Just a heads up that you'll be on your own tomorrow.... But we'll cover anything that needs to be covered on Thursday.
Needing No Introduction - NBC has introduced its new lead analyst, whose decision to accept the gig makes him sound like any other fan:
Paul Azinger is cackling again at the other end of the line.
The 1993 PGA champion with a giant personality has always enjoyed a good laugh,always been able to chuckle at himself. He’s always been quick with the needle, too, and always sees the glass as half full. A cancer survivor for 25 years now, he continues to be a 58-year-old kid at heart. And right now, he’s downright giddy.
“How good is golf going to be? How good is life right now with Tiger Woods in the mix?” Azinger said as he erupted in a long burst of joy, knowing that he’s back in the vortex that is Tiger Woods.
Frankly, the biggest surprise to me is that Zinger wanted to work that hard, though here's the skinny on that:
He has signed on for 14 events while also retaining his role as lead analyst at Fox Sports for the U.S. Open and the U.S. Women’s Open. Such is his gift for garrulousness that he has been granted permission to work for both networks.
How hot a commodity is Zinger? A third outlet requested his services, but he declined an offer to sit in the tower for Turner Sports in its coverage of The Match, next month’s pay-per-view exhibition in Las Vegas in which Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson vie for a winner-take-all $9 million pot.
I'm thinking that last bit was a good call.... As for this bit, well I'll just hope he's less confusing in the booth:
“A change like this doesn’t seem that significant to me because they still have their whole team in place, and it’s a great team,” said Azinger, 58, who actually got his first shot at TV commentary when NBC producer Tommy Roy asked him to sit in during the 1995 Ryder Cup at Oak Hill in Rochester, N.Y. “They’re just going to get a different voice from the booth, but with thoughts similar to Johnny’s, more or less. I’ll just say it differently.
“The unique thing about Johnny is that he would boo a bad shot, but you never heard him boo. He just told it like it was. Golfers don’t get booed. He booed them without saying boo. He booed them with honesty that he had when assessing a golf shot.
The big reveal relates to a possible curtain call as Ryder Cup captain:
In 2008, Paul Azinger became the first U.S. Ryder Cup captain in nearly a decade to lead a team to victory, doing so at Valhalla with his innovative “pod” system and a player-driven approach to leadership.
In the wake of that victory there were many, including the vast majority of his players, who said Azinger deserved a second chance to captain, but at the time the 12-time PGA Tour winner appeared to be undecided and the PGA of America named Corey Pavin the 2010 captain.
On Monday, Azinger was named NBC Sports/Golf Channel’s lead analyst starting next year and among many revelations during an extended interview on “Morning Drive” he explained how much he wanted a second chance to captain.
“I wanted to do it again, I lobbied to do it again after we won in ’08, but I think I waited a little too long and they had already made a decision,” Azinger said. “The excuse I got was that there are more captains than there are Ryder Cups and I thought that was fair, but then they asked [Tom] Watson to do it again shortly afterward and I was like, ‘What, huh?’”
As I recall, he was reluctant to commit, and who could really blame him? The magic was unlikely to recur.... But he's also showing a little cluelessness, because obviously that 2012 collapse required a really futile and stupid gesture.
The Forecaddie continues to break news, as that fourteen tourneys isn't the extent of his commitment:
The Forecaddie is most impressed with just how much work the 1993 PGA Champion will be doing, including the Masters.
“He’ll be there for the BBC and he’ll also be there working besides Brandel [Chamblee] and Mike Tirico, which I think is going to be a terrific add to our most-watched week,” said Golf Channel Executive Producer Molly Solomon. She also we should expect to see Azinger start off the year at Kapalua and the Sony Open for Golf Channel-only broadcasts, as well as “a lot of Paul Azinger on Golf Channel on Thursdays and Fridays.”
Amusingly, they've also seen fit to give Zinger a Secret Service code name:
As for how the deal went down, Roy revealed that once Miller had decided to retire this summer Azinger was called.
“I wanted to meet at a place where there was a pretty good chance we wouldn’t be recognized from people in the world of golf,” Roy said. A Ruby Tuesday’s halfway between Roy and Azinger’s Florida homes was chosen near Ocala. A code name was born.
“Whenever we have big-time deals at NBC, we operate in total secrecy, so from that time forward when we had any internal texts or communications on this, we always referred to Paul as Ruby Tuesday.”
Now The Man Out Front has one more place to check when he suspects a big deal is in the works. And getting Azinger to work so much looks like a very big deal to The Forecaddie.
I'd have gone with The Podfather, but reasonable people can differ....
Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics - Shack has blogged this Dave Dusek statistical analysis, and the best analogy is Rashomon.
Here's Dusek's header:
As contrasted to Geoff's:
This is all PGA Tour data, so we'll ask Shack to keep our daughters out of this.... Really, haters gonna hate. But what does the date really say?
As you can see in the chart below, the average driving distance on the PGA Tour last season was 296.1 yards, up 1.23 percent from the previous season’s 292.5. The average on the Web.com Tour also went up, from 302.9 yards to 304.9 yards.
We've seen these numbers before, and that three yards per year might seem small, but just like compound interest....
I'm unsure what happened in 2011-13, but the last five years tells a very specific story....
Duske then correlates driving distance with success, mercifully using cold hard cash in lieu of FedEx Cup points:
See those dots at the upper right? Remember, distance is supposed to be an advantage....But to Shack's disappointment, Dusek has not found a threshold change in the underlying relationship:
The average PGA Tour player last season won $1,329,295, but the chart shows some of the biggest hitters – such as Rory McIlroy, Tony Finau, Dustin Johnson and Justin Thomas – earned significantly more. At the same time, other players who have high driving-distance averages — such as Trey Mullinax, Harold Varner and Robert Garrigus — earned less. As a group, the 20 longest hitters on the PGA Tour averaged more than $3.5 million in prize money last season, which was 164 percent more than the Tour average.
As massive as that percentage may seem, it falls within a range that goes several years. In 2017, the 20 longest hitters on the PGA Tour averaged 123 percent more prize money than the PGA Tour average. In the three seasons before that, they earned about 150 percent more, which tells us that as distance off the tee has increased over the last few years, the longest hitters have maintained an edge in terms of earnings.
So, while this increased length triggers legitimate concerns, it doesn't seem to have change competitive balance, at least in these last few years:
The data from the 2017-18 PGA Tour season shows that pros are getting even longer off the tee, and the USGA and R&A are probably very concerned about that. But it does not appear that the longest hitters in professional golf are getting a more significant edge over their competition. The ability to hit the ball a long way with driver always has given players an edge, and that edge seems to be holding steady as yardages increase.
Of course, the far larger issue has always been that chicks dig the long ball....
The Kid vs. The Kidd - Tom Doak has always been the Johnny Miller of architects, never afraid of saying what he really thinks of others' work. And while we all know that David McLay Kidd have crossed paths a few time previously, I agree with Shack that his comments seem awfully personal....
Where to begin? I guess inevitably at Bandon, their first encounter. The Btit's original course at Bandon was the toast of the town, at least until Pacific Dunes opened, leading to this snark:
A few years ago they took part in a Q&A at Bandon Dunes, where Kidd’s original design opened to acclaim in 1999 but was overshadowed by Pacific Dunes two years later. What would you do differently, a questioner asked?
“I’d go second!” Kidd shot back, as Doak laughed.
“Usually it’s not an advantage because the first guy gets the best choice of ground. That didn’t happen in Bandon because Mike [Keiser] didn’t own all the ground,” Doak said.
Amusing, but misleading as well. Kidd's career would never have happened without that Bandon course, so any residual bitterness seems misplaced. In fact, if you read Dream Golf, one of the revelations is that Keiser probably thought he was hiring Kidd's well-known father, only to get stuck with the dauphin....
I'd be remiss if I didn't include this bit of their relationship as well:
The relationship between Doak and Kidd is always competitive, sometimes convivial and occasionally contentious. (In 2014, Doak rated a Kidd course in St. Andrews a “zero.”)
That was the famous Castle Course, about which nobody had anything nice to say.... Though, of course, Doak went out of his way to be dismissive of it with that zero....
Of greater interest than their little spat, here are Doak's comments about his new track at Wisonsin's Sand Valley:
Tom Doak waited more than 35 years for the opportunity that was presented to him thissummer, ever since he first saw Swinley Forest and Rye. Those two Harry Colt courses in England – renowned for being short on yardage but long on challenge – are the genesis of Sedge Valley, Doak’s recently announced course at Wisconsin’s Sand Valley Resort.
Great architecture exposes weaknesses in skill or judgment, and Doak’s proposed design probes the psyche even before a shot is struck. Sedge Valley is just 6,100 yards, par 68, guaranteeing that some will dismiss it sight unseen as too short to bother with, while others will assume it’s a pushover.
“It will be easier to break 90 than on a 6,800-yard, par-72 course,” Doak concedes, “but it won’t be any easier to shoot a low score. The hardest golf course I know in relation to par is Rye, and it’s 6,300 yards, par 68.”
But then he gets oddly personal, strange given that he's had the upper hand previously:
Doak often has plowed a lonely furrow with his work – purists blanched at four par 3s on the back nine at Pacific Dunes and his reversible Loop layout at Forest Dunes. He knows quirk can be a tough sell, even with clients such as the Keiser family, who have demonstrated admirable enthusiasm for ingenuity at both Bandon Dunes and Sand Valley.
“The hardest part will be to convince them to let me make it somewhat challenging,” Doak said. “I don’t think they think that’s a really important part of their business model, and the feedback on Mammoth Dunes says maybe they’re right. I don’t think that’s a difficult golf course and people love it.”
Mammoth Dunes was designed by David McLay Kidd, with whom Doak has had a robust rivalry since they built the first two courses in Bandon. Kidd had lobbied for Doak to get Sand Valley’s third job (Coore and Crenshaw preceded Kidd).
“He’s really competitive with me and he really wants to beat me head to head, which he can’t do if I don’t do a golf course there,” Doak laughs.
Substantively, it seems that Doak is arguing that the trend towards width has perhaps gone too far, though he admits that they're digging it. Though Doak's own work at Bandon, Pacific as well as Old Macdonald, is very much of the same....
I'm guessing what he's really saying is that his specific site, which lent itself towards a shorter course because of the specific locations for tees and greens, will be more interesting if he's allowed to make it play a little tougher, which is really an issue between Doak and the Keisers.....
Here's Shack's take:
Given that the course is years away from opening, it’s odd that Doak seems more obsessed with countering Kidd’s design than quietly going about building a great course and letting the results speak for themselves. But maybe this faux drama is what the “retail golfer” clamors for.
Keiser is wont to speak of the "Retail golfer", hence Shack's to me misplaced snark. That retail golfer has been awfully well-served by Keiser's efforts, and I guess we'll allow them a little faux drama to get us talking about the resort.
I'll also remind that we want the courses to be different from one another, otherwise what's the point? Doak's vision for this piece of land was sufficiently enticing for him the get the gig.... I don't mind that they've a little rivalry, but the focus should be on the golf course.
Seven Is a Stretch - Mike Bamberger (yes, I took him to the woodshed, recently, but I've moved on) has a new feature on the seven best things in golf each week. As you can imagine, seven can tax one's resources this time of year.... He did a Polo event with Tom Watson that he milks for about half his quota:
5. MODIFIED SCOTCH-FOURSOME GOLF
Watson will tell you that the greatest links golfer ever was Peter Thomson, who died this year. But Watson has five British Opens and three British Senior Opens. He loveseverything about golf in the kingdom, including the form of the game seldom played in these parts, what used to be known as Scotch Foursomes and what we typically call Alternate Shot. I played in another event recently, a 27-hole one-day thing in which 18 holes were played as modified alternate shot. The modification was significant and purists will detest it but I thought it was great: both members of each two-person team play tee shots, one of the shots gets selected, and then you alternate shots all the way into the hole from there. Play moves. You quickly develop, for good or for bad, team chemistry. You get to play more shots but you also find yourself all-in on what your partner is doing, in a way you might not be in a typical better-ball match. I urge you to try it.
There's not much of that left even in Scotland these days, though all of those alternate formats can be good fun.
2. GOLF WITH WAY FEWER THAN 14 CLUBS
I mean, way fewer. I played in a little, informal event the other day, just nine holes, on a short course, and you could only carry four clubs. OMG, was it fun! (I brought a driver, putter, sand wedge and 7-iron.) The PGA Tour should have a four-club event. Not seven clubs. Four. The equipment companies would maybe hate the idea, but TV would love it and it would be absolutely fascinating to see what the players would do if they had to manipulate one shot after another after another, by way of stance and swing. Seven clubs, a number discussed now and again in this context, is not extreme enough. I can’t tell you how many bad decisions I made over the course of these nine holes, typically when I had to decide between the sand iron and the 7-iron. The event was in my head. It was great.
There's a bonus Vijay sighting, and even a reference to his ongoing lawsuit.
That Took a Long Time... - Really, you can't make this stuff up:
Finally, a slow-play penalty, though it was called in PGA Tour Champions event and...not on Bernhard Langer
You're not going to believe this.... who am I kidding, of course you will:
Slow play is akin to the weather in that everyone talks about it, but nothing is ever doneabout it. Until, oddly, the final round of a PGA Tour Champions tournament on Sunday.
After completing play in the Dominion Energy Charity Classic, Corey Pavin was informed by PGA Tour Champions tournament official Michael Petch that he was being assessed a one-stroke penalty. Instead of shooting an even-par 72, he posted a one-over 73 and finished in a tie for 15th.
Now this also serves as a commentary on the state of journalism, as John Strege can't be bothered explaining the circumstances under which this penalty was imposed.....
Lanny is of course available to howl at the moon:
“Of all the things to happen with all the times,” he said on the telecast, "Cory Pavin, I have played, I can’t even count the number of rounds, I never thought Corey Pavin was a slow player. All the guys we know are slow players have never been penalized out here. Where has this been for the last 15 years?”
Good question.
gee, is I were a cynical sort, I might think they're not serious about this issue....
No comments:
Post a Comment