Monday, September 21, 2020

Weekend Wrap - Casino Royale Edition

 So, anything you guys want to talk about today?

This captures the general tenor of the coverage:

ANY QUESTIONS?

 Bryson DeChambeau proved his revolution real and his doubters wrong to win the U.S. Open at Winged Foot.

MAMARONECK, N.Y.—He told us a revolution was coming, which we ignored. He told us how it would come and we laughed. His trials were met with schadenfreude, his earnestness misinterpreted as arrogance, and when his methods began to work, we said they wouldn’t when and where they would matter most.

But now there is proof, finalized on a hole aptly named “Revelations.” The Mad Scientist proved his formula right and his doubters wrong (and perhaps converted many along the way), and for that Bryson DeChambeau was crowned United States Open champ.

“I did it. I did it,” DeChambeau said Sunday night. “As difficult as this golf course was presented, I played it beautifully … It definitely is validating that I'm able to execute time and time again and have it be good enough to win an Open.”

I consider it more evolutionary than revolutionary, but I do agree this has the feeling of a crossroads for the game.  We'll be all over the hot takes, even offer a few of our own, but we all need time to process that which we saw.

Speaking of hot takes, Alan Shipnuck has five for us, beginning with the obvious:

Bryson is more substance than style.

It has been so easy to get distracted by all the noise around DeChambeau, whether it’s hisbookworm pronouncements, funny clubs, social media beefs with Brooks, new diet or other fluffery. But there can now be no denying that his resume’ is world-class: U.S. Amateur, NCAA Championship, 7 Tour wins by age 27 and a U.S. Open blowout on a historic course. For all the talk of DeChambeau’s distance off the tee, his Sunday playing partner Matt Wolff outdrove him a couple of times. Tony Finau and Cam Champ might be longer than Bryson, and Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka are only a notch below.

What separates DeChambeau is a commitment that borders on zealotry. While Finau gives up lots of yards with a sawed-off swing and DJ employed a conservative gameplan that saw him hitting numerous irons off the tee, DeChambeau attacked relentlessly by swinging with abandon. He has more than confidence – it is conviction. And the pursuit to exploit his advantages never ends; following his win, Bryson mused about trying to master a 48” driver to pick up even more precious yardage. That is precisely what makes this victory so exciting. Rather than grow complacent, a validated DeChambeau is sure to press on in his quest to reinvent the game, taking all of us along for the ride.

Ya got that?

I don't Alan quite nails it there.  It wasn't that we thought Bryson was artifice over substance, it was more that his substance seemed way out there...  Yanno, like his drives.

Shack has a winners and losers bit here, and this was his take on the beast:

Bryson DeChambeau – You’ve taken enormous risks, listened to no shortage of doubters and now are a worthy, convincing major championship winner. Most impressive is the accomplishment coming on a course supposedly rigged against your aggressive style of play. Plus, no run-ins with the rules or officials, and you gave credit to your parents for the sacrifices they made. Classy win.

And the shear level of effort, dramatically changing his body as well as the constant experimentation.  The personality hasn't been my cup of tea, but I love the fact that the last guy on the range Saturday night had the best round on Sunday. 


One assumes Rory was safely tucked in by then....

Back to Alan:

The U.S. Open as we used to know it is dead.

This has been a long time coming, but Winged Foot feels like a tipping point. It was glaringly obvious that the traditional setup of long rough and narrow fairways is no longer enough to slow down the new age bomb-and-gougers. They will still blast away with impunity, overpowering the par-5s and leaving only short-irons or wedges into the par-4s, which, even from the rough, DeChambeau time and time again played with enough finesse to leave good scoring chances.

Narrow setups put every player in the long grass more often, giving the bruisers that much more of an advantage. Even Winged Foot’s vertiginous greens could offer only so much resistance. Alas, the way forward is unclear. There is not a course on the planet long enough to challenge Tour players; 9,000 yards would be the minimum needed, and that requires an obscene amount of land and water. The USGA has shown no appetite for rolling back modern distance gains, leaving the ancient playing fields unable to contain this new generation of sluggers. Perhaps shorter, not longer, grass is the answer – wickedly fast green surrounds that require more precision and touch than long, hack-out rough, and fairways that Stimp at 12 that let errant drives roll forever into deeper trouble. The USGA has nine months to figure it out before the next U.S. Open but that won’t be easy.

Musing on DeChambeau’s nuking of Winged Foot, Rory McIlroy said on Sunday, “It’s kind of hard to really wrap my head around it.”

This is the crux of the matter, one that we'll be coming back to again and again, both in this post and in the future.  Recently a groundswell of support for Tom Meeks era U.S. Open set-ups has arisen, which seems to me an over-interpretation of the Paris Ryder Cup venue.  "Make them hit Fairways" we heard, but the takeaway from this week is that rough may not be much of a penalty...  More to come on that for sure.

The problem with Alan's prescription is that it's rare to find such conditions in the wild.  Perhaps the most troubling filter for Bryson's runaway performance is that it happened in firm and windy conditions.  In a typically sweltering June in New York, the course plays longer and takes even a bigger block of the field out of contention.

OK, this just makes me laugh:

Let Alan explain:

Rory remains as baffling as ever.

In the end, nobody was going to catch DeChambeau, but McIlroy didn’t know that when he 4-putted the first green. Just like that, any dreams of a comeback were dashed. Such Sunday letdowns have become so routine that on Twitter my colleague Sean Zak offered a succinct analysis: “Rory gonna Rory.”

Actually, Rory's signature move is the backdoor top ten.  But having spent three days of hard work positioning himself on the fringe of contention, we all knew what was coming... So, not so much baffled as frustrated...

It had been fourteen years, so what did we think of the venue?  Geoff had these winners:

Winged Foot – Sure, the winner was six-under-par and you’ll now have to wait at least eight years to wonder what the next U.S. Open winning score will be. But the restoration came off brilliantly and it’s not your fault the governing bodies are dragging their feet on equipment rules tweaks. Hey, I have an idea, why not make some form of action a requirement to host again?

USGA Course Setup – John Bodenhamer and Jeff Hall led a crew balancing architecture, science, early fall conditions, irrational Winged Foot member desires and the ghosts of USGA setups past. The task is not a pleasant one but the setup eased players into the week, moved the field around, and exuded U.S. Open difficulty all the way.

That eight year bit refers to the fact that no venue has been announced for the 2028 Open, and there's been speculation that they might have left that void to see how things went this week.  

I enjoyed the week and I'm not instinctively put off by that -6 winning score, especially since it was only the one guy under par.  I think the important point is that they exuded that "U.S. Open difficulty" without descending into parody.  

But here's the conundrum that Geoff omits to mention.  That is far easier in September (I'm speaking to a Northeastern U.S. venue) than in June, when extreme heat can further stress the greens.   It's still a high wire act in June, and there simply no way to avoid disasters unless you're prepared to have Opens that look like Congressional in 2011.

Any other winners?

Dan Hicks – You maintained great energy during NBC’s eight hour broadcast Saturday and obviously know your home club, gulp, better than most. Sure, there were too many references to “The Foot” and most of America didn’t need to know the timing on the pro shop renovation. But you balanced an unabashed affection for Winged Foot with storytelling, conveying the outcome of key shots while investing us in the venue. I wouldn’t expect anything different.

I've always liked Hicks, especially his work in tethering Johnny Miller to reality.  But to me Hicks is upbeat and enthusiastic, but the contrast is with the increasingly treacly Jim Nantz.

Strangely, though, I also agree with this from Geoff's list of losers:

NBC – Fox was missed. That’s an unfathomable notion given Fox’s early struggles and NBC’s former place atop golf television. But Fox got a lot better and corporate budget cuts at NBC clearly took a toll in too many departments to list here. The broadcast lacked the technology, production values, sense of place and other little stuff NBC was famous for bringing to golf. Worse, so much cut from producer Tommy Roy’s pallet was just the kind of stuff viewers came to love from Fox’s USGA telecasts and CBS’s recent “Return to Golf” run.

Fox had really upped their game, and pulled the other guys along for the ride.  But I miss some of their contributors (Ken Brown and Gil Hanse, most notably), though none of us understand the Covid-related limitations on this broadcast.  As for Geoff's ode to CBS, he must have been watching a different broadcast than I saw.  

Geoff has more winners, including poa and square greens that you should peruse.  But the raison d'etre of this blog requires additional focus on the losers from the week:

Green Reading Books – A rule change designed to make these silly novellas more difficult to read has only added time to rounds. Speaking of slow play…

Slow Play – The USGA miraculously got the field around Thursday and Friday, but Sunday’s last twosome took just over four hours and thirty minutes, including 2:15 on the front nine even with the duo taking just six shots to play the par-5 ninth. Yes it’s a big course with high rough and diabolical greens, but matters are not helped by the players never facing a penalty the way they are at all other USGA championships.

Can someone remind me of the patron saint of lost causes?  

These guys as well:

Tiger And Phil – This fan-free golf just doesn’t seem like your thing. Maybe next year at Torrey you’ll give it one last college try.

Fan free?  Perhaps...   But to this observer, it was the more fact that their golf appeared to be skill-free.

And this guy:

Danny Lee – A terrible look with the Saturday six-putt and putter slam into the bag, followed by a WD. That came 90 minutes after play due to a wrist injury, but it took a Tweet from No Laying Up’s Tron Carter to shake the replay of your meltdown free of NBC servers. How did this not make on an eight hour telecast, only to be aired on the early morning pre-game?

I've got great news for y'all, presumably after Tron Carter filed a Freedom of Information request.   

This has been a funny story, because we all heard that he had six-putted from four feet, which even on the glassy Winged Foot Surfaces seems, well, impossible.  It turns out they omitted a small but telling detail, to wit, that after the first putt Lee went full John Daly on us...  Pro tip, guys, never go full John Daly.

Los of folks went ballistic over the subsequent WD, and they are quite correct there.  But riddle me this, Batman, how is that the guy wasn't disqualified by the USGA?  Very much like Phil at Shinny, the basic social compact is that, in return for a precious spot in the field, that each player will try to post the best score possible.  Not dog it at the first sign of difficulty...  I haven't seen anything as revolting as theat display since John Daly deliberately emptied his golf bag into a water hazard (you can't make me call it a penalty area) at Whistling Straits...

The Tour Confidential panel is a Monday tradition here, so shall wee what these nice folks thought of it all?

1. Bryson DeChambeau overpowered Winged Foot on Sunday and won the U.S. Open for his first career major victory. DeChambeau started the final round two back of Matthew Wolff but shot 67 and to finish six under overall — he was the only player under par for the
week — and six better than Wolff, the runner-up. DeChambeau’s booming tee shots usually steal the headlines, but which part of his game — or game plan — most impressed you this week?

Sean Zak: Man, you could list so many things. No double bogeys. Worst 9-hole score was 36. But really what impressed me was that he raised the two aspects of his game that have been struggling. He was literally more efficient with his irons and his short game than he was with his driver and putter. Strokes gained backs it up. The driver and putter seem like they’ll be there forever, but look out when the other aspects rise, like they did this week.

The 36 worst nine is really a good factoid, serious consistency over four days on a tough track under U.S. Open pressure.  The weakest part of Bryson's game has long been his wedge play, thought to be related to the longer shafts he uses.  But as I said in the aftermath of his win in Detroit, he'll figure that out.  But the putting has bee good for a while, it's just hard to watch because he looks so mechanical.

Alan Bastable: Full disclosure: I didn’t think he could do it. Not at a U.S. Open. I just kept waiting and waiting for an O.B. tee shot or a three-putt double to trip him up, to rattle him. But it
never came. The only real sign of angst I noted was on the 9th green on Saturday when he appeared to chide his caddie for a poor read. So that’s what most impressed me: his even-keeled, dare I say, sanguine demeanor.

Josh Sens: I was among the doubters, too. Mostly because I thought there was no way he could play efficiently from the rough all week, no matter how far he blasted it off the tee. That’s what blew me away. The distance control and accuracy he had from ankle-deep rough. He made bombing and gouging his way around a brutally hard course look ridiculously easy.

Jessica Marksbury: His putting! Seemed like he couldn’t miss on Sunday, the most important round of the week. Once he drained that putt from the fringe, it really felt like his day.

Michael Bamberger: Prior to this week, I thought he was a contrarian without a cause. Now I know better.

Alan Shipnuck: His wedge play! That’s been a bugaboo for over a year, but he hit so many good full-swing wedges, including a bunch out of the rough to set up scoring chances. If that part of his game remains dialed in, look out!

We all doubted it would work, but it so happens that when you swing it at 130 mph, the club goes through the rough like a hot knife through butter.

 We'll be mulling this over for some time, because the implications are scary for our little game:

3. DeChambeau and Wolff missed many fairways — usually a no-no in U.S. Opens — but drove the ball so far that they still had short irons into most greens. “This tournament used to be about hitting fairways and greens,” Lee Westwood tweeted after the third round. On Sunday night, DeChambeau said: “They made the fairways too small this week for the guys that were really hitting the fairway. If it’s too narrow, length is gonna win. Too wide, length is gonna win.” What did this Open teach us about how best to set up a modern major venue to test the world’s best players?

Before we get to their answers, let me just interject this from Ryan Herrington at Golf Digest:

Consider this: Since 1981, no U.S. Open winner had hit fewer than 27 fairways, according to Golf Channel. Here’s a listing of the champs with the fewest fairways hit in the last 40 years.

Angel Cabrera, 2007, Oakmont, 27 (ranked 48th for the week in accuracy)

Tiger Woods, 2008, Torrey Pines, 30 (ranked 56th)

Webb Simpson, 2012, Olympic Club, 31 (ranked 13th)

Scott Simpson, 1987, Olympic Club, 31 (ranked 42nd)

Interestingly, while DeChambeau hit the fewest fairways compared to the four others, he ranked T-26 for the field on the week, which is the second to Webb Simpson.

That last bit is Shack, but you know I can't pas sup an opportunity to mention that 1987 U.S. Open champion.  Winged Foot fairways are hard to hit, but Olympic's are impossible to hit...with a nine-iron.

Bryson's driver was a huge weapon this week, but as per this graph, he excelled in every facet of the game:


Here are those dispiriting answers: 

Zak: This Open taught us that 5-inch grass isn’t long. Seven or 8-inch fescue is the new definition of “long.” If you think that’s a slippery slope, that’s because it is. Also, the width of the fairways doesn’t really matter. And that the greens need to be the firmest surface on the property, cart paths included.

Bastable: Yeah, fairways and rough length don’t seem to matter anymore. I mean, they matter to some — Shane Lowry said he couldn’t get the ball to the green from the rough and was gobsmacked by how easily DeChambeau and Wolff could — but not to the bombers. Crusty, fire-breathing greens are seemingly the last line of defense.

Sens: There’s some truth in all of the above, but it’s not as if Winged Foot was a cakewalk. DeChambeau just made it look that way. The rough this week was still gnarly enough to thwart most of the field. The setup favored bombers, true. But Webb Simpson and Zach Johnson finished T8, and they’re not exactly big hitters by Tour standards. Maybe this event proves we need new ways to defend U.S. Open venues. But are there really any new ways we’re not already familiar with? No. Maybe we just need to ask Bryson to go easy on everyone next time.

Bamberger: It showed us again what Nicklaus has been saying for 40 years: if the ball goes too far – yes, in combination with other factors – traditional great courses are obsolete, in terms of traditional golfing values. This game requires less finesse and is less interesting. But that’s an opinion.

Marksbury: The hand-wringing over setups has grown tiresome for me, especially when it comes to criticism of the U.S. Open. You still have to putt and chip well to win, even when you bomb it like Bryson. He played superb golf. The past two major championship leaderboards have been super satisfying. What more do we want?

Shipnuck: The U.S. Open setup as we knew it is now dead. Long grass surrounding narrow fairways just puts everyone in the rough, giving the bombers a huge advantage. Bigger, deeper, more plentiful fairway bunkers can help, along with shaved green surrounds that demand more skill and creativity in the short game than hack-out rough.

I've been reliably informed that, when and if that USGA/R&A Distance Insights Report is issued, all of our problems will be resolved.   

Sean Zak takes a crack at the statistics, reinforcing that Bryson's Sunday was historic:

Greatest final round in nearly 50 years

DeChambeau was the only player in the field to shoot under par on Sunday. The course played harder than it has all week, and somehow DeChambeau never broke. His final-round 67 was 7.9 strokes better than the field average on Sunday, which was the fourth-best U.S. Open final-round performance ever, and best since Johnny Miller’s 63 at Oakmont in 1973.

 Johnny shot 63 at Oakmont?  Boy, he spent decades in the both and hardly mentioned it at all....

But isn't this really the scary bit?

Irons and chipping were phenomenal, especially for him

DeChambeau bombs it and putts well — we all know that. But what is lost in his game, especially this year, is that his irons and wedges haven’t been good. DeChambeau was below average in strokes gained: approach and around the green during the 2020 season, but not this week.

Bryson gained more than a stroke on the field in both aspects during the event. Not only that, he was statistically more efficient with his irons and wedges than he was with his driver and putter.

Better up your game, boys.   Speaking of those boys, how did they take it?  Well, PTSD comes to mind:

Q. What are your thoughts on Bryson just in general and what he's done in transforming his body?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Yeah, he's a man of his word. I said it last night, if there's anyone that I was worried about, it was him. Everyone talked about hitting fairways out here. It's not about hitting fairways. It's about hitting on the correct side of the hole and hitting it far so you can kind of hit a wedge instead of a 6 iron out of the rough. Yeah, he's sort of trending in the new direction of golf, and he said he wanted to do everything he's doing, and yeah, happy for him. He's playing unbelievable.

He doesn't actually sound all that happy to me...

Q. Going back to what you said before about Bryson,do you feel like he's revolutionizing the game?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: No. If you look at just people that have dominated, it's always been distance. Obviously, Tiger had the mix of touch and feel and everything. If you look back at he was sort of the first guy to really hit it far with those clubs. Jack hit is really far as well. All the greats hit it pretty far for the most part. It's no longer sort of a touchy-feely game. The only way to make a golf course really hard is to firm up the greens and grow the rough. It's going to make it hard for everyone, and you'd rather be the guy in the rough with a lob wedge than with an 8 iron or 7 iron. Revolutionize? Maybe he's just exposing our game in terms of, if he keeps hitting it further and further, I don't see why he wouldn't be able to win many more U.S. Opens.

And this guy as well:

Q. Your golf followed from Tiger's and Tiger's followed from Faldo, Watson, and back to Nicklaus, very kind of straight line. Then you see this guy doing it completely in his own way, and I'm wondering what that says to you about the guy and about the game.

RORY McILROY: So I think -- about the guy, I think it's brilliant, but I think he's taken advantage of where the game is at the minute. Look, again, whether that's good or bad, but it's just the way it is. With the way he approaches it, with the arm-lock putting, with everything, it's just where the game's at right now.  I'm not saying that's right or wrong. He's just taking advantage of what we have right now.

In reaction to which Geoff said this:

DeChambeau’s approach should raise questions about whether this is where the game should head. But you have to admire how he’s taken advantage of technology and put his body on the line in ways no one ever has. McIlroy seems to be saying that with his where the game “is at the minute.”

Which is also code for: where the game is because the governing bodies did not adequately anticipate many things that are happening.

Absolutely, but it's been one of those slow-moving train wrecks...  And that's what I meant above about it being more evolutionary than revolutionary.  All of these trends have been apparent for some time, but our governing bodies have been completely passive. 

Folks are a little in shock at that -6 winning score, but let me leave you with this question.  You saw how the guy played this week, with #frimandfats fairways and greens and swirling winds.  What might he have shot in the more typically soft June conditions?  

 I'll be back with lots more tomorrow, and hope to see you then.

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