Midweek Musings

It's a slow week.... In fact, it's gonna be on the slow side until mid-April.  But we'll do the best we can for you.

Venue Stuff - The USGA is on a classic kick, which continues with this news:

After visiting two new sites in the last three years, the men’s U.S. Open will continue visiting, for the foreseeable future, only its most classic sites. 

That much is clear as the USGA announced Tuesday the 2027 host for the event will be Pebble Beach Golf Links. That will mark the seventh time the Northern California course has hosted the event. The USGA also announced that Pebble will host the Women’s U.S. Open for the first time in 2023. 

"The USGA is committed to bringing our championships to golf’s greatest venues and the opportunity to have the best players in the world, female and male, compete at this iconic course will provide a fantastic showcase of the game," said USGA president Diana Murphy.

Can we bring Diana back in 2023 to award the trophy to Bethany Lang?  The biggest surprise here is that it took so long to get the ladies to Pebble...

Shack provide these takeaways from the announcement:

--This marks a 8-year turnaround to Pebble Beach for the U.S. Open after most recently

going 10-years (2000-2010) and 9-years (2010-2019) between men's Opens.

--2027 will be year-one of the USGA's next television contract.

--This certainly rules out Olympic Club as a U.S. Open venue for 2027 and could suggest the Lake Course may have a PGA and Ryder Cup in its future.

--The USGA has cooled on new and unproven venues.

--If this is the makings of a rota with a few fun ones thrown in from time to time, it's quite a good rota!

That rota would be Oakmont, Shinny, Winged Foot and Pebble.  Not sure whether Torrey deserves rota status... Let me rephrase, it doesn't deserve it for anything other than the views, but whether it fits or not is an open issue (pun intended).

But the mots intriguing factoid is that we're already looking towards the post-Fox era in golf, perhaps.  Even though the Chambers Bay fiasco is fresh in our minds, I suspect the bigger issue in that being the first year of the new TV contract is that it's a prime-time broadcast.

On this very same subject, you might also be interested in Shack and Matt Adams picking a venue that is long overdue for a women's U.S. Open.  I was an advocate of Mike Davis taking the big boys there, but by the close of business it was obvious that they won't be returning anytime soon.  But they're correct, it's time.

And while not a major, Joe Passov has a piece on the Tour's newest venue:

Native Texan Ben Crenshaw captured the Byron Nelson Golf Classic in 1983. Thirty-five years later, a course he co-designed will host the event for the first time. Gentle Ben 

The Par-5 seventh.

and his design partner, Bill Coore, have rolled out a remarkable private spread called Trinity Forest on a sandcapped former landfill just 10 minutes south of downtown Dallas. The 400-acre track is treeless, but it's surrounded by the 6,000-acre Great Trinity Forest, creating an almost arena-like effect for golf. The quality of the architecture, the terrain and the infrastructure prompted sponsor AT&T and the PGA Tour to move the venerable Byron Nelson event there starting in May 2018, a shift that takes it from the cushy, suburban TPC Dallas Las Colinas (and the onsite Four Seasons hotel) to a somewhat grittier urban area. Opened to preview play in the fall of 2016, Trinity Forest's heaving canvas, ever-present winds, close-cropped, fast Zoysia fairways and firm, quick Champion Ultradwarf Bermuda greens will present pros with the most links-like test this side of the British Isles. And test them it will.

Not a moment too soon for this event, which faces an existential crisis with contraction on the horizon.  There are four events in Texas, two that are currently without sponsors.  One would think that one of those will be left without a chair when the music abruptly stops....

Instructor Stuff - An interesting addition to the Golf Channel announcing crew:

ORLANDO, Fla. (Oct. 24, 2017) - Cameron McCormick, 2015 PGA Teacher of the Year and long-time swing coach of three-time Major Champion Jordan Spieth, will become an official member of the team of expert instructors featured on Revolution Golf and Golf Channel. The announcement was made today during McCormick’s guest appearance on Morning Drive. 

Watch a clip from McCormick's appearance on Morning Drive here.

As part of the new multi-year relationship, McCormick will host his own instructional series – featured on both Revolution Golf and Golf Channel – where he will share with golfers the knowledge he has cultivated over a 20-year coaching career, along with his creative approach to incorporating a wider perspective on what it takes to improve golf performance. 

McCormick also will join Martin Hall, Sean Foley, Martin Chuck and Andrew Rice as featured faculty members on Revolution Golf, the largest direct-to-consumer digital platform in golf, which was added to NBC Sports Group’s portfolio in August. By connecting golfers of all skill levels to world-class instruction, Revolution Golf will feature the first series of instructional videos hosted by McCormick on the website before the end of the year. An accompanying DVD series is scheduled to be released in November.

Interesting mostly because of how quiet he and Spieth have been.  But time to monetize that reputation....

Golf Digest Editor Jerry Tarde submits a candidate for the Hall of Fame:

I couldn't find Butch Harmon in the World Golf Hall of Fame, so I went looking for

him. 

The last time I saw Butch, he was ranked No. 1 by his peers as the game's best teacher (view our latest ranking: 50 Best Teachers In America). The distance between him and the next best has grown like Secretariat in the Belmont Stakes. A better comparison might be Tiger Woods in the 2000 U.S. Open—he won by 15; Butch was coaching him at the time. Harmon, age 74, has been at the top of the biennial teacher ranking for the past 18 years. His run exceeds even Greg Norman's and Tiger's No. 1 World Golf Ranking stretch, so I'll stop right there in defending why he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.

Shack had this reax:

While I fully support his place in the Hall--after some early figures in the instruction and game development world get their due to ensure no recency bias--a Butch induction might force the players whose careers he made to show for the World Golf Hall of Fame ceremony! Maybe.

You're such a tease, Geoff.  You couldn't be bothered giving us a short list of names?

Butch is certainly a significant figure in our game, I'm just not sure about instructors in the Hall....  Though given how the bar has been lowered in recent cycles, why not?

Tarde has a fun Q&A with the always-interesting Butch at that link, and you'll want to read it.  Here's a tease:

WHAT ELSE WOULD WE LEARN FROM YOUR WIFE?

Christy is the only person in the world who calls me by my real name, Claude. She always says, "I can't call a grown man Butch." She doesn't go to golf tournaments because she says I have to be Butch Harmon at golf tournaments. She says, "You all know Butch Harmon, but when he comes home, he's Claude, and you wouldn't know him if you saw him." I'm a big softy. I cry watching movies. At home, I'm the complete opposite of my image.

Good stuff on Tiger, Phil, Hogan, Rory and DJ..... Oh, and dogs.

Tiger Stuff - I know, you're still over the moon at the return of the stinger....  Alex Myers is as well, and thinks it's time to play Big-Cat Bingo:

No Reps or Feels?  Hmmm....plus shouldn't the WD cover about half the board?  Just sayin'....

If you can't get your fill of The Striped One, this guy ranks the top 14 Tiger-Tweets of all time... I'm sure that 14 was just a coincidence, no?

But, spoiler alert, Mack Daddy Santa comes in at No. 2, making me question the integrity of the voting:

 C'mon, it had to have been the Russians!

Oh, and this matter is on it's path towards resolution:

UPDATE: The hearing where Tiger Woods is expected to enter a diversion program for intoxicated drivers has been postponed. 

The hearing has been moved to Friday instead of Wednesday as originally scheduled. No reason was given for the change. 

The 41-year-old superstar golfer is scheduled to plead guilty to reckless driving in Palm Beach County, Florida. 

In the diversion program, Woods will spend a year on probation, pay a $250 fine and attend DUI school along with other conditions.

The traditional Friday afternoon news dump?   

HSBC Stuff - There's something in the water over there, as this kick-off promo clearly demonstrates:

I do hope that's more than a nine-iron....  Just ask Elin, it's not enough club.And Henrik was chewing the scenery as well:

Don't miss this Golf Channel slideshow of previous crazy photo shoots, involving everyone who's anybody in our game.  Including this of Phil exploiting his white privilege:

I have it on good authority that chess is racist... Give it a scroll, as there's swords, kettle drums and even Paula as a Bavarian milkmaid.

Silly Stuff - Jeff Ritter has this promising header:

Mind games: 18 ways to fluster, frustrate and infuriate your opponent

You'll be shocked to know I have a quibble, as these two suggestions have no place on the same list:

3. CROWD THE TEE BOX

When your opponent tees off, stand a little closer than normal. It might make 'em sweat a little, and it's within the rules. 

4. PULL OFF A MIRACULOUS ESCAPE SHOT

A hooked 4-iron under tree limbs that runs through a bunker and across the green before settling four feet from the hole? Soul-crushing.

The latter is golf, the former is gamesmanship, i.e., cheating by other means....  And Y.E. Yang is proof that it doesn't always work, even if you're wearing a red shirt....

It's just a fun item, and his last suggestion is pitch perfect....  

Christopher Powers, a new Golf Digest hand (one of the items above is his as well), uses Spieth's gift of that 3-iron to Royal Birkdale to identify thirteen other golf mementos that deserve preservation.  Oh, the memories....

For instance:

Anthony Kim's 'AK' belt

Given how things played out, isn't AK himself the more important memento?

Jordan Spieth's divot from the 12th hole at the 2016 Masters

Which one?

And this deserves its own Hall of Fame:

The fire hydrant Tiger Woods' crashed into

As opposed to other hydrants that have significance in our game?  But please tell me that's the actual hydrant, otherwise I'll lose respect for the man.

Undercover Stuff - Some interesting bits in this from Golf Diget's Undercover Pro:

The smartest move I made last season was dropping my clothing deal. I was getting paid 15 grand a year to wear a particular brand, and it wasn't worth the aggravation. I've never 

been picky about clothes, but this stuff I genuinely didn't care for. The colors were a bit electric for my taste, and something about the fit of the sleeves was off—tight in the armpits. I'd receive a new box of 20 shirts and a dozen pairs of pants every few months, and with almost every other shipment there was an issue. A logo would be mis-stitched or in the wrong spot, or some of the clothes were the wrong size. They'd promise to fix it and deliver a new batch to my hotel right away. Two tournaments later, the box arrives ... on a Friday. 

A clothing deal for a very top player could be a million or more, but unless your name is Jason Day or Sergio Garcia, most of the clothing-only deals are worth about the same, which is low five figures. And unlike deals for clubs and balls, where you can unlock bonuses with high finishes and wins, the marketing budgets of most smaller clothing lines are fixed. Still, they're not shy about asking for multiple days of your time, either to shoot advertisements or do promotional events with their clients. I get that it's a tough business, but the objectives of these companies are sometimes hard to discern. Each is looking for a player whose image tells their brand's "story," whatever that means. Understandably, I guess, a lot of clothing companies would rather have their guy look good and play bad than the other way around.

Admittedly the very definition of a first world problem, but I'm still shocked at how little they get paid.  

More shocking still is that  he's happier wearing it for free.