Your Friday Frisson

Another week winds down, but it looks to be a great weekend...  So, without further ado...

Scenes From Silverado - Golf.com is here to tell me what I missed:

Adam Scott and Andrew Landry share the lead 

Adam Scott and Andrew Landry lead the Safeway Open field at seven under par after the first round. 

Scott carded six birdies, and eagle and a bogey on Thursday, while Landry’s card was blemish-free, with seven birdies. Scott is seeking his 14th Tour victory, while Landry is seeking his second win, after claiming the Valero Texas Open in 2018.

Tony Romo impressed 

In his fourth PGA Tour appearance, Romo fired his career-low competitive Tour round — a two-under-par 70 that included five birdies and two bogeys. Perhaps most impressively, three of those birdies were made on Romo’s final five holes. 

Romo is playing as an amateur on a sponsor’s exemption, so prize money isn’t a factor for him this week, but in the event he makes the cut on Friday, he’ll have to miss a scheduled gig to call the Vikings-Bears NFL game on Sunday alongside Jim Nantz.

As I flipped between the Packers-Eagles and the evening replay, it did appear that the golf course is as firm and fast as we've seen it, perhaps a reason to tune in.  If, that is, you're looking for one.

You might expect a reaction from your humble blogger to Tony Romo's round....  You know how I feel about him taking up a slot.  Here's the statistics that I was able to find:

There's not much to be had there, though he obviously putted lights out for the day.  That seems unlikely to continue, so I'm going to predict a harsh regression to his mean today....  

On the flip side, he beat Phil by five... perhaps yesterday's jest was more on point than even I realized.  Which leads to this recurring header:

Despite a round-ruining 9, Phil Mickelson finds reason for optimism at Safeway Open

Just Phil being Phil, a role he plays to critical acclaim.  But the how behind that nine is unusual, even for our Phil:

No one can spin a bad round and make it sound like he’s on the verge of finding the

secret to golf like Phil Mickelson. 

Thursday’s opening round was a perfect example. Mickelson is mired in a terrible slump that dates back almost to the moment he holed his winning putt at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February. At the opening round of the Safeway Open, he recorded a round-ruining 9 on the par-5 fifth hole and signed for a 3-over 75. 

That score was his highest 18-hole score in 15 rounds at the Safeway Open at Silverado Resort and Spa’s North Course. How bad was the nine, which included two shots out of bounds? Well, according to the PGA Tour, in more than 38,000 holes he has played on Tour, Mickelson has only posted three scores higher.

OK, but that's not the weird part....  and this isn't either, though perhaps it offers a clue in how to react to his happy talk:

Mickelson also has made some swing changes. He’s been working on hitting a low-cut with his driver to try and keep the ball in play. 

“It’s getting rid of the big miss,” he explained. 

Not so much on Thursday – he hit only 3 of 14 fairways in the first round. 

“Every lie in the rough was a jumper and so I couldn’t attack the pins the way I wanted to,” he said.

And he's so on top of things that he laid down this marker for today:

So, in Phil’s world a 75 in his first competitive round of the 2019-20 season is no reason to hit the panic button. He wants everyone to believe that he’s “close” and “the game is coming around.” As a matter of fact, he’s expecting to take advantage of fresh greens in the morning and go low. 

“I’ll shoot 6-, 7-under-par tomorrow, I really believe that,” he said. “I believe the game is close enough to do that.”

We'll see about that....  but the weird part, and admittedly it's not to be found in the print coverage, is that he did the exact same thing last year from the same spot in the rough on the same hole.  Only then he made a putt to save his quad.

Scenes From St. Andrews -  They're playing the Dunhill Links this week, and the Old Course has been torched:

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland (AP) — South African golfer Justin Walters shot a 9-under 63 for his lowest score on the European Tour in six years, giving him a one-stroke lead after the first round of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship on Thursday. 

Walters, ranked No. 444, has not recorded a top-20 finish in 23 events on the tour this season but found some form on the Old Course at St. Andrews, one of three Scottish venues for the pro-am event. 

Every player in the field plays 18 holes at St. Andrews, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns, before returning to the Old Course for the fourth and final round Sunday. 

Three players — Victor Perez of France, Jordan Smith of England, and Ryan Fox of New Zealand — shot 64 at St. Andrews, with Adrian Otaegui shooting the same score at Kingsbarns.

With the amateurs playing, there's no way to protect the old girl....  But the name brand players won't see the place until Saturday, so we'll see how low they go then.

I love this event, and would choose to play it over that comparable Pro-Am at Pebble in a heartbeat, though there is this one nagging detail:

Heading that star-studded cast is world No 2 Rory McIlroy, who has been a fairly regular 

supporter of the event since using a third-place finish in 2007 as the launchpad for his professional career as that effort gained him a European Tour card. “It’s a very relaxed week,” observed McIlroy, who is teaming up in the pro-am event with his dad, Gerry. “St Andrews is a great town to spend a bit of family time and spending a lot of time with him on the course will be really cool.” 

Six-hour rounds will guarantee they do indeed do that on the course and, though someone who likes to play the game at the proper pace, this is one week when McIlroy doesn’t really mind taking a chill pill. “I try not to take it too seriously because, if you take these pro-ams too serious, you start to get frustrated with how long you’re out there and all that sort of stuff,” he added. “So I try to keep it lighthearted and, hopefully, that’s the key to playing some good golf.”

I cannot imagine why it should take six hours to play either The Old or Kingsbarns, though admittedly Carnoustie is a different animal entirely.... 

Don't miss this aerial view of Lee Westwood's ace on the 8th at Carnoustie, taken from a plane.  Way cool.

Scenes From The Business Side - Sports Business Journal is the go-to source on the business side of our game, but since their content is behind a paywall, we'll allow Shack to guide us:

Sports Business Journal’s John Ourand reports in great detail that some network heavyweights are descending on Ponte Vedra Beach to make initial PGA Tour,

Champions, Tour, Korn Ferry Tour and LPGA Tour media rights pitches.

Ourand lays out the schedule to include sessions with Warnermedia chairman Jeff Zucker and Turner Sports head Lenny Daniels, CBS’s Sean McManus and David Berson, ESPN’s Jimmy Pitaro and Burke Magnus (EVP programming), Eric Shanks and president Mark Silverman from Fox Sports, Amazon’s Marie Donoghue and Jim DeLorenzo, with NBC Sports Group President Pete Bevacqua and Golf Channel President Mike McCarley helming Comcast’s effort.

Curious, since the elephant in the room, the NFL, has just created uncertainty by advocating for an expanded schedule, including a 17-game season and an additional bye week.

The tour is coming to market after a year that saw weekend television viewership (excluding the majors) drop considerably. NBC’s weekend coverage was down 18% this season; CBS’s was down 10%. 

The looming NFL rights negotiation also could have an effect on these negotiations. All the networks are prepared to pay a lot more to keep the NFL when its rights come up in 2021 and 2022. The risk is that the prospect of those rights could keep networks from committing as much money as the PGA Tour is hoping for.

The Tour's desire to accelerate negotiations could be seen as an expectation that those numbers might not improve going forward. 

AT&T has told tour officials that it has looked into flipping one of its existing channels (Headline News or truTV) into a golf channel that would pick up the rights that currently are on Golf Channel. It’s likely that AT&T would offer the PGA Tour a stake in that channel. 

ESPN is expected to make an aggressive pitch centered on streaming rights for its ESPN+ platform. CBS has carried PGA Tour rights since 1970 and wants to maintain that relationship. Finally, NBC has built a healthy business around PGA Tour rights, like Golf Channel and GolfNow, and is expected to be aggressive in trying to keep them.

Methinks they'd be better served taking the cash, but it's human nature to covet that which others control.

Alan In Full - Despite the paucity of news. Shippy's weekly mailbag has a full compliemnt of snark:

Is Rory the best backdoor top 10 player of all time? #AskAlan-@coachkirbychs 

I used to think it was Furyk, but McIlroy is making quite a bid for this bad news/good news title. It’s highly commendable that when Rory gets off to a slow start he keeps grinding and patiently plays himself onto the first page of the leaderboard. The maddening flip side is why isn’t he more ready when the bell rings, especially in big events?

yes, there are his Thursday woes for sure, none more obvious than that home game last July.  But there were also enough times that he got himself into contention, then laid an egg on Sunday (Memphis comes immediately to mind).   

Here's a couple on the same wavelength:

With Willet’s return to form making it more interesting, which of the last five Masters champs (Tiger, Reed, Sergio, Danny, Spieth) do you think has the best chance of winning another green jacket? -@bdb822 

Oooh, this is interesting. I’ll take the guy currently playing the worst: Spieth. Jordan putts Augusta National’s crazy greens better than anybody this side of B. Crenshaw. He is too smart, tenacious and too talented not to figure out his swing woes. When he does, look out. 

If I told you that since the ’16 Masters, Spieth would win a major and have two other top-3s in majors, and Willett wouldn’t have another top 10 in majors over that stretch, would me telling you that Willett now has a higher OWGR than Spieth make you laugh, cry, or vomit? -@miller_bud 

It would certainly make me question your sanity. But all credit to Willett, who has won a couple of big tournaments in the last calendar year. There are plenty of other ways to slurp up World Ranking points besides high finishes in the majors.

Alan certainly has more belief in Jordan than I do.... His tee-to-green game is fairly dreadful compared to his peer group, and that seems a difficult matter to fix.

And this on a fave pinata:

How effective will Billy Horschel be in getting other American players to compete at Wentworth? He seemed genuinely thrilled with his experience.#AskAlan -@pcaseysafc 

Word of mouth among players (and caddies and wives) is massively important to the success of any golf tournament. So is the venue and the date on the schedule. All three factors are suddenly working in favor of the Euro tour’s flagship event. I fully expect a bunch more very-good-if-not-quite-great Americans to make the trip in the future, and the occasional superstar may be tempted, too. That’s good news for a tournament that deserves a stellar field.

The image of Billy Ho as some global ambassador is amusing, but it does seem that this event has been revitalized by the date change.  It's a good event and it used to be a great H.S. Colt golf course, before Ernie took a knife to it.  

This is a good one as well:

What tour will Akshay be playing on in the ’20-’21 season and why? Boom or bust? #AskAlan-@EthanZimman 

I’ll say the Latinoamerica Tour — even if it’s just Mondaying — which is a perfectly respectable place for any young player to ply his trade. I love the kid’s swing and attitude but, man, professional golf is way more cut-throat than the Matt Wolffs of the world make it appear.

Magic 8-ball says, "Outlook Cloudy."   

And now we deal with first world problems:

What’s the one invite you had to turn down that you still haven’t played? If one exists! -@pmmasc 

Haha, there have been a few. Next month I’m going on an epic New Zealand/Australia journey and will cross off a bunch of mind-blowing courses that have been on my to-do list for years. With that in mind, this is my current bucket list, roughly in order of lust: Fisher’s Island, Maidstone, Cabot(s), Oakmont, Chicago GC, Diamante Dunes, Morfontaine, Swinley Forest, Prairie Dunes, Sawgrass Stadium.

Good luck with Swinley...  I've bene told that, unless you're intimate with the Royal Family, you'll not see the inside of their gate.

I’m still in awe of the Solheim Cup finish. Doesn’t it seem like that was criminally undercovered? PTI didn’t even mention it. What are the odds after all those shots, it would come down to one putt on the final stroke of the whole tournament? And Suzann Pettersen would make it? -@gkellynyc 

That’s funny, just yesterday I got sucked into a whole highlights package of the Cup. It really was the most exciting event of the year. (The Masters was the most meaningful.) It played out like a movie, which is what you can say about the most transcendent sports moments. Hopefully this Solheim will be like the Shawshank Redemption — the more it gets replayed over time, the more it is appreciated.

It was great, but I can't see it having much of a shelf life...

Lastly, asked for an insider anecdote, he throws a Tour rabbit under the bus:

Give us an anecdote. The player(s) in question don’t have to be named. Gambling story. Crummy reputation. Best shot you’ve seen in person. Etc. An opportunity to humblebrag about your 25 years of access. Or outright brag. -@CHFounder 

This was more of a fluke than anything, but here goes: At a long ago Las Vegas Invitational, when it used to be the final event on the schedule and thus determined who finished in the top 125 on the money list and kept their job, I wound up staying on the same floor of the same hotel as a longtime Tour journeyman. We knew each other a little. With a strong Sunday he leapfrogs up the money list and keeps his card by less than a thousand bucks. He decides to celebrate with a comely cocktail waitress, which is fine until his wife arrives at his room, having flown in for what was supposed to be a joyous surprise. It’s late and I’m in my room typing when I hear an almighty ruckus in the hallway. I peek outside to see what’s going in and it’s said player and wife having a shouting match. He and I lock eyes. He gives me such a pitiful look of terror that I have never put the story in print … until now.

Alan, we're going to pull off your fingernails one-by-one until you give us a name....

Enjoy the beautiful weather, and I'll see you on Monday.