Weekend Wrap - Pebble Beach Edition

Sorry to have left you to fend for yourself during Open week, though I'm sure you understood.  I was able to catch the weekend golf, so let's pick up where we left off.

The Winner - One out of eight leaves him far below the Mendoza Line, but represents an improvement over oh for seven:

The U.S. Open favors ballplayers. Jack Nicklaus (four wins) was a ballplayer. Hale Irwin (three wins) was a ballplayer. Brooks Koepka (two) is ballplayer. Gary Woodland of

Topeka, Kansas, our new national champion in men’s golf, with a Wilson baseball hat on his large head and athletic tape on two of his beefy fingers, is a ballplayer’s ballplayer. Viewed that way, his win here, his salmon windbreaker offering about the only color on a gray and dank Sunday, is nothing like a surprise. He’s out of the mold. The surprise is that he did what very few ever do: playing for the first time in the final twosome on the final day of a major, he never showed a hint of flinch. His play was as solid as his physique. Talk about rock-steady. Yes, he made two bogeys. In response to these hiccups he looked, shall we say, nonplussed. What-me-worry is a beautiful thing.

Golf’s cognoscenti have known for a decade that Gary Woodland had all the tools. That’s why Mark Steinberg, agent to the stars signed him, one basketball player recruiting another. But tools alone are not enough. That was the lesson of this Open win.

Shack takes the low road, trotting out the J-word:

Other than the June gloom, it was a sensational week for a journeyman player who has hung around and persisted, the USGA and Brooks Koepka despite a second place finish.

Seems an awkward fit, given the obvious talent, but the career to date was most noticeable for the absence of wins.  

The signature moment, one we'll see in perpetuity, was that chip from the 17th green to, well, the 17th green:

The shot that won Gary Woodland the U.S. Open might get you suspended at your club

Might?  

Pretty odd watching him mark and clean his ball, then place it for the chip....

"I was just trying to get it down there, trying to get it past the hole so I could be putting back uphill, and it came off perfectly," Woodland said. "I clipped it nicely." 

Woodland pointed out it's a shot he was specifically working on earlier in the week with coach Pete Cowen, giving him conviciton to pull it off. 

"That's what I was thinking about when I was standing over it," Woodland said. "And it came out perfectly."

Kudos to Zinger for noting that the well-struck shot would barely leave a mark on the green, barely visible to the naked eye.  

The Tour Confidential panel led with this about the victor:

Gary Woodland refused to let major-hoarder Brooks Koepka chase him down Sunday at Pebble Beach, carding a two-under 69 to win the U.S. Open by three.

What did you learn about Woodland and his game that you didn’t know a week ago?

Sean Zak: We learned that he steps on the gas now. It’s been shared on this site numerous times, but when holding the 36-hole lead at Bellerive, Woodland played a layup iron off the first tee Saturday, comfortably sitting in neutral. Brooks Koepka, from the same group, smashed driver to 60 yards from the pin, flipped a wedge and made birdie, eliminating Woodland’s lead. Today, Woodland played aggressively when the result was in question — think about that macho 3-wood into 14, or any of his vicious hacks from the rough. It kept him one step ahead of Koepka all day long.

Jeff Ritter: I certainly wasn’t sure if Woodland was ready to close a major after sleeping on the 54-hole lead. That ain’t easy! I think a more common path for a first-time major-winner is to slip in through the back door on Sunday, but Woodland protected his lead even as Koepka came charging at him. Woodland managed his game beautifully, but he also hit some tough, clutch shots — none bigger than that pitch off the putting surface on 17 to save a key par.

The real key was getting off to that strong start on the easier stretch of holes.  The whole field was struggling form the eighth hole in, favoring the guy that had banked a lead.

To me, this has to be the key:

Josh Sens: Woodland himself talked about his refined new short game. We didn’t know he had that new element in his arsenal. As well as he struck it this week, it was his play around the greens that ultimately made the difference.

I would make the case that those two sick par saves on Saturday were of greater importance than the chip on Sunday at No. 17, but he was great around and on the greens all week.

As for these two guys...

Alan Shipnuck: So much heart. Brooks has created a Tiger-like aura but even with his monster charge at the start of the round Woodland refused to crack. He’s always had all the tools but now he has belief and know-how (and a better short-game), so look out. 

Michael Bamberger: So much heart, II. On the course, in the press conference, at the Phoenix Open. Just a man and a golfer, not a brand and a showman. Loved what he did and how he did it and how he explained it.

Guys, it's just a muscle.... I get that heart might matter, but I'm still thinking it's that short game that made the difference.

And while we're retailing in cliches, Alan falls into the trap of predicting that, having finally broken through, the floodgates will open.  How's that working out for DJ and Sergio?

The Runner-Up -  Let me see, in the 2019 majors, this guy has gone 2-1-2....  Forget Tiger, that's straight from Jack's playbook, he of the nineteen second place finishes in majors.  Brain Wacker's profile includes this obvious bulletin board material:

Brooks Koepka is human after all. We think. 

“He’s like a cockroach,” Xander Schauffele said. “He just won’t go away.” 

Koepka did not win on Sunday at Pebble Beach to join Willie Anderson as the only other player ever to claim three straight U.S. Open titles. 

So what? He doesn’t know much about Anderson, or Google, anyway. And he doesn’t even like golf, remember? 

Koepka, who finished second three strokes behind winner Gary Woodland, is the best player in the world and that much he does know. He just wasn’t the best for four days along the Monterey Peninsula, though he was close.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall the next time Brooksie and Xander meet.  Really, Brooks, I meant cockroach in the good way....

Eamon Lynch has a fun profile of the man as well, in which he reminds us that Brooks is quite the throwback:

Brooks Koepka is a thoroughly modern golfer in how he plays the game, a strapping athlete with the unbridled power to pulverize any golf course. It’s in how he plays the

other game — the one beyond the ropes, where brands are multiplatformed and images curated —that he remains a stubborn throwback to when sporting greats just ran the tables and not their mouths. 

It’s understandable that fans want their sport’s finest exponent to have a larger-than-life flair, to transcend the confines of their playing field like a Tom Brady, a Roger Federer, a LeBron James. But excellence in the arena does not presume entertainment out of it. Some greats just want to collect trophies and head home to their own couch, not to Jimmy Kimmel’s.

And don't be fooled by my snark, as I love the subtle dig as much as the next guy.  For instance, this is a classic of the genre:

At Pebble Beach, Koepka was asked about his evening routine. He replied that he goes home and watches TV. “We’ll flip on the Golf Channel for a little bit and see what they’re talking about at the end of the day, what Frank and David and Rich are talking about,” he said. Alert readers will have noticed that the Live From show Koepka is referencing features a four-man panel.

Touche!  Better played than his second on No. eight for sure....

Shack at Golfweek has a winners and losers column that we'll get to in a bit, though Brooks as a loser seems off base:

Brooks Koepka 

Despite rounds of 69-69-68-68, lost the chance to win three U.S. Open’s in a row, which what might have been his greatest feat yet in his historic run. Please Brooks, don’t get mad you made the losers list. But if you do, cite golfweek.com.

He takes names, Geoff, so good luck with that last bit.

Still, the sense is that Brooks didn't do much of anything special this week, and still finished second.  Like The Masters in that regard, and we can expect continued sightings on major leaderboards in the near future.

The Also Rans - The TC gang uses a Miller Light commercial to cover this portion of our programming:

Besides Brooks Koepka, the two most accomplished players lurking after 54 holes were Justin Rose and Rory McIlroy. Rose, who started the day one off the lead and, in the final group, shot three over. McIlroy, who started five back, shot one over. Whose day was more disappointing?

As in, I feel strongly both ways....  Might even make it troika and include Rickie with that patented fade after teasing us with that Thursday 65.

Zak: Rory, because Rose didn’t really have his A-game all week. He was scrapping it around and draining putts. Rory made enough birdies in his first 13 holes that would have tied him with Woodland for the lead late on the back nine. It’s a tough standard to hold anyone to (bogey-free play), but Rory quickly played himself out of having a shot. That made it all slightly less fun. 

Ritter: Rose was more disappointing because he still had a shot to win with about seven holes left, but he couldn’t come up with a single shot when he needed it. Three bogeys and no birdies on the back nine from a previous U.S. Open champ and world No. 1? Surprising. 

Marksbury: I never really felt like Rory had a fighting chance on Sunday, so his round was kind of in my periphery from the beginning. I was totally shocked by the way Rose crumbled, though. After that opening birdie I really thought he would be the man to beat, but 74 is never going to get it done on a major Sunday.

On a course where you're hitting 8-9 wedges into greens, I never thought Rory had a chance all week.  This guy draws a useful distinction:

Sens: Expectations were higher for Rory coming into the week. But if we’re talking about Sunday only, Rose’s showing was the bigger disappointment. As scruffy as he game was tee to green, he still had the tournament within his grasp well into the final round. His oil-leak down the stretch wasn’t a complete shock to watch, given that he was mostly holding his day together with gossamer and a putter, but it had to be seriously deflating for him.

Rose hit some shockingly bad shots yesterday, the shock deriving from his reputation as one of the purest ball-strikers out there.

Shipnuck: Rose ran out of miracles — he couldn’t keep one-putting forever. How about Rory blowing himself out of it with a ghastly double-bogey on the second hole? He made another double on 16. The guy’s game can be so maddening. 

Bamberger: Well, Rose, because he’s in the last group, he’s seeing what the leader is doing and his job is to play better than him. But he was never going to beat Woodland.

Alan, it's only maddening if you ignore the last five years.  Otherwise, it's pretty much what we should expect... 

The Never Rans - Shall we talk for a moment about a couple of guys that never made themselves relevant this week?  I'm guessing you know of whom I speak....

Tiger Woods closed with a hot back nine to shoot two under for the week and tie for 24th, but he also made some concerning remarks about his past injuries and how achy he feels when he plays in the cold. What did you make of Woods’ campaign at Pebble, and what, if anything, might it mean for his chances at Portrush? 

Zak: Tiger’s play was largely uninspiring after Thursday. He made a bunch of pars Friday afternoon where he could have re-entered the conversation via just a couple

birdies. He was never in danger of missing the cut, which is good, but if the temperatures at Portrush are anything like Pebble (I think we can expect this), that creaky back of his will not make things easy. He’s just a good golfer in his forties who kinda needs it all to click if he’s going to contend against the greatest fields. 

Ritter: It’s too early to write Tiger off at Portrush just because it’ll be sweater weather, but I think Sean’s right about how things need to line up perfectly for him to contend there. Tiger has proven he can still win big events, but his days of winning anything with his B- or C-game are long gone.

We saw much that we've seen from him since the start of this comeback, most notably the difficulty finishing off rounds.  I didn't have Tiger winning a major this year, and one of the primary reasons was knowing that these three venues were prone to cooler weather and/or play stoppages.  I'm not saying that The Masters was a fluke, but it does seem that planets might need to be perfectly aligned for him to contend.

The amusing thing is that weather might be the least of it at Portrush.  Tiger is such a creature of habit, that I'm always skeptical of him at new venues....  Especially since he doesn't play many practice holes before the events these days.

I'm becoming increasingly amused by how Mikey Bams is merely echoing Shipnuck's comments in this weeks panel confab:

Shipnuck: Can we take a moment to celebrate Tiger’s grit? He looked miserable out there yet roared home with six birdies to salvage his week. That’s a lesson for us all. 

Bamberger: The king of grit. The best grinder ever, or since Hogan. But that wasn’t a hot back nine. That was just Tiger playing as he plays.

There was something going on there, as Tiger could barely swing the club early in his round, and made a hash of the easier stretch of the course.  He did grind and finish strong, though the value of that is arguable.

If you didn't like his preparation for Bethpage, it seems you might want to avoid him for your Portrush fantasy roster as well:

Following his final round at the 2019 U.S. Open, Woods sounded like a golfer who won't tee it up in competition before next month's Open Championship. Twice, Tiger was asked about his upcoming schedule and twice he gave hints that he won't tee it up for real until Royal Portrush July 18-21.

First, there was a When will we see you again? question. 

"Depends, if you've got a camera phone," Woods responded. "So—no, I think I'm going to take a little bit of time off and enjoy some family time." 

OK. . . And then a more direct Will you play again before Portrush? 

"I'll play at home, yeah," Woods said slyly. 

Of course, this isn't much of a surprise considering Woods has never played any of the four PGA Tour events before the year's fourth an final major. Next week is the Travelers Championship followed by two new events on the tour schedule, the Rocket Mortgage Classic and the 3M Open, and finally, the John Deere Classic.

How about the Irish Open at Lahinch two weeks before the Open Championship?   A great course and he'd make some new friends....  yeah, right!  I've been reliably informed that the chase for eighteen is back on, though Tiger doesn't seem to be all that caught up in it, does he?

Anyone see that other guy this week.... yanno, the one trying to complete the career grand salami?

Phil Mickelson, who turned 49 on Sunday, finished four over and tied for 52nd at Pebble, where he had won earlier this year and at a course many expected him to thrive on. The Open heads to Winged Foot next year, where Mickelson infamously lost the 2006 Open. How much cold water does this week throw on his hopes of attaining the elusive career grand slam? 

Zak: For Mickelson to win a U.S. Open at this stage in his career, it will be a fluke. That sounds mean, but it’s true. The man would have to play his best golf since Muirfield in ‘13, all the way through the bag, to beat a field of 156 younger, hungry studs. Oh, and while you guys fantasize about a Phil Grand Slam, I’m going to go re-listen to these two sweet podcast episodes from A Pod Unlike Any Other.

Stick a fork in him....

Ritter: Phil has had a fantastic career, and he’ll continue to be one of the most popular players on Tour for as long as he’s out there. His burgeoning social-media presence is a blast. I can see him potentially winning a Masters and maybe even another British. I enjoy watching him. But he’s not winning a U.S. Open at 49, or 50-anything. It pains me to say it, but his chase for a career slam is over. The ship has sailed. 

Marksbury: You can never say never, right? But my oh my, Winged Foot seems like a much more formidable ask than Pebble this week. I hate to be the naysayer, but in this case … it’s over.

This one at least amuses:

Sens: Never say never. But at this point, it seems like his best chance at the career grand slam would be to pull a Monty and start counting senior major titles as majors. The 2021 U.S. Senior Open is in Omaha. Phil will be eligible.

Of course the focus is on Winged Foot given that 2006 Peak Phil moment, but I'm more amused by the 2012 venue, Torrey Pines. A track so tough that Phil sees no need to visit in the softer January conditions...

My sense is that Phil has capitulated, and his pre-Open comments can be seen as him begging the USGA for softer conditions on which he might have been competitive.

 

The  Dog That Didn't Bark - So, what did we think of that set-up?  

But the biggest story at the 2019 U.S. Open was what didn’t happen. 

The USGA, the governing body that runs this shindig, has been the prominent, if not the singular storyline in three of the past four U.S. Opens—from toasted greens to self-inflicted rules snafus. Last year’s gaffe at Shinnecock was particularly troubling, as a mistake the organization made in 2004 at the Long Island links, spent years profusely apologizing for and promising wouldn't happen again … happened again. 

Preparing a course for the world’s best is far from an enviable task and one easy to criticize, and in themselves, those incidents could be chalked as happenstance or aberration. In the aggregate, not so much. Messing up the 2019 national championship, at the most iconic American golf venue outside Augusta National? No walking back around that corner.

Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations....LKD informs us that the USGA's hand was forced by some atypical heat in the days prior to the opening round:

I’m not going to lie: I like my U.S. Opens tough. High heat, long rough, hard greens, complaining. I love it all. At the 2019 U.S. Open, I look at the leaderboard — at all that red — and I can’t help but feel a little disappointed, irrational though it may be.

But, as you can see, the weather spiked on the Sunday before to 2019 U.S. Open. It was

73 and 89 degrees, then jumped to a high of 95 and 90 degrees on the Monday and Tuesday of Open week.

And that was a problem. 

Renowned putting coach Phil Kenyon, who was out studying the course the weekend before the tournament, said tweeted that the course had gotten “very, very” firm during the weekend ahead of U.S. Open week.

It sounds like the course was, basically, in the shape the USGA wanted it — firm and fiery. But because the site got unseasonably warmer in the forthcoming days, they were presented with a problem they didn’t anticipate: The course was baking too much, too soon. Tournament officials had to act. 

To combat the heat, tournament officials reportedly dumped 400,000 gallons of water on the course — twice the normal amount — to keep the course from becoming unplayable. Considering all the criticism it got in the buildup to the event, it had no other choice, and it was undoubtedly the right call.

The absence of wind was the other oddity.... Not only would it have made those testy shots testier, but it would have helped dry the place out as well.   

But the other obvious factor was that the USGA wasn't going to take any chances here, after their string of incidents.  Just like the Massacre at Winged Foot was inevitable after Johnny torched Oakmont for his 63, this was always going to be a "safety first" week for the USGA.   

The TC panel had a couple of queries on the set-up as well, but I'll allow you to find those on your own.

I think we can call this a good, but not great, week for golf and the USGA.  We can now hopefully dispense with the bromide about Pebble, like Royal Birkdale, only crowning kings....  they were already stretching that with Kite and McDowell, but this is the final nail in that coffin.  Woodland seems a worthy, if uninspiring, champion.

I remain significantly less over the moon about this venue than most, as to me it promotes uninspiring play for most of the second nine.  The finishing hole is an example of of that has actually benefited from the distance explosion, although Jack might have been the last winner to play it under any pressure.  Mostly, though, I find that stretch from No. 11 through No. 16 to be quite boring....  I've always like fourteen and twelve is difficult at the least, but mostly it's about watching the best players in the world playing straight par-4's using irons off the tee....  Oh, the drama.

I'll leave you here, and be back with more tomorrow.