Tuesday Tastings

Just a few morsels for y'all, as I'm off later in the morning to play one of my least favorite golf courses on the planet.  

Sectional Recap - I'm old enough to remember when Golf Channel would cover The Longest Day in Golf™.  Not well, of course, as it's too dispersed for much in the way of live action.  here's Shack's highlights:

Sulman Raza is back! Kevin Casey with the Portland qualifier roundup where the former regon star displayed signs of the game that helped clinch a national title. 

Memphis provided the best drama, with Sam Burns going deep, Steve Stricker making it again and an 11-for-3 playoff that included recent PGA Tour winner Aaron Wise.

Chris Naegel went birdie-eagle to force a playoff and advance from Texas. 

Adam Scott got over his frustration with play at the Memorial to show up in Columbus and qualify, keeping his major streak intact. 

Luis Gagne won a coin flip at Local and now he's headed to Shinnecock. Well done! 

In Springfield, new pro Doc Redman missed qualifying for an event he was exempt to as U.S. Amateur champion. Dylan Meyer, however, continues his strong play and is headed to Shinnecock. 

Beef is back, as is cancer-survivor Matthew Southgate! So were an incredible number of WD's at Walton Heath (27). Nice to see some things never change.

To me the single biggest shock is that Aaron Wise wasn't already in the event.  Other old timers qualifying included Keegan Bradley, Aaron Baddely, Shane Lowry and Mike Weir.  But props as well to the many vets that tried and failed, including our old friend Robert Allenby.  Bygones!

And this is kinda cool:

 That's NHL ref Garrett Rank, who one assumes is not working the finals....

I didn't get a chance to blog it earlier, but I also love the John Smoltz story.  We love qualifiers... guys that peg it and put their games to the test.  Sponsor's exemptions, not so much.

As for this from Holly Sonders, it is the Longest Day in Golf™:

“Head to www.USOpen.com, and everything will be there, the entire days of sexual qualifying.” Well, that sounds like a very different kind of U.S. Open. It is impressive how analysts Shane Bacon and Brad Faxon didn’t crack up here, and how Sonders was able to just go on afterwards (even though it seems like she realized what she said). And it makes for a funny blooper.

It so happens that I've played in that event, but it was of course when I was a much younger man...

These Guys Are Good Deliberate, Volume CCLIV -  Patrick Cantlay has been taken to the Twitter woodshed:

Patrick Cantlay turned in another strong performance at the Memorial, finishing fourth

and notching his third top 10 in his last five starts, but he also gained some attention for a less desirable reason. 

Cantlay's pace of play isn't exactly speedy. Let's just call it deliberate. CBS Sports analyst Nick Faldo even brought it up several times during the Sunday telecast, at one point saying, "You'll have time to go make a coffee or double espresso before he hits the ball." 

Cantlay was in the final threesome with Bryson DeChambeau and Kyle Stanley, and their group was put on the clock at least once, which happened on the 13th hole.

One video shared on Twitter showed Cantlay looking at the pin 13 times during an address. He was also sluggish standing over several putts. A couple of videos are posted below, as are some (of the many) tweets from the Twittersphere.

 Click the link to see the judgment of his peers....  Well, not so much peers, as a Twitter mob.

Mallet or Blade? - See if you can spot all of the delightful details in this story from a leisurely round in Oklahoma:

An argument on a golf course in Oklahoma got ugly, escalating to the point that one man was sent to the hospital to receive three staples and 10 stitches in his head, according to

local news reports. 

The incident occurred at Kickingbird Golf Course in Edmond, Okla., and began as a dispute between a single player and a foursome. The 55-year-old victim was allegedly attacked by 72-year-old William Hickman and 67-year-old Eddie Aday, a volunteer at the course. A spokesperson for the police department said that one of the men attacked with a putter. 

The two men were later charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. 

"We don't normally have assault with a dangerous weapon calls at the golf course," the spokesperson said of the fight.

Here are my nominees:

1.  Kickingbird?  Is that really a thing out there?  Obviously it's not binding as to allowable weapons;
2. Quite an age difference.  The attacker was spotting him 15 years, though aided by;
3. The club's active and effective volunteer program.  At most clubs, volunteers limit themselves to pointing out the location of rest rooms, but here they're more....errr, hands on?
4. A putter?  Even Elin, a non-golfer, knew that the shot requires more loft.

I promise, I'll stop now.

Interestingly, my putter has been demanding to be similarly mistreated, though a skull seems like a softer target than is appropriate.

Strokes Squandered - Mark Broadie tells us all we need to know about last week's play from two participants:

Those numbers for the week are per 18 holes, so Tiger gave up almost two shots per round on the greens.  Obviously those approach and short-game numbers are pretty stellar, so much so that if he could break even on the greens he'd win.  

To me the most interesting thing with Bryson is that he survived his bad day of putting on Saturday, because his tee-to-green day was so strong.

I don't think the data tells us anything we couldn't discern with our eyes, yet it's helpful to have numbers to cite.

More Gravy For the Train - Every time I think the air might be coming out of the bubble, the Tour finds another set of deep pockets:

Discovery Inc., owner of cable channels including HGTV and Animal Planet, agreed to pay $2 billion for long-term international TV rights to the PGA Tour, part of the media

company’s push to become a global force in live sports.

The 12-year deal, which begins next year, includes TV and online rights to the U.S.-based men’s golf circuit and the development of a Netflix-like video service. It covers more than 140 tournaments a year, including about 40 PGA Tour events.

While known for unscripted programming like “Shark Week,” Discovery is focused on becoming a global TV sports giant. It has acquired a trove of intellectual property, including the European rights to the Olympics through 2024 for $1.4 billion. Alex Kaplan, a former NBA executive hired by the company last year, will oversee Silver Spring, Maryland-based Discovery’s business with the tour.

“We think the PGA Tour is the most compelling international sports IP in the world,” said David Zaslav, Discovery’s chief executive officer.

Doesn't it seem clear that this won't end well?  Every purchaser of TV rights in recent years has overpaid dramatically, and this seems pretty far afield from their core business.  Has anyone told them that all of these tournaments finish at 3:00 a.m. local time?

As for the Netflix-like video service, does anyone have a clue as to what that might entail?  This seems to be as far along as they are on the business model:

The PGA Tour has 85 players from 25 countries. Half of the top 50 golfers in the world are from outside the U.S., including Jon Rahm from Spain and Hideki Matsuyama from Japan. Two PGA Tour players were born in China.

Two players from China are themselves worth the entire $2 billion large....Sheesh!

Memorial  Leftovers - This Dylan Dethier column doesn't have much to interest us this morning:

6 things I didn't get a chance to report from the Memorial so here they are now

Though there was this one thing that I hadn't noticed:

4. More "village" than "Muirfield" — or Augusta

I heard a few people early in the week suggest that Muirfield Village is the Augusta National of the Midwest, and I could see a bit of it: the tranquil water features, the

severely sloping greens, the immaculate conditioning. Muirfield didn’t mind leaning into that particular vision, too: large leaderboards changed by hand, simple sandwiches in green packaging, even members of the tournament committee pacing the range in green blazers (this seemed a little too on-the-nose). But the two courses are far more different than they are alike. Muirfield Village – more "village" than "Muirfield" – wanders one hole at a time through rows of upscale houses and thick stands of trees, in stark contrast to the open, roughless expanses of Augusta National. Plus there’s the caddie outfits at Memorial – short-sleeve baggy white shirts that look like a Spring Training equivalent of Augusta’s full-length jumpsuits. “I feel like a barber,” one caddie told me.

Any chance it was Joe LaCava?  Because it would cool if he felt like a barber while his guy was putting like a butcher....

I promise, we'll get to Shinny in the coming days...