Late-Week Laments

The Solheim Cup is on as background music, and the sun seems to be out in Auchterarder....  That can't last.

Follow The Money - Mike Bamberger was old-school before old-school was cool, and he's got some issues with that Player of the Year voting:

But the Tour players, in voting for McIlroy over Koepka, were shunning history in favor of money. That’s their prerogative. They are professional golfers, after all. “Show me the money” works as well for them as it does for anybody else, if not better. “Follow the

money” does, too, when trying to figure out their motivations. 

The two biggest paydays on the Tour schedule are two Sundays owned by the PGA Tour: the final day of the Players Championship and the final day of the FedEx Cup. McIlroy earned $2.25 million at the former and $15 million at the latter. 

What kind of message would the players be sending if they didn’t put their stamp on all that?

But the Tour players, in voting for McIlroy over Koepka, were shunning history in favor of money. That’s their prerogative. They are professional golfers, after all. “Show me the money” works as well for them as it does for anybody else, if not better. “Follow the money” does, too, when trying to figure out their motivations.

It just so happens that I saw both those movies so, well played, Mike.

He does offer this alternative theory:

There’s one other factor at work, and that’s the popularity contest. Both players are (I imagine) well-liked by their peers, and, in their candor, both are interesting. But when Koepka downplays every other event except the majors, and diminishes the traditional role of The Long Warmup in his Tour routine, he becomes a challenging figure to the players. And the players are creatures of habit. They don’t like their methods to be challenged.

The PGA Tour morphed into Mean Girls so quickly that I barely noticed.

 But while Mike is type cast as the curmudgeonly traditionalist, he can't bring himself to even say out out loud the most cynical possibility of all.  To wit, that the players did no such thing, naturally voting for the guy that played the best.

Remember that quote from way back yesterday?

“Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”

Lots of Tour Suits would have been highly motivated to protect their feed lot. As a wise man said, I hope there are paper ballots....

Lastly on the subject, I think Curmudgeonly James Corrigan gets the better of this exchange:

What he said.

Solheim Stuff - While we shouldn't draw any conclusions from the early results, some of the pre-commencement items will amuse.  For instance, I've long found Lexi Thompson a curious specimen, alarmingly fragile and perhaps the worst putter ever to play the game professionally:

Lexi Thompson doesn’t consider herself to be a leader on the American team. Perhaps it’s time that changed. 

Thompson, of course, is the top-ranked U.S. player. It’s been that way for some time

now. She’s never going to be the most vocal or the one to spearhead group text messaging (that’s Morgan Pressel). 

“We all want to gel as a team as best we can,” said Thompson, “so we don’t want to overpower anybody. It’s all about just coming together as a team and not being an individual focusing just on ourselves.” 

That’s certainly admirable. It is a week of we rather than me.

But captain Juli Inkster is hoping for a little bit more from Thompson, and who can blame her? There are six rookies on the team, and Thompson is one of only three players who have competed on foreign soil. 

“You don’t really need to be vocal,” said Inkster. “I think If she says something at the right time, people will listen.”

Juli Inkster, who wasn't gonna do the pair the vet with the rookie thing, paired Lexi with rookie Brittany Altomare, and they're only four down.  More tellingly, Lexi just gagged on a short par putt, so they'll not be staging any furious comebacks.

Surprisingly, Juli had to be convinced of this rather obvious pairing:

“They actually asked me to play together,” Inkster said. “I wasn’t too keen on it.”

Initially, Inkster didn’t want to put the sisters together, the thought being that although their games are similar, their personalities are too different.

Jessica, 26, and playing in her second Solheim Cup, told Inkster to see how the sisters played at the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational, a new team LPGA Tour event that took place in July. Inkster said that Jessica offered, ‘If we kill each other, then maybe not put us together. But if we do OK, can you think about putting us together?’ ” 

At the Dow, the Korda sisters finished T-12, shooting two rounds of 68 in foursomes. More important, they didn’t kill each other.

Good thing she relented, because the Sister Act is going medieval on Caroline Masson and Jodi Ewart Shadoff (currently 6-up).

Danielle Kang won't be taking any souls in the morning foursomes session, as Juli left her on the bench.  But the Euros had these clever rejoinders to her trash talk:

Ewart Shadoff was the first to answer. “I think it’s just extra motivation, really, for us,” she said. “I don’t think there will be any tears on our team, just happiness.” 

But then Pettersen closed with quite a kicker. “And we’re just going to step on their necks.”

And how did those remedial etiquette classes go, Suzann?

This seems a tough sell:

Suzann Pettersen shoulders ultimate pressure for Europe at Solheim Cup

 But not good enough to be in the opening session line-up.

Although this might work out for the better:

Suzann Pettersen has lost her voice ahead of the 16th Solheim Cup. She better hope that’s the only issue she’s struggling with this week.

She hasn't played much, and when she has played, it hasn't been great:

The 15-time LPGA winner has played twice since her wild card pick. She finished T59

in the CP Women’s Open and missed the cut in Cambia Portland Classic. It’s hardly the sort of form needed for the cut and thrust of the Solheim Cup. 

“My golf game is in great shape,” Pettersen said. “Being here, it feels like I never left the game, which is kind of nice. I don’t know if it’s the atmosphere, the energy or everything that Solheim is all about that always brings out the best of all of us.”

Perhaps.   

Should be a fun weekend, as the blood is genuinely bad between these teams.

Fave Header Of the Day - It seems that Aussie Marc Leishman is having a bad week:

Marc Leishman's back flares up before he gets hit by errant shot in the pro-am, shoots a 76 and is in last place

Worse yet, he got hit by one of his partners:

Leishman felt his cranky back seizing up on him Wednesday morning before playing in the pro-am for the PGA Tour season opener, A Military Tribute at the Greenbrier. That was bad enough. Then, on the fifth hole of the pro-am, one of his playing partners inadvertently nailed him in the right side of his lower back with an errant approach shot. 

Apparently, the accident was a result of a miscommunication. Leishman thought the player had picked up after several strokes on the short par-4 hole. But he hadn't. Leishman still wasn't quite in the line of play when a ball came whizzing at him from about 100 yards away.

 How many is several?  God they must hate the ProAms,

Eamon in Full - Eamon Lynch is an Ulsterman with strong opinions on pretty much everything in our game.  Most you'll agree with, but all are worth considering...  Here are a couple, first this comparison with that other major individual sport:

At the U.S. Open, Rafa Nadal was serving 5-2 in the fifth and final set when the chair umpire hit him with a penalty for taking too much time before serving. 

Think about that: The United States Tennis Association was willing to enforce pace-of-play rules against one of the biggest stars in its sport, at a crucial moment in a huge event. 

Remember that when the excuse makers try to tell you that golf can’t possibly do the same. 

Pace of play is unsportsmanlike conduct. Penalize it as such. The player alone bears the blame if a penalty proves decisive.

True that.  I'd further add that Rafa took it far more graciously than, say, our Bryson...  Of course The Tour could address this in a nano-second, if they had the desire and the will.  

On a completely unrelated subject, Eamon pens this love letter to great golf courses:

I found myself thinking back to those fence-hopping days last week during a round at National Golf Links on the eastern end of Long Island, New York. The quality of my

golf has scarcely improved in the intervening decades, but the stature of the courses I besmirch has. I’ve been fortunate enough to play 60-odd of the top 100 courses in the world. Many of the old world’s finest layouts contributed DNA to C.B. Macdonald’s creation — he imported inspiration from St. Andrews, Royal St. George’s, North Berwick, Prestwick and Sunningdale — and almost every fine course in the new world traces its DNA back there. America has no better monument to the craft of course architecture. 

National long occupied the top spot on my wish list until I first played it five years ago. That was around the same time my thirst for great courses slackened. The list survives though. Today the top spot belongs to Royal Melbourne. Kingston Heath, less than five miles away, is on there too. Chicago Golf. Fishers Island. Crystal Downs. Cruden Bay. Swinley Forest. Rye. Tara Iti … Like swing theories, no matter how many you’ve experienced, there’s always another.

Best of all, it allows me to remind you that I'm headed back there on the 24th...  But Eamon also settles some scores:

Along the way there have been courses I still see in dreams (Cypress Point, The Old Course), and some in nightmares (Torrey Pines, Trump Aberdeen). There are places where I have intimate recall of every hole (all 85 at Bandon Dunes) and those where I had no lasting memory of any hole by the time I left the zip code (ChampionsGate in Orlando). 

On spectacular clifftops I’ve seen masterpieces (Cape Kidnappers in New Zealand, Shanqin Bay in China) and the odd monstrosity (Old Head in Ireland). Some courses were riotous fun (North Berwick), others were dour slogs (Carnoustie). There have been as many I considered overrated (Tokyo G.C. in Japan, South Korea’s Nine Bridges) as underrated (California Golf Club in San Francisco, Wannamoisett in Providence, Rhode Island).

Torrey isn't the stuff of nightmares, but it's not nearly as good as the property on which it sits.  But there are golf course that make one smile, and others that just beat us up....

Have a great weekend.