Your Friday Frisson

Back in the saddle at Unplayable Lies World HQ, so what would you like to discuss?  OK, well perhaps in a minute....

Upon Further Review - For a brief shining moment, DJ stood firm against the forces of evil.... But then he decided he really likes 433-yard Par-3's:

"It's not like we are dominating golf courses," Johnson said. "When was the last time you saw someone make the game too easy? I don't really understand what all the debate is about because it doesn't matter how far it goes; it is about getting it in the hole."

That last bit is true, but about the former... You, Sir, never hit more than a 6-iron into a Par-4 last season, so that kinda sorta sounds like, you know, dominating golf courses....

This was DJ a mere week ago:

"I don't mind seeing every other professional sport, they play with one ball. All the pros play with the same ball," Johnson said. "In baseball, the guys that are bigger and

stronger, they can hit a baseball a lot further than the smaller guys. ... I think there should be some kind of an advantage for guys who work on hitting it far and getting that speed that's needed, so having a ball, like the same ball that everyone plays, there's going to be, you're going to have more of an advantage."

And in this latest round of comments, he reiterated that point:

If the ball is limited then it is going to limit everyone," he said. "I'm still going to hit it that much further than I guess the average Tour player."

Shack astutely picked up this relevant comment from Claude Harmon, DJ's swing coach:

I'VE WATCHED DUSTIN JOHNSON spend three hours a day in the gym, seven days a week. When he's out on tour, there are no days off. I've watched him pay the price. To want to roll back equipment and put him and guys like him in a box, so they're confined to old benchmarks, drives me nuts. Is there another sport as determined to go backward as golf? Dustin is almost a physical freak to begin with, 6-4 and unbelievably strong and coordinated. When he hits a 9-iron 185, the TV commentators usually react with a laugh and an incredulous tone, as if it's the equipment more than the unbelievable clubhead speed and technical precision. It's just wrong.

Just say no to the crazy!  It's alarmingly misguided for someone so knowledgeable....

Nothing in the arguments for bifurcation (or rolling back the ball, if you will), would reduce or eliminate DJ's distance advantage, as he himself acknowledges in the excerpts above.  DJ himself skirts the issue with the comparison to other sports, and to me baseball is the best example....  Over time, the game has taken steps to control the balance between hitting and pitching, such as reducing the height of the pitching mound after a mini-dead ball era in the 1960's.

More to the point, Claude is arguing against his client's interests.  The modern golf ball hurts DJ, as opposed to helping him.  He's the best ball-striker in the modern game, not only long but incredibly straight, but the advantages of superior ball-striking have been mitigated by the longer, lower-spinning golf ball...

As long as we've led with the freak of nature, we have this from Alan Shipnuck's weekly mailbag:

Is Dustin Johnson actually underrated? Among “active" players he is tied for fourth (with Furyk) with 17 PGA Tour W's, behind only Tiger, Phil and Ernie. - Gus (@CCGabriel) 

I agree with your premise that we have taken for granted Johnson's sustained excellence. Twenty PGA Tour victories pretty much guarantees induction into the Hall of Fame, and the way DJ is going he seems likely to hit that number this year. So we can safely call Dustin a great player. But he has the tools to be transcendent; whether he will get there will be determined by how many more major championships he picks off in the next decade or so.

 Not so much, methinks.  I think the word they're looking for is underachiever, which he was at least until 2016.  I'll concede that he seems to have settled down in the loving embrace of Clan Gretzky, complicated only by the freak injury at The Masters last year.  

Rory, Ready For His Close-Up - You've no doubt heard the building buzz, such as this:

"I'd love to win again, and I don't think there's any better feeling than winning a golf

tournament. But I don't feel like it's that far away. I've practiced and I've played and I've shot some really good scores over the past few weeks, but obviously it's different doing that to being out here on Thursday and really having a card in your hand. 

"But from everything that I've seen in practice and playing over the past few weeks, there's no reason to think that it's not that far away. 

After a rib injury and heart condition slowed him down in 2017, McIlroy is slated to play eight events preceeding this year's Masters — a heavy load for the Northern Irishman.

 I get that he's missed it while on the DL, but I'm still processing that bizarre caddie decision.....

Back to Alan's Twitter feed, where he was asked this relevant question:

I had a bet with a mate today that Rory McIlroy would get back to world number one within the next five years. Would you take a piece of my bet or be on the other side ? #askalan - @tigerpencil 

The math is not on your side, or Rory's. Right now there is a bigger gap between Dustin (11.23 average points per start) and Rory (5.35) than there is Rory and the 1,925th ranked player in the world, Fred Funk (.0004). First, McIlroy has to stay healthy after three injury-marred seasons, and he has to fix his putting. Even if both of these things happen, he will have to play at an exceptionally high level for a very long time.

Even at his best, Rory tended to have bursts of spellbinding golf followed by  inexplicable lulls. A newlywed who's turning 29 in a few months, he's likely to have a kid or two over the next five years, and how much is he going to want to grind at that point? I think Rory will continue to consolidate his focus around the majors, and if he picks off a couple in rapid succession that could propel him back to number one. Failing that, I don't think the week-in-week-out results will get him there.

Alan makes a good point about his personal life, though that seems more manageable these days....

as well as out of our field of expertise.

 As is the injury thing, though stress injuries for a guy that has bulked up that way are quite troubling...  But in terms of his game, if only it were just the putting.  But his wedge play and scrambling are way below par out there.  Let's see what he brings to the table, but I won't take him seriously until he puts a strong pro on the luggage.

That said, he makes some fair points about The Ryder Cup:

"Look, the Americans are very strong, and I think for the first time in a long time, they have a real cohesion. All the younger guys get along great. Jordan, J.T., Rickie, Brooks,

DJ, Patrick Reed, Daniel Berger, they all get on really, really well. There's a real core group of players there, young players, that will be around for a long time. So they are going to be very strong.

But if you look at Hazeltine last time and how they set that golf course up: Big wide fairways, no enough, pins in the middle of greens; it wasn't set up for the way the Europeans like to play. I think Paris will be a completely different kettle of fish, so I think it will be so different.

So I'm confident. I obviously need to make the team first, but everything being all well and good, I'll be on that team and I feel like we'll have a really good chance.

A bit early for that, no?

 Is Phil Still Phil? - We've dealt with two of the show ponies, shall we turn our focus to Lefty?  Shane Ryan has him on the couch, it seems:

I have a theory that Phil’s fixation on a logical worldview is self-administered bunkum.

It’s snake oil that he sells to himself. In real life, Phil Mickelson rides the currents of chaos. At the heart of his existence is not symmetry or structure, but pure reckless anarchy played out on the tenuous foundation of a hunch, and it’s evident to anyone who has watched him play golf for more than two minutes. 

(I’ve read before that he has a gambler’s soul, but that’s a euphemism. Phil is a literal gambler. Yes, he’s a metaphorical one on the golf course, but he’s an actual gambler in real life, so saying he has a gambler’s soul is a little like saying a Galapagos turtle has a Galapagos turtle’s soul.) 

Phil surfs the choppy waves of entropy, and trusts his fate to the stars more than any athlete I’ve ever seen. So how else to read his dogmatic insistence on the clear explanation, the sensible conclusion, except as a desire to impose order on a life whose rhythms depend on quantum bursts of intuition? I think he knows deep down that chaos is his personal truth, but he retains enough sanity to want to deny it, to live in a world governed by reason, to cast himself as a conservative rather than a radical.

I'm sorry, why did we go to the Galapagos?  Is that where we find those choppy waves of entropy?

It's worth reading, but is a tad excessive most of the time....  I'll show some self-control and not excerpt the part where he credits Phil for saving the Ryder Cup....This Mike Bamberger effort is a bit more grounded:

Which brings us to Phil. Phil Mickelson, now 47. He's a property-owner, an investor and a regular in the California desert. He played in The Hope when Hope was still around

and starting on Thursday he'll play in its successor, as the so-called tournament ambassador. It will be his first tournament in the U.S. since early October, when he finished in a tie for third in the Safeway Open, in Napa. If the Tour has an Arnold Palmer today, it is Phil. Long careers, flashy shots and shoes, patient signers, scores of wins, experts in the high arts of fan appreciation and TV readiness, relentless optimism. So here it comes, the old Hope, the 560th event of Mickelson's wildly entertaining career. He looks tanned, rested and ready, big and strong but also trim and flexible.

 Shack has this on Phil and his new BFF:

If Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal can still win majors, why can’t Tiger Woods or Phil

Mickelson? 

Practically ancient in the world of tennis, legends Federer and Nadal reasserted themselves in 2017. And that’s a sport where no one is supposed to win majors in their thirties. 

With both Woods and Mickelson seemingly healthy, 2018 will tell us if modern science, coupled with status and experience, will present us with fortysomethings battling twentysomethings for major glory. 

Golf has typically honored late-career runs by those of a certain vintage, but not since Hale Irwin at Medinah in 1990 have we seen a genuinely resurgent late-career win. That suggests the golf gods have decreed this is a young man’s (and young woman’s) game. Yet watching Woods lash away in December’s Hero World Challenge with speed, torque and a carefree aggressiveness we haven’t seen from him in years, there is an inclination to think time hasn’t completely run out on the 42-year-old who ushered in today’s power-friendly playing style.

They're two very different sets of circumstances, but it's the time of year when anything seems possible.

On the other hand, how about we watch them in their early starts and see where their games might be.  In particular, I'm a bit fixated on seeing Tiger handle that early morning tee time in San Diego, as well as how his chipping holds up with a scorecard in his pocket.

As for Lefty, I don't think anything matters until Augusta....

I'm going to get on with my day, and perhaps I might hit the keyboard over the weekend.  Might...