Thursday Threads

I've got fourteen hours to kill until first pitch, so shall we dive in?

The Party's Over - Phil is in Korea for the event at Nine Bridges, and in his pre-tourney presser he lets his BFF off the hook:

“I have not played well in the last seven, eight months,” the 49-year-old said from the CJ Cup in South Korea on Wednesday. “There are much better options of players that have

played consistently at a high level that deserve to be on the team, and I have not.

“Even if I were to win [this week], I have not done enough to warrant a pick. I’m not asking for one, I don’t expect one.” 

From a pure numbers standpoint, he isn’t wrong. 

Though Mickelson had a runner-up at the Desert Classic in January and won the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February, he has struggled since with just one finish in the top 35 and eight missed cuts in his last 18 starts.

That's gracious of him, though I am surprised that he doesn't think a win might change that dynamic...  Or, perhaps it's just that he knows a win isn't in the cards.

Phil has made a habit of being an ass in recent years, mostly I think when he's trying to prove how smart he is.  But there's little wrong with his record, including his participation in every ream competition since 1994.  That's just crazy longevity, especially from the most inconsistent player on the planet.

It's quite a thing to have qualified for so many team events, a record of which he can be proud.  It almost seems churlish, therefore, to remind folks that he's not played especially well in those events, a fact that might have made a less self-confident man hesitant to seize control of the damn thing.

I Am Legend - Yanno, I wouldn't have taken the ladies to French Lick just on principal, but it all went sideways:

FRENCH LICK, Ind. — Senior majors titles come in twos now, apparently. Helen

Alfredsson joined Laura Davies as Senior Slam winners, sweeping the U.S. Senior Women’s Open and Senior LPGA Championship in the same season. 

In fact, Alfredsson has become quite the presence in these senior major events, with her only finish outside the top 3 coming at the 2018 Senior Women’s Open, where she took a share of sixth. 

On a brutally frigid day at the Pete Dye Course at French Lick, the colorful Swede came from three back of Juli Inkster to beat the American Solheim Cup legend by three strokes. The 54-year-old Alfredsson also edged Trish Johnson and Inkster by two strokes at the U.S. Senior Women’s Open in May at Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club. 

“You just don’t feel like you’re hitting the ball as good as you want,” said Alfredsson of conditions that, at times, were up to a 3-club wind. “Everything is a struggle. Nothing is smooth. You just need to get away with stuff.”

Who's ides was it to put them on top of a mountain in mid-October?  But Helen will have to take a back seat to this lady who will be the defining memory of the event:

Lee Ann Walker might make her way into the Guinness World Records, though not in a way she could ever imagine. 

In one of the most drastic penalty situations in golf, Walker was assessed 58 penalty strokes for repeatedly having her caddie line her up on the putting surface at the Pete Dye Course. 

Walker shot 127-90 in her Senior LPGA Championship debut at French Lick Resort.

Still, that's quite the improvement in the second round, no?

 But those 58 penalty strokes are really the least of it....  Here's the truly amazing part:

Walker’s playing partners, Laura Baugh and Laura Shanahan-Rowe, brought the infraction to Walker’s attention on the 14th hole (her fifth) of the second round. Walker immediately called over a rules official to explain the situation. 

Earlier this year, the USGA and R&A implemented a change that prohibited caddies from lining up a player on the putting surface under Rule 10.2b.

“This is my first competitive round since 2011 or 2012,” said Walker, of her last time on the LPGA. “Now that I don’t play the LPGA anymore, I don’t watch golf. I knew there were rules changes. I just honestly didn’t know ’em. Just plain and simple. My stupidity for not going over the rules changes.” 

The rules officials told Walker to keep playing while they discussed the situation. As Walker made the turn, she was informed that she would not be disqualified because she didn’t know that she had broken a rule when she signed her scorecard after the first round. 

After she completed the second round, LPGA rules official Marty Robinson said they had her recreate the times that her caddie lined her up. 

Walker incurred a two-stroke penalty for each time it happened, adding 42 strokes to her opening score of 85 on Monday and 16 additional strokes to her second-round score on Tuesday.

Ya got that?  Three players, three caddies and God knows who else watching, and not a single person knows the rules.   

This was Ron Sirak in his puff piece promoting the event:

Now, as 78 players prepare to tee it up Oct. 14 on The Pete Dye Course at French Lick Resort for the third Senior LPGA Championship, it feels very much like these are not just legends in the game but also pioneers taking their sport to a new day.

Meet the new day, same as the old day....

He Does Now -  The funny thing is that I'm not sure he intended it to be as confrontational as it sounds...  But this was our Brooksie when asked about his budding rivalry with Rory:

"I've been out here for, what, five years. Rory hasn't won a major since I've been on the PGA Tour. So I just don't view it as a rivalry," Koepka told AFP ahead of his defence of the CJ Cup in Jeju, South Korea which begins on Thursday.

Has he even seriously contended in one since Valhalla?  Maybe Brooks is smarter than he seems (he'd have to be, right?), and this is a master class in trolling.  Rory plays his worst when he wants it the most, and this will make him want it badly...

The Rory bit is the one getting the pixels, but this is by far the bigger howler:

NICK PARKER: And honestly, this last year, getting the win started here helped you win the Wyndham Rewards and then also you had two eagles for the Aon Risk-Reward

Challenge for another (inaudible.) How big is that, getting the season started right with both those and helped you along the way?

BROOKS KOEPKA: You've got to get off to a good start. To get off to a good start here is big. If you look at the Wyndham, the Aon, the FedEx, none of that happens without winning here, so you've got to play good every week. That's the beauty of the PGA TOUR. Every round does mean something whether you believe that or not. Even if you're back in 30th, 40th place, there's always something to play for and that's why I think Aon and Wyndham have done an incredible job of making every round, every shot mean something. That's important and that's what as pros you should be doing anyways. But it makes it fun for us coming down the stretch never really knowing what's going to go on, we've always got something else to play for.

I agree, that never knowing what's going on can be riveting.... Brooks, who can't be bothered practcing for regular Tour events, is all over the Aon Risk Reward?  And the Wyndham Rewards?  As Shack reminds us, he won that without actually playing the Wyndham, so I can see where he thinks that works just swell.

Need? - I can't stay up past the third inning of Yankee games, so I'm clearly not going to see any of this:

Everything you need to know about "The Challenge: Japan Skins"

We'll just agree to disagree about the concept of "need", but you'll agree that this changes everything:

What are the "extra challenges"? 

Just like The Match between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson that took place last November, The Challenge: Japan Skins will feature extra challenges other than just the

skins portion during play. These "challenge holes" will have additional monetary value that will support the event's charity partners, as well as add another layer of intrigue to the event. 

Details of the extra challenge will not be revealed until the live broadcast of the competition. 

__Is there anything else unusual about the event? 

In addition to the extra challenge, the one other unique thing about the event is that it is set to finish under floodlights. It's also the first televised exhibition match of Rory McIlroy, Jason Day and Hideki Matsuyama's careers.

And that first layer of intrigue would be?  Asking for a friend.....

That piece is pretty embarrassing, but this Alex Myers offering is even more craven:

In case you haven't seen The Challenge's promo in which HIdeki Matsuyama teaches his three opponents—Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, and Jason Day—a bit of Japanese, let's

start there. The entertaining clip contains plenty of classroom hijinks, good-natured ribbing, and even some valuable knowledge for those planning on playing golf in Japan.

But what if we told you this wasn't actually shot in a Japanese classroom—or even in Japan? And then what if we told you these four PGA Tour stars were never even in the same room at the same time? Hideki, how do you say "optical illusion" in Japanese?

The spot was part of a series of promos for the made-for-TV competition that were shot during the PGA Tour's BMW Championship in August. And it was filmed in a ballroom at Medinah Country Club across four separate sessions with each of the golfers. To execute the production, GOLFTV, which along with Golf Digest is part of Discovery, hired Above Average, a digital entertainment studio most known for producing "Saturday Night Live" shorts, and which also worked with Golf Digest on a fun 2017 project that imagined turning Central Park into a 36-hole golf course. So, yeah, they're as good at being creative as Rory is at hitting a driver.

Wow, I am seriously disillusioned that they would toy with my emotions like that.... There's a blooper reel, if you've got the stomach for it.

Zone, Flooded - Everyone wants a piece of the action, including that guy:

Tiger Woods is arguably the most-written about athlete in history. But now, the 15-time major champ will finally tell his own story. 

HarperCollins Publishers announced on Tuesday it has acquired the world rights to the first-ever memoir by Woods. And the title is succinctly perfect: Back. 

It's an obvious nod to Woods' remarkable comeback, but, of course, it also references the part of the body that plagued the legendary golfer to the point of wondering whether he'd ever return to competitive golf. After four back surgeries, including a last-ditch fusion procedure, Woods returned to action in December of 2017. He won the 2018 Tour Championship, his first PGA Tour title in more than five years, before winning the 2019 Masters, his first major in more than a decade and his first green jacket since 2005.

I'd have gone with Back, But Only for a Moment.  Tiger, of course, paints himself as a victim, needing to correct the historical record:

Woods said, “I’ve been in the spotlight for a long time, and because of that, there have been books and articles and TV shows about me, most filled with errors, speculative and wrong. This book is my definitive story. It’s in my words and expresses my thoughts. It describes how I feel and what’s happened in my life. I’ve been working at it steadily, and I’m looking forward to continuing the process and creating a book that people will want to read.”

Well, yanno, perhaps if you had ever shared anything.  But, and this is the important part, he ain't about to start now.

But as Shack informs, there's a bit of a boom in Tiger books, first by this guy:

Noted author Curt Sampson’s Roaring Back is set for an October 29, 2019 release from Diversion Books.

The write-up sounds like a warts-and-all work similar to past Sampson books, so we won’t hold this write up from the publisher against him: 

Sampson also places Woods’s defeats and triumphs in the context of historic comebacks by other notable golfers like Ben Hogan, Skip Alexander, Aaron Silton, and Charlie Beljan, finding the forty-three-year-old alone on the green for his trajectory of victory against all odds. As this enthralling book reveals, Tiger never doubted the perseverance of the winner in the mirror.

Seriously?  Obviously the reference to Skip, Aaron and Charlie will have these tomes flying off the shelves.... I remember Charlie, but I'm far too lazy to Google those othe rnames.

But beware of this offering:

Then there is Michael Bamberger’s book, slated for a late March, 2020 release date. From the publisher’s teaser: 

Michael Bamberger has covered Tiger Woods since the golfer was a teenager and an amateur, and in The Second Life of Tiger Woods he draws upon his deep network of sources inside locker rooms, caddie yards, clubhouses, fitness trailers, and back offices to tell the true and inspiring story of the legend’s return. Packed with new information and graced by insight, Bamberger reveals how this iconic athlete clawed his way back to the top. The Second Life of Tiger Woods is the saga of an exceptional man, but it’s also a celebration of second chances. Being rich and famous had nothing to do with Woods’s return. Instead, readers will see the application of his intelligence, pride, dedication—and his enormous capacity for work—to the problems at hand. Bamberger’s bracingly honest book is about what Tiger Woods did, and about what any of us can do, when we face our demons head-on.

Mike's take is usually of interest, though I'm thinking a long-form magazine piece might be sufficient to the task.

We have Alan Shipnuck's mailbag available for low-impact blogging, including a couple o queries relevant to this:

Would you rather 1) get your first ace, 2) ghostwrite Tiger’s memoirs? -@sindap 

Definitely 1 because I’ve already given up on 2. It would be fascinating to root around in Tiger’s head, even though I suspect it would lead to massive frustration. Still, if I could actually get him to be raw and real and produce an Agassi-esque memoir that is truly enlightening, well, that would be the journalistic achievement of the century.

Yeah, good luck with that...

What is one thing that could be written in Tiger’s [just announced autobiography] that would actually surprise you? #AskAlan -@JShamp 

Well, we already know far too much about his sex life. The toxicology report after his

DUI laid bare Tiger’s abuse of painkillers and prescription meds. I ‘spose the only bombshell would be if he admitted to using PEDs. Tiger could make the relatively convincing case that it was okay since for most of his career the Tour had no policy expressly prohibiting their use, and that he was just helping his body recover after repeatedly pushing it to the limit in the gym and various SEAL killhouses. Because there is so much more to the game than brute strength I don’t think think there’d be much of an outcry that Woods’s unparalleled record is tainted, but the fear of such a controversy would no doubt lead to self-censorship. So, I’m not expecting any earth-shattering revelations from this book. A few unguarded nuggets is probably all we will get.

I wouldn't get your hopes up even for that....  But he's more likely to cop to the Lindbergh kidnapping than PEDs.

Alan At Length -  It's far from a great mailbag, but there's always a few nuggets worth contemplating.  This is pretty much a whiff from the guy:

As the tour hits their Asia Swing do you see any issues similar to what the NBA had when it comes to their dealings in China and the protests in Hong Kong?#AskAlan -@coachkirbychs 

No doubt there has been a lot of back-channel education and, uh, pep talks from the Tour to the players on how to handle these kind of questions. I mean, when I went down to the Latinoamerica Tour last year to do a celebratory story every player received an email from PGA Tour headquarters strongly encouraging them to accentuate the positive. As the NBA has discovered, the stakes are much, much higher when it comes to the politics of China. Tour players are already more naturally cautious because as independent contractors their livelihoods are more delicate; witness how many top players are willing to do Saudi Arabia’s bidding. As I’ve written before, the entire European Tour business model is predicated on visiting countries with authoritarian regimes and/or abysmal human rights records. If pro golfers suddenly develop a conscience they will have far fewer places to play. LeBron James is currently taking a lot of heat for his comments about China/Hong Kong/free speech, but the bottom line is the Lakers are going to pay him $40 million this season no matter what. (He may lose a little in sales by way of Nike but won’t exactly feel it.) But if the Race to Dubai and Rolex Series and PGA Tour China suddenly disappeared it would have a profound effect on professional golf. So, expect a lot of carefully worded answers should any sensitive topics be broached during the Asian swing.

Yeah, that's a timely question for sure, though Alan quite seriously misses the point.

The reason the NBA and Nike find themselves in such a mess, is that they tried to compete in the woke Olympics.  Remember this nonsense?

In reality, LeBron and company proved themselves unwilling to risk anything....

Golf at least has had to good sense to not lecture us on their superior ethics....  mostly.

Here's another way of honoring Phil's longevity:

#ASKALAN Will Mickelson drop from 47th to outside top 50 in OWGR after this week’s at CJ Cup? He’s been in the top 50 since December of 1993…1,351 straight weeks. In his favor, there’s no cut this week. Thanks! -@MintzGolf 

Answering this would compel me to understand the World Ranking algorithm and be able to predict Phil’s play, both of which are impossible. But Mickelson’s battle against the machines is really just a chance to stop and reflect on that he’s been so good for so long. Yes, his play can appear ragged from week to week, but this top 50 streak tells us all we need to know about the incredibly high level Phil has sustained for more than a quarter-century.

1,351 weeks is 26 years plus, quite a thing assuming the questioner is correct.

Between Na and Harrington, there’s a lot of talk about personal pressure and how it affects a player’s game—and when they do well, it’s riveting (Tiger!). Then again, not all golfers who thrive “in spite of” dramatics are heroes (Reed, Daly…Tiger?). What decides the narrative? -@zuzanryan 

A lot of it depends on the source of the drama. Patrick Reed has cut off all contact with his parents and sister while his wife and mother-in-law are out there on social media making disparaging comments about them. That is not going to generate a lot of sympathy for Reed. Per Kevin Na, he had a relationship end and then his ex sued him and her mom is picketing him at tournaments! Most folks are going to see that and feel sorry for Na. In these cases, the narrative is driven by what we know, which is hardly everything. (To quote Hollywood icon Bob Evans, there are three sides to every story: yours, mine and the truth.) Tiger is an interesting case study because he has been awful to many people close to him, been at the center of the most salacious scandal of the 21st century, had his private parts exposed on the Internet, seen his bleary-eyed mugshot beamed around the world after a DUI and yet he’s never been more beloved than right now. I guess that proves the redemptive power of sport, or that people really love a winner. (Na is benefitting from this, too.) Clearly, narratives are elastic. If Reed were to win a U.S. Open on Father’s Day and have his kids run out onto the final green no doubt some feelings toward him would thaw.

Hey Bozo, I decide the narrative.... Next question.

Bryson is clearly unpopular with his peers and likely a tough pairing in team play. Who do you think is actually willing to play with him in Australia? -@hpjagger 

Well, Capt. Woods plays a lot of practice rounds with Bryson, so there’s one. DeChambeau and Kevin Na are also pals, so that would work if Na is a pick, which I think will happen. Webb Simpson is very easygoing and at the Ryder Cup has paired well with Bubba, so he’s used to having a nanny role. I think Bryson will be fine.

Yeah, if you can play with Bubba, you can play with anyone...  The more interesting question to me is format.  His game seems better suited to foursomes, but there you really need to be in sync with your partner and on your game.

How much influence do you think some ‘new’ social media platforms like No Laying Up should have in golf? Or, others who have sprung up due to the ability to make a name through social media. -@TheGhostOfHogan 

The use of ‘should’ in your question is interesting. There is no should. There are no gatekeepers. Not anymore. The influence of any media operation, new or old, is determined by the readers/viewers. If you put out good content, people will consume it, and that attracts sponsors and advertisers, allowing you to do more and better work, which then attracts even more eyeballs, which brings in even more money, and the cycle repeats. Social media alone isn’t enough to be an important player in this new landscape – it’s too shallow/ephemeral. No Laying Up has prospered, and earned access from players and tournaments, because their podcasts and video storytelling is excellent; the nonstop social engagement (and merchandise) is the sizzle, not the steak. Lotsa people make noise on Twitter and/or post ubiquitously on the Gram but in the absence of something of substance to regularly read or listen to or watch they are easily forgotten.

And thank God for that.  After all, his putative gatekeepers at Golf Magazine thought we needed four items on Steph Curry yesterday...  

And this one is perfect for my planned exit:

Let’s flip it positive. As 2019 is winding down, what do you love that is happening in or to the world of golf? -@TheTwittah 

I am shooketh because positivity is so rare up in here! But there is so much to love about the game right now: Shane Lowry singing in a tavern, Cameron Champ’s tears, Nate Lashley’s win, Max Homa’s Twitter, Eddie Pepperrell’s blogs, the Korda sisters’ good cheer, Steph Curry’s philanthropy, J.Y Ko’s putting stroke, Matt Wolff’s swing, Viktor Hovland’s giggle, Gary Woodland’s 3-wood, Jennifer Kupcho’s hybrids, El Camarón, Crunchy Pete, Harold Varner, Kevin Na walking in putts, Charles Howell hugging his family, Scott Harrington hugging his wife, Tiger hugging his kids … It goes on an on.

But again with the Steph....  he's not actually a golfer, you know?  Otherwise, as good a list as any, though I'm shocked that Sergio didn't make his list.