Unplayable Lies: Tuesday Trifles

Lots to muse about, so no time for preliminaries....

Tiger Scat - Still pretty much all anyone wants to talk about. First, the three major golf sites take a stab at the numbers. First, Todd Kelly at Golfweek:

$120,459,468 – Career earnings (most all-time)

$800 million – Estimated net worth (Forbes)

683 – Weeks at No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking

359 – PGA Tour events played

198 – Top-10 finishes

142 – Consecutive cuts made on the PGA Tour

108 – Worldwide victories

OK, some of that goes back to the Paleozoic Era, but still amazing stuff. The bottom of the list is interesting as well:

5 – Knee operations

4 – Back surgeries

3 – U.S. Junior Amateur wins

3 – U.S. Amateur wins

2 – FedEx Cup titles

1 – Presidential Medal of Freedom

Are they allowed to mention that last item? Yanno, since it came from Orange Man?

Alex Myers at Golf Digest offers his own list. I'll just pick a few trotted out less often that confirm Tiger's skill at this golf thing:

18: Number of World Golf Championships Woods has won. Dustin Johnson is second

with six.

10: Number of seasons Woods has won at least five times, a PGA Tour record. Snead is No. 2 on the list with eight five-plus win seasons.

7: Number of tournaments Woods has won at least five times, a PGA Tour record. Snead and Jack Nicklaus have the next most with three.

8: Number of times Woods has won his first event of the season, the Zozo victory bumping him from seven. For comparison, Rickie Fowler has five PGA Tour titles total in his career.

I just included that last bit for an easy laugh at the concept of the start of the season.... But can we name those seven events that he's won five or more times? I've got:

The Masters
Bay Hill ( I know, the pic above gave that away)
Memorial
Torrey
Firestone/Bridgestone

My guess would be that he's counting that old WGC-Amex and perhaps the Western? It's hard to tell, even from the perusal of this list of all 82.

Josh Sens sets the bar high with his number crunching:

9 astonishing numbers that put Tiger Woods’ record-tying win into perspective

OK, I'm all ears... Whatcha got?

44

Speaking of Phil, he has 44 career wins. Forty-four! That’s an average of two wins per year for 22 straight years. Pretty tidy, right? Well, yeah, unless you’re comparing him to Tiger. Take Phil’s career total and throw in Lee Trevino’s (29) and you’re still NINE short of Tiger’s mark. Wanna get to 82? You still need to toss in Matt Kuchar’s career haul.

Impressive.... I mean for Phil, of course. What else?

16 and 7

Talk about a game that travels. Woods has now collected titles in 16 different states and seven countries.

OK, is sixteen states in a 23-year season of dominance astonishing? Kinda leaves me indifferent, as does the seven countries. But while the game might travel well to medal-play events, would this be a good time to note that t hasn't traveled well to away-game Ryder Cups?

This one undoubtedly astonishes, it being miraculous that he can even walk:

9

Woods has undergone as many back surgeries (four) as Brooks Koepka and Rory McIlroy have each won majors. He has also had five knee surgeries, matching Phil Mickelson’s number of major crowns. Nine in all!

Dave Dusek has a fun item on Tiger's equipment through the years, including this mismatched set back at the inception:

Before he turned pro, Tiger used clubs from a variety of manufacturers. At the 1996 U.S. Amateur, where Woods won his third title, he used Titleist woods, a blended set of

Mizuno irons, Cleveland wedges and a Ping Anser putter. Woods split his irons and used clubs from two different sets to create a blended set because he wanted as little offset as possible, and within the Mizuno family at that time, the combination provided him with the look and the performance he wanted.

Like other elite golfers at that time, Wood also played a wound ball, the Titleist Professional 90.

Before the 1997 Masters rolled around, Woods made two substantive equipment changes. He added a King Cobra Deep Face driver and a Scotty Cameron Newport Tel3 putter.

Mizuno irons and Cleveland wedges? Who knew?

Back then, this was a deep-faced driver:

Smaller than our current hybrids....

Brian Wacker makes the case for late-career achievement from legends:

• Gordie Howe had his first 100-point season in the NHL at age 40 with 44 goals and 59 assists, and played until age 51 when he scored 41 points in 80 games for the Hartford Whalers.

• Brett Favre threw for 4,202 yards and 33 touchdowns at age 40, leading the Minnesota Vikings to the NFC Championship.

• Nolan Ryan, who threw seven no-hitters in his career with the first coming in 1973, threw his final one 18 years later, at age 44.

• Michael Jordan had three 40-plus-point games in the middle of his final season in the NBA for the Washington Wizards, shooting over 50 percent in all of them.

And didn't Jack win something big at a similar age...I've taken some recent heat for being a Shack fan boy, so let's amuse ourselves at this head-scratcher he wrote in blogging Wacker's item:

And, old legends tend to remain legends longer than everyone else

So, old legends remain legends longer than folks who never were legends.... Thanks for the clarification, Geoff.

What he's undoubtedly trying to say is something I learned from Bill James back in the day, that all athletes experience age-related decline in their abilities. The greats, however, start at a higher level and their skills may decline at a lesser rate, so late-career heroics are possible....It leaves us pretty much where we've always been, that it all comes down to whether he's healthy.

Or, as Sean Martin puts it:

The question now is how high can he go? His win in Japan was his third victory in his last 14 starts. He shot one of the lowest 72-hole scores of his career thanks to impressive iron play and putting. Only one player finished within five shots of him.

Ninety wins seems in play, but it’s also fair to wonder if he’ll get No. 83. It all depends on his body. As long as his back can support the torque and twisting necessary to create the requisite clubhead speed, his hands will find a way to get the ball in the hole.

Thanks for narrowing it down... Though, as the wise man said, it is what it is.

Lastly, Bob Harig has an answer to a lingering question:

Too many times, Woods showed up for a golf tournament and didn't look right. And the more that happened, the more you wondered whether the earth-shattering victory at Augusta National had swallowed up every last bit of energy he had mustered in an effort to win another major championship.

"It was a combination of things,'' said Rob McNamara, Woods' friend and a vice president with his company. "The knee led to him starting to slide and swing differently. And then it affected his back, and then a little bit his neck, and then his oblique. It was sort of a chain reaction of events because he wasn't working properly in the golf swing. Then couple that with some bad weather, and it just wasn't going to happen.''

The knee. Who knew? Woods never once let on that anything was amiss. But as he disclosed at the Zozo Championship, he needed to have an arthroscopic procedure to clean out cartilage -- on the same knee that required ACL reconstruction in 2008. And he put it off.

Instead of doing it a year ago, he waited. And it finally caught up with him over the summer, when he missed two cuts and withdrew from another event in just six tournament appearances. On Aug. 20, he had what was described as routine surgery. A week later -- so as not to interfere with the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup -- he announced it.

"The knee didn't allow me to rotate,'' Woods said. "And because of that it put more stress on my lower back and my hip. As the year went on, it deteriorated a bit and I struggled. Now I'm able to clear a little bit better, I feel better.''

But should we have known? As I noted in yesterday's post, I think the Tour will have to enact some kind of disclosure in this area in conjunction with its embrace of legalized sports gambling.

Settling Scores - I don't know how close Gary McCord is with Phil, though they do bother play out of Whisper Rock in Scottsdale. But it does seem that he shares Phil's transaction relationship with the truth, in this understandable reaction to being fired:

“He said to me, ‘You’ve been here so long, when you want to go, you tell me.’ I don’t

recall telling him that,” McCord said with notable wryness after news broke last week that his two-year option with the network was not picked up, ending his career of 30-plus years at CBS.

“This is not how I would have preferred to see it end,” McCord said. “I’m going on 72. I’ve been doing this for 30-odd years. I knew I was coming to the end of the deal, but I was going to go out on my terms. That’s not happening now.

“Bottom line, they fired me.”

“He [McManus] tells me, and he told Peter the same thing, that ‘We think CBS golf is getting a little stale, and we need to go in another direction,’ ” McCord told Golf Digest by phone from his home in Scottsdale. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but one thing I’ve never been called is stale.”

No one likes to be told their services are no longer required, but of course his act, with its planed spontaneous references to body bags and bikini wax, has gotten overly familiar, at best.

But here's where he loses me:

McCord, a former PGA Tour player and winner of three PGA Tour Champions events, is smarting over the decision mostly because he didn’t have a chance to personally thank all his CBS teammates behind the scenes who have supported him through the years, people who have become like family. “You just don’t do something like this,” he said. “You shouldn’t do it this way. No chance to say thanks to the viewers, to all my CBS friends? That’s what you get for 35 years?”

A CBS spokesperson said that the two men were offered the chance to work the first two events of 2020, the Farmers Insurance Open and the Waste Management Phoenix Open but both declined. McCord and Kostis are based in Scottsdale and are partners there in the Kostis McCord Learning Center at Grayhawk Golf Club.

McCord confirmed that he declined because, he said, “The way it was presented, I felt it was more for them than for us.”

Got that? he's mostly upset because he didn't get that chance to say adieu on air, but declined out of pique. And a reminder that that's how Johnny bowed out, and Phoenix would seem just perfect for the send-off, no?

On the whole, Peter Kostis, with his understated UPS jibe, comes off better of the two. We do, however, get our first hint as to what might come next:

Rumblings picked up by Golf Digest suggest that the network is going younger by making Trevor Immelman, the 2008 Masters champion, one of the new mainstays. He is expected to be join by his brother, Mark, a former All-American golfer and currently a college coach at Columbus State, who also does broadcasting on PGA Tour Live and on SiriusXM Radio. And 1997 PGA champion Davis Love III, a close friend of golf producer Lance Barrow, also could be in the mix at select events, including the Masters, according to sources.

Trevor seems OK, but doesn't have me walking on air. But his kid brother as well?

As I've noted before, I certainly agree with Sean Macmanus about the relative staleness of the broadcast, though not with his diagnosis of cause. This seems closer to the root cause:

Fresh insight on CBS and being ‘stale’

Gary McCord and Peter Kostis, “stale”? I think not. They’re the two who add the most life (McCord) and interesting analysis and information (Kostis) to CBS golf broadcasts (“How old is too old to talk about golf on TV?” Oct. 27).

If you really want to identify “stale,” look no further than the tower at 18. Jim Nantz and Nick Faldo (yawn) suck the life out of the telecast from the opening music theme.

Well, about that theme music.....

Trip Blogging - I don't know whether we'll have a Shipnuck mailbag later this week, because the lucky stiff is off in New Zealand playing Tara Iti and Cape Kidnappers. But before dpearting he posted a travelogue of a buddies golf trip to celebrate his 40th birthday. It's got some gems in it, so let's dive in, beginning on the first tee of The Old Course:

Two hours after leaving Muirfield, we roared into St. Andrews with just enough time to poke around the R & A clubhouse before our 4:50 (!) tee time. We were all feeling the

majesty of the first tee. Kevin is a superb driver of the ball, but he hit a smother-hook that ran clear across the 18th fairway onto The Links road. We granted him a mully and he piped it down the middle. “I can’t remember the last time I felt that nervous,” he said walking down the fairway.

His caddie, a leathery older gent, said, “Ian Baker-Finch did the same thing. But unlike him, you recovered.”

Your caddie didn't go by Shithead, by any chance? You had to be here in August to understand that one.... If you stepped onto that tee with the objective of missing the fairway, you'd hardly know how to do it... And yet, it happens far more often than we'd ever believe.

This is a good precis of The Old:

I’ve been lucky enough to play the Old Course a few times, so it was interesting to see it through Kevin’s eyes. He found it underwhelming off the tee, and it’s true — many tee shots are awkward and mostly blind. But the course grows progressively more interesting the closer you get to a given hole, and there’s nothing like the wild double-greens. Even the hillocks have nicknames. The 15th fairway features a couple of shapely mounds known as “Miss Grainger’s bosom.” This left Tom feeling a bit homesick, as Grainger happens to be his wife Amy’s maiden name.

Bosom is such a delightfully archaic term....

His description of Trump Aberdeen is worth reading, though we need to bust him for way oversharing:

It was after 4 p.m. when we arrived. While I was smearing Body Glide on my thighs in the bathroom, the boys migrated to the driving range, the first one we had seen on the entire trip. I joined them and we were all whacking balls with glee when Matt said, “What the hell are we doing to ourselves?” We marched to the first tee.

On the opening holes, it’s impossible not to be dazzled by Trump’s rugged dunes, which are taller than any I’ve ever seen on a golf course. But eventually the dunes never really come into play — they just frame the holes, and the playing field is kind of flat and ordinary. A round at Trump is like going through a stack of Playboys — you appreciate the beauty, but at some point it all starts to look kinda the same. The greens are another problem. Multi-tiered with sharp edges, they look wildly out of place in such a natural setting. The fairways are pretty narrow given the breezes, and there’s no wispy rough here — a couple of feet off the short grass and you’re dead. I wasn’t hitting it badly, but I lost a ball three holes in a row to close the front nine.

I remember posting an image of the edge of a green, where there were crazy edges going all sorts of ways. Way over-designed for sure....

And his ode to the wonderful Cruden Bay:

Laid out by Old Tom Morris in 1899, the course offers a perfect mix of holes: long, tough ones to test your ballstriking, a pair of drivable par-4s to test your nerve, and a blind par-3 to stretch your imagination. From the ninth tee there is an all-encompassing view of the coastline and the spooky majesty of Slains Castle, where Bram Stoker reputedly stayed while writing “Dracula.” Along with the sixth green at Pebble Beach, this is my favorite spot in golf. Maybe my favorite back-to-back pair of holes anywhere begins with the par-4 14th, which requires a blind approach to a gorgeous green nestled into a narrow dell. The 180-yard 15th calls for a hard draw around a towering dune to an unseen green. Then you get to rush down the hill to see what fate awaits. This is the kind of unique golf that compels a man to cross an ocean.

There's a joy to playing at a place like Cruden Bay that Alan captures so well, and that view from the ninth tee is indeed spectacular.

It's a fun read, especially with my next trip there a mere ten months away.

The Lido Shuffle - Non-geeks may want to give this a pass, but I tripped over this wonderful Twitter thread on The Lido, the Macdonald classic on the South shore of Long Island that was lost to the depression and WWII: