Tuesday Tidbits

Your humble bloggers has a busy week ahead, one that could turn frantic at the drop of a hat.  I think it unlikely that I'll blog again until Friday morning, so please plan accordingly.

ZoZo Rising - In the annus horribilis that is 2020, golf has been a refuge and outlet for many of us.  Mostly we've all jus been grateful to be able to play and to replace our worries about the fate of the world with the far more pressing concern about that thinned 7-iron and the like, not to mention being three down at the turn.  But it's been good to have televised golf as well, if only to have Bryson talk to us about protecting his brand.

One further benefit is the rescheduling of events from Asia to the U.S., apparently professional golf is not one those jobs Americans won't do.  This week we have the CJ Cup, typically played in South Korea, which provides a Vegas twofer for the boys.  The event will be played at Steve Wynn's Shadow Creek, which we saw for the first time relatively recently:

The 2020 CJ Cup will begin Thursday at Shadow Creek Golf Course in Las Vegas.

This tournament had been held on South Korea’s Jeju Island last year, but COVID-19 necessitated a venue change.

The last time a major event graced Shadow Creek was Nov. 23, 2018, when Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson faced each other in The Match. Yes, that one.

With a $9 million purse on the line, one golf legend took on another in a winner-take-all match play event. Woods and Mickelson dueled to a draw after 18 holes, but Mickelson ultimately prevailed on No. 22.

Check out some of the best photos from that day — and the gorgeous surroundings at Shadow Creek — in this gallery below:

Gorgeous?  Meh, that's at best a matter of opinion.  I found the place contrived and artificial, though in the desert it could hardly be otherwise.  Also, to be fair, the production values at that event were basically 1950's era, so it may be an unfair test.  I'll grab a few of his pics, and you should click through and scroll if it's of interest:

 

Of course, the photo that stays with me is this one:

Keepin' it classy.

Now there are a couple of interesting things about the week ahead, including the return of the artist formerly known as Brooks Koepka, which also requires an irony alert:

For the first time in two months, Brooks Koepka will play a PGA Tour event as he makes his return following rehab on his left knee at the CJ Cup at Shadow Creek in Las Vegas next week. Koepka missed the 2020 U.S. Open at Winged Foot Golf Club and has not played on the PGA Tour since missing the cut at the Wyndham Championship in August.

Koepka joins a slew of huge names participating in this year's CJ Cup, which moved from South Korea to Las Vegas because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Justin Thomas, Jon Rahm and Rory McIlroy will play alongside Koepka. Jordan Spieth, Justin Rose, Rickie Fowler and Tommy Fleetwood are expected to be in the field as well.

Coincidentally, Koepka actually reinjured his knee at last year's CJ Cup when he slipped on wet concrete. The knee has been a nuisance for nearly two years now -- dating back to the start of 2019 -- and has caused Koepka, who has nearly slipped out of the top 10 in the world, to miss a significant number of events.

When last we saw Brooksie, he was calling out his good friend (or is it former good friend) DJ and otherwise pissing people off.  Which works far better when one is the guy hoisting the trophy...  The question remains the knee, and whether it's recovered sufficiently to allow him to be an alpha dog again.

The other reveal is this, about which I have serious misgivings:

Golf Channel's broadcast of the 2020 CJ Cup this weekend will include a bit of network history for the PGA Tour.

The tour announced on Monday that Golf Channel's telecast from Shadow Creek this weekend will include live odds and a leader board of every player's current odds twice per hour throughout its broadcast window. This marks the first time a network broadcast of a PGA Tour event will include odds integrated in the broadcast. BetMGM, one of six official betting operators of the PGA Tour, will be providing the odds.

Starting at the Wyndham Championship in August, PGA Tour Live telecasts have included matchup odds on featured groups with analysts predicting the outcomes based on the odds. The Action Network, a premium handicapping content hub, has a partnership with the PGA Tour, and the company's experts have been included on the tour's live digital coverage.

Shack has the press release, as well as these comments:

Whether you are pro-betting or not, the prospect of live odds integration into telecasts should provide stellar entertainment. After all, announcers today are dancing around criticism of much of anything, so it should make for spectacular listening as they dance around the live odds.

“Rossi, did you see Collin Morikawa just move to 10-1 on that birdie? Mighty attractive price with just 31 holes to go and only six players in front of him, all imminently beatable, right?”

“Yes Jim, I’m opening up my BETMGM app as we speak to put down a hundon, AND jump on his head-to-head with Pat Reed who had a terribly long call with his wife on the range. That’s value you just can’t get at the dog track. At least, so I hear.”

Should be fun. And better than hearing about FedExCup projections.

Geoff is far more pro-gambling than I, so it's a healthy thing to have these divergent reactions.  He buys the premise that this will bring additional  "engagement" to our game, though I'm unclear whether he's anticipating new players or just TV/Streaming viewers who come for the action.

My skepticism relates to the fact that think golf sets up horribly for betting.  The irony is that its perfect for our weekend Nassaus, i.e., betting on our own fragile games, but on professional events?  It's just awkward and silly, without the binary pairings of team sports. An event like the Ryder Cup is a different matter entirely, but those are few and far between.

I'm also amused to see how certain aspects of our game play among the professional gambling set.  For instance, I'm guessing a hard-core gambler will be upset to place a bet on Tiger, only to find that his back doesn't allow him to swing the club that day or week.  is Jay Monahan prepared to issue NFL-style injury reports each week?

I see lots of mundane issues such as the above, but I also see that overt ties to professional gambling are just a bad look.  Doesn't mean I'm right, as I'm deep into that "Get off my Lawn" stage of life...  Developing.

Bryson v. World, Further Thoughts - Shane Ryan has an item up under this header:

Why Bryson DeChambeau comes out ahead in this latest round of the distance debate

Because Matthew Fitzpatrick's comments were idiotic and whiny?  We can stipulate to that, for sure, though Shane doesn't a decent job of dispensing with that nonsense:

It’s very easy to understand Fitzpatrick’s frustration, and there are plenty who agree that the USGA and R&A should institute some kind of policy to curtail the obvious benefits of DeChambeau’s approach. But the most telling part of Fitzpatrick’s remarks, I think, came near the end:

“The skill in my opinion is to hit the ball straight. That’s the skill.”

This, more than anything else, highlights the difference in how the two great players think. Plainly put, Fitzpatrick is wrong. The fundamental skill in golf, and the one that supersedes all the rest, is finishing each hole in the fewest strokes possible.

That sounds absurdly basic, but it’s a distinction worth making. Hitting the ball straight is merely a method of achieving that ultimate goal; it is not the goal itself. Sure, it’s long been considered an incredibly important method, but it’s still only a means to the end. You don’t make money and win trophies for hitting the ball straight. You do for scoring.

DeChambeau is not the first person to discover that driving accuracy is actually far less important than previously imagined, but he’s certainly taking that knowledge to extreme lengths. That’s the nature of DeChambeau’s approach—he considers the end goal, and his mind is open to literally any method within the rules of achieving it. (Including methods that prove to be failures, like croquet-style putting.)

From Fitzpatrick’s perspective, this has to be at least a little infuriating. The skills he excels at are not quite being rendered irrelevant, but they are diminished. When he says that he could put on 40 pounds, visit a biomechanist and add 40 yards of driving distance, the reality of the modern game prompts an unspoken, uncomfortable rejoinder: Well, you might have to.

This is ridiculously basic, and yet does need to be reinforced.  It's just beyond silly that the Englishman would characterize the skill in golf as being merely hitting the ball straight, but both Shane and he also being incredibly simplistic about Bryson's game.  Bryson is a symptom of the state of our game, but he's merely a little longer than the rest of these big boppers.... the truly scary thing, and that's obviously the underlying cause of Fitzpatrick's existential crisis, is this length is combined with the full gamut of golfing skills. 

Shane quite obviously understand and explains:

There were two other flaws with Fitzpatrick’s comments. The first was to imply that DeChambeau had somehow taken the easy way out. In fact, he probably worked harder off the course than any other golfer in the professional ranks to transform his body, his diet and his game. It would take more than a snap of the fingers and a simple choice for Fitzpatrick to duplicate that feat. Rather, it would require months (maybe years) of intense training. The truth behind their different approaches is that DeChambeau wanted to do the work, and Fitzpatrick does not want to have to in order to remain relevant. Which is fine—there’s more than one way to skin a cat—but the choice comes with consequences.

The second flaw was reducing DeChambeau’s improvements to a few pounds and a few yards of driving distance. Fitzpatrick was the second-best putter by strokes gained on the PGA Tour last season, but in the space of a few years, DeChambeau worked his way from a truly bad putter into the top 10 in the same category. At the U.S. Open, where Fitzpatrick reduced his effort to “taking the skill out of it,” the strokes-gained metrics showed that DeChambeau was third in scrambling around the green, 18th in putting and first in approach shots. He was second off the tee, sure, but No. 1 in that category, Rory McIlroy, finished at six over. The golfer who was third, Bubba Watson, ended at 12 over. Nos. 4 and 5, Taylor Pendrith and Jon Rahm, finished at 10 over. DeChambeau won the tournament at six under. The driver was only one part of his brilliance, and the driver alone wasn’t nearly enough. The fact is, all parts of his game are improving. To paint him as a one-dimensional player isn’t just unfair. It’s wrong.

As a wise man once noted, Bryson is more evolutionary than revolutionary.

But Bryson isn't coasting, as he'll continue to work until Augusta, though said work will not be on an actual golf course:

But after the eventful week, the game’s most talked about player these days will go silent and

vanish from the PGA Tour. DeChambeau won’t play the next four weeks as the golf world anxiously awaits the second week in November when players turn onto Magnolia Lane for the November Masters.

Especially after he overpowered the beast that is Winged Foot in New York in winning the U.S. Open, where the thick, high rough, thin fairways and firm greens proved no match for him as he won by six shots. Now many in golf’s circles fear what DeChambeau could do to the sacred grounds of Augusta National.

 As Shane notes, the question for Matthew is, are you working this hard:

Instead of playing a tune-up on the PGA Tour, DeChambeau will retreat to his Texas home and start beefing up for the Masters.

“Just trying to figure more stuff out as always,” he said after the final round of the Shriners. “I’m going to be working out like crazy. The first week back home, I’m not really going to touch a club too much and going to be training pretty hard and getting myself up to hopefully around 245, something like that, in weight. Be the first time I’ve ever done that, so I’m going to be consuming a lot and see and working out a lot and see what we can do from there.”

Loads of equipment will arrive at his home and he’ll do plenty of testing as he bulks up and tries to dial up swing and ball speed. Among the new clubs will be various drivers featuring a 48-inch shaft – about 2.5 inches longer than standard length. The extra length could produce even more eye-popping numbers than the ones he’s produced since golf returned from the COVID-19 break. In the Shriners, for instance, he hit 43 tee shots past the 300-yard mark – some with 3-woods and hybrids – with 18 exceeding 350 yards.

“From a speed training perspective I could probably (hit) upwards of over a thousand drives the next four weeks trying to get my speed up,” he said. “It takes around 100, 130 to have a good speed training session.

Of course the one issue I've elided is the potential health risks of the added weight and muscle mass.  I've been a skeptic as relates to Tiger and Rory, though Bryson is the first to actually tie it to distance gains.  It's troubling, and it puts the Fitzpatricks of the world in a difficult position, to the extent they're think the same.  This to me is the area to watch going forward, especially to see if Bryson experiences stress injuries such as we've seen with those two other guys.

Media Myths - I don't know Michael McKewan, but this item from Bunkered UK I found of interest, one in which he cries out for our withering golf media.  I'm not actually sure I agree, but it's worth thinking about.  I'm not sure he's done himself any favors with his framing device:

According to Dan Brown, “the media is the right arm of anarchy”.

Quite the statement from a man who very deliberately invited the wrath of 2.3 billion Christians around the world by making the suggestion that Jesus fathered a child the narrative of his breakthrough book. Fiction or otherwise, if that’s not an anarchic call to arms, I’m not sure what is.

Still, Brown’s withering assessment of the media is a pointed indictment of how the industry has come to be regarded.

These days, revealing yourself to be a journalist often elicits the kind of reaction previously reserved for parking attendants and tax inspectors: a very slight furrowing of the brow and an almost-apologetic ‘Oh’.

Public opinion of this once-estimable occupation has plummeted to such depths that ‘The Meejah’ has become a lazy catch-all upon which to foist the blame for everything we don’t like or agree with.

Boy that's a curious way to present, as Dan Brown writes fiction and the media...well, upon further review, I get it.  Of course, I am far more favorably disposed to parking attendants and IRS agents, still he presents as if this is just something that's happened to the media, as opposed to the media choosing to abandon all journalistic standards... Are you all familiar with this famous Robert Heinlein quote?

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck.” 

What's happened to our media, as a general matter, is bad luck only in the narrow Heinleinian sense.  They have chosen this fate, and are deserving of its consequences.

But McKewan extends this line of reasoning to the golf press, and here I'm just not so sure it applies.  This point he frames in Brooks-DJ and James Corrigan anecdotes, which you can read as you desire, and this argument:

It’s so easy to point fingers at journalists. Sometimes it’s justified. Sometimes we do get it wrong. Everybody does. But as the world has become increasingly noisy, with a platform for every voice to be heard, it seems we’ve leapt from accusations of things being “taken out of context” straight to “#FakeNews”.

People now believe who they want to believe rather than the people telling them the truth. Trouble is, it has never been easier to lie without consequence. The truth is whatever you decide it is and to hell with facts.

You might think that’s not an issue but you’re wrong.

The world needs journalists now more than ever. And by ‘journalists’, I mean actual ‘journalists’. Not ‘Wee Stevie’ who has started a blog and writes for fun as and when it suits him. I mean, I enjoy cooking but I’m not a chef.

Journalists exist to challenge, inform and report. That requires a particular skill-set, learned and perfected over time just like any other vocation. Nobody is claiming it’s the world’s most noble profession. It’s not as though it saves lives. But that’s not its purpose. It exists to broaden minds – and, now more than ever, it’s under threat.

I've had this browser tab open for a few days, struggling to understand what we expect from sports journalism.  I see some profound differences with the larger world of journalism, as we understand that a sports journalist will have some need to maintain access and promote the underlying enterprise.  We do still hope they'll be truth-tellers and deal with serious issues, but I do think our expectations are different and necessarily lower.

I also love the gratuitous dismissiveness of bloggers, who in certain notable cases (anyone remember the lovely Dan Rather) who found their niche by doing the job major media outlets refused to do.  Abject abdication of their primary responsibilities cause people to seek out alternative sources of information, and at a bare minimum it would be helpful to accurately present this cause and effect result.

My interest here is the food for thought of what we should reasonably expect from sports and/or golf journalism.  To be discussed further.

That'll be a wrap for today and we'll visit again later in the week.