Thursday Threads1. The course was designed by Ernie Els: The Big Easy and his design group are the brains behind this 18-hole championship course in the Bahamas. The course, which totals 7,400 yards, combines links and desert features with dunes and water meant to both serve as scenic and challenging. The club also features a 400-yard driving range, plenty of chipping and putting greens and a swing-performance center. For younger golfers, there is an academy to take part in private lessons and clinics.1. The course was designed by Ernie Els: The Big Easy and his design group are the brains behind this 18-hole championship course in the Bahamas. The course, which totals 7,400 yards, combines links and desert features with dunes and water meant to both serve as scenic and challenging. The club also features a 400-yard driving range, plenty of chipping and putting greens and a swing-performance center. For younger golfers, there is an academy to take part in private lessons and clinics.1. The course was designed by Ernie Els: The Big Easy and his design group are the brains behind this 18-hole championship course in the Bahamas. The course, which totals 7,400 yards, combines links and desert features with dunes and water meant to both serve as scenic and challenging. The club also features a 400-yard driving range, plenty of chipping and putting greens and a swing-performance center. For younger golfers, there is an academy to take part in private lessons and clinics.

It is Thursday, isn't it?  Feels like I'm in a bubble out here... A good first day on skis.  The mountain is noticeably whiter than this time in prior seasons, and some snow is in the forecast for the next few days.

Not a lot going on in our little golf world, but we'll try to keep it lively.

Dateline: Albany - Yeah, id does seem an inapt name for a playground for the rich, given it's linkage to that corrupt cesspool to which your humble blogger sens far too much money.  Pat Ralph, a new name to me at Golf.com, can only come up with three items to share about the joint:

1. The course was designed by Ernie Els: The Big Easy and his design group are the brains behind this 18-hole championship course in the Bahamas. The course, which

totals 7,400 yards, combines links and desert features with dunes and water meant to both serve as scenic and challenging. The club also features a 400-yard driving range, plenty of chipping and putting greens and a swing-performance center. For younger golfers, there is an academy to take part in private lessons and clinics.

2. The origin of the name Albany: The course, which opened in December 2010, was developed by businessman Joe Lewis. But the course earned its name from a fixture on the Bahamian coast. Albany is the name of an iconic pink beachfront Bahamian manor house. In fact, the pick manor house is credited as the home of the villain in the James Bond film “Casino Royale” from 2006.

I've got a fourth....  You can't afford the place.  Not that that's new data....

Tiger seems to have recovered from the S***storm at Shadow Creek:

Tiger Woods is starting the new season with the same set of clubs he used to win the

Tour Championship at East Lake back in September. 

The driver still works. 

That much was apparent Wednesday during Woods’ pro-am round at Albany Golf Course ahead of the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas. 

Woods was wearing Nike shades for much of the day – it’s rare to see him wearing those on the course, but this Bahamian sun is no joke – and shot around 2-under par. The wind was swirling hard all morning but he clearly had control of his golf ball. And he was absolutely piping it off the tee.

Which only begs the question of what clubs he used in Paris and Vegas....  There was also this, though it took place before Vegas:

The masses that tuned in for the The Match between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson at

Shadow Creek expected to see some incredible play. Some even placed prop bets hoping to see one of golf’s biggest stars make an ace during the $9 million grudge match. It turns out those viewers were too late, because Woods made his first hole-in-one since the 90s just days before. 

According to Bob Harig of ESPN, Woods says he completed the feat during a casual round with friend and World Golf Hall of Fame member Fred Couples at the Madison Club in La Quinta, Calif. Woods used a five-iron to ace the 210-yard, par-3 2nd hole at the course near where he grew up.

Apparently son Charlie was on hand, so perhaps now he knows that Dad was more than a YouTube golfer.... His last came at The International in 1998, which gives the rest of us hope.

Anyone remember who won this event last year?  Anyone?  Bueller?

It was this guy, who admits to being on the clock:

Rickie Fowler turns 30 in two weeks, and based on conventional pre-Tiger Woods PGA Tour career wisdom, he should be entering his prime. But ever since Woods crammed

three whole Hall of Fame careers worth of winning in his 20s—46 wins and 10 majors, to be precise—the competitive clock has started ticking sooner. 

Fowler is starting his 10th season on tour, and measuring by cash he's been wildly successful, with more than $34 million in career earnings on the course and at least that much off. Still, his 2018 season was a fair representation of his career. Fowler won the last Hero World Challenge with a spectacular final-round 61, but didn't record a "real" victory the rest of the season. He even made his traditional appearances on major championship leader boards at Augusta and the PGA and was counted on to be one of the leaders of the American Ryder Cup team. 

"I had a fairly consistent season—put myself in contention a lot, put myself in great positions at the majors—I just never got the job done," Fowler said. "It's not like it was a bad year by any means. I just didn't win."

He caught a huge break in that Tiger and Phil deflected so much of the Ryder Cup heat, where Rickie played just about as poorly.

Back to the host, who's got plans for December:

Tiger Woods remarked on Tuesday at the Hero World Challenge he intends to trim his schedule for 2019. One event that Woods hopes won't be a causality of this scale-back strategy is the Presidents Cup. 

Earlier this year Woods was tabbed as captain of the American club for the international biennial event. But during his introductory press conference in March, Woods stated his intentions to not watch from the sidelines. 

“I would like to get to a point where I'm playing well enough where I could make the team on points,” Woods said at the time. “I wouldn't want to have the conversation and go, ‘Self.’ I don't really want to have that conversation, so let's just see how it progresses.”

One can see it getting tricky should he fail to qualify, but we shan't have to worry about that for a while.   

Tone Deafness On Parade - Patrick Reed remains the gift that keeps on giving, when asked the inevitable question:

Per Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard, Reed was asked Wednesday if any damage had been

done to his magnificent Ryder Cup reputation after a rough showing at Le Golf National that ended with him slamming Jordan Spieth and Jim Furyk in a post-event interview.

His response was classic Patrick Reed. 

“No, still 3-0 in (Ryder Cup) singles,” Reed said, according to Golf Channel. 

That is technically true! 

Reed did expound on what having a strong Ryder Cup reputation has meant to him.

“It’s something that I love and cherish and hopefully will continue playing really good golf when I represent the country and keep on bringing it in those events,” Reed said. “Being 3-0 in singles is something cool because you always want to feel like you can be counted on toward the end, especially during a Ryder Cup.”

I get it, he's a singles specialist....Next time I'm sure he'll have his own pod....  and perhaps Phil can be a Vice Captain whose only job will be to eat dinner with Captain Table For One.

Is That All There Is? -  Turner et. al. have been crowing about the huge audience for Da' Match, though this seems underwhelming to me:

Turner Sports announced its viewership numbers from last Friday's match between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson at Shadow Creek, and though the early returns are

impressive, the most startling number is the amount Turner might've lost on a processing snafu.

In an interview with the Sports Business Journal, Turner president David Levy said there were 750,000 unique video views logged, and 55 million minutes consumed on B/R Live for "The Match." But the glitch that made the pay-per-view event free to watch potentially cost Turner a $10-million total, according to SBJ. 

"We are in this for the long haul," Levy said. "We don't have all the facts and figures, but based on early indications, total audience for the match surpassed expectations across all of our platforms."

Is that a homerun, because it seems kind of paltry to me.  I suspect that Golf Channel gets those kind of numbers for reruns of Tin Cup....

As longs as we're back on this sorry story, Jeff Ritter has some matches that he'd pay to watch.....  though I see scheduling issues:

3. Old Tom Morris vs. Young Tom Morris, c. 1868: The father-son duo dominated golf in their era, as they combined for eight British Open titles from 1861-72. When Young Tom won his first, in 1868, he became the youngest major champion ever … at age 17. (Old Tom finished runner-up.) They often teamed up to take on other players in “challenge matches.” Wouldn’t it be fascinating to see how the father and son interacted on the links? We don’t have pay-per-view television, but last year the movie Tommy’s Honour gave fans a look at their complicated relationship.

If you're gonna show off, at least do it with a little flair.  Young Tom would have closed out his Dad on the twelfth hole....  Better to think of a fourball match with the Parks of Musselburgh.

As for this? 

9. Tiger Woods vs. Bob May vs. Steve Scott, c. 2001: With all due respect to Mickelson, Woods really didn’t have a true rival in his prime. But Tiger was famously pushed to the limit in two head-to-head showdowns early in his career. Scott, then a junior at the University of Florida, took Woods to 38 holes at the 1996 U.S. Am. And the unheralded May fell to Woods in a playoff at the epic 2000 PGA Championship at Valhalla. We’re not sure how this three-way match would work, but it could’ve been a blast to give two guys who came up … just … short one more crack at Woods.

Not sure what he's going for there, as you can enjoy both of those unlikely tests of endurance on video.

But this might be peak silliness:

2. Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson vs. Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward, c. 1956: Golf historians know that golf’s original version of “The Match” was staged at Cypress Point on Jan. 10, 1956. The foursome combined for 27 birdies and an eagle; Hogan shot 63, Venturi fired 65 and their partners each carded 67s. A few hundred lucky spectators witnessed Hogan and Nelson’s 1-up win, and it’s been memorialized in books, not to mention golf lore. (They even tried to recreate it six years ago.) But, oh, if only there were cameras around to capture the original. And how wild would the real-time betting have been for this one?

Books?  I only know of one.....  

Still Grinding -  Golf Digest's young whippersnapper Alex Myers writes a weekly feature called The Grind, which we've not visited recently.  This weeks' edition has a good take on a Phil milestone:

Lefty didn’t earn any Official World Ranking Points for his win — he’s probably pretty satisfied walking away with 9 LARGE—but staying at No. 27 allowed him to hit an incredible milestone. Mickelson has now been ranked inside the top 50 for 25 consecutive years. Not 25 consecutive weeks or even months, but YEARS. An amazing athletic achievement—especially for someone who breathes so heavy walking around a golf course. Seriously, Phil, maybe do a little cardio this off-season.

Cardio?  Why start now?  But I do agree that it's an amazing milestone...

Alex has some amusing bits, including from the dueling golf weddings this week.  But be forewarned, if you continue to scroll down you won't be able to unsee this photo:

Stay classy, Phil.

See ya'll tomorrow.