Thursday Themes

I have an early appointment and wasn't planning on blogging this morning.  But I awoke even earlier than usual and can manage a couple of items in the available time.

The Match and Other Phun Stuff - I was able to watch the first eleven holes, which were mildly entertaining.  This guy must have been watching a different sporting event:

Bryson DeChambeau and Aaron Rodgers won The Match, and so did we

You get a car and you get a car.... That's my definition of winning, in any event.

Even if it’s corny, maybe this is all The Match is.

Maybe it’s nothing more than what we saw for four-plus hours on Tuesday evening at the jaw-dropping Reserve at Moonlight Basin. Nothing more than a gathering of celebrities at a golf

resort in the middle of nowhere, where no element of showmanship and no depth of cringeworthy joke is too extravagant. Where the primary draw is the guys, and everything else is, well, secondary (the golf included).

Maybe The Match is nothing more than pure entertainment. Golf’s larger-scale version of the Harlem Globetrotters, or the Arena Football League. But in this contest, there are no Washington Generals, just a couple of Super Bowl-winning average joes — superheroes who masquerade as mere mortals away from their chosen specialty for long enough to (maddeningly) become more likable.

And who said there was anything wrong with that?

To be fair, the guys behind it had quite a different intention initially... For instance, this was their business plan at the time of the rollout:

 Yeah, that turned out to suck...

But the author misses the point with his Globetrotter analogy as well.  Because what Phil and partners figured out is that the most interesting aspect to these events is inevitably the play of the amateurs, which can be anywhere from brilliant to cringeworthy, but it's OK to laugh at them, for the simple reason that it's not their day jobs... 

Of course, further down the author disqualifies himself from any further golf commentary:

We were wrong after the “original” Match — the Black Friday scrap between Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods — when we began to dream of a future of highly competitive, highly visible matches between big-name talents. That match, the original, was a pillow fight billed as a title brawl. And yet with $9 million on the line, it worked, and so we believed in its potential to become something bigger.

If it "worked", why did they have to refund everyone's money?   

Now, as most of you realize, this is not a moment when your humble blogger is high on St. Phil, after his nonsense in Detroit last week.  To me, most of the phenomenon that I call "Bad Phil" can be attributed to his need to show us how smart he is, but all I can say in response to this header is, Haven't we suffered enough"?

Phil Mickelson is a wild card on and off the course, but here's why he needs to be on the U.S. Ryder Cup team

Weird that I apparently didn't get the memo... But, just to be clear, we've given up on winning?

Although, from this lede, you'd think his conclusion would match my own:

Last week was not a good week for Phil Mickelson. It started when The Detroit News ran a story saying that a local gambler had stiffed Mickelson on a $500,000 debt almost 20 years ago, the facts coming from the transcript of a 2007 trial involving local gamblers unsealed in 2018.

Mickelson didn’t deny the story but threatened to never return to the Rocket Mortgage Classic—where he was playing for the first time—in the future. A day later, he took back the threat and said he’d come back if a local who was trying to get 50,000 fans to sign an online petition to sway Mickelson to come back reached his goal, and each of those people pledging to perform “an act of random kindness.”

This was pure Mickelson: a petulant outburst followed by scrambling to be the good guy in the eyes of the public.

You can bet most of the public will buy in.

Certainly the drones on social media will... But why would the rest of us go along for the ride?  And yet, here we are:

Just as important, so will his fellow players. Which brings us to this: Steve Stricker must make Mickelson a captain’s pick for September’s Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits. Right now, Mickelson is 17th on the points list—almost all of those points coming from one tournament—but that’s not close to being the point. As he proved in that one tournament, the PGA Championship, he’s still got some game and can rise to an occasion the way few golfers who will be on the American team can.

Which was exactly the argument for putting him on that 2018 team.  Anyone remember how that turned out?  Or his entire body of work:

18-22-7

Phil's Ryder Cup record is 18-22-7 in the 47 Ryder Cup matches he's played. In the 2018 Ryder Cup at Le Golf National, Paris, Mickelson played just two matches and was beaten heavily in both.

Heavily?  More insane than putting him on the team was playing him in alternate shot.  The next fairway he hits at Le Golf National will also be his first...

Regrets, I've Had a Few - Given the mood I'm in, you'll be shocked that this header grabbed my full attention:

Phil Mickelson’s 3 biggest professional regrets?

Three?  That doesn't even scratch the surface...

Colgan starts with a predictable summary of Phil's highlights (those six majors), but also a precis of his U.S. Open and other heartache, including his long (but now mostly forgotten) term as Best Player To Never Win a Major.  But here's where it gets interesting:

The situation began with Golf Digest’s John Feinstein, who wrote a story defending Mickelson’s

case as a captain’s pick for this year’s Ryder Cup team. In the story, Feinstein detailed Lefty’s checkered Ryder Cup career, which includes victories in ’99, ’08 and ’16, but a long history of controversy as well. In particular, Feinstein singled out a pair of incidents a decade apart involving U.S. team captains — Tom Watson and Hal Sutton — in which Mickelson criticized the leadership set forth by the U.S. side.

When the publication’s account shared the story to Twitter, Mickelson joined the fray to offer his thoughts on the story and a peek inside what he views as the most regrettable moments from his lengthy career.

“I appreciate this article John and so you know, I’ve apologized to both Captain Watson and Sutton and deeply regret my actions,” he said. “Both are (as well as hitting moving ball) (sic) the 3 things I regret most in my career.”

I'd be very curious as to the exact nature of those apologies, because I find it highly dubious that we're first hearing of this all these years after the fact.

The first incident (involving Sutton) came in 2004, when Mickelson lambasted the U.S. captain for a failure to prepare the team for competition.

“It all starts with the captain,” Phil said at the time. “I mean, that’s the guy that has to bring together 12 strong individuals and bring out their best and allow them on a platform to play their best.”

So, Phil, you're unable to play at a high level unless your captain prepares you for competition?  Noted...

Dear reader, how much do you remember of that 2004 Ryder Cup?  Yeah, that's what he counts on...  But his reference to preparation is the tell, because Phil showed up to Oakland Hills a mere few days after the announcement of his new contract with Callaway, unfamiliar with his new equipment and golf ball.  Funny he would go with the preparation angle.... And lest you think that contract was about Cally's products, the bigger need was for Cally to satisfy Phil's outstanding gambling debts.

And, yes, the Tiger pairing was about as stupid a gimmick as one can imagine.  Besides all the psychodrama, he took a man that didn't know how to play his own golf ball, and forced him to play Tiger's lower-spinning ball in alternate shot.  The signature moment of that experiment was the picture of Tiger and Phil looking forlorn after Phil bombed his drive OB on the 18th hole...  For some reason that doesn't pop up in a Google image search, so I'll just leave you with this:

Except for the inclusion of Tiger, a similar image could be found from any of Phil's Ryder Cups...

As for 2014, this is quite the alternative history:

Then, 10 years later, the situation repeated itself over again. This time, Lefty aimed his criticism at 2014 captain Tom Watson, who he felt had done an inadequate job of involving players in the decision-making process.

“Unfortunately, we have strayed from a winning formula in 2008 for the last three Ryder Cups, and we need to consider maybe getting back to that formula that helped us play our best,” he said in a lengthy press conference answer viewed by many as an evisceration of Watson’s kinder-hearted tendencies.

Yeah, that "kinder-hearted" bit is a mystery... Watson was chosen for exactly the opposite reason, which is where the trouble started.

To briefly recap, it was the wrong venue, the wrong message and, most certainly, the wrong messenger.  This all took place at the presser following the U.S. team's defenestration at Gleneagles, at which the role of the U.S. players was to compliment the victors and head for their charter flight home.  Phil, instead, unsheathed a shiv that he deposited in Tom Watson's back in front of an international audience.

But the message was a strange one, to wit, that U.S. players are unable to compete effectively unless they are put in pods.... Weird, no?  As to why it was the wrong messenger, I'll refer you to Phil's Ryder Cup record above.  I never thought Tom Watson would play well with the pampered modern players, but I understood why Ted Bishop wanted to go old school, because Phil (and his now BFF Tiger certainly seemed to need a firmer hand on the tiller) has no one but himself to blame.

But lost in the shuffle is the whopper Phil told in the presser.  At one point he earnestly looks at the questioner and says words to the effect that, "None of us here was involved in any decisions".   The reality is that Keegan Bradley and he played a morning fourball and, despite not playing especially well, they eked out a win.  The original plan was to site both of them in the afternoon foursomes, which made far too much sense to allow to happen.  Phil and Keegan put the full-court press on Captain Watson and he relented (is this the kind-heartedness referenced above?), and they played dreadfully and got crushed.

Watson then benched Phil (I actually don't recall whether he sent Keegan out) for both sessions on Saturday, which gave Phil all the time he needed to sharpen the shiv.  

In both cases I'd be very interested to know for what exactly Phil apologized, because my suspicion is that it wasn't sufficiently comprehensive.  But that guy that showed up completely unprepared to play in 2004?  We let him make a successful hostile takeover of the U.S, Ryder Cup effort....  What the hell were we thinking?

The Open Championship, A Tease - I'm already staring down my hard stop, so just a couple of bits to start our celebration of links season.  First, this old-timey image from Geoff of the Maiden:

The Open broadcast always provides logistical challenges for both the network and its viewers.  But you might be surprised (and disappointed) to hear of NBC/Golf Channel's coverage of the worlds oldest professional championship:

The Open Championship returns from its one-year hiatus and, with it, NBC Sports’ resumes its coverage of golf’s oldest major. But while the championship will be contested in Sandwich, England, it will be called nearly 3,500 miles away in studios in Stamford, Conn.

Due to travel restrictions imposed by the United Kingdom and the R&A amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, NBC Sports will be handling most of its coverage of the 149th Open Championship on NBC, Golf Channel and Peacock remotely.

“There’s still a quarantine in the U.K., so from the R&A’s perspective it would greatly help them for us to reduce our footprint, very similar to what the players are having to go through,” said Tommy Roy, NBC’s longtime lead producer for its golf coverage.

NBC has done just that. The network usually sends a crew of 250 people on site for its tournament coverage. At this year’s Open, a mere 24 will be on the grounds at Royal St. George’s.

 NBC producer Tommy Roy is, in my humble opinion, the best in the business, but he's not a magician:

“The feed is the primary one for the U.K., and then they are producing for a lot of their international clients,” Roy said. “Whereas the feed I would normally produce is customized for an American audience … installing the storylines, the leaders, checking in on the stars of the PGA Tour. Then there’s the travel log, because going to that part of the world is unique, it’s cool, golfers go there to visit the historic nature. So we integrate our telecasts with that in mind.

“So when you are given this feed, you can’t do that as easily.”

Obviously they're at the R&A's mercy, but this seems strange:

There is still a need for an on-site presence that can’t be replicated through the global feed, especially for the Open, when weather conditions are an integral part of the story. To ensure that part of the broadcast remained intact, NBC has sent a contingent of course reporters and interviewers. That group includes Jim “Bones” Mackay, John Wood, Notah Bogey, Karen Stupples, Cara Banks and Todd Lewis.

“You just can’t do a proper job without someone on the property,” Roy said.

They're sending Karen Stupples and Cara Banks, but not Dan Hicks and Zinger?  Bizarre, as is this bit from Geoff:

Yet ESPN has its full team at Wimbledon and does not appear to have scrimped. But the Worldwide Leader also reaches more homes than Golf Channel, with a much greater streaming subscription base. Still, the sacrifice was made and the viewing has been excellent. But back to golf.

That's all I have time for today.  Not bad, methinks, for a day in which I wasn't planning to blog, but we'll have our typical flood-the-zone coverage between now and next Thursday morning.