Midweek Musings

Not to worry if you're worn about by our flood-the-zone coverage of the Philacolypse..... Of course we'll have more on that, but we'll mix in some Philphree content as well.

R.I.P., Peter Thomson - Sad news from Down Under:

The family of Australian golfing great Peter Thomson announce his passing on Wednesday 20 June 2018. 

He had been suffering from Parkinson's disease for more than four years and lost his brave battle at home in Melbourne surrounded by family at 9.00 a.m. Born on 23 August 1929, he was two months short of his 89th birthday. 

The first Australian to win the British Open went on to secure the title five times between 1954 and 1965, a record equalled in the 20th and 21st Centuries only by American Tom Watson.

Via Shack, we have these newsreels of  his 1954 and 1955 Opens:

He was, in many respects, Australian golf.  R.I.P.

I Saw It On TV - Been sitting on this open browser tab for a couple of days, in which Golfweek media critic Martin Kaufmann gives Fox high grades:

Finally given a day worthy of our national championship, Fox was up to the task of 

What does the guy with the mic know about back-to-back Open wins?

presenting it. In its first three years broadcasting the Open, Fox has served a valuable role in dragging the industry forward through the innovative use of shot-tracing technology and microphones. (Some of the player commentary captured on the greens, particularly from Dustin Johnson, helped tell the story Sunday.) 

Fox seems to have settled on a crew of analysts, led by Azinger, Brad Faxon and Curtis Strange, who have the chops to tell the story. The decision this year to flip-flop the Shanes – Bacon and O’Donoghue – worked out. Bacon seems most comfortable in the anchor seat, where he gives Joe Buck a breather, and O’Donoghue’s easy Irish manner works well in the interview chair. 

For the first 15 U.S. Open rounds that Fox broadcast over the past four years, we spent too much time talking about needless problems. What we saw Sunday made all of those headaches seem like distant memories.

I mostly agree with Martin, as the broadcast has gotten tighter and the analysts in particular are fairly good.  I also like their graphic noting the pin location and yardage, which works especially well when combined with the shot tracer.

As for the audio, it certainly doesn't sound like any other golf broadcast we've seen.  First, as to the mics in the cups, a mixed bag for sure.  Shack had this to say:

For every fan annoyed by the sound of balls hitting the bottom of the cup, the telecast featured several reminders of how much on-green dialogue we get to hear thanks to Fox's aggressive placement of microphones and other efforts to push the technology envelope.

I agree with that, as much that's of interest gets picked up, but the needlessly loud click as putts are holed is extremely tedious.  

But it's the reported two hundred mics picking up crowd noise that has me puzzled.  Oh, there was this embarrassing moment for sure, and I find the headbutt especially troublesome....  Yanno, #metoo and all.

But it was the crowd noise on every shot that was so.... different:

On Thursday, viewers didn't get many revealing nuggets between opposing players or between players and their caddies. Instead, they heard a lot from a loud and proud New York crowd. It was like listening to the soused, rowdy crew at the notorious 16th hole of the Phoenix Open. Technology giveth, and it taketh away.

I almost thought it a parody of a New York crowd, it was so consistently outer borough, not that there's anything wrong with that.  This was Shack's summary:

I'm all for Fox pushing the boundaries and trying to pick up the sound, even if the collateral damage is a bit rough at times.

I agree....  Head-butters gonna head-butt, but those mics do pick up some interesting chatter.

So, how did our New York Open play in Peoria?  It didn't:

Good news! U.S. Open ratings were up all four days.

Bad news: once the second-highest rated tournament of the year continued an eye-opening downward trend since Martin Kaymer's runaway at Pinehurst, reports Paulsen at 

Sports Media Watch. A 3.6 overnight for the final round--an hour longer telecast window than in the NBC days--was up from last year's 3.5 rating for Brooks Koepka's 2017 win. 

This year was the fourth of the past five in which final round coverage had less than a 4.0 overnight. From 1989-2013, the final round had at least a 5.0 each year. That 25-year run included a 6.1 five years ago and an 8.5 ten years ago (when Tiger Woods won in a playoff). 

Certainly the extra length of the Fox telecasts softens the number, but with only World Cup as sports-viewing competition in the United States, the USGA has not seen audience growth with their move to Fox and faces the possibility of being the least-watched of the four majors again in 2018.

It's a fine time to revisit Ron Sirak's definitive accounting of the move to Fox:

 The Fox & The Peacock

How a network that has never done golf worked with a new faction at the USGA to stun NBC and take the U.S. Open in a billion-dollar raid

The move was largely the result of the USGA's jealousy of the Masters' TV ratings, but seemingly without any curiosity about the nature of its appeal.  They've achieved quite the dubious distinction, coveting Masters ratings they made a decision that resulted in ratings below the morning broadcast of the Open Championship.

Of course, there's a theory that it might have been about the Benjamins:

That meeting at Seminole was actually closer to the end of a process the USGA had begun years earlier as it reshaped its staff to put in place the team that would increase the USGA's TV rights fee from $37 million a year (NBC and ESPN combined) to $93 million a year.

The good news for Fix is that we only have eight years to go.  The bad news?   $93 million large for each of those years...

Phil, The Saga Continues - One of the mysteries of this saga is the prevalence of folks still taking Phil's rationalization quasi-seriously.  One such soul is Dylan Dethier, who hones in the only scenario where this could make sense, to wit, the 15th hole at Augusta.

As Dylan details, this could make sense for a player genuinely trying to post the best number possible, but it's still a stretch.  You're basically saying that the pitch from the drop zone is so treacherous, that taking a seven and moving on is reasonable.....  Sergio Garcia take note, but you know what else is awfully risky?  Yeah, making a stroke at a ball in motion....

Dylan is now proposing a Phil Rule:

But the USGA ultimately cited rule 14-5, which covers strokes made at a moving ball and also calls for a two-stroke penalty, but has no clause covering additional punishment. Because of the precedent now set, a new rule should address the simple fact that hitting a moving ball just isn't a part of golf. The so-called Phil Rule will be simple: anyone who intentionally strikes a moving ball will be disqualified.

I'm of two minds here... On the one hand, there' nothing objectionable about Dylan's proposed rule.  Well, nothing in the rule itself, I just kinda hate doing anything that justifies Phil's nonsense.  In his case the far better option was to declare the ball unplayable after it stopped rolling, but his actions are best understood as a middle finger to the USGA.

A couple of the players in Hartford were asked for their thoughts, and Jason Day had this:

“It’s obviously disappointing to see what Phil did,” he said. “I think a lot of people have mixed reviews about what he did.” 

USGA officials explained over the weekend that Mickelson’s actions explicitly fell under Rule 14-5, which called for a two-shot addition and turned his score of 8 into a 10, rather than Rule 1-2 or Rule 33-7 that could have resulted in disqualification for a “serious breach” of the rules. 

Day felt it was unfortunate that all of Saturday’s drama deflected attention from a world-class performance from Brooks Koepka en route to a successful title defense, but when it comes to the handling of the Mickelson controversy he believes the USGA could have made good use of a mulligan. 

“It’s just unfortunate that it happened at the USGA’s tournament, where they enforce the rules, like the R&A. And I think they may have, they probably should have enforced a different outcome for Phil,” Day said. “But it is what it is. It’s done. It’s just disappointing that that is overshadowing the winner of the whole week. I think if they had it back again, they may have chosen a different outcome.”

Actually, I don't know a single person that has mixed feelings about what Phil did.... Mostly, folks are fer or agin it pretty strongly.   But we see his point...

As for this guy, what's with these kids today?

"I laughed, I thought it was really funny," he said. In the aftermath of the incident, much

was made about Mickelson's intent, but count Spieth among those who believes Mickelson's explanation that there was a strategic element to the decision. "Phil knows the rules," he said. "There was a chance it was going to go back behind the bunker and he's got to chip back, or he was going to play off the green anyways, so he was potentially saving himself a shot. So if that was the intent, then what's the harm in that? He's playing the best score he can.

OK, I know math is hard, but he can't break ten if he allows the ball to keep rolling?  The guy with the best short game in the history of golf?

But there's something missing in this generation of golfers.  This is of a piece with the backstopping debate...  When we speak of protecting the field, they think we're speaking in Farsi.  It's not merely that we disagree, they can't even understand  the premise....  

The USGA, More Mulligans Please - Not a great week for our governing organization, though fortunately  their PR agency has long been on speed dial.  You knew that this guy would have some harsh words:

Following tournament play Sunday night, Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee had clearly seen enough.

"Something's amiss in a big, big way," Chamblee said. "I think the USGA has lost a lot of the trust of the golf world." 

To Chamblee, this was not an anomaly, stating his belief that the organization fell asleep at the wheel regarding equipment. Specifically, the rebound effect in drivers. 

"They missed the rebound effect and the combination of the rebound effect [with] the ball. They missed it, on their watch. And now, the feeling is that they’re crying foul, even though it was on their watch. And so, essentially, the equipment companies got it done, by [the USGA’s] standards, legally.

"There seems to be no obvious leadership, you know, to me," he said. "No obvious leadership heading in the right direction."

 No surprise there.  Mike Davis told us it couldn't happen again , and yet it did....

Shane Ryan may have written the essential piece on the week, in which he first confirms Robert Conquest's Third Law of politics:

The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.

Here's the relevant excerpt:

The USGA, god bless it, has become experts at transcending the self-image golf has manufactured for itself and exposing the sport’s absurdity in its most naked form. As a governing body, it elicits anger, censure and failure, and does so with a kind of brazen incompetence all its own. I will not try to claim the USGA is run by a group of comic geniuses, because I’m all but certain they aren’t acting intentionally. But I would pose this question: If they were a cabal of impish trolls with the mission of undermining the sport and all its players … well, how would they behave differently? 

The melodrama at Shinnecock Hills was the cherry on top of a four-year performance-art piece that began in 2015 at Chambers Bay. When USGA CEO Mike Davis appeared on television at the end of Saturday’s round on Long Island to apologize for the course conditions—hasn’t someone told him that in modern-day America, the worst thing you can do is say ‘I’m sorry’?—it represented the beautiful culmination of a thousand-plus days of entropy.

 USGA as performance art?  I like it and think we should let him make his case at length:

The interesting parenthetical here is that there’s an interpretation under which the USGA is mostly blameless. Look at Shinnecock: If it truly wasn’t a fair test, why were some of

the best players in the world at the top of the leader board? Why did it come down to a battle of some of the exact players you’d expect to be hashing it out on Sunday? Could it be the case that Patrick Reed was right, and that even in the depths of Saturday’s depravity, there were only two unfair pins, and the rest was a product of the weather? Could it be the case that someone like Zach Johnson, he of the “lost the course” brigade, was actually being a baby? Could it be the case that professional golfers on the whole tend toward the entitled, the hyper-sensitive, and that the ones who routinely compete for major championships are significantly tougher and more resilient than the ones who finish early and complain to the media? 

Of course it’s true. But that, too, is the brilliance of the USGA. Without intending to, the association exposes these mental weaknesses. Not content to merely highlight the flaws in a player’s game, they go so far as to reveal their emotional deficiencies.

I think he's dead-ass wrong with his "Without intending to...." , as testing the players mentally is absolutely a stated objective.  But if we're talking emotional deficiencies, one guy clearly lapped the field.  Shane scores with this psychological profile of that guy:

What did we learn, for example, about Mickelson? Reading between the lines, you could infer all of the following from his bizarre putt-chasing episode: 

1: That he deals with frustration by acting out against those who dare challenge him.

2: That he has a compulsion to make every story about himself.

3: That he revels in his larger-than-life image and is constantly seeking to stoke it.

4: That he tends toward brinkmanship—it would never be enough for him to merely complain about the course; he must push toward conflict in the most public way possible (see also: Tom Watson, 2014 Ryder Cup).

5: That there’s a fundamental lack of self-control at his emotional center.

6: That he’s not afraid to use his status to intimidate, knowing that he is mostly untouchable.

7: That the U.S. Open has rented out space in his head after too many near-misses.

8: That he will never forgive them for it.

That's really good, though I consider Phil's Saturday hissy fit more as confirmation of that which was already widely known.

One last excerpt:

The powers-that-be at the USGA have so fully enshrined themselves into our consciousness that there is no longer any possibility of a well-run U.S. Open. We won’t allow it. We will watch 156 golfers lean forward into pounding wind and rain at some glorified coastal sheep pasture at the British Open, and we’ll smack our hands together in credulous applause because we can shut our eyes and see the game’s origin. We will stomach the ceaseless treacly brand-advancement from Augusta, and only a few of us will have to stifle a gag reflex. We will watch the PGA Championship, and strain against our own apathy. 

But the USGA? These folks are the unforgiven black sheep of the major world, and we would find fault in paradise if they were the architects. They are irredeemable, and thus they are also indispensable. Confession: I can’t live without the USGA. I know the truth, which is that deep down the players just hate being made to play on tough courses, and American golf fans are so conditioned to serfdom that we recoil in anger alongside them when conditions result in their humiliation.

Like Shane, I think there's a place for a stern test of all aspects of a player, and I take a certain pleasure in coddled stars forced to deal with exacting conditions.  Alas, the USGA forfeits the high ground with its regrettable set-up mistakes, questionable venue choices and rules snafus.... Basic competence shouldn't be too much to expect, should it.

Lastly on this subject, Luke Kerr-Dineen posits and interesting theory, but fails to deliver the goods.  The theory:

U.S. Open 2018: Has the U.S. Open become a 'specialist's' event?

He credits success in this event to the following three factors:

Swing Fast

Great Drivers

Experience

You'll quickly note that if Nos. 1 and 2 aren't exactly identical, then they're no worse than fraternal twins....  Perhaps more importantly, there's no event where these skills aren't applicable.

But the more effective rebuttal is Jordan Spieth, Martin Kaymer, Graeme McDowell, Webb Simpson, Lucas Glover, Geoff Ogilvy and  Jim "The Big Bopper" Furyk.  Never mind...

Minny On My Mind - It's official:

One of the final pieces to the revamped PGA Tour schedule was put into place Monday morning. 

The tour and 3M announced a seven-year agreement for a tournament to be held in Minnesota, beginning in 2019. The 3M Open will be hosted at TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, and though dates were not announced, it is expected to be conducted in the summer. 

“We are delighted to partner with 3M for this new PGA Tour event in the Twin Cities, a community that has shown tremendous support for professional golf over the years with PGA TOUR Champions, the PGA Championship, Ryder Cup and Solheim Cup, and has deservedly played host to the biggest events in sports – Super Bowls, Final Fours, among them,” said PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan. “The 3M Open will also continue 3M’s commitment to charity and positively impacting lives.”

3M Open?  No event on the PGA Tour is truly an Open, so I think that a badly chosen moniker.  Houston now moves to the Fall, but I'm still unclear as to whether enough contraction has been identified.  but we'll leave that for another time.