Midweek Musings

It's still dark in Utah and there's still no snow, so what would you folks like to talk about?

The year in Social Media - I hope Kevin Casey got hazard pay for reviewing the year in social media, golf division of course....  Though it's far better than expected, likely because that stuff is on the come:

This list also won’t include any social media spats, as those will be detailed in an upcoming list. Anyway, here are golf’s top social media content/posts of 2017…

CTR-F: Grayson Murray yields 0 results, so it's safe for the children....

Sergio Garcia lets fan caddie for him after 206 straight days of tweets 

We’ll be honest, we didn’t expect this gambit to work. But shooters shoot. Mark Johnson, an English mailman and huge Garcia fan, tweeted for 206 straight days at the Spaniard, imploring each time to let him caddie when there was a short-term spot open.

That was nice of the Spaniard, though an English fan's attachment could keep a team of Viennese psychiatrists gainfully employed for their natural life expectancy.

The Euro Tour are the Jedi Masters of social media, and I had missed their Awkward Reporter series.   As for "Si Woo shaking that a**", I guess you had to be there.

As for the Boo Weekley-Beef Johnston 40-yard dash, we have a no spoiler policy just for these occasions.

This from ClubProGuy was my favorite tweet of the year, a heartfelt acknowledgement of his club's member's generosity:

Hmmm....overall neediness?  Do I know you?

More Rules Stuff - Alistair Tait with another reaction to the recent rules changes:

The level of ignorance of the rules among tour pros has amazed me over 25 years of covering this great game. It’s absolutely staggering. Tour pros will spend eight hours a

day working on all aspects of their game yet can’t find 10 minutes to read the rules. It’s not as if they don’t have enough down time on flights, in courtesy cars and in hotel rooms. As European Tour chief referee John Paramor once said, even 10 minutes a day learning the Definitions would go a long way toward increasing their knowledge and stopping violations.

Get in line, bro....  But the thing is, you don't really need to read the rules, you just need to pay attention to the things that inevitably come up as you play.  These guys have come up as juniors and taken a million drops, but somehow their minds are blank when they come out on Tour.

Talent, Final Answer - Brian Wacker with the deep dive into a rather obvious question:

What’s driving the remarkable resurgence of American team golf?

You know what's coming:

The contrast to three years earlier couldn’t have been more striking. At Gleneagles in

2014, the U.S. couldn’t get out of its own way when it came to another international team competition. The American Ryder Cup squad was in utter disarray, losers of three straight and eight of the previous 10 biennial matches against the Europeans. The ineptitude and dysfunction going on behind closed doors reached its boiling point publicly in the form of Phil Mickelson’s verbal takedown of his own captain, Tom Watson, in the post-event press conference at Gleneagles. 

The scene was tense, awkward and embarrassing. It was also probably the best thing that could have happened. 

“We needed it,” Davis Love III says now. “It was unfortunate for Phil and Tom that it got out of the locker room, but in the long run it was great.”

That was a dark moment for sure, but who's responsible for it getting out of the locker room?  I'll spare you the details, but Phil told several meaningful lies that day, of which people should be reminded.

Brian finally gets to this:

Yet just how did this transformation happen so quickly? Of course, while the infrastructure changes made were timely and necessary, it didn’t hurt that they coincided with a critical shift in American golf from one generation to the next.

 Ya think?

But let's also note for the record that this triumphalism is a tad premature.... Those kids have won exactly one Ryder Cup, and a home game at that.  Let's see if they can live up to the loft expectations in France, a tie that they should win.

We're All Trump Now - Todd Warnock is a partner in the proposed Coul Links, and pens a guest item for The Scotsman in which he accuses certain Scots of tarring him with comparisons to the dreaded Trump:

However, I’ve also noticed a growing and unsettling trend here in Scotland where some people, the odd politician, and some environmental organisations, when it’s in their

interest, have taken to likening Americans to Trump. 

I should say that I have never worked with, supported or agreed with Trump. I could never give my backing to his policies or actions. Yet my partners and I find ourselves described as “peas in a pod” with Trump by a Scottish MSP, John Finnie. He has never met me, my partners or responded to my calls, yet he seems content to use Trump as a stick to tar me with, regardless of my actual beliefs.

I’ve also noticed this approach has been taken up at an organisational level. RSPB Scotland and SWT, for example, continue to focus on my nationality rather than the environmental facts of our strategy. They ignore the substantial environmentalist accomplishments of Mike Keiser and I while taking every opportunity to simply label us as “American millionaires”. In my view, they are endeavouring to whip up anti-American feeling – just go read some of the objections to our proposal on the Highland Council website. This is not unlike the way the Trump singles people out by their nationality or belittles their intentions. Similarly, the small group of locals self-named “Not Coul” try to paste the Trump scarlet letter upon us. A sensationalist video features Trump more than it does me or my partners.

Me or my partners?  Perhaps they're just offended by your mangling of their language? 

Warnock makes his home in The Highlands and his love for the country and its people is readily apparent.  Politicians taking cheap shots is an obvious dog-bites -man story, but I wonder if there's some wounded pride involved as well.  The Scots feel a proprietary interest in golf and links, and the colonists and their money developing this site has to sting a bit.  That said, give the involvement of Mike Keiser and C&C, I'd like to see what might come of this.

Best of 2017, Major Division - Things are slow, so lots of rehashes to sort through....  Golf Channel has a slideshow of major moments, including this one for which Sergio remains grateful:

You never know, but he seemed like he couldn't lose at that moment in time.  

Doug Ferguson talks to the four major winners, with some interesting reflections.  First, Brooks Koepka with a shot that no one but he and his caddie were focused on:

“The tee shot on the par 5, No. 14,” he said. “We could hit 3-wood and get to the bunker, but driver was no good because we couldn’t carry it or we had a 20-yard fairway. We actually had to cut this 3-wood up into the wind. We had to take a lot off it. It only wound up 4 yards short of the bunker. We were walking up and I said, ‘I think we can go for that par 5 in two.’” 

He put it in the greenside bunker and got up-and-down for birdie. 

“That’s probably a moment a normal person wouldn’t think anything of it,” he said.

Love to know what his longest iron was, and how far back that would have left him.

As for Jordan, he focused on an early-round piece of magic:

The finish is famous. Overlooked was a shot in the second round that Spieth felt kept

him from a mini-meltdown. Right when the rain started pounding, Spieth drove into a pot bunker on No. 10, punched out and then hit his third shot long and to the right. Facing bogey or worse, he chipped in for par. 

“I hit a beautiful chip that went in that kept momentum going in the worst of the weather that we experienced that week,” Spieth said. “That chip shot was massive at that point because I was faltering. I could have made bogey or double easy.”

Before we move on, Dave Shedloski had an interesting take on Spieth's 2017, including this acknowledgement of that which we've all noted:

“Yeah, it’s been a really exciting career,” he conceded recently at the Hero World Challenge. “It’s been exciting in both ways, in the bad and in the good. I don’t know why I have a knack for the craziness, but it just seems to take shape. I’ve had boring wins, too. You could argue the Masters in ’15 was a boring win. This tournament was a boring win [in 2014, by 10 strokes]. But unless I’m really on, I struggle with the full commitment in my game that produces that three-, four-, five-shot win.”

Yes, you do, for which the rest of us are quite grateful.  

Shack and Matt Adams take on the question of most significant major moment, and while there's video at the link, here's Geoff's take on their choices:

Matt Adams and I debated this for Golf Central's Alternate Shot, with some footage included. While Adams took Sergio's second shot into Augusta National's 15th, I selected Jordan Spieth's wedge shot following the driving range recovery. Why? It was a tight lie over a pot bunker, his heart rate had to be off the charts from climbing dunes and taking drops, and it put a bow on the greatest bogey you'll ever see.

Can anyone think of any other memorable bogeys?  

Time to think about skiing....