We did, however, arrive to find said HQ at 91 degrees, despite a thermostat set at 62 degrees.... Not much sleep was had, so see if you can see the falloff in blogging acuity. I'm just going to hit a few items that arose during my hiatus, and we'll get back on a regular schedule next week.
Captain Strick - The formal announcement seems to have been delayed, but all is well in Cheeseland:
Steve Stricker, who oversaw one of the most lopsided U.S. victories in Presidents Cup history two years ago outside of New York, is hoping to reprise that success after thePGA of America officially introduced him as captain of the 2020 U.S. Ryder Cup team on Wednesday in Milwaukee.
Stricker, who turns 52 on Saturday, will be the first American captain without a major championship on his résumé. Nevertheless, his selection had been widely anticipated for months with the 43rd Ryder Cup slated for Whistling Straits in Stricker’s home state of Wisconsin. The Madison, Wis., resident also is the first man to serve as Presidents Cup captain before leading Team USA in the Ryder Cup.
The lack of a major was no hindrance to Thomas Bjorn or Paul McGinley, the last two European Ryder Cup captains. Last year at Le Golf National in France, Bjorn captained Europe to a 17½-10½ victory, while in 2014 McGinley’s squad pasted the Americans, 16½-11½, at Gleneagles in Scotland—two of America’s worst defeats in history. Stricker was an assistant captain on both of those U.S. teams as well as under Davis Love III in 2016 at Hazeltine National, where the U.S. posted its only win in the last five meetings.
More on point would be that a major championship did little to help the captaincies of Hal Sutton, Corey Pavin and Davis Love, at least the first time. As for Alas, Poor Furyk, npot much can help a guy that thinks Phil was put on this planet to play foursomes....
Substantively, Strick has made one change that is likely for the better:
Steve Stricker is getting rid of the 11th-hour captain’s pick.
During his introductory news conference Wednesday, Stricker said that all four captain’s picks will be announced at the same time – on Sept. 1, 2020, two days after the conclusion of the Tour Championship.
“I think it’s a good move,” Stricker said. “We’ve experienced when we waited on a pick last year, and that too provides a few issues along the way. Now I think we’ve formalized a really good system here.”
Everyone kept touting the Horschel amendment, seemingly unaware of the fact that it would have led to Billy Horschel being on the team.... But it became a circus, and it's unnecessary given the change in the Tour schedule.
But fear not, brave souls, all is well in the U.S, Ryder Cup orbit:
Steve Stricker had officially been on the job for just a few hours and he was already fielding what promised to be tough questions about Patrick Reed.
Stricker, who was named the 2020 U.S. Ryder Cup captain, said he’s already spoken with Patrick Reed about last year’s matches and that he doesn’t expect the American’s inflammatory comments following last year’s matches to be an issue in 2020.
“As far as he's concerned, and I am, too, it's been handled,” Stricker said. “He's apologized and spoke to the players. He spoke to me and I kind of asked him what to expect from him. He's like, ‘You know what, I've got your guys' back. I'm there for the team.’”
C'mon, when has Patrick Reed ever had issues with teammates? But perhaps of greater interest, does that cover Justine as well?
The Long and Short of It - Here's yet another story I got wrong:
Let the jokes begin as we’re about to see more shorts-wearing players during pro-am and practice rounds.
The PGA Tour announced a change to its player appearance guidelines Monday, which would allow shorts for pro-am and practice rounds in the tournaments operated on the six tours that fall under its umbrella. The change goes into effect immediately for this week’s WGC-Mexico Championship and Puerto Rico Open.
Ian Poulter was among the first to react. “My 43 year old varicose legs will be on full show,” he joked in an Instagram post.
Phil Mickelson tweeted: “Word is they saw my Insta-structionals in shorts and felt this move needed to happen.”
I'm comfortably into the "get off my lawn" stage of life, but this seems an unforced error. The rationale doesn't make it seem any smarter as well:
“It makes total sense,” Kevin Kisner said. “The Tour went about it in the correct way. They asked our sponsors and they said anything that makes us more relatable and makes pro-am groups feel more comfortable on Wednesday it’s a positive for them.”
According to Horschel it was input from various sponsors that ultimately convinced the Tour to allow shorts.
“[Tour commissioner Jay Monahan] was against it. He will tell you he wasn’t really for the shorts. But when the PGA of America did what they did and it was successful and people loved it he took notice,” Horschel said. “What pushed Jay over the edge was when he talked to the sponsors and they said they loved the shorts. They told him it brings the Tour player closer to us. That’s what Jay told me pushed him over the edge when it allowed the Tour players to become more relatable.”
Were I to play in one, I have no interest in my Pro-Am partner looking like he showed up for a member-guest. I want to be awed by these guys....
Today In Backstopping - Justin Thomas tells us it happens "like once a year", so I assume we're good until February 2020. It happened in the dead of night and on the LPGA, so approximately six people saw it:
A big thanks to Duncan French for capturing the following video from the Honda LPGA Thailand. Although, if backstopping really bothers you, then you might not want to watch what happened between World No. 1 Ariya Jutanugarn and Amy Olson on the 18th hole during the second round.
Faced with similar-length pitches for their third shots on the closing par 5, Jutanugarn plays first and hits a beautiful shot to about two feet. After grabbing her putter from her caddie, she starts to walk toward the green, presumably to mark her ball, while motioning to Olson. But Jutanugarn stops dead in her tracks and backs up, having either been told by Olson not to mark her ball or deciding not to because Olson was about to play her shot. Either way, it's a player's option—and responsibility—to mark their ball, provided it doesn't cause an undue delay in play.
According to Rule 15.3a, "If you reasonably believe that a ball on the putting green might help anyone’s play (such as by serving as a possible backstop near the hole), you may mark and lift the ball if it is your own, or if the ball belongs to another player, require the other player to mark and lift the ball."
The rule also states, "If you and another player agree to leave a ball in place to help one of you, and that player then makes a stroke with the helping ball left in place, each player who made the agreement gets the general penalty (two penalty strokes)."
Remember, it was Jimmy Walker who gave the game away, telling us that if he likes his playing partner he'll ask, "Do you want me to leave that there?"
As usual, I may be an unreliable narrator, because Amy tells us it was all about pace of play:
UPDATE: Contacted by Golfweek via text, Olson insisted there was no intent to gain any advantage by having Jutanugarn not mark her ball, but rather that she was trying to help with pace of play after the third member of their group, Michelle Wie, had been waiting to speak with a rules official. According to multiple reports, LPGA officials reached out to both Olson and Jutanugarn and told them there would be no penalties over the matter.
Here’s what Olson told Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols: “We had waited on 18th tee, for 10 minutes in 18th fairway and Michelle (Wie) was waiting for a ruling. To help pace of play, Ariya and I went before Michelle even though she was out. Ariya’s ball was not in my intended line and to help move things along, I told her it was fine. I had never even heard of the back-stopping issue as I don’t really watch PGA golf that much and it hasn’t been an issue on the LPGA. My intention was to help pace of play. Obviously with everything that has gone down I think we all [especially me] will be more conscious of it and I will have EVERYONE mark anything remotely close to the hole now.”
OK, we'll be watching....
Golfers Behaving Badly - Just a couple of loose ends on our poster buy for slow play, J. B. Holmes. Alan Shipnuck had this great question in his weekly mailbag feature:
Is J.B. Holmes the guy who asks the waitress to list all 45 beers and then orders the Bud Light? -@1159shadyave
So many excellent J.B. barbs this week, and this was my favorite. Yes, it was torturous watching Holmes bog down the telecast, but I, for one, am thankful for his, uh, deliberateness. In fact, I hope he contends every time he tees it up, because Holmes’s presence on the leaderboard may finally lead to a tipping point in the battle against slow play. J.B.’s plum-bobbing on two-footers is the golf equivalent of baby seals being clubbed to death; that is, a powerful image that unifies public sentiment against a grave injustice. Thank you J.B. for your invaluable service.
Heh! It's so rude, but I'm nowhere near as optimistic as Alan, principally because we still don't have a viable enforcement protocol, likely because we don't have the will to take this on.
#AskAlan Do we all owe Rory Sabbatini a big apology for jumping down his throat after he left his slow-playing partner behind? Did he really have it right all those years ago? -@1beardedgolfer
Yes, Rory was clearly a man ahead of his time. When we write a revisionist history of the Tour he will surely be hailed as the hero we didn’t deserve. In fact, Sabbatini’s civil disobedience offers a valuable template for battling slow play. Golf fans and scribes can complain every Sunday on Twitter, but that is clearly not going to spark a revolution. Jay Monahan and his castrated rules officials have proven they don’t have the balls to deal with this issue. The corporate sponsors and TV networks want to pretend everything is hunky-dory. It is going to take vigilante justice from the players to affect change. We need alpha males like Tiger, Phil, Brooks, and R. McIlroy to start calling out and confronting the slow pokes in a very public fashion, and that may finally start to reshape the culture on Tour.
As always, one should be profoundly uncomfortable anytime one is on the same side of an issue as the Great Slovakian Hope.
But Alan, why would your alpha males take on these guys, when Jay Monahan won't?
Shack poses an interesting question, one I've grappled with on occasion:
Is A Player Entitled To Wait Out Wind As Long As He Wants?
Tough question, no? I'm not quite sure I agree with this, but it is an interesting take:
Of course not!
J.B. Holmes epitomizes the same weird entitlement Matt Kuchar and Sergio Garcia exhibited in recent weeks after years of the PGA Tour coddling players.
Which leads to another of those effortless segues back to Shippy's mailbag:
#AskAlan Regarding Sergio and Kuch: A: whose apology was more sincere? B: whose apology was more effective? Bonus round: whose original sin was more egregious? -Oskar (@tallboy199)
A). Sergio’s felt like real contrition, while it appeared to take a team of crisis management experts to convince Kuchar to sort of say and do something like the right thing. Advantage Garcia.
B). Sergio has always been petulant and he long ago lost the benefit of the doubt; the whole golf world will be watching for his next slip-up. I think Kuchar finally put an end to his sordid saga, so I’ll give him the edge. Barely.
Bonus round: What Sergio did was ridiculous, but I don’t think it had any real effect on the players behind him, other than irritating them. Grass grows, greens recover. But Kuchar revealed himself to be a scrooge and point-misser of epic proportions. Screwing over the little guy – and repeatedly blowing opportunities to make it right – is worse than losing your cool on the golf course.
But what I think Alan misses with Sergio is that he didn't just damage the one green.... the petulance played out over ninety minutes or more. And hold the presses, we have another worthy contender. Think he's wound a little too tight?
LA Confidential - You no doubt heard the news that the Riviera event will be receiving enhanced status, on a par with Jack and Arnie's event. Shack has a proprietary interest, both as an LA boy and as George Thomas' biographer.
He offer suggestions for maintaining it as a premier event:
Maintain The Open StatusLast week when the new “invitational format was announced, I was a bit surprised to watch PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan unable to answer a straightforwardquestion about whether the 94-year-old Los Anglees “Open” would retain components of its original status in the form of Monday qualifying, a spot given to the local PGA section and an amateur spot of some kind. After the new invitational format was announced, I heard from many Angelenos wondering if it meant the end of Monday qualifying. The answer we got: TBD. And the name? Genesis Open is out, to be replaced by something clunky like Genesis Invitational, Genesis Classic or The Genesis.The narrative for Tiger is a simple one if he agrees to maintain elements of this tournament’s past: “I love Jack and Arnold’s events but this has always been an ‘open’ event, and as long as I can remember I dreamed of qualifying before I got an invitation in 1992 to play that was vital to my career. So even as we go from 144 to 120 players, my foundation will use sponsors invitations to maintain the open nature of this tournament: two Monday qualifying spots, an exemption to the Collegiate Showcase winner, an exemption to the local PGA of America sectional qualifier, and of course, the Charlie Sifford Exemption. Those five spots will maintain ties to this tournament’s past while also not prevent any worthy players from participating. Tiger would be a hero to golf geeks in SoCal and even PGA Tour pros would have to tip their cap at him maintaining the tournament spirit and name.”
You're down to only 120 slots.... I don't see how you continue to make those available to college kids and the like. But well worth reading.
I'll probably see you next on Monday morning.
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