PGA Championship Tuesday

The last PGA Championship in August.... Keep the Kleenex handy, it's going to be an emotional week...

We'll lead with this aerial video of all eighteen holes.  But in the interest of full disclosure, I've not watched it:

Why haven't I watched it?  Two pretty good reasons:

1. It's fourteen minutes long, and of greater import:
2. It's Bellerive.

Golf Wire helpfully provides thirteen things we need to know about the venue, including these you'll want to share with your foursome this week:

4. The club opened in 1897 and was called The Field Club. It included a nine-hole golf course. In 1910 it moved to nearby Normandy and was renamed the Bellerive

Country Club after Louis Groston de Saint-Ange de Bellerive, who was – who can forget – the last French commander in North America.

5. In 1959, the club moved southwest to its current site. Robert Trent Jones designed the new course, which opened one year later. 

6. While it will commonly be referred to as St. Louis, the course is actually situated in Town and Country, Mo., a suburb due West of the city center.

I told you this would be an exciting week....  And see if this doesn't have you counting your fingers and toes:

13. Bellerive will become the 18th course to host multiple PGA Championships.

Wow, history in the making.... 

Last night's Golf Channel Live From coverage was sufficiently comical that I wish I had a transcript available, as the head greenskeeper exhibited signs of Stockholm Syndrome.  Oh, his words were comforting enough, it's going to be a great week of championship conditions.  But I'm pretty sure his eyelids were screaming "Abort!" in Morse code....

The Forecaddie has an early look at the greens:

The Forecaddie has been hearing about the struggles with Bellerive’s greens for nearly two years and finally got a first-hand look Monday. In a nutshell, the 2018 PGA Championship course will feature slow and tender greens that by Sunday may resemble a war zone.

Don't sugarcoat it, tell us what you really think....  It's that "two years" that gets my attention, as they're spending lots of effort to tell us that this is just, you know, a really harsh year with difficult growing conditions.

Adding to Bellerive’s issues: Recently resodded zoysiagrass collars transition briefly to dirt on most greens before plunging down huge and healthy short-grass areas. The various stages of struggling turf leads The Man Out Front to comfortably declare that Bellerive is no putters’ paradise. Scoring, however, should be excellent given the softness of greens, immaculate fairways and dense zoysiagrass short-grass surrounds conducive to spinning lob-wedge recoveries.

Yeah, they should torch the place....  Literally.  Our man on site has more, as it hasn't been a good season for the club's membership:

The PGA of America, always loathe to set a bad example with silly Stimpmeter speeds

and other extreme maintenance practices, has taken every step possible to improve Bellerive’s huge surfaces. The greens here were last rebuilt with A-4 bent in 2006 by architect Rees Jones. More recently, the Forecaddie heard 18 temporaries were played for a member-guest after the club had been employing first tee closures when the temperatures hit 90. Subsequently, club dues have been picked up by the PGA of America for July and August after play was halted entirely in an effort at turf salvation. 

How poorly the green complexes play in the context of other August PGAs remains to be seen. But certainly the weakness of the greens — The Forecaddie saw light pitch shots leaving dark grey bruising — are bad enough to bring back memories of previous PGAs held in hot climates with cool-season grasses.

On the bright side, the agronomic struggles outside St. Louis should help validate the PGA’s move next year to May.

I'd caution him to withhold that judgment at least until we see Rochester, NY in May....   But hey, it's one of only 18 venues to have held two PGA's, though they say that like it's a good thing.

Joel Beall also risks speaking truth to power on course conditions, coming up with some juicy quotes that'll have Kerry Haigh's head exploding.  This of course was my fave:

A caddie, on request of anonymity, briefly told Golf Digest on the practice green that, while surprised at Bellerive's greens, they're not worse than what players faced at the Scottish Open at Gullane. "Just factor in [bumps] as part of the read," he said.

I'll go way out on a limb and predict that will be the only comparison to links turf all week, and that was only offered with the promise of anonymity.

This is also deserves comment:

"With this heat, it's not surprising," Joe LaCava, caddie for Tiger Woods, told Golf Digest. "That's the Midwest. It's a shame it looks like this. But what can you do?"

I don't know, Joe, I'm just spit-ballin' here, but you could avoid St. Louis Town and Country in August? 

But it's Joel's photos that tell the sad story:

 As for the weather, they're actually catching a bit of a break there:

Those temps are actually on the moderate side, though it would also be helpful if we could avoid those thunderstorms.

Who Ya Got?  Yeah, smells like the bomber whose putter heats up, but that covers like twenty names.  

For me, this one is absolutely No Sale:

Jordan Spieth bounded up the steps leading to the Firestone Country Club locker room on Tuesday afternoon, hopping two at a time. Spieth almost never walks anywhere. He runs or bounces or leaps. That’s just his way. 

As he reached the top of the steps, Spieth almost ran smack into Gerry McIlroy, father of Rory, who was headed in the opposite direction—albeit not quite as quickly. The two men exchanged greetings and handshakes and the senior McIlroy said, “I know you were disappointed Sunday at Carnoustie, but looks to me like you’re going in the right direction.” 

“Absolutely!” Spieth said with a wide smile. “I feel good about my game. I’m going in the right direction. I can feel it.” 

Then he shrugged and said in that insightful Spieth way, “I’m close, right? Where have you heard that before?”

Let me see if I have this right...  The guy that spit the bit in the final round at Carnoustie is desperately seeking affirmation from the father of the guy that spit the bit in Akron?  Good luck with that...

Not only is Jordan lost in the wilderness, but he can't even pretend that these conditions are to his liking....

The Tour Confidential panel spent a little time on this topic, at least as relates to three of the twenty referenced above:

1. Justin Thomas will head to the PGA Championship as not only the defending champ, but coming off his first World Golf Championships win. He shot 69 on Sunday to lock down a four-shot victory at Firestone. Is he the prohibitive favorite next week?

Silly query, as the only prohibitive favorite in golf is, you know, the field.

Alan Shipnuck: Not only is JT coming in scorching hot he’s been stellar all season long backing up last year’s breakthrough. I’ll take him over DJ.

Michael Bamberger: Does prohibitive mean you cannot make a case for somebody else? I’ll make a case against JT and his sunshine band: it is extremely difficult to do it for eight consecutive rounds. Four is hard, five is harder — then there’s six and seven. Eight is way, wayhard.

Ask a silly question....  But Mike is making an important point, the argument against Justin is that it's still golf.  

As for this guy?

2. Rory McIlroy was in the final pairing at Firestone, trailing Thomas by three after 54 holes, but he couldn’t get anything going and shot 73 to tie for 6th. McIlroy is still majorless since 2014. After this latest Sunday swoon, where is your McIlroy Meter with just one major left on the ’18 calendar?

Shipnuck: I never thought I’d say this but I’ve become apathetic. Rory has done this so much over the last few years — including the final round of this year’s Masters — it’s getting harder to say this isn’t who he is now. I loved watching him in his prime and want to see that again as much as anybody, but it was made glaringly obvious on Sunday he doesn’t have the same precision, consistency and control as Thomas tee-to-green and is nowhere near as good a putter, and while JT’s hunger was palpable Rory seemed as lost as ever.

Ritter: Rory has drifted a bit the past few years. Some of it was injury, some of it was probably life changes off the course. But this PGA sounds like a big, tough course that may play a little rain-softened. That’s straight out of the old Rory major-winning playbook. I think he’ll be part of the story this week.

When I hear about such conditions, the name that jumps out at me is Rory.... But Rory doesn't seem to care all that much, so why should I?

And, of course, this guy:

3. Tiger Woods lost steam over the weekend at Firestone, closing the WGC-Bridgestone with rounds of 73. Sure, we can blame the heat for a little tiredness, but Woods looked a touch sluggish on the weekend. After his round on Saturday he said he was fine, but he’s also got a busy schedule ahead. He’ll play next week’s PGA and then have a week off before what could be three straight FedEX Cup Playoffs starts, making it five events in six weeks. Is Woods running out of gas?

Tired?  That's really what you're going with?  

Shipnuck: Tiger has showed this year that his best golf is good enough but he has been unable to string together four straight strong rounds. Is it mental fatigue? A back that is balkier than he will let on? Frayed nerve endings? The guy is still a specimen so I don’t think it’s that he’s physically tired. I think the reality is that he’s the 50th-ranked player in the world for a reason. 

Bamberger: That is incisive, Alan, and I agree with all of it. The difference between 63-hole and 72-hole golf is the difference between being No. 50 and being a consistent winner and contender, of which there’s maybe a half dozen, tops. He can win again, at a regular Tour event against a B-field. It won’t mean that much to him. Carnoustie — The Open! With his kids there! — meant the world to him. Too much. As for this week, from the little I know of the course it just doesn’t strike me as a good course for where his game is.

Alas, the most interesting scenario is one in which he misses the cut....  Puts Cap'n. Furyk in an interesting corner.  But this week doesn't seem to suit the guy at all, but we should give him credit therefore for any kind of reasonable result.

The Golf.com guys pick here, and Rory gets way more love than he deserves:

Josh Sens: It’s Tony Finau time. He’s been knocking at the door in the majors, and now he comes to a big straight-forward layout that favors bombers and an event that has no par-3 tournament for him to wreck his ankle in. Sleeper: Luke List. Putting is his historical weakness but he’s been rounding into form and is coming off a strong showing at Firestone, a course that plays not unlike Bellerive.

Finau is an interesting pick, as he fits the profile.  Mikey Bams'  has an interesting sleeper pick:

Michael Bamberger: Rory. The driving game he showed in Akron, for one thing. Also, how long can you keep a good man down? Sleeper: Bryson. He’s earned his place in the darkhorse category because of the talk around him. Example: he’s choking his way off the Ryder Cup team (some people will say), he had a fit of driving-range craziness (some will say) at the Open and he was classless and looked lost (some will say) in the final day in Germany. I’m guessing he’ll dig deep here to make the Ryder Cup team on points. That driving range “episode” — it was hardly an episode. It showed SOMEBODY WHO CARES and somebody who uses the range, as Francesco Molinari does, as a place to try out the shots you will actually need in competition. So if the shots are lousy you have a reason to be upset. As for the poor play in Germany, he’s too smart and too talented not to learn from that. I’m bullish on him in every way.

Joe Passov, predictably, gives Tiger a big, open-mouth kiss, but you'll have to click through to read that.  

Alex Myers offers his top thirteen picks, the first twelve of which you can obtain from scrolling through the Official World Golf Rankings....  As for No. 13?  Well, heads will be exploding....  Again, click through at your own peril.

Gearhead Mike Stachura offers up his picks in a meandering, reference-laden item under this promising header:

PGA Championship 2018: The can't-miss, sure-fire, super-nice-guy choice to win at Bellerive

We like nice guys, though there's a better than even chance he's over-interpreting the Nick Price and Gary Player history of the venue.  But it's his detours that amuse:

While history hasn’t been my friend, what else can you rely on when you have a major-championship venue that will appear on the big stage for just its third time in the last six decades? That’s what we’ve got with Bellerive. It’s been 26 years since the St. Louis course hosted a major, when an unfaltering Nick Price won the PGA in 1992, and 53 years since Gary Player won his one and only U.S. Open title there and cap his career Grand Slam. So, as a major venue, it’s about as unknown today as, well, Rod McKuen, the drecky kitsch poet whose late 1960s “Listen to the Warm,” which is not a Spinal Tap album, sold millions of copies.

Seems a lock that Rod McKuen and Spinal Tap have never been found in the same sentence previously, and it seems a dubious foundation.  But spoiler alert, his pick is the guy leading the Tour in Strokes Gained: Attitude.

Lastly, this week's host aren't going to love this item:

Does the PGA Championship produce the worst major winners? An investigation

Shaun Micheel, take a bow.  It's complicated and I don't love his methodology, as he analyzes based upon current world ranking rather than career results.  But yeah, it's the least interesting major for so many reasons....

Udder Stuff -  John Wood is Matt Kuchar's caddie and a frequent contributor to the Golf.com Tour Confidential discussion group.  He's penned an open letter to the USGA on their proposed rules changes related to green-reading books, which one hopes will be considered seriously during the comment period.  First, his framing of the issue:

Dear USGA and R&A, 

We need to talk. 

This is where you’ve decided to put your foot down? Restricting green-reading materials?

Because it feels like there’s an elephant on the tee box that no one’s addressing — looking at you, 350-yard drives — and you guys are waving your hands and jumping up and down saying: “Look over here, look over here! Here’s the problem! Look at how easy putting has become!” Sorry, but if we get a calm day at St. Andrews in a couple of years and someone shoots 59 on the Old Course, it’s not gonna be because of a series of little arrows in a book.

On the one hand, those issues have nothing to do with each other....  But, on the other hand, WTF!  

Let me also note that I'm not in love with the argument that it's unnecessary because putting stats haven't improved.  There are offsetting changes to the conditions of greens, making them firmer and faster, that could account for that.  However, those reservations aside, this is a pretty good use of statistics to support his argument:

My biggest question is this: Has putting improved because of greens-book usage? Has rolling in 15-footers become so easy as to make that skill less relevant to being successful on Tour? Not a chance. Leading the Tour this year in Strokes Gained: Putting is Jason Day, at a whopping +1.193 strokes per round. Jason does not use a greens book.

Wherever you stand on the issue, this is worth your time, especially as Woodie explains the possible enforcement nightmares.....

Ryder Cup Update -  Lots of chatter on the subject, here and here, for instance, but the only real issue this week revolves around the eighth spot for automatic qualifiers.  Webb Simpson, as discussed after Carnoustie, holds the spot, but Bryson DeChambeau is within striking distance.  

But you know who else is within range of an automatic slot?  Pretty much everyone:

The PGA Championship winner will earn roughly 4,000 Ryder Cup points, which means that nearly any Tour player in the field could lock up a team spot with a victory. Consider that Chad Campbell (No. 104) is currently less than 4,000 points from the top eight. The winner earns two points per $1,000 earned at Bellerive, while the rest of the field picks up 1.5 points per $1,000 earned. What all that means is there is plenty of room for Ryder Cup drama this weekend in St. Louis.

I think we can all agree that if Chad Campbell is on the Ryder Cup team we're gonna need a bigger task force.

Details, Details - No need to panic, at least yet, over this header:

As Tiger Woods-Phil Mickelson "Match" begins to take shape, some crucial sticking points remain

Most important, you have to come up with another name.   The Match is taken.  

It seems that the big pieces are in place:

While many pieces to the puzzle are still missing, a television contract has been finalized. Cable network TNT, which shares the rights to this week's PGA Championship with CBS, has agreed to broadcast the showdown across its multiple platforms.

Folks might need to give up the ghost on this:

Another is whether or not the two very wealthy players would—or could—put at risk some of their own money. Sources say the subject has been broached, though to what

extent is unclear. It would not be included in the primary stake, but the two might give at least passing consideration to reaching into their own pockets for some kind of press or a side bet to goose interest levels. 

“Let’s face it,” said one television spokesman, “for this to work, to get people’s attention, they have to play for some of their own money somehow. Who wouldn’t watch that?”

Let's see... The one guy is notorious for not even grabbing restaurant checks, and the other let a buddy go to jail resulting from an unpaid gambling debt.  So I'm guessing no on this...

But you know who isn't in love with this?  

The concept of made-for-TV matches is nothing new, but one significant difference this time is the amount of cash potentially on the line; the proposed figure is $10 million, equal to the purse at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational won by Justin Thomas. Sources familiar with the ongoing contractual talks say the PGA Tour is not comfortable with that payout, because it potentially “overshadows” the total purse at all but a handful of its tournaments.

Asked if the tour might have an issue with the sum Mickelson first put forth at the Players Championship, the tour’s Andy Pazder, executive vice president and chief of operations responded via email: “The purse has not been finalized for the Tiger V Phil (sic) match and no agreements have been signed at this stage.” 

Hard to not read between the lines. One could speculate that it's a point of contention.

I'm reading between other lines, and guessing they're "uncomfortable" because they're not getting their vig....

Why The Long Face? -  What is with these kids today?  The PGA Tour is not a safe space, and God help us if it ever is.

Brian Wacker has written on the travails that have befallen the Artist Formerly Known as Smylie:

Smylie Kaufman’s season is over. The 26-year-old former PGA Tour winner told GolfDigest.com that he has filed with the tour for a medical extension, citing an inflamed 

left elbow that has plagued him for months. He last played at The Greenbrier in early July, where he withdrew following a 79 in the opening round. 

An MRI revealed no structural damage, but the pain, swelling and lack of range of motion was too much to bear. Kaufman, who has missed the cut in all but two of 16 starts this year, hasn’t touched a club since pulling out of the event and isn’t expected to be able to play for the next two to five months. When he does return, he’ll have five starts to earn enough points to keep his tour card or secure secondary status. 

“It has been the toughest year, year-and-a-half of my life, golf wise,” said Kaufman, whose exempt status from his lone victory, the 2015 Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in Las Vegas, was set to run out at the end of this season. “It sucks being really good for so long and feeling like I forgot how to play.” 

At times it looked like he had.

It's a brutal game we play, and there's no place to hide when it all goes bad.  I have a ton of sympathy for those in Smylie's position, and it'll be a great story is he's able to claw his way back.  Throw in a physical injury and we all feel for the guy.

This is the part where my sympathy is lacking:

It didn’t help any, either, that one of his favorite outlets, social media, had turned less, well, social amid his struggles. 

“Social media doesn’t help,” Kaufman said. “That place sucks. It was so great for me for so long, but it was never anything good the last six months. When I go to Twitter, it’s like reading the newspaper for me. Well, I don’t wanna see Tom or Joe telling me how bad I suck when I read the newspaper.” 

Kaufman took a two-month sabbatical from Twitter and Instagram earlier this year and has tried to be more low key with each since, though he was happy to share some snaps from his wedding in April to high school sweetheart Francie Harris. Settling into married life and a routine at home in Birmingham during his off time has helped as well, providing stability and a bit of clarity, as has working with sport psychologist Dr. Bhrett McCabe.

 His career hangs in the balance, but his biggest problem is Twitter trolls?  I'm actually interested to hear about his actual golf struggles, but he's whining about the mean girls.  Grow a pair, Smylie!