Unplayable Lies: Weekend Wrap

I went a little long on Tiger v. Phil, so walled it off in a separate post. It was a glorious weekend for your humble correspondent, and I hope for you as well. Shall we dive in?

Ballyliffin's Moment - I can't tell you how much I enjoyed watching the golf from Beloved Ballyliffin. I had everyone in our pro shop taking it in, and I do hope you had a chance to do so as well.

They certainly hit the lottery this week, first with four days of Chamber of Commerce weather, then with a dramatic finish:

It was the late, great Arnold Palmer who once said that the hardest thing in golf is making a birdie when you really need one. By that measure, the new Irish Open

champion can feel pretty pleased with himself.

Make that doubly pleased.

Standing on the endlessly picturesque Ballyliffin’s 18th green 13-under par for the 71 holes he had already completed, Russell Knox was pretty certain he would need to hole from 35-feet to tie Ryan Fox in the group behind. When he did so, the 33-year old Scot was round in 66. Fox narrowly failed to make what would have been a winning birdie, and the two went to a playoff.

It lasted just one hole. After being outdriven by 60 yards, Knox found the green and almost exactly the same spot, 35-feet from the cup. Fox then pitched to maybe ten-feet, making him a strong favorite to clinch what would have been his maiden European Tour victory. Amazingly, however, it was Knox who holed again, before Fox’s tying effort cruelly horseshoed out.

Not just picturesque, but endlessly so..... Really good stuff, and keep note of Ryan Fox, who hits it a bloody mile. And does so on pretty much every hole.... It looked like he had it until Knox forced the playoff with the first of his bombs, but he did at least punch a ticket to Carnoustie.

I found the TV coverage visually stunning, even more so than the typical Open Championship fare. I'm not sure why that was , though they (and I'm assuming it was the basic Sky feed) made exceptionally good use of the aerial shots. This has to be a huge thing for the club though, as the bride noted last evening, we don't want too many people to become familiar with it.

It definitely triggered a desire in your humble correspondent to return, perhaps as early as next year. It also had me thinking and talking of our intended Season in Ballyliffin, so stay tuned.....

Na Na Na Na, Goodbye - I didn't see a minute of the week's coverage, such was my laser-like focus on all things Ballyliffin.

Kevin Na rode a hot putter to halt a winless streak of nearly seven years on the PGA

Tour.

Na shot a 6-under-64 for a five-stroke victory at A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier on Sunday.

The 34-year-old Na's only previous tour win came in Las Vegas in October 2011.

"I wasn't sure if it was going to come again. I was hoping it would — sooner than later," Na said. "I've been close so many times, failed so many times."

He's had three dozen top-10 finishes since that last win and showed signs earlier this year that reaching the top again was still well within reach. He tied for second at the Genesis Open in January, two shots behind Bubba Watson. In late May he shot 61 in the first round of the Fort Worth Invitational to match the course record and finished fourth.

I give him credit for overcoming the yips (or whatever it was) that he experienced at Sawgrass back in the day, but I find him very hard to watch.

The TC panel ultimately gets around to an assessment of his career:

4. Kevin Na went on a birdie binge and shot 64 to win The Greenbrier by fiveon Sunday. It was just the second win of his PGA Tour career — the first was in 2011 — and it came in his 370th start. Yet Na has now banked more than $27 million in his career, which is 40th all time, and has 65 career top-10 finishes. Is consistency/longevity, in Na's case, overrated ... or underrated?

Shipnuck: It's brutally difficult to stay on Tour for such a long time without the exemptions that come with victories. Na's longevity has been one of the more remarkable accomplishments in golf. Nice that he's finally been rewarded with another win.

Sens: Among the many things to admire about Na are his frankness and self-deprecating humor, to say nothing of the grit he showed in fighting back from those squirm-inducing driver fidgets. I don't know if he's underrated. But the qualities that make him an appealing character are, I think, underappreciated.

Ritter: Sens nails it. Yes, Na is slow and a headcase, but how many pro athletes would own it to the point of posing in a straitjacket for a magazine photo shoot? He's probably appropriately rated, but I often find myself rooting for him.

All true, yet unsatisfying... To me, this is a perfect illustration of how the Tour's success has made it less interesting. Back in the day one had to win to survive out there, and that made it compelling on a week-to-week basis.

Phil Being Phil - I've been reliably informed that Phil is always the smartest guy in the room, and I remain in awe of his use of the rule book to his advantage on the 13th hole at Shinnecock. The man is a national treasure.... But riddle me this, Batman, why does he keep pulling such stupid s**t?

Phil Mickelson, for the second time in as many starts, was penalized for a rules violation.

The latest incident came during the final round of A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier on Sunday. About to play the 439-yard par-4 7th hole, Mickelson walked to the front of the tee box and patted down some fescue with his foot. A few seconds later, as he was standing behind his ball, you can hear him say, "I'm not sure what I just did is legal," presumably to caddie Tim Mickelson. "... I'll ask somebody."

Turns out what Mickelson did was in fact illegal. He flagged down a rules official coming down the fairway, who then sought clarification and later reported back to Mickelson that it was a two-stroke penalty for a violation of Rule 13-2, which covers improving line of play. "A player must not improve or allow to be improved his line of play or a reasonable extension of that line beyond the hole by removing or pressing down sand, loose soil, replaced divots or other cut turf placed in position."

So reminiscent of the Presidents Cup in Korea where he asked Captain Jay Haas if the one-ball rule was in effect, but only after having changed golf balls.... Though I do find this rant from Shack a tad uncharitable:

It's fascinating to see the PGA Tour on all of its social media accounts billing this as a player calling a penalty on himself. It's an unusually desperate and ignorant position to take from the land of #LiveUnderPar (well except in this case).

To review: Mickelson asked a question sensing he might have violated the rules and likely anticipated someone spotting the violation on the PGA Tour Live telecast. He got the explanation from Robby Ware and was subsequently penalized after Ware double checked, out of kindness.

So please, whether this "called a penalty on himself" nonsense is born out of ignorance or just a marketing effort to show that living under par means calling penalties on oneself, do not lump this incident with the many folks who have called penalties that no one else could see or possibly have known about. Especially since many of those incidents, which we rightly hold up for being incredible displays of integrity, happened because the player could not live with themselves thinking they had violated the rules.

Phil's case was a simple act of ignorance. He would have been assessed a penalty after a those monitoring the telecast would have passed the word along of his silly-stupid move.

Unless, of course, no one was watching PGA Tour Live. A very real possibility.

Yes and no.... I think it's OK to acknowledge that Phil behaved as we'd want a player to after having committed that act of stupidity. And his instinctive comment to Tim connotes a laudable desire to stay within the rules... Phil gets himself into these situations partially through the hubris of thinking he's so clever, and I accordingly revel in the schadenfreude of it all.

Non Compos Mentis - Shack had an interesting take on the Bryson DeChambeau compass decision:

One reason the compass and protractor yardage checking might not be a usual device?

Most golfers, caddies and others would not know what to do with them!

Also fitting the Rules description for unusual devices assisting play would be yardage books with gradients shot by rangefinders that disallowed in competition, and of course, green reading books which are now a usual piece of equipment because they were not immediately deemed unusual soon enough.

The same green reading books where he was using his protractor to double check a hole location!

Do these inconsistencies undermine the credibility of golf's Rules? How can they not?

Hmmmmmmm? Good catch, Geoff.

Required Read of the Day - This game just torments us, no? And yet said torment is more of a feature than a bug.... Curious that. Mike Bamberger with a highly personal accounting of his own struggles, under the smile-inducing title, "Goodbye, Mr. Yips". Though that header might be more hopeful than accurate... A couple of excerpts will connote the wistful flavor of the piece:

On the short ones, the only thing that worked, or semi-worked, was backhanding them, from the left. During the 2010 U.S. Open, I bought an old Titleist Bulls Eye at a gas

station off Highway 1 from a guy selling surfboards. The Bulls Eye (for you kids) is a two-way palindrome of a putter used ingeniously by Corey Pavin for most of his career.

Once, at the end of an interview with Pavin, I asked him if Bulls Eye putters had loft on both sides.

"Let me guess," he said. "You're going righty on the long ones and lefty on the short."

"How did you know?"

"We've seen everything," Pavin said.

And this:

2. I WENT TO SEE MY OPHTHALMOLOGIST.

I had three questions for Dr. Steve Goldman. Do I need glasses? Am I right-eye dominant? Do you have any putting suggestions for me? A distillation of his answers: no, yes, practice.

Good Luck with all that, Mike. For anyone interested in a scholarly treatment of the Y-word, David Owen has your backgrounder here.

Shack in Social Media - In recent days he's had some great stuff, which we'll just ~~steal~~ link to at will. First, this great old photo of perhaps the most famous one-shotter in golf: