Late Week Lamentations

The holiday weekend is upon us... Strange, in that as recently as Tuesday it still seemed to be winter.

Bifurcation, For the Children - Does Phil Blackmar strike you as a goofy sort?  Well, this column on bifurcation will not disabuse you of that notion:

So, instead of penalizing the professional player for working hard and taking advantage of all that is available today, my argument has shifted to wanting bifurcation in order to 

When you get to the fork in the road, take it....

make the game easier, less costly and quicker for the average player. 

My idea for the average player begins with distance; the game is too darn long. Think about it: If a player gives up 80 yards off the tee and 45 yards on a 7-iron (180-135), it makes sense that this player should play from 7,400 – ((80 X 14) + (45 X 14) + (4 X 50)) = 5,450 yards to relate to the tour game. Even for the player who averages 250 off the tee and 160 with a 7-iron, the same reasoning yields a 6,400-yard course, give or take a little. But I’m not stopping there, equipment rules need to be relaxed as well. 

For instance, the allowable trampoline effect for amateurs should be increased with a focus to fit slower club-head speeds. The limit on the size of the club head needs to be removed and larger grooves for more control and spin should be allowed. Ball limits should be relaxed so the player with lower club-head speed gets more benefit from new ball technologies.

There's a whole lotta crazy contained in a mere three graphs, beginning with the concept of "penalizing" players.  hasn't he heard that any scenario for a rolled back ball would leave DJ and JT and the others as big boppers?

The middle graph is equally perplexing, given that most course have a range of tees available and the governing bodies having been airing Jack's "Play it Forward" PSA's.

As for that final graph, I get the sense that the higher the handicap, the more non-conforming the equipment specs in Phil's world.  I don't see that as especially helpful to the discussion.

The comes this whiplash inducing sentence:

Courses also need to quit watering so much, which would yield a more natural look as opposed to playing in the botanical gardens.

That's a great point... though it's not terribly on point.  Phil's thought is that firmer and faster will make courses play shorter, ignoring that around the greens F&F are that much harder for the high-handicap player.  Like many, I think Phil loses sight of that fact that its difficulty is golf's greatest virtue....

But at its heart, Phil's solution to the distance issue is to make the ball go further....Curious.

Amateurs, The Good, the Bad and the Twits -  If Aaron Wise seems like a grizzled veteran, keep you eyes on these kids:

A pair of high school seniors took down some of the game's best amateurs and won the 

Hammer (l) and Barber (r).

4th U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship on Wednesday. 

Eighteen-year-olds Cole Hammer and Garrett Barber downed Marc Dull and Chip Brooke 4 and 3 in the 18-hole final at Jupiter Hills Golf Club in Tequesta, Fla. 

Hammer, who played in the 2015 U.S. Open as a 15-year-old, and Barber dominated the event. They trailed for only two holes throughout their five matches and 71 holes. 

"Growing up watching U.S. Opens and U.S. Amateurs on TV, I just knew being a USGA champion is something that I desperately wanted," Hammer said. "To finally do it, it feels incredible. It feels as good, if not better, than I thought it would. And especially being able to do it with Garrett."

Is it me or do they look like they're about 12-years old...  Hammer is off to Texas and Barber to LSU.  We'll undoubtedly see them at the NCAA's at this time next year.

If the name Marc Dull rang a bell, that's because of this recent story, the proximate cause of another of my legendary segues:

Jeff Golden has offered more detail on what transpired at the Florida Mid-Amateur Championship, writing in a long statement on Twitter that Marc Dull’s caddie was “inebriated” before he allegedly sucker-punched Golden in the face.

OK, I'm not sure Mr. Golden is helping himself here.  This, for instance:

“I’ve never seen an opposing caddie engage in so much conversation with a competitor,” Golden wrote. “On the eighth hole I had become extremely frustrated when my opponent and caddie were talking and moving. I expressed my disappointment with their etiquette to the rules official in our group.” 

On the ninth hole, Golden informed the official that he believed Hibbs had broken the rules by offering advice on his putt. Golden won the hole by concession to move 2 up at the turn, and Hibbs removed himself from the match and returned to the clubhouse. 

Golden wrote that after the penalty, the match “turned even nastier, with more negative comments from my opponent on the 10th tee.” He added that he conceded Dull’s 15-foot birdie putt on No. 10 because he was “sick of the abuse from my opponent, and I wanted the match to resemble what you would expect of a FSGA final.”

None of knows what happened out there, but Golden's own description of the penalty he called sounds like BS, so a pox on them all.  And Dull seems anything but for staying out of the crossfire.....Plus, he seems to have made it through to finals of the USGA's fourball without causing any further international incidents, so he's got that going for him.

Last up on our flood-the-zone amateur coverage is a subject near and dear to me, the granting of exemptions into professional events to amateurs of indeterminate ability.  Shack has been more favorably disposed to this trend than I, but he sees the issues with this one just fine:

I'm usually a defender of sponsor's invites and the silly scores that have come with them. But I'm not sure if country singer Jake Owen (Nashville Open first round 86) taking to Twitter mid-round is the look a tournament or the PGA Tour was hoping for since Owen was pushing back at a player unhappy at seeing a spot wasted. How Owen saw the mention among his 2.28 million followers is unclear, or when he found the time to bang out a Tweet as he was racking up a huge score is also not clear.

Here's that offending tweet:

Here's the thing, Jake.  If you're checking your twitter feed during your round, then by definition you're not "playing as hard as you can".  An attorney would call that an admission against interest.  Also, you appear to be not very good at this golf thing, by the standards of a professional tournament.

Problem, Solution - When I think of Rory McIlroy these days, I'm reminded of the popular definition of insanity, i.e., doing the same thing and expecting different results.  In the lead up to the Euro Tour's flagship event at the desecrated Wentworth, we had these kind of headers:

Rory McIlroy in search of spark at BMW PGA Championship

It's not the putting or distance control with wedges, it's just that elusive spark that's missing....

Rory McIlroy takes the good and the bad of 2018 in stride as he tries to kick-start his summer at Wentworth

 Like maybe a spark?

So he goes out and posts a 5-under 67, and apparently the bookies have lost their collective minds:

Rory McIlroy a 3-1 favorite after opening-round 67 at BMW PGA Championship

Have they been told that there's three more rounds?  He's not even in the lead...

Not Gonna Happen - The issue here is secondary, of greater importance is this story that I hadn't previously heard:

In the days before caddies were allowed to wear shorts, Tiger Woods and caddie Steve Williams famously had a staredown with the PGA Tour regarding the rule. At the 1999 "Showdown at Sherwood," an exhibition match against world No. 1 David Duval, the caddies wore shorts, as it wasn't an official Tour event. 

When a rules official from the Tour ordered them to change to pants, Duval's caddie agreed — but Williams refused. Rules officials reportedly made it clear that if Williams failed to comply, he would be banned from caddying on the PGA Tour. 

Woods interrupted the conversation. "Guess I'll be playing in Europe next year," he said. That was motivation enough for the Tour: Williams was permitted to wear shorts, and it was less than a year before the caddie shorts rule was changed.

How silly is that?  Every part, the not allowing caddies to wear short but also that you'd trigger such a confrontation before a made-for-TV event.

But on the bigger issue, this ain't gonna happen:

"I would love it," he said. "We play in some of the hottest climates on the planet. We usually travel with the sun, and a lot of our events are played in the summer, and then on top of that when we have the winter months here a lot of the guys go down to South Africa and Australia where it's summer down there.

They do follow the sun and suffer accordingly, so boo friggin' hoo.   But look at Tiger in the photo above and you'll quickly note that he doesn't look like a professional....  The most important day on tour for the sponsors is Wednesday, and the guys need to show up as golf professionals, with the white pants and all.... Sorry, Tiger.

It's Always Something - Kevin Na is just weird, as you don't need me to tell you.  He's also impossible to watch, so bear that in mind before you turn on Colonial this week.  But he had a bit of a tiff with his long-suffering caddie Kevin Harms that worked out OK:

Microphones captured a fascinating and testy exchange between Kevin Na and his caddie, Kenny Harms, on Na's final hole of the first round of the Fort Worth Invitational on Thursday. 

Na was in the right rough, 185 yards from the ninth green, which was guarded by water. He vacillated between a hybrid and an iron, but with either club he would have to hit "a 40-yard cut," as Harms termed it. 

"Over the green's dead," Harms warned. 

"It's not gonna go over the green, Kenny," Na replied. 

Na finally settled on an iron and said to Harms, "As long as you're OK with this club." 

"I'm not," Harms replied. "I'm not OK with either one of them." 

"I'm going with this," Na ended the discussion. 

He missed the green with his approach shot, but avoided the water. After taking a free drop away from the grandstand, he had 92 feet 3 inches to the cup and of course, holed the pitch shot for a birdie-3, a 62 and a one-shot lead at the end of the first round.

The best thing to happen to golf broadcasts has undoubtedly been the improvement in audio technology...

I can't remember the player, but last week as a caddie stepped away, I heard him say to his boss, "Have a good swing".  It cracked me up, and I assume it's some kind of recurring joke between them, but is it helpful to make the guy laugh before he hits a shot?

Enjoy the holiday weekend.