The boys head to Arnie's place, while we head off on several inconsequential tangents.... Yanno, just a run-of-the mill Wednesday.
Concession Leftovers - Still trying to decide what I thought of the week and the course, but we have a couple of loose ends that may amuse.
Dylan Dethier has a relatively new feature called The Monday Finish, in which he goes after my Weekend Wrap core audience. Not to worry, as both my readers have remained steadfastly loyal, but it's a good vehicle for that which gets left on the cutting room floor. Such as, this certain drive by a player not getting much weekend air-time recently:
Because I’m not always on site, when I am I try to strike a happy medium, spending as much time as possible outside the media center actually watching golf, chatting with players and immersing myself in the scene in ways that are more difficult to do through a TV screen or video chat. So when I experience something in person that I know I wouldn’t have been able to from my couch at home, I get a small thrill. All of which brings us to the 13th tee on Sunday afternoon.
It's Rory, so that would be EARLY Sunday afternoon...
Calling the back tee at No. 13 “visually intimidating” is a wild understatement — take a peek at the photo above (Ed. Note: below for us) and you’ll see what I mean. But if you’re Rory McIlroy and you’re a handful of shots behind leader Collin Morikawa, you’re eager to pummel driver and leave yourself just a mid-iron into the par-5. So that’s what he tried to do.
One of many stroke-and-distance tee shots at Concession...Oops, strike that, at THE Concession.
The back tee on No. 13 is a good visual of why this course is gettable for the best pros in the world and very very scary for everybody else pic.twitter.com/dLcnZYFZfQ
— Dylan Dethier (@dylan_dethier) February 28, 2021
Instead McIlroy’s tee shot began hooking a bit too much. The further left you go, the more lake you have to carry, and this one veered dangerously left.
“Go,” he pleaded. “Get up, get up, get up. Oh, no.”
But then, as McIlroy’s TaylorMade hit the surface of the water, something strange happened: his ball skipped over onto the other side. Everyone was in disbelief. Plenty of golfers have seen balls skip across the water, but to see a medium-flighted draw driver bounce to safety? There was nothing common about that.
McIlroy tracked his ball to a bush on the far side of the water. From there he punched out to the fairway and then hit the green with his third. Two putts later he was in with par.
Because McIlroy was on the wrong edge of contention, I don’t think the TV broadcast showed the tee shot — or, if they did, cameras didn’t catch the skip, marking a small, insignificant victory for in-person viewing. After the round, once slightly more pressing questions had been posed, I asked McIlroy how he’d managed the Houdini act.
“Just lucky. I can’t believe I had a birdie putt on that hole. I thought it was just going to be a re-tee,” he said. “Yeah, I got fortunate there, I was happy to walk away with a 5.”
Of course, even Dylan admits in the very next 'graph that this had no lasting significance whatsoever, but offers us an opportunity to revisit some actual golf history. Class, can anyone tell me the most famous skipped golf shot in history? Anyone? Bueller?
Have you ever heard of the Lily Pad Shot? Also missed by the NBC cameras, without said Lily Pad Shot, there may well have been no Grand Slam...err, strike that, Impregnable Quadrilateral. But I have good news, though mostly for myself, because there's no need for me to write a history of this famous golf shot, since I already did so back in 2014. Enjoy and you can thank me later...
It's unclear what is coming for this event, which only recently migrated from Doral to Chapultepec. It's quite obvious that it won't be returning to Doral, though I get the sense that it's equally unlikely to return to Mexico City any time soon. So, why not The Concession? The local rag gets some reactions from players to the course:
What Rory McIlroy said about Concession
“It’s a great golf course. It’s sort of a typical Florida layout. It sort of reminds me a little bit of the Bear’s Club. I guess Jack had a hand in this with Tony Jacklin. Sort of generous off the tees, but
if you start missing fairways, not much rough and you sort of get into trouble in the brush and the trees,” Rory McIlroy said after playing his practice round.
“It’s a big golf course, undulating greens, and I think that’s sort of the defense … you know, they can tuck some pins away here and put them in some difficult spots.
“I think this course has been really well received this week. Maybe there was a couple of greens that are a little severe, a couple of pin placements anyway over the weekend that were maybe a touch severe, but I think when we come back again that the guys who set the golf course up will know that. Yeah, I liked it, I think it’s convenient for a lot of guys and I think everyone enjoyed it.”
Is that just the afterglow from his lily pad shot? But I would have thought there's be some disgruntlement from the boys with all those triples and quads that were recorded... For instance, this quantification from that Dylan Dethier feature linked above:
For reference, Riviera Country Club, which is notably difficult, extracted 97 double bogeys and five “others” from the field at last week’s Genesis Invitational. This week, in a smaller field at the WGC-Workday, players made 110 doubles and 26 “others” — and the greens weren’t even close to full speed! As a fan of chaos on Tour, I’m in.
And from this guy as well:
What Billy Horschel said about Concession
“I think this is a great golf course. I’ve always been a big fan of a course that, as I say, you can’t
fake it. Maybe you can fake it one or two days, but you can’t fake it for four days. And this is one of those courses. You’ve got to hit the ball great every day, you got to hit it solid. You’ve got to have control of your golf ball from tee to green.
“You have to have control of distance, direction. You’ve got to think about where you’re hitting the shots into the greens or maybe even off tees. I think this is a great golf course. I think our rules staff did an unbelievable job this week of setting it up. I think they could have I think the superintendent would have loved to have seen the greens be a little firmer, a little faster. I’m sure he wasn’t happy 18 under won, but it’s such a fine line of maybe a foot faster or a little bit firmer and some of these pin locations become pretty stupid, and we look pretty stupid. And you don’t want to make us look stupid when we hit good golf shots.
“You’ve seen when that happens at a certain major and we don’t need to do that on the PGA Tour.”
Billy Ho being Billy Ho... The gratuitous USGA-bashing is almost endearing, but then he doesn't seem to understand that he's given an almost perfect rendering of the dilemma faced in current course set-ups. The dilemma we have, and no one is more culpable than the USGA, is how do we set up that sternest test in golf without going over the top. That argument is for another time...
But if there's a player whose opinion I'd want, it might just be Viktor Hovland... From my vantage point, no player saw the yin and the yang of this course more than the Norwegian.... I'm too much of a purist to love South Florida golf, but even I have to begrudgingly admit that the chaos was entertaining....
Haven't We Suffered Enough? - Behold another effortless segue, my signature move. No sooner does someone trash South Florida golf, than this news item crosses my path:
The European Tour is ready to make history by playing three back-to-back tournaments in Florida. If the emergency plans have to be actioned because of the pandemic, it will be the first time the circuit has ever hosted an event in the the previously off-limits United States.
Officials at Wentworth HQ have had to move quickly and creatively to fill the void that will most likely be left because of the Covid-19 situation and restrictions on travelling to and from Spain and Portugal.
Not only has the PGA Tour given their sanction to the prospective tournaments, but it is understood they first proposed the idea as they saw their new partners struggling with the schedule due to the ongoing crisis.
Immediately after The Masters at Augusta, the Tour is down to visit Tenerife, Gran Canaria and the Algarve. But with Spain banning visitors from the UK and South Africa and with Portugal on the red list, the “elite athlete” exemption would not apply.
This is just weird. Jay is going to allow Euro Tour events in the U.S. that compete with Harbor Town and the other post-Masters events? Shack is so excited, that he's even detailed their itinerary:
What a gift. A second Florida swing because one wasn’t enough? Who needs Tenerife, Gran Canaria and the Algarve when you can go to Tallahassee, Gainesville and the Villages?
Very exciting, but I do hope Mr. Pelley institutes a rigid bubble should they go to that last proposed stop, since the risk of transmission remains extremely high there.
Now, did I hear someone mention Wentworth? Yes, bizarrely, the Euro Tour has its headquarters there, where it also hosts its signature championship. Wentworth has provided countless hours of amusing blogging over the years, and today we offer up this gem:
The rich vs the very, very rich: the Wentworth golf club rebellion
Best of all? This is from the Guardian, so their take on the "very, very rich" will inevitably contain all the appropriate Marxist dialectics, which we know as howlers...
There have been two stories from Wentworth that have amused us over the years of this blog. The more important story, based on your humble blogger's skewed priorities, has been the serial desecrations of the Harry S. Colt classic, most notably by Ernie Els. The piece references The Big Easy, such as here, but fails to note his involvement in the redesign and the reactions thereto:
Caring invested heavily. He improved the club’s food and service. He hired Ernie Els to lead a £6.5m renovation of the West Course – to design new bunkers, to tonsure the putting greens and plant them with a different kind of grass. The project took 13 years. “It needed to be done,” Els told me. “I mean, the course had barely been touched in 80-something years.”
This isn't our subject for today, though I simply don't know how a journalist covers this story without noting the outrage at these course changes. In reaction to the rather harsh comments of his peers, Ernie basically invited them into the parking lot to settle their difference.... The Big Easy, for God's sakes?
The second story is the contentious acquisition of Wentworth by reclusive Chinese billionaire Yan Bin, and that's quite the story, which you should read at your leisure. Your humble blogger is subject to distraction from shiny object and, given that it's the Guardian, we'll have no shortage of these. For instance, how do you think the wokesters there feel about our game? Yup, you nailed, they drip with contempt:
But the members always felt that Caring had one eye cocked for buyers, so that he could earn his money back quickly. The fees rose beyond “the average person’s comfort zone”, Fleming said. (Although, of course, most golf club fees have never fallen within the average person’s comfort zone.) The membership increasingly comprised young bankers and lawyers who drove in from London for the rare game. Caring even wanted to build a hotel around the club, to drive up its value, another member said, but his move to get planning permission was stymied by Wentworth Estate’s homeowners. Finally, in 2014, Caring sold the club to Reignwood for £135m – a slender profit. Which was how Wentworth Estate came to be home to Yan Bin, who blew into the club’s snug, staid world and turned it upside down.
That most bit is just class warfare nonsense, as virtually every town in the UK has their own golf club whose fees do fit into the average person's budget. Wentworth is a little different for sure, being a London-area magnet for the wealthy, but the author shows her ignorance of how the game is played throughout her homeland.
But here's the biggest howler, on the rather sensitive subject of immigration:
The Island changed, in other words, just as Britain did. The country, too, became a domicile for people who had made fortunes elsewhere. They found that Britain called to them with open arms and lax tax regimes, even as its politicians were erecting barriers for immigrants of more modest means. The plutocratic few arrived to buy property in central London, Scottish estates, football clubs or newspapers. This influx of money drove up property prices, deadened neighbourhoods by stocking them with the silent mansions of absentee landlords and influenced politics. It fed a fixation among some Britons about who Britain is really for, about the rich as well as the not-at-all-rich who wished to move here, about the world outside, and about Britain’s dwindling station in it.
Barriers to immigrants of more modest means? If only, as per the folks in Rotherham. Of course the Guardian wouldn't have seen fit to cover that lovely story, as Narrative Uber Alles.
Give it a read just to enjoy the problems of the rich. The good news is that in ruining this classic course, we don't need to worry much further about its fortunes.
May In South Florida - The Walker Cup is a go for Seminole in May, though I'm unclear if it overlaps with that Euro Tour swing referenced above. I'm going to blog this in reverse order, beginning with the USGAs announcement of their team:
The 10-man USA Walker Cup Team that will face Great Britain and Ireland in the 2021 Match this May at Seminole Golf Club, in Juno Beach, Fla., has been announced by the USGA’s International Team Selection working group. The two-day competition, which is scheduled for May 8-9, is being contested on U.S. soil in the spring for the first time.
The team, which will be captained by Nathaniel Crosby, of Jupiter, Fla., includes Tyler Strafaci, 22, of Davie, Fla., who earned his place by winning the 2020 U.S. Amateur Championship. Three players earned places as the top three Americans in the World Amateur Golf Ranking® / WAGR® as of Feb. 10. They are: Ricky Castillo, 20, of Yorba Linda, Calif. (fourth in the WAGR); John Pak, 22, of Scotch Plains, N.J. (seventh in the WAGR); and Davis Thompson, 21, of St. Simons Island, Ga. (second in the WAGR).
The remaining players chosen by the working group are: Pierceson Coody, 21, of Plano, Texas; Quade Cummins, 24, of Weatherford, Okla.; Austin Eckroat, 22, of Edmond, Okla.; Stewart Hagestad, 29, of Newport Beach, Calif.; Cole Hammer, 21, of Houston, Texas; and William Mouw, 20, of Chino, Calif. Hagestad, Hammer and Pak are returning players from the 2019 USA Team, which defeated GB&I, 15½-10½, at Royal Liverpool Golf Club, in Hoylake, England.
Five things to know about Genesis Invitational leader Sam Burns
They have five, but those five excluded his most famous cameo, which Alistair Tait is all over:
Hard to believe Sam Burns nearly overcame a stellar field to win the Genesis Invitational yesterday yet wasn’t considered good enough for the US Walker Cup team.Burns isn’t the first player to induce head scratching at being left out of the best team contest in amateur golf. The guy pictured knows all about that.Burns was an All-American during his time at Louisiana State University, a Jack Nicklaus Award winner. He qualified for the 2016 US Open and helped the US win the 2017 Palmer Cup. He was considered a lock for the 2017 US team for uber-snooty Los Angeles Country Club. Yet he didn’t make the 10-man side.There will be those who say the USGA hierarchy got team selection spot on because the home side romped to an easy victory. Wrong. The score doesn’t validate team selection. Any team should include the best available players.
Well, not all over, because he doesn't really have much to say, other than to cite similar victims, the most famous of which is Brandt Snedeker. Or, even tell us why this is a problem...
This is a problem because the event is usually held in September, and the kids have to defer their turning professional to wait to play in the event (as well as the U.S. Amateur in August). We obviously want the kids to have as much information as possible with which to plan their schedules, but the USGA does not maintain any kind of points list or otherwise guide players as to their likelihood of being chosen.
The Burns case is just the most obvious example, his college career being so strong that there was simply no logic to his exclusion. Combined with the PGA Tour's actions that force the kids to declare sooner, it makes for a hostile work environment for the kids.
The second obvious question is, what's the deal with Sam Burns? Obviously the blue jackets at the USGA don't buy his act, and Shack had this cryptic slam after Max Homa won the Genesis:
But who cares? Local boy makes good. Local boy saves writers from having to write a Sam Burns story.
So, Patrick Reed is welcome in the brotherhood of PGA Professionals, but Sam Burns is beyond the pale? Leaves me with little choice but to root hard for Sam Burns at Torrey Pines, no?
Rickie In Winter - I wasn't sure if he had qualified somehow, but we really only have Viktor Hovland in Sunday orange these days:
Rickie Fowler is one of the nicest guys in golf—just ask his peers. So when he says that hisslump has been difficult on everything from his relationship with longtime caddie Joe Skovron, to his time at home with his wife Allison, it’s telling.Fowler, whose last victory came at the 2019 Waste Management Phoenix Open, has missed the cut in 10 of his last 23 starts, dating back to last year’s Farmers Insurance Open, and he has just one top-10 during that span.“It's very frustrating,” the 32-year-old five-time PGA Tour winner said Tuesday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. “It's made it at times tough between Joe and I on the course. We have a great relationship, we have known each other for a long time, but when I'm out there and I'm not hitting shots that I'm visualizing and seeing, it's hard. It's tough for all of us that are involved, from my caddie, to my wife—she's having to deal with me at home.”
His putter has deserted him, and he makes Jordan Spieth look like a Master of the Universe.
The good news for Fowler, one of the game’s most popular players, is that he still has time to earn a spot in the field in Augusta by winning a tournament between now and the Masters or climbing back into the top 50 in the OWGR by the week prior to the tournament. The bad news is that in his five starts in 2021, he has missed the cut twice with his best result a T-20 at the Genesis Invitational two weeks ago.The reasons for his struggles are myriad.
Statistically, Fowler ranks worse in every major category than he did a season ago, with the exception of strokes gained/off-the-tee and SG/around-the-green. Notably, his iron play has been abysmal (166th in approach) and his putting, once a pillar of his game, just as awful (167th).
Whatya think, should he drop a dime and have a chat with Mark O'Meara? See Morikawa, Collin if that suggestion escapes you...
But it's far from all doom and despair. On an optimistic note, he's solved this problem:
For all the criticism there has been of Fowler not having won enough in his career—he was once voted the tour’s most overrated player in a magazine poll before winning the Players Championship in 2015
Nobody thinks that any longer, so Mission Accomplished.
He's a fun guy to have in the mix, and he does seem to be a genuinely nice guy. That said, methinks the Rickie Era is well done.
Catch you Friday?
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