In considering the democratic side of golf we are forced to remember that all the original links were common soil over which every man, woman or child had free access -- as free as the expanse of ice in the Dutch pictures where small boys are to be seen pottering about with putters tucked under their arms. It seems a pity that the boundaries of the popular links should ever be closed – even in the interests of gate money. People may be inconvenient in their numbers, but barriers are worse. The perfect course, will, I think, always be as free as the air.
H.N. WETHERED
Apparently our little golf course is quite the mess this morning, but kudos are do to the Pinkies for the early postponement. Win-win, baby....
Party Like It's 1951 - We almost had one at St. Andrews in 1970, but there are multiple looks back at that '51 Open, leading with Alistair Tait:
It’s hard to think of a more colorful British Open champion than Max Faulkner, the 1951 Champion Golfer of the Year at Royal Portrush. In an age of drab, Faulkner stood out from the crowd in more ways than one.
Faulkner has retained the title as the only player to hoist the Claret Jug at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland for 68 years. It’s hard to imagine this year’s winner having the Englishman’s joie de vivre.
Born in Bexhill-on-Sea in 1916, Faulkner served in the RAF in World War II. He decided to wear bright colors after spending time in a Liverpool hospital with a perforated eardrum.
“Every morning the nurses brought pretty flowers into the ward, and every night they took them out,” Faulkner was quoted to have said in his obituaries. “It was so gray without those flowers. I thought, if I ever get out of this bloody war I’m going to wear some colors.”
He remained true to his word, specializing in pink shoes, salmon socks, lilac trousers – anything to brighten things up.
Faulkner, who died in 2005 at age 88, got away with his outrageous attire because he never took himself or the game too seriously. “I always larked about,” Faulkner told this writer in a 1988 interview for Today’s Golfer. “I used to talk to the members as I was going around the course. I’d play trick shots for them. I used to tell them the shot I was going to play and then play it for them. Even in tournaments.”
I love that term, "larking about." I take it he was Doug Sanders a generation earlier....
And playing the role of Lee Trevino....
The final two rounds of the Open were played on a Saturday in those days.
Faulkner began the day with a six-shot lead. He had no intention of larking about, though. Not with the biggest prize in golf on the line. In fact, Faulkner ensured he’d have full focus over the final 36 holes.
“I asked Frank Stranahan if he would mind not talking to me during the last two rounds,” Faulkner said. “He chatted a lot, you see. I took him aside the night before and I said, ‘Look, I don’t mind playing with you, but would you mind not talking to me tomorrow?’“I walked onto the first tee the next morning and I said, ‘Good morning, Frank.’ And he never even answered me.”
Heh. But Stranahan did utter some words at a critical juncture, and you'll want to click through and read them.
John Fischer has this interesting profile of Faulkner, including his war service during which he played one round of golf in six years. But like his doppelganger Sanders, he was a magical ball-striker that struggled with the flat stick:
Faulkner had a major weakness: putting. His idol, Locke, seemed to make every putt, but Faulkner missed too many, and he continually changed putters, sometimes even making his own. His most unusual putter had a shaft made from a billiard cue and a head made from a piece of driftwood that Faulkner had found on the beach. He got good press about the odd putter, but it wasn’t that often in his bag.
Galleries loved Faulkner. He spoke with fans, and would even explain the type of shot that he was going to hit. His talkativeness seemed to relax him and put him in a good frame of mind. In one match with the Welsh Ryder Cupper Dai Rees, Faulkner walked on his hands from the green to the next tee with the explanation that he needed to get some blood to his brain.
He was a great raconteur, always ready with a story for any occasion. At one Ryder Cup dinner, Faulkner stood on the banquet table doing imitations of various players’ swings, much to the delight of his audience, including the usually stoic Ben Hogan, who was overcome with laughter.
Faulkner also dressed in wild colors and usually wore knickers or “plus fours,” with shirt and socks of matching colors and his custom-made shoes matching his knickers. In the period of austerity in Great Britain after World War II, many in the golfing establishment looked down on his manner of dressing.
Ironically, it was his putter that won him his Open, besting his hero by eight shots. But we've yet to talk about Bobby Locke's Hollow, the bailout on Calamity Corner, the safe way to play the iconic Par-3, which of course works best if one happens to putt like Bobby Locke.
Not yet a fan of Max Faulkner? I've got one last card to play, this bit from Mike Bamberger's seven best things in golf this week:
6. Mad Max IOn a happy note, with the Open going to Portrush next week, the name “Mad” Max Faulkner is in the air again as he won the only Open ever played there in 1951. His very name will make you smile. The English golfer’s clothes, in an era when light gray was considered flashy, were more colorful than Rickie Fowler’s, and his experiments with shaft-length make him a symbolic ancestor of Bryson DeChambeau’s. Max’s son-in-law, the English professional Brian Barnes who beat Jack Nicklaus twice in one day at the 1973 Ryder Cup, was noted for once marking his ball in a tournament with a can of beer. There will always be an England. Max, in full.
And to think of the heat I get when I mark with a poker chip...
Via Shack, there's an amusing cartoon of Faulkner's daring shot, as well as this newsreel footage:
Joel Beall takes a crack at this issue:
British Open 2019: Who does a new major venue favor? An analysis gives emphatic answer
It's modestly interesting, but far less emphatic than that header implies.
First, the Open Championship already skews towards older champions than the other majors, for what I think are some obvious reasons. Joel also excludes places like Torrey Pines and Quail Hollow, but Portrush hosted that Irish Open in the recent past.
There's really only the one example of a "new" Open Champonship venue, that being the return to Hoylake in 2006 after an extended vacation from the rota. Hence this picture accompanying the article:
But that event was played in excessively dry and firm conditions, allowing a driverphobic version of Tiger to hit only one driver all week.
I don't see any meaningful lessons to be learned here, just the usual pre-major fog. Then again, I remain the '62 Mets of fantasy golf, so perhaps that fog is a more localized condition than I realize.
A Little Cheese With That Whine? - Christie Kerr stops just short of going all Stacey Lewis on us, with her rant on the inhumanity of the LPGA Tour:
Dustin Johnson has had an incredible career. Twenty wins on the PGA Tour. A victory at the 2016 U.S. Open. Fifth on the all-time money list.
That haul is matched almost exactly by Cristie Kerr on the LPGA tour: 20 wins,including two majors (2007 U.S. Open, 2010 PGA Championship), and No. 3 on the all-time money list, trailing just Annika Sorenstam and Karrie Webb. The biggest differentiator between Kerr and Johnson: their winnings. Johnson has made more than $61 million in career on-course earnings, while Kerr has netted $19 million, or almost 70 percent less. It’s a discrepancy she cares about deeply, and one that she discussed in depth on the most recent episode of the GOLF.com Podcast, beginning at the 19:30 mark.
“I’m not saying we’re the same product as the PGA Tour, or that we should even make the same money,” Kerr said. “But we should not make 10% to 15% of what they make. I think that’s wrong. We’re getting there, but there’s no reason we can’t, in leaps and bounds, catch up. We need to catch up.”
No, you're not remotely the same product, but $19 million large seems plenty to this humble blogger. Kerr demonstrates only the most tentative understanding of basic math, as her career winnings are far in excess of "10-15%" of DJ's, almost a third, and I'm not even buying that she's a comparable commodity to Mr. Gretsky....
But completely missing from her "case" is the sense that these things are earned, not given. Like most, she's now hiding behind Megan Rapinoe's skirt, ignoring completely the inconvenient truth that the U.S. Women's soccer team is paid a higher percentage of the revenue's generated than the men's team. I know, I'm a hater....
Are The ESPYs A Thing? - I can't imagine how I missed them, but this seems quite the daring selection:
Brooks Koepka wins 'Best Male Golfer' award at the ESPYs
And Jenna was there to celebrate with him:
Though that angle misses the most notable aspect of the event.... Correction, the two most notable parts, that is:
Not sure what look she was going for there.... I'll go way out on a limb and guess that she follows Paulina on social media.
She made a modest funny about this being rare footage of them fully clothed.... well, almost. Which I'll assume was a reference to this iconic photo:
Where do I go to unsee that?
Just to wrap this important subject, this will apparently find itself to a bulletine board near Brooks shortly:
Opinion: Did the EPSYs add another line to Brooks Koepka's list of grievances?
I need a scorecard.
Not His Cup Of Tee - Gary Van Sickle has been relegated to the wasteland of Morning Read, a loss for the rest of us. He made a visit to TopGolf with his son Mike, a struggling professional, and it's not a pretty picture:
* Mike hit two balls that we watched land in the target areas that never registered. No points showed on the screen. It was like putting money into a vending machine and your candy bar doesn’t come out, then you can’t get your quarters back. Huh? How are they going to resolve that if it happens during the Topgolf Tour competition?
* Topgolf balls are flighted. That means they don’t go as far as a normal golf ball. Or as a real golfer would say, “They don’t go anywhere.” I found that I had to hit about a club-and-a-half more to make the ball go as far as my shots on a real golf course. And hitting them feels like hitting rocks.
* Topgolf balls are used and abused, just like balls at a traditional range. The problem with that is, some balls get whacked out of round. Mike had a handful of shots that veered off in strange, un-golfy directions. He compared it to hitting mud balls in traditional golf. The farther the shot and the more club Mike hit, the more likely the reduced-flight ball flew oddly. That made hitting the farthest target problematic.* Our server dutifully returned every 10 minutes or so to make sure that we really didn’t want to order drinks. Once, he blurted his cheery, “How are you guys doing?” right as Mike was in his takeaway.
As their CEO admitted a while back, they're not in the golf business.... they run saloons. Adjust your expectations accordingly....
Enjoy the weekend and we'll gather again on Monday.
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