This morning presents with a decision... Shall I open and analyze my stack of March 31st account statements, or should I use the time to blog? After careful consideration of my options, what would you nice folks like to discuss?
Predicted date for the opening of said statements? Maybe by April 30th it won't feel so raw... that is, April 30, 2021.
Upon Further Review - As happens with increasing frequency, the points which seem most important to make when I first read the golfing press, somehow get overlooked when those items get blogged herein.
I want to excerpt a long Monday rant from Geoff Shackelford. It was his context for his blogging of the revised 2020 golf calendar, and I just thought it a misfire:
We are all clamoring for things to look forward to. It’s already been too long without sports and the dearth of competition stings a bit more as Masters week arrives with no Masters. That the planning has gone on behind the scenes is perfectly understandable. There is no playbook for dealing with a situation like this and golf will undoubtedly be the first major sport back.However, the Surgeon General of the United States warned just yesterday that this week would be “the hardest and the saddest" for Americans.
"This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment, only it's not going to be localized, it's going to be happening all over the country and I want America to understand that," Vice Admiral Jerome Adams said on "Fox News Sunday."
There was this from the President of the United States on Sunday, too:
"This will be probably the toughest week between this week and next week, and there will be a lot of death, unfortunately, but a lot less death than if this wasn't done but there will be death," Trump said.
Worldwide, 70,000 people have died and as of this post, at least 9,600 in the United States where there are 337,000 confirmed infections. More than 3000 may die in a single day this week. Hospital bed shortages are prompting makeshift hospitals in multiple American cities. Another 600 lost their lives to the COVID-19 coronavirus in Britain yesterday, surpassing Italy’s death toll for the second day in a row. The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, is in intensive care.Yet, the leading organizations of golf—typically associated with charitable efforts more than all sports combined—have been working hard behind the scenes to help stop the spread by wheeling out a new fall schedule. Even as nearly all experts suggest large gatherings to not be on the table any time soon and doing so on a day when thousands more will succumb.Feeling the need to share this information publicly, for no rational reason as every other sport quietly waits out this terrible time and with only faint regard for the threats posed by not taking every protective measure possible, diminishes the efforts of those attempting to stop this pandemic.
Fortunately my standing as a Shack fanboy cannot be challenged, so you'll understand the context of my rebuttal. Also, despondency is our constant companion, so no one begrudges Geoff the occasional rant.
But I feel strongly that he's wrong on this, but also that it's important that it be discussed in public venues. I would argue the exact reverse.... to wit, that it's in this darkest week that this news is most needed. No one should need to apologize for moving forward with their lives.... that, in fact, is an extremely important message for folks to be receiving these days.
This also ties in with my criticism of the R&A... I'm ecstatic that the Folks at Augusta National want to give us a Masters when they can.... whether or not it proves feasible. Same goes for the USGA and PGA of America, though the latter seem to have their priorities bass-ackwards.... But the R&A, in prioritizing insurance proceeds are, to me, misreading the moment and breaking faith with the millions of golfers they serve.
All Things Masters - There will be no rhyme or reason for the order of presentation herein, though it's always pleasing when one's Golf God agrees:
The postponed Masters is just one piece of a revised schedule, one that now includes the PGA Championship in August and the U.S. Open slated for mid-September. In Nicklaus' view, the changes could prove beneficial for Rory McIlroy as he looks to slip into an elusive green jacket."He seems to play better in the fall," Nicklaus said. "As you know, he's won the Tour Championship a couple times. Played in Atlanta, very similar conditions. I think this scheduling will be to Rory's favor."
I've been suggesting for weeks that a Fall Masters, with its softer conditions, could play to Rory's advantage...Of course, I'm pretty sure that Jack hasn't considered the potentially harsher take on why Rory does better in the Fall...to wit, that the more Rory cares, the worse he plays.
No doubt you've all seen this from Tuesday night's Champions' Dinner:
Everyone's in Masters green, well except the dog...
Not sure if these menu choices will work as well in November:
Each year at the real Masters Champions Dinner, the reigning champion gets to pick the menu, and before the coronavirus pandemic hit, Woods planned to treat his fellow Masters champs to steak and chicken fajitas plus sushi and sashimi.
And one additional treat for dessert.
“I’m debating whether or not to have milkshakes for dessert,” Woods said in February, speaking to the 2020 menu. An all-time favorite memory of his, he said, was watching Gene Sarazen and Sam Snead sip milkshakes on the porch at Augusta National’s clubhouse.
OK, but I thought Jack had cornered the milkshake at his Memorial event. Of course, that's a pretty specific and wonderful memory, so by all means have milkshakes in November.
Golf Digest had twelve things they liked about his stay-at-home celebration, though the list might be just a tad repetitive:
1.) For those planning a wedding, don't spend any time fighting over center pieces. You're not beating Tiger's sterling replica of the Masters trophy.2.) Tiger's smile, which 100 percent says, "That's right, I won the %&*#ing Masters."3.) Tiger going full Don Johnson with the T-shirt/green jacket combo.4.) Dog looking at sweets.5.) Dog looking off camera.6.) Dogs.
Further down the list is this:
9.) The stay-at-home beard. We've seen worse.
You mean like this?
Golf Digest also presumes to rank the Fifty Greatest Masters moments. This just reminds of how foolish they can be (of course, sight unseen, we all know what No. 1 has to be):
No. 50: A broadcast (finally) showing all 18 holes (2002)
The Masters has long embraced creating value through scarcity, and for many years that included limiting how much of Augusta National viewers at home were able to see. When Tiger Woods outlasted Retief Goosen to win his third green jacket in 2002, the other big winner was a television audience allowed to see all 18 holes of the final round for the first time. “We knew that there was a great demand for it,” Masters chairman William (Hootie) Johnson said of the relaxed policy, “and we just decided that we ought to satisfy that demand.”
It almost seemed that they were reluctant to allow us to see it...
I'm delighted that they've found a slot for this Tradition Unlike Any Other:
No. 43: An interview so painfully bad it was good (1980)
For golf fans of a certain age, televised interviews with Masters winners by Augusta National chairmen were once considered high comedy. A stiff, awkward air pervaded Butler Cabin when Clifford Roberts did the honors, and in 1980, Hord Hardin reached a nadir when he asked Seve Ballesteros how tall he was and how much he weighed. “The scene was out of a Monty Python movie,” Golf Digest’s Jerry Tarde wrote, “but only years later did I realize the full extent of Hardin's panic.” Hord’s explanation: “I knew Seve was a handsome fellow. I was building up to ask him about girls. But I realized maybe he’d say, ‘I don’t like girls. I like guys.’ So I sort of froze up.” To Hord’s credit: “I always realized how terrible I was at those things.” Today, the job is left in the capable hands of Jim Nantz.
So many favorites in this category. For instance, Clifford Roberts jumping in to correct a reference to Augusta Country Club... Or Ken Venturi making nice with Arnie, who he considered to have stolen a Masters from him. Really, anything with Clifford Roberts.
I hadn't read all the way through when I started blogging the item, because they're going to tease these out though the weekend. But we know we won't see a certain shot on No. 15 until Sunday....
Also from GD, nine things you didn't know about the Par-3 Contest:
There have been 101 holes-in-one made.
If you want to see an ace, the Par-3 offers an excellent chance as 101 have been made, including nine (a record) in 2016. Perhaps one of the most surprising was made by Jack Nicklaus' son GT in 2018, when the Golden Bear let him take a swing on the ninth hole. Another memorable ace came that year as well when Tony Finau grotesquely dislocated (and popped back into place) his ankle while celebrating the shot on the seventh hole.
As fun as it was, color me surprised that GT's would be included in that count... Not to be a rules Nazi, but doesn't one have to actually be entered in the event?
How about a slideshow of curious menu selections? I'll allow tou to peruse that on you're own, with a warning for anyone that's triggered by haggis.
Mike Bamberger and Alan Shipnuck previously collaborated on a book about a fictionalized Tiger Woods. They're back with a feature on a fictionalized Masters involving the very real Tiger....specifically, the flight to Augusta:
The golf world shuddered when Woods withdrew from last month’s Players, citing back issues, and then walked off the course 11 holes into the second day of the ensuing WGC-Match Play, even though he was 3-up on Brendon Todd at the time. He hadn’t been seen in public since.
But Tiger’s buoyant mood on the flight to Augusta owed much to his recent trip to Iceland, from where Woods had just returned after receiving three days of treatment. “Fred told me about his guy there,” Woods said. Fred Couples. “Back feels effing great. Best since Zozo.”
The man with 15 major championships started playing some kind of interactive tennis game with his son, Charlie, on an iPad. Nobody was really drinking. LaCava had the flagstick from 18 from last year’s tournament with him. He said he wanted Tony Finau and Francesco Molinari’s caddies to sign it.
“You know what you could get for that at auction?” Steinberg said.
“That flagstick is sitting in my den for the rest of my life,” the caddie said.
“I know, I know,” the super-agent said. “Just saying. LeBron told me he’d give you $100,000 for it.”
I know it's fiction, but Tiger allowing a couple of sportswriters on his plane? Does not compute.
But they get into a rhythm, including this highly plausible bit:
Just then Mickelson’s gaze wandered to an unlikely sight: Patrick Reed pressing flesh beneath the giant oak between the clubhouse and the 1st tee. Reed had spent all morningpresiding over the Drive, Chip & Putt festivities. Now the 2018 Masters champ wore his green jacket and a tight smile, joking with the kids and chatting with their parents.
Reed was making his return to competition after the unsettling events at the Players, where he was standing over a 12-footer for birdie on the 72nd green to force a playoff with Erik van Rooyen when two protestors stormed the green. One dumped a bag of sand on the putting surface while the other began building a castle before being tackled by one of the Tour’s vice presidents, Ty Votaw.
Understandably rattled, Reed left the ensuing birdie putt four feet short. The bad juju enveloping him will be one of the big stories early in the week.
Bad juju? Pulleeze, Mr. Table for One is the man for these social distancing times....
I may circle back to this as their Masters fever dream plays out... Or not.
We have another long-read for all those hunkering in place, a profile of the legendary Clifford Roberts by the great Frank Hannigan. Jerry Tarde's introduction is again the place to begin:
Editors search to match writer with subject, and this piece proved to be one of those happy marriages. Today his name is hardly recognized by golfers, but Cliff Roberts, co-founder of the Masters and Augusta National Golf Club, was the dictatorial visionary who set tournament and club standards that still define the golf world. His portraitist here is Frank Hannigan, who began his career as a golf columnist for the Staten Island Advance before joining the United States Golf Association as public-information manager in 1961 and eventually rising to become its senior executive director, 1983-'89. He subsequently worked as an on-air rules commentator for ABC and columnist for Golf Digest.
Hannigan was a writer at heart and bureaucrat by accident. He believed in jazz music, the Rules of Golf and the joy of friendship—and those three principles guided his life. Hannigan also admired power brokers and Old Money elite; he loved observing them up close, the way they wielded influence and got things done. He was personally dismissive of Augusta National—refusing to go to the Masters in his later years—but I always thought it was out of a touch of envy for what the institution has come to stand for. Despite or maybe because of his contrarian nature, Frank saw Roberts as a mix of pure power and to-hell-with-everybody-else. They were two iconoclasts separated only by a bank account.
This story should be compulsory reading for modern sports administrators and tour pros who need to appreciate where the game came from and who got it here. Pretty much nothing has changed since this piece was published in April 1996, except Masters daily tournament tickets have gone from $100 then to $115 in 2020. —Jerry Tarde
I'd prefer that everyone read the bible (in addition to, not that there's anything wrong with Frank's profile), because Hannigan focuses on that period after the Masters had become an institution. I don't think one can fully appreciate that without having lived through the hand-to-mouth period of the club's founding. It opened at the height of the depression, and the Tradition Unlike Any Other was only Plan B when they couldn't land a U.S. Open.
I always say that half of everything people know about Clifford Roberts is wrong. The contradictions are just endless:
- He was responsible for some of the most basic rudiments of golf broadcasts, for instance it was Roberts who suggested to CBS that they broadcast golf shots from behind the player so the viewer could follow the ball. Yet, as noted above, he wouldn't show us the front nine until 2002.
- He's widely perceived to have been a racist, and support for that can be found in any number of quotes. Of course he was a prisoner of his time and location, but the saddest place at Augusta on the day of his death was the caddie shack.
Well worth your time to read Frank's entire profile.
And one last bit:
Course Rater Confidential: What would scratch and bogey golfers shoot in tournament conditions at Augusta?
Ummmm...a lot?
For a scratch golfer:
76-80 – 43.5%81-85 – 35.5%86-90 – 9.7%70-75 – 4.8%91-plus – 6.5%
PANELIST COMMENTS
80-85. Given the length of the course, the firmness and speed of the greens, and the tightness of the hole locations, par would be a great score on any hole for even a scratch player. The better player would also make a double or two attempting to get cute on a short-sided chip shot.
82. But I’ll need Fluff on the bag and a breakfast ball off the first tee.
From the back tees, a standard scratch golfer who typically plays 6,800 yards will shoot 80-plus. There are many holes that you will have a wood into, and you need to hit the hood of a Volkswagen bug. Good luck.
For the bogey golfer? This is going to take a while:
101-110 – 48.4%Sky’s the limit – 35.5%96-100 – 12.9%91-95 – 3.2%
PANELIST COMMENTS
100-110. The speed of the greens and the amount of movement around the hole on short putts would make it difficult for the bogey golfer to score well. It would also play 1,000 yards longer than anything that they are accustomed to playing.100. Too much pressure to break 100.
110-plus if they ever finish. There will be holes where they may go back and forth chipping until they have a John Daly or Phil Mickelson moment, then DQ!
Assuming everything has to be holed out, my guess is that Joe Bogey golfer would need about 60 putts to get around ANGC.
Honestly, I don't know how a bogey golfer would ever hole out, except from pure luck.
I shall leave you to get on with your day. See you soon?
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