Thursday Threads

I'm going to savor those precious last few minutes of the off-season....  Just a couple of items for your day.

Inside The Ropes - You know John Wood by now.  Best known as Kooch's luggage handler, but also from his engaging commentary with the Tour Confidential panel and as the guy that NBC/Golf Channel really should have hired in lieu of Bones....

Woodie spent some time with Golfweek's Dan Kilbridge talking about that epic Sunday at Birkdale:

The symphony builds steadily throughout a Sunday morning at a major championship. 

It’s a distinctive sound. Almost therapeutic.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. 

One well-struck range ball after another. 

The melody wanes into mid-afternoon quiet, and suddenly a caddie is left with the realization there are just two players left on the driving range and a 2:30 p.m. tee time to make. He doesn’t know what the next 18 holes at Royal Birkdale will hold, but he knows one absolute truth. 

“Four hours from now, something great is going to happen to one of you two,” John Wood said.

Nice lede....  This, though, is the part most folks want to relive:

Wood heard the reaction but never saw Spieth’s tee shot. 

The tee shot. 

“You kind of look up, and when the guys hit a drive you have a visual window where the ball should be somewhere in there,” Wood said. “I looked up and I honestly had no idea where the ball went.”

None of us did, John...

Kuchar and Wood waited nearly 20 minutes while Spieth and his caddie, Michael Greller, located Spieth’s errant tee shot and tried to figure out how to drop and play on. A big screen left of the fairway gave Wood a vague idea what was going on as they waited. He doesn’t recall any specific conversations during that time. Kuchar probably talked about his kids. Wood might have discussed a book he was reading. A bit of normalcy amid the chaos. 

“At a certain point we just started laughing,” Wood said. “That’s all you could do. You’re going, ‘This is a funny situation. I’ve never been in something like this.’ … (Kuchar) didn’t get frustrated by it. He just kept calm, and we were sitting back there telling stories and laughing. That was the best way we could handle it, really.”

What do you think?  Best day of golf in 2017?  Certainly the most exciting Unplayable Lies we've ever seen, yanno, except for this blog...

There Will Be Blood -  Rex Hoggard on the Tour finally reaching the 20th century in one important regard:

The PGA Tour introduced its anti-doping program in 2008 under the guise that golf,

although widely believed to be free of the doping scourge that had tainted so many other sports, needed to show the world that it was “clean.” 

For years, the circuit has pointed to its testing record – with only a handful of low profile and largely innocent violations – as proof the game is above doping, but there was always a hole in the Tour’s anti-doping policy. 

Since the program began, the Tour has only used urine to test for violations, which detects the vast majority of drugs a player may use to gain a competitive advantage, but not every drug.

One can only evaluate the effectiveness of a program by comparing it to the program's objectives.  The drug-testing regime of Commissioner Ratched was specifically designed to perpetuate a myth, and in that regard was quite successful, including the requisite small sample of sacrificial Tour rabbits.  

Rex's piece is interesting in that it still seems unclear when the blood samples will be taken, with even a suggestion that blood might be taken prior to a round.  Given that there are folks from whom the drawing of blood can be an issue, I would think that Sunday night might make the best sense.

Paul Casey is the most-quoted player, and had this suggestion:

“Why can’t we do hair samples, because then you can actually trace further back?” asked Casey, who is also an amateur cyclist. “There are certain drugs that are flushed out of the system within a day or two days, hair actually holds that drug in the follicle longer.”

Interesting....  I mean, who knows doping better than a cyclist?  They learn how to mask their doping as they're transitioning away from training wheels...

But on the flip side, good luck getting a hair sample from Furyk or Cink....  And if you want one from Jordan, time is very much of the essence....

We have our fun with this, but this is a good and important move by the Tour.  Let's just hope it's rolled out in a serious manner.

That Name Is Taken -  Jay Monahan has sent out his Save the Date notifications:

JERSEY CITY, N.J. – Tiger Woods’ tournament outside Washington is still talking to potential title sponsors, including Quicken Loans, which did not renew. But it’s on the schedule for the new season as The National, and PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan says it’s not coming off.

Jay, I'm mostly a fan of your work, but THE National is an historic golf course at the Eastern end of Long Island, not a second-tier Tour stop.

”We made the commitment,” Monahan said. ”Our players are going to be showing up there and we’re going to be playing for that amount of money ($7.1 million).” 

The tournament, run by the Tiger Woods Foundation, originally was scheduled to return to Congressional for 2018. But with uncertainly over title sponsorship, the PGA Tour decided to opt out of its contract with the club for 2018 and 2020.

Has anyone spoken with the nice folks at Bridegstone?  They seem to think that Tiger is worth more today than in the glory years....

Also amusing about this is that Tiger doesn't seem to be all that interested in this event either....  He couldn't be bothered showing up, and added to the absence of a venue it's all a bit amateurish.  But contraction is coming, and this event has a bullseye on its forhead.

 Shinnecock In The Spotlight - Brad Klein tells us what to expect:

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y – When the world’s best players tee it up here for the 2018 U.S. Open June 14-18, they’ll confront a golf course that is substantially different than the one they last faced in 2004. 

The course has been stretched, sculpted, and restored to more of its original character as designed by architect William S. Flynn, whose plan for the course from the 1931 rerouting into the present configuration now hangs prominently in the clubhouse. Fairways have also been reshaped on the edge and in some cases, narrowed.

Jeff Hall, managing director, rules and open championships for the U.S. Golf Association, said that a decision to narrow the fairways marginally came upon reflection about the experience of the 2017 U.S. Open at Erin Hills, where uncommonly mild winds made the wide fairways readily accessible to players, diminishing the importance of skilled driving as a crucial element of championship golf. 

“We want to make sure accurate driving is still part of the test, especially if the wind lies down,” said Hall.

As I understand things, the club went through a restoration process and widened the playing corridors.  However, after Erin Hills, the USGA said Holy Crap, Batman, and decided to narrow the place again....  

I also know that my caddie at The National a couple of weeks ago went on quite the rant about the USGA ruing Shinny....  Perhaps Mark W. will enlighten us to what he's seen, assuming he made a trip out there this summer, or has heard from Costello.

There's more of everything except time....Can we do this again tomorrow?