Tuesday Trifles

Buckle in, we've got much to discuss....

Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye - I think we can all agree that it's time:

After nearly 30 years in the broadcast booth, Johnny Miller is ready to hang up his microphone. 

Following a Hall of Fame playing career that included a pair of major titles, Miller has become one of the most outspoken voices in the game as lead golf analyst for NBC Sports. But at age 71 he has decided to retire from broadcasting following the 2019 Waste Management Phoenix Open. 

“The call of being there for my grandkids, to teach them how to fish. I felt it was a higher calling,” Miller told GolfChannel.com. “The parents are trying to make a living, and grandparents can be there like my father was with my four boys. He was there every day for them. I'm a big believer that there is a time and a season for everything.”

I've always had a higher tolerance for Johnny than Sir Nick, but he did stay a tad long at the fair.  The Desert Fox will make one last cameo, so keep the hankie close by:

His farewell event will be in Phoenix Jan. 31-Feb. 3, at a tournament he won in back-to-back years in 1974-75.

As for the replacement, a bit of a surprise:

While the Johnny Miller Era on NBC is coming to an end, the network appears to have found a worthy replacement in the booth. Sources confirmed to GolfDigest.com that Miller will be replaced by Paul Azinger, something that was first reported by Golfweek. 

Miller, however, couldn't confirm the Azinger hire. While he said "I'd like to tell you I had a say in my successor," he believed NBC/Golf Channel was still "kicking around some names." The network is expected to make an announcement shortly. 

Azinger, 59, is the current lead analyst for Fox Sports' coverage of the U.S. Open and U.S. Women's Open. According to Golfweek, Azinger is expected to remain in that position while working for NBC/Golf Channel.

Did NBC know that Greg Norman is available?  Still too soon?

Biggest loser?  Those advocating to make Zinger Ryder Cup Captain for Life....  Instead, now he'll be critiquing Strick, Phil and Tiger....

Reading is Fundamental -  The comment period is over and the governing bodies have issued the final rules on green-reading books:

The U.S. Golf Association and R&A finalized their decision on the use of green-reading materials, releasing their new interpretation of Rule 4.3 that will go into effect Jan. 1,

2019. 

The new-look Rule 4.3 (Use of Equipment), finalized after a six-week feedback period, places limits on size and scale of putting-green maps and disallows any similar electronic or digital materials that a player may use during a round to assist with reading the line of play on the putting green. 

“These latest modifications provide very practical changes that make the interpretation easier to understand and apply in the field,” said Thomas Pagel, the USGA’s senior managing director of governance. “We’re thankful for everyone’s willingness to provide feedback as we worked through the process of identifying a clear interpretation that protects the essential skill of reading a green, while still allowing for information that helps golfers enjoy the game.”

I'll leave it to the reader to sort through the exacting details of what is allowable, but suffice to say that Mr. Pagel uses the loosest possible definition of "practical" and "clear".   We could be litigating font size come January....

I would have rather they simply banned the books in their entirety.  

Of Architecture and Distance - Garrett Ford is new to me, though his blog seems like something I should be spending more time with:

Golf nerdery?  Damn, wish I'd thought of that one....

He riffs interestingly off this tweet from you-know-who:

Options off the tee?  WTF?  DJ from No Laying Up had the same reaction.... well, the same, only funnier:

I'm guessing that Patrick used all three of these drop options in that Saturday morning fourball...  Still too soon?

Garrett puts Brandel in his place here with a helpful primer:

Architecture wonks use the terms “strategic school” and “penal school” to define different philosophies of course design. The goal of the strategic school, as Geoff Shackelford puts it in his book Grounds for Golf, is to “present options for the player to debate, ultimately rewarding the more daring play carried out with skill.” The penalties for a poor shot are often subtle: an awkward lie, an obscured view of the green, an impossible angle to the pin. In order to create these scenarios, strategic courses generally have to provide width and plenty of short grass. The tighter the playing corridor, the fewer options the player has.

The penal school, on the other hand, prizes execution above all. Hazards are pushed to the sides of the fairways so that well-struck shots are consistently rewarded and poorly struck shots consistently punished. The penalties can be severe: deep rough, furrowed bunkers, thick foliage, and lots of water. Hole after hole, the course shows the player a patch of green surrounded by danger, and asks for a straight, true shot toward safety. To increase the challenge, the architect can simply make the safe area smaller. 

In its Ryder Cup setup, Le Golf National is clearly penal.

I really encourage you to read the entire piece, as it's quite well balanced but not overly long.  It's not that penal is necessarily bad... let Garrett explain in another longish excerpt:

Some insist that Le Golf National demanded a specific kind of strategic thought: on many tees, players had to think twice about hitting driver. At most PGA Tour venues, relatively easy setups allow bomb-and-gougers to operate with impunity. Le Golf National, however, forced competitors to calculate the risks and rewards of a long, potentially wild tee shot versus a shorter, likely accurate one. 

No doubt this is a form of strategy. It just isn’t a very interesting one. 

First, it requires almost nothing of the course design. Just mow a straight, 15-yard-wide fairway, grow ankle-high rough on both sides, and voila! You have made Tony Finau question whether he should pull driver. 

Another problem is that penal courses suppress the diversity of recovery shots. When you miss, you are either hacking out or taking a drop. Compare that to the array of punches, flops, runners, and blind Hail Marys you might attempt when out of position at the Old Course or Royal Melbourne or Sand Hills.

But the best part is his encapsulation of strategic design, this from the Good Doctor's The Spirit of St. Andrews:

That's the Long Hole, No. 14 on The Old Course, and its many lines of play.  Add in the ever changing wind, and hopefully you get an appreciation for the endless variety of golf on such a course.

We'll go out on this as relates to tournament golf at the elite level:

Contemplating the Future of Tournament Golf 

In the past 25 years, the average driving distance on the PGA Tour has increased by 38 yards. This trend shows no signs of stopping. Every year, more and more players who came of age in the era of 460cc driver heads, solid-core balls, and Trackman-assisted instruction arrive on the PGA Tour. As the usual outlets reported last week in their usual breathless way, Web Tour graduate Cameron Champ averaged almost 130 miles per hour in clubhead speed at the Safeway Open. Luke List led the field in driving distance at 339.5 yards. 

339.5. No golf course in the world is big enough to contain that kind of power merely by adding length.

I do have on significant quibble to be found in that last bit.  Garrett lumps Augusta National with the Old Course, which I think does a disservice to his case.   Augusta National can and will be defended, though it's taking about $100 million in land acquisitions around the club to do so.  But The Old Course can't be defended, as there are only so many tee boxes to be placed on the adjoining golf courses....

Now, a digression from our focus on distance.  It's a tad long, but take a look at this interesting video:

Thanks to Shack for the screen grab of these results:

Take a look at those spin numbers....  I continue to believe that the newer golf balls go too damn far, but they also spin far less than older technology.  One of the reasons the guys can bomb and gouge is that their foul balls aren't very foul....

This has John Feinstein seeing red:

The average winning score in 46 individual stroke-play events during the 2017-'18 season was 16.56 under par. Twelve of those events were won with at least 20 under par

and 41 were won with a double-digit total. The three-way playoff at the Safeway Open Napa to start the 2018-’19 season was at a mere 14 under. Additionally, the cut line on Fridays is often somewhere under par. Last January at the CareerBuilder Challenge, the 54-hole cut came at eight under par. In other words, if you averaged 69.7 for three rounds on the desert courses, you were home on Sunday. 

Yes, these guys are good. But are they really that good? Or, has the tour, in its zeal to prove week in and week out how good they are, gone too far with sometimes laughably easy course setups?

Yes, next question.  John is best with bits like this:

The PGA Tour doesn’t have to adapt the USGA’s setup philosophy. It also doesn’t have to turn almost every week into a birdie-fest. There’s a happy medium. 

When a course produces a winning score of 20 under par—or lower—there is an absolute sameness to almost every hole, every day. For most players, it’s driver off the tee/wedge approach, or something shorter and then perhaps an 8-iron. Miss the fairway? No problem, the second shot is usually short enough and the rough not quite so menacing that today’s players can spin a shot close to the hole anyway. Bunkers? They’re absolutely perfect; there’s almost never a bad lie. How often have you heard the ex-players who carry microphones say as a player digs his feet into the sand “this is makeable”? How often do you see a player hit a bunker shot to five feet and shake his head in disgust? The answer to both is often. 

If you penalize players for finding the rough or a bunker, if you make the hole locations more difficult, you force them to show-off more of their skills. A lot of PGA Tour events nowadays are putting contests: everyone hits greens in regulation; most everyone hits the par 5s in two. 

That doesn’t mean you have to make courses unfair; just make them more challenging. How about this for a new slogan: “Make birdies meaningful again.”

 Exactly.  And they squeal like pigs any time they're challenged....

I do think John shows less clarity in his treatment of USGA set-ups, which admittedly have been all over the lot.  Though the ones he cites, Congressional and Erin Hills, had weather and conditions that tied the USGA's hands, making the error more in venue selection.

I just think we're at a juncture where the set-up options at the elite level of the game is a conundrum.  The ability to drive it long and straight should be tested, just not perhaps on every hole.

Please Sir, may I Have an Off-Season? - No doubt you've heard the exciting news:

PGA Tour officials visited Alameda’s Corica Park twice in the past 10 days, and the

course has emerged as the front-runner for a planned new tour event in September 2019 — hosted by Warriors guard Stephen Curry and including a full field of professional golfers. 

Several PGA Tour executives, in the Bay Area for the season-opening Safeway Open in Napa, checked out Corica’s renovated South Course on Oct. 2, two sources told The Chronicle. One of the tour’s agronomists then inspected the course Monday, the day after the tournament ended at Silverado Resort. 

Corica Park’s South Course re-opened in June, after an extensive redesign by noted architect Rees Jones.

Man, I haven't been this excited since they got Justin Timberlake to host an event....  Yeah, I know.

But this is the bit that fried my beans:

Tour officials have not announced the dates of this potential tournament, but it’s tentatively slotted for Sept. 19-22, early in the 2019-20 season. The current 2018-19 “wraparound” schedule started last week in Napa, takes a break in December and ends with the regular-season finale Aug. 1-4. Then the FedEx Cup playoffs run for three weeks, ending Aug. 25 with the Tour Championship. 

The tour is expected to take a two-week break before launching its season Sept. 12, 2019, at the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia. Curry’s event would be next, followed by the Safeway Open in Napa, Sept. 26-29, one week earlier than in recent years.

I had it on good authority that golf had no interest in competing with the NFL, and yet......  Seriously, how an we miss you if you won't go away?

Hall Pass -  Eamonn Lynch with some needed tough love:

19th hole: It’s time to inject some life into World Golf Hall of Fame

I woulda gone with long past time, but no matter, as he notes the obvious:

When the World Golf Hall of Fame announced its “Class of ‘19,” the inclusion of Peggy Kirk Bell illustrated much of what’s wrong with that noble but misbegotten institution. 

It’s not that she isn’t worthy of induction. Quite the opposite: She deserved it years ago. Bell lived 95 years, but the Hall waited until two years after her passing to bestow its grace. 

Thus can an intended honor seem like a clumsy insult. She deserved better.

Yes, but it was more important to induct Phil while he's still in his forties.... Or was it his thirties.  Eamonn takes a crack at the omissions:

Every Hall of Fame class is apt to be argued more for the names omitted than those honored. Golf’s is no different. Though until changing to an every-two-years ceremony in 2013, golf inducted a new class annually, which makes it all the more impressive that it has managed to overlook so many worthy candidates. 

Other than Weiskopf – who warrants inclusion as both competitor and course architect – consider who else hasn’t been enshrined. Bill Coore, the finest living course designer we have. Legendary teacher Butch Harmon. Butch’s late father, Claude Harmon, should be in there too, along with a handful of accomplished and almost forgotten players such as Tony Lema, Macdonald Smith, Norman Von Nida and Jim Ferrier.

 It's a little amusing to hear Woosie complain about his slight, when I'd have him still waiting....  Ironically, I was at Fresh Meadow last week and Matt Dobbyns made the case for Macdonald Smith, who I agree is the most over-looked player of that era.

In this week's Tour Confidential panel, the gang opines on this year's class:

Michael Bamberger: Yes. Billy Payne, no matter how you grade him for style, did more 

for golf, broadly, than just about any person alive today. That is, he used the badge of Augusta National and the Masters in new and effective ways. As for the others, yes, yes, yes and yes. What I like best about this class is it shows there are many paths to having a true impact on the game. 

Josh Sens: Michael puts it well. It shows the many paths. It also reminds that the criteria had to evolve to accommodate the new era. It happens to all Halls. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame just anointed LL Cool J.

Sean Zak: Is there anyone who is actually going to deem someone unworthy of the HOF? It’s a great group.

Ummmm...waving hand in air, over here, Sean.  Look, I love Peggy and I'm open to Billy....  On the latter, his opening of Augusta National and sponsorship of amateur events was big and worthy, but I'm not in love with the land grabs and changes to the golf course.  As for Peggy, it makes me sad that they couldn't have honored her when she could have enjoyed it.

But here's the thing....  the best at actually playing the game of golf in this class is retief Goosen, and that seems kinda lame.

On the omission question:

2. Who’s not in the Hall that belongs there? Brandel Chamblee, for one, has lobbied for the inclusion of Tony Lema (12 Tour wins, including one major title, before he was killed in a plane crash at 34); Tom Weiskopf (16 Tour wins, including one major, plus revered course designer); and Macdonald Smith (his 24 wins, but no majors, is tops among eligible players not already in the HOF). Any snubs come to mind? 

Bamberger: Weiskopf belongs because Fred (Couples) is in, on playing alone. Add to that his career in design and his commentary and his fame — he has impact! — I’d say he belongs. Mac’d Smith, for sure. 

Sens: Given that Colin Montgomerie got in without a major and before he’d won a senior major, Weiskopf seems like a must. 

Dethier: Butch Harmon has had a teaching career of some note — he coached Tiger from ‘93-‘04 and you may remember a certain amount of success during that period…

Passov: I’ve been making the case for Tom Weiskopf for many years. In fact, it startles many knowledgeable golf fans when you tell them that Weiskopf is not in the Hall. A few years ago, I asked him whether he’s more bothered by not being in the Hall of Fame or not winning the Masters. He said “Give me the Masters over the Hall of Fame. But what I really wanted to win was the U.S. Open.” He was briefly the best in the world, and he certainly deserves his place for all of the reasons Michael articulated.

You see the slippery slope down which they've trundled....  Once you enshrine Freddy and Monty, there's little argument against Weiskopf.  Tony Lema is an interesting suggestion, though, one I'd likely support.

That's more than enough for you ungrateful wretches...  See you tomorrow.