I hadn't intended to blog today, but I'm felling guilty about leaving you high and dry on Monday. Plus, the 2021-themed stuff won't age well, so we'll just spend a few minutes together...
In With The New - Rumor has it that some of your have been critical of 2020. I do get it, but also feel compelled to note that 2021 being an improvement remains just an assumption.... The dial has been set at Relentless Optimism, so lets' dive in:
33 reasons that every golfer should be looking forward to 2021
Personally, I'm very much looking forward to April 2021. January - March 2021 is quite a different matter... Let's see if Dylan can provide that ephemeral spoonful of sugar:
2. More golf
Working from home has normalized the emergency nine. Morning nine before work? Lunchtime nine between meetings? Evening nine before sunset? Yes, yes and extra-yes. Those emails can wait. (If my bosses are reading, this part is satire.)
Not sure how Dylan spent 2020, but it is simply impossible that Americans can play more golf than they did in 2020. Unless, you know, I missed the repeal of the time-space continuum...
He's only at No. 6, and already the whiff of desperation is in the air:
6. Olympic fever
I love watching golf and I love watching the Olympics, so you won’t have to work hard to convince me to tune in for 72 holes in Tokyo. At the same time, I hope this is the year golf realizes just how much more fun a team match play competition would be on the world stage.
If I follow Dylan correctly, his case for excitement about 2021 rests on something, Olympic team golf, that will not happen. Remind me again of why 2021 will be an improvement...
This next one is no better tethered to reality, but at least provides for a cute photo:
7. Solheim Cup earmuffs
We got a sneak preview of the Inverness Club this summer. We got a sneak preview of the team’s best players, too. Danielle Kang and Nelly Korda leading the U.S. team against their European rivals is reason enough to watch, but a potential star-spangled Yealimi Noh earmuff sighting should put you over the top. Speaking of which …
To wit:
Dylan does tout a couple of potentially interesting comebacks:
13. Annika Sorenstam’s potential comeback
The GOAT turned 50 in October, and she hinted at a potential return at this coming year’s U.S. Senior Women’s Open, which will be held at Brooklawn Country Club in Connecticut. Sorenstam walked away from the game at age 37, while she was still a winning force. Her presence alone would bring a ton of intrigue to the third playing of the event.
14. Michelle Wie West’s potential comeback
Wie West has said that she thought she’d retire from full-time competitive athletics when she had kids — but when she had her daughter, Makenna, in June, her perspective changed. “Now my goal is: I really just want to show her that I can play at the highest level,” she told Fortune. We want that, too.
OK, maybe not all THAT interesting... Though possible, unlike this one:
15. Jordan Spieth’s potential comeback
Is this the year?
I'm gonna go with no, final answer.
I am at least intere4sted in how this one turns out:
17. John Wood on TV
Another big acquisition for Golf Channel/NBC Sports: veteran caddie John Wood. He’d caddied most recently for Cameron Champ and Matt Kuchar and joined our own Tour Confidential roundtable every Monday morning. Few caddies are more dialed into the Tour world than Wood, and fewer still have his worldly perspective. He’ll be a terrific analyst.
Lastly, this example of the soft bigotry of low expectations:
20. The Open Championship, period
The women played on across the pond this summer, but we dearly missed the men’s edition of golf’s most fun major championship. Royal St. George’s will be a welcome sight indeed when golf’s traveling circus arrives in mid-summer.
Unless, you know, there's a big check to be cashed....
Luke Kerr-Dineen really wants to help:
7 common sense New Year’s resolutions golfers should make in 2021
This is pretty thin, and even includes an attempt to plug their sister club-fitting business. I am, though, amused at the story's placement next to this piece:
20 for 20: 20 broken New Year’s golf resolutions from 2020
So, all of them?
In With The New, Tiger-Centric Edition - The man turned 45 on Wednesday, and the Tiger dead-enders are out in force. Steve DeMeglio ledes with this summary of 2020:
Because his troublesome, fused back acted up and COVID-19 turned the world upside down, Woods made just nine official starts on the PGA Tour in 2020 – and didn’t contend in a single one of them.
It was a surprising, disappointing campaign, especially since Woods was coming off a spectacular 2019 when he won his fifth Masters and 15th major championship, won the Zozo Championship in Japan to tie Sam Snead for the most victories in PGA Tour history – that would be 82, by the way – and then was the best player in the 2019 Presidents Cup in the Land Down Under as he captained the red, white and blue to victory.
But his 2020 journey alongside Father Time’s unrelenting march was more in step with a lost year as Woods tumbled down the officials world rankings – he’s currently ranked No. 41 after beginning the year at No. 6. The fall was steady as he registered just one top-10 finish in those nine starts – a tie for ninth in his first start of the year at the Farmers Insurance Open.
It went bad somewhere between Torrey and Riviera, and it never recovered. I find this explanation delusional:
And he can still play. Woods had spurts of good play in 2020 that reminded us that it’s too soon to write him off. He still has his hands and plenty of speed, remains one of the best ball-strikers in the game, still outthinks most and his competitive fire is still lit.
While his trying 2020 is in his rearview, COVID-19, despite the arrival of vaccines, and his tender back are still concerns heading into 2021.
Yeah, he teased us with that Thursday 68 at Augusta, but I don't consider eighteen holes a spurt.
Sean Zak riffs on the season with this, which has me concerned that I played the delusional card too early:
Tiger Woods is 45 now. Here are 5 goals for his next 5 years
Most of us are wondering if he'll make to Torrey, but Sean has Tiger's 2025 planned. Only, yanno, reality:
1. 12 to 15 events per year
This is the secret number, folks. Tiger has long played this many tournaments, both when he was playing well and when he wasn’t. In the last 24 months, he’s only played in 24 sanctioned tournaments. So 12 to 15 is a reasonable goal. If he reaches this threshold, it means a couple different things; mainly that he’s not injured. No surgery is needed for an ankle or a knee or whatever. That number of events means he’s likely not skipping events, either. He’ll play Arnie’s event and the Players in the run-up to the Masters. We didn’t have that happening in March, 2020.
Fifteen events? After long and careful consideration, I'll take the under...
This one's a head scratcher:
2. Sustained flashes of brilliance
We won’t be so ignorant to think that Woods will play like the greatest golfer of all-time forever. But we know there’s still some brilliance within him. We saw it in one-round spurts in 2020, the trickiest year in memory. That third-round 69 at Torrey Pines in January that brought him into contention? That was nice. So was his opening 68 at Augusta in the fall.
But most of Woods’ 2020 was difficult to take seriously. Oh, a first round 68? How will he give it back in the second round? The most devout Tiger fans don’t want to hear it, but he did not follow up good rounds with good rounds this year. It didn’t happen. When Woods carded two rounds in the 60s at the PGA Championship, it happened on Thursday and Sunday, with not-so-great golf in-between. He doesn’t have 63s and 64s in the bag anymore, so consecutive 68s are where his contention begins.
You might expect that I'll focus on the oxymoronic "Sustained flashes", which belongs in a list with military intelligence and jumbo shrimp. As snark-worthy as that might be, I'm even more intrigued by the extent to which Sean has defined brilliance down... apparently 69s are the new 63s.
But wait, there's more... Sean's got one that's even more improbable than those two:
3. Tell it all within the memoir (or at least most of it)
Much has been written about Woods since his incredible comeback and 15th major win. Even more of his life story is set to be revealed in a two-part HBO Documentary coming in the next three weeks. But even more tantalizing, to an extent, is the forthcoming memoir Woods is writing titled Back.
Woods has reportedly teamed up with J.R. Moehringer, the ghost writer for similar books on Andre Agassi and Phil Knight. As our senior writer Michael Bamberger wrote already, a revealing Woods would benefit us all, even Tiger himself. We can only hope. The release date has yet to be announced.
I don't know what Sean might be smoking, but I do deperately hope that he's brought enough to share.
Golf Digest celebrates Tiger's birthday with this gallery of the best photos of the man. You'll remember many, though I was struck by those I don't remember, such as this one from the 2008 Masters:
That much Pelley was prepared to reveal. The Raine Group, an equity firm backed by the Saudis and speaking for the PGL, had, he admitted, made “a compelling offer” that would have taken the European Tour “to a new level, but in a different direction.”
So it is that what exactly this brave new trans-Atlantic world will look like in years to come remains, at least for the moment, unclear. But at least one close observer thinks the moniker “European Tour” (long a misnomer) will be gone as soon as 2022.“I don’t think we are going to see a lot of change in the short term,” says one European Tour member who asked not to be identified. “But it is the right thing for golf. The game was ready for this. There are so many organizations, our sport is so fractured, it was time to start working together.“For the sake of the players and the game,” he continued, “this whole process is about learning to walk before we can run. It’s about taking things slow and continuing the dialogue that has taken us this far. In the end, if we hadn’t gone down this path, the game would have become even more fractured. So any sort of consolidation has to be good. Monahan and Pelley are the right guys to do this. Yes, they have egos. Yes, they have their own ways of doing things. But they get on and work well together. So this was the right moment, even if it took a long time to get here.”
Would it be too much to explain why the game being "fractured" is a problem? It seems to me that they have bene working together on things like Olympic Golf, which is simultaneously the best thing ever, yet needs to be changed. Having screwed that up, we are assured that more of this working together will save us... Personally, I'd rather maintain an independent series of tours, the scrappier the better, as nothing terrifies me more than the imposition of Ponte Vedra Beach-inspired conformity.
So, what should we expect? Not much, apparently:
The answer, at least as far as 2021 is concerned, is in a holding pattern of sorts.
That's sad... but wait, there's good news:
Amusingly, Huggan allows Chubby Chandler to give the game away:
“The whole thing is very positive,” says Andrew (Chubby) Chandler, a former tour player andnow head of International Sports Management. “It has lifted the European Tour out of a cash hole. It has brought the two tours together against the PGL. And it has accelerated what was going to happen in two or three years anyway. This was always going to happen. But the difference is that the European Tour has gained a few quid [pounds] instead of getting nothing.”
But Chubby, we had been reliably informed that there was no hole... But the Chubster is telling us that the WHOLE THING is positive, and he wouldn't say it if it weren't true, right? Yet, let me just grab some bits that seem, on the surface, to be less than positive in a whole thing kind of way:
While the overall calendar for 2021 contains 42 events in 24 countries, a noble effort for a circuit that saw the postponement or cancellation of 18 events in 2020, only four of the lucrative Rolex Series events remain. And the early schedule, historically the weakest part of the tour’s line-up, is best described as sparse. After the three-week run in January from Abu Dhabi to Dubai to (controversially) Saudi Arabia, there are a limited array of playing opportunities through the Masters.
And this:
For one thing, the money spent propping up so many of 2020’s events has basically been recouped by selling 10 percent of the company to the PGA Tour, according to sources. Perhaps not a moment too soon. As many as 68 European Tour employees have reportedly been laid off over the past few months.
Good thing they weren't in financial distress.
Out With The Old - This from Golfweek sounded promising:
Best golf shots of 2020? These stand out from the majors and beyond
OK, but after Morikawa's drive at Harding Park, what really was there? Not much it seems, though I did catch the end of a replay of this in the last few days, and it very much does belong on the list:
Out of the fog
This year’s U.S. Amateur at Bandon Dunes stands out because it was such a welcome opportunity to disappear into those lovely Bandon views, and in primetime no less. I probably speak for many golf fans when I say I was glued to that coverage.
Watching the final match between Tyler Strafaci and Ollie Osborne was strange considering how much fog blanketed the Bandon Dunes course late in that 36-hole marathon. The drive at the cliffside par-4 16th is terrifying enough in clear conditions, let alone with the limited visibility Strafaci and Osborne faced.
But the shot that stands out to me is the shot Stafaci hit to land the par-5 18th green in two. Tied with Osborne entering that final hole, Strafaci faced all the pressure in the world. To win the Havemeyer Trophy is to change your lot in the golf world.
“I told myself that I was going to hit a winning shot when it mattered most under the most pressure in amateur golf,” Strafaci said. “I needed 225 yards to carry the bunkers and if I rip a 4-iron, it goes 225. I wanted to hit it close by hitting the best 4-iron of my life. I knew I could execute it and trusted myself.”
-Julie Williams
It wasn't the shot of the year, for sure, but it was my favorite event of the year. Ironic in that the U.S. Amateur itself has been substantially diminished in recent times. But the combination of an inspired venue and the absence of a proper links season, had your humble blogger watching every night.
I know she's going for the cosmic convergence bit here, but this was quite the low point in golf in 2020:
No better example of 2020 than a ricochet and a chip-in
Mirim Lee chipped in for eagle on the 72nd hole to get into a playoff at the ANA Inspiration, which she eventually won. Incredibly, it was Lee’s third chip-in of the day. More incredibly, the shot was set up after her approach into the par 5 bounced off a temporary blue wall on the island green. How 2020.
-Beth Ann Nichols
We can't blame the players for managing the course presented to them, but an artificial wall off the back of the green is a new high-water mark in the dark art of beclowning themselves. If you wanted instead to do a column on the worst moments in golf in 2020, you could do worse than the LPGAs signature event being decided in such a manner.
I'm headed for the exit, but will leave you this aggregation with which to amuse yourself until next we meet:
Golf Digest's 10 most popular longform stories of 2020
Some of them are quite good, though this first one is really just amusing with the benefit of hindsight:
10. Playing golf during a pandemic might be safe. But is it right?As with everything else, COVID-19 dominated the golf conversation this year. In this story written in the fraught early days of the pandemic, Max Adler talked to spiritual leaders about whether it was OK to play golf with so much suffering ongoing elsewhere.
Yes, far better that everyone suffer.... Hard to believe the thought process.
This was the most read and is well worth your time if you missed it, a strong entry in the no good deed going unpunished category:
1. Brad Faxon saved his childhood club. Members are now suing him for fraud. The curious case of Metacomet Golf Club
This deep dive into the saga of Metacomet Golf Club in Rhode Island was Beall at his best. What could have been a dry, complicated bureaucratic account of a golf club’s demise was ultimately a layered story about a charming golf course, the people who loved it and good intentions gone sideways.
First, let me wish you all the best for 2021, and to thank you for making time for these pages all year. I hope there have been a few laughs, which is the primary objective. The plan as of this moment is to head out Monday and open the Unplayable Lies Western HQ. Assuming nothing changes in the next few days, we'll pick up the thread from there. And, if you're so inclined, please pray for snow, which is desperately needed.
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