Colonial Times

It occurs to me that you might not know to look for a new post on a Tuesday.but we have much to discuss.  And tomorrow is the earlier tee time, so shall we dive in?

Must-See TV - The "Eye" will have no shortage of eyes upon it this week, as televised professional golf returns.  CBS presented its broadcast plan to the media (I know, postmodernism for sure), and Shack has a link-filled post that I'll draft off of.

We'll allow Jim Nancy-Boy to bat lead-off, though I think you'll agree that he's checked his white privilege and is keeping his perspective on matters:

“I consider this to be perhaps the most important moment in our country in my lifetime,” the 61-year-old Nantz said. “We have to get this right. We can't let this opportunity pass. I hope to express that at the top” of the broadcast.

Have to get what right?  Jim, please tell me you're not going to take a knee Thursday morning?

I'm really not sure what to make of the self-importance.  He's likely over-stating the importance of this moment in the country, that's a trap into which we all occasionally tumble.  But the sickness is in thinking that your silly little golf broadcast has to address the weighty issues of the day...  Your role, Jim, is to provide a respite from the real world, not to reinforce its malignancies.

But this might be the more important bit:

“It's a wonderful opportunity for the game ... to go before a sports-starved nation and have a chance to create a wider fan base than it's ever been before,” Nantz said. “A lot has to be personality driven. We need to hear from the players. It's something that's not obtrusive. It's an opportunity for players to invest in their own game.”

Personality driven?  You mean like Pebble?  Please don't ruin my day by telling me that Ray Romano is no longer self-quarantining... here's a thought, Jim.  Have you guys considered making the telecast golf driven?  An idea so crazy it might just work...

From that same Doug Ferguson piece, here's the skinny on the announcing crew:

CBS is doing its part of reduce health risks with a production crew that McManus said will be roughly half of what it is for a normal PGA Tour event, with operations such as graphics and video shading in six locations. 

Faldo will be at Golf Channel studios in Orlando, Florida, along with Frank Nobilo and Ian Baker-Finch, who usually are in towers on the course. The other talent at Colonial will be Dottie Pepper and Mark Immelman as on-course reporters. 

There will be smaller production trucks spread across the compound to promote social distancing. Nantz will call the action all four days, as the same production will be used for the weekday coverage shown on Golf Channel.

So, trucks are require to practice social distancing as well as humans?  Good to know...

It's not just Orlando, but this from the CBS press release indicates crew will be spread around the four corners of the globe:

CBS Sports and GOLF Channel will present a unified, linear broadcast production. The same production and announce team during Saturday and Sunday’s coverage on CBS also will work Thursday and Friday’s coverage on GOLF Channel – allowing for fewer than half of the normal contingent on site for a typical PGA TOUR production. In addition to Fort Worth, there will be members of the team working remotely from GOLF Channel studios in Orlando, Los Angeles, New York, Stamford (Conn.) and New Zealand.

So, what have we learned, class?  Somebody will be in New Zealand, but that somebody is seemingly not Frank Nobilo....

Lots of discussion of audio, but first that which will not be on your soundtrack:

• While there will be no fans watching the action at Colonial, the network will eschew piping in any audio enhancements—another way of saying it will not add fake crowd noise or reactions. As Nantz said, appropriately, “The key word is ‘fake.’ As a fan … just take it for what it is, give me the real scene and let me deal with it.”

Ah, good times.  Remember when CBS got busted for piping in bird calls?  Hey, dogs don't get older than this one, though it's good to see them maintaining the purity of their audio track.

This bit relates to Nantz's comments above, and I really recommend muting your TV or fast-forwarding through it if you're watching on tape:

Another wrinkle, and a big one that will frame coverage the first week, will be an introductory monologue from Nantz shortly after coming on air. The longtime golf host will, in his own words, put the return of golf—and, more broadly, sports in general—in the proper perspective amid two ongoing world-altering events: the COVID-19 pandemic and the impassioned protests in the wake of the death of George Floyd.

Because they think we can't sort through such issues on our own...  I might be more inclined to accept Jim Nantz's guide to the real world if I had any sense that Jim spends much time there...  he self-quarantined on 17-Mile Drive, so I'm sure he can teach us much about life in the 'hood.

So, where was I?  Oh yeah, audio:

A few players have already agreed to wear a microphone during this week’s telecast, part of what CBS chairman Sean McManus described as an “aggressive” push with the Tou

r. With no spectators for the first five events, McManus said there’s “a little bit more of a willingness” among the players to be mic’d up.

“I think there’s probably a greater appreciation for wanting to contemporize golf coverage a little bit,” he said, “and players are beginning to realize they can play a real role to make it more interesting.”

Maybe the best part is that accompanying photo.  Jordan is for sure the poster child for audio capture and the photo is from Colonial in 2019, but those high-fives with spectators are now the subject of hate-crime legislation.

Audio capture is great, though it needs to be carefully curated....  Most of what you get is banal, so CBS can't just feed us the live audio.  But the other point to make is that it's going to be hot this week in Fort Worth, so wearing the microphones might not be a whole lot of fun.  And for those that sweat profusely, I've heard talk that moisture and batteries are a bad combo....

But by far the most noteworthy bit has been dubbed the "Confession Cam":

“I want this to be expressed — 'Guys, we need your help. We're not asking for a lot,'” Nantz said. “If you had a chance to hear from 30 players in the field, you can't imagine what a difference that could make to our broadcast. All they have to do is walk over and talk into a confession cam. We need the players' help.”

Apparently they will be ushered into a tent and asked a single question.  i agree that this could be good fun, but it kinda depends upon the question, no?  Or maybe they'll just take a knee... 

More fun is to think through what we'd want them to be asked, and somehow I'd expect there's an amusing Twitter thread on this very topic.  I'd offer up the inevitable Patrick Reed question, but you wouldn't have to even make it personal.  You could ask them to describe the worst drop they've ever seen taken, and it could even be without naming names....

I thought this was interesting as well:

• Though the network plans to use roughly the same amount of equipment as before the hiatus, it will reduce the number of personnel on the ground by half, including having just three announcers in Fort Worth: Nantz in the 18th tower and Dottie Pepper and Mark Immelman as on-course reporters.

That seems to this observer as less of an issue over the weekend, when the field is sorted by score.  But should have them stretched pretty thin on Thursday and Friday, no?

Udder Tour Notes -  The logistics of the broadcast are their own interesting subject, but let's cover a few other aspects of the resumption of Tour life.  First, I know you're deeply concerned about their travel arrangements, but we've got you covered:

7 things to know about the PGA Tour’s jumbo jet carrying players and caddies

Who gets the middle seat?  Nah, but this won't surprise you:

But there’s a priority ranking 

As far as registration goes, players come first, caddies second. And even then, players with greater status in the game will be prioritized first. A top 20 player like Matt Kuchar will have no problem choosing his seat. He might even get one of the precious first class spots. But a lower-ranking player will be pushed further down the list. Caddie reservations will follow players, and will be prioritized according to their player’s rank.

Gee guys, it might not be a good look to put Harold Varner in steerage.... Just sayin'!

No test, no boarding 

In order to provide as safe an experience as possible, players and caddies will only be able to board the plane once they’ve confirmed a negative Covid test within the last 24 hours. The Tour is providing testing on Saturday afternoon to players and caddies who wish to fly via the charter jet. If a player tests positive, they will not be allowed to board the plane

But who is handling the flights for the Tour?  I actually don't know for sure, but this was the accompanying photo:

Does Jay know anyone at FedEx?  More importantly, do FedEx planes have seats?  Seems like they've left us with more questions than they actually answered.

There's surprisingly little written about the testing procedures as players arrived at the tournament site, this being the most detailed:

When the PGA Tour resumes on Thursday at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth,

Texas, following three months of silence due to the coronavirus pandemic, it will be a new golf world with a new normal. 

Testing – including thermal readings and questionnaires each day – is one of the pillars of a safety and health blueprint developed by the PGA Tour in consultation with infectious disease experts. The Tour has partnered with Sanford Health to conduct COVID-19 tests, with results available in a manner of hours. 

Social distancing measures, host hotels and chartered planes for players also are among measures taken by the PGA Tour to create a “bubble” of protection for players, caddies, staff, media, volunteers and others that will attend events.

Thermal testing and questionnaires are not what most of us think of as "testing", it's more a way of culling the herd for those that should be tested.  Last I heard, the Tour is not planning to share any positive tests with the public, though I'm curious to see is their longstanding policy of Omerta can survive the Wuhan flu...

This is an interesting take:

The 3 most significant ways having no fans at events will impact play during the PGA Tour's restart

I've been all over this issue:

No more “grandstanding”

For most amateurs, missing way long of the green is the quickest way to a big number. The ball often careens well past the putting surface into an impossible position. You’re forced to try a flop shot, often with the green sloping away from you, if you’re to have

any chance to save par. On the PGA Tour, however, shots that miss long—or right, or left—often end up hitting a grandstand and bouncing back toward the hole, or ending up in the grandstand and resulting in a free drop. They essentially act as bumpers, and it’s a phenomena labeled by conspiracy theorists detractors as “grandstanding.”

Whether players use grandstands as backboards intentional or otherwise, the fact that they won’t be in place at the first few tournaments could have a very real impact strategy. Say a player is faced with a 250-yard approach into a par 5. There’s water short of the green and a grandstand behind it. The player is in-between clubs—his 3-wood carries about 270, but his 3-iron only flies about 240. With a grandstand there to catch anything that goes long, 3-wood would almost always be the play. Now, players will have to decide between hitting a little three-quarter 3-wood into the green or roast a 3-iron, with danger lurking short and long.

Think we’re exaggerating? Well, here’s how Jim Furyk, who has been on tour more than 20 years put it: “There’s a lot of greens on the PGA Tour that I’m not actually sure what’s behind them because there’s usually a block of stands there every year when we play them.”

Yep, things are going to look a lot different for players without fans the next few weeks on tour.

To me, it highlights one of the great misunderstandings about the professional game, the extent to which these guys use TIO's to their benefit.  Interestingly, all three of his examples, the other two are more lost balls and tougher lies in the rough, should theoretically drive scoring higher in these five events to be played without spectators and grandstands.

Unexpectedly, the Monday qualifier for this week's Korn Ferry event was loaded:

More than 250 players will tee it up at two sites – Palencia Club in St. Augustine, Florida, and Eagle Harbor Golf Club in Orange Park, Florida – on Monday ahead of the Korn Ferry Tour event, and their resumes are all over the board.

You mean people want to get out of the house?  Who could seen that one coming?  Familiar names such as Martin (Mr. Gerina) Piller and Dru Love qualified, but there were all of eight spots available.

I read somewhere that the cancelled tournaments represented $90 million in purses, so it's no surprise that these guys will do anything to get a tee time.  But I'm not calling them money-grubbers, it's just a normal human desire the get back to that which you do.  

'Dis and 'Dat - Your humble blogger has far too many browser tabs open, so shall we knock a few off?

The Rich Get Richer - We've seen this before, and we'll see it again:

Report: Augusta National makes largest real estate purchase yet

Even by Augusta National Golf Club’s gaudy standards, this real estate deal is a doozy.

On April 13, the Monday after what was supposed to be the final round of the 2020 Masters, until it was postponed to November because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the club finalized a $26 million purchase of a nearby shopping center, making it the single-largest financial acquisition in ANGC history, according to a report on Thursday by the Augusta Chronicle.

The 15-acre National Hills Shopping Center is across the street from the northwest corner of the Augusta National property, just a couple hundred yards from the main entrance on Magnolia Lane. The primary tenants are The Fresh Market and Electrolux customer service repair center.

We always knew of their desire for a defensible perimiter.  We just never realized that perimeter would be in South Carolina...

You'll Need a Bigger Blog - I think we can all agree that this list can't possibly be comprehensive:

The 41 absolute *worst* feelings in golf, according to golfers

Here's an example:

22. Blading a sand wedge from a greenside bunker

I don’t always hit my wedge 170 yards, but when I do, it’s from a greenside bunker.

This isn't all that bad, as long as it's a front bunker, so that you're hitting towards your next tee box.  From a back bunker?  Just abandon the ball and wait for your group at the next hole.

But I can top this one:

31. Counting your clubs and realizing one is missing 

The horror of realizing you left your wedge back on that green where you chunked, then bladed those chips.

Much worse is to suggest, while caddying, that your player hit 8-iron instead of the nine, only to find no 8-iron in the bag...

I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy this one from the Golf Digest vault:

Dirty little secrets of a sandbagger

Little?  We'll be the judge of that:

Most people classify sandbagging on a handicap as outright cheating, but I’m not so sure. Cheating is carrying a tube of Chapstick in your pocket and whipping it out on the

tee of a long, tight par 4 with water running down the right side. You grease up your lips, put the tube back in your pocket, pull your driver from your bag, and wipe your bottom lip with your forefinger. Then you discreetly brush that greased-up finger across the clubface of the driver. That little film of lubricant makes it impossible to slice the ball into the drink.

Or the guy I knew from Houston who always griped about the course being in lousy condition. He would suggest on the first tee that we play the ball “up,” so you may bump it in your own fairway. He always carried a roll of LifeSavers, which we didn’t regard as suspicious until the day we caught him tossing one on the ground next to his ball. We watched him roll his ball up on top of that LifeSaver, and it made the prettiest little tee you ever saw. He preferred the lime-flavored kind, so the green blended in with the grass. In winter, when the Bermuda grass went dormant, he’d use butter-rum.

Now THAT’S cheating. Sandbagging is quite a different thing. I did it for years on the Texas golf “barbecue circuit,” for reasons of economic survival. There are scores of small amateur tournaments around the state, and handicap hustling on this “tour” is a way of life. From Sherman to Paris, from Tyler to Longview, you either play with an inflated handicap or just donate your entry fee to the guys who do.

Does Patrick Reed suck on Lifesavers?  It's good fun, though our bigger problem these days is with vanity handicaps.  

I'm of mixed minds on this one:

Cheaters on tour: ‘We know who they are’

This is another from the Golf Digest vault, so no cheap Patrick Reed jokes here.

Nothing has been said this year in golf or in sports that rings with a sharper truth than the five words: “We know who they are.”

To a leading question in a dinner setting, Tom Watson acknowledged in late winter that there were cheaters on the PGA Tour. “The game is a game of integrity,” he told an Australian interviewer in Melbourne, “but you are talking about money and you’re talking about livelihoods.”

Invited to name names, Watson said icily, “We know who they are.”

As if candor were calumny, Tom was slammed in the U.S. for once again sticking his blue nose where it wasn’t wanted. But the slammers lost momentum when Nick Price told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, “There are two [players] I know of for sure on tour who cheat and many others who I have come across in my travels. But once you do it, the guys all know who you are. Forever.”

While PGA patriots were extolling Jeff Sluman’s honesty at Bay Hill, Ben Crenshaw, of all gentle people, was saying, “Cheating is the absolute worst thing on tour, period. It’s like the people who play golf are one big family, and once you get cast out of the family, there’s no way to get back in.”

First, I'm glad that you guys know, but I'm still curious as to why you don't share that with the rest of us....  We get enough glimpses to know that there's more than they let on, but not enough to know how widespread it really is.

But it's that last bit that really troubles me, because the cheaters don't seem to actual;y get cast out.  Not only did Vijay, Gary Player and Colin Montgomerie survive allegations of cheating seemingly their whole careers, but Sung Kang remains a member in good standing.  

I left Seve out, about whom a PhD dissertation on cheating could be written, including this:

Many U.S. Opens ago, a large Californian named Lon Hinkle seemed to hang over young Ballesteros like a gargoyle at every green. Asked about it afterward, Hinkle said in a measured tone: “He is a great young player, but he is going to have to learn to mark his ball like a professional.” Evidently, he did.

Not according to many Americans...

I actually believe that the bast majority of players are honorable, but the Tour's refusal to share the exceptions rankles.  I don't actually take their word for much of anything, as they act like they have something to hide.

News You Can Use - Again from that vault, though it seems ripped from today's headlines:

How To Save Your Club

Including this proposal that has much to recommend:

It has long been a truth universally acknowledged that no man is a hero to his valet. In an asylum, who will have the better measure of the inmates than the keepers? In the

singular, special bedlam of a golf club, who is in a better position to pass final judgment on the clubworthiness of the members than THE STAFF: the people in the golf shop and caddie shack, the greenkeepers, the folks in the clubhouse?

My second modest proposal would therefore stipulate that each year, by secret ballot properly certified by a disinterested party, the staff shall have the right to “fire” 1 percent of the members excluding, however, in the interests of equity, those members who have bought their way in within the preceding five years.

I suspect that such a policy would put an end in short order to undertipping, stiffing the pro by patronizing Nevada Bob’s, being discourteous to waiters and caddies, failing to repair ball marks, bringing around the wrong sort of people, taking five hours to play 18 holes and many of the other forms of general churlishness that have made modern golf so iffy a social and sporting proposition.

Yes, just like public shaming, the behavioral benefits would be profound.... 

The Seedy Underbelly of Professional Golf - This will shock you for sure:

John Daly will send your friends a (semi-harassing) message for $750

Semi?  But of course he will.... But get these comparative valuations:

The way Cameo works, different celebrities charge different fees for a quick message and will take up to seven days to create the short video. Other golfers on the site include Keegan Bradley and Luke Donald, who both charge $149 for a short message. Tom Lehman will leave a short message for $100 while Golf Channel host and former Symetra Tour player Blair O’Neal will do so for $99. A message from current LPGA star Lexi Thomson costs $50.

Long John isn't exactly the value brand, is he?  

I'll see you good folks later in the week.