Weekend Wrap

Probably an abbreviated version thereof, as it's still sorta the weekend...

A Rose By Any Other Name - It wasn't even close:

Justin Rose closed with a 6-under 64 and finished at 20 under Sunday at Colonial for a three-stroke victory over defending U.S. Open champion Brooks Koepka in the Fort

Worth Invitational. 

It was the ninth career PGA Tour victory for Rose, the 37-year-old Englishman and No. 5 player in the world who also won his 2017-18 season debut in October at the HSBC Champions in Shanghai. He is the fifth player with multiple wins this season. Rose got nearly $1.3 million and a plaid jacket for winning at Hogan’s Alley. 

"Really, really proud of this one," Rose said. "This is a special victory for me. I think obviously just winning here at this venue I think is really what means so much. A tournament that I pick up the trophy and the first thing I saw was Ben Hogan's name twice. It sort of says a lot."

Rose and Brooks Koepka put on an entertaining show for the folks, but Brooksie was never at risk of catching him.  As the CBS crew keeps telling us, he's about 14th in putting on tour this year, and if he puts that well he should actually be winning more.

I'd suggest that you consider him at Shinnecock, though that strategy failed miserably for your humble blogger at Augusta.

About the only other item of note is that Kevin Na continues to do Kevin Na things, those being especially weird:

Kevin Na put together two of the most impressive rounds on the PGA Tour this year, yet

it still wasn't enough to catch Justin Rose. 

Three days after opening the Forth Worth Invitational at Colonial Country Club with an eight-under 62, Na closed with a nine-under 61 on Sunday to tie the course record.

"You know, first round I was one out of (tying the course record)," Na said. "I was thinking, One of these days I'm going to get a chance to shoot the course record. I didn't think it would come on Sunday." 

Na is just the second player since 1983 to have multiple rounds of 62 or better in a week at Colonial.

If you're not gonna win with a 61 and 62, when will you win?  I think I'll go with "never"....

More importantly, though, I think we dodged a bullet.  Put the tartan sports jacket in the top photo over Na's Sunday shirt and LCD's would be exploding throughout our fair land.

Dateline: Virginia Water, England -  This was likely the more significant tourney of the week:

A Sunday shootout between Molinari and McIlroy at the European Tour's flagship event never really materialized.

They entered the final round tied for the lead on 13 under but while McIlroy sprayed his drives left and right, Molinari was the model of consistency and established a three-shot cushion by the turn after birdies at Nos. 3, 4 and 8. 

From there on, it was a clinic in front-running from Molinari, who laid up when he needed to and picked up his only shot on the back nine with a tap-in birdie at the par-5 12th. 

McIlroy birdied the par fives at Nos. 17 and 18 but left his victory charge too late. 

"I didn't feel intimidated at all," Molinari said of his head to head with the former world No. 1. "It's just the last couple of holes, he's basically thinking eagle, eagle. I'm thinking par, par, and that makes the whole difference.

Nobody does any more, Frankie, hence his current spot of trouble.

Though, on your behalf, this is just plain sad:

"If I could pick one tournament to win in my career, it would be this one," the Italian said at the prizegiving ceremony.

Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations.... If the Players Championship is the Fifth of Four, this is like the thirty-third of four....

But my case for significance is of course more about the runner up, for whom expectations were high.  In fact, as I noted Friday, after the first round the "smart money" installed Rors as a 3-1 fave, and it may have gotten even more ridiculous after he torched the place on Friday.

He seems to have taken a page from the Tiger playbook with this:

McIlroy has been working on some swing changes with coach Michael Bannon in

Florida, and he said it was a work in progress.

"When you're working through a bit of a swing change or a swing tweak, it takes more than a week's work to try to bed it in," McIlroy said, "and this is my first competitive start since trying to rectify things.

"I think as a tournament goes on," he added, "you're not spending as much time on the range because you're into play mode. Maybe just got away from few of the things I was working on at the start of the week, which is the way, when you get under pressure and you're forced to hit shots out on the golf course, you revert back to what you've been doing. There was a bit of that."

Just remember, it's a process...  You have to get your reps in to find those golf feels, but at the end of the day it is what it is.

I think B.B. King said it best when he noted, "Nobody loves me but my mother, and she could be jivin' me too."

This seems on point, at least the  last part:

"It's close, it's very close," he said. "I've given myself a great chance here this week. I didn't quite pull it off but it's not far away. I get a bit down on myself because my expectations are high, and with a 36-hole lead, I should have closed it out this week."

On the bright side, Patrick Reed wasn't involved.

The Tour Confidential panel couldn't find time to discuss Colonial, but did pose this head-scratcher:

4. The BMW PGA Championship, the European Tour's flagship event, had only six Americans in the field, which was brought to light in a tweet by Gary Player: "What a shame for our global game. You can never be a world champion if you stay at home." (The event had only four U.S. players in 2017 and two in 2016.) Should the American stars feel more obligated to support the Euro tour's marquee stop?

Say what?  This might make Keith Pelley's head explode, but the only marquee stop in Europe is the Open Championship...  I know, it's not, strictly speaking, a Euro Tour event, but it is what it is...

While the responses are OK, adjusting for the silliness of the query, there are two factors that must have gotten lost on the cutting-room floor.  First a couple of responses:

Zak: No. They don't owe the Euro Tour anything, but they may have fans over in Europe, and one could argue they might owe them something. Missing the 2018 BMW PGA that is played during the glut of your home tour season just days before one of the biggest American events of the year IS NOT unbecoming of a world champion, I might add. Gary Player is just a fan of globe-trotting, as he can be. The bottom line is the best players play in America, so you can't blame them for hanging around, especially toward the end of May. Gary can look no further than the French-Irish-Scottish run-up to the British Open as a place where Americans are happy to commit.

Bamberger: I think Player's comment is in the right place — if you want to be a legend and icon, you have to play the world and win all over the world. But economic realities are carrying the day here for American players who stay at home in the heart of the season. Jordan Spieth saw what too much air-time does to your game.

The schedule is a factor.... as noted by others, this event will move to September next year, and that might draw more American traffic.

But the tow points I want to make are as follows.  First, venues matter.  Wentworth's West Course started life as a Harry S. Colt classic, worthy of a long journey.  But it's been serially desecrated by a string of alleged architects, most recently Ernie Els, and it's simply not worthy of the trip.  

Secondly, am I the only guy to notice that this discussion of Americans playing the Euro Tour's flagship event is curious in light of the fact that Colonial, not one of the PGA Tour's marquee, events, was won by one of the Euro Tour's marquee players? Wassup with that I hear you ask, and Curmudgeonly James Corrigan had the answer two weeks ago (H/T Shack):

Justin Rose has revealed he is skipping the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth in two weeks’ time. The absence of England’s top-ranked golfer is an obvious blow for the Surrey tournament, particularly as he is such a local favourite. 

Rose - who has been challenging to become world No 1 here at The Players Championship - has agonised over the decision, but says he has been left with little choice because of PGA Tour regulations that demand pros appear in at least one event in which they have not played in the last four years. 

“It was a very difficult decision to miss Wentworth, but I felt I had to bite the bullet,” Rose said. “I’m a bit of a victim of the new PGA Tour rule. There were only a few options, and they included the John Deere [Classic] and the Wyndham [Championship] – but I wanted to play the Scottish Open before the Open at Carnoustie, so that ruled out John Deere.

Gary Player could not be reached for comment.

Don't Try This At Home, Folks - We all understand that the increasing distance these guys hit it is a direct result of all the time they spend in the gym, and Thomas Pieters puts that on display in this weeks flagship moment from the Euro Tour's flagship  event:

Thomas Pieters is known to be a strong man. He’s also known to show off a bit of a temper on the golf course. Combine the two and you have potential for the incredible, which is exactly what happened Friday. 

Pieters was five over at the BMW PGA Championship and, as you’ll see, clearly upset with himself. After lashing at his second shot from the rough on the par-5 4th hole at Wentworth Club, Pieters snapped his club in half over the back of his neck.

Look at those perfect lines...

 Video at the link....  I suppose there will be a fine involved, but so totally worth it.

Knowing a slow week when they see one, that TC panel has some fun with this display:

5. The ever-fiery Thomas Pieters took his anger out after a poor shot by snapping an iron shaft over his neck on Friday at the BMW PGA. What's the worst case of golf rage you've witnessed on the course? 

Zak: That one. The Pieters one. There is nothing more impressive and scary than that version of golf rage. There's a reason no one has ever seen anything like that before.

We forget how young some of these guys are.  A guy like Sean Zak probably hasn't even heard of Tommy Bolt....

Bamberger: While caddying on the European Tour in 1991, saw a Spanish golfer slap himself hard across his face over a short missed putt. That was bad.

Not something you see every day.  What else you guys got?

Sens: At a public course in Iowa years ago, a guy I got paired with responded to a wild tee shot by slamming his driver on the cart path. The club head broke off and bounced up and hit him in the chin. He wasn't knocked cold. It was more like a TKO.

Sometimes a club just cries out to be punished.... 

Dethier: One feat I've never seen repeated was a friend putting his fist through a cart windshield — but another story sticks out more. I was playing a 36-hole mini tour event in Florida and another player in my group hit his approach shot to 20 feet. He hit that putt four feet past the hole, then lipped out the comebacker for a three-putt bogey. He stared at the ball for a while, like it had betrayed him. Then he tapped it in, walked to his cart and drove back to the clubhouse. After one hole. That's not rage like Pieters — it's much deeper and darker.

Although the fist through the cart windshield could be good fun...

Shipnuck: Who knew Woody was so angsty? I love it. This wasn't that big of a deal but at my first Masters I was on the ropeline of the 15th hole and Curtis Strange sliced his tee shot over there. (This was back when there were big mounds right of that fairway and it was a cool spectating spot.) He hit his next shot in the water and proceeded to loose a Richard Pryor-esque monologue. I've never heard the f-word conjugated that many different ways. It made quite an impression on me.

Let's see, that would be I f***, you f*** and he, she it f***s.... I fail to see the interest therein.  Heck, I've done worse during my warm-up....

Berhow: On the 5th hole of the course I grew up on, one of my frequent golf partners had seen enough. He threw his driver down the fairway and then emptied his bag — one club after another was chucked. But he wasn't done. Soon all of his golf balls, one by one, he was crow-hopping off the tee. F-bombs flew along with the Pinnacles. The show finally ended by him kicking his bag off the platform to the lower tee. Nice guy, though.

They and we are always nice guys....  In skiing we'd call that a yard sale. 

And Lastly - One that doesn't require that I do much of anything, the last query from the TC panel:

6. With a nod to Ben Hogan and this week's Fort Worth Invitational (which Justin Rose dominated), if you could ask Hogan one question, what would it be? 

Zak: What are the residuals like for current-day sales of the Five Lessons? 

Bamberger: What's it like up there? 

Sens: How many majors do you think you would have won if you'd turned pro the same year as Tiger? 

Dethier: Whatchu think of Trackman? 

Wood: Why didn't you play more internationally? You know you can't be a great champion without doing that. 

Shipnuck: What did you really think of Arnold Palmer? 

Berhow: Would you have followed me on Twitter?

Pretty good range of responses, methinks.  Though for Shipnuck's question, isn't the "why" the more pressing issue?

Have a good Memorial Day and we'll reconvene tomorrow.