Weekend Wrap

Your humble blogger is safely back in Western HQ, where they had 60" of snow in my absence....  Not that I'm counting, or anything.

A Rose By Any Other Name - From Golf.com's invaluable 30-second guide:

World No. 1 Justin Rose had a stranglehold on the Farmers Insurance Open through 54 holes, but he had some big-time players chasing him on Sunday in Adam Scott, Jon

Rahm, Rory McIlroy and more. Here’s what you missed on Sunday at the Farmers at Torrey Pines. 

Who won: Justin Rose (three-under 69, 21 under overall) 

How it happened: Rose opened the day with a three-shot lead over Scott and led Rahm by four, but his Sunday playing partners did little to threaten him early. Rose was even on the front, but so was Scott, and Rahm played the front side in one under, making Rose’s lead three at the turn. A birdie on 10 pushed Rose’s lead to four, and he won by two despite Scott birdieing the last four holes. Scott shot 68 and was alone in second place. 

Why it matters: It’s Rose’s 10th victory on the PGA Tour (to go with his 12 European tour wins), making him the winningest pro from England since 1945. 

Best fill-in caddie performance: Rose’s regular looper, Mark Fulcher, had heart surgery on Jan. 17, and Rose has used Gareth Lord in his absence until Fulcher can return. So far, so good. Rose and Lord, who used to caddie for Henrik Stenson, tied for 34th at the Desert Classic last weekend before winning this week. Fulcher, of course, was watching the win unfold.

I just hope that Gareth was aware that the going rate for fill-in caddies is $5,000, and that's only if you get the "W".  

The biggest winner was likely Honma, with an early return on their investment... Rose is an interesting case in the present moment, a superior ball-striker that has finally found a means to putt well enough to win consistently.  The remaining knock is just the one major, with 2013 seemingly long enough ago to have been in the persimmon era.

But the side stories might have been more interesting....  First, of course, the return of the Striped One, as covered by the Tour Confidential panel:

2. Tiger Woods saved his best for last at the Farmers, birdieing five of the final eight holes to shoot 67 on Sunday and tie for 20th. What should golf fans take away from Woods’s 2019 debut?

Zak: It was an impressive start to the season for a 43-year-old man. I kind of expected him to need some warm-up to really get going before playing well. But nope, not with Tiger. He played really well, even at a course where he’s expected to. Golf fans should expect him to be hitting the ground running and rightfully aiming to contend at every event.

Impressive, Sean?  I so hate to quibble (kidding, guys), but I'd stipulate to solid....  He was, after all, on the wrong side of the golf course the entire weekend, though he did seem to improve each day.

This exchange is amusing, though I suspect John Wood will be hearing from the Tour:

Wood: That Tiger is healthy, and he has a good understanding of what his body can do and will set his schedule accordingly. I wouldn’t expect him to chase any points lists. The rest of his career will be focused on four weeks a year. But I’m excited to see how healthy he looked and how much he seemed to be enjoying it.

Dethier: I am offended on behalf of the Tour at J. Wood’s suggestion that Tiger isn’t chasing FedEx Cup points (although deep down he surely has Presidents Cup points on the brain), but the solid showing reminded us that last year wasn’t a mirage. This felt like an engine rev and then a natural continuation.

But there was a far bigger controversy swirling around our Tiger....  After all, it's Sunday and, like Patrick at Augusta, what's up with the pink?

For twenty long years Tiger has been giving up nothing to the press, which he continued after Sunday's round:

Q: Big debate on TV this morning about whether that’s pink or red or orange. 

Tiger Woods: Yeah. 

Q. Do you have an answer? 

Woods: Yep.

Yep, there's that new Tiger we've heard so much about....

 This, of course, is why God had to invent Notah Begay, the Tiger whisperer:

Gotta be a Pulitzer in there for him, no?

Of course, everything takes a back seat to the hug heard 'round the world:

Justin Rose might be in the lead at the Farmers Insurance Open through three rounds, but that wasn’t the storyline that caught golf fans’ attention at Torrey Pines. Instead, it was

the reconciliation of the Jordan Spieth–Patrick Reedbromance on the first tee on Saturday. 

Paired up together for the third round, the two greeted each other warmly with a big hug and praised each other afterward. It was a moment that many golf fans had been waiting for.

“I laughed. I think he did, too,” Spieth said. “It was more kind of sarcasm towards [the media]. That was kind of, just, we knew the cameras were on and we knew people were interested in that, so I just thought it would be kind of funny.”

Sarcastic, eh?

Despite their moment of forgiveness on Saturday, Reed said that the Ryder Cup has not come up between the two when they have chatted.

“Literally when we got off the plane it was old news and we all moved on from there, so not really,” Reed said. “I mean, it’s really nothing. Jordan and I, we’ve moved on. We’re now just out here trying to play some good golf and trying to feed off of each other as well as just trying to go out and shoot low numbers.”

If you guys say so....  

Bryson In Full -  This is becoming rather a routine occurrence:

Bryson DeChambeau didn’t just win his first European Tour event – he ran away with it. The world No. 5 practically lapped the field to win the $3.25 million Omega Dubai Desert Classic. 

The 25-year-old returned a closing 8-under-par 64 to set a tournament record. His 24-under 264 total for a seven-shot win bettered by one the 72-hole record Haotong Li set last year. 

England’s Matt Wallace finished second on his own on 17 under. Spaniards Sergio Garcia and Alvaro Quiros, and Englishmen Ian Poulter and Paul Waring shared third place on 16 under. 

Dubai wasn’t just DeChambeau’s first European Tour victory, but his maiden international win to go with five on the PGA Tour.

He's winning a lot, and doing by a TD and PAT is really impressive.....

Of course he's still Bryson, terminally weird and all.  He had this after a second-round 66:

The 66 left DeChambeau happy and frustrated. More importantly, he’s in a terrific

position to win alongside 24 other players within four shots of the lead. 

“Still shooting six under, I was happy about that,” DeChambeau said. “Unfortunately, didn’t have the right sensations and proprioception over shots. I just felt uncomfortable unfortunately and was not ball-striking at my best. But hey, I mean shoot, I’m not complaining one bit.”

Don't you just hate when that happens?

Shack is there for us, with this from Wikipedia:

Proprioception (/ˌproʊprioʊˈsɛpʃən, -priə-/[1][2] PROH-pree-o-SEP-shən), is the sense of the relative position of one's own parts of the body and strength of effort being employed in movement.[3] It is sometimes described as the "sixth sense".[4]

 Glad we cleared that up.... 

As with Torrey, the more interesting stories are sidebars to the event itself, though perhaps of greater long-term import.

First, Haotong Li and his caddie might want to find themselves a rules seminar:

Haotong Li became the first high-profile player to run afoul of the new rule that bans a caddie from assisting in lining up a shot. 

The defending champion at the Dubai Desert Classic, Li was in position for another high finish when officials determined that Li’s caddie stood on a direct line behind his ball when he took his stance on the 18th green. The two-shot penalty turned his birdie into a bogey, his 71 became a 73, and he dropped from a tie for third into joint 12th – the difference of about $100,000. 

It’s one of the major changes in the new rules, which went into effect Jan. 1.

Again Shack is there for us with the wording of the new rule:

New Rule: Under Rule 10.2b(4):

The previous prohibition is extended so that, once the player begins taking a stance for the stroke, and until the stroke is made, the player’s caddie must not deliberately stand on or close to an extension of the line of play behind the ball for any reason.

There is no penalty if the caddie accidentally stands on or close to an extension of the line of play behind the ball, rather than in trying to help in lining up.

I'm not sure what I think here, because in watching the real-time video it seems so trivial.  Shack makes a spirited defense of the ruling and I recommend you watch the Morning Drive video embedded.  The Tour Confidential guys, however, capture many of my thoughts about intent:

Wood: This was PATHETIC. This was an overzealous rules official overstepping their bounds when they saw even the smallest opportunity to enforce one of the new rules. The caddie was in the final stages of reading the putt for his player, taking one last look and conveying what he saw to Haotong. They were conversing. Haotong hadn’t grounded his putter behind the ball. To the side, yes, but it’s more than a stretch to interpret his movement as addressing his ball. And why does intent matter for some rules but not for others? It boggles the mind that someone using a long putter can anchor it against their chest and make a stroke as long as they didn’t intend to anchor it, but in this case, intent is irrelevant. I know a caddie’s motions, and he wasn’t doing anything close to lining him up.

We can all find common ground to conclude that Euro Tour majordomo Keith Pelley's reaction  was a bit over the top, as Geoff covers in the linked post above.  he goes so far as to suggest that Pelley is trying to distract from his current PR issues related to this week's event.  Not to worry, we'll get to that one in a sec.

I've been saying from the start that intent is an awfully slippery slope, but that second paragraph above seems to imply just such a standard.  Back to you, Shack.

What Is To Be Done? - There might be more fireworks on the Euro Tour this week than on the American, no small matter when the PGA is at the Wasted....  But Mr. Pelley picked a really bad week to quit smoking:

Last spring European Tour CEO Keith Pelley announced a three-year partnership with Saudi Arabia that would bring golf to the Middle Eastern country. "We are very excited

to be taking the first steps toward bringing professional golf to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the first time and I must thank His Royal Majesty, Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud for his vision in making this happen," Pelley said in March. Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed and Paul Casey were highlighted as early commits; Pelley would name drop Justin Rose and Brooks Koepka in the ensuing months as participants.

But the tournament has been complicated by matters that have transpired since. Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor who lived in Virginia and was a critic of the Saudi government, was brutally assassinated—intelligence officials believe his body was drained of blood, cut in parts and dissolved in acid—at the country's ministry in Istanbul in October. After initially denying its role in Khashoggi's killing, Saudi Arabia has taken responsibility for his execution, with the Saudi attorney general announcing the murder was premeditated. Turkish officials and the United States intelligence community have asserted with "high confidence" that Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing. 

Khashoggi's murder has put other Saudi Arabia human-rights issues into light, putting the European Tour, Pelley and players in a precarious position.

I absolutely love this story, though it's a difficult one to address.  And I do feel a bit for the players involved, as I'm not completely sure how I feel about the matter.  But there's so much nonsense and misinformation involved, that we cant' help but have some fun with it....

First, this from the man in the blue glasses was pretty lame:

European Tour chief executive Keith Pelley said he had no second thoughts about bringing a tour event to Saudi Arabia.

The European Tour has held events in the Middle East since 1989, and there are now six tournaments on the Arabian Peninsula, but never have they attracted so much attention.

“Our main focus is on the safety and security of our players and staff,” Pelley said 

Sunday on “Morning Drive”. “Like many global companies who operate in the region, we monitored the situation. … Having looked at that – and having done our due diligence in terms of the safety and security – we’re obviously moving forward and looking forward to this new chapter on the European Tour.” 

Pelley added that the event is an extension of the tour’s “Middle East strategy.”

Folks are outraged that the Euro Tour would hold an event in a brutal and oppressive country such as the Kingdom whereas, as noted above, the tour has been holding events in Middle Eastern countries for decades.  Are those regimes less oppressive and brutal?  

Shippy had this supporting point in the TC linked above:

Shipnuck: It’s interesting this one event is getting so much attention when a full quarter of the Euro tour schedule is played in authoritarian countries, including some of the biggest purses of the year. If the tour suddenly developed a conscience it would be in danger of going out of business.

But Pelley's assurance that no golfers will be chopped up and removed in garbage bags doesn't seem especially responsive to folks' concerns....  

The other aspect that continues to amuse me is the nature of Kashoggi himself, who is typically referred to as a Washington Post reporter. and critic of the Saudi regime  This is willful ignorance worthy of the Post itself, has Kashoggi has long been a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood.  In other words, he opposed MBS and the Saudi's because his heart belongs to a different brutal political faction.  More recently, it became apparent that Kashoggi was an agent of the Qatari government....

Of course that doesn't justify his brutal murder, but this was very much an intramural skirmish.....

The players obviously don't know what to do...  One of our favorite pinatas had this:

Most players are interested in little else. "I'm probably not the most educated man in the world to sit down and have a discussion about politics," Ian Poulter told BBC Sport. 

"I tend to err on the other side and try not to go too deep into that because my IQ is not great. 

"Obviously, we all know what's going on around the world, but when I see the tour trying to make good and give us opportunities then I think it is a good thing."

See how we build bridges here....  We've already found common ground on Ian's IQ not being so great.

Remember recently we were giving Eddie Pepperell props fro his Twitter game?  More common ground is to be found in the revoking that credit:

Thud!

I'm going to leave you here and we'll pick things up tomorrow.