Back To Business

Hope you were able to productively use your free time the last five days.... my longest vacation from blogging in forever.

So, shall we pick up where we left off?

Tiger Beat - When last we spoke, Tiger was in the process of missing the cut at Riviera....badly.  Mike Bamberger has an interesting take on yesterday's action, focused on the most vital of things:

The world — the golf world — has changed since then. Justin Thomas, for one thing, playing right in front of Woods on Thursday, has come to the fore. Another new thing (to

my in-person eyes) is Woods's black Monster Energy golf bag, with his name on it in small block white letters and nine lime-green logo Ms, in a in a typeface one could call Freddy Krueger Serif. Tour yardage books have more green information in them than they did even three years ago, and Woods on Thursday spent more time looking at his yardage book with a putter in hand than I had ever noticed before.

OK, I don't know what Freddy Krueger Serif means either, and yet I'm amused.

This will surely sound weird, but Woods's Thursday round showed a golfer who had to work too hard to end the day where he began it, at even par. As he was signing his scorecard, Justin Thomas was on a riser, talking to reporters. He had shot a three-under 67, despite four bogeys. Well, that's what happens when you're playing with a free mind and a free swing. You're not trying to play perfect golf. You know there are going to be bad holes and more good holes. Woods is not there yet. Whether he has enough golf left in him to get back there is a question only his golf schedule over the next few years will answer.

Not weird at all.... His short game has been the only thing keeping him from scores that begin with 8's in each of his seven competitive rounds.

Tiger himself had this to say about his fused game:

“I can’t create the same angles I used to be able to create naturally,” Woods said.

“Obviously I’m fused, so it’s a little bit different and I’m starting to learn what it feels like under the gun. Some of the shots I like to play, they’re not the same as they used to be and that part I’m going to have to learn. It’s not something that I’m used to because I’ve never felt like this, but this is the new norm.”

As is typical when Tiger speaks of his game, I'm left scratching my head.  But even par puts him T23, the high water mark for this comeback.  

Ryan Lavner sees improvement and goes to the videotape ShotLink for support:

It was by far his most impressive round in this nascent comeback. 

Playing in a steady 20-mph wind, Woods was better in all facets of the game Thursday at PGA National. Better off the tee. Better with his irons. And better on and around the “scratchy” greens. 

He hung tough to shoot 70 – four shots better than his playing partner, Patton Kizzire, a two-time winner this season and the current FedExCup leader – and afterward Woods said that it was a “very positive” day and that he was “very solid.”

This seems to be the strongest case:

Officially, he hit only seven of 14 fairways and just 10 greens, but some of those misses off the tee were a few paces into the rough, and some of those iron shots finished just off the edge of the green. 

The more telling stat was this: His proximity to the hole (28 feet) was more than an 11-foot improvement over his first two starts this year. And also this: He was 11th among the early starters in strokes gained-tee to green, which measures a player’s all-around ball-striking. Last week, at Riviera, he ranked 121st.

He'll be the centerpiece of today's Golf Channel coverage, so pull up an easy chair and draw you own conclusions.

The State of The Game -  A somewhat interesting few days of chatter about our little game, with the lead played by Mr. Jack.

Jack is an unofficial host this week, and recounted this conversation with the USGA's Mike Davis:

Nicklaus said he discussed the matter with U.S. Golf Association CEO Mike Davis over dinner Sunday night.

“Mike said, ‘We’re getting there. We’re going to get there. I need your help when we get there.'” Nicklaus said. “I said, ‘That’s fine. I’m happy to help you. I’ve only been yelling at you for 40 years.’ 1977 is the first time I went to the USGA.” 

Nicklaus said sarcastically he assumed that meant the USGA would be studying the issue for ‘another 10 years or so.’

Heh.  I don't remember Jack ever being that snarky, but I like it....

Theb Randall Mell got him to name names....well, one name at least:

“Titleist controls the game,” Nicklaus said. “And I don't understand why Titleist would be against it. I know they are, but I don't understand why you would be against it. They make probably the best product. If they make the best product, whether it's 20 percent shorter ... What difference would it make? Their market share isn't going to change a bit. They are still going to dominate the game."

Titleist representatives could not be immediately reached by Golf Channel.

Ummmmm...Jack, are your security arrangements adequate?

But I should note that while everyone if focused on the ball, their solutions are not all consistent.  To me it would seem that bifurcation is the path of least resistance, and the R&A would seem to agree, at least it seems that way from the recent comments of Martin Slumbers.

Mike Davis has made repeated statements that it's not just the men's elite game, and Jack's vision has been to play different balls based upon the length of the course.

Nicklaus said he would like to see golf courses and golf balls rated, so that different courses could be played with different rated balls. For example, a ball rolled back “70 percent” would fit courses rated for that ball. He said players could still play those courses with a 100 percent ball, but handicapping could be factored into the game so players could compete using differently rated balls. 

“And so then if a guy wants to play with a 90 or 100 percent golf ball, it makes it shorter and faster for him to play,” Nicklaus said. 

Nicklaus believes rating balls like that would make shorter courses more playable again. He believes creating differently rated balls would also make more money for ball manufacturers. 

“Then you don't have any obsolete golf courses.” Nicklaus said. “Right now we only have one golf course that's not obsolete, as I said earlier [Augusta National], in my opinion.”

More on that one course below, but doesn't Jack's plan seem needlessly complicated?

Jack also believe that the ball is the major culprit in slow play, which to me is a bit of a stretch.  I guess if the logic is that the longer ball has resulted in faster green speeds, but I'm reluctant to mix these issues together.

Not that slow play isn't an issue, there's just far more involved than the ball.  You all remember my man-crush on Geoff Ogilvy, well he's back with a typically thoughtful piece on the things that take the fun out of golf.   First up, well of course:

The first is obvious and one that will no doubt resonate with all of you: Slow play. It is the one thing that affects me most during an event. Everyone has a natural pace, so some people are just naturally slow in everything they do. My father is one of those. But even if that is the case, there is – at least to me – little excuse for playing golf slowly. If you do all the little things between shots quickly, you can almost take as long as you want over a shot and not fall behind. 

On Tour, the most frustrating aspect of slow play is being ready to hit, then looking over to see the guy with the honour just about to start his pre-shot routine. In other words, he has been doing something else entirely at a time when he should have been working out his yardage and figuring what club he needs to use. It is just so thoughtless and selfish. And it drives me nuts.

Good thing he wasn't paired with J.B. at Torrey.... or Kevin Na, who he mentions specifically.  Did you catch him last week with his JB-esque tap-in?  If not, Shack has the skinny on his trip to the woodshed courtesy of retired cricketer Kevin Pietersen.  When you've lost the retired cricketers.....

But back to Ogilvy, who has so much more:

Architecturally, my biggest pet peeve is what I call “double hazards.” For example, a fairway bunker directly behind a tree. That sounds ridiculous. But I see it so often, even on “great” courses where a tree planted 40-years ago has grown to be simply inappropriate. Valderrama in Spain has a few of those. 

The idea of any hazard is to test the recovery skills of players. But put a tree in front of that hazard and you bring everyone down to the same level. Everyone is reduced to chipping out sideways. When I see that happening I always wonder why the bunker and tree are not replaced by a small water hazard, where you take a one-shot penalty and move on. That is, in effect, what has been created by “doubling” the bunker and the tree. So yes, have a tree. Or a bunker. But not both.

 Give it a read, as he's the most thoughtful player out there.

Handicaps, Standardized - The last time we trod this ground was when the USGA disallowed the posting of solo rounds, but now comes the details of our Brave New World:

There is, however, a flaw in the system. Specifically, there isn’t just one system for

calculating handicaps. While the USGA formula is used by the largest number of golfers worldwide—roughly 10 million of the 16 million who have handicaps—it coexists with five other systems, none of which easily translates with one another. In Great Britain & Ireland, there’s the Council of National Golf Unions (CONGU), which computes handicaps incrementally off a limited number of rounds. In Europe, they use a variation of CONGU called European Golf Association. Australia, South Africa and Argentina use their own systems similar to the USGA’s. Suddenly, the virtue of having a handicap isn’t quite so virtuous. 

Enter the World Handicap System (WHS), announced jointly on Tuesday by the USGA and R&A, the result of six years of conversations, deliberations and mathematical modeling among the statistical gurus who oversee the current formulas. The goal? To clear up confusion and create a single Handicap Index that’s easy to obtain and maintain, and is truly portable.

The biggest surprise for most is the absence of the R&A on that list of governing organizations.  

Fact is that the new system will mostly mirror the existing U.S. system, though it will be based on the best eight (currently it's ten) of your most recent twenty posted scores, which should skew us all a bit lower.  Sandbaggers are hereby put on notice that they'll have to work a bit harder, but we all know they have it in them.

Augusta Being Augusta - While we were away, news broke of another hole to be lengthened at ANGC.  Fortunately it's not the 13th:

Big changes could be coming soon to Augusta National Golf Club’s fifth hole, according to preliminary site plans filed Jan. 30 with the Augusta Planning and Development

Department.

The tee box for Masters Tournament play on the 455-yard, par-4 hole could be pushed back an estimated 20-30 yards across Old Berckmans Road. The new tee would alleviate congestion at the fourth green and current fifth tee, which are just a few yards apart. 

Old Berckmans Road has been closed to through traffic since 2015, but the plans call for the road to curve around the area that will be used as a tee box.

Shack had this cryptic take on it:

From the purely Jones-MacKenzie point of view, it will be interesting to see if the fairway bunkers and slopes require recontouring to retain the original dynamics intended to reflect some Old Course strategies.

Interestingly, two guys with four green jackets are OK with the change:

“I’m a big fan of making the hard holes harder and the easy holes easier,” Mickelson said Sunday at the Genesis Open. “So making No. 5 harder, which is perennially a difficult par, or should be one of the harder par-4s out there, I’m a big fan of. What I’m not a fan of is taking a hole like 7 and making it the second-toughest par on the golf course. I think that’s a mistake. I think making 5 more difficult is not.”

Phil has been consistent on this subject, and this guy concurs:

Jordan Spieth believes the proposed changes would force driver into players’ hands on what he described as a “3-wood hole” given the pitch of the fairway, and added that firm and fast conditions could potentially push a longer fifth hole to the brink of playability. 

“It would make an already very difficult hole even harder,” Spieth said. “If the greens are firm and fast, then it’s a pretty dicey hole given how severe that green is. But when you can still land a mid-iron on and stop it on the back of that green, then it makes sense. So I think they’d probably do a mix of the tees.”

Though I have no idea what he means by that last bit, given that ANGC famously will only allow two tee boxes on each hole, which have to accommodate Phil, Jordan and Condi Rice.  Phil drives it 320 ans Condi drives it, oh maybe 95 yards, so you see the issues....

I'll leave you there....  I've got more, so perhaps some bonus weekend blogging is in order.  The key word being maybe.....