Your Friday Frisson

Lots to cover, so no time to waste on pleasantries....

Scratch Ain't S**t - Wisdom from PGA Tour ranges for sure, but we'll get to that in a sec.  First, a little know leader:

Playing on a course softened by about 2 inches of rain the previous day, Denny McCarthy shot an 8-under-par 63 to take the early lead at the AT&T Byron Nelson in Thursday’s opening round. 

Seeking his first PGA Tour win, McCarthy made six birdies on the back nine, capped off with a birdie on the par-3 17th when he hit his tee shot to within 16 feet of the hole. It was his 10th birdie of the day after he recovered from a double bogey on the fourth hole. The 63 was McCarthy’s lowest round in 41 Tour individual starts. 

The 26-year-old, who played golf at the University of Virginia, has finished in the top 10 three times since earning his PGA Tour card before the 2018 season. His double bogey on the fourth helped him calm down a bit, McCarthy said. He finished his round before the wind picked up in the afternoon. 

“Timid swing off the tree and from there on out I told myself I was just going to play really carefree and really aggressive,” he said of the only blemish on his card.

Eight under with a double?  These guys are good....  

Wasn't he one of the guys penalized for his caddie standing behind him earlier in the year?  Too lazy to Google it, but a bell is ringing.

But there's a name we're all looking for among the scores, and see how hard this headline writer is working:

Tony Romo makes highlight-reel eagle, shoots personal-best PGA Tour score on Day 1 of AT&T Byron Nelson

Wow, he must be among the leaders, right?  

Tony Romo started strong before mistakes cost him down the stretch. If that sounds like

a familiar refrain for the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback on the football field, it still added up to a more-than-respectable performance on the golf course on Thursday. 

Romo recorded an opening five-over-par 76 at the AT&T Byron Nelson, but he appeared on his way to shooting something much lower before several late stumbles at Trinity Forest. The NFL on CBS analyst playing as an amateur on a sponsor's exemption birdied the first hole, then really got the Dallas crowd going when he chipped in for eagle on the par-5 seventh to move to two under.

Tiresome....  Everything that could went right for him, and he rode it to a strong T148.  He's a good stick among civilians, but has no business being out there.  And it's a further reminder that he's the only person on the planet that gets paid to endorse golf shoes, yet retains his amateur status.

A Man of the People - The major golf bodies, what Shack amusingly refers to as The Five Families, have not exactly covered themselves in glory the last few years....  It's mostly been a race to the bottom.

PGA of America frontman Seth Waugh sits for one of Guy Yocum's My Shot one-pagers, and I'd think that the membership should be feeling a bit queasy by now.  First, Seth insists that you know exactly which golf clubs he belongs to:

But two or three times a year, I'll tee it up individually, in tournaments—the club championship at Seminole, the singles events at National or, in the past, the Travis at

Garden City. I like to feel on occasion that uncomfortable sensation that comes when you have to post a number, no Equitable Stroke Control, no excuses and nowhere to hide. It's a little scary, given my day job and a Handicap Index of 8.6, and there's always the possibility I could go completely off the rails toward Humiliation Station. But I like it. My friend Vinny Giles said it best: “Golf's a lot different when you've got a pencil in your hand.” 

To be fair, Seminole, The National and Garden City are merely the tip of the iceberg, but any more in one short paragraph would be unseemly.   

He does at least pay lip service to those 29,000 souls, though his opinion of their lives might be distorted by the nature of those clubs he hangs at:

The PGA professional is the most revered person in the game. He or she is admired and respected, much the way doctors, teachers and football coaches are in our communities. They come into contact with a lot of charities, civic leaders and business people. At its core, it's a noble profession, because they're always serving. They can have a huge influence, they're trusted and they care. They're sort of ministers with a different pulpit. I took this job for the opportunity to make 29,000 members' lives better, and because of how that can impact the lives of the millions of people that they touch every day. I'd like to utilize these traits more to their benefit.

I'm perfectly willing to concede that PGA professionals can have a real world impact on folks, especially youngsters, but this grandiosity seems ill-considered.  Yes, it's a fine and noble profession, but they don't exactly save lives.  

Seth I'd like to see your organization doing more for those 29,000 members, most of whom do not toil at Seminole or Garden City, but WTF?

It's just an idea, but say your PGA member drove a Cadillac. Could he or she, as a local thought leader, drive sales for the nearby dealer through club members and benefit from that in some way? Can we do this on a national scale? Everyone wins.

Because when you think of highly-esteemed professionals, car salesmen jump to the very top of the list....

But bear with me, because the mushrooms are just kicking in:

A lot of ideas for improving the game are going to come from outside of golf. Arjun Chowdri, who we just named as the PGA of America's first Chief Innovation Officer, told us recently about a discovery prompted by the problem of waste in grocery stores. The amount and cost of produce going bad before it moves off the shelves is staggering. Arjun noted that scientists have developed a safe polymer that, when sprayed on fruit and vegetables, makes them last several days longer.

Seth, care to share with your members the salary of your Chief Innovation Officer?   

Arjun is wondering if there might be a use for that polymer on golf courses.

Could it mean less water usage, which we know is an increasingly critical issue in golf? Can it keep the azaleas in bloom at the Masters a week longer?

Weer I a more cynical man, I'd be tempted to ask how this is remotely in the mandate of Seth's organization?

Maybe, maybe not.

Gee, thanks for narrowing it down for us..... But it's all in the service of a higher calling:

But we're going to be encouraging and investing in that type of alternative thinking. One benefit of moving our headquarters to Frisco, Texas—we'll have golf courses and other state-of-the-art facilities—is to create a laboratory for the game in all forms. It will be the canvas to incubate ideas, and to test and develop concepts in real-world settings.

Yes, it'll be a real world setting, if your real world consists of Seminole, The National and Garden City.... Wouldn't you love to be one of Seth's dues-paying members?

Only Seven? - He's baring all, except for the secret sauce:

Bryson DeChambeau: These are the 7 things I think about before every shot

Here's the start of his list:

1. Air Density

“It’s number one because that’s how far the ball is going to fly at that point in time, at

your local position. It’s what matters most because it’s literally how the ball is flying through the air. You can have two winds that are the same, but they’ll fly through that wind differently because of air density. So air density relates to literally every factor.” 

2. Elevation Change

“Easy, how much the altitude affects the flight of the golf ball. Think about it: If I go out and play a tournament one week at 1,000 feet of elevation, and then the next week go play in 2,000 feet of elevation. If I hit a 150 shot from last week, and the next week it flies 156 — that’s not a correct adjustment by the way — it something you have to take into account.” 

3. Wind Vector

“Vector is the magnitude and direction. It’s a physics term to say how hard it’s blowing and in which direction.”

 But he leaves us wanting more:

6. Something Secret

“I’m not going over that one. Intuitively the top players in the world know it, but they don’t understand why it happens. I do.”

I've been reliably assured that the secret is in the dirt.  Bryson, it gets much easier..... at this point, I just take the raw yardage, figure what I used to hit, and add three clubs....  Never fails, except when it does.

How Could It Be? -  Mike Bamberger is pining for his heroes, as am I:

Golf isn’t the same without Dan Jenkins, Arnold Palmer and Dave Anderson

Lots of pleasures to be found, I'll just excerpt a random couple of graphs:

Rickie Fowler, bedecked in umbrellas at Bay Hill, can’t be expected to know why he was so drawn to Arnold. Maybe we can help: Arnold was cool. Dave Anderson, Dan Jenkins, Dow Finsterwald, the same, each in his own way. You can put Frank Chirkinian —

legendary CBS producer and the father of the Masters on TV — on that same list. His first major live golf show was Finsterwald’s PGA win, at Llanerch Country Club, in suburban Philadelphia, where Chirkinian was born (’26) and raised. Right time, right place was more of a thing then. Most everything is fairer now, and success requires more actual ability, but being famous has never been more work. 

Chirkinian’s friend Greg Norman will tell you: Nobody could pull off the fuschia cardigan like Frank (aka “The Ayatollah”) could. The Bay Hill winner gets a red one. (F. Molinari, the Italian Detective, in this year’s heat.) Only Arnold could bring je ne sais quoi to pushing up sweater sleeves. Ike’s cardigans were the color of overcooked oatmeal. Arnold’s color palette was pure Roy G. Biv, as is Rickie’s, except he seems to try so hard.

Three absolute giants, and we shan't see their kind again.

The Light of Day -  We've covered this ground previously, but the more scrutiny is applied to Sam Snead's win total, the more it withers:

What can't be argued is that both Snead and Woods won PGA Tour titles at prodigious rates while displaying freakish longevity. Woods' 2019 Masters triumph came at 43 (and

with a fused back) while Snead's final win came when he was nearly 53. How amazing is reaching the 80-win milestone? Consider a player would have to average four wins per season for two decades. Then consider that for more than a decade (from 1981 to 1993) no golfer won more than four times in a single season on tour. And it should be noted Woods has never shown anything but reverence for Snead's mark of 82. 

But for this argument’s sake, it's also important to note that of the 82 wins that stood for Snead, a sizable portion would raise eyebrows in today’s game. There’s one, the 1937 Crosby, that was shortened to 18 holes because of weather. There are three 36-hole triumphs (today, the PGA Tour only recognizes events that went at least 54 holes as official events), including the 1946 World Championship of Golf, which only had four players in the field. There are five other Snead victories that came against fields of 16 or fewer players. And then there are the five team events that count toward Snead’s total.

There's no pleasure to be had in diminishing the man's career, but it's just a random total.  The author of this piece argues that by the standards of the day, Tiger would be at 95 wins....  This one just doesn't mean much, alas.

Behave Yourselves -  Josh Sens has dubbed himself as The Etiquetteist, first instructing us as to how to behave on the putting green:

1. Mind the Signs

OK, so this is a written rule. If it says no ‘chipping’, that means no chipping. No exceptions. No excuses. What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?

2. Don’t Be a Ball Hog

This is not the driving range. There’s no need to bring a bucket. One ball should be plenty, but we’ll give you some leeway: three balls, max.

But isn't the biggest etiquette issue on putting greens related to range balls versus real golf balls?  Bo advice on offer there for those that are constantly making off with my pellets.

You know what's next, the driving range:

6. Stay in Inside the Ropes

Those boundaries are there for a reason: the turf beyond needs time to recover. What it

doesn’t need is to take a pounding from someone who thinks he’s more important than everyone else. 

7. Don’t Pelt the Range-Picker

We get it. It’s tempting, taking aim at the driver in the mesh-enclosed range-picker. But what may seem to you like harmless target practice is disrespectful of the very people who are trying to serve you. If juvenile shooting is what you’re after, try downloading video game.

We'll just have to agree to disagree....  If you don't me pelting the picker, why'd you put him in a cage?

Bethpage Black, The Controversy - Ron Whitten, a man to be taken seriously on subjects architectural, makes the case that it's not a Tillie.  The story actually begins with Robert Moses, the most powerful man never elected to public office in New York State:

HARD TIMES FOR TILLIE 

As a master showman, Moses knew how to generate news. So he retained A.W. Tillinghast as a consultant to the project. Tillinghast was hired on Dec. 30, 1933, months 

Robert Moses.

after the Blue, Red and Black courses had been laid out. His contract paid him $50 a day for a maximum of 15 days. 

This was hardly the sort of fee Tillinghast normally would have accepted. But the genius who created Winged Foot and Quaker Ridge in New York, Baltusrol and Ridgewood in New Jersey and San Francisco Golf Club in California had fallen victim to bad investments and heavy drinking. Struggling to keep his home in Harrington Park, N.J., unable to find work designing new courses, Tillinghast had taken the job as editor of Golf Illustrated in early 1933. 

He visited the Bethpage State Park site in January 1934 and described the scene of 600 workers in his February issue. He wrote about the park again in April, saying that he was "honored by being selected as the consultant in the planning of these courses" and that the land reminded him of Pine Valley. He described the terrain of the fourth and fifth holes of what would become the Red Course. He made no mention of the Black Course. 

He talked about Bethpage again in the October issue of Golf Illustrated, this time describing only the caddie corps that Burbeck had established for the existing course. 

Work proceeded at Bethpage throughout 1934. Two holes were added to the old Lenox Hills course, now renamed the Green Course, so that all four courses would commence and finish at the new clubhouse. The Blue and Red courses were grassed that fall, but construction on the Black was delayed until the next spring. A new house for the park superintendent was constructed near what is now the 14th green of the Black Course. It's the house Joe Burbeck grew up in.

I actually made it through Robert Caro's definitive biography of Moses, which I recommend highly if the era is of interest.  

Interestingly, I've read of the iconic fourth hole being used to justify Tillie's involvement in thr routing, though here Whitten argues the opposite:

THE SMOKING GUNS 

In August 1937, Tillinghast wrote for the first time about Bethpage Black, in PGA Magazine. He credited Joseph Burbeck with the very concept of the Black Course. 

"Now it was Burbeck's idea to develop one of these layouts along lines which were to be 

Joseph Burbeck.

severe to a marked degree. It was his ambition to have something which might compare with Pine Valley as a great test, and although my continual travels over the country in the PGA work have prevented me from seeing play over Bethpage's Black since its opening, I am rather inclined to believe from reports from some of the best players that it is showing plenty teeth." 

The next few lines suggested he made at least one visit to the Black. He described the par-5 fourth in some detail: "In locating and designing the green, which can only be gained by a most precise approach from the right, I must confess that I was a trifle scared myself, when I looked back and regarded the hazardous route that must be taken by a stinging second shot to get into position to attack this green." 

Was he physically looking back down the fairway, or was he merely looking back in time, to the day when he'd reviewed the original blueprints? If we give Tillinghast the benefit of the doubt, conclude he actually walked the land on which the Black Course was built, and even located and designed the fourth green, the fact remains that the four Bethpage course routings were made before he came on board, and for most of the time when relief workers were hand-building the Black Course, Tillinghast was out touring America.

The claim cannot be definitively adjudicated, so it's probably best to just enjoy the mystery.

I've long note that the greens are most flattish, and Tillie had most certainly gone to his final reward before they were shaped.  A good thing for a public course that's brutally difficult from tee-to-green, but it might leave us cold for the best players in the world.

Have a great weekend, and we'll keep our fingers crossed that we can get our golf in.