Late Week Leftovers

With the heat spell broken, I'll be heading out soon to tee it up.  According to our super, the golf course took on 1.65" of water in yesterdays thunderboomer, so I'll be in my hip-waders.  So, just a couple of items for y'all.

Men in Red - Wide fairways softened by the heat and heavy rainfall, led to a day of low scoring in Philly:

Tiger Woods dazzles with a 62 in the opening round of the BMW Championshi

Tiger Woods spectacularly avoided the hole in which he has often found himself in first rounds this year by summoning shades of glory days gone by on Thursday. 

Woods went out in 29 en route to an eight-under-par 62 in the opening round of the BMW Championship. 

His six-under front nine at Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square, Pa., included four birdies and an eagle on the par-5 16th hole. He hit every green in regulation and seven of his nine shots to the green were inside 20 feet. 

It was the first time he bettered 30 for nine holes since the Tour Championship in 2007. It was the sixth time he broke 30 for nine holes in his career. 

To be sure, it was an anomaly for Woods in this a comeback season. He entered the tournament 140th on tour in round-one scoring average with a 71.13.

He has had a Thursday problem most of the year, so this is noteworthy.  I'm not sure where to assign the cause.  There was this hall pass from Ponte Vedra Beach:

Tiger Woods said he’s never skipped a Wednesday pro-am, but at the tail end of a long season, at the final stop on a stressful three-week stretch, he finally decided to sit one out. 

“I needed it,” he said Thursday. “I really did. I’ve played a lot of golf in the last six weeks, and I needed a day off to recover and make sure I was fresh today.” 

To pass the time Wednesday, Woods said he went to the gym, received treatment and watched “a lot” of U.S. Open tennis. He felt even better about his decision when the temperatures soared over 90 degrees, and Hideki Matsuyama and a couple of caddies had to pull out of the pro-am because of heat exhaustion.

I don't know the rules involved, but in that heat it was a good call, especially for a man of a certain age....

But there was also this in Shack's distinctive phraseology:

Of course there was also the Scotty Cameron coming off the 60-day DL that might have helped, too, as Tiger noted after the round.

I've long believed that putters need to be put into a time out at least once a season....  It just helps them stay focused.

A 62 with a bogey is quite the day, though admittedly the course was playing to about a Par-66 yesterday.  But, you know what's better than a 62 with a bogey?  Yup, you guys don't miss anything:

McIlroy, meanwhile, made six consecutive birdies, starting on his ninth hole (the 18th at

Aronimick). He made two bogeys late and closed with yet another birdie on his 18th hole. 

“Obviously, today was good,” McIlroy said. “Yesterday in the pro-am I made seven birdies in a row on my back nine and shot eight under for my last nine holes. Obviously, I was nine under through 14 today. I think I played a 23-hole stretch in 17 under par. Pretty good. 

“Eight under par was good. It probably should have been a lot better, but still a pretty good start to the tournament.”

I can't find the average score for the day, but 48 of 69 players were under par.  Which makes Phil's +3 really bad....

No Surprise -  Golf Magazine has completed their annual anonymous poll of Tour Players, releasing this amusing but unsurprising result:

Despite the hush-hush nature of cheating on the PGA Tour, everyone seems to be well aware of the c-word. They just don’t do it themselves. 

As part of our newly published Anonymous Pro Survey, which you can find in the October Issue of GOLF, a resounding 44% of Tour pros surveyed admitted that they had witnessed a fellow Tour player cheat during a tournament round. 

“Multiple times,” offered one Tour pro. “The Tour is a joke when it comes to enforcing the Rules.” 

While those numbers might be slightly inflated, it appears there is plenty of rule-bending on the Tour, at least more than the public typically hears about. The irony exists is in the follow-up question. Of the players surveyed, 100% said they themselves had never broken a rule and not reported it. Of the plenty of players willing to call out cheating, none were willing to point the finger back on themselves.

I'd love a deeper dive on this, to better understand the nature of the offenses.  For instance, they cite the Joe Dahmen-Sung Kang drop fiasco as an example, for which the use of the C-word is arguable.  

And The Winner Is... - Mike Keiser has picked one of his usual suspects to design a very unusual third course at his Wisconsin Sand Valley resort:

It was a three-way horserace, down to the wire in Nekoosa, Wisc. 

In a photo-finish, Tom Doak prevailed. 

The vaunted architect, known for his modern-minimalist designs, will build the third 18-hole course at Sand Valley Golf Resort, edging fellow designers Gil Hanse and Mike DeVries by a nose. 

In keeping with his reputation for out-of-the-box thinking, Doak earned the nod with an unconventional idea. His proposed routing, tentatively named Sedge Valley, calls for a shorter-than-usual par-67 or 68 course that will tip out at no more than 6,100 yards, and feature a mix of drivable par-4s. 

“We had three proposals from three extremely talented architects, all of whom we love,” Sand Valley managing partner Michael Keiser said by phone Wednesday. “The decision in the end came down to these factors: It was Doak, plus concept, plus the specific routing.”

Veddy interesting!  Also interesting is that this bake-ff for the third course yielded similar results to the one for the second:

As a testament to how much room they had to work with, each of the three architects in the running for the next 18 submitted proposed routings on different plots of land of their own choosing. The site Doak selected happened to be one that the Keisers themselves had long been drawn to for its distinctive topography and vegetation. 

“There’s a wonderful mix of really bold movement along with some more subtle, gently roly-poly terrain,” Michael Keiser said. “And then the ground cover is this beautiful sedge.”

The only solution is to build them all.... Now.

Have a great weekend.