Back In The Saddle

Man, I missed you guys....  Shall we pick up the thread?

Torrey, Torrey, Torrey - Golf.com has a helpful piece on everything I missed from Round 1:

Tiger’s round was up and down 

Currently the world’s 13th-ranked player, Woods had expectations running high — especially at a tournament where he’s thrived in the past. (Woods has eight career wins at Torrey Pines). 

But Round 1 was pretty meh for the Big Cat, whose five birdies were mitigated by three bogeys. He finished at two under on the day, currently T51 and eight shots shy of Jon Rahm’s lead.

It was on the South Course, so it's not a horrible day....  

Speaking of Rahm… 

After battling the flu and rallying to finish 6th at last week’s Desert Classic in La Quinta, Jon Rahm proved he has plenty of firepower left in the tank with an impressive first-round score of 62 on Thursday. That’s 10 under par! 

Rahm made two eagles on his opening nine (Nos. 10 and 17) and carded seven birdies, including four in a row on holes 5-8.

Not all that helpful since Jessica Marksbury couldn't be troubled to tell us which course they played....  I'm guessing she wasn't hired for her deep knowledge of our game...

The biggest issue to come out of Torrey is no doubt pizzagate....  What, you haven't heard?  

Talk about a slice problem. During Wednesday’s Farmers Insurance Pro-Am, Tiger Woods headed to a concession tent operated by Dang Brother Pizza in search of a snack. The 80-time Tour winner crossed Torrey Pines’s 13th tee box to get to the tent…and got rejected. 

“They aren’t letting us serve right now,” the attendant, Daniel Johnston, told Woods sheepishly. Woods laughed off the incident, which Brandon Stone of KUSI News captured on video.

OK, now nobody but me seems to find the reason they weren't serving outrageous:

“No comment,” Johnson said later with a smile. Stone reported that the rejection came from bad timing: the health inspector was conducting a status check.

This is mad hatter stuff, a food inspector shutting down a concession during an event.  I know it's The People's Republic of California, but does it ever occur to anyone that there might be too much government for our needs....  

But Shack is ranting on another aspect of this story, that the PGA Tour can't let anyone have a laugh:

As an eyewitness to this adorable little moment in Wednesday’s Farmers Insurance Open pro-am, I can attest that it was 100% comedy and totally innocent.

Here’s what happened: Tiger Woods tees off at the 13th and walks to the forward tee where a local pizza vendor has been commissioned to hand out pies to pro-am participants. The legendary golfer and one of the most famous people on earth is rejected because, it turns out, a health inspection was taking place at that moment and they could not hand out pizza. Tiger doesn’t know this but laughs off the rejection with Joe LaCava and his pro-am partners.

Everyone had a good chuckle at the sight of Woods getting turned away in the same way Roger Federer’s rejection from entering the Australian Open locker room last week went viral.

Brandon Stone of San Diego’s KUSI captured the whole thing and posted it on Twitter. He also wrote about the light moment here and the star-struck lad who loves Tiger but had to say no because of the inspection taking place. Stone’s video of the moment went viral, of course. But Stone also Tweeted the news of the video takedown notice from the PGA Tour.

I thought this nonsense was over with the reign of Nurse Ratched....  All I can say is that the food inspectors and suits in Ponte Vedra Beach all deserve each other....  As for what we deserve, that doesn't seem to be a consideration.

A Good Call - The boys will head to Phoenix next week and the Desert Fox will bid us adieu....  But I do think this is a very good call:

JOHNNY MILLER TO CALL FINAL BROADCAST ON SATURDAY AT WASTE MANAGEMENT PHOENIX OPEN AFTER NEARLY 30 YEARS AS LEAD GOLF ANALYST

NBC Sports to Celebrate Miller’s Three Decades with the Network through

Special Tributes and Reflections During Live Third Round Broadcast

Not only is there the issue of not stepping on the final round, but there's that little football game to distract everyone.  This actually makes so much sense, it's amazing that they got to the right answer.

Johnny is famous for being opinionated, so this waffling seems inappropriate:

Most golf fans would agree that Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus are the two greatest golfers of all-time. But deciding which one is better than the other? Good luck making that call. But don’t feel bad because you’re not alone; even the sport’s biggest names can’t decide either. 

Enter acclaimed golf broadcaster Johnny Miller, who will be retiring from the booth following the Waste Management Phoenix Open next week in Arizona. On a conference call on Wednesday leading up to his final event, Miller was asked about what it would mean in the golf world if Woods were to eclipse Sam Snead’s career PGA Tour victories record of 82, and how that would compare to the Golden Bear’s record number of 18 majors. So, in other words, who would you take: Tiger or Jack? 

Well, even after almost 30 years of color commentating experience, Miller can’t say.

“It’s a close call between those two,” Miller said. “They’re both so consistent. The body of work has been amazing. They’re both right there at the best of all-time.”

Yeah, Johnny, we know it's a close call....Never mind, just enjoy your grandchildren and retirement.

Inside Baseball - Alex Myers goes quasi-serious on us, sitting the entire CBS golf crew around a conference table, which at times is unintentionally insightful.  Here's a sample:

What are some challenges to broadcasting golf that the average fan sitting at home doesn’t realize?

Pepper: Everything. It’s a city that gets put up and broken down every week and relocated. The logistics of it are incredibly thick. If you just think about the towers that

go up however many stories, they have to have an occupancy certificate. So this is so far in advance, but people think you just flick the light switch and it magically happens. There’s miles and miles of cable, and trucks, and it’s a city that moves every time we move. It’s not like you can just plug it in and press play. 

Kostis: There’s also when they watch the show they see this seamless transition of Jim to Nick talking, to throwing it to 16 to this and that, and it’s very soothing. What they fail to realize what’s going on in our ear pieces. An announcer’s first rule is never, ever let what’s going in your ear come out your mouth. Ever. So while it seems like it’s a slow-moving sport, in our world, our lives exist in six-second increments, and we’ve got two people talking to us in our headphones while we’re trying to say something on air. From our perspective, it can be chaotic at times, even if it comes across as anything but.

Pepper: There are no timeouts. There’s a ball in the air all the time, even if we’re not on the air live. So that has to be covered as well.

Really, Dottie, because those 22 minutes per hour of Cialis commercials seem very much like a timeout.

Give it a full read,as it's well worth your time.  Go ahead, I'll wait for you...

Lots of fun stories and good insights....  I mean, who knew that Frank Chirkinian, The Ayatollah, was such a people person?

It's an interesting phenomenon, but perhaps they're all just a little bit too nice?  Excepting Sir Nick, of course.... Because while they seem individually focused on the right stuff, the CBS broadcast has, to my way of thinking, driven off the cliff.  They're so busy with the treacly background stories and talking about last night's dinner, that they show us very little golf...

I'd love to sit them around a conference table and run a tape of their broadcast, with Martin Kaufmann and The Forecaddie critiquing it...

OH, and Jim Nancy-Boy (that's what Employee No. 2 calls him) is very muck looking forward to the Open at Pebble....  Not only because it's a home game, but he's picking this guy to complete the career slam.  Ummm, Jim, care to make it interesting? 

Golf, Not Broken Yet - From the PGA Merchandise Show comes this next savior for our game, its elevator pitch being traditional golf meets TopGolf:

The Golfuture concept encapsulates pieces of traditional and simulation rounds into a

compact adventure. The course is divided into four quadrants: driving, approach, short game, putting, each with targets of varying distance, with the capacity for 120 players to tee off at once. 

Which is the first wrinkle in Golfuture: a golfer does not play 18 holes in the traditional sense. Far from it. In the first quadrant, a player will hit all their drives on every par 4 and 5 before moving to the approach area. Meaning you will hit your second drive of the day, but your second shot on the scorecard will come later. 

As for where those drives head, a computer screen will direct you to a target on the range to hit your drive for each specific hole. Each ball's distance and location is saved, transmitted to the approach area to be displayed for the player when they reach that quadrant. Within 10 minutes, a player's tee shots for the round are completed.

I have no objections to an improved version of simulator golf, and this does obviously address many of the obvious limitations.  And there's this obvious incentive:

While time is the major pitch to players, it's only a piece to potential buyers and investors. 

The range-like format boasts low maintenance and operating costs. It's a small footprint: the property takes up just 15 to 25 acres. For context, according to the Golf Course Superintendent Association of America, the average golf course uses 150 to 200 acres. This makes it ideal not just for urban areas, but for existing ranges that want a makeover or courses looking to add a different component to its portfolio.

And this is music to my ears:

The Korpachs don't view Golfuture as a substitute for traditional golf, and the altered flow may leave something to be desired for certain golfers. Conversely, they have constructed one of the few tangible responses to golf's litany of worries. Moreover, it's more than just a glorified driving range, and its set-up should serve as a conduit to beginners and non-golfers.

It's not golf....  I know that seems a rather obvious point, but one worth reinforcing.  

And by the way, perhaps golf isn't going the way of the dinosaurs?

According to the 2019 report, the golf equipment business grew by 4.1 percent in 2018

compared to 2017, reaching $8.41 billion. While that number is a significant boost over2017’s down numbers, it remains behind the research firms’ first numbers from 2014. Those showed a total equipment sales decline of 3.5 percent compared to 2014’s $8.72 billion.

The U.S. market was up by 5.4 percent over 2017 and was among the fastest growing golf economies, trailing only Germany, which was up nearly 6 percent year over year.

The study showed the top five golf markets in the world all grew in 2018, compared to 2017. In addition to the U.S.’s growth, Japan (+5.1 percent), Korea (4.3 percent) and the United Kingdom (+4.5 percent) had some of the largest improvements versus last year.

Of course there were some bad years in there, but over the longer term it's a much more stable picture than folks admit.  Equipment sales can be highly cyclical, affected by perceptions of technological improvements, so I prefer to watch sales numbers for consumables, such as golf balls.  But it's not a death spiral, merely a niche sport.

And, to be fair, even the above-referenced extinction of the dinosaurs is widely misunderstood, as Gary Larson clarifies:

Stat So? - Shane Ryan sorts through the ocean of data from the ShotLink era to cherry pick some statistical anomalies, although he calls them unsung statistical feats.  I know, one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter, but when you end up with a list that includes Johnson Waggoner, Chucky Three-Sticks and the like, a more modest header seems appropriate.

Don't get me wrong, I love the ShotLink data and the insights resulting therefrom, it's just that perspective is required.  For instance, this is quite the feat:

3. The Norman Three-Putt Gauntlet 

Sue me: Another pre-ShotLink stat. Going back to 1992, Greg Norman is the only PGA

Tour golfer to make it through an entire season three-putting on less than 1 percent of his holes. It happened in 1994, when he three-putted 11 times in 1,134 total holes, just dipping under that 1 percent mark at .97 (one more three putt, and he’d have missed it). It’s an astonishing figure, and only Rick Fehr (1996) has given him a real scare since—Fehr finished with one three-putt too many that year, ending at 1.05 percent. This, to me, is the closest thing golf statistics has to an unbreakable record.

And yet, my mind inevitably resurfaces a repressed memory of Norman three-putting at Inverness and handing a PGA to Paul Azinger.   

There is some good stuff there, a couple of Tiger sightings and Jason Day's unbelievable work with the flatstick.

A Game For Gentlemen - The PGA Tour is taking some heat for allowing this guy into last week's Pro-Am:

The narrative thrust of The Act of Killing is that few of the hatchet men involved in the

CIA-backed massacre of between 500,000 and 3,000,000 Indonesians ever faced consequences for the killings, and many of them don’t even harbor remorse. Their nonchalant openness about the murderers is what makes the documentary so chilling. Pancasila, which played a major role in the genocide 50 years ago, is still very much active and very much for hire for any, say, European conglomerate that wants to break up a nascent union by force.

Most recently, Soerjosoemarno was one of the amateur partners for PGA Tour pros Jim Herman and Rod Pampling at this year’s Desert Classic (he shot a 201 over three rounds.) Soerjosoemarno is especially fond of playing in the Coachella Valley, where the PGA has held a January event for 60 years.

The way I figure it, with Billy Walters in the slammer, they had an open slot to fill....And no need to respond to inquiries:

Deadspin reached out yesterday to two Desert Classic representatives about Soerjosoemarno’s long-running involvement with the tournament, and whether or not they knew he admitted to participating in the 1965-66 genocide. They did not reply. Deadspin also asked three PGA Tour reps if they would allow Soerjosoemarno to participate in future events, and whether or not they condemned the Indonesian massacres of 1965-66. They did not respond either.

To be fair, they were awfully busy taking down highly sensitive videos and otherwise Living Under Par™.

Gonna leave you there, kids...  Have a great weekend.  I should warn you that Monday is a travel day, so we might not wrap the weekend until Tuesday.

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