Tuesday Tidbits

The next couple of days feature early obligations, so let's slake that thirst of yours for trenchant golf insights...

Golf's Longest Day - With the USGA TV rights safely back in the grasp of NBC/Golf Channel, The Longest Day is once again a made-for-television event:

It wasn’t the most high-profile cancellation—that goes to the Open Championship—but the nixing of last year’s U.S. Open qualifying process proved a bitterly disappointing casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic. The opportunity to play your way into “golf’s toughest test” is part of the fabric of the national championship, but the logistics of staging umpteen local and final qualifiers in the throes of the pandemic proved an insurmountable challenge for the USGA. The field at Winged Foot, which was comprised entirely of players who received exemptions, sorely missed the journeyman pros and off-the-radar amateurs who seem to play their way into the show every year.

How lovely it was, then, to ride the emotional roller coaster of “golf’s longest day.” The USGA successfully staged nine qualifiers across the United States on Monday, and those, in addition to May 24 qualifiers in Japan and Dallas completed this year’s process of narrowing down the 8,680 players who signed up for Local Qualifying to the 60 men who earned their tickets to Torrey Pines.

Of course, the one site most watched couldn't finish due to weather delays:

That is, they almost completed it. Storms in Columbus, Ohio, delayed play at that über-stacked site—with the Memorial finishing Sunday in the area, it’s chalk-filled with PGA Tour pros—for more than three hours, which will force the contenders to return Tuesday morning to finish things off. With that in mind, here are the seven most intriguing storylines to emerge from final qualifying, at least so far.

 That site is there for the convenience of those playing in last weekend's memorial in nearby Dublin, OH.

In terms of results, this guy is on quite the heaters.  No surprise to your humble blogger, who has listened to golf buddy Ed Pavelle touting the kid seemingly forever (he's the son of the Sleepy Hollow head professional):

Cameron Young is giving us some serious Will Zalatoris vibes

Young, a 24-year-old graduate of Wake Forest, should not move a muscle. Because, as we learned in “The Hangover,” you never walk away from the table when you’re on a heater.

The torrid stretch began out of nowhere three weeks ago, when he won the Korn Ferry Tour’s AdventHealth Championship—which came right after he missed five cuts in his previous six starts. Young followed it with a five-shot victory at the Evans Scholars Invitational to put himself one win short of earning the ultra-rare Battlefield Promotion to the PGA Tour, and giving himself a chance to become the first player to win three Korn Ferry events in back-to-back-to-back weeks. It wasn’t to be at last week’s Rex Hospital Open; he finished T-78 before boarding a flight back home to New York. Young is something of a Met section hero, having won everything there is to win in the area as an amateur. He added another chapter to his local-legend status by shooting 67 at Old Oaks Country Club and 66 at Century Country Club to breeze to medalist honors. This is the second time he’s played his way into the U.S. Open, having done so in 2019. (He shot 75-76 at Pebble Beach to miss the cut).

If he can putt, he might blow by Zalatoris....

This kid seems like he's been around forever, at the advanced age of nineteen:

Akshay Bhatia, still just 19, continues to show signs

In an age when nearly every great American junior spends at least some time in college, Bhatia

raised quite a few eyebrows when the phenom eschewed that option in favor of turning professional as a 17-year-old. After a rough first year-plus as a pro, he’s slowly beginning to find his footing. Last fall, he finished T-9 at the Safeway Open. This February, he became the first player since 2008 to hit all 18 greens at Pebble Beach in the first round of the AT&T, eventually finishing T-30.

The rail-thin 19-year-old lefty will now get his first crack at a major after getting through a 3-for-1 playoff at Long Cove Club in Hilton Head, S.C. His first-round 65 was the low round of the day, then he held on for dear life in shooting two-over 73 in the second round, then got up-and-down on the first playoff hole to stay alive, then parred the second to crush the hopes of Ben Martin and Zack Sucher.

Not sure the decision to skip college will hold up so well, especially if he never makes it big.  

Speaking of heaters, this kid has had quite the run:

Joe Highsmith—from the natty to the Open

Highsmith is having quite the golf month. The Pepperdine junior won his final match 4 and 3 at the NCAA Championship to help his Pepperdine Waves beat Oklahoma and win the national title. (If you watched the action on Golf Channel, which was highly compelling, he was the one in the bucket hat). Five days later, and back in his home state of Washington, he took medalist honors at the Meadow Springs Country Club site in Richland to claim a tee time at Torrey. How about that for a golf month?

But to this observer, the story of U.S. Open qualifying is the effort of veteran players to play their way in.  Rickie Fowler is deserving of credit for making the effort, but he's hardly the only one:

The popular California native isn’t the only player of note preparing for golf’s longest day. Major

champions Padraig Harrington, Keegan Bradley, Jason Dufner and Charl Schwartzel also are vying for a berth in Columbus. Lucas Glover, the 2009 U.S. Open champion, is rushing back from Ohio to play his home course in Jupiter, Fla., The Bear’s Club—another Nicklaus layout. Former World No. 1 Luke Donald also is in the field there, while former Ryder Cup players Ian Poulter and Brandt Snedeker are in the field in Hilton Head, S.C.

This will be Fowler’s fourth spin through the sectionals in Columbus, where he has had mixed success. As an amateur in 2008, when the U.S. Open was first held at Torrey Pines, he lost out in a playoff that involved nine players for seven spots after shooting 66 at Brookside and 73 at Ohio State’s Scarlet Course. He later got into the field as the first alternate. That playoff included Rocco Mediate, the eventual runner-up to Tiger 

Woods, and Dustin Johnson, who won the 2016 U.S. Open.

I just don't think there's an analogy in any other sport.  Rickie likely won't make it, unless he does something special this morning:

One player who needs to do work is Rickie Fowler. The five-time winner on the PGA Tour and two-time winner on the European Tour is 3 under with five holes to play. He’ll likely need to make three birdies to get into a playoff.

He will start on the par-3 14th hole.

“I have a good number with a 7-iron in the morning,” Fowler said. “Then some birdie holes coming in. Just get some good looks and makes some putts. I didn’t make much through the first 31 holes.

“It was a long day for sure. A little beat up after last week.”

Not likely we'll see the Man in Orange at Torrey, but we should respect that he's out there.  And after an 8th place finish at Jack's place, after an 11th at Kiawah, perhaps there's cause for optimism.  Perhaps...

Women's Open Leftovers - I'm in stall mode, as all sorts of web pages, most notably Golf.com, are refusing to open this morning.  So we'll work around it, beginning with this piece on a set-up audible:

Credit Shannon Rouillard, senior director of USGA course setup, for being willing to adjust during the week, making subtle changes to ensure the “tough but fair” mantra held true for the 156-player field.

The biggest alteration came when she decided to trim back the primary rough on the traditionally claustrophobic course. At the start of the week, it measured 3¼ inches and had players worried that no one would break par. But Rouillard and her team took it down to 2¾ inches before Thursday’s opening round.

Additionally, after saying as late as Wednesday morning that she would not have an intermediate cut on the course, Rouillard added one before play began on the par-5 first and par-5 16th holes.

On the remaining holes, however, Rouillard stuck to the decision not to include an intermediate cut, instead leaving fairways in place that were 10-15 percent wider—and even 20 percent on the fourth hole—than when men’s U.S. Open was played here in 2012

“I understand why it got a lot of chatter because we typically have an intermediate pass at this championship,” Rouillard said.

It's less because there's typically a step-cut at the Open, and more because there's no course on the planet with more side-to-side slope in their fairways... We spent the entire weekend watching good-looking drives make their last sideways bounce into the deep stuff, and I'm not convinced that's the best enduring image of an event.

Beth Ann Nichols has filed a piece that's premise is obvious from the header:

Opinion: The best in the women's game deserve The Olympic Club and so much more

Deserve?  Not a fan of that concept...

No, my issue is whether Olympic showed the women's game at its best, and the answer to that is far more muddled... Though I'm thinking that they dodged a bullet when the USGA cut the rough at the last minute.

The desire for respect is understandable, though I also think the ladies do better when they make a venue their own.  Pine Needles, where they go next year, is a good example, and they're creating their own history at such a venue, instead of attempting to piggy-back on the men.

But all this talk of venues distracts from the bigger issue of the TV coverage.  Beth Ann gets to that here:

Everything starts with the venue, but for the women’s game to truly move to the next level it takes good timing, too. Moving away from a tournament like the Memorial is another important piece of the puzzle. There should be a significant push within the industry (that includes the PGA Tour) to align schedules to give the biggest women’s events the best possible chance at success.

That goes for TV too. There were great strides made this week at the Women’s Open with the addition of feature groups and the return of Golf Channel’s Live From. But the fact that the network TV window came and went on Saturday without showing a single shot from the leaders (it switched to Golf Channel), combined with Sunday’s final round missing primetime and forcing Sunday threesomes, is a giant weekend whiff.

With the event in California, the decision not to finish in prime time is more than a little curious.  I didn't actually stay for the playoff but, per Shack, apparently the LPGA/USGA were the victims of the ultimate diss:

When NBC sent the U.S. Women’s Open playoff to Golf Channel without warning and viewers went wild (as AA’s Jay Rigdon documents here), we were reminded of a few things:

• NBC took back the USGA package from Fox and already had plenty on its plate (Belmont Stakes, French Open, Olympic trials, etc.).

• It’s an Olympic year and NBC has far more invested in the Games build-up than in golf, so prime time gymnastics will always get the call. Fine, it’s a big business, it wasn’t supposed to be this year and we get the headaches involved in all of this except…

• Women Worth Watching was pushed by the USGA and NBC. If you were on Twitter at all you’d know how relentless the staged messaging was. That should not have been pushed in an Olympic year when the network priorities lie elsewhere. (Perhaps incoming CEO Mike Whan can get that fixed down the road or revisit the U.S. Women’s Open date if it will continuously get squeezed on the schedule.)

• The final round was already compromised when threesomes were sent off both tees much earlier than on Saturday. Players were asked to make a quick turnaround. All for television in the most important championship in the women’s game. Turns out, the Saturday schedule of some early NBC action followed by the evening conclusion on Golf Channel in ET prime time would have been better for the U.S. Women’s Open than what transpired Sunday.

• Peacock was developed with a streaming future in mind and made part of the renegotiated Fox contract, so why not stream all of it there all the time so you can point to the app and say, “we are giving it all to you in once place while juggling an obviously busy sports schedule, we hope you understand.”

Just add that all to the list of why Mike Whan's fetish about network TV seems ill considered.   This is how the networks treat women's golf yet, like a battered spouse, Mike keeps going back to them.  But bailing on a playoff?  That seems a new low....

Folks are obviously struggling to understand the Lexi collapse Sunday, though it's not as though we haven't seen the movie previously.  This header captures the mood:

A surreal back nine at the U.S. Women's Open leaves Yuka Saso a major champ and Lexi Thompson heartbroken again

That "S-word" I remember being used frequently to describe the vibe at Augusta during Norman's 1996 collapse, a logic analogy for all to make.  Here's the author's take on what happened to the girl:

Certainly, this was a more visceral undoing. Thompson looked sharp and composed in shooting

one under on the front nine to forge a five-shot lead when everyone else seemed to be folding around her. As it happened, the birdie she made at the par-4 fifth would be her last.

The trouble started on the par-4 11th, when Thompson missed the fairway and slashed out to well short of the green with her second shot. There, maybe the nerves began to show, when she chunked her wedge and didn’t make the green. She came up well short of the hole with her fourth shot and missed the five-foot putt for bogey, settling instead for a double. Still, she had a three-shot lead.

But Thompson appeared to lose almost all feel from there. She missed all but two of the remaining fairways on the back nine, left her tee shot on the par-3 15th at least a club short, and at 17 and 18, with makeable putts to save par, Thompson’s weak rolls couldn’t get to the hole.

Not a girl blessed with an abundance of feel to begin with, but it all evaporated for sure.  And let's not forget those wedges into the last two greens, each of which came up a good 15-20 yards short.  

But the harsher reality is that we can't any longer be surprised when this happens to her.  The surprise will be if she can hold it together until the finish line, and perhaps she'd be better served in trying to come from off the lead.

A Bad Business Decision - An odd take on the Rahm incident:

So let’s speak the language of corporate attorneys and CEO consultants: Jon Rahm made a bad business decision.

If Rahm had been vaccinated ASAP after his home state of Arizona opened eligibility to all adults on March 24, the 26-year-old Spaniard almost certainly would have avoided testing positive for COVID-19 Saturday at the Memorial Tournament.

And had he not tested positive, he would not have withdrawn from the Memorial, which he led by six shots with 18 left to play.

And if he had not withdrawn, Rahm stood a strong chance of leaving Muirfield Village Golf Club with a crystal trophy and $1.675 million.

It does not take a Fortune 500 company accountant to connect those dots. Get a tiny prick in the arm, avoid the huge hole in the pocket that allowed a cool million-and-a-half to slip through.

I have no issue with calling it a bade decision, I just doubt that Rahm was driven by the business aspects. 

The Tour has said that more than 50% of its members are now vaccinated, though that seems absurdly low.  I'd love to understand why Rahm deferred vaccination, as well as why so many of his peers are doing the same.  But the Tour doesn't accept that its paying customers might have an interest in understanding the risk factors of attending a tournament, so a pox on them all.

Reports Of Their Demise... - Ironic, given that they've never, yanno, existed, but the dream lives on:

Detailed plans for a £250m Premier Golf League aimed at revolutionising the professional game are to be revealed later this week.

BBC Sport has learned that the Formula 1 style global competition is scheduled to begin in January 2023 and would include 18 tournaments targeting the top 48 male players in the world.

A dozen of those events would be staged in the United States with the others "chasing the sun" around the world. Each competition would be worth $20m (£14m) with $4m going to the winner and last place picking up $150,000.

By way of comparison, the biggest purse on the PGA Tour for a single event is $2.7m from a $15m prize fund at the Players Championship.

You might be in need of a scorecard, as this is not that evil Saudi initiative:

A rival Saudi-backed Super Golf League (SGL) was the talk of the sport during the recent US PGA Championship at Kiawah Island. PGL's plans, which are entirely separate, look likely to stimulate conversation at next week's US Open at Torrey Pines.

There's no shortage of nonsense:

Speaking exclusively to BBC Sport, Gardiner said: "The team is ready to go.

"We've used the last eight months to bring in externals to check through every single piece of the model to make sure the events of the last 12 months with Covid haven't changed our thinking.

"The January 2023 date right now is entirely feasible. We will see how the conversations go with the community that we want to embrace."

Just that niggling detail of players willing to sign up...

That "community" includes the PGA and European Tours, who have formed a strategic alliance to fight off the threat of projects such as the PGL and the SGL.

But Gardiner is convinced his project offers golf its best opportunity to increase fan interest in the sport. His organisation has no desire to replace the majors and Ryder Cup at the pinnacle of the game.

Shockingly, Kubla Jay Monahan hasn't been enticed by the prospect of turning the PGA Tour into a developmental tour.  Boy, some guys just have no sense of humor...

 See if this tugs at your heartstrings:

Players have been threatened with lifetime bans from established tours and potentially the Ryder Cup if they were to defect, but Gardiner insists such punishments would be unlawful.

"Think about the individual's right to work," he said. "Thomas Jefferson, the declaration of independence talked about life, love and the pursuit of happiness and that includes the ability to work as you want to.

"Individuals shouldn't live in fear of exclusion of not being able to work. Competition law exists to ensure there is a level playing field and everybody in these circumstances can compete for the services of the best players in the world.

So it's a human rights issue?  Not gonna happen, but seemingly not gonna go quietly into that dark night either.  And who knows, they might land Phil and Lee Westwood, though I'm not sure how that moves their league forward.

Geoff has some fun with this in a second post:

News of the Premier Golf League’s non-Saudi backed plan getting a refreshed non-Raine Group rollout seems to be designed to generate discussion at next week’s U.S. Open inside the bubble.

But the news landing this week highlights just how embarrassing the PGA Tour’s “product” can be in weeks when a 156-player field is rolled out despite no demands to see that many players for another stroke play event.

The PGA Tour incentivizes executives to create playing opportunities and purse growth, no matter how much if dilutes the product. Not many businesses I can think of would succeed that way.

Therefore this week’s Canadian Open replacement event turns up at a remote club in South Carolina featuring 156 players. Many had to be awakened from their backyard hammock to get down to South Carolina in time.

Or worse, in Tommy Gainey’s case, they passed to play the Korn Ferry event instead.

Hey congrats you’ve been called up to the Show! Wait, what? You want to stay in the minors?

I think Geoff makes an important point, it's just a bit unfair to use this week's jerry-rigged event to score points.  The Canadian Open has its place in our game, it's a just a victim of the last vestiges of Covid and the resulting travel restrictions.

But in making the point about how "dreadful" the PGA Tour product can be, alarm bells should be ringing inside Fortress Ponte Vedra Beach.  Instead, Kubla Jay is focused on cozying up to the DraftKings and perpetuating his Live Under Par™ nonsense.... The Tour is somewhat vulnerable, but mostly because its week-to-week product is so mind-numbingly boring... But rather than address the issues with the core product, Jay sets up a secret fund to compensate his favorites....

Gonna leave you here.  I'll be back with more, I'm just not entirely sure when.