Late-Week Lamentations

For the record, this is four posts this week, a summer high.  And while I remain skeptical as the the the ability of Olympic Golf to grow the game, it does seem to have had a positive effect on this little blog, which I'm sure you'll agree is the far more important bit.

Olympic Fever - Golf and typhoons are an awkward fit, and this is the best I can come up with for an update on the men's event:

Play was suspended with sixteen players still on the course, mots notably including the local favorite.  If I were a betting man, I'd wager a few shekels that Mito Pereira will regress to the norm quite harshly...

Olympic golf, I've decided, is like spinach...  There's nothing tasty or enjoyable about it, but folks won't relent from nattering on about how good it is for us.  Here's a sample from Alistair Tait, a man who really should know better:

Rory McIlroy never stood over a putt as a child and thought this is to win an Olympic gold medal. Future generations might do just that, especially future generations of Irish youngsters if McIlroy can add a gold medal to the four major trophies he has in his trophy cabinet.

The former world number one is playing in this Olympic Games after missing out five years ago in Rio de Janeiro. McIlroy joined Jordan Spieth, Dustin Johnson, Adam Scott, Jason Day and other big names on the side lines in 2016 when golf made its return to the Olympic family after a 112-year absence.

Justine Rose didn’t mind: the top stars’ absence it made it easier for him to get his hands on the gold medal. Henrik Stenson picked up silver while Matt Kuchar won bronze. Only time will tell where Rose’s gold medal ranks against his 2013 U.S. Open victory. One thing’s for sure: a bigger sporting audience will recognise the medal he picked up in Brazil more than the one he earned at Merion.

There's a lot to unpack here, though it's hard to get past Rose's joy at being indistinguishable from Patrick Reed's wife.  Though perhaps the most curious bit is Tait's contention that Rory "missed out" in 2016....  Just something that happened to him, I guess.  

I think Rory deserves a modicum of credit for being there, when he clearly doesn't want to be:

"I am doing it because I think it is the right thing to do. I missed it last time, and for golf to be an Olympic sport, you need your best players there. I feel like I want to represent the game of golf more than anything else.''

And that ignores his rather unique decision as to the flag under which he'll march, but I just think bits like this are profoundly silly:

Still, well done to McIlroy for doing his bit to help grow the game by actually playing in the Olympics. Too bad others missing this week don’t see the bigger picture.

Fact is, Rory can help grow golf just by playing in the Games. He can inspire kids to add Olympic gold to their wish lists. Why wouldn’t they? In fact, why would any athlete pass up the chance to win an Olympic medal?

Ummm, because it's a profoundly silly competition?  The contention seems to be that some cave-dweller in , fill in the third-world country of your choice, will happen across Olympic golf and pick up a stick and.... Of course, that guy (or girl) will not be watching the golf, because the Olympics are about swimming, track & field and the like.

Mike Bamberger is a man I turn to for an historical take on our game, and he tries really hard here:

Olympic golf needs to look less like the majors and more like golf’s greatest team event

Olympic golf would do better to takes its cues not from Olympic tennis or weightlifting or boxing, but from Olympic basketball, Olympic water polo, Olympic volleyball. Sports in which the individual is subjugated in the name of team. Every week on Tour, no matter how often Jordan Spieth uses the word we, it’s really about me, me, me. That’s professional golf’s greatness and its weakness. The greatness of the Ryder Cup, of course, is that it is about team.

So, golf should pattern itself after water polo and basketball, which are not now nor have they ever been individual sports...Is Mike actually arguing that there shouldn't be individual medals in Olympic Golf?  That's certainly a minority position...

Unfortunately, while Mike asserts that the event should take its cues from the Ryder Cup, his actual proposal ignores everything we've learned from the Ryder Cup and other team events:

At the Olympics, you could have 30 countries send two two-person teams. Sixty men, 60 women. Each two-person team would play better-ball golf for four days. Yes, better-ball, aka best ball. A game we all know and love. You don’t even have an individual score in better-ball golf, not a meaningful or true one. It’s all about team.

On that basis, Team Austria shot a first-round 61 in Tokyo. Try writing that down, on your piece of paper.

The Paris Games will be here before you know it, but I don’t know if three years is enough time for the IOC.

Mike apparently wants to fix Olympic golf by making it worse... First and foremost, he wants to exclude more American and South Korean golfers and replace them with more players ranked 433rd in the world.  Well played, Mike.

More importantly, team stroke play might be better than that which we have, but only marginally.  Have you watched the Zurich the last few years?  That event only gets interesting when we force the players into the awkward alternate shot, and even that is barely interesting.

Mike references his colleague Dylan Dethier's proposal, which is moderately better than Mike's (and which we blogger earlier in the week):

The individual competition remains the same. Three medals are awarded on each side as each the men and women play 72 holes of stroke play. But there’s an additional team competition, and it’s

modeled after the college game: Four scores (two men, two women) but you take the three highest at day’s end to produce the team total.

This model addresses all three issues raised above. While it’s not exactly reinventing the wheel, it’s imaginative in that it’s unlike anything else we see every four years. For a sport that talks about growing the women’s game, there’s something powerful in packaging the two competitions together, and because of field size it’s a rare tournament week that would allow it to happen.

Dylan has proven an important point, that something can be technically true yet completely misleading.

In this case, it's his citation of the NCAA's, where he completely misses the point.  He is correct that they play stroke play, but for a purpose.  The stroke play team event qualifies the schools into the match-play team competition, and that's where the magic is to be found.

If you're citing the college model, you might actually want to highlight the good part.  The trick here, and Geoff had a far better format suggestion, which does actually follow the NCAA format reasonably closely.  But isn't it funny how people think the Ryder Cup rocks because it's team golf, whereas the frisson comes from it being team match play, a very different animal.

So, why don't we have a better format?  Golf.com reposts this item in which Chief Inspector Dawson explains:

In an interview with “insidethegames,” Dawson touched on all aspects Olympic golf, including

the question most on the minds of golf fans: why the sport opted not to pursue a Ryder Cup-style team format.

“[The International Olympic Committee] wanted the format in the Olympic Games that was prevalent in the sport, not some fancy format for the Olympics,” Dawson said. “And stroke play is the way that golf largely determines its major champions.”

In Dawson’s telling to “insidethegames,” the IOC wanted Olympic golf to be representative of the overwhelming majority of the sport’s events. In other words, the IOC wanted one thing: stroke play.

Doesn't that sound high-minded?  In reality, these IOC blowhards only cared about golf not taking up too many hotel rooms, and most of the negotiation involved making them understand why the guys needed their luggage toters.  

Yet here I actually agree with the IOC kleptocrats:

“They also made it clear, and this is maybe a subject of ongoing discussion, that they don’t want team sports that are simply the addition of individual performances,” Dawson said. “For example, football is a team sport, where everyone interacts. It’s not just the addition of performances, although some sports in the Olympics are still like that and have been for a while.

And that was your opening to put team match play on the table, but you couldn't be bothered...

Even richer is this, which really tells us all we need to know:

The Olympic Committee’s objections weren’t the only issues in implementing a team format. Equally difficult was negotiating a schedule gap to allow for Olympic competition with each of the major professional tours.

Even if the IGF managed to secure approval for a second team-based event (mirroring events like swimming, track-and-field and gymnastics), getting the professional tours to agree to a two-week work stoppage was unlikely.

“We didn’t have the option in the bidding process of putting a team format together,” Dawson said. “And Tours didn’t want to stop play for two weeks for the Olympics, they wanted to stop for one week. So there wasn’t time for a separate team event.”

All these poseurs telling us that the Olympics are critical to the growth of our game prove unwilling to sacrifice any of their goodies for the cause.  To paraphrase Glenn Reynold's take on climate change, I'll believe that Olympic golf is important when those telling me it's important act as it is important.  Oh, and just a reminder, while the PGA Tour is dark this week, in 2016 they played the John Deere in competition to the Rio men's event.

It's On - No formal declaration of war has been issued, but that's where we seem to be:

The PGA Tour will refuse to allow some of its biggest stars to play in the controversial Saudi International tournament next year, Golfweek has learned. PGA Tour members must obtain a

waiver to compete on other circuits and the Tour has signaled to managers that permission will not be granted because the Saudi event is no longer sanctioned by the European Tour, which also plans to deny permits for its members to compete.

The move will be seen as an escalation in a battle for the future of professional golf that pits the PGA and European tours against the Saudi government, which has been pushing a Super Golf League concept that would lure elite players to a breakaway tour with guaranteed paydays of up to $30 million.

Asked to confirm that releases will not be given to players for the Saudi tournament, a PGA Tour spokesperson replied: “You are correct. This follows a PGA Tour longstanding policy of not granting releases to unsanctioned events.”

The buried lede is the prior action of the Euro Tour to no longer sanction the event, though one assumes that the remainder of their Middle East swing would remain intact.  But the Euro Tour is best understood these days as a vassal state, obeying orders issued from Ponte Vedra Beach.

There's two aspects of interest, one of which Geoff ledes with:

On the groundbreaking news of Jason Kokrak’s signing with Golf Saudi, his hopes of collecting an appearance fee may be in doubt.

That seemed especially odd at the time, even without this further news.  But he's not the only our player that seems out of sync with  the powers that be:

“However, given that Dustin has played in the event the past three years and would be returning as their defending champion, I have no doubt he would be quite disappointed if the Tour potentially denied his release.

“I also think it is important to note that he is in a unique position, having played in the tournament since its inception and has, without question, helped put golf on the map in the Kingdom,” Winkle added. “In doing so, I hope he has helped grow the game in a region where golf is still a relatively new thing.”

I don't think that's gonna happen, but the guys will bitterly cling to those large appearance fees.

Interestingly, having been spurned by the Euro Tour, the Saudis have apparently found someone willing to cash their checks:

Multiple sources told Golfweek that the 2022 Saudi International could be conducted under the aegis of the Asian Tour, which is headquartered in Singapore. The Saudis recently made a significant investment in the Asian Tour — ball-parked by two sources at $100 million — in an effort to gain traction for their global ambitions in golf. When asked if waivers would be granted to players if the Saudi International is officially sanctioned by the Asian Tour, a PGA Tour spokesperson responded, “We’d prefer not to speak to hypotheticals on matters pertaining to PGA Tour regulations.”

Specifics on the Saudi investment in the Asian Tour have not been announced by either party. One golf industry executive with extensive ties to the Asian market believes the deal will likely involve guaranteeing purses at a number of regular Asian Tour stops (the prize funds of which are typically around $1 million) with the goal of eventually holding several highly lucrative events for elite stars, with purses in the $15-$20 million range.

Your move, Jay.

Shark Sightings -  So, the topless one hit my radar a few days back, and I was prepared to ignore it mostly because it related to a prior story I had blogged.  We've had our fun with Norman's penchant for over-sharing his topless photos with the public, but apparently he's just a natural kind of guy:

Natural seems to be the key word, except when it isn't.  Today come news of his latest golf course design project, mercifully in a galaxy far far away:

Champion golfer Greg Norman has announced plans to build a golf course shaped like a great white shark.

Norman's company, Greg Norman Golf Course Design, signed a formal agreement for the project on Wednesday with Dean Lukin Jr, the son of gold-medal winning weightlifter and ex-tuna fisherman, Dean Lukin.

I'm sure that we can all agree that nothing screams "natural" quite like a golf course artificially designed to mimic your nickname...

Of course, he'll have to go some to be competitive with Desmond Muirhead, whose "Clashing Rocks" design at Stone Harbor remains the leader in the clubhouse:

Testing Blues - The shame is that this will come as surprise to people, but why are we doing this to ourselves?

More maddening to Rahm is searching for answers on why this happened to him.

“I haven’t had two experts tell me the same thing,” he said.

Andy Levinson, the PGA Tour’s senior vice president who has overseen the COVID-19 protocols, was not involved in any of Rahm’s tests and hasn’t spoken to him. From his experience and working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he said it sounded like what the tour dealt with last summer.

Some players still tested positive for weeks — sometimes months — after 10 days of isolation and no symptoms.

“The reason the CDC does not require someone to test again after 10 days of isolation is it’s very likely that for some period the test is going to detect remnant viral particles,” said Levinson, who also is head of USA Golf at the Olympics.

It's quite obvious that certain folks are invested in keeping us freaked out about this virus, even though Jon Rahm is no threat to transmit the disease (especially on a golf course in the great outdoors).  Yet we continue to use tests with excessive sensitivity, and continue to freak out over positive tests, which quite clearly signify nothing of importance.

I'm now going to try to connect this with the Simone Biles/Naomi Osaka stories, though this might be a bit of a stretch.  here's Rory talking about those other situations:

McIlroy knows about the weight of expectations. He knows what it’s like to be anointed young royalty of a small sport with an avid following and he knows what it’s like to live up to that hype. He knows what it’s like to fall short, too. And he knows what it’s like to have a group of fervent supporters and to try to keep them happy, all the time. To his point, that doesn’t mean he knows what it’s like to be Simone Biles. But he knows enough to offer his unequivocal support for her decision to bow out of competition at this year’s Games.

“Just as I thought Naomi Osaka was right to do what she did at the French Open and take that time off and get herself in the right place, I 100% percent agree with what Simone is doing as well,” he said. “I mean, you have to put yourself in the best position physically and mentally to be at your best and if you don’t feel like you’re at that or you’re in that position then you’re going to have to make those decisions, and I’m certainly very impressed with especially those two women to do what they did and put themselves first.”

First and foremost, I see little in common in the Osaka and Biles' stories.  The common thread though, to the extent there is one, is of excessive emotional fragility, which is not something we expect to see from our hardened athletic heroes.

I have little sympathy for Biles, though that comes out sounding harsher than I intend.  I of course have tremendous sympathy for the pressure and weight of the world that was inevitably on her shoulders, but as the gymnastics GOAT, isn't she supposed to be a warrior?  I get that she ran into issues with her twisties, but athletes suck it up and perform as best they can in the moment.  All Biles accomplished, in my rather harsh judgment, was to let down her teammates.

I have even less sympathy for Naomi Osaka, who seemed to feel that she could perform only that part of the job she liked.  I found her accusations against the media hard to credit, given the extent to which she preened for the media at the U.S. Open, parroting the Antifa and Black Lives Matter nonsense.  So, apparently the media is just fine when they act as stenographers for your juvenile virtue signaling, but not when you actually have to submit to an interview about your tennis.  

Forgive the rant, but in all these stories I see a generation that seems unable to accept the most basic risks of life, those that we naturally incur in our daily existence.  The implications for sports are rather minor, we'll just ask these two ladies to clear the stage for those that are willing and able to accept the terms of competition.  But the implications for society at large are to me especially troubling...

That's a bit of a downer on which to finish but, as the wise man said, it is what it is.  Have a great weekend and we'll catch up on things on Monday.

Midweek Musings - Olympic Golf Edition

For those keeping a scorecard at home, this represents my third consecutive day of blogging... A few of you remember when I was at the keyboard every weekday, though lately I've been keeping a mild case of blogger burnout at bay.  This week is an odd one, though... Way too much golf, though it happens to be afternoon golf, which leaves morning free for musing.

Olympic Fever - Tokyo qualifies as a first-world city, making it appropriate to lede with this first-world problem:

The toughest decision for Olympic golfers? To stay in the Village, or near the course

In a normal Olympic year, the dilemma would be obvious.  But this ain't your grandfather's Olympics, though it does sound like the lockdown isn't as severe as we've been led to believe:

Take Tommy Fleetwood’s experience thus far. He’s staying in a Team Great Britain block of “apartments,” as they’re called, with the Union Jack hanging from the balconies. If his Monday evening tweet is any indication, he’s having a blast: “Please excuse my language but I’d just like to say that I F*@%ING LOVE THE OLYMPICS!!!!”

Team GB’s male golfers arrived in the Village Saturday, and before long Fleetwood was enjoying the complimentary masseuse services. He was even invited to a sparring session with the British boxing team. “Tommy in boxing mitts. I can’t wait to film it,” his caddie, Ian Finnis, said.

I was under the impression that the athletes would be required to stay in their accommodations, leaving only for the competitions:

There’s plenty on offer in the Village, even during a pandemic. Free laundry services. A barbershop. A sprawling gymnasium to accommodate thousands of athletic freaks, and an impeccable, 24/7 food court that everyone seems to rave about. There’s also a bit of celebrity floating around.

In between her arrival and a visit to the nail salon, Mexico’s Gaby Lopez ran into Simone Biles, perhaps the greatest gymnast of all-time. Later, she posed for a mandatory selfie with Mexican footballer Guillermo Ochoa. Tennis star Novak Djokovic isn’t even staying in the Village, but is visiting most days and has been stopped constantly by athletes of other disciplines, asking for advice on how to deal with pressure. Team USA’s basketball stars left their hotel on a special trip to check out the scene and take photos in the Village. Clearly, there’s a bit of magnetism to it for all athletes. It’s just the golfers can’t agree on if they should actually stay there overnight.

But while most commentators are focused on the weather and that pesky typhoon, your humble blogger is providing traffic updates:

Therein lies the dilemma. Even with a limited field, players will hit the course in threesomes Thursday and Friday, between 7:30 and 11:09 a.m. local time. They might be used to waking up before dawn, but waking up before 4 a.m.? That’s too much for Schauffele. And while you can get lucky with Tokyo’s elevated traffic system — highways situated above city streets, weaving among the downtown buildings — the commute from the Village is almost surely 90 minutes. Tuesday at 5 p.m. it was a 70-minute ride, no traffic. But Tuesday at 7:30 a.m. it was a full 100-minute trek. You won’t find any four-lane interstates between the Village and KCC. The quickest route is actually quite meandering.

And as you'll see, there's no shortage of gaming the system going on:

There’s also the company they keep. Canada’s Mackenzie Hughes and Corey Conners both brought their wives as “personal coaches” this week, skirting the rules about non-essential visitors to Japan. Caddies and physios are allowed in the village but family is not. Schauffele’s father, Stefan, who is also his swing coach, cannot get into the Village. His credential won’t allow it. Morikawa’s girlfriend, also listed as a personal coach, is not permitted. For the Canadian players’ wives, it’s the same story.

Not that I blame them, as they're taking one for the team.  Though I think you'll agree that this is unintentionally hysterical:

“With our bodies, it’s not ideal to sit in a car for a couple of hours beforehand,” Australian Marc Leishman said. He and his teammate Cam Smith are staying in a hotel in Saitama. “So that was our thinking behind that, try and prepare like it was a major. I think I would love to stay at the Olympic Village, but it just wasn’t as convenient as we maybe would have liked this year.”

Fair enough, if by "Our" bodies you meant your Pillsbury Dough Boy frame....

Dylan Dethier is, I believe, home in Seattle, but nevertheless has time enough to tank the men's field, breaking it into seven amusing tiers.  I assume you'll know the show ponies, but perhaps might be surprised at how quickly the talent falls off.  This, as an example, is Dylan's third highest tier, after the thoroughbreds (JT, Rory and Hideki) and Hipster Faves (Cam Smith, PReed, Abe Ancer, for example):

TIER 3: THE PELOTON

Mackenzie Hughes, Canada (66-1)

Hughes is trending up after a T14 at the Rocket Mortgage Classic and a T6 in his last start at the Open Championship.

Carlos Ortiz, Mexico (66-1)

Ortiz is all in on adapting a team/country format for the Olympics: “I think the format can definitely be better and I think that would engage the country to be more involved and make it more about the country, not individual,” he said on Tuesday.

Jhonattan Vegas, Venezuela (50-1)

Vegas, a three-time PGA Tour winner, became the first Venezuelan golfer to play on the Presidents Cup in 2017.

Guido Migliozzi, Italy (50-1)

Migliozzi went on a summer heater with back-to-back runner-up finishes on the European Tour before capturing hearts and minds with a T4 at the U.S. Open…

Garrick Higgo, South Africa (50-1)

…but nobody has been on a summer heater like Higgo, who won twice in three starts in Europe and then won in his second-ever PGA Tour start at Congaree.

Alex Noren, Sweden (50-1)

Noren owns 10 European Tour titles but is still chasing his first win on American soil.

Si Woo Kim, South Korea (40-1)

At 17, Kim was the youngest player to make it through PGA Tour Q-School when he finished T20 in 2012, and in 2017 he became the youngest-ever Players Championship winner.

Marc Leishman, Australia (40-1)

Leishman shot three under on the back nine Friday of the Open Championship while putting with his sand wedge, missing the cut by just one shot.

Christiaan Bezuidenhout, South Africa (40-1)

Bezuidenhout has been consistent but not quite at the top of his game of late; in his most recent 10 starts he has made every cut but hasn’t finished better than T23.

All names we know, though many haven't exactly been lighting it up recently.

But it's that seventh tier that should embarrass folks:

TIER 7: DIAL UP THAT WIKIPEDIA PAGE!

Udayan Mane, India (1000-1)

Mane plays most of his golf on the Tata Steel Professional Golf Tour of India, where he has won five times since the tour got world-ranking sanctioned in 2019.

Ondrej Lieser, Czech Republic (750-1)

Lieser was the first Czech golfer to ever win on the European Tour and breaks the golf mold by competing in glasses and no hat.

Juvic Pagunsan, Philippines (500-1)

Pagunsan got plenty of attention when he qualified for the Open Championship with just 11 clubs in his bag — but there was far less fanfare when he skipped the Open to prep for the Olympics instead.

Gunn Charoenkul, Thailand (500-1)

Charoenkul has put together a solid career across Asia for the better part of a decade but doesn’t enter the Games in his top form; in 10 Japan Golf Tour starts this year he has just a single top-20 finish.

Gavin Green, Malaysia (500-1)

Not to be confused with the clothing company Galvin Green, nor with his brother, Galven Green, Gavin Green was an eight-time winner and three-time All-American at the University of New Mexico.

K.K. Johannessen, Norway (400-1)

Asked why he didn’t become a ski jumper like his father, Johannessen had a simple explanation: “Yeah, I’m just too fat.”

Hurly Long, Germany (400-1)

Long owns a decent claim to fame: He’s the course record-holder at Pebble Beach, where he shot a second-round 61 at the Carmel Cup in 2017, competing for Texas Tech.

Ashun Wu, China (350-1)

Wu, 36, became the first Chinese golfer to win on the Japan Golf Tour in 2012 and the first Chinese golfer to win three times on the European Tour after his KLM Open win in 2018.

Compare that list to the list of top players that didn't qualify, and it's pretty clear that it's not a serious competition, yet folks like Shack and Alan Shipnuck will whine on about those that don't participate.

The Shipnuck call-out was far from random, as we've a new installment up of his mailbag feature, which just happens to have Olympic-themed questions:

I would like to #AskAlan, does golf need the Olympics more than the Olympics need golf? @_Qonquistador

I’m really bummed about a second straight Games turning into a semi-disaster for men’s golf. I thought the Olympics could become an awesome tradition for the sport and a way to to introduce its charms to new global audiences. But the disingenuous Zika fear-mongering four years ago was a disgrace, and this time around too many of the top players turned out to be myopic, selfish buzzkills. I certainly wouldn’t blame the IOC if it drops golf at some point. But all hope is not lost. As we saw coming out of Rio, the golfers who actually get the Olympic experience are deeply moved. They wear their flag and train and eat in close proximity to many of the world’s best athletes. For one of the few times in their lives they are a part of a team and treated like a real jock, not a golf nerd. Hopefully the good word-of-mouth will continue to build and in 2024, when the Olympics are in Paris, I would expect all of the best players to show up, because who doesn’t love Paris? They’ll certainly turn out in a big way for the 2028 Games in L.A. Golf just has to survive Tokyo and hopefully the next two Games will be remembered as the turning points when men’s golf finally fell in love with the Olympics. If not, we will be able to declare the whole experiment an unmitigated disaster and move on.

There's way more nonsense contained in that 'graph than I have time to unpack, but that's always been the case on the subject of Olympic golf, to which so many of our best golf writers seem incapable of applying critical thought.

To begin at the beginning, I don't think that golf needs the Olympics but nor do I believe that the Olympics needs golf.  But I do believe that Peter Dawson, et. al. felt that  golf desperately needed to be in the Olympics, because it's the only rational explanation for the disastrous deal they negotiated.  If their objective was to structure golf's Olympic competition to ensure that golf would once again disappear from the Olympic Games, what would they have done differently?

 And this equally silly bit on Captain America:

Is it too weird to think the late-arriving Pat Reed can come in and swoop gold at a wacky Olympics when no one is watching? Top 3 at least to spite us? @JustShake

That would be so on-brand. It would also pretty much guarantee Reed is on the Ryder Cup team, which will further vex much of the golfing public. Jet lag to Japan will be no joke, and Reed probably won’t get in a practice round; it’s a big ask for him to podium. But he’ll be running on adrenaline and spite, two powerful fuels.

Yeah, it's a stretch to assume that his Ryder Cup heroics (which are a bit overstated) will translate to stroke play.  But the buried lede is that Captain America will need a captain's pick to be in Whistling Straits, and we really don't know how Steve Stricker and the cabal feel about the man after Royal Melbourne.  He did have that win at Torrey, though that came with yet another instance of Patrick's disregard for the rules of our game.

This will, of course never happen, though it's amusing to contemplate:

Does Steve Stricker have the intestinal fortitude to pair Justine’s husband with Cryson Douchecanoe all week at the Ryder Cup for some much needed team stability for the others? #AskAlan @woolydub

A Reed-DeChambeau pairing would certainly get under the skin of their opponents, and these anti-heroes might very well thrive if thrown together. Their games are so different—Reed is probably the shortest hitter among the elites—it’s amusing to think of them as alternate-shot partners … but it could work. Imagine Bryson swinging for the fences and Reed erasing any mistakes with his magical short game. As you suggest, it also eliminates the headache of having to find partners for two very, uh, specific personalities.

I hear Douchecanoe and instinctively my mind adds, "And Tyler too".  Fact of the matter is that, even if you add Reed to the team, you don't want him out there in alternate shot, he's so short and crooked off the tee.  

The Euro Beat - Alistair Tait has done the unforgiveable, which you'll quickly suss out from his header:

Still Waiting For Strategic Alliance Joy

Geez, that seems uncomfortably close to actual journalism....Is this wise?  Here's the bit that will offend in Virginia Water and Ponte Vedra Beach:

“The landmark agreement will see golf’s two major Tours explore all facets of collaboration, working together on strategic commercial opportunities including collaborating on global media rights in certain territories.

“The Tours will also work in partnership on a number of other areas including global scheduling, prize funds and playing opportunities for the respective memberships. Further details of these areas will be announced in due course.”

 They don't like it when we remind them of their nonsense...

The coming together of both circuits can’t come soon enough for the junior partner in this strategic alliance. Pelley and his team have done a fantastic job putting together a schedule during the pandemic to allow European Tour members to continue to ply their trade. However, all you have to do is look at the prize funds and strength of the fields on this year’s schedule, compare them to what’s on offer on the PGA Tour, and it’s no surprise many European Tour members are champing at the bit to see where the European Tour is heading with this strategic alliance.

I think we've known from the beginning where they're headed.  The nagging question is whether that's preferable to the option that presented

The European Tour turned down a chance to take Saudi money to build a circuit that could have rivalled the PGA Tour in a significant way. Pelley and the European Tour made the right choice from an ethical standpoint. From a business standpoint… Well, only time will tell. European Tour members will hope getting into bed with the PGA Tour pays off in the long run.

I hear through the grape vine an announcement on the strategic alliance benefits is imminent. It can’t come soon enough for the European Tour.

I certainly understand the concern about Saudi money, though in the last Premiere Golf League stories we had non-Saudi deep pockets involved as well.

But I have a decidedly contrarian take, which is that a scrappy European Tour was and would be a blessing for our game.  The more I see of Jay Monahan, whose focus is on sports betting and paying off Tiger and Phil through the double-secret PIP program, the more I worry about his stewardship of the game.  And let's not mince words, Keith Pelley sold out his birthright for a mess of pottage, and his tour is now a vassal of the U.S. Tour, to the detriment of the golf world, I fear.

Linksy Goodness - Geoff simply refuses to move on, a position with which I completely agree:

While golf moves to soft, green, inland Japan I refuse to let the links season go just yet. Thankfully some fantastic “content creators” are giving us fresh, smart and beautiful looking short films to watch. One is on an old, well-known favorite in North Berwick and the other is on a course I knew nothing about, Hayling.

Nor do I.... A few days back, this flyover of North Berwick popped up in my Twitter feed:

Stunning.. Can't wait to play it soon 😉 https://t.co/GZisaLce0f

— lawrencedonegan (@lawrencedonegan) July 5, 2021

Because, yanno, I wasn't sufficiently depressed about my second consecutive year with a fix of links golf...

Geoff has this video to add, from something called The Old Tom Trails:

But, like Geoff, I've never heard of Hayling, which appears to be located in Berkshire:

I have links DTs, though these videos just make me miss it all the more...

Alan, Asked - Just a couple more bits from Shippy, then I need to get along:

Dustin Johnson missed the cut badly at the 3M Open with a weak field. Maybe his W/D

from the Olympics was a blessing? Discuss. @JStew68129215

I don’t know, the only way DJ could have salvaged this woebegone season would have been to win a medal at the Games. Unless he goes bonkers in the FedEx Cup—and it’s possible he’ll find the needed motivation, because the dude loves money—this is going to go down as Johnson’s worst season since 2014. It’s particularly stunning because after his record-setting performance at the November Masters, it felt as if Dustin, 37, might go on a history-altering run. But he has been sabotaged by mediocre putting and driving stats and a baffling tendency to make a bunch of bogeys whenever it appears he might generate some momentum. Time will tell if this is just a bad year or if Johnson’s reign is really over.

Forget the Olympics, this would seem to be an issue for the Ryder Cup.... But who knew that one win a year was a "reign"?

Alan, out of any living veteran golf pro, who would you pick to mentor Bryson and why? He really needs some guidance outside of his circle. Tough love from Lee Trevino, who lives in Dallas, would be my choice. #AskAlan @forearmshivers

I love Trevino, but now that he’s a crotchety old-timer I’m not sure he could put up with Bryson’s schtick. There is only one answer: Phil Mickelson. Like Bryson, he is an esoteric thinker who always wants to be the smartest guy in the room. He’s also a mad scientist when it comes to equipment. Most of all, Phil has been through myriad controversies and he understands the media, modern celebrity and outrageous wealth in a way that older pros simply can’t. Some low-key mentoring has already been going on between these two, but if I was Bryson I would move into Phil’s guest house Kato Kaelin-style and refuse to leave for a year or two.

This is unintentionally hysterical, given the manner in which these two guys beclowned themselves in Detroit.  It's better not to encourage Bad Phil...

#askalan By my reckoning Collin Morikawa is the first major champion from L.A. (Corey Pavin is from Ventura, Tiger is Orange County.) Amiright and what accounts for L.A.’s lack of champions? @PeteViles

I did the requisite snooping and couldn’t turn up any Angelenos who have won majors, which is flabbergasting given the perfect year-round weather, great private clubs around town and the long history of the L.A. Open. But there is a depressing dearth of public courses throughout Los Angeles, which has to be a key factor. More than that, there is not a culture that supports junior golf. Now travel down the freeway to San Diego, where a tribe of dedicated citizens built out the Junior Worlds and various other programs and in the process churned out so many accomplished golfers, including major championship winners such as Phil Mickelson and Craig Stadler. Of course, if Anthony Kim mounts a comeback he could still make history for El Lay.

So, by my math, Argentina has three majors to L.A.'s two.... Who woulda think it?

#AskAlan What do you think is the most prestigious non-major golf event of the year? (My vote is the Memorial.) @War-Eagle1991

That is an excellent choice, but I’m taking the L.A. Open. Better course, richer history, more of a big-time feel and far less irritating milkshake content. That said, the Memorial victor’s 18th hole handshake with Jack is one of the cooler traditions in the sport.

Errr, guys, doesn't it sort of have to be The Players?  I'm a fan of The Riv as well, but it comes a bit early on the calendar.

That's it for today.  I expect I'll see you later in the week, but no promises as to on which days.... 

Tuesday Tidbits

In which we do our utmost to stoke your Olympic fever.... Or something.

Dateline: Kasumigaseki Country Club - I keep waiting for the woke mafia to train their sights on the Olympic Golf venue, whose membership policies compare favorably to those of  The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, c1955.

Golf.com offers up its Ultimate Guide to the men's competition, though I'll ultimately be the one deciding its ultimateness, though the start isn't promising:

The players

While the list of those not playing is notable (more on that later), so, too, is the roster of those who are. In all, 60 players will be teeing it up, and their selection was based on the Olympic Golf Ranking, which was based on the Official World Golf Ranking. The top 15 ranked players qualified (unless their country already had four), and, from there, the field was completed by ranking (though a country could have no more than two players qualify through this route, and if a country qualified two players from the top 15, they could have no more on their team).

Unless their country already had four?  Isn't that quite the problem? here's the current top twenty in the OWGR (they used an earlier version of this to set the field):

The author is rightfully focused on those not here, which is a necessary but not sufficient argument.  Under their optimal scenario, meaning that all who qualify will play, our geniuses have designed a competition that has no room for Bryson, Brooks, Cantlay, English, PReed, Jordan, Webber, Berger, Scottie and Finau.  Why should any of them go, it's the Hero World Challenge, only in the middle of the PGA Tour's schedule and with a much longer flight.

More from our ultimate guide:

The numbers to know

60

The number of players in the field. There is no cut in the 72-hole event. Should players be tied after the 72 holes, they will play a three-hole playoff, and if it remains tied after that, they will go to sudden death.

13

The hour time difference between Tokyo and the Eastern time zone. The tournament runs Thursday through Sunday — but the Golf Channel broadcasts will start at 6:30 p.m. ET the days before.

0

Returning number of medalists. In 2016, Justin Rose won the gold medal, Henrik Stenson the silver and Matt Kuchar bronze. Before that, men’s golf hadn’t been played in the Olympics since 1904.

The number of players in the field is a red herring, because the number they don't share is the number of elite players in the field, which is well into double-digits.

Sean Zak is one of the few golf writers actually on site in Tokyo, and he offers nine early observations from the venue:

1. What’s the course like?

That’s a tough question. One that Tommy and I tried to answer together. I asked him for his best Tour comp, and he looked genuinely unsure, taking a solid minute to answer. It’s not quite like Quail Hollow, because “Quail is much more demanding off the tee.” It plays a bit like Harbour Town in that it’s not driver everywhere, “but not so tricked up.” The routing of the holes and even the tall, leaning pine and cypress trees make it feel a bit like Riviera, but we both knew this isn’t Riv. It has deep bunkers that make every miss intriguing, and just one water hazard that comes into play, on the 18th.

Fleetwood’s caddie, Finnis, thought it has a Spyglass Hill vibe to it. I can certainly see that. The heat and the zoysia grass certainly remind me of Bellerive, the 2018 PGA Championship host outside St. Louis.

How’s that for a lengthy, non-definitive answer?

Yes, that Tommy, who's been rocking a visor since his arrival in Tokyo:

 Bellerive?  You're not making this sound any better...

3. Rahm’s Covid test is the talk of the town

And shouldn’t it be? Man, this virus is confusing. Rahm apparently failed his third of three tests required before tripping to Japan, then took three more tests and each turned up positive as well. All of this a full seven weeks since his incident at the Memorial. When Adri Arnaus, the other Spanish golfer in the field, arrived on the range Monday, he was immediately peppered for the details from New Zealand’s Ryan Fox and Zimbabwe’s Scott Vincent. Everyone is confused, Arnaus included. “We think it’s from the last time he got Covid,” he said. Either way, Jorge Campillo will arrive to represent Spain later this week.

Of course it's from the last time, unless it's from the vaccine.  The sensitivity on the test remains ridiculously high, so this will keep happening.  Meanwhile, we're almost through our second full golf season with Covid and there remains zero  evidence that a single transmission has taken place on a golf course.

Store this away if you plan to watch:

5. My favorite holes: 6 and 14

No. 6 is a tasty little par-4 that probably isn’t a driver hole. Probably. If that’s the club, it had better be a cut shot. (If Rory bombs driver over everything, I may have to quit the biz.) There’s a fairway bunker in the 305-yard landing zone along the left side. Beyond that, the green is guarded by three tall pines that only get in the way when you’ve missed your tee shot to the left. Hopefully tournament organizers stick a hole over there at some point this week. The club choices will be fun to watch. You could see everything from a cut driver down to a laid up 6-iron.

No. 14 is a 625-yard beast, with a long, deep fairway bunker along the left side. The fairway slopes to the right, so it’s either a 3-wood short of the trouble or a driver that goes absolutely straight. Fleetwood mashed 3-wood to a good spot, but then hit his layup through the fairway, which meanders left to right and right to left two separate times. Arnaus blew a drive into trouble left and then another one into more trouble right. Is 3-wood the play? Driver might be the play, and you take your punishment once you find it. “That bunker is actually not a bad spot,” Finnis said. A true three-shotter for the pros is always fun.

 But, just as we've reacquainted ourselves with the energy of fans on site:

6. It’s quiet out here!

PGA Tour players have definitely gotten used to playing in front of fans. But we are a long way from the scenes of Kiawah Island and Royal St. George’s. With no fans in attendance and about a 90-minute commute from the Olympic Village, there’s not much for sound-makers out at Kasumigaseki.

You’ve got Paul Casey rolling some putts by his lonesome. The German pair of Maximillian Kiefer and Hurly Long silently striping it alongside each other. The loudest action thus far comes wherever the Japanese players are playing. The local press follow their stars Hideki Matsuyama and Nasa Hataoka avidly in the States, and are understandably out in full force this week.

Winning a medal in front of no fans will be weird. And tough in its own way. Walking up the 18th on Sunday, Arnaus turned to me and asked, “Are we really not going to have fans?” as though he just hadn’t believed all the reports thus far. When I told him yes, no spectators, you could see the disappointment wash over him. No one wanted it to be this way, and the empty grandstands are a reminder of that.

Time to revive that meme that Collin Morikawa can't win in front of spectators?

That's the home team above.

If we haven't turned you off yet, perhaps this will help:

8. Mother Nature is Olympics-bound

It’s hot. It’s going to be hot. It’s going to feel like summertime in Memphis, another 35-degrees-latitude city, where all these Tour pros will head next week. The feels-like temperature at the course reached 97 degrees each of the last two days. And the only reason it’ll cool down is because Tropical Storm Nepartak is on the way.

It was news to me that Tropical Storms ascend to ‘Typhoon’ status in the Eastern Hemisphere, not hurricanes. Thankfully, the course seems like it’ll be on the edge of the storm’s path, which just means plenty of rain and some wind, at least during the men’s competition. The 7,600-yard course will play a bit softer, then, and longer.

 Admit it, that Bellerive analogy is making way more sense, not that that's a good thing.

Geoff takes on the hot mess that is Olympic Golf in his newsletter:

As in the past with various efforts to propose a better Olympic format, these exercises in futility

are stifled by an International Golf Federation refusing to address the weaknesses of the current Olympic golf format. It could be stubborness or worrying too much about the PGA Tour’s needs. Or maybe some have been on the job too long. It doesn’t help that their new President, Annika Sorenstam, is off playing the U.S. Senior Women’s Open this week.

If the Olympics were meant to grow the game, as we’ve been told ad nauseum, then we all know team golf with a match play component would show the world just how thrilling the sport can be. Instead, we have the WGC Kasumigaseki this week. Even if there had been fans and a better field, it still lacks the potential for drama until the last nine holes.

I fully expect that next week's WGC in Memphis will have a much stronger field than Tokyo.  As Geoff explains, the limitations for the competition format may surprise:

The IOC is concerned about bed space. Keeping the number at 60 addresses this. However, as we already know from Rio, most top professional golfers will not stay in the Olympic Village. In Paris they’ll stay closer to the course near Versailles. In Los Angeles a few might want to experience UCLA dorm living but most would rather stay in the guest house of a $25 million mansion around the corner from Riviera. You know, staying with a host family.

Apparently the IOC is still unclear as to why the players need caddies... But they have golf's best interest at heart, right?

Rather than excerpt in full, Geoff proposes a tweaked version of the NCAA's format, which has been a home run:

I would take the above and tweak it for Olympic golf like this:

• Continue the current qualification system for individuals. Two max per country unless ranked inside the world top 15. That’s when you a country can send four.

• Prior to the Games, determine the eight best teams of five players based on the official world rankings. This adds competition and drama prior to the Games for countries to qualify as a team. All five players get in the Games and can compete for individual Gold.

• At the Games, play 54 holes and cut to the top teams plus the top nine individuals not on an advancing team. Determine the individual medalists, give out medals, and move to team match play the next day.

Now here is where I’d tweak the NCAA concept.

• Instead of the top eight teams going to three days of knock-out match play, only have six or four teams advance. That cuts a day and makes the stroke play meaningful to ensure players grind to the very end.

• Assuming six of eight teams qualify for match play. Then the top two seeds get to sit out the morning of a 36-hole first day. But if that’s too grueling, then a four-team semis and finals commences, with the losing semi-finalists playing for the Bronze.

• This means six days maximum of competition for twenty players. Four days for most who come to the games. Check out for them is noon Monday!

The buried lede is a consolation match that would actually matter.... well, sort of.

The team match play runs the risk of making this compelling, and Lord knows we can't have that.

Lastly, Daniel Rappaport does a deep dive on the only issue that might prove compelling, the high stakes under which the South Koreans will labor:

Golfing pressure comes in two forms. The first is opportunity pressure. This occurs when a player is at the doorstep of an accomplishment, perhaps a life-changing one. A chance to beat Pop for

the first time. A 15-footer to win a PGA Tour event. These are good nerves. Any competitive golfer worth a damn relishes these situations. They’re what you practice for.

The second type of pressure, a bit darker in nature, ​mostly​ plagues those brave souls who play this game for a living. No sane person dreams of avoidance pressure. These are the putts you absolutely, positively need to make, for a miss brings real-life consequences. Having to make birdie to keep your Tour card for another season. Needing a back-nine push to get to the final stage of Q-School and avoid another year of Monday’s and mini-tours.

But here's the key bit: 

This week, both Im and Kim will be reunited with avoidance pressure of the highest order. In

anticipation of perhaps the most important tournament of their lives, both men took the extraordinary step of skipping the Open Championship to devote their entire focus to the Olympics. Can you blame them? A medal would exempt them from mandatory military service. A fourth-place finish or worse—well, they’d prefer not to think about that.

Serious stakes for the young men in question but, as I noted yesterday, the only real drama inherent in Olympic Golf comes at the cost of weakening the field for the game's oldest professional event.

Rio On My Mind - Apparently reports of the demise of Gil Hanse's Rio golf course have been over-stated:

After much sweating, headache and even a little fear for lives, the Rio Olympic golf course was completed in time for the games. The Gil Hanse-Amy Alcott design was a massive collaboration between multiple parties, including the PGA Tour and International Golf Federation. Yours truly even paid a visit to share ideas, a documentary crew captured the process and the course was kind of a huge hit.

So while most of Rio’s other Olympic venues languish—and lazy stories like this Business Insider claim of its abandonment have circulated, only to then report in 2020 it wasn’t busy, the Rio course is appears to be thriving in ways that seem unimaginable five years since Justin Rose took gold over Henrik Stenson.

Most amazing of all? It may center around how stunning the conditioning looks. To say this course looks lean (in a great way) might be underselling it. Long feared as a place that would be overwatered and too lush for the Sandbelt-style golf envisioned by the design team to show the world a more sustainable game, the Rio course is delivering. Look at this close up from the Google Earth shot 19 months ago:

Now that is a beautiful shade of green!

But if you want proof that the course has become a lively place to be on a daily basis, give their Instagram account a follow. They had a concert in the progressive clubhouse last week! And you can follow along to see what the operators are doing to promote the game. No, the purveyors aren’t growing the game in the favelas, but they are keeping the place public, thriving and conducting outreach programs to juniors.

While some smaller events have been played there it’s a little surprising another big event like the Latin America Amateur Championship hasn’t been played there.

That's actually good news, given the predictions that there wouldn't be sufficient funds to maintain it.  Of course, as Geoff hints, all those predictions that golf would boom in the favelas were silly, and I'm still waiting for the identification of the first new golfer created by the sport's inclusion in the Games.  And, yes, I'll keep waiting for that...

As for this, I don't think it has the desired result:

Remember Rio? A brief recap of the 2016 Olympic golf competition

As golf gets ready to tee off for the Olympic Games, we decided to take a minute and remember the sport’s triumphant return to the 2016 Games in Brazil. Here’s what you might have forgotten about.

It was a nice moment, mostly because Rose et. al. so embraced it.  But I feel compelled to note that those three haven't done much since that date (and, just because I had to Google it, Stenson's Troon showdown with Phil was a month prior to Rio).  Just about the only subsequent accomplishment I can cite from these three is their advancement of the caddie compensation issue.

That's Gonna Leave a Mark - Dylan Dethier's Monday Finish feature typically has some goodies for us, but the most notable bit to me was this bit of harshness:

At the 3M, the group at T2 included professional runner-up Louis Oosthuizen. There’s an instinct to treat second-place finishes as failures for famous non-winners like Oosthuizen or Tony Finau,

but in this case that would be the wrong way to look at it. Oosthuizen’s final-round 66 was the second-low of the day and included three birdies in his final four holes. Runner-up was an achievement.

“I was happy to play this week. I sort of didn’t really want to just think about last week, about not playing great on that Sunday and immediately quickly go back into tournament mode and then play this tournament,” he said. “We had a good time here this week and I’m just trying to see if I can go one better than all these seconds and thirds.”

Professional runner up?   Geez, and you guys think I can be harsh....

Though Dylan seems far more interested in the Olympics, even proposing this constructive suggestion:

This is the best Olympic idea I’ve heard thus far. Especially if one of the options comes up “golf.”

Better to leave them to their rhythmic gymnastics and the like....

That's all I have for today, kids.  I'll see you down the road...