Hey kids, whatcha wanna talk about this morning? I might have watched just a wee bit of golf this weekend.... But there's way too much to discuss, so let's break it down into bite-size morsels.
The Brooksie Two-Step - I his game story, Alan Shipnuck plays the Bash Bros. card:
SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — In the shadow of Shinnecock Hills's stately clubhouse, in the tense moments before the 2:13 tee time of the 118th U.S. Open, a Noo Yawk voicepierced the silence: "American muscle!" Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson both smiled in acknowledgement. These bash brothers have owned the Open of late, having won the last two. On Sunday they were in prime position again, tied for the lead. They are the archetype of the modern golfer, with gym-toned physiques and Trackman-optimized launch angles. That they have emerged together as the game's most overpowering forces is not a coincidence. Koepka and Johnson train together nearly every day, talking trash and pushing heavy metal. They come by that American muscle honestly. In a joint interview in their Florida gym late last year, they discussed the surprising fact that they've never tangled late on a Sunday afternoon.
Why is that surprising? Tiger and Phil have only done so a precious few times, and they've been out there since the prior century.
Shipnuck notes that last year's win has been devalued in public opinion, because of the easy set-up:
Koepka is more than just a bomber – in 2017 he was 11th on Tour in proximity to thehole on approaches from 75-100 yards – and on 16 he feathered a wedge to four feet for a crucial birdie and a two-stroke lead. He was escorted up the final fairways by the last legend to win back-to-back U.S. Opens, Curtis Strange, who was doing commentary on the telecast. "That was pretty cool," said Koepka.When it was over, Strange offered a warm embrace to Koepka, who is only the seventh man to win back-to-back Opens, including the likes of Bobby Jones and Ben Hogan. "He's some player," said Strange. "I'm proud of him because there was some talk last year that Erin Hill was not the Open as the Open is supposed to be. He won on a classic [today], so he's an Open player."
No, he's simply a player. When he noted in an interview shown over the weekend that his two wins made him an underachiever, I was in agreement. But watching him finish it's inconceivable that he won't be hoisting more hardware soon.
The Tour Confidential panel went straight for the historical perspective...
1. Brooks Koepka repeated at the U.S. Open, coming from the penultimate group to shoot 68 and top Tommy Fleetwood, who shot 63 earlier in the day to take the clubhouse lead, by one. The 28-year-old has won three times on the PGA Tour, and two are majors. He becomes the 16th player to win two U.S. Opens, a list that includes several Hall of Famers. He’s also the first to win back-to-back Opens since Curtis Strange did it in 1988 and '89. What about Koepka's game jives so well with the unique demands of the Open?
Michael Bamberger: Nothing. Good golf is good golf anywhere, and at anytime.Alan Shipnuck: He drives it long and straight, is a precise iron player, has a feathery touch with his wedges and makes clutch putts. That’ll do.
Josh Sens: Koepka has all the physical tools. A lot of guys on Tour have all the physical tools. What was notable this week (aside from the big drives and the clutch putts) was his mental state. He said he was the most confident guy in the field. That's not something you can fake.
Sean Zak: The fact that he does everything really, really well. Some players have flaws. Brooks has none.
Fair enough, guys, but those three wins with two Opens makes him every bit the stud as....well, it needs to be said, Andy North.
They stay too long on this subject, resulting in the answers asymptoptically approaching silliness:
2. Put into historical perspective what it means for a player to win consecutive U.S. Opens.
Sens: It's been done seven times in the history of the game, and the last time was 30 years ago. This is rare stuff. Not Comet Kohoutek rare but so scarce that most of us on this forum will likely not see it again.Bastable: Tiger, Jack, Arnold, Snead, Player, Watson, Nelson, Watson, Player, Trevino, Sarazen, Miller, Floyd, Norman, Casper…not one of them did it.
Alan Bastable must have his degree in gender studies or another such field in which logic isn't taught, because some of his guys, Snead and Norman most obviously, never won a single U.S. Open. Thus, the fact that they never won back-to-back is....oh, you get the point.
And that list of guys that have back-to-backed? Pretty strange (see what I did there?), no?
Willie Anderson — 1903: Baltusrol (307) / 1904: Glen View Club (303) / 1905: Myopia Hunt Club (314)
John McDermott — 1911: Chicago Golf Club (307) / 1912: Country Club of Buffalo (294)
Bobby Jones (a) — 1929: Winged Foot (294) / 1930: Interlachen (287)
Ralph Guldahl — 1937: Oakland Hills (281) / 1938: Cherry Hills (284)
Ben Hogan — 1950: Merion (287) / 1951: Oakland Hills (287)
Curtis Strange — 1988: The Country Club (278) / 1989: Oak Hill (278)
Brooks Koepka — 2017: Erin Hills (272) / 2018: Shinnecock Hills (271)
You'd expect the list to be populated by the legends of the game, but I count three at most. And that includes Willie Anderson, a native of North Berwick that along with other transplanted Scots dominated the early years of golf in the colonies.
The more interesting characters are McDermott and Guldahl. The former is a footnote to history, the defender in the year of Ouimet, but ended up mad as a hatter. The latter was the first of his generation to get to the top of the game (he also won a Masters and a couple of Western Opens), but then suddenly lost his form after publishing a golf instruction book. The irony, she burns.
B-to-B Opens should be an indicator of greatness, but we'll see where Brooks can take it.
Phil, The People's Champion - I think I've had enough of our Phil for this lifetime, but your mileage might vary. Mike Bamberger, an insufferable purist like your humble correspondent, wasn't having much of it, as his header makes clear:
For a moment Saturday, Phil Mickelson demeaned the game and revealed more of himself than he ever intended
My only quibble is that, including the 14th green and his comments after, it was sadly way more than a moment...
The Saturday oddness will cause some to hyperventilate, but there has never been a long career that didn't have a glitch in it. Still, it is hard to imagine Tiger Woods or Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicklaus or Ben Hogan or Curtis Strange ever doing anything like that. It was Strange who interviewed Mickelson when he emerged from the scorer’s room after roughly 20 minutes. The two-time Open winner was stone-faced.
You could say that this moment was Mickelson, winner of the 1990 U.S. Amateur who represented the USGA on two Walker Cup teams, taking the middle finger off his gloved hand and raising it high to the perfect sky of a fine June day.
That's pretty good, Mike, though I think he went double-barrel on the middle fingers....
Lots of history being exhumed, including mentions of the infamous 2014 Gleneagles presser, but Mike digs even deeper:
Within a year of that Open, the USGA offered Mickelson its highest annual honor, the Bob Jones Award, previously won by Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan and Francis Ouimet.Mickelson declined. His stated reason was that, in his mid-40s and still trying to win the U.S. Open, the timing was not right. Still, it was an extraordinary rejection of one of golf’s great honors.
Mickelson likes to push buttons and test limits. It's part of his appeal to some and it annoys others. He would have made an excellent criminal defense lawyer. In 2010, Mickelson briefly used on Tour a 1990 Ping Eye 2 wedge with grooves with more volume than the USGA currently allows. Mickelson argued, accurately, that the club he had been given an exemption, as a term of a suit filed by Ping against the USGA. Still, Scott McCarron, among other players, contended that Mickelson was violating the spirit of the rules. Mickelson, possibly the greatest wedge player in the game's history, was really voicing his displeasure with the USGA.
I had forgotten both of those highlight reels.... yes Phil was displeased, and Lord knows we can't have that.
Mike demolishes Phil's post-incident nonsense about using the rules to his advantage, which is almost the most damning part of the sorry spectacle. Somehow making a ten is better than making an eight, I'll just have to trust Phil on that....
Mike missed a couple of bits in my humble opinion, though his coda nails it:
The starting point of golf's rules is this: play the ball as it lies. The rest is commentary. Mickelson didn't do that. It wasn't clever or cute or funny or smart. For a moment, he demeaned the game and revealed more of himself than he could have possibly intended. Phil is one of the greatest players in the history of the game, but for a moment he acted like a spoiled child.
OK, you'll want to know what was the worst part of his Saturday outburst... Shack is all over it:
Pressed by reporters if he got away with a serious breach of etiquette at the very least, Mickelson issued a bold directive.
“Toughen up,” he said.
That’s right, a guy taking the easy way out of a bad putt is telling his detractors to toughen up.
So, when you speak of being sorry for anyone that thought your actions disrespectful, what you really meant was "Get off my lawn." Noted.
John Feinstein isn't amused, easily demonstrating that Phil isn't the genius he plays on TV:
Mickelson’s situation on Saturday was different. He knew he’d violated a rule the instant he raced after his putt to flag it down. He clearly wasn’t embarrassed or non-plussed by his actions, and his explanation was classic Mickelson “I’m the smartest guy in the room” stuff.
Actually, if he was that smart, he would have declared the ball unplayable after it stopped rolling and moved it two-club lengths in a direction that would have given him an easier putt or chip, or played the ball from its previous spot on the green.
It's all comically bad, unfortunately including this from his better half:
'He’s a good man who had a bad moment': Amy Mickelson says Phil offered to withdraw
OMG, he's hiding behind Mommy's apron-strings... Amy, you simply can't have it both ways. Your
hubby looked us in the eye and told us it was a carefully-reasoned move to save himself strokes, whereas you're saying he just lost it.... I can believe either, but no one can believe both.
Same reaction to Phil's late day text to journalists, in which he noted it was not his finest moment. But he ducked out after his round Sunday without clarifying his thoughts on the matter.
Amy also breaks the news that in a phone conversation with Mike Davis he offered to withdraw. I think Yoda said it best when he noted "There is no offering, there is only withdrawing or not withdrawing". Or something like that....
I turned on the TV on Saturday just after it happened, and I have to note that he's getting a pass for the 14th green. On that green he deliberately putted past the hole and up to the edge of the green, utilizing the slope to bring the ball back. This was not a Masters-style adaptation, it was done in the spirit of his prior-hole shenanigans and unseemly yuck-fest with his playing partner. Done for the same reason that a dog licks himself, because he can.
I believe that he should have been DQ'd, and that there were at least two rules under which that was almost required. However, the USGA wasn't having the best of days, and I'm also open to the concept that adjudication of his crime is best prosecuted in the court of public opinion. The TC gang expects that this will fade, and they're probably right:
Bamberger: Over the long term, it's a blip. But as a window into how he thinks (or doesn't) it was extraordinary.Shipnuck: I don't know, it hijacked the U.S. Open for a good 24 hours. It really just confirms what we already knew: Phil always wants to be the most clever guy in the room. This time he outsmarted himself.
Phil has gotten a pass on a lot of nonsense. I can't find it right now, but did the Tour ever penalize him for consorting with a know gambler, strictly proscribed in the Tour bylaws, after the Billy Walters fiasco?
As our head professional Shaun Powers said on Sunday morning, just a horrible day for golf. Shaun also told me that on the Sunday broadcast that Azinger took Phil to the woodshed. Interesting, because on Saturday's live coverage he was much more of a Phil-enabler. Interestingly, so were all of the golf people on the broadcast... Credit where due, Joe Buck was the guy that kept pushing his colleagues and the USGA to see it in the harsher light.
The USGA - The story going in was that they had to get this one right and, to paraphrase Agent *^, they missed it by that much....
It's almost quaint to note at this juncture, but despite tough scoring conditions for much of the first two days, the set-up was universally praised. Then Saturday happened:
Then came Saturday’s carnage. You can’t blame original course architect William Flynn for the mess, or Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, who tweaked the design in preparation forthe tournament. Nor can you point a finger at Shinny superintendent Jon Jennings and his staff, who did a remarkable job of creating a balanced, well-conditioned layout following a miserable spring, weather-wise. No, this one falls on the USGA. And they owned it.
On a day that the tournament administrators misjudged the stronger-than-anticipated wind, which dried out the greens, they inexplicably set several pins in truly dicey locations, specifically on holes 13, 15 and 18. Disaster ensued. With the holes in precarious locations on the edge of slopes, it was nearly impossible to stop an approach, chip or putt anywhere near the hole.
On the one hand, you want to scream that their planning was derailed by a little more wind at Shinnecock. Completely fair that this is filed under #you had one job....
On the other hand, this is the state of our game, as much as the cessation of play on The Old Course in 2015 due to high winds. The only way to test these guys is to have greens that run at speeds never contemplated by architects, and that puts us on a razor's edge. You'd think that in the aftermath of 2004 they'd err on the cautious side, but they were also reacting to Erin Hills and -17.....
But we're really talking about a couple of feet on 2-3 hole locations, as the TC gang explains:
Shipnuck: Golf courses are living, breathing things. It's not easy to bend them to your will. The bitter irony is that this is really about the USGA's incompetence in regulating distance gains. The pros will shred any course unless it is pushed to the absolute limit. When you do that, things can go wrong.
Sens: A few goofy pins on Saturday but I'm with Michael once again. It's the US Open. It's supposed to be very hard. Look at the top page of the leaderboard. Do those results look fluky?
One of my lingering thoughts on the 2004 debacle is that I just don't get the outrage over watering a golf course mid-round. It's insanity to think that conditions will remain the same over twelve hour on any golf course, much less one located at the sea. The only way to keep the field level is to constantly monitor it take remedial steps... Shack gets briefly into this issue here, but I have no problem with mid-round watering.
We all got very lucky in that the guy that got handed the trophy was the right one. Their set-up allowed Tony Finau and Daniel Berger to hopscotch the field, and it would have tainted their titles had they won. Life isn't close to fair, as their Saturday 66's were really good. Only one other guy broke par, but they obviously played a much easier golf course.
There was some of the same effect on Sunday, as Tommy's 63 was a little wind-aided. That doesn't diminish it, easy conditions are when the 63's happen..... But the right guy won, and for that we should all be thankful. OK, those that work in Far Hills, NJ should be especially thankful, and I'm sure they'll nail it in 2026.
Tiger Scat - I hope he had a good weekend, and wouldn't you love to know what he thinks of his new BFF Phil?
I'm running out of steam here, but I've had a browser tab open since Friday night. First, the TC gang's take on his short work week:
6. Asked after his missed cut at Shinnecock Hills if he's convinced he win a major again, Tiger Woods said, "Absolutely." Did this week change at all how you feel about Tiger's chances in the remaining 2018 majors and beyond?
Bamberger: I think Tiger will have to win some low key events — Sea Island, Greensboro, Honolulu — before he can think about winning a major. As he likes to say, "Baby steps." Can he? Of course. But the odds are way against him.
Interesting, though how will he win such events when he's not in the field? Curiously, the one event outside the Tiger rota, Tampa, was his strongest result. The irony, she still burns...
Bastable: Augusta, 2019. Brace yourselves.
I can brace myself for that at a later time...
Jeff Ritter had this curiously optimistic take on Tiger, including this:
But really, you can just go straight to the 1st hole, a benign (by Shinnecock standards)par 4, straight down the hill off the back of the club's stately, two-story clubhouse. It's currently playing as the fourth-easiest hole of the week. Woods hit an iron into that fairway in the sunshine on Thursday, and he found the short grass again in the rain on Friday. On Thursday he bombed his approach over the green and into trouble, and on Friday he shoved his second shot into another mess – a tangled patch of grass right of the green and behind a sand trap. On Thursday he took three sloppy shots around the green to reach the putting surface. On Friday he took two more after his hack from the hay scooted across the green and down the slope. In two spins through that opening hole, Woods played it in five over.
Yeah, his inability to play from the fairway with a wedge on No. 1 is a curious footnote, but we play a game that requires that we count them all.
But this is the bit that has me grinding my teeth:
But Woods played hard, as he always does, and even closed with two birdies. And that's where we turn to the positive. Did anyone think, one year ago when the mugshot taken after his DUI arrest was still splashed in the headlines, that Woods would compete here at Shinnecock Hills? Or, when he had two discs fused and only began taking full swings in October, that he would become one of the top five or so betting favorites entering this week? Or that his World Ranking would climb from deep in the 600s to 80th? Or that he would become a virtual lock to play on the U.S. Ryder Cup team in Paris this fall, and not merely don an earpiece as an assistant captain? When Woods took his first question in his post-round press conference Friday afternoon, the one about his poor play on the opening holes, he stood on the platform, hands on hips, and actually smiled. He knows.
I know, who else's teeth would I be grinding.
But do we think that Tiger is a "virtual lock" for the Ryder Cup team? I get Jeff's point that he's back and healthy, and I'd also add that seed isn't an issue.
But since Tampa I haven't seen a guy with much claim to being among the twelve best golfers with U.S. passports. There's still golf to be played for sure, and perhaps it's worth updating the qualification metrics to see who he'll be fighting with for those last few spots. I'll try to get to that later in the week.
And I'll add that we could be heading to an agonizing decision for Captain Furyk. That to me was always the sub-text of his accepting at cart-driving gig, as it might now be delightfully awkward should his buddy Jim go a different direction.... Let's further note that the deterioration in his putting in recent weeks has to be especially troubling... He might punch a ticket to Paris, but I can't see how he's a lock, even with the weaselly V-word attached.
I'm a spent force at this moment. I'm sure we'll have more tomorrow.
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