Tuesday Tidbits

Just a few trifles for you this morning, as I'm off on a daytrip in a bit.  

Tour Players Behaving Badly - It's out raison d'être, for sure....  It's funny how images stay with one.  I remember the 18th hole at Olympic, as Webb Simpson was trying to close out that U.S. Open.  He had a funky lie next to a bunker, and called a rules official over to see if there was any basis for relief.  The official turned him down, and before preparing to play his shot Webb looked him in the eye and said, "Thank you."  

SHOT:  So, it turns out that I missed the best part of Sunday's telecast:

Now it's hard to really follow te discussion, so fortunately we have this:

But recorded footage of his final double bogey of the tournament is causing a bit of controversy. 

On the 11th hole, Reed hit his approach shot on the far right side of the green, and found his ball among the brush where TV cables were also present. A rules official was called over, and Reed requested relief because he claimed he would have been standing on a cable (power lines, cables and telephone lines are generally considered temporary

moveable obstructions during tournament play, and players are entitled to a club-length of relief under Rule 24-2b). 

But the official refused to grant Reed the relief, arguing that he would be taking an abnormal stance. 

"Not if I take a 7-iron," Reed replies in the video. He then calls for his 7-iron from his caddie as an off-camera voice says, "Anyone else would get a drop out of there any day of the week." 

"I guess my name needs to be Jordan Spieth, guys," Reed responds dryly.

The rules official is unmoved. He tells Patrick to play away. "That's fine," Reed replies. "I want a third opinion. I'm allowed that." 

It's unclear whether he's joking, because he then addresses his ball. From off camera, the rules official asks, "You want a third opinion?" Reed backs off and responds, "Yeah I do. I do want a third opinion. From an unbiased source."

Now everyone is of course focused on the invocation of Jordan's name, curiously personal given their rather successful partnership in Ryder and Prez Cups.  To me, it's the allegation of bias that achieves Peak Patrick....

CHASER:  Were you glued to the match-play bracket show?  I know, Roger Clemens, what a get!  But even The Rocket knew this was interesting:

Naturally, a day after citing Jordan Spieth in a whiny effort to get a free drop, Patrick Reed has been drawn into the same match play pod as the man whose name he invoked in rather pathetic fashion, as Brendan Porath notes.

Popcorn ready.  I can't seem to find which day they'll play, but I'm sure I'll have that for you tomorrow.

I do hope the schedule date is changed with the schedule revisions next year, as the fallout from being right before the Masters is a tad heavy:

ORLANDO, Fla. – Five of the top 64 players in the world will skip next week’s WGC-Dell Match Play. 

Justin Rose, Rickie Fowler, Henrik Stenson, Brooks Koepka and Adam Scott all will miss the second WGC event of the year, held next week at Austin Country Club. 

As a result, the last man into the field is world No. 69 Luke List. Kevin Na, Charles Howell III, Joost Luiten and Keegan Bradley also got into the field.

At least we have Keegs.... His cage match with Jiminez a few years ago was the best thing that ever happened at Dove Mountain.

Needle, Moved - All those folks that didn't show up to watch the Olympics have tuned in to Bay Hill and Innisbrook:

ORLANDO, Fla., March 19, 2018 – Record viewership of the PGA TOUR continued this weekend for NBC Sports Group at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. Sunday’s final-round coverage on NBC (2-6:45 p.m. ET) delivered a 3.6 overnight rating, +136% vs. 2017 and the highest-rated final round at this event in six years. Combined with last week’s final round viewership at the Valspar Championship (5.1 overnight rating) these rank as the two highest-rated final-round PGA TOUR telecasts (non-majors) on any broadcast network since the 2015 Wyndham Championship. Golf Channel’s Sunday final-round lead-in coverage earned a .97 overnight rating, the highest at this event in five years. Across NBC and Golf Channel’s coverage, more than 12 million minutes were streamed, +683% vs. 2017.

Those are some wacky numbers for golf.   CBS must be drooling over their expectations for Augusta.

Rory Unplugged - Like much of what comes from John Feinstein these days, this post mortem on Bay Hill fails to deliver the promised good:

Rory McIlroy strikes the right balance between confidence and comfort at Bay Hill

Note to John: They all look confident in the week they win....  The hard part is discerning whether it's sustainable.  probably the best of it his tale of putter woes:

He hit a low at the 2016 PGA Championship at Baltusrol. The problems there, he said,

were technical and mental. “I had a two-way miss going with the putter,” he said. “It had everything to do with my grip, but a lot to do with what was inside my head. None of it was good. If anyone else had hit the ball the way I did the first two days at Baltusrol, they’d have been leading the tournament. I missed the cut.” 

So, McIlroy went back to square one. He changed putters and he changed putting coaches, going from Dave Stockton to Phil Kenyon. It worked—for a while. Two weeks after starting over, McIlroy won in Boston. Then he won in Atlanta and played very well a week later at the Ryder Cup at Hazeltine National. 

Since then, for all intents and purposes—nothing. Last June at TPC River Highlands, he used three different putters in four days. By the end of the summer he knew he needed a break, physically and mentally. His rib still wasn’t 100 percent and neither was anything about his game.

 There's a few good quotes from the man, including this confirming that which his play makes clear:

“Some of it was adjusting to the greens over here,” he said last week. “I always play well in the desert. There’s rarely any wind, and I’m comfortable on the greens there. There were some windy days here where I didn’t feel comfortable and something was off with my swing; not way off, but off enough. The margin for error for all of us is so narrow. That’s why we all say, ‘We’re close,’ when we’re struggling. It feels like a small gap, but finding your way across that gap can be difficult.”

How a man grows up in County Down without playing well in the wind remains one of life's enduring mysteries....  

Back To The Physio -  Josh Sens has an interesting feature on the prevalence of back injuries in out little game:

"Just in general, the swing has gotten shorter, faster and tighter," says Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee, who fleshes out that thesis in his book The Anatomy of

Greatness: Lessons from the Best Golf Swings in History. "When you do that, you're basically turning the body into a time bomb, and sooner or later the spokes are going to start busting off the hub." 

Although Chamblee cites many names in support of his argument, Exhibits A and B for him are Tiger Woods and Michelle Wie, the two most soaring talents of their time. Woods has been under the knife more times than the guy in the Operation board game, while Wie's litany of injuries might lead you to believe that she's a running back. 

That one is fond of twerking and the other has a penchant for jumping out of airplanes may provide a partial explanation. But it doesn't change the fact that both superstars fell prey, to differing degrees, to what Chamblee describes as a detrimental drift in golf instruction. That vogue, which first gained traction in the "80s, called for players to maintain a flexed right knee during the backswing, the better to build a stable base for the shoulders and torso to turn against, loading the body like a spring. "Not only is that a bad way to hit a golf ball, it's also a very good way to get hurt," Chamblee says. "Look at Michelle's swing when she first came out, before she started making changes. It was long and fluid, with a full release of the lower body. It was a thing of beauty, and she could have played until she was 65."

Interesting examples, for sure.  Thing is, Tiger came out with the perfect golf body, but the swing was always violent.  I always thought that his left knee would end his career, but the back should have been my second choice.

Read it if only for the tale of Phillip Francis, the best player you've never heard of.