Midweek Musings

Where should we start?  Equipment?  Golf Channel instructors?  Tiger?  

What the hell...when in doubt, go with Tiger...

Bygones - With all the talk of Tiger's feuds with everyone... You know the list, Stevie, Hank, Sergio, et. al, one that never comes up is his loathing for Golf Digest, more specifically Jerry Tarde and Dan Jenkins.  o this comes as a bit of a shock:

Max Adler gets to see the circus up close:

“I’m Tiger,” he says with a grin when you introduce yourself, and the handshake is as strong as it gets.

 

Actually, it was more than a photo shoot. With a man whose time is as valuable as Big Cat’s, you kill at least two birds. With cameras rolling on the south end of the driving range at Medalist Golf Club, TaylorMade’s top equipment staff unboxed for Woods the new line of clubs he should soon be playing. So besides capturing marketing materials, it was also the first official custom-fitting session with the staffer who sat out nearly all of 2017 injured. TaylorMade invited Golf Digest along to witness the process.

That bit about it being his first fitting can't be true, can it?  Call me cynical, but I assume that's just what he tells all the equipment guys....

 This veers into too much information:

“Give me a phony smile,” says Walter Iooss, Jr., Golf Digest Photographer-At-Large. The trick either works or doesn’t, because the one Woods returns is genuine. Iooss has photographed Woods nine times over the years. Though it’s for Golf Digest Senior Photographer Dom Furore whom Woods saves his biggest hug. Furore shot his wedding.

Remind me, how did that wedding turn out?  Granted, it was in no way the photographers fault....

And this, because apparently we're going to reference all of his bad marriages:

“Man, hit that one solid!” Woods exclaims after thumping a foam practice ball into a net, the echo resounding in the barn’s rafters. Woods adds a wry comment for the fact the endorser of the foam ball is Hank Haney, his former instructor.

Actually, that marriage was very productive, while it lasted.

Michael Johnson was invited as well, and has more here.

Gearhead Central - I am not now nor have I ever been a Gearhead, but 'tis the season....  Taylor Made has released M3 and M4 drivers, and there's a twist:

The new TaylorMade M3 and M4 drivers contain a lot of impressive technologies but

one stands out: Twist Face, which is exactly what it sounds like. The faces of these drivers are actually twisted a bit in the low heel and high toe areas, a novel design feature that will no doubt give golfers pause.

So what is Twist Face and what does it do? 

To understand the technology, you first must understand that the face geometry, or what’s commonly referred to as "bulge and roll," of the traditional driver design is slightly curved — bulge is the curvature on the horizontal axis and roll is curvature on the vertical axis.

At my age, we ignore all discussion of bulge and roll.....  Shall I let them go on?

The key for promoting straighter shots is bulge, which is designed to utilize gear effect to correct shots struck away from the center of the clubface. Tee shots that connect on the toe will start further right to compensate for the higher degree of hook spin on a toe shot, while shots struck on the heel will start further left to compensate for slice spin. Roll also matters in that it helps correct loft imparted on the shot.

But then TaylorMade engineers studied their own driver data, which consisted of more than 500,000 shots, and determined that the existing design didn’t actually direct mishits toward the center of the fairway when humans stepped in and hit the drives instead of a robot. According to TaylorMade, that’s because a robot delivers the club to the ball squarely every time, regardless of where on the face the ball is struck. Real, live golfers, on the other hand, naturally manipulate the face angle of the club at impact on mishits: closed on toe hits and open on heel hits. This manipulation causes the ball to move further left on toe shots and further right on heel shots, often causing the ball to completely missing the fairway.

Sorry, I might have nodded off there.

This we knew previously, but makes little sense to me:

After a 15-year run with TaylorMade that included winning his first major championship at last year’s Masters, Sergio Garcia has signed a multiyear endorsement deal with

Callaway to use its clubs and ball. 

The announcement is more of a formality than news as Garcia used an Odyssey putter and some Callaway clubs late in 2017. TaylorMade also announced in November that it had mutually agreed to part ways with the Spanish star. In addition to his Masters title, Garcia also won a Players Championship while with TaylorMade. 

Moving forward, Garcia will play Callaway woods, irons and wedges and one of the company’s Chrome Soft balls, along with an Odyssey putter that the company says “will launch next month.” The club likely being referred to is the Odyssey Toulon Atlanta prototype—a toe-hang mallet—that Garcia used to win the Andalucia Valderrama Masters last fall. For signage, Garcia will have a Callaway logo on both sides of his hat while continuing to have an Adidas logo on the front and on his apparel.

As I've noted previously, Sergio and DJ are the two guys that defined TaylorMade in my mind.  With that fifteen year investment and all the press he'll garner at Augusta, does it make sense to drop him?

Even stranger with Adidas sticking with him....

Say It Ain't So - Somewhat surprising, at least to me:

If instruction is your thing, Golf Channel’s 2017 purchase of Revolution Golf has led to

some revolutionary on-air changes. 

The Man Out Front wasn’t surprised to hear first of Cameron McCormick’s Golf Channel hiring and now Sean Foley’s — both are Revolution Golf-affiliated instructors who also happen to work some of the game’s best players. 

Actually, it’s who will not be back on Golf Channel airways that will turn a few heads: longtime Golf Fix host Michael Breed has departed. 

While TMOF will have news soon on Breed’s various landing spots following more than 385 episodes of high-energy tips that propelled the network’s early week programming, he’s pretty sure Foley’s prime time Playing Lessons will make for a different instruction show vibe.

Can we throw in Martin Hall for an instructor to be named later?  That voice is just so grating...

Still More Predictions - Chris Powers offers nine players due for a win in 2018...  See if you can spot the common thread here:

Paul Casey

It’s almost impossible to believe that the Englishman has won just once in his career on the PGA Tour, and it came back in 2009 at the Shell Houston Open. After winning 13

times on the European Tour, Casey shifted his focus to the PGA Tour in 2015, and has since finished seventh or better 19 times in just 73 starts, including two runner-up finishes in playoffs in 2015 at the Genesis Open and the Travelers Championship. If he keeps that rate up, 2018 could be the year Casey explodes, and maybe even for his elusive first major.

Charles Howell III

No one understands how hard it is to win on the PGA Tour better than Howell III, who has made more than $30 million in his career with just two wins to his name, the last coming in 2007. We should all be so lucky, but it’s still amazing how often he’s come to the top spot in the last 11 years, only to finish in second six times. Two of those came in 2017 at the Farmers Insurance Open and the Quicken Loans National, the latter where he lost in a playoff to Kyle Stanley. With a little faith, maybe Howell III could be this year’s Stanley, and not the other way around.

Yup, the two guys whose careers are most defined by the fact that they contend often and NEVER win.  In what sense are they due?

Not to worry, Kooch is there as well....

Ryan Herrington offers seven events to follow in 2018, but not the usual sort of thing:

The inaugural U.S. Senior Women’s Open

Nearly 40 years after the inaugural U.S. Senior Open, the USGA will debut the equivalent for women ages 50 and older in July with a 120-player field. Past U.S. Women’s Open champions and LPGA major winners will be eligible, making for an interesting question for a handful of retired players such as Amy Alcott, Pat Bradley, Meg Mallon or Dottie Pepper: Any interest in a comeback? If the intrigue of a new championship isn’t enough, the venue for the debut is sure to capture attention in Chicago Golf Club, the renowned C.B. Macdonald course that last hosted a significant national event in 2005 Walker Cup.

Can't wait to see the place.  This one as well:

Trinity Forest’s debut at the AT&T Byron Nelson

So much has already been written about the nascent Bill Coore/Ben Crenshaw design that there’s the potential for the hype to make the course impossible to live up to expectations. Still, early reviews have been so strong we can’t help but get excited to see how the course holds up when the PGA Tour makes the move there in May. Suffice to say, it’s not just fans who will be curious about the venue, but officials with the USGA and PGA of America who might be entertaining the possibility of bringing one of their championships there in the future.

He does double or triple dip on the 2019 schedule implications, but that is one of the more interesting aspects of the coming year.  The music will stop at some point, and 3-4 events will be left without a chair....

My Fave Story of the Day - On our August trip to Cornwall and Wales, we flew from London down to Newquay.  Some hardy souls at Newquay Golf Club went out for a quick 18 over the holidays, apparently not having checked the weather forecast:

Revelers in Cornwall, England had been warned of high winds and potential hail storms during the week between Christmas and New Years, with gusts on the coast potentially reaching 80 mph (hurricane-force winds are defined as sustained or frequent gusts greater than 74 mph according to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale preferred by American weather authorities). 

That didn't stop a few golfers from taking their chances at Newquay Golf Club in Newquay, Cornwall. 

At some point during their round, the golfers were met (surprise, surprise) by hail and hurricane-force winds. Fortunately for the rest of us, one participant risked destroying his phone to capture his playing partner struggling to find cover during a particularly intense moment in the storm.

Do check out the video at the link.  As an expert at links golf, I estimate it as a 15-club wind.....