A little of 'dis, and a dollop of 'dat for you today. The usual Tour restrat stuff, but also some architectural musings...
Gentlemen, Restart Your Engines - We are at T-minus nine days for the Tour's resumption of play. It's all very exciting, though it of course pales in comparison to the rumor that salons and barbershops might re-open... I'm not sure where either fits on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, I'm merely hoping to avoid another back-alley haircut.
Brian Wacker has the news of an information package sent to the players:
The resumption of the PGA Tour season is a week away, and tour officials have offered further details on their health and safety plans with a 34-page “Participant Resource Guide,” which was sent to players on Monday morning.Many of the points in the guide, a copy of which was seen by Golf Digest, have been previously reported. The document, however, illuminates the Tour’s plans for a return, identifying more specifics as well as modifications to previous guidelines.
I hear it's quite the page turner, but let's focus like a laser on the surprises:
Most notable among the guidelines is that while COVID-19 testing is a condition of competition, the at-home test players and caddies take before traveling is not required but rather “strongly encouraged.” Also, should a player or caddie test positive while at a tournament, they’ll receive a stipend from the Tour to cover associated costs, but only if they have taken the at-home test and tested negative. Players are, however, required to fill out daily self-screening questionnaires starting seven days prior to departing for a tournament.“The at-home test is intended to help players avoid the unlikely situation of testing positive and be required to quarantine away from home,” said Joel Schuchmann, PGA Tour VP of communiations, when reached by Golf Digest. “They will be tested immediately upon arrival into Fort Worth.”
I'm actually unsure of how I feel about that, but Geoff is certainly a bit miffed:
So the PGA Tour’s view is that the pre-tournament test is one to prevent an inconvenient stranding, but if safety of players and those around them was the ultimate priority, I would think an all-clear test before traveling was one of the most important steps.This hole in the “bubble” is one of several—media and spouses/partners/inspirational companions/new Tinder matches who choose to travel and stay with players are not mentioned in any of the documents as part of the testing bubble. This, combined with not requiring an all-clear test after three months away from the Tour, explains why the word “screening” has been used to date.
Should we care about this rather minute difference, which seems limited to whether a player testing positive does or does not receive a stipend? I do assume that these guys don't present a huge risk factor, as I'll estimate that approximately zero have been on the NYC subway system since March.
I do get that the Tour is not testing everyone on site, which would seem to me the bigger concern. As for the inevitable Tinder hook-ups, well, we can only wish that these guys were that interesting.
This to me is the more interesting and amusing bit, as it tells us so much about our society.
That third bullet point seems especially amusing, given the size of their staff bags and the fact that only one guy touches it. But more to the point, golf quickly mobilized a series of protocols in reaction to those scary stories of how long the virus could stay active on surfaces....Yet, this walk-back is the proverbial tree falling in the forest:
CDC Now Says Virus 'Does Not Spread Easily' on Surfaces
As amusing as watching Tour caddies sanitizing bunker rakes might be, how long will we have to endure all this nonsense? As a first pass answer, I'm going with forever.... After all, folks are still removing their shoes at airports...
Shack also seems upset about alleged loophole:
The other noticeable loophole involves players being able to stay in a rental home, RV or at the “bubble” hotel with a companion not allowed at the course, but also free to roam the host city or anywhere but the golf course.
Le Sigh! Apparently Geoff thinks the quarantines should be a forever thing... and then there's shock when people protest the lockdowns. Just a reminder, Geoff, this was supposed to be a couple of weeks. People are going to resume their lives, whether you like it or not. If a condition of play is that you cease your relationship with your wife or girlfriend, we'll see how that turns out....
Dave Shedloski is there for those needing help to repare:
Wait … wait … GO!: The best advice for players on how to be mentally ready to restart the 2020 PGA Tour season
Given the bubble in which these guys resided pre-Covid, are we especially worried?
“Basically, how guys prepare for competition isn’t going to change. These guys knowhow to get ready to play golf, and they know what to do when the gun goes off,” Dr. Bob Rotella said. “Obviously, things going on in the world have affected their daily lives, and it has affected the rhythm of their season, their practice and so forth, but they can’t let that get in the way of their proven methods and mindset. Having said that, human nature dictates that everyone is different.”“Inside the ropes, it’s going to change the least. Playing the game is still playing the game,” Dr. Mo Pickens agreed. “But whatever the way things were at the last event we played, we aren’t going to see that coming back, maybe ever. A ‘normal’ week is going to be different. We will still have the traveling circus, but it is going to be a different circus.”
Seems like it'll be quite a bit quieter inside the ropes... Any time the world stops and starts, there will be some guys that look unprepared when the gun goes off. Whether that's an actual lack of preparation, or just the random walk of life remains an enduring mystery. But if I seem unconcerned, it's because that, like myself, these just aren't the folks we should be worrying about at this juncture.
They're world class at blocking out the rest of the world, so they'll be fine... Even in our little golf bubble, there are so many more deserving of our concern and assistance. But we can all use the amusement, and we still need to convince a whole bunch of governors that it's OK for folks to continue living, so let's hope golf can be helpful in that regard.
Moscow Rules - The National Golf Foundation informs us that 98% of the country's golf courses are open. Heck, even Scotland is back to playing golf, and who ever thought we'd see that in our lifetime. But there's one valiant holdout, bravely protecting its serfs from temptation:
Live in New York City and want to play golf?
Get out of the city. It’s your only option. You’ll have to go play elsewhere — Long Island, Westchester, New Jersey or Connecticut, Pennsylvania, wherever … if you’re lucky enough to find a precious tee time.
Inexplicably, while golf courses all over the tristate area — and around the country for that matter — are open for play, the 13 courses in the five boroughs of the city remain closed, as they’ve been since they were ordered to shut down on March 22.
Not only have city golfers been deprived of critical outdoor recreation, but the operators of the golf courses are hemorrhaging money as they struggle to maintain the expensive upkeep of the properties without the business revenue to offset the significant costs.
This is another of those effortless segues, in which I pay off that comment above abut the folks deserving of our concern and help. High on that list should be any human being forced to do business with the Mayor From Hell:
“It’s devastating,’’ Rich McDonough, the director of golf at Marine Park in Brooklyn, told The Post on Friday. “You’re talking about multi-million-dollars-a-year businesses that have absolutely no ability to operate, and there’s no reason whatsoever why they’re not open.’’
Mike Giordano, who operates Marine Park as the concessionaire, said he “thought initially it was going to end in a couple weeks, then it became a month now we’re into our third month.’’
“This could be a death blow to us,’’ Giordano told The Post. “Nobody has unlimited funds. You exhaust your funds as the clock keeps ticking.’’
Giordano said he’s spending $100,000 per month to maintain the golf course with no revenue coming in and — most appallingly — no communication from City Hall.
“Mike is obligated to maintain these properties with no revenue, which is ridiculous,’’ McDonough said. “Every Nassau County and Suffolk County course is operating, New Jersey is operating, everything around the five boroughs is wide open. The nonsense behind this is all coming out of City Hall and [Mayor Bill de Blasio] doesn’t seem to have any kind of a plan.’’
Giordano said “the most troubling thing about this is nobody has identified any sort of finish line’’ for the end of the closures.
As a wise man said, Commie's gonna Commie.... I don't see the issue, as I've been reliably informed that business owners are fully on board with the Il Duce:
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has been blasted as a 'liar' for claiming that struggling small businesses are 'hanging on' and are prepared to stay closed for 'months' yet as he continues to cling on to the city's lockdown despite mounting calls to reopen.
Previously I had been reliably informed that it was a three-hour tour...
Of course, things at Marine Park are even worse than just being forced to close:
A band of hooligans stole five golf carts from a Brooklyn golf course to go on a joyride and vandalized the course, along with a fleet of other carts, causing $100,000 in damages, police and a staffer said.
“It looks like a tornado hit the course,” Richard McDonough, the director of golf operations at Marine Park Golf Course told The Post on Monday, adding that 25 of the roughly 60 carts were wrecked.
Nothing says Justice quite like destroying golf carts, we can all agree. Amusingly, the stupid criminal meme has another in its long series of entries:
Officers searching the Marine Park neighborhood by car nearly collided with five suspects each zipping around on a golf cart when the police made a right turn from Avenue V onto Hendrickson Street nearby the course, cops said.
The thugs then ditched the golf carts and ran into the nearby parking lot of the Kings Plaza Shopping Center, said authorities.
Following a brief foot chase, cops were only able to catch up with one of the vandals – a 16-year-old boy.
The teen was arrested on charges of burglary, grand larceny, criminal mischief, reckless endangerment, and criminal trespass, authorities said.
The cops didn't exactly distinguish themselves either, but such is life in DeBlassio's People's Republic. And the final nail in the coffin:
When the golf course eventually reopens from its coronavirus-induced shutdown, there will likely be restrictions of one person to a golf cart for social distancing purposes, McDonough explained, noting that the fleet of trashed golf carts will now make logistics even harder.
When? More like if....
Architectural Musings - A few unrelated items on this subject, beginning with this promising header:
Course Rater Confidential: What makes golf-course routing so hard, and so important?
The answers seem pretty obvious, but there are interesting folks involved so let's see what they have for us.
1. Routing has been called “the hidden art” of golf-course architecture. Are there any golden rules of routing? Absolute no-nos? Any hard lessons you’ve learned inyour own career about what to do (or not do) when routing a course?
Tom Doak (Panelist since 1983; has played 97 of the World Top 100; author of the forthcoming book on routing, Getting To 18): In general, I feel that others’ rules for golf design were made to be broken, but one absolute no-no for me is to build a dogleg hole with another golf hole on the inside of it. I managed to win the job at Stonewall in Pennsylvania many years ago by remarking how people would inevitably short-cut their planned 18th hole by going down the 10th fairway, which they had not noticed. But then I made the same mistake in our redesign of Atlantic City Country Club, extending the 10th hole into a par-5, which meant that going down the fairway of the 9th would be an attractive option to some. Just try telling people not to take advantage of a short-cut in a casino town! Never again…
Funny story, I played ACCC in a Pro-Am with Big-Break Anthony and he encouraged me to the play the hole via that ninth fairway... The other interesting part of the hole is that the tee box is part of the practice green, a strange experience when you tee your ball up.
Jim Urbina (Panelist since 2015; has played 69 of the World Top 100): In his book, Golf Architecture, Alister MacKenzie described 13 rules to follow when designing and building a golf course; he broke every rule. Several hard lessons to learn. When someone says, “Build me a championship golf course,” the golf course should be hard but fair and the golf course should have a balanced scorecard. These are a few examples that stifle the designer. These demands hamper the creative process when trying to find the best holes on any given property.
The photo above is Pacific Dunes, designed by Tom Doak back when Jim Urbina was his design associate/master shaper. Urbina is the lesser known of the two, but Mike Keiser thought so highly of him that he forced Doak to co-design Old Macdonald with his former employee...
There's more, all of it interesting (at east if one tests positive for the design nerd gene):
2. For all those armchair architects out there who think, “I could do THAT,” what are some of the biggest challenges of routing that might not be obvious to the outside observer?
Doak: When people tell me one of my holes would have been better had I located the green or tee differently, I think, sure, but what about the holes that come before and after? The routing is a puzzle and it’s important that the pieces fit together well. When we are honing in on the final plan, anytime we consider tweaking a hole, it’s two or three holes that will be affected, because you can’t knock over one domino without hitting another. (Well, I suppose you can if you want a 100-yard cart ride from each green to the next tee, but I hate that sort of arrangement.) The other two fundamentals of routing are trying to plan the fairways around areas where drainage collects, and maintaining visibility from tee to fairway to green, two things that most amateurs don’t even think about until they run into trouble.
The biggest surprise to civilians is probably the extent to which routing and design are driven by drainage... it's its own dark art form.
Curley: Don’t get too hung up on the scorecard and by all means try to use the routing as the first tool to create variety in design. Look for natural holes as much as possible but, at the same time, do not be afraid to move dirt if you must. Grades must be lived with for the life of the course but nips and tucks can change initial designs (many great courses have done so over the years but few have made drastic grade changes). Find the great opportunities but don’t shy away from an occasional breather hole. Find the great natural par-3 but remember (as Pete Dye told me) you can always put a par-3 anywhere.
I know I'm going long, but this is the money bit:
3. What’s an example of a masterful routing?
Doak: Cypress Point is famous for how it goes through the dunes into the trees, back out into the dunes for the 8th and 9th, back into the trees again at 10 and 11, and then out across the dunes to the ocean. At Pacific Dunes I tried to mimic that. Many people have noted how the holes along the ocean aren’t at the end of each nine, but interspersed through the round so you never know when to expect them. But, the other great feature of the property was the bowl of sand dunes in the center, which gave me places for four great short par-4 holes, but I didn’t want to use them all consecutively. So, you play the first and second holes in the bowl, then you head to the ocean for 3-4-5, come back into the bowl for the 6th-7th-8th, head to the ocean again (twice), and come back through the bowl one last time at the short par-4 16th.
A number of thoughts.... It's hubris to compare his Pacific Dunes to the Sistine Chapel of golf, but I actually think he's on solid ground. Cypress is famous for it's eccentric routing, notably featuring BOTH back-to-back Par-5's and B-to-B Par-3's, the latter being two of the most famous one-shotters on our planet.
Yet Pacific Dunes is an equally weird scorecard, with a back nine featuring only two Par-4's. And while the PD site is not quite as varied as CPC, no parkland element, it's routing is equally breathtaking.
But also a reminder, we recently had a tease for the original Seth Raynor routing of Cypress, meaning that we might be able to compare how two Golden Era greats would have routed their eighteens over one of the best grounds for golf in the world. Be still my foolish heart...
Other musings of an architectural nature include a couple related to the new course at Bandon:
BANDON, Ore. – There are plenty of cliffside holes to love at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort’s new Sheep Ranch, which opens June 1 and features nine greens on the 100-foot cliffs above the beach and Pacific Ocean below.
But the focal point clearly is the giant, undulating, made-for-selfies double green perched atop Fivemile Point.
One piece of advice: If you’re afraid of heights, don’t look down. Plenty of photos and drone videos show the steepness of that edge of North America, but it feels even more dramatic when you take a break from reading putts to sneak a peek westward.
Any guesses at the source of the inspiration for a massive double green? The green is massive, with separate tall dunes blocking the right-side entrances to both holes. No. 3 plays almost directly west from the interior of the course, while No. 16 stretches along the cliff from a tee box set south of the green. The highest portion of the green serves as the front for No. 3 and is not really in play for No. 16. From that high point it’s down, around, over lumps and swales to the lowest portion of the green just a step from the cliff’s edge.
Not in play? We'll see about that, but it looks and sounds spectacular.
More musings triggered by this new track:
Sand bunkers: Do we need them? Sheep Ranch challenges that question
That depends... Are we getting rakes back anytime soon?
Why, I hear you asking:
Ever-present wind, Lusk told JuliaKate Culpepper.
“It’s hard to explain how strong that wind is,” Lusk said. “I’ll give a quick example — along the cliffs I hit a drive that went about 350 yards, and I don’t hit 350-yard drives. Into that same wind along the cliffs, I hit a very solid drive that went 140 yards. It’s a 210-yard difference on the wind on a tee shot.
“Now when that kind of wind comes blowing it up across the golf course with traditional bunkers, the sand flakes out, it creates these little tornadoes in bunkers and you see the wind spinning in the sand. You see that sometimes on the other Bandon courses, particularly on Old MacDonald, where you’ve actually seen it flying across the property.”
Like everything else in the world, this is an interesting adaptation necessitated by a unique feature of this property. But, given the expense of maintaining bunkers, the lesson here is one of degrees:
Lusk noted that sand bunkers can be expensive to maintain and are often the first thing to show wear. It wouldn’t be surprising if this trend became more popular.
“You’re starting to see this with some other courses around the country,” Lusk said. “More and more people are experimenting with leaving out, if not all, then at least some bunkers, because bunkers are a maintenance nightmare and that adds to the cost of running a golf course.”
Our bunker renovation project at Fairview took out maybe a half-dozen bunkers, though we might look back and think we could have removed others.
One last item before we move on, a mess of a feature that purports to explain the world to us:
Here are the 6 different types of golf courses, explained
Yeah, I'm thinking that the world doesn't fit quite that easily into categories... This is from newcomer Desi Isaacson, he of the recent series of features on template holes, which also featured fatal flaws.
He starts near and dear to my heart with this:
Links course
First up is the most famous type of golf course, the links course. The term derives from the Old English word hlinc meaning rising ground or ridge and refers to sandy area along coast. While many courses claim to be links, call themselves links-style, or have theword links in their name, the category is more specific than that. True links courses are mostly found in Scotland, Ireland and England. The course must be along the coast with sandy soil underneath. Links golf is where the game was founded as this sandy soil was perfect for the game and not great for much anything else. The land wasn’t of any use for agriculture so people started looking for a different use for it. The sandy soil drains remarkably well, keeping the ground firm — ideal for a golf course. You can check out the links association website which tracks all the courses in the world that fit their criteria of true links. Some of these courses include The Old Course at St. Andrews, Royal Troon, Lahinch, and several of the courses at Bandon Dunes golf resort.
But this doesn’t tell the whole story. When most people think of links-style golf, they are picturing golf that can be played along the ground with lots of undulation, plenty of dunes and little to no trees. These courses also usually feature pot bunkers as opposed to the larger sprawling American-style bunkers. Because of the lack of trees and waterfront location, wind plays a huge factor on most links courses.
Now, architects have started trying to replicate some of these features on land that aren’t technically suitable for links courses. They will build wide-open courses and try to make the ground feel naturally undulating and windswept. These courses can still be tons of fun, even if they aren’t technically links courses.
This is mostly accurate, though if you're going to address the prevalence of faux-links, it's hard to do so without talking about the grasses involved. And I'd have thought you'd want to note that the Open Championship is played exclusively on links...
Isaacson takes us through the litany of parkland, heathland and sandbelt courses in passably competent fashion, though I do think he underestimates the importance of a sandy base and the resulting similarities in the architecture of these types of courses. It's not for nothing that heathland and sandbelt courses are sometimes referred to as inland links. Substrate is destiny...
But then he lays a massive category error on us:
Stadium/Championship course
This may be what folks call their courses, but it's not a type of course in the sense that the specifics of a site drive the design. It's just a marketing term that folks used back in the Robert Trent Jones era, but that we've mercifully moved on from in recent times. Of course, Royal Troon is both a links and a championship course, hence his category error.
And someone needs to explain to him that the Par-3 at Augusta is still a parkland course....
Golfers Being Stupid - I know, I'm gonna need a bigger blog... Anyway, we just have a confluence of folks in and around our game saying things that profoundly silly.
First up, Justin Rose is just off his mutual break-up with Honma, was interviewed by Ryan Asselta, and had some curious thoughts on the Ryder Cup:
Ryan Asselta: Justin, this is supposed to be a Ryder Cup year. There have been some opinions given by Rory McIlroy and Brooks Koepka on the possibility of playing the matches at Whistling Straits with no fans. You’ve played on five European Ryder Cup teams. Is it worth playing the Cup with no fans?
Justin Rose: We might actually be used to it by then. It might almost be interesting if the Ryder Cup is the first event with fans. Who knows how the summer is gonna play out? The thought of a Ryder Cup without fans is mind-blowing, but what is the new normal? Would we rather still have the opportunity to play? You can’t just bump everything to 2021 because 2021 becomes chaos if that’s the case.
Interesting, Justin, because you know what else in addition to the Ryder Cup is being pushed into 2021? That would be....errr, nothing. And we all understand that if the Ryder Cup is pushed into '21, then the Prez Cup will inevitably move to 2022. So, WTF are you talking about?
But he's not done with the head-scratchers:
Justin Rose: In one way, it could be more intense between the two players. There’s nowhere to hide, nowhere else to look. You know, it’s eyeball to eyeball. It could create a bizarrely intense environment.
Maybe.... But it could also be flat and lifeless. Amusingly, Justin's wife Kate participated in the interview and her thought are no more tightly tethered to reality.
Next up is a frequent offender...please give it up for the one and only Shark. Most of us enjoyed the Premier Golf League story for the pressure it put on the PGA Tour, though it seemed unpromising and dreary at best.
But Mr. Norman had a much more personal reaction, because they were stealing his idea. I know, but I'm inclined to be charitable because his pimped out golf carts failed to revolutionize our 600-year old game, and who coulda seen that coming?
So Greg is here with an update on the PGL, most notable for the troubling specificity of his fever dream:
HOBE SOUND, Fla. — The Premier Golf League is not dead. The world needs it nowmore than ever! So says Greg Norman, an Aussie who has lived in Florida most of his adult life and is a 2001 inductee into the World Golf Hall of Fame.
Golf needs fewer events with more star power, Norman says, and that will ultimately happen because golf fans across the world will want it to happen. Norman says he has had no communication with the league’s organizers since February, but his understanding is that the first PGL event will be in January 2022. There may be no bigger believer in this new league than Norman.
Really, you can't make this up. The rest of the world doesn't know if we'll ever be able to play golf in front of spectators again, but Greg has the tee sheet for the first PGL event.
But wait, there's more... We can safely assume that the folks in Ponte Vedra Beach have no use for this gadfly, a safe assumption because they barely tolerated him when he was playing. But he's got the skinny on everything:
Norman is saying the PGL, in concept and in practice, won’t be killed by the Covid-19 pandemic. He’s saying the PGL won’t be killed by the public disavowals of it by Rory McIlroy and Brooks Koepka. And, Norman is saying, the PGL won’t be killed by whatever the PGA Tour is cooking up in an effort to squash it. News of the PGL dominated golf websites in January and February of this year, when the world was in a different place. The proposed league would be funded by Saudi wealth.
“What I’m hearing is that the PGA Tour, against all their bylaws and governances, is talking about putting aside a $40 million pot for eight players, with $8 million for the top player,” Norman said in a recent interview. “The PGA Tour is re-tweaking their model with the PGL out there. If you’re player nine, 10, 11 or 12, I think you’d be pretty pissed off.”
The rough English translation is along the lines of, "I'm still big, it's the pictures that got small". Come to think of, Norma (Desmond) vs. Norman.... just a coincidence?
But isn't it the absolute certainty and specificity that's most interesting, at least in a psychological pathology sense? Damn it, attention must be paid! The funniest part of all is that what he's describing pretty much already exists, it's called the FedEx Cup. But thanks for sharing, Sharkie...
We'll go out on this bit from Bryan Zuriff, the producer of The Match series and good buddy of Phil. This comes with its own rebuttal from Mike Bamberger, as Zuriff is beating his chest about the franchise of challenge matches involving Phil and Tiger, first with this bit of hype:
Zuriff expects a Match III, with Tiger and Phil, maybe even on the same team. The event would raise money for a good cause and be a payday for the participants and others. “They’re professional athletes, they should be paid,” Zuriff said. He imagines a second-day event that would not be televised, featuring the athletes, an event for which sponsors would pay large sums to participate. Zuriff’s tie is to Mickelson, “the best entertainer that golf has ever seen. He’s magic. He can do anything in front of a camera.”
That's pure hype, but at least with a grounding in reality coming off Phil's performance at Medalist. But, not content to rest on that, he then takes it that one additional step into Normanland:
“Bottom line,” Zuriff said, there is “something about Phil and Tiger that works.Chemistry. Movie magic.”
You’re tempted to scratch your head — could there be two star golfers with less chemistry? But, as they say at Graceland, 50 million Elvis fans can’t be wrong. Nearly six million people watched Match II. This show’s going on.
Thanks, Mike, for saving me the trouble of reminding folks of the reality of things. But they succeeded largely because the absence of any televised sports created unique pent-up demand, and they seized that intelligently in including the QBs.
Of course they want to milk it, but it's a much harder thing to keep the interest level high. I don't actually like their chances, especially since the one indispensable participant adds nothing to the broadcast...
Not sure when we'll next meet, as I've morning golf planned for the nest two days.
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