Nothing to get out of bed for, and nothing to run to the keyboard for as well... 2020, man!
Masters Detritus - Yup, still milking it, because it's a long way until April. Golf Digest's Daniel Rappaport bravely proffers 18 parting thoughts, a quantity that I'm guessing isn't coincidental. Shall we see how keen his insights might be, though it's curious that his Redemption Song bit for DJ mostly casts shade at the prior major:
1. The last major championship before this one felt so … divisive. Bryson DeChambeau bludgeoned his way to a U.S. Open. Yes, I know, he also chipped and putted well, but the days after were spent debating the future of golf. It was tiring, that conversation. It still is. And distance debate aside, DeChambeau himself is a bit of an enigma. He’s honest and he’s smart, but on the golf course he veers toward slow and petulant. Some people love him, and some people very much do not love him. He’s polarizing.
Really, who are these people that love him? I certainly haven't tripped over any in the wild... Begrudging respect? Sure... But love? His is a personality that only a mother could love and she could, per B.B. King, be jiving him too...
Dustin Johnson’s victory, by contrast, was a breath of fresh air. Among his peers, DJ is not only admired for his talent—he’s genuinely liked. He’s kind and he’s friendly, not the type to gossip orsay nasty things about other people, even under his breath. A stand-up guy. That earnestness also comes off to fans and media, who seemed to share a general consensus that DJ deserved another major championship. Too good a player to finish his career with just one, too good a guy to suffer through heartbreak after heartbreak.It got dicey for a minute there on Sunday, when he bogeyed four and five and the four-shot lead shrunk to one. The golf world’s collective heart rate increased. Not again. Come on, DJ. He didn’t make a bogey the rest of the way, eventually cruising to a five-shot victory. Thoroughly deserved, and universally approved. For one night, at least, the golf universe can agree on something.
Deserved? That's dangerous ground, and there are others succumbing to this faulty logic as well... I certainly agree that it was well-deserved, in the limited sense that DJ clearly played far better than his pursuers, but Rappaport seems to take far too much pleasure in the avoidance of those divisive issues that have, at best, been deferred a few months.
This bit does capture the strangeness of it all:
2. While the tournament concluded with a satisfying feel, it also holds true that there was a tangible lack of buzz at Augusta year, particularly during the final round. No anonymous roarsechoing from Amen Corner, leaving the crowds and players to guess what just happened and who did it. Tee times pushed up early, keeping Sunday’s pressure at a lower boil for the leaders. The soft golf course, devoid of fire. The entire week felt somewhat casual.The best illustration of this came on Friday morning. The threesome of Dustin Johnson, Patrick Cantlay and Rory McIlroy had just hit their approaches into the second hole. Two balls were on the green and one was in the bunker, and none of the players had any idea whose was whose. In normal years, at least a couple hundred people would be following that threesome, plus the group that always congregates on that upslope behind that green, and their reaction after each shot would make abundantly clear which was which. (It’s one of the best viewing spots on the course, because you can see the approaches on 2, the tee shot on 3, the approach into 7, the tee shot on 8, and the green on 9).Rory McIlroy, always switched on, remarked on the strangeness of it all. I couldn’t hear his exact words, but it was something to the effect of: “We’re three of the top 10 players of the world, and we can’t even identify our balls.”
I can help you there, Rory, yours is the ball in the bunker... Sheesh, for a man always switched on, he was notably switched off for his first round.
His take on that always switched on guy:
5. Speaking of McIlroy—leave your Rory takes at the door, because we’ve heard them all: He tries too hard. No, wait, he doesn’t try hard enough. He plays too aggressively. No, actually, hedoesn’t play aggressively enough. We have no idea which one of these is correct, and in all likelihood, neither does he. Sometimes a bad round, like the 75 he shot on Thursday/Friday, is just a bad round.Anyways, our only thought on McIlroy for the week: Man, we need details on the pep talk Augusta National member/golf power broker Jimmy Dunne gave him between his first and second rounds on Friday. “It was colorful,” is all Rory cared to share. What could Dunn possibly have said to motivate a guy with four major championships? Did he take after Rory’s old caddie, J.P. Fitzgerald, who famously asked his boss at the 2017 Open Championship: “You’re Rory McIlroy, what the f*** are you doing?” Did he make fun of his score, telling him that the old man shot 74 from the championship tees last Wednesday? Did he make fun of his haircut? The world may never know.
He only needed two words: Jeff Knox. As in, if you don't get your s**t together, that's your weekend pairing...
Yes, sometimes a bad round is just that... But those bad rounds keep happening just when he wants it most.
And a couple of shout-outs to this relic:
11. The third-round pairing of John Augenstein, Rory McIlroy and Bernhard Langer was everything that’s beautiful about Augusta National. A college kid, a global superstar and a 63-year-old whose game doesn’t seem to age, all posting the same score after 36 holes of the world’s most famous golf tournament. How can you not be romantic about the Masters?
Yes, though I do think Rory was hoping for a later tee time...
12. While in the end McIlroy beat Langer by six, the elder statesman got the better ofDeChambeau on Sunday, besting golf’s brute force 71 to 73. Quite literally, the shortest-hitting guy in the field (who made the cut) beat the longest guy in the field. DeChambeau, to his credit took the whole thing in stride: “Definitely I still look up to him. Even though I’m bombing it by him, he’s still playing better than me. It doesn’t matter. That’s the cool part about the game of golf—you can shoot a score whatever way you want, and he’s still able to do it at his age that way, which is pretty impressive.” Couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
Alan Bastable has a fun take on that Sunday pairing as you'll readily discern from his header:
How to beat Bryson DeChambeau when you’re giving up 700 yards to him
In which the ageless German blows it by Bryson:
2. For a short time, Langer outmuscled DeChambeau
A very short time. On their first hole, the downhill 10th, DeChambeau slung a 3-wood around the corner, his ball coming to rest 288 yards down the damp fairway. Langer pulled driver. Boom, 290! The arms race was on! (No, not really.)
Good fun, but here's a better accounting:
14. It doesn’t get the love of Amen Corner of the famous finishing holes, but for my money, No. 7 is the most underrated hole at Augusta and maybe my favorite on the course. The tee box is nestled way back in a pocket behind the sixth green, creating a chute-like claustrophobia that makes the drive uncomfortable. Trees frame both sides of the fairway. The hole looks straight as an arrow, but the fairway slopes from left to right and you want to stay left to give yourself a flat lie. The green is maybe the narrowest on the course, so distance control is key, and long is dead. Plus, the visual of hitting the severely uphill approach over steep-faced bunkers filled with bright-white sand—one of the better approach shots to watch in all of golf.
As regular readers know, I don't obsess over TV ratings, because golf's audience ranges from small to smaller. But even by my standards, these kinda suck:
A glance at the Masters TV ratings is a matter of perspective and context.The Masters drew a 3.4 rating and 5.59 million viewers for Sunday’s telecast. It is the lowest-rated Masters since 1957 and the least-watched tournament on record (counting goes back to 1995). That 3.4 mark is a 51 percent drop in ratings from last year’s triumphant victory by Tiger Woods at the Masters.Noted above, a number of circumstances can explain the drop in viewership. The Masters follows the trend of high-profile sporting events such as the NBA Finals and MLB’s World Series turning in all-time ratings lows. That includes September’s U.S. Open, which drew a 2.0 rating and 3.2 million viewers.
Per Shack, ESPN's early week coverage fared better:
While this is undoubtedly the lowest rated Masters since numbers were tabulated, weekday coverage on ESPN did not see such extreme declines, drawing an average of 2.2 million Thursday and almost 2.8 million Friday.
Apparently the only lost one-quarter of their audience, which is what passes for good news these days.
How's this for a peek behind the curtain?
Is he trolling us?
As I referenced above, this item is worthy of peak derision:
After Dustin Johnson's Masters win, who deserves a second major championship the most?
No one. Final answer.
Funny thing, even Shane Ryan knows that...
But, as legendary Americans Clint Eastwood and Snoop have both said (and as we’ve written on this site before), “deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” Now that DJ has broken through, there are plenty of other players who are stuck at one major and who, by all rights, should have more. Enough, in fact, to make a top-10 list. Let’s count it down, and note that we’re discussing players who are still on the scene and relatively young, which will exclude the Fred Couples, Jim Furyks and Stewart Cinks of the world.
Even with the lax standards of sports journalism, WTF. Shane excludes Stewart Cink, who won an actual PGA Tour event just a couple of months ago, but includes this guy?
3. Henrik StensonStenson hasn’t won often in America, but when he does, he wins enormous events, from thePlayers to the Deutsche Bank to the WGC-Match Play to the Tour Championship. The 44-year-old Swede is a gamer, and for more evidence you only need to see his 13 major top 10s. For a period in 2013 and 2014, it seemed like he was in position to win every major he played. Like Sergio, he got his big title at a time when it looked like it might never happen, and he played one of the most legendary final rounds ever in 2016 at Royal Troon, so you can’t feel too terrible for him. But it’s a fact that Henrik should have more.
Gee, no. It's your opinion that he deserves more, and calling it a fact doesn't, you know, make it a fact...
Other of Shane's facts that wouldn't survive scrutiny, that the Deutsche Bank and Match play are "enormous".
At the opposite end of the spectrum is this profoundly silly inclusion:
9. Bryson DeChambeauThis will seem like a troll, particularly for a 27-year-old who just won his first major. But with six PGA Tour wins to his name beyond the U.S. Open (including two FedEx Cup playoff events), a Dubai Desert Classic, a U.S. Amateur and an NCAA national title, he already has the pedigree of a multiple major winner. When it comes, if it does, it will already be statistically deserved.
It seems like a troll because it is a troll...
I guess he wanted top ten list, but I want a hit off whatever he's smoking:
10. Graeme McDowellThis one’s tricky, because McDowell has always been known as a player who accomplished a lot with fewer athletic tools than his average contemporary, and like Geoff Ogilvy, you could argue that he’s an overachieving brainiac for whom one major is about right. He only has four other top 10s in his 54 major championship starts, and of his three PGA Tour wins, one came in the fall and one was the same week event as a WGC. Still, his longevity and his European Tour record (11 wins) gets him on the list, just barely.
You start your list of guys deserving their second majors with a player that didn't deserve his first? I'm thinking it's time to move on...
OK, I lied... Just this video of DJ from his Coastal Carolina days, including that payoff at the end:
I like your chances, kid.
Udder Stuff - A few of those pesky open browser tabs, beginning with this interesting project:
It’s getting hard to keep up with the folks at Cabot, the golf and real-estate developer.
Not content to stand pat with a vaunted resort in Nova Scotia and another in the works in the
Caribbean, the company is now set to stretch its reach across the Great White North to the mountains of British Columbia, in western Canada.
On Monday, the Cabot team unveiled its plans for Cabot Revelstoke, an alpine resort in the folds of the Monashee and Selkirk mountain ranges, in an area famed for its heli-skiing.
Scheduled to open in 2023, Cabot Revelstoke will expand upon the offerings of an existing property, Revelstoke Mountain Resort, with real estate, accommodations and an 18-hole course, called Cabot Pacific, by the architect Rod Whitman and his new design firm, Whitman, Axland & Cutten. The Lodge at Cabot Revelstoke, a 150-room hotel, is slated to open in 2024.
Revelstoke is a place your humble blogger is dying to see, just with boards in lieu of clubs.
In other venue news, Shack informs us of a Gil Hanse-led renovation of LaCosta, which seems destined to become a permanent home for the NCAAs:
Tremendous news on all fronts as the NCAA Championships eventually move west in 2024 to La Costa for what sounds like an audition as a permanent host site: Gil Hanse has been enlisted to renovate the Champions course in advance of the event.Once a regular site for the PGA Tour’s Tournament of Champions and later the WGC Match Play, La Costa’s course has lost a few steps even as the resort and spa were upgraded. A rethinking should position it back in the limelight of tournament golf thanks to the facilities and location in golf’s west coast hub.
The NCAAs, with its team match play format, has become one of my favorite events. A West Coast venue and the associated prime time TV schedule, seem an obvious fit.
Are you as excited as I am about the coming Truth and Reconciliation Committees. Yes, one assumes your humble blogger's name is on the list, but not at the very top of the list. At least not in Scotland:
President Donald Trump will face “due accountability” if evidence is found linking his Scottish golf resorts to money laundering or other financial fraud, the leader of the Scottish government said this week.First Minister Nicola Sturgeon spoke out Wednesday in Parliament in response to a call from the co-leader of the Scottish Green Party to seek an “unexplained wealth order” to determine the source of funding for Trump’s $60 million cash purchase of his Trump Turnberry golf resort in 2014, when his U.S. tax returns showed vast losses that allowed him to avoid paying any income taxes. Trump also owns the Trump Aberdeen resort in Scotland.The Scotish leader said she wouldn’t protect “the soon-to-be former president of the United States” from “due accountability in Scotland” if wrongdoing is found. An investigation, including an unexplained wealth order, would be up to the Crown Office, the independent public prosecution system in Scotland, Sturgeon added.Green Party leader Patrick Harvie has contended Trump’s Scottish resorts raise suspicions because neither Turnberry (which lost $26 million in 2016) nor Aberdeen has turned a profit or paid a penny in taxes to Scotland since Trump purchased them. All of the revenue is allegedly absorbed by costs — with many of the expenses flowing back to the president’s Trump Organization.
To be fair, I think this was the full quote:
But Scotland seems to be sending mixed signals, no?
The Aberdeen council approved plans last week to allow President Donald Trump’s golf business to build a second course in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.The course will be constructed next to the original Trump International resort north of Aberdeen. It will be named after Trump’s mother Mary Anne MacLeod, who was born and brought up on the Hebridean island of Lewis before emigrating to New York.
Given that they're not actually allowed to play golf in Scotland these days, I'm wondering about the wisdom of the underlying business plan.
I'm going to save my other items for tomorrow. Hope to see you then.
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