Thursday Threads

This may be a bit abbreviated, as Bobby D. and I are predictably planning to take advantage of the warm weather and final pre-aeration week of golf.  Additional urgency derives from the fact that Bob went medieval on me yesterday, though graciously accepted today's double-or-nothing terms....

We Are Fam-i-Lee - Have you heard that Cam Champ is biracial?  I wish we could get to a place where this doesn't matter, but I have to admit it's quite a good back story:

The victory was a poignant one for Mack, one of 10 children in his family who started caddying before he went to grade school at 7 years old. He estimated the work at a public course in Columbus, Texas in 1948 added up to 40 cents an hour, adding it was just extra money for his family. Jeff took his son there to see it. 

“Back in those times it was different for African Americans,” Mack said. “They didn’t call us African American. In America we were called Negros. There was no place for us to play. You weren’t allowed.” 

Even after going through the military, and serving in Vietnam, Mack wasn’t welcome in certain restaurants, at least not through the front door – including one in College Station, Texas, where six decades later Cameron was an All-American at Texas A&M and represented his country in the Walker Cup. 

“You weren’t allowed,” said Mack, an airman wearing his basic training Air Force uniform that day. “You had to go through back doors.”

That's his grandfather.  Think Earl Woods with a lower blood alcohol level...  We'll have a bit more in Cam below.

Dropping Like Flies -  Can you believe we're already through four years of the Fox USGA contract?  The Forecaddie once again breaks the news:

Four years after having hired her away from Golf Channel, Holly Sonders will not be part of Fox Sports’ future golf telecasts. 

“I’m incredibly proud to have been a part of Fox Sports’ USGA coverage,” Sonders said

when contacted by The Forecaddie. “The entire golf team has become like family and I learned a lot working alongside them. I look forward to continuing my relationship with Fox Sports as I transition into a studio role and am excited about the opportunities ahead of me.”

Sonders was in contract negotiations four years ago with Golf Channel when Fox Sports offered a lucrative deal to join its newly-acquired USGA coverage package. At the time, Sonders was the second big hire after Greg Norman, who lasted one season with the network as the lead analyst. Sonders was hired as a studio host and also was expected to work as an NFL sideline reporter. She continues to work select studio shows as well as college football broadcasts.

Quite a bizarre contract, no?  No word on how long she'll be buried on college football and the like, though we can only hope she's being paid well for the career suicide.

She was hired to create a splash, but then they had no idea how to use her on the broadcasts....  I assume this move is just to cover them for the inevitable misogyny charges:

The Man Out Front also hears that Fox Sports has not renewed Irish golf journalist Shane O’Donoghue, another member of the original 2015 announcing team who came from CNN International, anchored coverage of Fox’s first broadcast in 2015 and more recently handled post-round interviews at the 2018 U.S. Open.

So, Fox hates women and the Irish.  Got it.

Speaking of the Irish... -  Another of those effortless segues...  Last I heard from Padraig, he didn't want to talk about the 2020 event in order to not jinx his selection as Captain:

Harrington has said many times we would welcome such a job, and on Tuesday in Turkey, where he will play in the Turkish Airlines Open, Harrington was already talking about the 2020 Ryder Cup and its venue. 

The Irishman said home-field advantage won’t be as prominent in two years time at Whistling Straits, which Harrington called “a European-style golf course.” That would buck a recent trend that saw Le Golf National and Hazeltine National help home teams to landslide victories. 

“They just knew, a stats guy came in and said, look, we make more birdies than the Europeans,” Harrington said of the 2016 Ryder Cup at Hazeltine. “We make this into a birdie fest, we should win.” 

Harrington added: “Let’s face it, if we were going to Riviera, that would be so hard for the Europeans to win on that style of golf course, just U.S. to the bone there. There’s so many golf courses that they could go to in the States. They should just turn up in Hazeltine every year, their cup of tea and gives such an advantage.”

 Hey, bud, we've got this task force just to cover issues like this....  What could go wrong?

The C-Word - The best thing about this Shane Ryan thumbsucker is the quip in the header:

Paul Azinger must free the choke

Combine, you know, with the photo below.... get it?  The gist of it is the new NBC talking head's reluctance to use his predecessor's go-to shtick:

“I’m not afraid to use that word, but I’m not going to stick it on somebody because I don’t think that’s fair. It’s irresponsible as a broadcaster to do that. I want to help build

their brand, not tear them down, and I want to do it in the way that I do it.”

This brings up a few thoughts. 

1. Saying you’re “not afraid to use that word” but that you’re “not going to stick it on somebody” is a little contradictory. It’s like the student who says, “I could get good grades, but I just don’t feel like trying.” Hearing it, you can’t help think, well, maybe that’s true, but we can’t quite prove it. 

2. Anyone who follows televised golf knows that the players are a little coddled by announcers not named Johnny Miller—especially in comparison to other sports—and the fact that NBC Sports is a “partner” with the PGA Tour is an economic reality. Still, it’s a little strange to hear a media member, especially a kinda-sorta-journalist, say of the players that he wants to help “build their brand.” In golf’s realpolitik, it’s no conflict of interest at all, but it does feel like Azinger is grinding the last flickering embers of perceived media independence into ashes under his heel. It certainly makes him sound more like an aspiring Nantz than an aspiring Miller.

Build their brand?  That's certainly an off-note, but Zinger has a substantial body of work in the field, so I think we know what to expect.

Alan On Cam -  It's best damn mailbag feature in golf, especially since Van Cynical was exiled to Siberia.  We'll lead with his take on the new gold boy (who, in case you didn't hear, is biracial):

Who has more wins in the 2019 season, TW or Cam Champ? -@KevinBarton1 

As my Scottish caddie once said, fer fook’s sake! I enjoy hyperbole as much as the next guy, but things are already getting out of hand. Then again, maybe this isn’t that crazy of a question, given that Champ plays the modern Tour game and Tiger is a dinosaur who

still — gasp — enjoys hitting irons off the tee. There are two dozen Tour setups that are in Champ’s wheelhouse, while Woods’s controlled style is better suited for only a handful (of course, these tend to be higher status events, but that wasn’t the question.) But who will bring their A-game more often? Now comes the hard part for Champ, adjusting to overnight stardom while he eyes fast cars and brighter lights. Last season, Woods consistently played at an incredibly high level, even as he squandered a bunch of opportunities. Gotta think he’ll be a more efficient closer this time around. Then again, Champ has already matched Tiger’s victory total from last year. I’m just going to cop-out and say each wins twice.

So that's how you spell fook..... Pretty embarrassing that I've been doing it wrong all these years.... 

At the risk of being serious, I'll take the guy with the 1-0 lead.... especially since he'll play way more events.  Also, he's likely the better putter, maybe by a lot.

This is fun, though it should come with a caution flag:

What are the second-shot clubs that Cameron Champ hits on Augusta’s four par-5s? Assume he catches his driver flush, with a slight draw. And will he have to hit 3-wood off the tee at 13, to prevent his drive from going into Rae’s Creek in front of the green? -Paul (@PoolSharkPaul) 

First of all, he has to qualify for the Masters — victories at opposite field events don’t come with a coveted invitation to Augusta. But when Champ does play his way down Magnolia Lane, he will have wedges into 13 and 15, a short-iron into number two and maybe a 4-iron into eight. The mind reels, and that was before considering whether he has to lay up short of the creek.

Perhaps more importantly, if they push back the tee on No. 13, Cam may be the only guy that can clear the dogleg....  We've seen those kind of clubs into the three-shotters, especially from Tiger back in the day.

This series of related questions also features a Cam angle:

Why haven’t the USGA and R&A controlled the distance the ball is traveling? Why do we keep having this discussion? Golf should not be only about how far you hit the ball. It’s sad some great golf courses are now obsolete. -@MikeyBateman1 

I’ve kvetched about this extensively, but, yes, the ruling bodies have put golf in a ridiculous position by utterly abdicating their role as stewards of the game. Modern athletes, with highly specialized training regimens and diets, wielding cutting-edge equipment and swings optimized by Trackman and an army of specialists, are completely overwhelming the outdated playing fields. The only defenses are cartoonish — think the greens at Shinny and rough at Le Golf National — and they reduce the skill factor dramatically. The obvious solution (bifurcation) would harm the equipment industry while taking away a lot of the fun of spectating. (I don’t want to watch Cam Champ drive it 275…I can do that myself.) To test this new legion of bombers while allowing them to still hit driver demands courses be at least 9,000 yards, but that would require an obscene amount of water and land and make the game even slower than it already is. So it’s a quagmire with no easy solutions, and the problems become more obvious with every 350-yard drive, exciting as they may be.

I think that's a reasonably good synopsis of the state of play, with a couple of minor quibbles.  First, Shinny was mostly OK, it was really only the couple of pins on Saturday....   Though, for sure, a good example of how close to the edge they take things today.  

But I do think the assumption that bifurcation will hurt the manufacturers is worth questioning....  They're no doubt reluctant to test that assumption, but let's add this Q&A before I go on:

First Bubba, then DJ, now Cam… we keep getting guys that hit it further and further but at what point will we reach the physical limits of humanity on driving a golf ball? #AskAlan -Chris (@cstiles24) 

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, too. Clearly we’re not there yet! Guys in their 20s are the first golfers who grew up exclusively with solid-core balls and 460 cc titanium drivers, so the only way they know how to swing is with abandon. Barely two decades ago the driver was among the most exacting clubs to hit; finding the tiny sweet spot was paramount, and the penalty for a mishit was massive, so the swings were more controlled. Now that the equipment is more forgiving speed is what matters, and Champ has taken this new game to the illogical extreme. But somewhere out there there is a kid who will be taller, stronger and with even more efficient mechanics, and now he he has a new role model, too. Gulp.

The golf ball reduces spin to an extent that there's no consequences from bad shots....  I always note in these discussions that Bobby Jones could hit ti 300 yards with hickory shafts, but the difference was that his misses were really bad.  To me, that's the model to go back towards....

Alan also deals with this guy:

No question, just feel for my man, Finau. -@1000Steps 

Yeah, me too. I’ve been saying for a while that Big Tony is the nicest guy in golf. That’s a good thing, of course, but Finau has displayed a dispiriting inability to win despite manifold opportunities. Something is clearly missing. I’m not saying Finau has to morph into Patrick Reed but he does need to discover some kind of mental edge to get him over the hump.

Anything bit THAT!  But his point is well taken, and Alex Myers had thoughts on the subject in his weekly feature as well:

Tony Finau’s win total: OK, this is getting a bit ridiculous. Despite all the high quality golf Finau has played the past few seasons he still only has one PGA Tour title. And it came at an opposite-field event in 2016. This boggles the mind—especially because Finau isn’t exactly choking these events away, which was the case with a one-under-par round on Sunday at the WGC-HSBC that resulted in a playoff loss to Schauffele. I thought for sure Jimmer Fredette was going to be his lucky charm:

But before leaving Alan, he did have this amusing little P. Reed bit:

Any comments on the grit P. Reed showed on Sunday breaking 80 when he didn’t have his best stuff? -Chad (@chadwickswill) 

Even more disappointing was Reed’s mealy-mouthed comments about the Ryder Cup. If you’re gonna lob grenades, you better be prepared to deal with the explosion.

Yup, like Alan himself did with his grenade-like Ryder Cup prediction.  Patrick had the Thursday lead, but obviously his game remains lost in the wilderness.... Lots of time to turn it around, but he presumably knows that a captain's pick isn't likely in the cards.

Alex Myers also had this funny bit at that link above:

Missed it by that much!  But Gordon Sherry does have a Wikipedia page, so he's got that going for him...

Catch you tomorrow?