HOUSTON — The opening round is in the books at the U.S. Women’s Open, and with pristine late-fall weather and a slight breeze, conditions were close to perfect to begin the final major of 2020.
With an unprecedented two courses in play for the first two rounds, it had a different feel from majors of years past, but with limited daylight hours to work with, the change was a necessary one. Despite the unusual circumstances, players came away from the day generally pleased with a fair, challenging setup and bracing themselves for the impending carnage that each U.S. Open promises.
Carnage? There's a style book that hasn't been updated recently, but the scarcity of daylight precludes carnage on Thursday-Friday. Now I might have some actual carnage for you below, from a different venue entirely.
But how many times have we seen an indifferent round jump-started by one shot?
1. Surprise name atop the leaderboardThe best players in the world are in the field this week in Houston, but through 18 holes, an unlikely name sits atop the leaderboard. Amy Olson shots a four-under 67 on the Cypress Creek course Thursday, securing the outright lead by day’s end.Olson’s day got off to a so-so start as she sat one-over through six holes, but with one swing of the club on the par-3 16th, her entire day turned around. With an 8-iron from 141 yards, Olson held a high fade into the breeze and watched as her ball trickled in for an unlikely ace.
As distinct from those likely aces? Also, how many times have we seen a highly-touted youngster come on tour and initially struggle?
When Amy Olson turned pro in 2013, many expected that she’d be the next star on the LPGATour. That included Olson.There was good reason: In college, Olson won 20 tournaments while at North Dakota State, breaking Juli Inskter’s NCAA record of 17 titles.
Seven years later, the 28-year-old is still looking for her first tour victory. “I think coming out here I expected to win really early,” Olson said. “It always kind of came easy to me in college. I won the U.S. [Girls’] Junior Amateur just my second time playing the event, so it definitely was easy for me early on.
So, what amused and/or entertained your humble blogger? Well, apparently the USGA is so envious of the PGA Tour's staggered start in the Tour Championship that they enacted a modified, limited version thereof for this event:
In keeping with 2020, the first story line of this week’s tournament at Champions Golf Club was of Jing Yan rushing to the first tee at the Cypress Creek course, a moment captured on the Peacock livestream. She failed to make it by her 9:42 a.m. start time.
In accordance with the rules, Yan was given a two-stroke penalty. She walked to the tee, drilled a drive and later made what would have been a birdie putt. Instead, her card listed a bogey 5.
That's a Woosie birdie, for those that remember that little moment. But I hear you asking, how dows this happen?
Confusion might have been caused by the tournament’s configuration — players went off the first and 10th tees on two different courses on Thursday morning.
Given that we've talked about little else in the last week, this shouldn't have come as a surprise to the girl.
You know what else makes your humble blogger laugh? Yeah, Lexi Thompson.... Not sure I fully understand my own reaction, but I said it out loud. I for sure hate her violent and off-putting golf swing, but I also have little tolerance for her emotional fragility, especially since she allegedly was battle-hardened by competing with her two brother growing up.
As you might well have heard, Bryson DeChambeau's looper loyal manservant Tim Tucker has Lexi's bag this week, and talk about worlds colliding:
“The first day that we went out, he has all the green density, the air density, and has that allfactored in, and you know, it was unbelievable,” said Thompson. “Like the first two holes he said, it’s going to play this number. And I trusted it and I hit it so close, and it was a perfect number.
“But I’m like, maybe I should just have another – like the actual pin number in my head just for my sanity. But it’s unbelievable what he calculates. I’m truly amazed. I’m like, just keep it to yourself; just tell me what you think the shot will play.”
Am I the only one that finds her as dumb as a rock? We might not love the dependence that's developed on yardage and green-reading books, but she seems to be the only one pursuing this strategy:
Thompson, 25, doesn’t carry a yardage book on the golf course. She relies on her caddie for numbers and needs a small fraction of the information that DeChambeau, the 2020 U.S. Open winner, requires to go about his job.
Needs? More like, "Is able to absorb".
But riddle me this, Batman, is T75 one of those numbers Tim kept to himself?
One last bit previewing the second round, the W-word is about to become the story:
Thunderstorms are expected to roll into the area on Friday afternoon, and USGA organizers have taken note, moving tee times for the second round up about 90 minutes. The first groups will now go off at 9 a.m. ET.
And while the rains will likely be a nuisance, the real issue could be winds gusting up over 20 miles per hour.
Are we allowed to tell Lexi? Not sure how much data that pretty little head can absorb.... Hope she has back-up plans for the weekend.
Tour Stuff - A couple of unrelated stories about the big-boys Tour. First, some updates on early-season 2021 events:
On Thursday, the tour sent an email to players outlining its plans for the first seven tournaments of the new year, starting with the Sentry Tournament of Champions, Jan. 7-10 in Maui, through the Genesis Invitational, Feb. 18-21 at Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles. The email, a copy of which was obtained by Golf Digest, said the tour is working in accordance with local governments and that its plans vary in accordance with current local COVID-19 guidelines.In Hawaii, which only recently opened its islands to visitors, up to 200 fans/VIPs per day will be allowed at Kapalua and only up to 100 per day at the Sony Open the following week in Honolulu.After that, the tour moves to the U.S. mainland, beginning with The American Express in Palm Springs, Calif., where 100-200 spectators per day will be allowed.
Of course, there's that one early-season events uniquely dependent on spectators, and we have news there:
Then there’s the Waste Management Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale. The tournament with the highest annual attendance on tour—in 2018 it had a record 719,179 fans for the week—will allow up to 8,000 fans per day next year, by far the most of any PGA Tour event to date. Scott Jenkins, who is chairing the tournament for the host organizers, The Thunderbirds, in 2021, told Golf Digest last month that the plan was to build a one-story structure to accommodate fans at the par-3 16th, which has in recent years had a three-story grandstand surrounding most of the hole.
It’s an end of an era. PGA Tour rules officials Mark Russell and Slugger White, who both hold the titles of vice president of competitions and have led the competitions department since 1999, confirmed that they will work their final events in 2021 after more than 40 years of service. Thenews was originally shared with Tour staff in an internal memo.Russell, 69, the Tour’s longest tenured active employee (since Karen Rose retired in June), said he still plans to work 16-20 events next year and assist in a smooth transition.
White, 71, who played four seasons on the Tour from 1976-79 – “probably three and a half too many,” he cracked – joined the Tour’s staff on January 1, 1982. He said he intends to work 6-8 events and that his swan song may be the Memorial in late May.
“That’s enough for me,” said White, who became recognizable for his distinctive Panama hat. “It’s been a damn good run. It’s time to pass the baton, which is fine. I’m not going to be afraid to relax a little bit.”
And it's not just a domestic issue:
The announcement comes on the heels of European Tour veterans John Paramour and Andy McFee working their final events in October.
Together with Russell and White, the world of professional golf is losing more than 160 years of experience at the top of the game. Their retirement will leave a void in the administration of the Rules of Golf.
A Ryder Cup analogy pops into my mind, about the value of experience when said experience is of the losing kind... Here, my question is whether the administration of the rules has been sufficiently competent that we should mourn the loss of it. It's a complicated subject, and I'd argue that those eff-ups come more from the rules-making than the rules administration.
There's an interesting Q&A with Slugger that's worth your time, from which I'll excerpt the bit on slow play:
GW: When’s the last time you gave out a slow-play penalty?
SW: I think the last one, and this has been a while, is Glen Day at Honda, years and years ago. Now, we’ve got it to where you really have to be – I don’t want to use an adjective you can’t print – but you’ve got to be a dumb ass, how about that? You really do. I’m sorry. You can paraphrase that as much as you want, but you’ve got to be really looking to be penalized to be penalized. To be penalized you have to be hit twice and you’ve got to be an idiot to be get hit the second time and we haven’t gotten to that point.
That recipient notoriously earned the rather obvious nickname "All-Day", but the more important point is that it was in 1995 per the Wayback Machine. If the last penalty given out was twenty-five years ago, let's just agree that we're not enforcing pace-of-play rules.
Did You Want Carnage? - Have you heard of Rustic Canyon? It's an LA-based daily-fee course that was renovated by Gil Hanse a few years back, and Gil's design team included that Shackelford guy.
They held an amateur event there this week, and Christian Powers tells us about the idyllic circumstances:
What's the Scottish saying? Nae wind, nae rain, nae golf. Whoever first uttered that phrase probably didn't account for the wind blowing 40 mph.
Those were the conditions on a brutally windy day Monday at Rustic Canyon, which hosted the Southern California Golf Association's Tournament of Club Champions. The 18-hole stroke-play event is open to any SoCal club champion who has a handicap index of 2.4 or lower. Ninety-three players entered. Just 67 survived.
The wind was so bad that it caused 24 players to withdraw, in addition to one DNF (did not finish) and one NS (no start). It's hard to blame them after hearing what it was like from someone who played in the event. Andy Ho, who won his club championship at The Vineyard GC and shot 100 on Monday, tweeted out some inside info.
This is a different tweet, but you can see Ho's at that link above:
What a scene at Rustic Canyon yesterday! Consistent gusts of 30-40 and slippery greens led to some interesting #s:-2 guys broke 80 (both 1st group out)-26 WDs in a field of 93-a 2-handicap shot 123-This video by @techtrainingtip of Mark, a +1, 6-putting: pic.twitter.com/uuMQGkJxzv— Dylan Dethier (@dylan_dethier) December 9, 2020
Looks like he 6-putted from about five feet, putting Danny Lee to shame. Forget those poseurs above, this is what carnage looks like.
Alliss, Interrupted - A couple of quick add-ons to our celebration of The Great Man, first this tribute to the Voice of the Open Championship:
I'm getting better at embedding social media posts, though the centering of them continues to elude me...
Friend of the blog Mark W. was kind enough to forward this remembrance from the R&A's obit:
I remember in particular, the Open at Royal St George’s in 1985 when a streaker ran onto the 18th green chased by heavily booted policemen. He was eventually tackled by Peter Jacobsen and a policeman removed his helmet and placed it over the streaker’s ‘ equipment’.
As he did so, Peter came out with ‘Well, what a lot of fuss about such a little thing’. I am told no one in the commentary box was able to speak for some time!
We'll miss him, especially come July.
Further Ruminations On The Year That Was - All sorts of bits on this annus horribilis, so we'll just dive in. First, Joel Beall:
13 'things' that help tell the story of golf in 2020
Not sure he delivered, but tis one sure seems like a lifetime ago:
Tom Brady’s ripped pantsWith TB12’s appearance in The Match 2 at Medalist Golf Club in May, the future pro football Hall of Famer was exposed as a sandbagger, received an ungodly amount of schadenfreude during a hit-n-giggle and ripped his pants in the one nanosecond where things weren’t going wrong. Yet the shot that ultimately led to that infamous splitting of slacks—a hole-out for eagle—was the first “Oh-My-Did-You-See-That?!?!!” sports moment since the world shut down in March.
See, I think he misses the point here. This was amusing in the moment, but by far the more interesting bit was Brady losing his swing on national television, which actually was the most compelling aspect of this event.
As for the most interesting player of 2020, Joel is oddly dismissive here:
Protein shakes. And fire ants. And broken drivers. And hype videos. And lost balls.
It was a busy year for Bryson.
Fair enough, though there was also that dominating U.S. Open performance.... Just sayin'.
Daniel Rappaport attempts to capture the essence of 2020 in select quotes, including this from that Players' Championship debacle:
“I’m probably the only one who’s not playing. Same number as the sanitizers in the clubhouse, locker room and dining.” —C.T. Pan, March 12In a since-deleted tweet, Pan explained his reasoning for withdrawing from the Players Championship prior to the first round. This marked the first real encroachment of COVID-19 on the PGA Tour; there was sparse talk of it the week prior at Bay Hill, but worries mounted as the Players practice rounds wore on and other sports, notably the NBA, put their seasons on hiatus. Pan was the only golfer to withdraw over safety concerns, but by the time Thursday’s opening round was underway, it was unclear whether the tournament would make it to Sunday. At noon on Thursday, just as Hideki Matsuyama was polishing off perhaps the most under-the-radar 63 in golf history, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan announced that the Players and all events through the Valero Texas Open would be played without fans. Ten hours later a different announcement came.
We'll give the Tour due credit for managing the reboot well, though Jay's performance at the Players' was disgraceful. On the flip side, the Chainsmokers killed...
And this from the man of the year:
“I think there’s a lot of bunkers that are around, like, 290, so hopefully I’ll be able to clear those and take those out of play. So, sorry, Mr. Ross, but, you know, it is what it is.” —Bryson DeChambeau, June 30As far as actual golf storylines, DeChambeau’s bulk-up dominated discourse virtually all summer. He showed up to Colonial some 30-odd pounds heavier than he had been just three months earlier, a hard-to-believe transformation. A late bogey cost him a spot in a playoff, but it became clear that this was no side-show. He finished T-8 and T-6 in his next two starts, then showed up to the Rocket Mortgage Classic at Detroit Golf Club, a 1910s-era Donald Ross design that proved no match at all for his thunderous power—he shot 23 under and won by three. The above quote, while undoubtedly humorous, was also rather poignant, underscoring how a player hitting the ball 350-plus yards can nullify so many great architectural challenges of classic golf courses.
Of course, you'll all remember this rebuttal:
“It’s not a skill to hit the ball a long way in my opinion. I could put on 40 pounds. I could goand see a bio-mechanist and I could gain 40 yards; that’s actually a fact. I could put another two inches on my driver. I could gain that, but the skill in my opinion is to hit the ball straight. That’s the skill, he’s just taking the skill out of it in my opinion.” —Matthew Fitzpatrick, Oct. 11The Bryson-distance talk did not cease after his torrid summer that peaked with a six-shot U.S. Open victory, and Matthew Fitzpatrick re-fueled it with these comments at the BMW PGA Championship in England. Not a long hitter himself, Fitzpatrick struck some with his comments as offering the bitter lamentations of a jealous player, but there also were plenty who agreed with his assertion that the game is trending in the wrong direction. DeChambeau, to his credit, took the comments in stride, though he did offer this biting response: “Hey, man I would love to help out.”
Matt, I'm pretty sure not even Donald Ross would agree with you there...
Dave Shedloski tackles the controversies of the year, capturing the dark side of that guy:
Garbage rules and the massaging thereofWhen he wasn’t pounding drives 350-plus yards, or chewing out photographers or cameramen, Bryson DeChambeau often was testing the limits of the Rules of Golf. It all started at the Memorial when DeChambeau started pumping balls out of bounds to the right of the fairway onthe par-5 15th hole, leading to a 10 on the scorecard and a missed cut. He eventually found his first misplayed ball, but it was up against a fence defining the boundary. He asked for a second ruling when he didn’t like the first (which said his ball was OB and was overhead on the telecast saying, “They’re trying to give me another garbage ruling.” At the Masters in November, he lost a drive in the uncharacteristically thick rough at Augusta National on the par-4 third hole. He was overheard asking an official, “If we can’t find it, is it a lost ball?” Social media howled over that one as well. But the topper actually came in Memphis when he tried to take relief left of the fairway near some trees on the par-4 seventh hole at TPC Southwind during the first round of the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational when he observed a few ants and an ant hole near his lie. DeChambeau thought they were fire ants. He wanted to move his ball. PGA Tour official Ken Tackett wasn’t having any of it. “I just don’t see it, Bryson, honestly,” Tackett said. DeChambeau made a double bogey. The following afternoon, Brooks Koepka was in the same vicinity, pointed to the ground and told his caddie, Rickie Elliott, “there’s an ant.” Because of course he did.
I'm unclear on where the controversy is, as there was unanimity that he's kind of a jerk.
And, while I thought I watched every available moment of that U.S. Open, I simply don't remember this:
Reed-ing the green at Winged FootOf course, this collection would be incomplete without a Patrick Reed submission, and the Texan didn’t disappoint with his actions on the ninth hole during the third round of the U.S. Open at Winged Foot. Leading after 36 holes, Reed found his approach to the green had come to rest against the collar of the rough. Camera footage picked up Reed appearing to flatten the grass behind his ball with his wedge before chipping onto the green. Plenty of viewers, already familiar with controversy surrounding some of Reed’s questionable actions on the course, chimed in on social media to point out the apparent infraction. USGA rules officials, however, did not see it as such. There was no indication that they ever questioned Reed on the matter, and he was not penalized, except maybe by karma. He fell off the pace with a seven-over 77 and ended up T-13.
Appearing to? The controversy here is that this continues to happen without outrage...
I'll just link to this one that you can explore on your own:
The 10 moments we missed golf fans most at PGA Tour events in 2020, ranked
Not to worry, he's got your Thomas-Morikawa and DJ-Rahmbo bombfests, though those weren't always the most significant, at least they weren't in the most significant events. I'd have had that Morikawa tee shot higher, but reasonable folks can disagree.
Golf Digest continues to roll out its list of top newsmakers, though the current installment has quite the cold open:
No. 14: RORY MCILROY
“A game of two halves” may be one of soccer’s hoariest cliches, but it is an apt description of
Rory McIlroy’s play during the 2019-’20 season and beyond. Between October 2019 and March 2020, the now 31-year-old Northern Irishman won once (WGC-HSBC Champions) and was never out of the top five in seven consecutive PGA Tour appearances. But when the tour returned after the COVID-19 lockdown in June, that high level of consistency was gone. In his next nine starts, McIlroy’s T-8 finish at the season-ending Tour Championship was his only top 10 and his distinction as World No. 1 was no more. Meanwhile, the 2020-’21 season, so far, ranks somewhere between those two extremes. Four appearances contained a T-8 at the U.S. Open and a T-5 at the Masters. Good obviously, but not even McIlroy’s biggest fan would claim he was ever in serious contention to win either. So what to make of it all? In a recent interview, McIlroy—who also became a new father to daughter Poppy, born Aug. 31—gave himself a “C” grade for his play. “I think any year you don’t win a tournament is a disappointment, and that’s why this year is disappointing,” McIlroy said, acknowledging once more his struggle getting comfortable with fanless tournaments. “It maybe took me longer to adjust to it than some other people. Every time I went out there for the first few weeks it felt like a practice round, like it didn’t matter.” Still, the world of golf is trending upward. A virus vaccine is reportedly on the way, and the return of crowds could follow. If the ever-inspirational McIlroy follows that same direction, it would hardly be a surprise to see a fifth major victory—and the first since 2014—added to his resume in 2021. Then again, maybe he won’t do anything of the sort. As 2020 has illustrated, with Rory you never quite know anything for certain. —John Huggan
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... Of course, the key bit is that the latter occurs for Rory when it matters most.
On the general subject of assessing 2020, there was this bit from Sunday night's Tour Confidential that I never got around to blogging:
4. Brooks Koepka this week said Dustin Johnson’s stretch of golf this year — in which he won, in order, the Travelers Championship, the Northern Trust, the Tour Championship and the Masters — “will probably go down as one of the best maybe six months we’ve seen in a long time.” Where do you rank that run among the other great heaters in Tour history?
Are you serious Three wins is some sort of epic heater?
Sens: Impressive. Still a notch or two below the Tiger Slam of ’99-2000, not to mention that little run Woods went on in 2006-07, when he won seven in a row, including two majors. But yeah. Of our current crop of alphas, no one does dominant stretches like DJ.
Errrr, Josh, that Tiger slam was 2000-2001, but whatevah.
Dethier: Since Tiger in ’07 would qualify as “a long time” in my mind, I’m with Koepka. Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy and Jason Day (don’t sleep on Jason Day!) have each put together hotstretches in the past decade, but when you take a peek at Johnson’s run of form — T12-T2-1-2-T3-T6-T2-1, with a green jacket and a FedEx Cup in that stretch — it’s a good time to be DJ
Bamberger: I’m sure Koepka is correct, except for one thing: I don’t see this run ever coming up as a barroom/Twitterverse conversation. He won a November Masters. That people will remember forever.
Piastowski: It’s up there, no doubt. The thing is, I think this stretch is going to continue for a while.Shipnuck: It’s really a five-year run during which DJ has conquered two citadels (Oakmont and Augusta) and won 16 times, including four WGCs and four playoff events, to say nothing of taking a FedEx Cup and two POYs. That’s a Hall of Fame career right there.
I guess things are a tad awkward between the former BFFs, but really... Succinctly, here's my rebuttal:
And here's Alan Shipnuck's equally succinct rebuttal:
Care to make it interesting, Alan? He had a great year, but a little perspective seems in order...
Truly Random Musings - Some stream-of-consciousness thoughts here, which you should feel free to ignore at your pleasure.
First, did you know that August, GA has a minor league baseball team? What would you name such a team? Well, yeah:
Augusta GreenJackets Invited to become Atlanta Braves Affiliate
Of course you would...
This last bit comes from my recreational reading, about which I've considered blogging more extensively. Early in the pandemic, needing an escape from our grim realities, I dove into Andrew Roberts' acclaimed biography of Napoleon, which proved a fascinating journey. A journey that included an intersection with my family's history, as on his ill-fated journey to Moscow his forces were delayed by resistance from the fortress town of Bobruisk, which just happens to be the birthplace of Nathan Simpson, your humble blogger's paternal grandfather.
Fast forward eight months, and I've just begun Roberts' biography of Winston Churchill. I'm not even one hundred pages in, yet the young Churchill already intrigues the reader. It's the year 1900 and Churchill is in search of adventure and a reputation for bravery, and manages to get himself posted to South Africa in the midst of the second Boer war and takes part in the Battle of Skion Kop. From Wikipedia:
The Battle of Spion Kop (Dutch: Slag bij Spionkop; Afrikaans: Slag van Spioenkop) was foughtabout 38 km (24 mi) west-south-west of Ladysmith on the hilltop of Spioenkop(1) along the Tugela River, Natal in South Africa from 23–24 January 1900. It was fought between the South African Republic and the Orange Free State on the one hand and British forces during the Second Boer War campaign to relieve Ladysmith. It resulted in a Boer victory.
The battle, collectively with its location at a hill, has gone down in British football lore as the namesake of a common British term for single-tier terraces and/or stands at football stadia.
Naturally, you'll be wondering where the connective tissue might be. This one isn't as personal as with Napoleon, but there just happens to be a hole on the Balcomie Links at Crail with a curious name:
Hole 16 – Spion Kop – Named after the hill in South Africa (Spioenkop) where a battle was fought during the Second Boer War in 1900. This also why the Liverpool FC supporters end at Anfield is known as ‘The Kop’.
Here's slightly more from a mailing we received:
Hole 16 – Spion Kop – Another tough uphill par 3 named after a hill in South Africa where a battle was fought during the Boer War in 1900. The hill in front of the green consists of a number of short terraces resembling the hill where the battle was fought.
This will bring our history lesson to its conclusion. Though the practice of naming golf holes after battles lost seems a tad curious.
Have a great weekend and I'll see you on Monday.
No comments:
Post a Comment