Midweek Musings

 Surprisingly, we have quite a bit to cover.  Unless, yanno, you're not into the women's golf thing...

The Ladies in Winter - OK, technically it's not winter yet, but most of us are sufficiently depressed that it feels like the dead of winter.  Shall we begin with those hardest hit?

Why broadcasting this week’s U.S. Women’s Open presents unique challenges

No, seriously.  Ivor Robson, call your office:

Tommy Roy, like many other great television producers, is a man of considerable mettle. In the last year, NBC’s 29-time Emmy Award-winning lead golf producer has deftly performed his high-wire

television act despite cancellations, pandemic restrictions and a cloud of thick, white fog at the U.S. Amateur.

Roy, like many other great television producers, is also a man of considerable metal. He speaks in brass tacks, rules with an iron fist and yes, even has a bladder of steel.

“The biggest challenge is you can’t go to the bathroom,” Roy says with a laugh. “You gotta stay there. There’s no commercial break you can get up and leave. So you’ve got to limit your liquid intake before you go on the air.”

Roy is speaking of this week’s U.S. Women’s Open, where he is preparing to air large blocks of commercial-free golf from Champions Golf Club, in Houston.

Given that the average age of a golf viewer is, checking notes, dead for three years., I would anticipate a lot of sympathy for your own bladder-control issues, Tommy.  But I hadn't actually picked up the absence of commercial breaks:

It’s the third time in as many years the Women’s Open will adopt a quasi-commercial-free format, but the first with Roy at the helm. NBC snatched up the USGA’s broadcast rights in a shrewd deal with Fox in June, and the advertising structure came with it. That’s great news for golf fans, for the USGA and for Rolex (the sponsor that financed the arrangement).

I'll grant you only that NBC's deal was shrewder than the original Fox deal, though that's setting the bar awfully low.   But given our recent ratings items (and we might have one below), I suspect that NBC will have overpaid when all is said and done.

And perhaps Rolex has sensed a void and seized an opportunity that will pay off for them, but my operative assumption is that, if you're not airing commercials, it's because you couldn't sell them.  How that's good for the USGA will just have to remain one of life's enduring mysteries...

So, what are these "unique challenges"?

The commercial conundrum is only one of many production challenges facing Roy and his team

in Houston. The opening rounds of the tournament will be contested across two separate courses at Champions — Cypress Creek and Jackrabbit — in order to ensure the completion of play before sundown each day.

While this wrinkle introduces an intriguing strategic element to the tournament, it also means twice the work for NBC’s on-air talent.

“I’ll be in a day early, or actually almost two days earlier, than what I would normally be on property just to get a feel for the two different golf courses, get a feel from players how they’re preparing differently for the week,” said lead NBC analyst Paige Mackenzie. “It’ll be interesting from the broadcast side to see how we interplay the highlights from the one course as we’re broadcasting, you know, two at the same time.”

Got that?  The unique challenge is something they manage every single year at both the Crosby and the Hope (that sound you hear are heads exploding in Ponte Vedra Beach at my use of those archaic names).  But how about that buried lede?  It's a major and Mike Whan has it on the big channel on the weekend, and your lead analyst is Paige Mackenzie?  Egads, can't you even pretend tat it's an important event...

It's not that the inside baseball discussion of how they'll cover that second course is without interest, it's just that they seem far more interested in the potty issues:

On the production side, Roy and his team have designated three LiveU units on the Jackrabbit course for Thursday and Friday. The trio of cameras, which operate over cell-phone signal rather than radio frequency, will trail key groups on the additional course over the opening two days. The crew will also have access to its full arsenal of 30 or so cameras on the Cypress Creek course, which will host the final 36 holes.

“The biggest thing is that golf is very expensive to do,” Roy said. “You have to journalistically be able to cover what’s going on [at] that other golf course to keep people up to date on the leaderboard, but you have to do it in a fiscally responsible way.”

NBC added an additional director, a graphics operator and roughly a dozen more technicians to handle the extra action. But even with reinforcements, the Jackrabbit course provides its own set of challenges.

With only three cameras on the second course, who should NBC follow during its 12.5 combined hours of coverage on Thursday and Friday? It’s a question without an obvious answer.

Just spitballin' here, but how about you follow those featured groups?  Oh, and since these are mobile, you can always change your mind if one of the other gals is going low.  

I suspect he'll want to cover this group as well:

The USGA is known to have a little fun when making the pairings for its championships, and this week's U.S. Women’s Open at Champions Golf Club in Houston is no exception. Of the pairings for the 154-woman field, one sticks out: the bombers group. The USGA put together the three longest players on the LPGA Tour: Bianca Pagdanganan, who averages 284.7 yards off the tee, Anne van Dam (281.8 yards) and Maria Fassi (280.4 yards).

 

So, in a bit of Karmic convergence, it's a 2020 Women's major, so there's going to be a wall, no?  

Another LPGA major, another wall.

This one won’t impact the outcome of the tournament at least.

At this week’s U.S. Women’s Open there is temporary fencing that runs most of the width of the driving range at Champions Golf Club. With a 156-player field, the wall is there so both ends of the double-sided range can be used at the same time, and to prevent balls from a handful of long hitters rolling up near players on the opposite side.

The range is 300 yards long, and the fencing on each side is only about 30 yards in front of where players are teeing off, meaning it makes for not just an awkward look, but awkward shots, too.

What, you thought only the guys are doing all that ab work?  Here's one take on it:

“I'm not thrilled about it, to be honest with you,” said Danielle Kang, who is making her first start since a runner-up finish at the LPGA Drive On Championship-Reynolds Lake Oconee in late October. “I do a lot of wedge work. I do my wedge numbers with head covers every single day, so that's kind of bringing in a lot of obstacles for me.”

When Kang first arrived this week and saw the fencing, she thought it was temporary. Then she found out it would be there all week.

Anyone know what means about doing her wedge distances with headcovers?  Here's another bit I don't fully understand:

For tech-reliant players, though, the barrier still presents a problem, because it impedes Trackman monitors from zeroing in down range on pins and can make for some wonky numbers.

“We just had to figure that out ourselves,” said native Texan Cheyenne Knight. “It’s different, but maybe after the cut they’ll take it down — it’s kind of weird.”

I actually didn't know Trackman does anything with range pins, I thought is just reads the metrics of the club and ball at impact.  Somebody fill me in, please. 

Typically they wouldn't use the members' range, at least for the men.  But with the second course in use for the early rounds, no purpose-built range is available.  

Heads up, here comes one of those deft segues for which I am legend...  It was Beth Ann Nichols who came up with The Great Wall of Dinah at the ANA a few months back, and she's back with this strange cri de coeur:

Opinion: It’s time for the golf world to blow the roof off the U.S. Women’s Open

So helpful that they labeled it an opinion piece, but WTF?  Beth Ann typically does a nice job covering the ladies game, but she's sounding a bit shrill here:

A first-ever December U.S. Women’s Open presents a unique opportunity for the women’s game. This year the championship, to be played Dec. 10-13 at Champions Golf Club in Houston, isn’t competing against a marquee PGA Tour event or backed up to a men’s major. It’s an ideal time

for the golf world to hype up the women’s tour. Make it the talk of twitter and top-of-mind on television segments and websites rather than just an afterthought.

Let the women lead this week.

USGA social channels have been promoting a #womenworthwatching hashtag and shining light on a stat that makes something we all know to be true look even worse than we thought.

Only 4 percent of sports coverage includes women’s sports or female athletes. Yet, according to Minnesota’s Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, 40 percent of all sports participants are female.

Beth Ann, has anyone ever explained to you how this Cause-and-effect thing works?  Any guesses as to why, perhaps, only 4% of the TV coverage is of women?  Well, have you seen the ratings?

In fact, she's seems to be working herself up declaring it the civil rights issue of our time:

It’s impossible to justify 4 percent.

Not when the best story in golf this year came from Sophia Popov, the little-known German who scripted that unbelievable tale at Royal Troon. The wiry player who oozes personality backed up that AIG Women’s British Open victory too, making six straight cuts and posting three top-25 finishes since then.

OK, you can stop laughing now?  I'm certainly glad to know that the standards for backing up majors is making a few cuts... Of course, Sophia was a nice story at Troon, but Beth Ann seems blind to the irony of touting the girl, because the biggest story in which she was involved was her exclusion from that ANA...

Shack has this post up on the abysmal ratings from Mayakoba, in which he has this throwaway about the ladies:

The LPGA fared even worse, with no day of the Volunteers of America Classic cracking the top 150 cable broadcasts last week.

We've covered all sorts of folks whining on this very subject, from Mike Whan to Stacey Lewis.  They're always quick to decry their treatment and demand network coverage or equal treatment with the men's tour, but never quite get to the issue of the size of the audience they can deliver.  

John Strege makes the case for this unique venue:

What’s in a name, the Bard famously wrote, long before Jackie Burke Jr. was born, and Burke

was born nearly a century ago. Still, an interesting question. The answer in this case is more than you might know.

In this case, the subject is Champions Golf Club in Houston, site of this week’s U.S. Women’s Open, rescheduled from its June date due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Start with Golf Club. It suggests that access is limited and that golf is not just the principal activity, but is its only activity. You want tennis courts and a swimming pool, you’re in the wrong place. Go find a country club. Champions is a golf club.

Champions, meanwhile, denotes a certain quality of player. Included on its roster of winners are Arnold Palmer, Tiger Woods, Ben Crenshaw, Hubert Green and a U.S. Ryder Cup team. Hackers need not apply. When two Masters champions, Burke, 98 next month, and the late Jimmy Demaret, founded Champions in 1956, it was designed to be a club for better players (handicap indexes of 14.0 or lower these days).

Give it a read, as Jackie Burke is a national treasure.

As for picks, the Golf Digest and Golf.com writers take their shots, which you can scan through on your own.  Hopefully someone has asked Hank Haney for his pick...  Yeah, passive-aggressive for sure, but everyone is waiting for this youngster to break through, though this might not be her moment:

Nelly Korda did something “stupid” (her word) on the 13th hole of the first round at Aronimink Golf Club. She tried to crack her back, and it went into spasm. Korda said she doesn’t normally

crack her back, but it was cold outside in the opening round of the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship and she could feel it tightening up.

“I just made a little oopsie,” said Nelly, “which turned into a little bit longer of an oopsie.”

She withdrew from the October major and hasn’t been seen since – until this week at the U.S. Women’s Open, where she’s taking things “step by step.” She started practicing about a dozen days ago. Played 18 on Monday for the first time since the opening round of the Women’s PGA.

A little young for back issues, no?  Weather forecast looks decent early in the week, but barely breaking sixty degrees for Sunday.  

How Can We Miss You... - Jay might have thought he had put a stake in their heart, but they simply refuse to go away:

Key figures behind the breakaway Premier Golf League concept are pressing ahead with plans for a series of events on both sides of the Atlantic despite the newly formed partnership between the European and PGA tours.

The Raine Group, venture capitalists who came close to an agreement with the European Tour, believe the finest golfers in the world – as independent contractors – can still be coaxed to play in competitions not sanctioned by the sport’s traditional tournament organisers.

There remains concern among some at the upper levels of professional golf that, by coming closer, the PGA and European tours are not boosting the market by allowing competition. Meanwhile, Raine are not going away.

They're still shooting their mouths off, in any event.  I really don't know what they think they can accomplish, because Monahan has made it clear that no PGA Tour members will be granted the necessary waivers to play in PGL events.  Presumably he now enforce that on the Euro Tour as well, though I had been reliably informed that the Euro Tour will remain completely independent.

A few more details are seeping out:

The European and PGA tours announced a “strategic alliance” in late November that will inevitably lead to co-sanctioned events. For the time being the PGA Tour’s commissioner, Jay Monahan, will take a place on the European Tour board and the PGA Tour has taken a minority stake in European Tour Productions. Raine’s own talks with the European Tour, first revealed by the Guardian in June, resulted in an offer worth up to $200m (£150m) that was ultimately rejected at board level in favour of a PGA Tour partnership. Via Raine, the European Tour would have remained independent and had the option of equity in Premier Golf League at no cost to the tour.

Just a reminder that the Euro Tour was not in financial distress....  But this is the most interesting bit, in which Jay says to Keith, "Nice little tour you have there.  Sure would be a shame if anything happened to it":

The European Tour had worries about what the knock-on and negative effect of any deal with Raine, and not the PGA Tour, may have been. There would have been an anticipated PGA Tour reaction. Documentation seen by the Guardian understood to have been shown to the European Tour board cited, as examples, potential scheduling conflicts and increasing the number of minimum events that players must enter to retain PGA Tour status. The notion of PGA Tour qualifying events in Europe, the lobbying of major championships regarding eligibility criteria, pressure on broadcasters over coverage and impact on the Ryder Cup were all even mooted as possible outcomes. As things stand, the PGA Tour has no formal involvement in the Ryder Cup whatsoever.

And the PGA Tour having a beneficial interest in the Euro Tour side of the Ryder Cup remains the high-water irony mark.

The Year That Was - I don't think sepia tones are quite the ticket, as we prepare to did goodbye to a kidney-stone of a year.  Cristopher Powers seems like one of those annoying optimists that are typically ignored in these pages.  He's got a few of those silver linings to run by us:

You played more

Not only do we have statistics to back this up (in July, golfers played 10 million more rounds than

they did a year ago, according to Golf Datatech), it passed the eye test. Whether you belong to a private club or play at a local muny, it was nearly impossible to get a tee time this past summer and fall. There were more women and more kids than ever—trends that we can all get behind—and many young adults who’d be occupying themselves in a variety of ways during normal times decided to give golf a shot. For a sport that less and less people were playing due to a number of reasons (time, money, etc.), this past summer and fall was a massive turn of events.

Walk this way

Once people realized golf was among the few legitimate activities to try during the height of the pandemic, they also came to realize it was a great way to exercise. Walking burns more calories than you’d think—an 18-hole round is give or take the equivalent of walking five miles—not to mention you are doing it while enjoying the fresh air and the scenery. Push carts, considered taboo among some particularly in the U.S., are now the norm. Most importantly, walking allows you to keep a safe social distance. As golfers, we all benefitted from learning to love to walk again.

Golfers were the luckiest folks on the planet this year, as we actually had somewhere to go.  Not that our elected officials didn't do their best to deny it to us... 

But are we so sure that this is a good thing:

You bet you could bet

In June, golf and the UFC were the first two sports to return in the pandemic world. That gave sports fans something to watch and, for a growing segment, something to bet on. DraftKings reporting that the TaylorMade Driving Relief skins game in May was “similar to a major” in terms of wagering. The PGA Tour’s first event back in June, the Charles Schwab Challenge, became the most-bet tour event in DraftKings history. Those trends are only continuing, thanks to new partnerships the PGA Tour is forging with groups like IMG Arena, to help make legal betting easier.

So now were in favor if regressive taxes?  Good to know...

Joel Beall has ten things we learned from that rather unique PGA Tour season, though most strike me as old news:

You can’t wish something into existence

It’s been three years since Spieth has won, and it feels like the entire sport wants to will him back to his former self. Though that may ultimately come to pass, 2020 only grew the expanse between the Spieth of then and now.

In 20 events this year, the three-time major winner registered two top 10s against six missed cuts. Colonial was the lone start where he entered Sunday in contention, and he was a non-factor in the three majors. It’s not a fickle driver or streaky putting that’s plaguing Spieth; he’s struggling in all aspects of his game, finishing the 2019-’20 season 165th in strokes gained/off-the-tee, 97th in approach and 105th in sg/putting. Worse, though his scoring has been good to decent to start a tournament (75th in Round 1 average, 36th in Round 2), the weekend has been the bane of his existence, ranking 165th in Round 3 and 147th in Round 4.

Revisionist history has dubbed the period since Spieth’s victory at Royal Birkdale in 2017 a drought, which is not entirely true. He had two consecutive runner-ups in playoff events in 2017, nearly completed the biggest comeback in tournament history at the 2018 Masters and played in the final group at the 2018 Open Championship. He has also dropped 60 spots in the World Rankings since that Open win, and he is the rare talent whose success is measured in victories and victories only. For his part, Spieth insists he’s on the right path, that this is all part of a process. Here’s to hoping that process yields more positive results in 2021.

And yet, there you go again, wishing Jordan into that 201 version thereof.  The rest of us have moved on..

Appreciate that Brooks is here

A T-7 at the Masters—a performance Brooks Koepka called “disappointing”—gave hope Koepka has rounded the corner on hip and knee issues. Of course, when it comes to hip and knee issues, sometimes that’s a corner that can’t be walked back around, so, if only for a second, let’s be thankful for what we’ve witnessed from Koepka. He attacks the majors with a single-minded focus and tenacity that only a handful of others in this game have known, and his refusal to adhere to social tour norms—while occasionally forced—is nonetheless interesting. The game is better when Brooks is in the mix.

Hey, we appreciate Brooksie as much as the next guy... For instance, Alex Myers has been keeping us current on his exploits, first with this tweet:

Brooks Koepka taking the MC at Mayakoba quite hard pic.twitter.com/jN2yvgiBB7

— Christopher Powers (@CPowers14) December 7, 2020

We've been all over the psychodrama between the guys, but it seems that Jenna has a little Paulina-envy going on as well.  There's also a Brooks in Paradise musical number if you have a high tolerance for pain.

Lastly, on this topic for now, Golf Digest is posting a continuing list of the Golf Newsmakers of the Year, which they're rolling out piece by piece for dramatic effect.  I do hope they got the memo from Beth Ann Nichols that Sophia Popov has retired the category, but we'll have to wait on that one.

Here's a quick and mostly random sampling:

No. 24: HOODIES

Like seemingly every controversy in golf, the heated debate that centered around the

acceptability of wearing hooded sweatshirts—aka Hoodies—during a golf tournament was manufactured on social media. While well-known players like Tony Finau, Justin Thomas and Rory McIlroy had worn them in competition before, HoodieGate didn’t really “explode” until Tyrrell Hatton won the European Tour’s BMW PGA Championship in September wearing one. And by “explode,” we mean a handful of folks with 26 Twitter followers were upset with Hatton’s Bill Belichick-ian look at Wentworth. Nevertheless, the debate persisted, becoming less of a Hoodie-specific controversy and more of a diatribe on proper golf attire in general. One English golf club doubled down on its no-hoodie rule after Hatton’s victory. Ewan Porter, a former tour pro, told the story of being kicked out of an Australia golf club for wearing black socks. These two situations had many up in arms over golf’s outdated “dress code,” the argument being that if we want to grow the game, forcing people to abide by archaic rules ain’t the way to go. One thing is clear: There is still a divide regarding golf’s dress-code debates, be it on social media or behind the closed gates of an exclusive club. —Christopher Powers

 What, you thought they'd miss the threshold issue of the day?

This one is more up my alley:

No. 22: SHEEP RANCH

Like the age-old gifting question, What do you get the person who already has everything?, it’s difficult to envision what could possibly make Bandon Dunes better. The golf world received the

answer this year: Sheep Ranch, which opened in June and earned Golf Digest’s Best New Course honors for 2020. The trick to enhancing a golf destination that seems to offer everything—including four courses currently ranked among Golf Digest’s America’s 100 Greatest Courses—is to make any new addition distinct. Sheep Ranch accomplishes that by playing across a property that’s unlike anything else on site—a broad, open plain of seaside bluffs to the north of Old Macdonald. Where Bandon’s other courses dip in and out of sandy dunes and forests, Sheep Ranch fans across a mostly naked and ferociously windswept expanse that used to be home to a rustic and secretive 13-green course of the same name. The task for architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw was to find a way to assemble, in limited space, 18 holes that were broad enough to handle balls that would be blowing in all directions. In doing this they were also able to locate a remarkable nine greens along a majestic run of Pacific Ocean bluffs. Sheep Ranch is a gorgeous, bouncy course with its own look and playing characteristics, giving guests a different kind of golf experience and travelers yet another compelling reason to make the trek to southwest Oregon. —Derek Duncan

Which only leaves us to ponder that most important of questions... To wit, when will your humble blogger get to play it?

I'll see you down the road.