Midweek Musings

I am pegging it later this morning, so let's get to the important stuff....

Match Play Madness - I had to pass on the quarterfinals, but the semis certainly delivered the goods:

The Oklahoma State Cowboys won’t get a chance to defend their men’s NCAA Championship. 

In a wild match that went to a playoff hole, the Longhorns outdueled the Cowboys to win 3-2 and advance to the match play final against Stanford after Cowboy senior Zach Bauchou missed a putt from a few feet that would’ve forced a second playoff hole.

Entering the semifinal match, Texas held a 3-2 regular season record against Oklahoma State. 

In what appeared to be the match of the day between Texas freshman Cole Hammer and Oklahoma State’s individual national champion Matthew Wolff, Hammer dominated from the start, announcing his presence with authority en route to a dominant 4&3 victory for the Longhorns’ first point. Seconds after the first point, fellow freshman Pierceson Coody added the second point with a 5&4 victory over Oklahoma State senior Hayden Wood.

It was truly Hammer time in Fayetteville, as the frosh with the perfect name took down the best player in college golf.... and it wasn't close.

And that missed putt by Zach Bauchou was the dreaded horseshoe.  In the other semi....

Stanford freshman Daulet Tuleubayev was the hero for the Cardinal in their semifinal match against Vanderbilt at Blessings Golf Club. 

The Almaty, Kazakhstan native hit a putt on the 18th green from outside 20 feet at the 2019 NCAA Div. I Men’s Golf Championship to send Stanford to its first-ever match-play final and a chance to win a ninth national title. 

However, the putt wasn’t the craziest thing to happen to Tuleubayev in the semifinal match. 

“First drive I pushed it a little to the right, and it sounded funny,” Tuleubayev said after defeating Harrison Ott 1-up. “I didn’t think of it too much. Coach said, ‘Was that a crack?’”

Either a crack or "damage", and you'll be rolling your eyes when informed that it matters which:

The official explained that there’s an explicit local rule that states you can replace a damaged driver, but not a cracked driver, which Tuleubayev thought “was a little ridiculous.” Ray described the crack as “a hairline fracture, four inches across the top” of the driver head.

From there the story gets even crazier, but they have until early this morning to figure things out.

Copying the Masters, the finals have been moved up to 8:30 a.m. EDT in hopes of finishing before nasty weather hits.

U.S. Open Confidential -  The USGA has been rightly criticized for it's run of U.S. Open cock-ups, and you can predict the outcome when you ask players (plus coaches, caddies and the like) to speak under a grant of anonymity.  But, irony alert, in trashing the USGA they inadvertently hold a mirror up to themselves.

This must be an important piece, because Golf Digest assigns both John Huggan and Brian Wacker to it, and you'll know where they think they're headed with this:

Golf Digest interviewed 57 people intimately involved in the game, including 35 current players and 16 major champions, along with caddies, coaches and analysts, and uncovered details on rapidly eroding relationships with the governing body. The

resentment ran so deep that at one point in 2016, leading players say, they even contemplated the unthinkable: a boycott of the U.S. Open. 

It's not just the long list of Open controversies that have antagonized players (the handling of the Dustin Johnson ruling at Oakmont in 2016 and the ravaged greens at Chambers Bay in 2015, to name but two). The new rules for 2019, and their implementation, have led big names to on-course displays of mockery that would have made Arnold Palmer cringe.

As you'll see here, not all players agree on everything, but there's a common tone that the ruling body faces huge challenges to win back trust, on and off the course. Many of the people interviewed, including those who are supportive and/or sympathetic with the USGA, would speak candidly only with anonymity. “The U.S. Open means so much to me and my family,” one former champion says before adding some tough love: “The gap between the players and the USGA is bigger than it has ever been. There is a total lack of respect. And the USGA people brought it on themselves.”

The piece leads with the anticipated gripes about set-ups, and here the USGA has it coming.  But amidst these obvious gripes, one caddie inadvertently demonstrates that he's not exactly arriving with only carry-on baggage:

CADDIE FOR MULTIPLE PGA TOUR WINNERS: The USGA official with every group always patronizes the caddies on the first tee: “Make sure you've got 14 in there—count your clubs.” That's insulting. That's not their job; it's mine. And if I have 15, it's my fault. I heard a caddie say once, “Don't worry, I've got this. I do it every week of the year. It's only you guys who do it once a year.” That statement applies to so much of the U.S. Open.

As long as you stay focused like a laser on the truly important things....  This one is interesting as well:

TEACHER OF MULTIPLE MAJOR CHAMPIONS: The USGA is an organization built on egos. It's full of successful people who are not used to being told what to do. And they're very rich, typically. They don't listen when it comes to golf.

I'm reminded here of something the late, great Frank Hannigan once told Shack, that the biggest problem with the USGA was their need to be liked.  Doesn't that seem a more likely explanation for some of that which has gone down?

Admittedly, this is my favorite part....  Not the most important, for sure, but telling in its own way:

WINNER OF MORE THAN 10 PGA AND EUROPEAN TOUR EVENTS: It will

only take player power to turn the tournament on its head. If you had a majority of players say they're not playing—and that nearly happened a couple of years ago—if that doesn't set alarm bells ringing, then nothing will. 

MULTIPLE PGA TOUR WINNER: We weren't getting extra money originally [after the USGA signed a 12-year, $1.1 billion television deal with Fox beginning in 2015]. In a player meeting we talked about it, just to raise everyone's attention.

MULTIPLE PGA TOUR WINNER: We had about 10–15 guys who were willing to sit out after 2016. Some of them were big names—Dustin was one, Rory was another.

Two obvious points need to be made.  First, when they tell you it's not about the money....  Yeah, it's about the money.

Secondly, you'll only speak candidly if you can do so anonymously, though you've no hesitation in selling DJ and Rory down the river....  Remind me, if I ever get into a PGA Tour locker room, to keep a watch out for shivs.

That stuff will get the most pixels, but my sense is that the Euros interviewed might be the more candid.  Don't these have the ring of truth?

MULTIPLE EUROPEAN TOUR WINNER: I played with two leading Americans in the first two rounds last year. One whined for two days. The other's caddie had to tell him to shut up at one point, he was being such a pain. He said it was “clown golf,” but it wasn't. He was just hitting it bad. 

MULTIPLE EUROPEAN TOUR WINNER: The U.S. Open should be a test of temperament as well as execution and technique. 

EUROPEAN TOUR WINNER: I've played in three U.S. Opens on three classic courses. I never had a problem at any of them. I thought the USGA did a fantastic job.

Those aren't the kind of link-bait that Golf Digest is after....  Wouldn't you love the names in that first guy's quote?

Problematic for me, is that these guys just don't know their history:

MULTIPLE MAJOR CHAMPION, INCLUDING THE U.S. OPEN: The USGA could do 10 great things at a U.S. Open, but the one bad thing they do is what gets publicized. They overthink it. It's golf. It's not a math equation. The R&A runs one tournament a year, and we never hear from them, because they deal with flat links greens and they can't get them above 11 on the Stimp.

Curious...  I guess you don't remember the R&A suspending play in 2015 because of the....wait for it, the wind?  On a friggin' links?  Where play continued on the more exposed Castle Course?  Because the greens were running too quick in order to keep scoring under control....

ARCHITECT AND MULTIPLE TOUR WINNER: The U.S. Open managed to identify Hogan, Nicklaus and Woods. But among them, Palmer, Snead and Mickelson won only one, total [Palmer in 1960]. Is that bad luck, or something else?

Well, folks still can't get over that 1939 U.S. Open set-up....  Sheesh, are we blaming Phil's 2006 meltdown on Mike Davis as well? 

And this:

MULTIPLE PGA TOUR WINNER: I miss the U.S. Opens of old, where you had narrow fairways and thick rough, and it tested everything.

Many folks think we're headed back to those days, but the contention that it tested everything seems curious.  Those Tom Meeks set-ups were dreadfully boring golf, but it may be the only way to create a stern test given their insistence on doing all those ab crunches.

Many incorrect lessons taken from 2010 at Pebble as well:

MULTIPLE PGA TOUR WINNER: The last time we played there in the Open, they screwed up 17 [which underwent a restoration in 2015]. You had seven guys on Sunday hit the green in regulation. That's unacceptable. I hit a 4-iron one pace on [the green] in line with the pin, and if it hadn't hit the TV tower it would have gone in the water. Explain how I'm supposed to play this hole. Guys had to hit it in the front bunker, miss the green intentionally, and get up and down. That's not golf.

And yet, no one remembers that 1982 final round, when Jack congratulated Monty on winning the U.S. Open... The 14th and 17th greens had shrunk far too much to work at U.S. Open levels of firmness and speed.

The larger point is that, in failing to regulate distance, the governing bodies have created profound issues in how to prepare major championship courses.  There's much of interest as relates to Merion and Shinnecock, of course, but that St. Andrews example is of equal importance.

Folks just love to hammer the USGA on "Protecting Par", which I find a red herring.  There is nothing off-putting in wanting their championship to be the sternest test in golf, it's the "How to get there" that's troubling in this day of 350 yard carries off the tee.

Sad News - We lie our long-term player-caddie partnerships, so this will come as sad news:

The longtime working relationship between Justin Rose and caddie Mark Fulcher has come to an end – at least for the time being. 

Fulcher is taking an indefinite leave from Rose’s side on the bag as he continues to recover from heart surgery earlier this year. 

“After an amazing 11 years with Fooch, our successful run together has finished for now,” Rose posted on Twitter Tuesday as part of a longer message. 

Fulcher has been forced to “focus on his health and well being after the heart procedure earlier this year,” Rose added.

Damn.  Way too much of this in my life these days....

As Woody Once Said... - Half of life is just showing up.  Of course he said that before he became creepy, but let's not focus on that right now.

Shack has had a recurring bit about the abnormally high WD rate from the U.K. U.S. Open qualifier, something that doesn't show our pampered professionals in a good light.  But, hold my beer, it turns out they've got nothing on The Land of the Rising Sun:

Kodai Ichihara, Shugo Imahira and Mikumu Horikawa earned invites to the 2019 U.S.

Open. And they only had to outlast 12 other players. 

The Japanese U.S. Open sectional is routinely one of the smallest qualifiers into the U.S. Open, boasting a field of 30-to-40 competitors. (For context, the Columbus, Oh. sectional has 120 players). Moreover, it's common for many, believing they are out of the running, to drop out after 18 holes during the 36-hole event. 

But the proceedings at Kuwana Country Club were slightly different, in that more than half of the 33-man field failed to finish the tournament.

A number of players walked off mid-way through their second 18, including Satoshi Kodaira and Yuta Ikeda. Jazz Janewattananond, one of the breakout stories of Bethpage Black during the PGA Championship, threw in the towel after an even-par 72. Hiroshi Iwata called it quits after 11 holes of one-under par golf.

Good, the need to be named and shamed....

The Chase To 82 -  This is nothing new to those who read my drivel, but Jack is all over that Snead record:

If Nicklaus was dismissive about the possible feat, it mostly stemmed from how he felt the PGA Tour tallied its tournament wins. He professed to have little idea. 

“I don’t know how you add up tournaments anymore,” Nicklaus said. “Every time I go to some place, winner of 113 tournaments, winner of 110 tournaments, I don’t know how many I won. It depends on how many the Tour is taking away or giving me. 

“They change their mind every year about what they’re going to count. So I don’t know what’s what. No one in the world could know how many tournaments Sam Snead won.”

Which in now way should diminish The Slammer's career, it was simply a different world back then.

At the Tour's website, Laury Livsey writes about how we settled on 82, though I'll first bore you with this fun anecdote:

In his autobiography, “The Education of a Golfer,” Sam Snead recalled a conversation he had one afternoon at Griffith Park, site of the 1937 Los Angeles Open. Snead wrote, “Henry Picard walked up and asked, ‘How are you hitting, Sam? I hear you are bending them halfway to Santa Monica.’” 

Snead, who had been struggling with accuracy off the tee, primarily with a hook, wrote

of his chat with Picard: “I’m so wild I’ve about decided to quit the tour and go home.” Snead then recounted that he hit some drives to show Picard what he meant. The two pros talked about the positioning of Snead’s feet, and then Picard asked to look at Snead’s driver and said, “This stick is too whippy for you. Your hands are too fast for such a light and swingy club. I’ve got an Izett driver in my car that might be the answer for you.”

Picard returned with the George Izett persimmon model. Snead liked what he saw (and felt) and the two made a little transaction – Picard charged Snead $5.50 – and a week later, with the hook under control, Snead won his first big tournament, the Oakland Open, using the stiff-shafted, 14 1/2-ounce club. 

Long after his retirement, Snead reserved a special place for that driver in his Hot Springs, Virginia, home. He never lost sight of how important the club was to him, estimating that three-fourths of all his victories -- official and otherwise -- came with that driver in his bag. Snead would occasionally bring the club out and show it to friends, and he always treated it with reverence.

I don't get it...  Why didn't he just go to Club Champion and get fitted?  Oh right, no Golf Cahnnel back then... This will give you a sense of the arguments involved:

Yet even those additions cause heartburn for some today, with the 1937 tournament an 18-hole affair, the ’38 and ’41 tournaments 36-hole events and the 1950 “Crosby” a 54-hole tournament, declared a tie, with Snead, Jack Burke Jr., Smiley Quick and Dave Douglas. All earned official-victory designations because darkness set in on the final day without a winner emerging, and a next-day playoff was out of the question because of the players’ travel requirements. 

In addition to the four “Crosby” wins, the committee also bestowed official wins on Snead for his 1952 and 1957 Palm Beach Round Robin titles, already crediting him with Round Robin victories in 1938, 1954 and 1955. 

Because of the new standard defined by the panel, though, the committee elected to remove nine tournament titles from Snead’s official-win total, most notably his Greenbrier Invitational victories in 1952, 1953, 1958, 1959 and 1961, the latter two tournaments played at The Greenbrier but renamed the Sam Snead Festival. Also gone from his tally were the 1952 Julius Boros Open, the 1940 Ontario Open, the 1942 Cordoba Open and the 1953 Texas Open, which the record book credited Snead with winning, a tournament actually won by Tony Holguin. That Snead received credit for winning the San Antonio tournament meant the PGA of America and the PGA TOUR essentially perpetuated an error for many years.

It's complicated....Jack is right, he won a boatload of events, but an exact number seems elusive.

Gotta run, but we can pick this up tomorrow.