Monday, June 24, 2019

Weekend Wrap

It sure turned gorgeous around these parts over the weekend.... I hope you enjoyed it as much as your humble blogger.


Go Aussie! - I didn't watch much golf this weekend, but that which I did watch was of the distaff ilk:

Hannah Green needed a clutch sand save on the 72nd hole to win the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship for her first LPGA victory and major, and she delivered. 
Green made a gritty par on the 18th hole at Hazeltine National in Chaska, Minn., to hold off defending champ S.H. Park and take home the $577,500 winner’s check. Green
closed with an even-par 72 on Sunday to finish nine under overall. Park was second at eight under. 
Green, a 22-year-old Australian, led by one to begin the day, but a handful of women jumped into contention during Sunday’s final round. One of them was Mel Reid, who shot 66 earlier in the day to take the clubhouse lead at six under, but Green gave herself a two-shot lead with two to play when she rolled in a birdie putt on the 16th hole to get to nine under. 
Her lead was still two when she stood in the 18th fairway of Hazeltine’s difficult par-4 18th finishing hole, but as she waited for the group ahead to clear she heard the gallery roar when Park made birdie to shoot 68 and cut the lead to one. One swing later, from 182 yards into the wind, Green missed the green and was short-sided in the bunker. But needing to get up and down to win, Green blasted out to about eight feet and made her par to win.
Notice the size of that winner's check?  For this newly-minted major that has The PGA of America and KPMG as sponsors....

Green is one of the kids supported by Karrie Webb, who was following her group during yesterday's play.  She went walkabout in the middle of her round, making three bogeys in four holes at one stretch.  But she thereafter righted the ship, as the announcers are wont to say, and got it to the clubhouse...  This might be the more enduring image of the winner:


Good on ya, mate.  Are we allowed to call women "mates"?  I'm not sure of the etiquette here, and I wouldn't want my Aussie readers to think I'm laying on the hate.

Golf Digest has listings of the winnings of this event and the PGA Tour event in Hartford, the latter being +/- double the former.  It's not exactly apples and apples, as the lady's event is a shiny, new major, whereas the men's is a second tier affair buried the week after the U.S. Open, so the disparity is obvious larger than that 2:1 ratio...

Which segues nicely into a discussion of the prospects for this tour, and why they're not playing for more money.  Commish Mike Whan was out and about this week, and might want to pair a nice Camembert with this whine:
At this point in his tenure as LPGA commissioner, Mike Whan genuinely thought he’d
have more than 10 events on network television. He has five. Two of the LPGA majors – the ANA Inspiration and Evian Championship – are broadcast exclusively on Golf Channel. 
“Does it frustrate me? Virtually every minute of every day,” said Whan, who took over in 2010, at a media roundtable at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. “Is it anybody’s fault other than mine? It isn’t. I’ve got to solve that.” 
Nearly every year at his state-of-the-tour address at the season-ender in Naples, Fla., Whan delivers the same message about network TV. It’s a massive key to increased purses and endorsement dollars for players. It’s what keeps him up at night.
 The self-flagellation is fine, but is network exposure really the issue?
Five events on network television isn’t enough to introduce casual fans to the LPGA and then bring them back to Golf Channel on a regular basis. 
Look at the abysmal ratings from the U.S. Women’s Open in Charleston, the worst final round on record for the championship at 728,000 viewers. It’s the only women’s professional event on the Fox, and therefore tough for even LPGA fans to find. 
Contrast that to the two women’s events on NBC this year: Augusta National Women’s Amateur (two-hour window in the afternoon), 1.194 million and the Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions, 822,000. 
For the women to gain traction on American network television, they’ve got to be on network more often.
This cause-and-effect thing can be tricky, for sure, but I'm thinking they have it bass ackwards....  Perhaps, and I'm just spit ballin' here, they need to demonstrate demand for the product to earn their network exposure?  Crazy talk for sure...

Mike goes on in this vein, and it's just not a great look:
Whan points to current No. 1 Jin Young Ko as a prime example. 
“If you gave me 39 weekends a year, I promise you I could make you love Jin Young Ko,” said Whan. “You’re going to get to know her story and swing. You see her five times a year, she’s just a name I can’t pronounce. That’s a shame. If you give me 39 weeks there’s a lot of guys on the PGA Tour I wouldn’t care about.… When they become people you know, you want to watch them.”
A couple of hyper-obvious rebuttals...  First, Mike has five weeks in which he's drawing below the audience that might tune in for cycling or curling, but he's talking about 39 weeks....  Hubris is the word that pops into my mind, though you might have gone with delusional as well...

Secondly, if you need 39 weeks, perhaps Jin Young isn't quite as captivating as she seems to you.  But it's the "If you gave me" that really rankles this reader, as nothing is given....  It has to be earned, and Mike seems to not understand that.

But here's where it gets interesting, at least to this observer.  The LPGA has just renewed their TV contract with Golf Channel, and their employing quite the unique strategy:
The LPGA’s 10-year contract with Golf Channel comes to an end this year, and Whan says the tour is in the final stages of completing a two-year extension with Golf Channel that would line up the LPGA’s contract with when the PGA Tour’s contract ends as well. 
This is significant because the PGA Tour is acting as an agent for the LPGA when it comes to negotiating the tour’s television contract this go-round. While it’s fair to wonder how much the PGA Tour is going to look out for the best interests of the LPGA compared to its other properties, it’s important to have a seat at the table with the game’s biggest force. 
(The opposite occurred when the LPGA was completely in the dark about Augusta National staging a women’s event the same week as one of its majors.)
Yowser!  This is like 3D chess, given the PGA Tour''s contract status.  They're not a secondary consideration, not a tertiary either, but a quandary, after the round bellies and Web.com KornFerry Tour.  Further complicating matters is the Tour's well-known desire to control their own network, which I'd have thought might offer the LPGA an opportunity as a hedge to Golf Channel.

As always, I think it more likely that the PGA will extract an ownership stake in Golf Channel instead, but that leaves the LPGA off the podium as well....  And it's not as though the golf audience is all that large to begin with.

Reavie Redux - I caught a very few minutes of Saturday's broadcast, at a point when unknown Zach Sucher had a five-shot lead.  I was wondering what all must have happened when that round ended with Chez six shots clear of the chase pack.

One think that happened was that Reavie lit it up to the tune of a 63, and held on yesterday for his first win since the Year of the Flood:
Why it matters: It’s the second PGA Tour victory of Reavie’s career, and first in over a decade. The 37-year-old’s first Tour victory came at the RBC Canadian Open in 2008. It’s been a good run for Reavie, who also tied for 3rd at the U.S. Open last week.

You mean why it matters to the Reavie family? 

That unknown might have had some issues on Saturday, but came back for a final-round 67 and a life-changing T2:
Zack Sucher was well aware that FedEx Cup points earn valuable PGA Tour status, but on Sunday night, after his final-round 67, he was focused on simpler math. 
“I’m not sure what all this does for points-wise, for next year; I don’t even know how that works,” he said. “I know that like two months ago we had credit card debt, so I know we don’t have that anymore.” 
Sucher tied for 2nd at the Travelers Championship on Sunday in Cromwell, Conn., in what was a life-changing victory. 
The 32-year-old held the 36-hole lead and was up by as many as five on Saturday, only to shoot 40 on the back nine and give it away. He entered Sunday six behind eventual-winner Chez Reavie, and while he never sniffed the lead he did exact some revenge on the back side: he shot a five-under 30, which included a chip in for par on 18.
Good on you, young man, now just don't get cocky.

Chez ain't exactly a bomber, prompting this from the Tour Confidential panel:
1. Chez Reavie picked up his second PGA Tour title Sunday, cruising to a four-shot win at the Travelers. Reavie averages “only” 286 yards off the tee, which puts him outside the top 150 on Tour in that category. Do short hitters have enough chances to win on Tour?
Luke Kerr-Dineen: Power has always been an important part of golf. People used to talk about Bobby Jones’ booming drives, and Slammin’ Sammy Snead. The modern era is no different in that regard, but unlike those days, the difference nowadays is that power all too often goes unchecked. Short, straight drivers are punished disproportionately more than longer, more wayward drivers. That serves to strip the game of its diversity by creating a prototype of how players must play, swing, and be. The more golf can figure out ways to level the playing field for equally good — but different — types of players, the game will be better off for it. 
Josh Sens: As Luke says, bombers have always had an advantage. But look at the Tour’s list of winners this year (Kisner, Kuchar more than once, Justin Rose, Francesco Molinari). There’s been plenty of opportunity for the non-bombers to win. Sure. The game can take some steps to level the playing field by choosing certain venues and setting them up in certain ways. But the Tour remains enough of a meritocracy for me — the golfer who golfs his ball the best still has plenty of chance to win, no matter how far he hits it. No need to start legislating beyond that out of some exaggerated sense of “fairness.” Should the NBA start lowering the hoop to make it easier for everyone to dunk?
JR isn't exactly a bunter....  Though this from Mikey Bams seems to veer a bit off subject:
Michael Bamberger: The shorter the course, the more chance there is for more players. Twenty-plus years ago, Nick Price said the best way to Tiger-proof the courses was to make them shorter. He had it correct and nothing has changed. The game is better in every possible way (for the pros) at 7,152, but fellas and chicks dig the long ball, so we all know how that goes. There will be fewer chances for shorter hitters in the future, but there will always be an Open championship. God Save the Queen. Where have you gone, Larry Mize? By the way, his swing was beautiful, back in the last days of the Rhythm Method.
There is much to bemoan about the modern game, but Larry's demize is way down that list....

Last week I expressed my lack of understanding as to why Brooks Koepka would make the grueling trip to Cownwall, and here's a guy in agreement with that:
“I'm just pretty – I don't think I'm even over the PGA,” he said. “And then to exert all your energy there last week, just fried. I mean, I've caught myself yawning on the golf course. I don't think I've ever yawned on a golf course before.” 
In fairness, Koepka has yawned before – in a way that was weirdly perfect – but it’s clear that last week’s run at a third consecutive U.S. Open title took a lot of him. 
Asked why he made the cross-country trip here after Pebble, Koepka said he wanted to honor his commitment and that he couldn’t have known in advance he would be this drained. Considering the reason, he’s happy to feel fatigued. 
“When you're planning your schedule, you're not thinking you're going to compete in all three majors and still be fried from it,” he said. “It's fine. I don't mind it.”
He's a good buddy of DJ, so we can safely assume he's not, you know, the sharpest knife in the drawer.  But the full schedule was available, and he didn't think that this third-tier event was missable?

Geoff had this caution flag for the lads as well:
It’ll be interesting to see what the combination of The Open followed by a WGC, a week off and then the playoffs yields in the way of energetic play from the game’s stars. In the hottest month of the year.
Geoff, it's not merely a WGC.... it's a WGC in Memphis in August!  If you don't need the money or OWGR points, why would you do that to yourself?

You'll Need A Bigger Blog -  Alternate Take:  Only 13?
Two clicks to get to his original thirteen, and both lists cover the usual suspects, such as this:
2. Iron covers 
Google “Golf Iron Covers” and 126,000 results pop up. C'mon guys. Forget the lunacy of trying to coddle instruments that regularly plow into the turf and strike a golf ball at full force (although we all have a difficult time doing that sometimes). But good god, man, think of the people playing behind you. It’s bad enough you take forever to put the driver headcover back on because you wrestle with it like you’re auditioning for the WWE. But when you start searching for your plastic or neoprene iron headcover after every shot, you’re just asking for one of those nasty on-course altercations over slow play. And we can't have your back on this one.

I have a friend who shall remain nameless who uses them... At an event a few years ago he noticed one missing, and insisted that we drive back into the group behind us to retrieve it....  Not a high point of my life in golf.

This one is curious though:
9. A major tournament risking running out of daylight 
If a regular PGA Tour event finishes on Monday, so be it. A major championship is a
different animal. Golf fans are far more invested in the majors, spend much more time watching or reading about them and as such, deserve a Sunday finish. Still, there are times the folks running these tournaments play Russian Roulette with the clock (2014 PGA at Valhalla, anyone?) by refusing to move up the start time when it is almost certain weather will be a factor. At this year’s Masters, Augusta National endeared itself to all by moving the tee times up and finishing without incident. Not only didn’t the world come to an end, it was one of the most talked-about events of the year. When it comes to the majors, we’ll watch whenever you have it on—except Monday morning.
OK, but weather does happen unexpectedly, so it's not exactly clear what's being suggested.

But that photo is Rory from Valhalla, in which he rushed to hit his tee shot on No. 18, and you can see how perilously close he came to finding the hazard penalty area.   Wasn't the far stupider act his rush to finish, in which he was apparently unwilling to come back Monday morning to finish off a major?

A Tease - The good news is that I figured out how to embed this tweet....  The bad?  It embedded without the video, which was sort of the whole point.... So, click here:
The subject is Calamity Corner, a brutally difficult Par 3 that will play as the 16th hole in the Open Championship.

Have I mentioned how over the moon I am at The Open coming back to Portrush?  It's such a great links, and a great get for Northern Ireland as well.

Here's a description of this hole from the club's website:
Calamity Corner, the 236 yard par 3 16th Hole is a must play for any follower of the game. Between the tee and the green is a yawning chasm, which must be cleared to stand any chance of making your three. It is hard to describe the feeling as you stand on this tee, looking out across the Valley links below, knowing it will take a fantastic shot to hit the small target across the void.
I have a great picture of playing from said yawning chasm, thought its location eludes me right now.  

This is a great hole on a great golf course, and we'll have much more to say as we approach the event.  We'll also acquaint you with Bobby Locke's Hollow, the bailout short-left into which its namesake played all four rounds of that 1951 Open.

See you tomorrow?


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