Midweek Musings

It's not like there's much of anything to blog, yet blog we shall.  

Not Yet Ready To Move On - Folks seem shockingly wistful about 2020, a year you wouldn't think would engender such a feeling.  Golf Digest, in particular, seems anxious to carry Jay Monahan's water.  For instance, on their home page is this:

7 things to catch you up on the 2021 PGA Tour season

If only there were a 2021 PGA Tour season but, alas, all we have is this kitschy 2020-21 season... Is there anything we need to know

DJ races to early FedEx Cup lead

Dustin Johnson has never been the FedEx Cup points leader heading into Maui because he’s had the luxury of taking a real vacation. Other than playing the WGC-HSBC Champions and the Woods-

hosted Hero World Challenge, Johnson can usually be found on a boat in the early winter.

But in this lengthened year, the World No. 1 is already comfortably atop the FedEx Cup table—ahead of Bryson DeChambeau by 252 points—and he knows how valuable that is after using his cushion in the Tour Championship to take the title in 2020.

In three starts this season, DJ has three top-six finishes—T-6, U.S. Open; T-2 Vivant Houston Open; and his triumph in the Masters. Though the Maui field is larger than normal this year, expect Johnson to only pad his FedEx lead; he has a top-10 in every TOC start the last five years, including a win in 2018.

As you think about DJ's play since last August's Tour Championship, including that accompanying photo, I think we can all agree that DJ will be most proud of that early FedEx Cup lead.... 

It's actually more of a 2021 preview piece, such as with this bit:

Playing catch-up

The tour enjoys touting that those who excel in the pre-January portion of the season usually hold a nice spot come season’s end. But there’s seemingly been less a bump for the grinders in the extended start that has seen the stars play more (thanks to those two fall majors). In the top 30, only Im and Adam Long have played eight times. Among the next 40, only 10 have competed that much. Feel very sorry for Mark Hubbard, who is the only golfer in the top 160 to have played nine times, and he stands at 129th.

The season goal is to make the top 30 for the Tour Championship, and it’s early, but among the more notable names who have ground to gain: Rory McIlroy (currently 37th), Tony Finau (40th), Webb Simpson (42nd), Bubba Watson (49th), Brooks Koepka (52nd), Patrick Reed (60th) and Jason Day (76th).

The big guns in big early trouble: Justin Rose (113th), Collin Morikawa (124th), Rickie Fowler (135th), Jordan Spieth (166th) and Phil Mickelson (187th).

Except for making the folks in Memphis fell tingly, it's hard to see a point... though the snarks pretty much writes itself.

For instance, Colin Morikawa is in "big trouble" because that major he snagged happened to come before the ersatz playoffs, which somehow I'm guessing isn't keeping him up nights.

On the other hand, the author still considers Jordan, Rickie and Phil to be "big guns", so apparently we're gonna party like it's 2015...

That bit of flackery was apparently insufficient, so this item is right below it:

2020-'21 PGA Tour FedEx Cup points list standings

If you care, you might be reading the wrong blog...

But the best part is that they take it down to 224th place.  Tommy "Two Gloves', in case you're curious.

I like the concept of this one, also from Golf Digest, far better:

The costliest shots on the PGA Tour in 2020

 Sounds promising...whatcha got?

Hawaii wasn’t paradise for Ryan Palmer (or Brendan Steele)

Trailing by a stroke and standing in a fairway bunker on the final hole of regulation at the Sony

Open in Hawaii last January, tour veteran Ryan Palmer naturally went for the green in two on the par 5, only to send his 3-wood approach sailing right and off the top of a scoreboard. Rather than hitting a provisional, Palmer searched fruitlessly for his ball, only to be forced to return to the sand to play his fourth shot when it was never found. He’d go on to make bogey—costing him nearly $200,000 compared to what he would have earned had he made a par.

But one could theorize the sequence of events, which took more than 15 minutes to unfold, were even more costly to Brendan Steele. Clinging to a one-shot lead and in the group behind Palmer, Steele waited and waited (arms crossed) before finally getting to play. When he did, he hooked his 2-iron approach to the 18th green so badly that it landed on the other side of a hospitality tent, opening the door for Cam Smith, playing in the same group as Steele, to force a playoff with a birdie. Smith then beat Steele in overtime. Of the wait, Steele said, “Yeah, wasn’t helpful.”

That is a good one because of the unintended affect on another player... 

I'll lump these two together for rather obvious reasons:

Bad timing for Rickie Fowler

All the strokes count the same no matter when they happen, of course. But Rickie Fowler missing—and nearly whiffing—a six-inch tap-in to miss the cut at the PGA Championship was apropos of 2020.

Apparently there are good times to miss six-inch tap-ins, but that's not important now...

A tough end to a tough year for Brooks Koepka

Coincidence or serendipity, the final PGA Tour event of the year, the Mayakoba Golf Classic in December, would end with Brooks Koepka—the four-time major champion and former World No. 1 who has since tumbled outside the top 10—missing the cut in the most 2020 of ways. Hovering near the cut line in Mexico, he missed a 10-footer for birdie on his 14th hole of the day, the par-5 fifth, and then lipped out the 1½-foot comebacker on his way to a bogey.

Except, under Golf Digest's own premise, these two took place in completely different years...  Brooksie's oopsie didn't end his 2020, it began his 2021... or something.  

One last bit of 2020 navel-gazing, though it's one for which I am not the target demo:

Introducing the @GolfDigest Ace social media awards

You're mostly on your own here, though who doesn't like a cute couple?

#RelationshipGoals: Maverick McNealy and Danielle Kang

We all love a good golf couple, but Maverick McNealy and Danielle Kang take it to another level. Not only can they help each other with their games, but they’re the ultimate spectators at tournaments—carrying snacks, taking photos and being a No. 1 fan. Where can we find someone to carry food for us all the time? Asking for a friend …

While I've gotten pretty adept at embedding tweets, Instagram posts are a bridge too far.  But that's the cute couple in Bermuda, where Danielle played gallery for her sweetie.  To me the more interesting bit is their divergent golfing fortunes.  Kang seems ascendant, one of the top players on the LPGA, whereas McNealy is struggling to maintain status awaiting a breakthrough.  Gotta be tough on a young couple, one assumes...

Wait, I lied...  One more bit on the departed year, a typically amusing compilation for the Euro Tour of the worst shots of the year:

The scrappy Euro Tour media arm does this sort of thing well, unlike the humorless crew in Ponte Vedra Beach.  The irony, of course being that the U.S. Tour funneled their financial lifeline to the not-in-distress Euro Tour through this media entity, ensuring that it will lose all its charm.  So, enjoy bits like this while they last...  The most amusing bit is this Golf.com item detailing the circumstances of each and every one of those dreadful shots...It's good to have a complete historical record.

The Year Ahead - A couple of the GD writers preview the season for us, at least for those of you that want to put a few shekels on the action.  Stifle that yawn, we all understand that the purpose of our game is to provide betting action for frustrated millennials, right  You know I'm a skeptic, so let's see where they point us:

The 9 golf bets you should make right now for 2021

Justin Thomas to win the Open Championship (20-1, FanDuel Sportsbook) — If you see JT

at 20-1 odds to win any tournament, you take it. The Open is the major in which JT has had the least amount of success, but he did finish T-11 at Royal Portrush in 2019. With his world-class iron game and his deft touch around the greens, JT should compete at every major in 2021. You’ll never see odds this high again, so lock it in now. --Stephen Hennessey

Tyrrell Hatton to win the Open Championship (50-1, DraftKings) — Am I missing something? Hatton was 28-1 or shorter in some spots to win the Masters, and he's up to 50-1 to win the Open in his home country in July? Yes, it's a long way away, but the Englishman has solidified himself as a top 10 player in the world and there is no reason to believe he won't continue on that trajectory in 2021 and beyond. --Christopher Powers

Any interest in JT at 20-1 vaporized upon contact with those 50-1 odds on a player almost as good.  

But at least these are players who show up occasionally....  How'd you like to put the nest egg on this guy?

Bubba Watson to win the U.S. Open (150-1, PointsBet) — Go ahead, laugh it up. I'm aware . . . Bubba's U.S. Open record is not good (OK, it's abysmal). Just one top 10 (2007 at Oakmont),

and he's since missed seven of 12 cuts in our national championship, with a high finish of T-18. But Bubba was sneaky great post-restart, and he's also been sneaky great at Torrey Pines this past decade. He won there in 2011, and has a 13th and a sixth there in two of his past three appearances. He's likely entering the end of his prime, and only has a few more real chances to win a major other than the Masters. Torrey in June could be a great spot for him. Should he contend at Augusta, or pick off a win before June, you'll be kicking yourself for not having him at 150-1 when he inevitably drops closer to 50-1. --CP

Bubba in a U.S. Open  If that were gonna ever happen, I'm thinking 2020 would have been the year.  

I just don't find these touts very interesting, and when I look towards 2021 I'm focused more on these sorts of  numbers:

“I haven’t given up the pursuit of trying to get faster,” DeChambeau told Golf Channel’s Todd

Lewis on Tuesday at Kapalua, where after a year hiatus he will open his season at the Sentry Tournament of Champions.

How fast? DeChambeau said that once he reaches between 207 and 210 mph average ball speed with his driver (he currently leads the PGA Tour at 192.80 mph and has yet to break the 200-mph mark in competition), he will finally be satisfied with his distance quest.

“At that point, I’ll probably be like, ‘OK, that’s good enough,’” DeChambeau said.

Actually, I don't think he'll ever be satisfied...That's certainly where my eyes will trained starting on Thursday.

Irony Alert - This header has all we need to know:

Xander Schauffele got to Sentry Tournament of Champions because of COVID-19; then he got it

As we noted on Monday, he's one of the players without a win added to the field because of the tourneys that were cancelled.  But despite the implication of the header, he's completed his quarantine and will be playing.  Though shouldn't he get around to wining something one of these days?

Scenes From The Class Struggle - I have no clue what to make of this story, so perhaps we can sort through it together.  It concerns former Golf Channel talking head Lisa Cornwell, who recently participated in the No Laying Up podcast with harsh words for Golf Channel management:

Since her contract with the Golf Channel ended last month, Lisa Cornwell has alleged in multiple tweets that she both experienced and witnessed mistreatment during her employment with the network.

Video shows Trump supporters brawling with police ahead of Congress…

Trump Supporter Calls Mitt Romney 'Absolute Joke' in Airport Viral Video

Lisa Cornwell airs out allegations of mistreatment by Golf Channel executives on No Laying Up podcast

OK, sorry to hear that, but is it typical for folks to lawyer up for podcasts?

Tom Mars, Cornwell’s attorney, was also present during the recording of the podcast. Golf Channel declined No Laying Up’s request for comment according to a statement from host Chris Solomon at the outset of the show.

So Ms. Cornwell has a whole litany of gripes and I'm going to give her the time to share them, first with these from the Wayback Machine:

Cornwell’s first allegation against the network stemmed from an incident at the the 2016 NCAA Championships in Eugene, Oregon, during a dinner with coworkers.

“The person leading that dinner, and there’s 15 people there, he’s the head of Golf Central. We have a new analyst who’s had some anxiety issues on air, and he’s basically making fun of him. I stood up, he’s a friend of mine, I said ‘What are we doing? We don’t do this. This isn’t who we are.'”

Her “downhill spiral” with the network came in August of 2018, she said, when she was filling in for an anchor alongside Brandel Chamblee, who she alleges never liked her.

“There is a clear timeline from August 2018 to where things started to shift,” said Cornwell, who admitted to making a mistake on air during that broadcast that she said bothered Chamblee.

She then called senior vice president and executive editor for Golf Channel Geoff Russell – who is married to Molly Solomon, Golf Channel’s executive vice president of content and executive producer – to address the issue. Cornwell aired her grievances to Russell, who said he would make some calls and look into the matter.

In December 2018, Cornwell received a scheduling email with her assignments for the following year, where she had one event in particular circled on her calendar: the 2019 NCAA Championships, hosted by the University of Arkansas. Cornwell played for the Razorbacks and was a four-time Arkansas state champion.

“I had always hosted the women’s NCAAs since I had been at Golf Channel. I get a scheduling email that I would not be the host that year at Arkansas, that I had been demoted to a reporter, and they didn’t even have the guts to tell me.”

Ya got all that?  A guy said something insensitive back in 2016, though I might note that an on-air analyst experiencing anxiety seems a bit of an issue...  But her bigger issue seems to be that Brandel doesn't like her and she didn't get to cover her pet event.  Boo friggin' hoo...

 More recently comes this tweet from September's Dinah Shore:

The player leading the @ANAinspiration right now, Xiyu (Janet) Lin, put a new set of irons in the bag last week. @MizunoGolfNA wouldn’t give them to her. She had to buy them.

Incredibly disappointing.

— Lisa Cornwell (@LisaCornwellGC) September 10, 2020

 Here's her rather lengthy explanation of the circumstances surround this incident:

That coincided with an incident in which Cornwell learned from LPGA player Xi Yu Lin (who goes by Janet) and her instructor Tony Ziegler (Cornwell knows both from frequenting many of the same golf courses near her Orlando home) that Lin and her team had been unable to get new Mizuno clubs after a fitting just less than two weeks before the ANA Inspiration, despite many requests.

Lin and her team ended up buying the heads off the rack at an Orlando-located Edwin Watts and attaching overnighted Nippon shafts. Cornwell referenced the Mizuno incident on air after the first round of the ANA Inspiration as a lead-in to her interview with Lin, who was in contention, and also sent a tweet on the subject.

After that round, Cornwell described a heated phone call from Russell over the way it was handled, namely that Cornwell did not call Mizuno to confirm the story before mentioning it on air. Cornwell said she was aware of many other LPGA players who had a similar experience with other equipment companies as Lin.

Golf Channel brought Cornwell home from the event after that round and she did not conduct another post-round LPGA interview on air through the end of the year. Golf Channel also sent a correction concerning Cornwell’s reporting of the Mizuno incident via Twitter. Lin and the club fitter both responded that the correction was not actually correct, and Cornwell said a Golf Channel HR manager admitted the same to her. The tweet remained on Golf Central Twitter anyway.

Cornwell said the events were prominent in her next correspondence with the EEOC.

“A man, in his 60s, who was my boss, screaming and cussing me out and sending me home over a gender-related issue from a women’s golf tournament during the middle of a retaliation, gender-discrimination, EEOC case,” she said on the podcast. “I don’t know what organization allows that to happen but Golf Channel didn’t do anything about it.”

There's a couple of buried gems there that seem, well, curious...  First, did you catch that EEOC reference?

Much of the second half of the No Laying Up interview concerns Cornwell’s revelation that last March, she and Mars filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. They received a reply from the EEOC and in September, were expected to send a follow-up.

Long before the Mizuno tweet, she filed an action against her employer, and then she's shocked when they don't like her work.  I'm not saying here management aren't jerks, but are jerks an actionable tort?

But the line I'd really like to focus you on is that bit above about sending her home for "gender-related issues".  Earlier in the piece there was this bit of perhaps unintentional candor:

“What I went through, and obviously I made it a female issue, a women issue, is nothing compared to what dozens and dozens of women at that network have faced over the years. That’s first and foremost to me,” explained Cornwell. “This isn’t about being a victim.”

Finally we find common ground.  Because I certainly agree that she's made it a female issue, because I'm hard-pressed to see anything else that smells like a gender issue in those 2016-18 incidents, the ones that presumably triggered the EEOC filing.

Let me just add that even the Mizuno tweet reeks of victimhood....  Why is that story disappointing, Lisa?   Do the players have an entitlement to free equipment?  And you have no problem trashing Mizuno without even asking them about their take on the matter, which pretty much rules out any claim you might have to be an actual journalist...  

Let me posit another possibility.  That the Mizuno tweet, which inevitably pits Golf Channel against a potential advertiser, was intentional bait to support her discrimination case?  Remember, the case was filed in March but didn't seem to have much behind it that was actually gender-related.  If not intentional, certainly it seems opportunistic...  But, given that these are the only stories in which you seem interested, we shan't miss you.

But I shall miss you, dear Reader, until we meet again.