Thursday Threads

No time for pleasantries, we've got a rich, full day ahead of us....

Cardinals Rule - It's team match play, so the best don't always win....  Certainly not this year:

After Stanford finished eighth or worse in each of its three stroke-play events in the fall, Ray knew his squad needed to toughen up. He added a Friday morning workout to the

team’s weekly training schedule. The high-intensity conditioning, led by assistant coach Matt Bortis, likened to a boot camp for golfers, so the team coined the hourlong sessions, “Bortis Camp.” 

Bortis, who played three years at Arkansas before becoming an All-American at Texas as a senior, spent eight years in the Marine Corps prior to taking the Stanford job last October. 

“Without a doubt, I’d say that we were the underdogs, but I think some of the stuff that we’ve been doing together has proven guys otherwise,” Bortis said.

Geoff uses this great event to bemoan the conformity of another:

Olympic golf is about to be on our radars and players will be forced to pretend how excited they are about the possibility of playing a purse-free WGC event at a greater Tokyo country club, the 2019 NCAA Championships once again reminded how much more compelling team match play is than 72 holes of stroke play.

Nothing about this year’s college golf should have been that compelling other than seeing a historic team cap off their season. They didn’t so two other top ten teams faced off in the final. Still, it featured players largely unknown to most watching, a course featuring an odd set of often buzz-killing green complexes and less than ten hour turn around to beat storms. Yet Stanford and Texas put on another stellar match play era show.

Everything about the modern NCAA’s TV-friendly format continues to be fan friendly and a constant, pesky reminder of Olympic golf’s refusal adopt a team format. Seeing players fight for their team in a sport where lone wolf types generally excel, and watching coaching and team components juxtaposed with match play makes for the ultimate “grow the game” theater. It also helps to have a telecast free of promos, thus allowing more time to listen in on player-coach conversations or to simply let announcers set up situations.

Hey, I've been reliably informed that Olympic Golf is epic.  C'mon, 72 holes of stroke play....  I'm sure they spent weeks coming up with that imaginative format.

I know he bowed out Tuesday afternoon, but have you caught Matthew Wolf's golf swing?  I'm having no luck embedding it in a tweet, but you can watch it here.  Not sure what's more curious, the swing itself or that triggering move.

He'll undoubtedly come out with sponsor exemptions lined up.  We usually like to see the kids stay in school, but it's hard to argue that there's much left to accomplish at the amateur level.  Shipnuck had this question in his mailbag:

This kid Matthew Wolff appears to be the real deal. Does he turn pro this year and how quickly do you think he has an impact on PGA Tour? Keep up great work bro. -@dafrase 

Man, you were doing so well right up until the word ‘bro.’ Anyway, it seemed like a done deal Wolff would turn pro after these NCAAs…and then Oklahoma State got upset in the semis. He clearly cares about his team, and so I suppose the sting of this epic upset could lure Wolff back for a run at another, cathartic natty. But, clearly, Wolff has outgrown the college game and I expect he’ll follow in the footsteps of Tiger, Rickie, Jordan and sundry others who bolted early for the big leagues. Wolff is a special talent, and it will be a blast to watch him attack Tour venues. It seems like a sure thing that he’ll have a long, fruitful career but predicting pro success can be dicey. Remember Manny Zerman? Joel Kribel? Pablo Martin? Exactly.

Manny Zerman?  Takes a fellow back for sure....

On Pebble - And the USGA, as well...  Just yesterday we had an anonymous pro calling ourt Rory for his alleged willingness to boycott the U.S. Open.  Strange that, methinks, since Rory has always seemed to go out of his way to remind folks that the Far Hills Liberty Corner gang aren't deliberately beclowning themselves.  Nice of him to do so, for sure, though the need to do so is telling in its own right:  

McIlroy, who won the 2011 championship at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, 

Doesn't this seem like a lifetime ago?

Md., said that he has a good relationship with the association, and that the USGA has sought his opinion on some golf matters. He is willing to give its leaders the benefit of the doubt as controversy swirls around them.

“They’re trying to do as good a job as they can,” McIlroy, No. 4 in the world, said Wednesday at the Memorial Tournament. “And I think they’ll admit they’ve made a couple of mistakes over the last couple of years. Everyone does. And I think we should give them the chance to redeem themselves. If they can’t redeem themselves at Pebble Beach, then there could be a problem.” 

McIlroy didn’t elaborate on what the “problem” might entail.

Of course, his Back to the Future solution leaves many of us cold:

“I guess in my head growing up watching the U.S. Opens, that was what my perception of a U.S. Open was. It was tight fairways, it was thick rough. It was a premium on accuracy and precision,” McIlroy said. “And I think some of the golf courses we played and some of the setups over the last couple of years have went a little bit away from that. We play one Open Championship a year; we don't need to play two. I think it’s just lost its identity in terms of what it is, and I’d like to see them go back to that, because it worked. It really worked.”

Like Rory, I never got the Chambers Bay venue decision, as links golf isn't an American tradition.  But memories of those dreadfully boring U.S. Opens at rough-choked golf courses have faded...

In agreement with your humble correspondent is one Alan Shipnuck, from whose mailbag we also cherry-pick this bit:

Is there a way to make the U.S. Open stand out as toughest test of golf without going overboard on the course setup? Back to 36 holes a day? #askalan -@EduCrawford 

I would loooove to see a return to the grueling 36-hole finish, which pushed players to the breaking point physically, mentally and spiritually. (Ask Ken Venturi, circa 1964.) But given the current plague of slow play, it would take two full days to play 36 holes in a day, so who are we kidding? Otherwise, the best hope is for the Open to go old-school with skinny fairways, gnarly rough and brick-hard greens, weather permitting. This kind of setup doesn’t lend itself to exciting golf, but it will identify a very proficient champion.

This to me is the threshold question of the era.... Maybe now isn't the time for it, but the desire to make the U.S. Open a sterner test than the other 51 weeks of the year seems a valid objective, consistent with the event's and organization's history.  The means of doing so, in a world of 350-yard carries, is less clear...

That Tiger guy had a free weekend, and snuck in a visit to Pebble:

When asked to assess his recent scouting trip to Pebble Beach ahead of next month’s U.S. Open, Tiger Woods got straight to the point. 

“Pebble was wet, cold and rainy,” Woods said with a grin Wednesday at the Memorial. 

Days after missing the cut at the PGA Championship, Woods flew to Pebble Beach for a scouting trip ahead of the season’s third major. He got in a full day of practice last Friday along the Monterey Peninsula in conditions that were a far cry from those he enjoyed while winning the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble by a record 15 shots.

Just what a guy with a fused back needs, right?  I would just advise those that like his chances there to at least scout a weather report before committing any shekels to his prospects.  Marine layers and all...

Woods tied for fourth at Pebble Beach during the 2010 U.S. Open, but he hasn’t played the course in competition since a T-15 finish at the 2012 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am when he shot a final-round 75 alongside eventual champ Phil Mickelson. Even in cold and wet conditions, Woods found a course that should provide a stern test for the field in two weeks. 

“I forgot how small the green complexes are. Add a little bit of firmness and speed to them and they get really tiny,” Woods said. “But seeing some of the new greens that they had re-done, taking a look at some of the new pins was nice to see. So come next week when I start concentrating and focusing on Pebble Beach, it will be nice to have those images.”

I totally don't recall him being a factor that week, but those small greens are the primary defense of the golf course.  Shack has the logical explanation for Tiger's lack of recall:

Part of Tiger’s forgetfulness has to do less with eroding brain cells and more with encroaching bunkers and the continued shrinking of Pebble’s greens since the last Open.

Fortunately, the two worst greens have been rebuilt (Nos. 17 and 14).  Remember that confessional from Golf Digest about the USGA?  No?  Geez, it was only yesterday....  Lots of comments on Pebble in 2010:

CADDIE FOR MULTIPLE MAJOR-CHAMPIONSHIP WINS: I fear for Pebble. It was close to unplayable in the last round in 2010.

TEACHER OF MULTIPLE MAJOR CHAMPIONS: The story going into Pebble is, “How will they screw this one up?” The greens will be brown again. What other defense does a course that length have? It's so short [7,075 yards, par 71]. And what will they come up with at the [par-5] 14th? I'm betting no ball will stay on that green after they get done with it [even after it was redesigned]. So what will they do? Water some greens and not others? Mow some greens but not others.

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. 

MULTIPLE PGA TOUR WINNER: That's a prime example of how they could take a great, iconic hole at Pebble, where there's been so much history, and have the 71st hole of a major championship be complete luck. 

MULTIPLE PGA TOUR WINNER: In 2010, they were some of the worst greens I've putted on. They were so bumpy. Half of a green would be brown, half of it would be green. You'd hit one wedge, and it would one-hop over the back; you'd hit the next one, and it would land in a green spot and rip back 25 feet. I don't know how much skill is involved at that point. 

FORMER U.S. OPEN CHAMPION: No. 8 barely has a pin placement on it. 

FORMER U.S. OPEN CHAMPION: The course is exposed to the elements, so the conditions can change in an instant. 

MULTIPLE PGA TOUR WINNER: Let's not trick Pebble up. Let's leave Pebble to be Pebble. It's hard enough as it is. 

TEACHER OF MULTIPLE MAJOR CHAMPIONS: Pebble is not a course where they're going to hit driver anyway. Forget trying to make them hit driver. They don't have to. How can it be a U.S. Open if you can leave your woods at home? 

TEACHER OF MULTIPLE MAJOR CHAMPIONS: I've seen the fairway cuts for Pebble, and they're obnoxious. The rough on the 18th fairway comes right out to the tree. On the sixth hole, the “fairway” bunker is 35 yards into the rough. It should be on the edge of the fairway, not completely out of play. If they want to make the fairway that wide, put the bunker where it's supposed to be.

To me it was always strange that there wasn't more grumbling after that 2010 Open, where players deliberately played into the front bunker on No. 17.   The only way to hold that green was to land the tee shot in the rough between the bunker and green.... what Jack used to refer to as landing a 4-iron on the hood of a Buick.

There's a lot of discussion as well about Saturday at Shinny, specifically how the golf course changed in the course of the day.  Same concerns apply here, it's a very hard thing to get precisely right.

A Battle of Headers - We had the story of Justin Rose's longtime looper Mark Fulcher yesterday, so you know the background.  Here's the entirely appropriate Golfweek header from that item w elinked yesterday:

Justin Rose's longtime caddie Mark Fulcher sidelined indefinitely due to health concerns

Pretty low degree of difficulty you'll agree, and yet here's the Golf Digest header:

Justin Rose Splits With Longtime Caddie

Perhaps another line of work would suit their talents better?  Unless, yanno, it's all about raisng class consciousness among the proletariat.... 

The Problem With Hogan - The previously unknown-to-me John Barton has a problem with Ben Hogan....  though I'm unclear on what that problem might be.  He frames his piece in Hogan's childhood trauma:

One night, in 1922, Chester Hogan, a rural Texas blacksmith, was arguing with his wife. Then he went into another room, pulled a .38 revolver from his bag, and shot himself. 

According to some accounts, his 9-year-old son, Ben, was in the room with him.

What did Ben Hogan witness—did he see the suicide? What was the impact of the trauma? Of growing up without a father? Of knowing that the man who made him, whom he idolized, came to the irrevocable decision that life was not worth living? 

Child victims of a parent's suicide often are susceptible to depression, social maladjustment and post-traumatic stress disorder. More pressing for the Hogans was the fact that they were plunged into poverty. Young Ben went to work. To help the family make ends meet, he sold newspapers. Then one day, at age 11, he hiked seven miles to Glen Garden Country Club after he'd heard you could make money carrying golfers' bags. 

Golf adopted Hogan. His clubs became his hammer, the practice tee his anvil. He forged something beautiful. Ben Hogan became Hogan.

That's a shock to anyone unfamiliar with the Hogan story, but where might we be headed?  I gather the problem has something to do with this:

For many, Hogan is an icon of what it means to be a golfer and a man. Clean-shaven, immaculately dressed, scrupulously honest. Modest. Hard-working. Disciplined. Stoical. A lone wolf, battling nature and the elements, internal ones as well as external.

Golf prides itself on its life lessons. The game comes with a set of rules, a tribe and village elders. From role models like Hogan, boys can learn to be men (something many aren't learning at home: one in three American kids, like the teenage Hogan, don't live with their dad). They learn that the game is hard, and rewards are few. Good bounces can come disguised as bad bounces, and vice versa. Play the ball as it lies. No one saw you inadvertently break a rule? Call a penalty on yourself. Take dead aim. Don't complain; don't explain. Got a problem? Fix it. "Dig it out of the dirt." 

Yet Hogan was famously taciturn and cold. He eschewed small talk or, more accurately, talk. He hated giving interviews. He could stop a young autograph hunter in his tracks with an icy stare. As a kid, Hogan hovered like a disapproving eminence grise over my fledgling attempts to become a grown-up. He seemed like every hard-ass teacher I'd ever had at school, every disapproving ex-military British golf-club secretary who ever upbraided me and my friends for some absurdly petty transgression, every unnamed Victorian ancestor who peered unsmilingly out from old photograph albums. I read in one of Jack Nicklaus' autobiographies that he liked Hogan because he wasn't effusive, and in Nicklaus' view, effusiveness was bad. My ensuing monosyllabic attempt to be uneffusive was short-lived.

And that's a problem why?  That a man who survived profound childhood trauma might emerge a little on the taciturn side seems obvious....  Barton then devolves into psychobabble leading to this rousing crie de couer:

We tell our sons to man up. There's no crying in baseball, or anywhere else. Boys are raised to feel nothing (except anger, which is manly); to say little; to be expendable cogs in a loveless machine. We create numb, inarticulate loners: John Wayne, Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood. Travis Bickle, Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski. The guy who works in IT. We create absent fathers. We ride off into the sunset.

You see what he did there?  John Wayne and Clint Eastwood are just like the Unabomber....  Even better, it's there movie personas that are just like those social misfits and serial killers.

But are our boys really raised these days to feel nothing?  Why are we giving them participation ribbons then?  Hogan has many virtues that can and should be preached to the young of today, but no one that can fog up a mirror presents him as a role model for the modern world.  I happen to think those old world values have merit, but that's an argument for another day.

Alan Unplugged - Shippy's mailbag is a national treasure,...  OK, I exaggerate, but the appeal of low-impact blogging is obvious.  Just think of it as a low-carbon source of snark...  Lots to enjoy on Jack and his event:

The Memorial has the worst logo on Tour by far. Get me in touch with Jack to

redesign, yes or no? -@JustShake 

I agree it’s rather underwhelming. Surely there should be some iconography from Big Jack’s career — how about the putter-raise from the 71st hole at the ’86 Masters? Alas, no doubt Nicklaus has vetoed many such ideas with his Midwestern modesty. But if we’re not going get the man himself, shouldn’t they put a milkshake in the logo?

It's amazing how much press those milkshakes get.  

Does Jack get enough credit for his record of top-3 finishes in majors? It’s almost as amazing as the 18 titles. -@SteveThomsonMN 

It might be more amazing. Want to make your face melt off? Peep Nicklaus’s finishes at the British Open from 1963-1980: 3, 2, 12, 1, 2, t2, t6, 1, t5, 2, 4, 3, t3, t2, 2, 2, 1, t2, t4. In the 1970s there were only five f’ing majors where he didn’t finish in the top-10! Big Jack had 13 seasons in which had at least three top-5s in the majors! It goes on and on. What a legend.

For sure.  Though he played so conservatively in majors that it raises an interesting question.  How many might he have won had he fired at pins and the like?  

On other subjects:

Has Kevin Na got the mindset to win a major? -@tav190 

Without a doubt. Dude has been to hell and back…a few times. He might be the toughest, most tenacious player on Tour. His iron play is first-rate and short game among the best on Tour — that game travels, especially on a course that doesn’t require a lot of drivers, like Pebble Beach or assorted Open Championship venues. It would be deeply satisfying to see Na break through at a major because few players have ever climbed a mountain that high.

I have no opinion on this, as Na's play has never captured my affections.  Well, except for that time in San Antonio when he need an HP 12C to compute his score on a Par-4.  Alan did write the definitive piece on the man back in 2016,  If you're wondering whether Kenny Harms deserved that souped up Dodge Charger, just remember where they were a few years ago.

Is Sophia Na the new Dash Day? -@WallDwarf 

How cute was that? I used to be violently opposed to the family photo ops, because it seemed so contrived — after the winning touchdown catch is a football player mobbed by his wife and kids? But I guess I’m getting soft in middle-age because lil’ Sophia was one of my favorite parts of Na’s victory, of which there was much to celebrate.

Middle age?  Nah, Alan is still a young brat....

Onto another tragi-comic hero?  Why not?

Speith always talks WE…. do you think if he would say “I “ need to putt better or

“I” need to drive better, he may win? I understand the team concept, but he hits the shots. He’s responsible during the game. -@CarsleyGolf 

This has always vexed me, and it goes way beyond Spieth. The royal “we” sounds inclusive but really it’s a shirking of the rugged individualism that has always made golf great. The modern pro has an entourage to attend to his mind, body and soul but, as you say, they’re ultimately all alone out there. I think acknowledging and embracing that would help a lot of these guys, not just Spieth.

OK, we'll just have to differ on this one.  Yes, for sure, Jordan is always saying "We're so close, and then going out and stinking up the joint.  You seem to find the first-person plural pronoun the more curious, whereas I focus on the his rather misguided characterization of his game.

To wit:

Starting now, who wins more Majors: Bruce or Ricky + Rory + Jordan combined? -@ianmdallas 

Oof, tough one. For the sake of this argument, let’s give Bruce/Brooks four more. Rickie will win one — he has to, right? Otherwise all those commercials are for naught, and who could abide that? Same with Rory — one of these days he’s going to turn a backdoor top-5 into a victory, just by accident. That puts the onus on Spieth. Does he have three more major championship victories in him? Does he have *one*? As woebegone as he seems these days he’s still only 25. He’s so smart and tenacious he has to figure it out soon. Right? The more we talk this out, I’m taking Koepka!

Yup, you keep waiting for that inevitable Rickie breakthrough....

This remains an interesting subject:

How far away are we from the PGA Tour network and what do you think that means for golf’s current TV partners? -@DKateeb 

Before GolfTV made the scene I thought the Tour was positioning itself to start its own network. But Discovery is a huge, worldwide platform run by a bunch of smart people. And of course Golf Channel already serves as a very capable delivery system for Tour-related content. The amount of investment it would take for the Tour to duplicate these networks — in gear, technicians and talent — is prohibitive, to say nothing of the challenge of breaking into existing cable companies. Obviously the Tour could scoop up a ton of money, but that is reliant on delivering a good product. Look at recent ad campaigns and the bland social media offerings that emanate from Ponte Vedra Beach — are these people going to suddenly be able to create compelling television? Seems unlikely, and deep down Jay Monahan must know that.

One thing I learned long ago is that all businesses look better from a distance, and this certainly applies here.  I'm pretty convinced that the Tour would be far better served to just keep cashing large checks, but I have no idea how Jay Monahan sees this issue.  But I could also see them take an equity stake in Golf Channel as part of the next contract, though certain books on journalistic ethics might need a quick rewrite.

You’re playing a par-3 in a charity outing, put one in the bunker, purchase a mulligan to benefit the charity and ace the next shot…does it count? -@JimmyNuge 

No, but nice par!

This is asked of Alan because he has filled column inches with whining about never having made an ace...   Still, the better question might have been whether it qualified for the Closest to the Pin.

I don't typically bore you with stories of my own play, as I feel that readers of these pages have already suffered enough.  But this query reminds me of a routine par I made at our third  hole last Saturday.  Having tugged a pitching wedge into the pond, I proceeded to hole out from the drop area...  It's actually quite aggravating, but that's the game we love.

Catch you tomorrow?