The Great Untraveling

It's the bizarro world fro sure, as it's arctic cold in NY and balmy at 10,000 feet in Utah.  Unfortunately, Delta s one job, to get me from Point A to Point B, so all typos are a result of my teeth chattering.

For The Best - Tiger begins the process of crafting a schedule:

Tiger Woods is ready to tee it up again. 

Despite a year-end announcement in which Woods did not clarify any tournament plans,

the 42-year-old tweeted Thursday saying he will make his 2018 debut at the Farmers Insurance Open (Jan. 25-28) and will play again three weeks later at the Genesis Open (Feb. 15-18). 

The Farmers Insurance Open is held at Torrey Pines, where Woods has won eight times in his career, and is also where he began his 2017 slate of events. Woods shot 76-72 last season to miss the cut. 

The Genesis Open is held at Riviera Country Club, and is run by Woods's event management company, TGR Live. Woods was expected to play the Genesis last season, but was sidelined after injuring his back at the Dubai Desert Classic in early February.

No real surprises here.  Torrey was one of his big-three meal tickets (along with Bay Hill and Firestone), and LA is for the Foundation.  Give the tenuous state of the D.C. event, he has to show.

As for the sincerity meter, this didn't move the needle:

"I'm very excited to be back at Riviera," Woods said in a statement. "I haven't played at Riviera in a tournament in a very long time. To be able to play in an event that I used to come to as an amateur, as a junior and now as the tournament host, that is on one of the most historic sites in all of golf, it's a dream come true."

Heh!  In his salad days, this was the one course that had his number, such that he stopped showing up.  Will it be different now?  At least that's a reason to tune in...

Musical Chairs -  Crazy changes for our talking heads....  We had the Sean Foley for Michael Breed swap when last we met, now comes this news about Michael:

Following in a long tradition of exclusive partnerships with the game’s top instructors, including teaching legends Bob Toski, Paul Runyan, John Jacobs, Jim Flick, Butch Harmon and David Leadbetter, Golf Digest welcomes teacher Michael Breed as its Chief Digital Instructor. 

Breed, who is ranked by his industry peers among the 50 Best Teachers in America, has left the Golf Channel after 385 episodes of his weekly instruction show, The Golf Fix, to become the lead host and instructor on Golf Digest’s new digital game-improvement platform.

He's also got some kind of deal with Sirius/XM Radio.

But this came as quite the surprise shock:

The Man Out Front is always leery of seeing writers closing up their laptops in favor of

makeup and suits. But given Jaime Diaz and Tim Rosaforte’s body of work, TMOF is just happy to see two veterans continuing to do their thing for Golf Channel.

The long-time Golf Digest and Golf World contributors left the Conde Nast-owned publications to become full-time Golf Channel employees beginning Jan. 1. While Rosaforte’s move comes as no major surprise given his role as Golf Channel’s “Insider” since 2007, TMOF was shocked to see one of golf’s most respected writers (Diaz) move full time to television.

“I’m looking forward to continuing to tell stories and offer ideas about the greatest game in such a dynamic medium,” Diaz tells TMOF.

The former Sports Illustrated writer has been a fixture at Golf Digest since 2001, where he was promoted to the editor’s job at sister-publication Golf World when his predecessor, Geoff Russell, departed for Golf Channel.

 Not good.  I don't really care about Tim, as TV seems to be the right spot for him.  But Diaz is currently the best writer in the game, and his longform pieces are were a high point of the Golf Digest platform.  Now he's reduced to this:

Diaz is now reunited with Russell, the channel’s executive editor, and is expected to contribute historical perspective and insight to various live shows. The 63-year-old Diaz tells TMOF he expects to still do some writing.

Some writing!  This is a big loss....

Lorne's Thoughts -  Lorne Rubenstein makes the case for appreciating that which torments us:

There are music appreciation courses. There are art appreciation courses. How about golf course architecture appreciation courses? The 2018 tour golf menu begins this week with 

the Sentry Tournament of Champions at the intriguing Plantation Course at Kapalua in Hawaii. Spectators there and television viewers everywhere would surely find their enjoyment of the tournament enhanced if they were deeply informed about, or studied, the nuances of the Bill Coore/Ben Crenshaw design. 

But I’m thinking not only of the awareness viewers would find if the various networks employed somebody week in and week out who really knew design, I’m also thinking of the increased enjoyment recreational golfers would have if they understood more about the design at courses they play. Forgive me for sounding churlish in this time when golfers salivate about power and genuflect over the latest, hottest, greatest driver. But I maintain that golfers would enjoy their rounds more if they grasped what architects were trying to accomplish.

You're not venturing outdoors into the arctic tundra, so you'll want to read the whole thing, including this:

Uneven lies make the golfer think. Slopes carry a ball away. Miss a shot by a little on ground that undulates and you will have effectively missed it by a lot. The golfer who plays, oh, Royal Dornoch or the Old Course in Scotland, and who doesn’t fully understand the effect of slope, will miss so much. To appreciate architecture is to flat-out (excuse me) get more out of the game. 

That’s my view and I’m sticking to it, even if it takes only a minute to realize when a playing companion’s eyes are glazing over while I inform him about the details of a hole’s design. I try not to be a design bore but I do succumb. I want to say, “Come on, there’s so much more to golf than how far you can carry a drive. How about trying to sling a low bullet into that slope on the right so that the ball will carom back into the middle of the fairway and run along?”

For those that really want to embrace this, he even thoughtfully provides a reading list.

A New Feature -  Shack is now taking a page from my book, letting others do the heavy lifting.  Specifically, he's doing a daily post of the best of Instagram.... I know, kinda beneath him (but not me), but lots of good stuff.  How about this from the first batch to cheer us up with dreams of Magnolia Lane:

The second post has a new 19th hole at Kingston Heath, as well as this photo:

That's Tommy Armour being presented the Claret Jug after his win at Carnoustie in 1931. And while Hunter Mahan has fallen on hard times, he did post this lovely note from a young man capturing so much about our game:

Do click through, because the viral video of the dog sledding is the cure for what ails you....

Just Asking - Alan Shipnuck continues to amuse via his Twitter feed.....

What's your favorite non-Pebble stop in the West Coast Swing? - @BrianSheeny 

It has to be Kapalua, and it kills me not to be there for the first time in forever. But my kids are on break and I'm helping the assistant coach of my daughter's middle school hoops team and we have a big game next Tuesday so I couldn't swing it. I love the Plantation Course, which requires so much imagination and geometry, and the relaxed vibe, small field and lack of fans makes it a great week to get work done. There is also excellent observational reporting available poolside at the Ritz Carlton.

Hard to argue with that, except for the existential question of whether the event is considered part of the West Coast Swing....

Would that we could ignore these kinds of questions:

Do you predict any decline in ratings or fan interest for this season with pro golfers like Spieth, Thomas, and Johnson playing golf with such an unpopular President? -

Michael (@MayMasters)

I would expect a ratings decline only if those guys start teeing it up with Colin Kaepernick. Let's face it, there is a heckuva lot of overlap in the demographics of golfers and of Republicans. Rory McIlroy got a bit of blowback for pegging it with the President back in February but since then half the PGA Tour has done so and no one seems too bothered. I think part of Trump's appeal to his voters is that he is a walking, talking wish fulfillment. A lot of them probably think that if they had f*@# you money they would act exactly like him. And a lot of golfers probably tell themselves that if they became president they would try to play every weekend with all the cool kids on the PGA Tour, which is more or less what Trump has done.

I'm so old that I remember that when POTUS invites you somewhere you go, regardless of whether there's a "D" or "R" after his name....

This is a good one, both the "Q" and the "A":

Who wins major first: Fowler or Cantlay? - @ScottMichaux 

Cantlay is the sexier answer and he certainly has a polished game that should translate to the majors, but to win a major you have to lose one first, or maybe a couple. Fowler has already been there a bunch of times, so you have to think at some point he'll apply those lessons.

That is so very true, except when it isn't..... This one is also of interest:

Do you think there's a place for a reboot of Shells Wonderful World of Golf or something like that? I imagine it taking place on architecturally significant golf courses to give us a better look at these layouts. - Chris (@no_gimmes)

Stellar handle, by the way. Oh gawd yes, it's baffling to me that Golf Channel hasn't rebooted this concept. How about Jordan vs. JT at Cypress Point? Rory vs. Dustin at Pine Valley? TIGER VS. PHIL at National Golf Links? The possibilities are f'ing endless.

Alan, sucking up to the rubes is beneath you....  More on point, isn't this essentially what Tiger tried back in the day?  The matches with Duval, Sergio and the like under the lights... 

I think the bigger problem is that with the Tour not leaving an off-season, there's not all that much need for more golf on TV.  But yes, if you're going to do this, make the venue part of the appeal.

"Do you think Tiger will mark his ball or be a backstop guy like the rest of the Tour? Hard to imagine him helping his competitors at a major. #AskAlan" - @AlwaysOnIn2 

Stellar handle, by the way. The old Tiger would definitely have marked his ball. But this new, cuddlier version, who is so eager to be liked by his peers and accepted as an elder statesman? Hard to say. I do hope he can still access that inner hardass – it's a big part of what made him so dominant.

Though, as I noted during The Hero, JT failed to backstop for him.... I had an e-mail exchange on that subject with Shack, who thought Tiger did the practice stroke thing that told JT he wanted him to mark his ball.  Something to watch for at Torrey for sure...

This is just great:

If you could replace any hole on any course with another, what would they be? - @WilliamHardy

Three of the worst finishing holes in golf come on a trio of the most celebrated courses: Cypress Point, Augusta National and Bethpage Black. Rather than a hypothetical airlift of another hole, I have simple solutions for each. Fifty or sixty yards offshore from Cypress's 18th tee box is a large rock outcropping on which, legend has it, Alister MacKenzie wanted to site the tee. But building a bridge over the raging Pacific scotched that idea. (Nevermind the regulatory or common sense issues of building a bridge into a marine preserve – this is fantasy!) If CPC built that tee and widened the fairway a bit the 18th would suddenly be utterly spectacular. Augusta could also fix its problem relatively easily by switching the 18th and 15th holes. It'd be an easy walk from the current 14th green to the current 18th tee. After putting out there the players could take a high-speed train in an underground tunnel back to the current 16th tee. After playing that hole and the next one it's a quick jaunt from the 17th green to the tee box of what is now 15 but should be 18, creating the most exciting finishing hole on the planet. Bethpage is another easy fix: just proceed directly from 14 to play 17 and 18, then rechristen the current 15th and 16th as the new finish. Those are incredible holes and offer the smashmouth closing stretch that course deserves.

Whatever he's on, I hope he brought enough to share.  Joking aside, I'm not sure that actually fixes the 18th at Cypress, though it's been a long time since I've been allowed inside those hallowed gates.

I disagree with him on Black 18, as it's a daunting hole for mere mortals,  Admittedly, it works not all for the big boys, as Lucas Glover made clear.  As for ANGC, their home hole seems to work better since they pushed back the tee and created that chute.   

There's a bit more, including this that's become an amusing perennial:

What forfeit are you willing to do if (when) Europe wins the Ryder Cup? #SorryNotSorry #RyderCup18 - Andrew (@ANorrby) 

I'm willing to quit Twitter. In fact, that will be advisable.

Yeah, he's all-in on that one....  But all in good fun.

Stay warm and I'll try to check in now and again.