But one in which your humble correspondent watched very little golf, and that which I did watch was of the distaff variety...
Zurich Zaniness - Golf mag with their useful 30-second summary:
Who won: Jon Rahm and Ryan Palmer (three-under 69, 26 under overall) / Rounds 1 and 3 best-ball; Rounds 2 and 4 alternate shot.Why it matters: It’s Rahm’s third PGA Tour victory and first of the year, but the win was even sweeter for his partner, Palmer, who at 42 is 18 years older than Rahm (24). Palmer has now won four times on Tour, but this was his first in nearly a decade. His last victory was the Sony Open in 2010.
Who lost: Mullinax and Stallings were tied with Rahm and Palmer to begin the day, but they played the front nine in one over and then, still just one off the lead at the turn, made bogeys on 11, 13 and the drivable par-4 16 to tumble out of contention. They shot 77 and tied for 13th.
Best shot when it mattered: Faced with a 24-footer to save par on the 15th hole, Rahm drained it and kept their three-shot lead (and momentum) intact. That came after the duo birdied the 13th and 14th to push ahead of the pack.
Take heart, Patrick, Ryan Palmer shows that there's possibilities for former Jordan Spieth partners.... Actually, among the few minutes I saw on Saturday, the key shot might have been Palmer saving bogey after both put their tee balls in the water on the Par-3 seventeenth....
There's been a surprising amount of existential angst over this event, which Dan Kilbridge captures:
Watching the teammate dominos fall is a huge part of the Zurich Classic’s appeal in the
Fix No. 1 might be to arrange for two trophies.... days and weeks leading up. Dissecting the pairings and eventually their chosen walk-up music might be more intriguing than the actual golf.
International Presidents Cup team captain Ernie Els even introduced the idea of treating it as a chance to prep for the December matches at Royal Melbourne, with international players staying at the same hotel and bonding after-hours. Jason Day and Adam Scott played together for the first time, but that experiment ended early in a missed cut.
OK, who's gonna remind Ernie that the December event is match play, whereas this one.... oh, never mind.
Of course, isn't this the killer, bring all discussion to a screeching halt point?
There’s also something to be said for simply breaking up the weekly PGA Tour “Groundhog Day” routine with the two-man teams, rotating rounds of best-ball and alternate-shot, and little touches like the first-tee music. The decision to switch it up in 2017 had its critics, but does anyone really think that one more 72-hole stroke play tournament each year is what’s missing in golf?
Shack has his own take on the format:
When you need excruciatingly painful exercises like walk-up music—executed better this year, slightly—and December Presidents Cup testing grounds, something is amiss.I’d start by making the foursomes play modified, with each player hitting a tee shot. Or, if the purity is just that important to someone, then back to Thursday-Saturday rounds. To finish on a Sunday with a format that is about making the fewest mistakes instead of what is the most fun to watch, once again announces to fans that the PGA Tour was not thinking of you. Or if they were, they believed you like watching hard-earned pars being made.
Well, if it weren't for that live under par thing.... Alternate shot is such an interesting format to watch them play, but a bunch of no-names with eight-figure bank accounts is admittedly a tough sell.
Tiger Scat - The needle is most certainly moved, as his decision to skip Charlotte was the most discussed news item, at least in my fourball.... There might be a sample-size issue there, but whatever....
The Tour Confidential panel led with this query:
1. In a surprising move, Tiger Woods decided to skip this week’s Wells Fargo Championship, although his agent, Mark Steinberg, said it is not due to injury (a video from earlier in the week appeared to show Woods limping). “[Tiger is] still digesting and appreciating what happened two weeks ago,” Steinberg told ESPN’s Bob Harig. Woods’ next start appears to be the PGA Championship on May 16-19. Does Woods’ decision to skip Quail Hollow, and go from the Masters to the PGA, change your opinion on his chances in the second major of the season?
Sean Zak: Doesn’t change my opinion on the PGA but it does interest me. The major season is so jam-packed now that hopes of seeing him play elsewhere, like Minneapolis or Detroit, seem futile. That’s sad, even if it’s smart.
Josh Sens: Well said, Sean. Then again, given what he’s done, watching Tiger in anything less than a major almost seems anticlimactic. The historic hunt is back on, and it’s once again the most compelling story in golf.
Josh Berhow: If the guy wants to soak in No. 15 a little more, he deserves it. Also, how about this — what if him skipping Quail Hollow makes me even moreconfident in his PGA prospects? It just tells me Tiger is happy with where his game is and is comfortable taking that to Bethpage Black, which I’m sure he’s got a great game plan for already.
Michael Bamberger: I think he prepares more mentally than physically in this incarnation. I would think it improves his chances to win there.
Fair enough, but let's remember his unusually good record after layoffs..... Not that it's all that recent, of course, but as long as we're turning the clock back....
Shack says we should chill:
If It Makes You Feel Better, Tiger Will Still Be Teeing Up Way More Than Hogan Did
Setting the bar pretty low, for sure... But that TC gang hit upon the potential contradiction in the news this week:
2. Woods won’t play the Wells Fargo Championship, but he did recently commit to the PGA Tour’s inaugural ZOZO Championship in Japan in October. It’s quite the haul for Woods, who said at the end of last year he will be limiting his schedule and hasn’t played in as many overseas events in the last couple of years. Woods will also be in Australia for the Presidents Cup in December. Thoughts on Woods’ latest international commitment?Zak: Anytime I see Tiger play overseas in a non-major, I see dollar signs. Regardless of who is sending those dollars and which direction they’re flying in, that’s what I see. It is a good thing.
Sens: No doubt. This is all about the $$$. As for any effect on Woods’ health or game, it strikes me as a non-factor. Last I checked, his air travel does not involve cramped seats in the back of an airplane. He goes to bed. He wakes up in Tokyo. Big deal.
All I remember is his last trip to the Middle East, where he ended the first round on the wrong side of 80 and then withdrew... Private travel notwithstanding, the travel can't be good and he has another long trip planned for December. Methinks spanning the globe chasing appearance fees really isn't a great look for the guy, and I're rather he showed up in the Napa Valley and make good on his bat-and-switch from a few years back.
Eating Our Young - This is easily my favorite story of the day, as our game sends what can only charitably be describes as mixed messages:
Scotland’s Carly Booth has encountered an online backlash after announcing a sponsorship deal with Golf Saudi in social media posts that were subsequently deleted.
Booth wrote on Twitter and Instagram: “I am honoured to represent @Golf_Saudi as they acknowledge that women in sport is of paramount importance. Although culturally they are in a different place to some countries, they are doing everything they can to introduce girls and women into sport and lead healthy lifestyles.”
But who drives the cart? Also, is she allowed in public without a male relative as an escort?
You know where this goes:
“Writing ‘culturally in a different place’, as in women just got the right to drive, are able
I had this photo in my files... Think the Saudis have seen it? to finally attend sporting events if they are seated separately from men, and where [the] death penalty is executed against women’s rights activists. Cool, Carly,” Alvarez tweeted in response.
She later added: “This lacks total awareness of the human-rights violations inflicted on women in Saudi Arabia … until SA stops murdering & imprisoning women’s rights activists there is no reason to be an ambassador for them.”
The Talksport presenter Georgie Bingham wrote: “Crikey Carly, I think you might want to head to Google and a bit of ‘women’s rights, Saudi Arabia’ before announcing that.”
Equally amusing, as we saw during l'Affaire Kooch, people are awfully quick to lay the blame elsewhere, as Eamon Lynch notes: is all over. Before we get to his take on this, he covers the Kooch and Sergio messes, adding to Sergio's lore with this:
OMG, that was a near-miss spit take....Her's Eamon going in for the kill:
One can mount a defense for Booth, but it’s unflattering: devotion to her craft leaves little time to study geopolitics and human rights; women golfers, and particularly those in Europe, subsist on vapors so deals aren’t easily rejected, no matter how morally questionable the source.
But no exculpatory defense exists for the fatuous pillocks on her management team, who devised the deal, who displayed a mesmerizing disregard for the risk to her reputation, who presumably helped author the social posts, who thoroughly failed at their most basic function: they left their client looking like both a fool and a jerk.
OK, but how exactly does he know what her management advised? As I noted during Kooch's fiasco, the most likely scenario is that the player's management is doing that which the player wanted. Aldo, Eamon might have buried the lede, specifically in his argument that they should have protected her reputation, when perhaps there really isn't all that much to protect:
What reputation Booth enjoys owes more to her appearance in ESPN’s 2013 Body issue than to her play on the Ladies European Tour. Her world rank is 351st. But posts on her social media accounts on April 24 left her more exposed to scrutiny than that ESPN shoot.
We know that he's drawn the ire of certain self-appointed SJW's, though I'd like to see some proof for his last point, given that her body is clearly up to any scrutiny demanded.
The TC gang echoes Eamon's displeasure:
4. Ladies European Tour player Carly Booth received so much backlash about a tweet promoting her sponsorship with Golf Saudi that she removed the post altogether. Did she deserve this kind of heat? And who should receive the blame: Booth or her management team?
Zak: As a human who should be aware of the news/vibe/connotations around a sponsor decision, yeah she’s deserving of some heat. But as we all know, there are multiple people involved with this decision. They all probably expected this, even Saudi Golf. So…they still went for it. Booth AND her management team should receive blame.
Berhow: Yeah, both deserve some blame, and at some point she should have realized it would get some blowback, and I think she did (to a degree) with the qualifying text she wrote in her post. But that’s also why you pay your management team, to manage you. They did not do that here. At least not well.
This story amuses me because of the newfound evils of the Saudi regime....Really guys, they've been this way forever. Not only was the Kashoggi story misinterpreted, but golf has been doing big business with equally noxious regimes the world over.
How about somebody put the rules down on paper, so that we can all agree? It's inappropriate for Carly to cash their check, but seemingly OK for the Euro Tour to spend a month in the Middle East to avoid the harsh Euro winter?
What's Become of Edoardo? - This was a popular question a few weeks back, as we damn near had our first Masters champion that has looped in the event.... That would have been epic, no?
Turns out the less famous and successful Molinari brother is on a mission from God:
Molinari took to Twitter to vent about slow play after playing a five-and-a-half-hour round Saturday at the European Tour’s Trophee Hassan II, saying, “It’s time that professional golf does something serious for slow play.” He then tweeted out a list of every player who has been timed, penalized and fined this season because of slow play in European Tour, WGC and major tournaments.
And to think that I had been reliably informed that naming names was wrong....
This guy thinks he's off topic:
“I saw his tweet this morning when he came off the course, ‘We need to play faster, blah, blah, blah.’ I get it,” McDowell said Saturday at the Zurich Classic. “I hear where Edoardo is coming from, but he is, what shall we say, flogging a dead horse?
“It’s not a dead horse, but it’s pretty dead. What do you want to do? We can’t get around there much quicker. Is 20 minutes going to change his life? Listen, I like Edoardo, nice kid, but I think he’s just frustrated.”
McDowell pointed out that he feels like the pace-of-play policy on the European Tour is more stringent than the PGA Tour’s policy, though he said even that is “getting tougher and tougher.”
“Listen, golf courses are long, golf courses are hard, we’re playing for a lot of money, it’s a big business, it is what it is,” McDowell said. “There’s just no way to speed the game up really. You can try these small percentiles, but at the end of the day it’s very hard to get around a 7,600-yard golf course with tucked pins with a three-ball in less than 4:45, 5 hours. You can’t do it.”
Still, we wish him well... Well, some of us do, he might not be especially welcome by some in the locker room:
Berhow: Media members and casual fans of course love to see this, but I doubt this move gained Molinari friends inside the locker room. But here’s the kicker: this won’t change anything. It’s the same old story. Courses are long, courses are hard and guys are playing for major paychecks. Nothing will change because they still don’t have a reason to speed up.
Sens: Not just applause. A standing ovation. Josh is right that a single tweet is not going to change anything. But if enough players of Molinari’s gravitas get actively behind the idea of speeding up play, something will eventually have to give. The glacial pace of golf is the absolute worst thing about the game, from the pro level on down. What I never hear discussed in all this talk of players competing for so much money is this: Does playing at an agonizing pace actually improve performance? I’d like to see some numbers one way or the other. I suspect we’d find that playing with a little dispatch is not a bad thing for scoring either.
I could get behind his effort, though not until we come up with a more effective rules protocol...
Opening Acts - Here's a fun one on which we'll make our graceful exit:
From Merion to St. Andrews: The five greatest opening tee shots in golf
Only five, so I'm thinking we should go through them all..... The first candidate is inevitable:
1. Old Course at St. Andrews
St. Andrews, Scotland“Knees knocking, everyone watching.”“So wide yet so scary.”“The hair stands up on any normal neck.”“It’s so wide…and yet the OB stakes on the right are so white.”“100+ yards wide never looked so narrow. Did I mention the burn?”
OK, I guess. It gets there exclusively based on reputation and the aura of the majestc clubhouse, as it's not much of an actual golf shot. Most of us can't actually reach the burn, and it's about 120-yards wide.... Next up is the only one I've not played:
2. Merion GC (East)
Ardmore, Pa.“From lunch to the first tee in less than 10 seconds!”“Quiet please, on table four.”“Why did the glassware and silverware suddenly stop clinking when I took my stance?”“You do not want to hook one here.”“Would everyone please stop looking at me?”“At lunch time, it is the scariest opening tee shot.”“Great anticipation versus fear and exposure!”
I don't remember this as being, well, memorable, but I've only seen it on TV.....
This one you knew was coming:
3. Machrihanish GC
Argyll, Scotland“All of Scotland to the right.”“That drive over the Atlantic!”“How much do I take off the first shot of the day?”“Entire rounds have been mentally surrendered here.”“Better hope the wind is not directly into your face.”“It’s the ultimate in risk/reward in a dramatic setting.”“Scary and unique…think of the permissions needed to build this today.”
Although I adore Machrihanish, I'm a bit of a dissenter on this golf hole and the tee shot. It's your basic cape hole, but not one that taxes one's capabilities. It's not a long hole and there's not reason to flirt with the beach, so I don't find it all that strategically interesting.
It is an unusual location for a tee box, and is quite memorable.....
For a more demanding opening tee shot and first hole, look no further than...
4. Portstewart (Strand)
Portstewart, Northern Ireland“How steep is that drop?”“Nothing prepares you for the stunning view down the 1st.”
This is the far more spectacular setting, and the front nine is played among those dramatic dunes in the photo. A really tough hole as well.... as this last entry:
5. Old Prestwick GC
Prestwick, Scotland“Hope my tee ball doesn’t start heading south in the adjacent coal train.”“A trip back in time with the railroad!”
It's ironic that four out of five come from the Old World links. So often we find great links with weak opening and closing holes, because of the need to get players out to the more interesting terrain. Of course there are exceptions, as this list shows.
Another might come from Elie, a smallish links that is No. 1 on my list to play in August, for the simple reason that I've not played it previously. There an old submarine telescope is provide for use in assuring that the fairway is clear....
See you tomorrow I hope.
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