount fond memories after a 19-11 drumming. 

Granted, the resurrection didn’t happen easily. There were the millions spent to execute 74 changes in 2011, including three green rebuilds and a rethinking of the course setup. A successful 2013 Barclays – now the Northern Trust – helped, but a bold re-routing of the course this time around still meant uncertainty as a serviceable venue in spite of the magnificent conditioning by superintendent Greg James’ crew.

Errr.....OK.  It's not so much that I disagree, it's just that the course is utterly forgettable at best.  But the energy of being in NYC, the spectacular visuals and the team match play format were the winners of the week, despite the lopsided result.

Shall we let Geoff go on?

Turns out, the effort paid off and Liberty National will be remembered for more than just the mesmerizing views. 

“I think the course is a great match-play course,” U.S. captain Steve Stricker said. “There’s reachable par 5s, some good par 3s, great setting with the Statue of Liberty in the background.” 

The new routing was introduced with an eye toward getting most matches to reach the club’s waterside 18th with a mid-course stretch of risk-reward holes. Envisioned by John Mutch, the PGA Tour’s advance official in charge of the Presidents Cup, there was also input from PGA Tour Design’s Steve Wenzloff, overseer of tweaks to Liberty National for the Presidents Cup and perhaps again in advance of the 2019 Northern Trust.

You see how low Strick set the bar?   Especially since there aren't too many Par-5's the guys can't reach these days.... 

The Barclays Northern Trust returns here in 2019.  We'll see how we feel about the joint then, but I'm guessing lukewarm at best....

The Fix is In - Everyone and his brother wants to fix this event, but does it even need fixing?  Will Gray has one of the bleaker assessments:

It’s a common goal, one shared by the other 16 men sitting at the podium who at times 

Why the long faces?  Oh, yeah....

seemed helpless in the face of an American juggernaut that won 19-11 and nearly clinched the biennial matches a full day in advance. The International team’s overall record now drops to 1-10-1, and 21 years will have passed since their lone victory the next time the cup is up for grabs at Royal Melbourne. 

In all likelihood, it’s also a goal shared by many PGA Tour executives. This event, after all, is the Tour’s property, created as a complement to the PGA of America-run Ryder Cup. Blowouts like the one seen this week do little to alter the perception that this event pales in comparison to the high-octane spectacle played in the even-numbered years.

But while the goal is shared by several parties, creating productive change for the International squad is easier said than done. 

Consider the uphill battle Price faced simply to get the total points trimmed from 34 to 30. It took nearly two years of lobbying to Tour officials before the change was administered for the 2015 matches, leading to a narrow American victory. It appeared to be a step in the right direction for an event desperate to create any hint of a truly back-and-forth rivalry.

The Prez Cup was created out of frustration at the ill-conceived decision to leave ownership of The Ryder Cup with the PGA of America when the organizations split up, but that was done because at the time it was a worthless exhibition.

Nick Price does hit on the one advantage the Americans have:

Reflecting on his third straight loss as captain, Price went back to familiar refrains: shortening the available points, putting lineups in secretly rather than allowing captains to plot one matchup at a time. 

“We play these team events every second year, and the U.S. team plays every year. So they are a little bit more, I don’t want to say prepared, but they kind of – there’s not as big surprises on their team,” Price said. “I think to put pairings together with a very diverse group as we have, is our challenge.”

Well, that's the major structural advantage.....  I think they also benefit from it being a lower-key, less pressure-filled event than The Ryder Cup.  I'm not sure what can be done about this...  Who would these guys play in even-numbered years?   Though I once jokingly suggested that if the U.S. loses the Prez Cup then the International team should play the Euros....

Karen Crouse proposes a solution that will delight the editorial department in her Eighth Avenue offices:

The solution to this uneven competition is obvious: Make the Presidents Cup a

combined-gender event in which the top six men and the top six women from the United States square off against their International counterparts. No need to change the format of foursomes, four-ball and singles. 

This year’s competition was threatening to be the most lopsided of the biennial event’s 12 editions, with the United States nearly clinching Saturday night before any of the 12 singles matches had been put down on paper — much less played out at Liberty National Golf Club.

Any volunteers to explain to Karen the misogynistic facts of life, that the only programming that draws lower ratings than men's golf is, you guessed it, womyn's golf.  

I noted yesterday that I love that idea, just that it won't and can't happen in this lifetime....

But Karen wrote for her Sunday paper, obviously before the singles beatdown that the Americans endured.  It just seems that folks are way too quick to interpret the rout from the team competition, no?  Golf is a strange game and, while the Yanks were going to win this year for sure, Sunday was a predictable regression to the mean.  

Jaime Diaz is the voice of reason on this subject, as he so often is:

It doesn’t need much fixing or even tweaking. There was enough of that when captain Nick Price finally got a reduction of 34 total points to 30 points, arguing that it gave the Internationals a better chance. And Price’s likely successor, Ernie Els, dropped some

hints that he will be asking for some adjustments to the rules. But more concessions based on the presumption that one team isn’t quite good enough undermines the reason for having the matches. 

What the Presidents Cup most needs – as much as the present moments might scream for something drastic - is the golf audience’s patience to let it evolve. 

In our “what’s next” culture, 1994 – when the first Presidents Cup was played - might seem like an eternity ago, but it’s not long at all in golf years. It’s easy to forget that it took the Ryder Cup nearly 60 years before it got really competitive, or that many of the previous 11 Presidents Cup matches were hotly contested and were excellent theater.

It's hard to imagine this event ever having the intensity of that other one, given that the International team is an artificial construct.  Though perhaps a few years of losing will create an edge that will increase the intensity of the event.... 

But the event is a pleasant exhibition that showcases our game in a range of formats, is that really so bad?

Though this from Brandel Chamblee seems an over-reaction:

I'm very much on board with Brandel Chamblee's suggestion that the Internationals, as hosts, propose a home-field change to the order of play. Given their recent success in singles, Chamblee suggested presumed-captain Ernie Els propose opening with singles to prevent a huge early points deficit. 

It's also a gamesmanship play. The Presidents Cup has generally lacked the chippiness that makes the Ryder Cup so compelling. By using the home field advantage, the risk and potential reward could be enough to turn the tide for the Internationals.

So would better play.

Singles first?  No, that's just all wrong...

What Dat? -  I have to get on with my day, so just a quick item to go out on...  Can anyone identify what this is?

I thought it was the stuff of fiction, like Nessie and the Yeti.  But that, my friends, is an actual foot wedge....  From Greg Chalmers, who found it in the bag of his Pro-Am partner.