Thursday Threads

Back in UL World Headquarters, though likely not for long....

Distance Musings - Shack jumps all over some interesting tidbits from South of the Border, though I think he over-interprets the import (and, no doubt caught up in the accolades after unveiling his redesigned website, fails to provide a link, leaving your humble blogger at the mercy of Google)::

The story is of particular note given that we are not far from hearing pros howl about the awful adjustment period should the governing bodies ever roll out a distance rollback.

But here they are all on the record about Trackman and the relatively easy process of adjusting thanks to launch monitors.

“I think this is going to be the best week for (Trackman’s) branding, for sure, versus any other week,” said Justin Thomas, who won his seventh title in his last 30 PGA Tour starts last week in the Honda Classic. “It's very, very dependent on the shot you're hitting and the club you're hitting, but when you hit those drivers up in the air, they go pretty far.”

That last bit if from Steve DiMeglio's USA Today piece, which is quite interesting on its own.  Geoff closes with this:

That's all you need! Of course, players will tell us that a Masters ball would be impossible because of the long adjustment period.

Given that Geoff is the first guy to dump on this event as a meaningless money grab, I'm surprised he's being so inconsistent.  And, we cal all agree, that today's pampered Tour pros will whine about any little old thing...

But....and it's a meaningful but, the guys have to make adjustments for conditions every week, this no doubt being among the more significant.  The point is that watching how they adjust for a meaningless money grab is entertaining....  But for the Masters, I want them at their best and fully prepared.  I'm perfectly happy to have the ball rolled back, but I don't like the idea of a major or Masters ball.  If we're gonna roll it back for the big boys, then let's roll it back for all professional events.

One last item to add to this mix, as William McGirt voices an issue that gets lost in the distance debate:

“I told them, ‘Look, if you honestly believe that the ball doesn’t go any farther than it did 20 years ago, you’re in denial,’” McGirt told TMOF. “If that’s the case, why am I hitting my 7-iron 10 yards farther in the air today than when I was 23 years old? They finally admitted the ball goes farther. The big thing is, I just wish they’d make it curve again. Let foul balls be foul balls.”

I'm not a rocket scientist, so I don't pretend to understand the physics of ball flight.  But we tend to speak only pf the ball going further, but the fact that it spins far less could be as or more significant.

Mexican Musings - Golf Channel's Rex Hoggard considers this week's event under this header:

WGC-Mexico deserves better spot on the schedule

This is seemingly non-controversial, as breaking up the Florida swing with a side-trip to Mexico is obviously not sub-optimal, though Rex offers up some howlers in making his case.

Those mixed feelings were somewhat mitigated by the event’s shift to Mexico City last

year, a move that finally put the “World” back in World Golf Championship. The WGCs might have brought together the game’s best from across the globe, but they did so with a distinctly American lineup since the concept’s inception in the late 1990s. 

Until the WGC-HSBC Champions in China was added to the rotation, the events had with a few exceptions been played in the U.S., which made the move to Mexico both encouraging and overdue. 

The best version of professional golf being played in a region that had been void of top-caliber events checked off all the right boxes and was exactly what Benjamin Salinas, the CEO of Grupo Salinas, had in mind.

Where to begin?  Those bullying Americans.....  But let's remember that when they moved these events outside the U.S., it wasn't just the Yanks that failed to show.  And Rex, far from spreading the gospel and growing the game, these are exclusive moneygrabs that help pereptuate the closed shop that is the PGA Tour.

This is even more vexing:

This week’s field at Chapultepec features 45 of the top 50 players in the Official World Golf Ranking, which is hardly reason for concern, but the no-shows are conspicuous. Rory McIlroy, Henrik Stenson and Jason Day all passed on the event, while Hideki Matsuyama and Brooks Koepka are out with injuries. It’s always easy in these situations to question the player, but this is more about the schedule than it is an issue of individual motivation.

What's his point?  No matter where you put this on the calendar, a few players are gonna opt out.  In this case it's only three, unless you think in future years there will be no injuries...

And then this?

The dramatic makeover of the Tour schedule beginning with the 2018-19 season will feature the WGC-Mexico Championship moving to the back end of the West Coast swing, but with fields in California and Arizona enjoying a renaissance in recent years, a post-Los Angeles date likely won't be a dramatic improvement over the event’s current date.

Again, Rex, what's your point?

Exemption Musings -  Like your humble blogger, I'm sure you can't contain yur excitement over Tony Romo being offered an exemption into a PGA Tour event.  I'm sure he's working feverishly to prepare himself for his moment in the sun.  Shall we check in with the lad?

Bad news, Tony Romo fans: your favorite quarterback disappeared at the start of the fourth quarter. 

The good news? The professional sporting event in question was a golf tournament on the Northern Texas Players Tour — and, even better, Romo still has three weeks before he has to tee it up in his first official PGA Tour event, the Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship, March 22-25 in the Dominican Republic. That's a lot of practice time! 

Still, there's no denying that Romo's latest tuneup went poorly, as he withdrew from the mini-tour event after a rain-delayed 27 holes to catch a flight, according to the PGA Tour's Sean Martin. 

The former Cowboys quarterback got off to a rocky start at Bridlewood Golf Club, making bogey on his first hole and a quintuple bogey 10 on No. 2. After pars on No. 3 and 4, Romo tripled the par-4 5th and bogeyed No. 6 to reach 10 over.

Ya got that, Romo fans?  And yes, I'm speaking to both of you....

He takes a spot in the field froma struggling professional, and then he can't even hang around long enough to turn in a card.   

Loudmouth Musings - Shane Ryan tackles the Justin Thomas fan eviction in amusing fashion, giving vent to both his inner angel and devil.  I know, which is which?

First, the set-up:

On the 16th hole at the Honda Classic on Sunday, fighting for a win he’d secure three holes and one playoff later, Justin Thomas got fed up with a fan who openly rooted for

him to hit his ball in the hazard. So fed up, he went the extra step of having the guy tossed from the gallery. Thomas seemed fairly proud of it at the time, blowing the smoke off his own revolvers with a parting shot that seemed to come from the climax of a rejected movie script: “Enjoy your day, buddy. You’re done.” After the round, still remorseless, he told reporters that the unruly fan “had to go home.”

That's quite good, though to his credit JT felt remorseful the next day.... But this is equally engaging:

DEVIL: You’ve gone soft, and I’m disgusted. There’s no debate that Thomas was in the wrong. Two weeks ago you wrote about how professional golfers are, by necessity, some of the most selfish people in the world, and Thomas clearly fits the bill. He’s another one of America’s Very Special Golf Boys, the kind of kid who literally grew up on a country club, privileged to the teeth as the scion of a golf family, and never had to do anything but play. He certainly never had to learn to take criticism or real-life adversity. So, predictably, he became the kind of entitled snowflake that felt no compunction about demanding that an entire golf course, with thousands of people, serve as his own safe space.

I feel strongly both ways, though I have no problem with that loudmouth being booted (though I hasten to add that it's not much of a deterrent).

I've come to believe that the required silence as a player steps up to his ball is provocative in the same sense that a gun-free zone is a siren song to the crazies and disaffected.  At least in the presence of alcohol...

Less successful is Shack's take on it:

The Golf Tournament Attendee’s Guide To Determining If You Have Loser Tendencies

Loser tendencies?  Was he worried about their self-esteem?

It's all fairly obvious stuff, and far from Geoff's best efforts.  Though this last bit is a good image, and he once again grabs the perfect image from his voluminous files:

You go back home after the tournament and rewind the telecast to hear yourself taunt a player. Actually, that’s when you have bigger issues than mere loser status.

He seems to be an Oriole fan, so we'll acknowledge that he's got a high tolerance for pain....

Tiger Musings -  I cited Geoff above for over-interpreting, now his buddy Doug Ferguson is guilty of the same offense:

MEXICO CITY (AP) Tiger Woods is bigger than ever in golf, and he already was plenty

big when he was winning at a rate never seen. 

The Honda Classic broke its attendance record last week with a confirmed 224,624 spectators over seven days. The tournament attributed the record increase to the return of Woods and the drama of a sudden-death playoff won by Justin Thomas. 

Woods no longer moves the needle in golf. He is the needle. 

Even when he finishes 12th.

Oh stop already....  Yes, Tiger is a big story as he comes back, in fact I'm unable to think of a comeback story that's equivalent.  But the game did fine when he was laid up and will continue to do so after he inevitably retires....  

Playoff Musings - That Shack guy has a follow-up post on the change to the U.S. Open playoff format, with two points, the first being this:

We've already had a lot of exciting playoff golf in 2018 and the sudden death format clearly works well for the PGA Tour. In considering the new U.S. Open policy of 2-hole aggregate playoffs, there was prevailing desire to avoid sudden death playoffs at major championships stemmed in large part from years of being reminded by the USGA that an 18-holer was the only proper way to determine a national champion. When Far Hills reduced the U.S. Women's Open to three hole aggregate no one minded because of the success seen in other playoff formats of three or more holes.

Landing on two holes, when the other majors and The Players play three, could damage the U.S. Open's already bruised stature. Following the Chambers Bay and Erin Hills experiments, any differentiation in stature could further undercut the U.S. Open's identity. 

On that front, he Players went to the 17th hole in sudden death and no one felt good about determining a winner that way. It was one more reason The Players was not up to the level of a major. The PGA Tour changed the format to three holes and it produced one of the most thrilling playoffs in modern golf history when Rickie Fowler won in 2015. The tournament, as a result, has more stature because of its playoff format.

 I agree completely, though with a quibble about the Players' analogy.

As He notes, for years, nay decades, the Far Hills suits have told us that a Monday playoff was necessary to ensure the worthiness of the champion.  Silly me, I actually believed them....  They bowed to the pressures of television and the like for the women's and seniors, but for a long time held the line on the most important golf tournament of the year.

I'm not going to re-litigate that decision, having made my feelings known in Tuesday's first post.  But having decided to capitulate on their flagship event, they willingly choose a format obviously inferior to other majors and even one non-major.  Just bizarre and quite off-putting, at least to this purist.

I agree that the Players did well by expanding to the three-hole format, though I think that No. 17 is just a far too quirky hole for sudden death....  Also, that three-hole stretch just works perfectly, finishing in front of the large grandstands on No. 18.

This brings me to a second point: the next two U.S. Open venues feature a par-3 17th hole. And there is something unsettling about starting a playoff with a one-shotter in the same way architects avoid opening a course with a par-3. Shinnecock and Pebble's 17th holes are great holes but tough places to start, especially if you've been sitting around a while.

Satisfyingly, we'll be finishing U.S. Open Sunday's more often than not. But will it be satisfying with just two holes?

Yeah, that could be awkward, though I haven't read anywhere that they're committed to those two holes.  Given that they could cart the players and caddies, they can almost pick at will which holes to play.

He does repeat his Masters speculation, and you might want to take a look at his back-and-forth with Matt Adams on the subject.  As for me, I just want to know where I get one of those Shack masks?

Global Warming Climate Change Musings - 

 SHOT: Snowfalls are just a thing of the past.

               The Independent, March 20, 2000

CHASER: Pictures from a possibly familiar location:

Climate Change, is there anything it can't do?