Your Friday Frisson

Unclear at this moment whether golf is to be played...So let's spend a few moments together and prepare you for the weekend ahead.

Tiger Scat - With PGA Tour Live broadcast over Golf Channel as a freebie, there was little excuse for not seeing each and every one of his 71 strokes.  Lots of takeaways:

Tiger Woods is back and 3 things you should know after Round 1 at the Memorial

Tiger Woods is contending 

Woods put his tee in the ground, placed his ball on top of it and striped his tee shot 327 yards down the right side of the fairway. He hit his approach to within 10 feet. He rolled

in the putt. Birdie. Woods hadn’t played since mid-February due to ailment and the PGA Tour’s three-month hiatus due to the coronavirus. At his last tournament, the Genesis Invitational, Woods had finished last among the players who made the cut. He was back, and he was back.

Woods added a birdie at 3. Two-under through three. He was 1-over from there and finished with a 1-under 71, five shots behind leader Tony Finau.

“Got off to almost an ideal start and got a feel for the round early,” Woods said. “I just didn’t make anything today. I had looks at birdies, but I really didn’t make much.”

If by contending one means that he's reasonably well positioned, specifically T18.  

But I have to think this guy is over-promising:

10 things we learned from Tiger Woods’ very first hole at the Memorial

Ummm, perhaps that one hole is the ultimate small sample size?

1. We’re doing collars this week. 

Woods wore mostly blade-collared Nike shirts in 2019, plus the notable mock-neck red he wore in capturing the Masters title. He went blade collar at The Match II, too. This week? Looks like we’re back to a traditional collar. As for the color? We’ll call Thursday’s selection somewhere between “sky blue” and “seafoam green.”

Well, at least he's focused on the important stuff.

6. Bryson ain’t the only one who can move it. 

Woods’ 3-wood off No. 1? It went 327 yards. (That was hardly a fluke, too: his 3-wood a hole later went 345. But that’s inadmissible for the purposes of this column.)

After a practice round earlier in the week, Bryson said Tiger hits it pretty far for an old guy...

8. That iron swing? Just the way you remembered. 

Woods’ approach shot was perfection — a pin-seeker to a back hole location on a blustery Ohio summer afternoon. After nearly hitting the flagstick on the way by, he was left with 10 feet for birdie.

His swing looked very much under control all day.

10. Tiger Woods makes everything in golf that much more exciting. 

No fans, sure. But there’s Tiger Woods, stiffing iron shots, making birdies, walking that Tiger Woods walk. Everything around him — Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka, wedge shots, the Memorial — instantly elevates in excitement. 

Good news, golf fans: still 71 more golf holes to go.

More like 54 at this juncture... Only eighteen of which are guaranteed. 

TigerTracker was plenty pleased as well, though he did highlight this aspect of Tiger's game:

Woods’ par-5 play will likely be a point of emphasis heading into the second round. All of them are gettable, but he wasn’t able to go for any of them in two (either because he was too far back or out of position) and consequently made only one birdie on the par 5s.

As an opening round of the new season, after an inconceivable five-month layoff, the day obviously exceeded all hopes.  The alternative framing, however, is that this will be his only hostile action until the PGA at Harding Park, and that's a higher standard.  He certainly showed plenty of rust, so he'll need to make progress there and avoid going the wrong direction today.  He's in fine shape, but not so fine that a bad day wouldn't result in an innocent trunk being slammed....

Here was Tiger's own take:

“Well, it’s been a while since I’ve played,” Woods said. “Got off to almost an ideal start and got a feel for the round early. I just didn’t make anything today. I had looks at birdies, but I really didn’t make much. 

“I was very pleased the way I drove it, my feel for my irons. I just didn’t quite hit the putts hard enough. Most of my putts were dying, didn’t quite have enough oomph to it.”

And this from one of his playing partners:

“I think he’s always had a wonderful cadence with his routine. He does the same thing every single time,” said McIlroy, who shot 70. “I’ve always enjoyed playing with him because you can sort of feed off that. He got off to a great start. He was hitting it nicely. He sort of had most things under control today. I’ve always liked playing with him because of that rhythm that he has.”

And this on the subdued feel of the place:

DUBLIN, Ohio -- Next to play, Tiger Woods. 

Silence. 

No roars. No applause. No "Let's go Tiger!" coming from the gallery that would go rows and rows deep with fans trying to get a glimpse as golf's most famous player stood on the tee box at No. 1. 

Welcome back to the PGA Tour, Tiger, and welcome to how tour events are now being played. While the rest of the tour players have had five tournaments to get used to events without fans amid the coronavirus pandemic, Woods didn't get a first-hand experience until Thursday during the first round of the Memorial Tournament. 

"There were still a lot of moving carts and a lot of media that were moving around, but the energy wasn't the same without the fans," Woods said after his opening-round 1-under 71, which left him in a tie for 18th and five shots behind leader Tony Finau. "That certainly was noticeable, mostly different. But there were still a lot of moving parts with camera crews."

I'm still unclear on why they were doing any player introductions on the first tee...Tiger had this comment as well:

"I definitely didn't have any issue with energy and not having the fans' reactions out there," Woods said. "I still felt the same eagerness, edginess, nerviness starting out, and it was good. It was a good feel. I haven't felt this in a while."

He goes at 8:17 this morning, though I haven't checked to see if PGA Tour Live will extend the freebie...

Mikey Bams has predicted No. 83 this week, and isn't backing down based on Thursday's play:

Why Tiger Woods, after an opening 71, will likely be in the hunt this Sunday

Unlike the current generation of millennial scribes, Mike believes in consequences for bad predictions:

If Tiger is not contending by Sunday afternoon, this reporter will eat his package of Tour-issued Zehn-X sanitizing wipes. (Ten towelettes.)

Here's the crux of Mike's argument:

Tiger is more difficult to classify. In 2000, when he was playing golf likely better than

it’s ever been played, he wasn’t fast, but he was decisive. He knew what he wanted to do and how he would do it. He was under the tutelage of Butch Harmon in that period. In subsequent years, under Hank Haney and Sean Foley, Tiger often looked actually unsure of what kind of swing he wanted to make, even in weeks when he was contending and winning.

Which was one of the most striking things about his round on Thursday. Woods, who doesn’t have a formal coach now but talks about the swing with his friend and employee Rob McNamara, made one confident swing after another on Thursday. He looked like he was playing a casual round at home, and that’s not a comment on playing golf without a gallery. At home, at Medalist, he plays in a cart on a flat course and gets around in under three hours. His first tournament round in this age of the pandemic took well over five hours. The supergroup was waiting on one tee after another and sometimes in the fairway, too. If Tiger had even a soupcon of irritation it was not evident. It’s amazing, in golf, when golfers are swinging well, the whole mood lifts. 

Some 71s are better than others.

That last bit is true.  But truer is the fact that none of those 71s is as good as Finau's 66 or Palmer's 67, so there's much work to be done. 

Lions and Tigers and Bears - Well, we've covered the Tiger, and we'll get to Jack in a sec.  As for a lion, well there's always Phil... though that's not spelled correctly.

Did you see Phil and his putting hitch?  Egads, just when you think the man can't get any crazier:

Phil hasn’t been putting great recently, finishing 139th in SG: Putting in 2019 and 126th so far in 2020, so he’s tinkering again. In what appears to be a new addition this week, and as you can see for yourself below, he takes the putter back, makes a pronounced stop, holds it for a second or two, then resumes once again.

What I couldn't tell was whether the putter actually rested on the ground during that pause.

As for Bryson, he shot a one-over 73.  But let's admit it, his score isn't the number we're focused most on:

On the 17th hole, DeChambeau uncorked a tee shot, easily clearing the bunker on the left with 348 yards of carry, rolling down the hill toward the green to finish 407 yards away. That’s right, four-zero-seven. From there, he had just 66 yards left, and a very average approach left him with 20 feet for birdie. It was an easy two-putt par. If only that was his best drive of the day. 

Two holes later, on the 1st hole at Muirfield, with the wind in his favor, DeChambeau took a hyper aggressive line off the tee, up and over the corner. Needing about 335 yards of carry, DeChambeau got 345, bounding through the edge of the rough and down the hill toward the green. When his ball came to rest, it was 423 yards away from the man who hit it, and just 46 yards from the hole. 

“Those are usually numbers you see after an errant drive,” was immediately mentioned on the broadcast. 

“Yeah, when you had to chip out,” Christina Kim replied.

If I understood correctly from the broadcast, in the forty-five year history of the event there had been exactly two drives in excess of 400 yards, and the one guy matched that total yesterday.  But I had been reliably informed that driving distances are down from 2018, so it must be our lyin' eyes...

Jack of course paid a virtual visit to the broadcast booth and had these comments on our favorite topic:

Jack Nicklaus has seen enough. Well, he's seen enough for several decades now. After his course, Muirfield Village, was torched last week (the winning score was 19 under) and currently under attack from 400-yard drives by Bryson DeChambeau, Nicklaus called out the USGA and R&A to make equipment changes (to the golf ball) in the near future. 

"The golf ball is a very simple thing to fix and I've been preaching about it for ... 43 years I first went to the USGA," Nicklaus said in the Golf Channel booth during the first round of the Memorial Tournament on Thursday. "I mean, that's a long time to be studying something. Guys, stop studying it and do something, will you please?" 

The governing bodies of golf -- the USGA ad R&A -- have been studying distance reports for forever. Earlier this year, they actually said that golf does have a problem with distance (if you've watched Bryson hit a 423-yard drive, you would agree), but no steps have been taken yet to correct any of this.

He's implicitly siding with your humble blogger, though he got there long before I did.  Regardless of the causes of the distance gains, the ball remains to logical means of regulating distance because it's a manageable solution.

Of course, there's little evidence of the existence of the necessary will in our governing bodies, so mostly we're all just agreeing among ourseleves.

No doubt you caught this guy's name on the leaderboard:

Jordan Spieth has no trouble getting off to good starts. But can this one finally lead to a good finish?

The round included this bit of Peak Jordan:

Spieth eagled the par-5 11th hole, his second of the day, converting from four feet after an approach from 211 yards. But he gave it right back when he doubled the par-3 12th by coming up short in the water.

Not sure he's got four days of consistent play in him these days, but people really want him to make it back to the top.  They do get a little overly excited by any show of his old form, and that's getting a little tiresome.

Open and Shut - A couple of items "celebrating" what should have been Open Championship weekend:

The 15 best Open Championships, ranked

At least they don't the claim of being the definitive ranking....

Surprised that this one passed muster:

13. 1992, Nick Faldo, Muirfield

As Rae noted, Faldo was in the prime of his prime, going for his fifth major in six years. He had won the Irish Open, and at the start of this Open, he looked fundamentally unstoppable. He set a 36-hole record, beat his own 54-hole record and came into the final round leading by four shots. It looked like a coronation, but it was not—a miserable stretch from 11 to 14 saw him lose three shots, American John Cook catching him and taking the lead on 16. For Faldo, this “dominant” Open now became about resilience. Pulling himself together, he birdied two of the final four holes and squeaked out a one-shot win—a testament to perseverance and even acceptance in the face of what must have been massive disappointment, and the greatest of his three Opens.

I'd have this one third of the three.  His best was the '90 win at the Old Course, because it's the only one of his six majors that wasn't the result of a collapse by another player (Zinger, Cook, Norman, Hoch and Floyd, to name names).

Jack being my golf God, this one still stings:

7. 1972, Lee Trevino, Muirfield

In terms of the greatest shots in Open history, Trevino’s chip on 17 on Sunday ranks near the top. He had bungled the par 5 up to that point, and had hole out for par while Tony Jacklin, tied for the lead, had a 15-footer for birdie. It looked very much like Jacklin would head to the final hole with at least a one-shot edge. “I really felt, on the 17th, like I’d broken him,” Jacklin would later say. But in one of the great feats of match-play-within-stroke-play golf, Trevino turned the tables. Watch it play out, including Jacklin’s subsequent putts, starting at the 3:45 mark:

For Jacklin, who had watched Trevino hole out twice the day before, the loss was unbearable. Later, he said, “I was never the same again after that. I didn’t ever get my head around it—it definitely knocked the stuffing out of me somehow.” Jacklin had already won the Open in 1969, luckily, and would go on to transform the European Ryder Cup team as its captain, but what shows the emotional swings of better than that moment, which gave Trevino his second straight claret jug?

There's video at the link, but you can't make me watch it again....

And the winner is... 

1. Tom Watson, 1977, Turnberry

Students of the game knew No. 1 without having to scroll down, or else would have been enraged to find anything else in the top spot. “The Duel in the Sun” between Watson and Jack Nicklaus was simply one of the greatest golf spectacles ever, and one that, to quote Rae, “will forever be spoken about.” It was about the great rivalry between the two men, it was about the sportsmanship on display, and, of course, it was about the golf. “It went beyond natural chronology,” Rae said. “It was legendary.”

Watson, 27, and Nicklaus, 37, matched each other score for score in the first three rounds at Turnberry, hosting the Open for the first time, pulling away together where by the end, they were 10 shots better than anyone else in the field. In the closing stretch, where Watson birdied four of the final six holes for the dramatic victory, but perhaps it’s best summarized by a quote from that final-round Saturday, when Watson turned to Nicklaus and said, “this is what it’s all about isn’t it?”

“You bet it is,” Nicklaus replied.

I've avoided any of the St.Andrews Opens, because of this companion piece:

St Andrews Highlights

The best moments from Opens at the Old Course

1984 - The iconic Seve celebration 

Few celebrations in the history of sport are as iconic as the one enjoyed by Seve Ballesteros following his final putt at St Andrews in 1984. 

Tied at the top of the leaderboard with defending champion Tom Watson, who was behind him in the final group, Ballesteros knew a birdie on the 72nd hole would greatly enhance his hopes of victory. 

When his putt for a three found its target, Seve let out a roar of delight and repeatedly punched the air in jubilation, striking a pose that would become synonymous with the charismatic Spaniard. The birdie secured a second Open title for Ballesteros and he claimed a third four years later at Royal Lytham & St Annes.

That was quite the finish, one of the few heartbreaks for Watson in this event.  But they don't go back past 1970, as it's a companion piece for the R&A production that will air on Sunday.   From the first linked item, here's one with which you should be familiar:

12. 1927, Bobby Jones, Old Course at St. Andrews

In 1921, a younger, more impetuous Bobby Jones became so angry at his play in the

third round at St. Andrews that he tore up his scorecard and withdrew after 11 holes. He then insulted the Old Course, and the St. Andrews press fired back, writing “Master Bobby is just a boy, and an ordinary boy at that.” This, then, was a kind of comeback story, because in the interval, Jones had come to love both the course and the town. And as fate would have it, they loved him back. When he won by six shots, he was carried off the green by a jubilant crowd, and even asked that his trophy be kept in Scotland with the R&A. By 1958, Jones had become just the second American “Freeman of the City” in St. Andrews, an honor he shared with none other than Ben Franklin. At that ceremony, Jones said of the Old Course that, “the more you study it, the more you love it, and the more you love it, the more you study it.”

It's Bobby Jones and St. Andrews.  No more need be said...

You Don't Know Jack -  Watching the broadcast yesterday was the first time that I sense that Jack is losing some of his acuity, which made me very sad.  I was almost angry with Terry Gannon for keeping him on air for so long, understanding that part of the issue was the result of doing this remotely.

Did you catch this a day or so ago?

This is the 45th year of the Memorial Tournament, and host Jack Nicklaus has made a tradition of waiting behind the 18th green to congratulate the winner with a hearty handshake. 

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Nicklaus said Tuesday that he will not be changing anything. 

"I'm going to shake their hand. I going to walk right out there and shake your hand," Nicklaus said during a virtual news conference at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio. "If they don't want to shake my hand, that's fine. I'll give them a fist bump or an elbow bump, but I'm not going to give them COVID-19, so that's -- I wouldn't put anybody in that position. I wouldn't do that, and if I was in any danger of doing that, I wouldn't shake their hands.

I know, none of the Usual Karens were amused....   They're outdoors and they can readily wash their hands, but you know how Karens are.  At least this Karen had an amusing take:

That's the artist formerly known as Curmudgeonly James Corrigan... being, you know, a curmudgeon.

Have a great weekend.