Weekend Wrap

Lots to talk about, though we might get from here to late October without another baseball reference.

March Madness - Apparently the Golf Magazine was so put off by match play that, two weeks before the Masters, the couldn't be bothered convening their Tour Confidential panel.  So I'm forced to let their competitors at Golf Digest lead, with their alliterative designation of our new match-play maestro:

Consider for a moment some of Kevin Kisner’s victims (in reverse order) each of the last two years at the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play: Matt Kuchar, reigning Open

champion Francesco Molinari, Louis Oosthuizen, Tony Finau, Alex Noren, Ian Poulter, Kuchar again and Dustin Johnson. Not bad. 

Now consider the final score of last year’s Ryder Cup: Europe 17½, U.S. 10½. Very bad. 

“Kevin Kisner appears to be a very good match-play player,” Lee Westwood tweeted smugly on Saturday. “I’ll tell you a course that would really have suited him. Le Golf National.” 

Zing. 

Turns out, not surprisingly, that claustrophobic Austin Country Club suited Kisner well, too. After reaching the championship match for a second straight year, the 35-year-old Kisner picked up the title this time with a 3-and-2 victory over Kuchar after a lopsided 7-and-6 loss to Bubba Watson in last year’s finale.

Zing?  No, but he was in the booth....  Lee's just having a little fun with us, emptying his salt shaker into our still-festering sore.... But after his loss in the finals last year, he's now a mortal lock for Royal Melbourne, and will no doubt raw support for 2020.

I did not see any of his semi-final win over Frankie Molinari, though my suspicion is that they were the two best players this week.  By far.

Do we still love match-play?  I certainly do, though it is hell on the networks and one has to acknowledge that by the time the final match hits the first tee, most of us will have lost our will to live.  It's more golf than a human being can absorb....

Just one item to support my love of the format...  I assume every adult on the planet has seen this shot, one that he probably can't attempt in stroke play.  Of course the best part is the interplay of the two players after he pulls it off.  As the wise man once said, these guys are good.

The world buzzed over that Tiger-Rory match-up on Saturday morning, or at least my cellphone did.  But the cynic in me saw another opportunity for Rors to step up, in which he failed to do so.  As always it was only one day, but it isn't hard to imagine how much he wanted to play well against his idol, yet the obvious weaknesses in his game continue to show at crunch time.  Guess what other event he wants that badly?

As for The Striped One, I'm thinking that he was better off losing in that Saturday afternoon match.  Steve DiMeglio agrees:

But it could turn out that the surprising turn of events against Bjerregaard will be a blessing for the 43-year-old with a bad back who pulled out of the Arnold Palmer Invitational four weeks ago with a neck sprain. 

The capital of Texas broke cold and windy on Sunday, with temps not reaching 50 until noon and the wind-chill roaming from the high-30s to the mid-40s. Not exactly ideal weather for a man nursing a bad back. 

A victory in the semifinals and then a match in the finals could have meant 36 or more holes on the card for Woods, possibly stretching his total to 120 holes played in five days. Instead, Woods was home in Jupiter, where it was 80 degrees.

Do we think Tiger looks ready?  I thought he was awfully lucky to survive group play, and am not over the moon about his chances in two weeks.  Once again folks agree with me:

The stat sheet reveals he should put in extra work with his short irons. One of the best iron players of all time is having a tough time hitting it close this year. He ranks north of 100 on the PGA Tour in approach shots from 100 to 125 yards and is hovering around 100th in approach shots from 125-150 yards. 

That doesn’t bode well at Augusta National. Nor do the short misses with the putter – he missed three putts inside 5 feet against Bjerregaard. Additionally, earlier in the year, he putted terribly at the WGC-Mexico Championship.

And how about Lucas Bjerregaard and his Saturday of the Gods?  I'm gathering his Outlook Calendar looked something like this:

Saturday, March 30, 2019.

8:30 a.m. - Introduce myself to Henrik Stenson

12:30 p.m. - Close out Henrik Stenson on 16th green

2:30 p.m. - Introduce myself to Tiger Woods

7:05 p.m. - Close out Tiger Woods on 18th green.

Not a bad day's work.... Pissed off the folks at Golf Channel/NBC for sure, but still....

Last up is our delicate flower..... you know where this is going, it's time to talk about our Sergio.  Some of you might be under the impression that our hero has found some inner peace.  He's allegedly gotten over having his heart broken by Greg Norman's daughter, broke through at The Masters and even named his baby girl Azalea....  It's just all coming up roses for the man.

And yet....  Earlier this year we had him damaging greens in Saudi Arabia, for which I judiciously determined would be appropriate grounds for an honor killing.....  Keith Pelley, on the other hand, performed a self-colonoscopy to rationalize not suspending the man....  and I use the term "man" in its loosest definition.

In case you missed it:

Garcia was just eight feet away in three on the 7th hole, and 1 down in his match with

Kuchar. When his putt slid left of the hole, Garcia was disappointed. He rushed up to scrape in what remained — perhaps six inches — with the back of his putter, but did so too casually. Garcia’s rake-in caught the edge of the cup and rimmed out. Ho hum, he likely assumed. 

Problem was, Garcia acted so quickly that Kuchar had not had a chance to verbally concede the putt. According to the NBC broadcast, Kuchar was approached by a rules official to see if he had conceded the putt before Garcia touched it with his club. While Kuchar said he would have given Garcia the putt, he did not do so in time. Therefore, Garcia’s backhanded swipe counted, and he lost the hole.

They're video at the link, but I love the use of that passive voice, in which drama finds its way to Sergio....As if El Nino is just an innocent victim.

As for this header, no struggle in the least:

Struggling with where to place blame in the Garcia-Kuchar mess? This one was all on Sergio

I'm good, thanks.

Though his lede is pretty good:

Perhaps we should have expected an untoward occurrence when two Tour villains squared off in the WGC-Match Play quarterfinals this past weekend. Matt Kuchar vs. Sergio Garcia. The gringo in the black hat vs. the Spaniard with the black cat. The pro who lowballed his local caddie after taking home a $1.296 million paycheck vs. the self-pitying underachiever who blames bad luck for blown majors and demolishes bunkers when the sand isn’t to his liking. 

Garcia’s petulance over the years has been one of the few constants in a career charred by expectations and inconsistency. But if he got off somewhat lightly after his brattish behavior at the Saudi International a couple of months ago, he paid dearly for such behavior in his clash with Kuchar. Following a seven-foot miss for par to win the seventh hole at Austin CC on Saturday, Garcia made a hasty, backhanded stab on the four-inch leftover, which circled the rim of the hole and spun out.

I think we unfortunately learned about a side of Kooch that we'd prefer he didn't have, but I wouldn't call him a villain.  Sergio, on the other hand, is fully on his own here...

Paul McGinley saw fit to stick his nose in, and runs the risk of tarnishing his reputation:

This time, the blame is misplaced, the reaction a joke. Garcia is 39 years old going on 12. How is that his opponent’s fault? 

We’re not talking just about critics lying in the weeds or hiding behind a Twitter feed here. European Tour veteran and former Ryder Cup captain Paul McGinley pulled out the rifle during a post-match show on Sky Sports: “You see the smiley, nice Matt Kuchar. You’ve seen the incident with the caddie. There’s a hardness about him. Don’t be fooled by him.” 

With all due respect, Mr. McGinley, you are the one fooled. Connecting the two incidents with an implication of exonerating Garcia falls somewhere between illogical and irresponsible. Kuchar may not actually be Mr. Happy Go Lucky, but that has nothing to do with his role in Concessiongate.

But I haven't even shared the best part with you yet, the one in which Sergio... well, shall we let Bob Harig tell it?

It was after that hole where Garcia suggested to Kuchar that he concede a hole to make up for what happened on the seventh. 

"I thought about it and said I don't like that idea, either," Kuchar said. 

"Typically there's an acknowledgement," he added of a conceded putt. "I understand how the concession needs to be vocal and I try to do a really good job. I hate it when guys sort of mumble something. I always try to be very clear, very vocal. This is one where I was on the back of the green. It happened so fast. I knew I hadn't conceded it. But it was never a tactic or anything." 

Despite the apparent tension within the match, Garcia backed away from any controversy after it. 

"It's quite simple: I screwed it up, it's as simple as that," he said. "Obviously I missed my putt and I kind of tapped it with the back of my putter before he said anything. It's a loss of hole. I understand that. 

"There are many options that you can do if you don't want to take the hole, even though I've already lost that hole. But obviously he didn't like any of the options that were there. It's fine. At the end of the day, I'm the one who made the mistake."

I see his point completely.   If there's no penalty for spitting in the cup or damaging greens, why should he ever be accountable for his actions on the golf course?

To be fair, he took responsibility later.... sort of. Josh Sens has this on the incident, and the header is really all you need to know:

As the Garcia-Kuchar concession affair reminds us, the Rules of Golf do not allow for intent

Yeah, totally, except, you know, when they do....

But this bit is amusing:

Then there’s this what if: What if Kuchar had marched off to the next hole without saying anything? Could that have been interpreted as a concession? 

Under match-play protocol, the referee’s role would have remained the same: his job would have been to ask if the putt had been conceded.

Oh, he's talking about the move known as The Full Pettersen.....  But you never want to go full Pettersen.

Ladies' Day - A significant event has lost it's marquee player, and it's probably for the best.  Curious?

It turns out Lucy Li won’t be playing in the inaugural Augusta National Women’s

Amateur after all. 

The 16-year-old California native and 2018 U.S. Curtis Cup team member, who retained her amateur status after the USGA investigated her appearance in an Apple advertisement earlier this year, was set to be among the 72 players to kick off the new championship next week in Georgia. But tournament officials announced on Friday that Li has withdrawn from the event, citing an unspecified injury.

Our governing bodies have hardly distinguished themselves this year, though this one seemed especially.... err....corrupt.  It's always a bad look when an organization fails to enforce its own rules.

Now the folks at Augusta National put Beth Ann Nichols in an uncomfortable position, but she has made her decision:

For the past year people have asked which event I’m going to cover the first week of April. With the ANA Inspiration and the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur overlapping, there was a choice to be made.

I have covered the past 15 ANAs, but for all the girls like Shepherd who dreamed of one day competing at Augusta, and for those who couldn’t bring themselves to even think it, the choice was clear: Go watch history be made. 

“It’s going to be everything,” said Shepherd of what it would mean to win. “They’ll always be the first winner of what could be the biggest turning point in women’s golf.”

Even before the first ball is in the air on April 6, we can all agree this wasn’t a home run for Augusta National. There’s a practice round in the middle of the tournament for Pete’s sake. 

The fact that the women only get one round at Augusta National feels like a slight. The making of this event should’ve been done in concert with the LPGA, so that the best amateurs in the world wouldn’t have to choose between a major and Augusta National.

It’s impossible to overlook those two missteps. 

Yet it remains a significant step forward. And in the spirit of the LPGA’s new “Drive On” campaign, a trip down Magnolia Lane is for every girl. They will crush it.

I’ve never met someone who went to Augusta National for the first time and came back saying it was overrated. It’s one of the few places on the planet that exceeds the hype.

Yes and Yes.  You see the issue, no doubt.  Augusta National creates an opportunity for the young ladies, but of course they'll only do it on their own exacting terms.  Not only do they give them only the one round, but it's on that one weekend out of 52 when the top amateurs could be pegging it in a major.  A pox on you all....

I'll Have What He's Having - Alistair Tait is not amused, and I do hope Mike Davis is paying attention:

Tait: Golf's new terms another attempt to dumb down great game

That was exactly the reaction of Employee No. 2....  

You’ll never hear me use the words “tie” or “tied” when talking about match play golf. I wish broadcasters of the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play felt the same way.

The on-screen graphics referring to matches as “tied” or describing a putt to “tie” were a further step in the attempt to dumb down this great game. 

There’s nothing wrong with “all-square” or “halve,” terms that have served the game well since two shepherds decided to play against each other with crooks and stones on the Fife coastline 500 years ago. 

Thankfully, Sky Sports broadcasters refused to endorse the new terms much to the relief of British and Irish golf fans. Paul McGinley, Ewen Murray, Robert Lee, Rich Beem, Nick Dougherty and Andrew Coltart steadfastly refused to adopt the terms that have somehow been legitimized by the new rules of golf published on Jan. 1.

Bless them, though the Golf Channel/NBC crew were so faithful to the new terminology that you'd assume that the USGA took hostages.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that wonderful, unique to golf term “dormie” is edited out of the next edition of the rule book even though it’s been in existence since Mary Queen of Scots pondered the benefits of an overlapping grip over a ten-finger one.

Ummm Alistair, I really don't want to be the one to break this to you, but that's a done deal.  R.I.P. Dormie.

As that bit about the shepherds in Fife makes clear, the language that has evolved around our game is a sacred trust we should be striving to protect.  But perhaps I'm not enough of a wordsmith the make this case, here's a quote from a guy that talked pretty:

“Golf’s lexicon of colourful words and phrases is its crowning achievement. For long after the urge of the ability to play the game leaves us, golf’s joyful adjectives and modifiers, its splendid superlatives and unequalled accolades ring in my ear the waves of familiar sound.”

That's poet Robert Browning in the 19th century.....  Of course, he never had to deal with millennials.

 And this one is pretty good as well:

“Golf is the Esperanto of sport,” the great Henry Longhurst once said. “All over the world golfers talk the same language.” 

Old Henry must be choking on his claret up in that great clubhouse in the sky at the dumbing down of the sport he loved so much.

Well played, Alistair, not that it will help us in the slightest given the nature of our game's current leadership.

I've got to run, be we'll have more for you tomorrow.