Friday Fragments

At the risk of repeating myself, just a couple of quick items...  But today I mean it.

Year-End Push - Props to Shack for covering the unseemly year-end scramble for position inside the top fifty in the OWGR.  It really makes no sense at all, though neither does this Shack analogy:

There are many clubs in golf worth fighting to join, but none as lucrative as Official World Golf Ranking End Of Season Top 50 National CC.

If it were a piece of architecture I'm fairly certainly it'd be a Tom Fazio course heralded as Golf Digest's Best New Private and, six years later, Golf Digest's Best New Remodel. 

Here we are again watching players and their agents crunching the OWGR numbers to determine if how they get finish in the world top 50 and its $350k or so of guaranteed money and opportunities for easy ranking points. Oh, and there's a Masters berth on the line, too.

I enjoy a good Fazio slam more than most, but while the analogy is lacking, the underlying point has merit.

As Geoff notes, Brandt Snedeker took his sorry self to Indonesia to attempt to crack the top 50, though that effort ended in tears.  Kevin Casey has the even more troubling tale of  Kiradech Alphabet Aphibarnrat:

Kiradech Aphibarnrat seemed to secure his 2018 Masters ticket last week by closing in eagle for a solo-fifth showing at the Indonesian Masters. But apparently he needed to do one more thing, and it involved not hitting a golf shot at all. 

The Thai player has withdrawn from the Boonchu Ruangkit Championship, an Asian Development Tour event, with a back injury, but there’s likely a tactical reason to this as well.

Aphibarnrat is currently No. 51 in the Official World Golf Ranking and would finish No. 49 by year’s end by not playing in anymore 2017 events – with the top 50 in the world at the end of 2017 earning Masters invites for the following April. 

What would happen, though, if Aphibarnrat did play this week, in the final tournament offering OWGR points in 2017? 

Well, he would need a top-12 finish … or else he would fall out of the top 50 and lose his guaranteed Masters spot!

The incentives are a tad perverse for sure....  It's an awkward spot on the calendar for a cut-off, but the cut-off itself is troubling.  The limited field money grabs perpetuate the closed shop nature of Tour life.....

It's A Young Man's Game - The estimable Jaime Diaz finds the larger significance in Justin Thomas' breakout year:

The lesson of 2017 is that golfers are gaining vital knowledge sooner and maturing

faster. And perhaps the game they are playing is built more on physical prowess than nuanced skill. Bottom line, the latest group of Young Guns/Young Lions/Roaring 20s is simply more ready. 

“It’s such a young man’s game right now,” says Justin Thomas, 24, who by virtue of winning of five tournaments including the PGA Championship, the FedEx Cup, and PGA Tour Player of the Year honors, happens to be Golf World’s Newsmaker of the Year. 

The big data is convincing. Consider that since 1980, there have only been two PGA Tour seasons in which there were six or more different winners younger than age 25: the 2015-’16 wraparound, when there were seven, and the just completed 2016-’17 season, in which there were nine. All told last season, there were 18 victories by players who hadn’t yet turned 25. The previous record was 10. The average age of the PGA Tour winner was 28.9, the youngest ever recorded.

Maybe.  I try to be a little cautious about jumping on the bandwagon, as these things tend to be cyclical.  Jaime's case is that it's not about any individual, but rather the depth of the talent pool:

But more convincing than the top names is the collective. There have been previous groups of 20-somethings that changed the guard. The wave in the mid-1970s comes to

mind, led by Johnny Miller, Lanny Wadkins, Tom Watson, Jerry Pate and Ben Crenshaw. But the current group is younger, and there are more of them.

The roster includes Brooks Koepka, 27, winner of the U.S. Open. Hideki Matsuyama (now 25) won three times at age 24. The youngest winner of the year, 22-year-old Si Woo Kim, was also the youngest Players champion. Xander Schauffele, 24, won at Greenbrier and the Tour Championship and was Rookie of the Year. On the European Tour, the winner of the Race to Dubai was Tommy Fleetwood, 26. Jon Rahm won three times around the world, and at 22, the big Spaniard has the most runway to grow. And three other 24-year-old winners are intriguing for their individuality: Daniel Berger, Bryson DeChambeau and Grayson Murray.

Grayson Murray?  This is where he's really over-reaching....  Even Jon Rahm, who is no doubt extremely talented, has done nothing yet in the cosmic scheme of things.  

Jaime does dive in to the reasons that some of these kids are so good so young, but let me leave you with two issues not addressed.  First, has the technology made the modern game less interesting, the Mike Bamberger premise, and therefore it's easier for the kids to figure it out at a younger age?  

Secondly, for a long time I was warning folks that Tiger was old in golf years, because of the intensity of his junior and amateur career....  One thing to watch for with these kids is whether they burn out earlier....  It may just be that a soul can only succeed in the cauldron for so long.  

All Brandel, All the Time -   Kevin Casey promised us a column on the dark side of golfers and social media, and he delivers the goods.  Brandel gets into it with just about everyone in the game, inclduing but not limited to Rory, Poults, Billy Ho and The Duf....  Good times for sure, and there's an appearance by Grayson Murray as well.  Dive in as your time and level of interest permit.

My personal fave is the back and forth over JT's club throw.... Perfect lines, indeed.

But Kevin's deadline made him miss this latest Brandel bombshell from his year-end column:

There have already been more than a few players talk about rolling the ball back, which

when one looks a little deeper smacks of the same type of player-sponsor tandem that sought to have square grooves – i.e. Ping’s irons, which were threatening a huge market share at the time – deemed illegal on the PGA Tour a few decades ago. And, of course, there are more than a few “ancient idolaters” who’d like to see wood and balata come back for no other reason than they think the courses of Tillinghast, Thomas, MacKenzie, Raynor, Ross, Crump, and Wilson should be restored to all their majesty.

Ya got that?  A player advocating to roll back the ball can only be a Manchurian Golfer under the spell of his sponsor.... or a Luddite that wants to return to the glory of hickories, or perhaps both?

But wait, there's more:

When I hear people scream, “Roll the ball back!” I first think, Why the ball and not the rebounding and forgiving metal woods? Why the ball and not the longer lighter shafts? And then I think, At what cost? Who is going to pay retribution to the manufactures[SP] whose products will be rescinded? Who will pay for the lawsuits? Who is going to tell all of those amateurs who have been having a blast hitting the ball farther than they ever have, no more smash?

Now the first point is of interest, because the distance explosion has many contributing causes, and he doesn't even mention those, such as Trackman, that are beyond the ability of the governing authorities to control.

But that last bit gave me a case of whiplash.... I'm sorry, who's a puppet of the ball manufacturers?  

Brandel has more in this line of thinking, and Geoff has his 2012 comments advocating for bifurcation to throw back in his face.  All very curious....

Silly Stuff - Just a couple of non-golf items to amuse you... First, I can't unfortunately embed the video, but if you're bored with golf, click here to learn of the new sport of Eisfussball.  Here's a photo of an especially dramatic moment:

Take a close look at the footwear....it's pure genius.

And my favorite header of the day:

Amazon pulls DIY circumcision ‘training’ kit

Hmmm, I wonder why.  It's hard to see where anything could go wrong....

I'll pop in as there's any content to discuss, but I suspect it'll be a quiet holiday weekend.