I do recommend the Scottish Open to those looking to watch some golf this week, as an amuse-bouche for next weeks festivities at Sandwich. Here was Geoff's preview from his Quad newsletter:
I’m hardly going out on a limb by saying the Scottish should only be played on links or links-adjacent ground because, (A) it’s bloody Scotland, and (B) having a tune-up on windswept ground will always attract a strong pre-Open field. This year marks the third Scottish at Tom Doak’s Renaissance Club and features a garbled name that is someone’s hipster way to reimagine a bank’s brand: abrdn Scottish Open.
Yes, someone was paid money to develop that. Hate to think what finished second.
The Renaissance Club is not a true links and the entire vibe is more American than Scottish, but it is still infinitely better than visiting something like last week’s inland Irish Open venue. Renaissance is also a wonderfully-run place with a welcoming purveyor in developer Jerry Sarvadi.
Besides Renaissance, Castle Stuart hosted four times, Gullane twice, and Royal Aberdeen once. I attended the last three venues while hosting and they were as special as any non-majors I’ve been to.
As for what the Scottish tells us about The Open? Form does matter and we see who is working to get acclimated. Winning both events? That’s difficult:
Scotland has been plenty bloody through most of its history... Yeah, it's calmed down a bit, but it wouldn't take much for them to have another go at the English, so here's hoping that Poulter behaves this week.
For years the event was held inland, which just made no bloody sense. Thereupon followed some years of plenty, with the Irish Open held at a top tier rota that included Royal Portrush (an Open test run), Royal County Down, Lahinch, Baltray and our beloved Ballyliffin.
As Geoff notes, a decent field, even in a year with an unusually long trip to the Open venue:
Jon Rahm turns up as does Rory McIlroy. They’re joined by Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa and Xander Schauffele to give them five of the world top ten. Other notables include Tyrrell Hatton, Tommy Fleetwood, Henrik Stenson and Francesco Molinari, with three last-minute spots to The Open available.
Oddly, certain players will still go to Quad Cities, then jump that Sunday night charter to Sandwich....
Did Someone Mention Sandwich? - A lot to cover, as the R&A returns to its southernmost venue for the first time since 2011. As its "Royal" sponsorship hints, the club has deep roots:
The club was founded by the surgeon Laidlaw Purves in 1887 in a setting of wild duneland. Many holes feature blind or partially blind shots, although the unfairness element has been reduced somewhat, after several 20th century modifications. The course also possesses the deepest bunker in championship golf, located on its fourth hole.[2]
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| Laidlaw Purves rocking the Tommy Gainey Two-Glove Look. |
Opinions about the links seem to have been polarized from inception:
“This is as nearly my idea of heaven as is to be attained on any earthly links,” wrote Sandwich’s greatest admirer and eventual club president, Bernard Darwin. Others have been less enamored in large part because of the severe undulations, obstructed views and relentless awkwardness of the questions posed.
As contrasted with this gent:
“The first nine holes—tremendous fun, not very good golf,” said Walter Hagen. “Second nine holes—tremendous golf, no fun at all.”
Hagen won two of his four Open Championships at Royal St George’s.
Referring to Hagen as a gent is my own little joke, as he played in an era when professional golfers were notoriously considered to not be gentlemen. At the 1920 Open at Royal Cinque Ports in Deal (the next town over from Sandwich), Hagen pulled on of his more notorious stunts:
Before Hagen came along, golfing pros were actually looked down upon by amateur members of elite golf clubs. There was a huge division between the two worlds, especially in the UK. At a time when pro golfers were seen as scruffy, sweaty sportsman, Hagen was showing that you could still be a great athlete while dressing well.
Around this time, professional golfers weren’t actually allowed into clubhouses by the front door and once inside couldn’t use the facilities. As the world’s first full-time touring golf professional, Hagen wasn’t going to stand for this.
It’s said that at the 1920 British Open in Deal, Kent, he hired a Rolls Royce – along with a chauffeur – to serve as his private dressing room, which he parked up on the front drive after being refused entry to the clubhouse dressing room. When he was later denied entry to another clubhouse, he refused to enter to collect his prize.
Shack has a deep dive on Purves and the club's formation:
While the initial design credit is slightly muddled, the course is undoubtedly the work of Dr. Laidlaw Purves, a Wimbledon Golf Club regular. He joined forces with fellow members to build a seaside links within two-hours of London via a 12-shilling train ride.
“Whether this breakaway was conceived in bitterness is not clear,” wrote B.J.W. and Peter Hill, authors of the club’s 1987 history.
“Dr. Purves was a masterful personality and a man of many parts,” they wrote.
Was he ever. And what a name too. Go with the Spanish pronunciation if you say his name out loud. Even if it’s wrong. Language has evolved since his day.
A leading ophthalmic surgeon and author of several medical treastises, Purves edited a version of Robinson Crusoe and translated Gil Blas from French. He learned to play golf at Bruntsfield Links in Edinburgh and developed a strong taste for undulation and extreme links. He was also known to welcome women into the game well before some of his peers, though Royal St George’s remained essentially an all men’s club until not that long ago. Women could play with a male member but the clubhouse was off-limits. So when Queen Elizabeth’s mum was Dutchess of York she had to use a side door.
Laidlaw planned a course at Littlestone in 1888 and later printed a pamphlet containing a full analysis of bunkers and hazards where he proudly concluded that St George’s had seven more cross hazards than the next most.
Big cross-hazard guy!
Carry distance was the strength of his game and he designed accordingly. The dunes he designed over and through could be extreme in spots, necessitating a number of blind shots. None more dramatic than the 6th hole, the Maiden, depicted here from behind the green and highlighting safety issues then. Today the green can be seen from the tee.
More on the Maiden below.
Mike Bamberger pens an ode to golf travel, focused on the Kentish coast:
The fellas will gather next week in the heart of fish-‘n-chips country, at Royal St. George’s, on the Kentish Coast of England. The Kingdom of Kent is as close as you can be to France while still under the Queen’s watch. It’s a spectacular part of England, rural here, seafaring there, with country roads that are about as wide as cart paths, lined by hedges. The locals call Royal St. George’s Sandwich, for the town in which it lies. Yes, the Earl of Sandwich. Yes, his enduring invention. A traveling golfer is a de facto history buff.
I was first there in 1985, caddying for a golfer on his honeymoon, Jamie Howell. Jamie qualified for the Open at a course next door to Sandwich, at Royal Cinque Ports. Maybe you’re tempted to say (nodding to your high school French) Royal Sank Port. You know, un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq (sank). There are five ports in the vicinity: Sandwich, Rye, Hastings, Hythe and Dover. But the English, being English, nod to France only when absolutely necessary. So it’s Royal Sink Ports. Just because. The locals call Royal Cinque Ports Deal, where it’s located.
The best part, perhaps, being this aerial photo of Deal:
It's quite the cluster, as the troika of links overlooking Sandwich Bay also features Princes Golf Club, which hosted the 1932 Open Championship. It's a notable omission on your humble blogger's resume...
Sandwich has developed a reputation for fluky winners. That's perhaps fair to an extent, but it's a recent phenomenon:
I'll grant you Jack White, but the names don't get more bold-faced than Taylor, Vardon, Hagen, Cotton and Locke.
The first thing you need to know about RSG is that the pros hate it. Nicklaus once famously said that the Open venues get worse the further south one travels, and this is by far the southernmost site. He has tried to walk that back, acknowledging that he just didn't play well at RSG (but also admitting that he simply preferred the Scottish venues, where he won all three of his Claret Jugs).
But the very reasons that they hate it, the quirkiness and blind shots, makes it seems a delight for everyday play. Many will remember Tiger losing his opening tee shot in that 2003 Open, and Sandwich has historically featured the hardest fairways to hit in the game. Shack has an interesting two-part interview with Martin Ebert, the Open Championship Doctor, about his work at the club, which includes this on that very subject:
GS: The 18th fairway was pretty tough to hit in 2003 when things were firm. The course was more lush in 2011 and the hole seemed to function better. What do you anticipate for the finishing hole this time around?
ME: With the 18th, it was decided to reconfigure the two cross bunkers—there were previously three—to produce more options from the tee. These had not really been reachable years ago, but the cross bunker feature had become a real obstruction with almost everyone in The Open having to lay-up in still or downwind conditions. Now there is a dangerous opportunity to take the tee shot on and that, in turn, will allow the flag position to be tucked away at the front left if The R&A want to set the hole up that way.
With the 18th in particular, there is a huge sand hill taking up a large proportion of the left side of the fairway at the landing area. In the old days, the golfers struggled to reach it but, in 2003, so many balls kicked off it into the rough on the right. The fairway was widened to the right in 2011 and, as you say, the softer conditions helped too. However, the cross bunkers, while reduced from 2 to 3, were still a road block.
In 2003, 24.3% of drives found the fairway on the 1st, 29.5% on the 17th and 24.7% on the 18th compared to an overall average for the course of 45.8% and that overall average was obviously reduced by the low figures for those 3 holes! As described above, that was giving the course a reputation for being unfair as, on occasions, drives hit straight down the middle ended up in the rough. Hence, the reconfiguration of them for this year’s Open. The right hand bunker is still in place but the left hand one has been moved on and to the left to provide a temptation for long drives if the conditions are right. So I hope that there will be more variation of strategy adopted for this key hole.
That's make today's pampered touring professionals just a tad cranky....
But by far the best part is the inclusion of old photos of RSG, including this of the famed Himalayas on No. 4:
Straight ahead of me there is a giant bunker, described in the book as 'one of the tallest and deepest bunkers in the United Kingdom'. It is almost comically large, right in the line of a drive on to the fairway. Somehow I clear the monster, as did Bond, but end up with a six, rather than Bond's four.
You mean this bunker?
It's quite the thing, though largely irrelevant to the modern professional game, as all those ab crunches have the guys readily carrying it.
Here's another of the historic photos:
One last oldie:
What in the world is a maiden hole?You might think, similar to a maiden voyage, a maiden hole would be the first on the course. Thatisn’t true. A maiden hole is another template C.B. Macdonald learned from his time in Europe and brought back to the United States.It might be more accurate to say that a maiden is a type of green template rather than an entire hole. A maiden green has interior undulations similar to that of a double plateau. The maiden green has two tiers or humps in the back of the green with a valley between them. There are lots of variations on how the rest of the hole plays, but it can be considered a maiden as long as it has some version of this green type.With his excellent ability to shape and move dirt, Seth Raynor built many of the best maiden greens in the United States. While the original maiden green was on a par-3, Raynor often built this green type on par-4s.
Yes, but originally it was so much more than just a type of green:
Where is the maiden, Maiden?Most experts believe the original maiden hole is the 176-yard par-3 6th at Royal St. George’s Golf Club in Sandwich, England. In its original form, the 6th had a blind tee shot over the biggest dune on the course. While Macdonald seemed to enjoy the green enough to bring it to the US, he apparently didn’t love the hole because of the blind tee shot.However, due to safety concerns and frustration with blind shots, the tee box has been moved so it is no longer blind. Many think the hole has lost some of its luster from this decision, but the green remains untouched and simply magnificent. Here’s how the Royal St. George’s website describes the hole:“The Maiden, named after the shape of the towering dunes surrounding it. The long two-tiered green, set at an angle to the tee, can be tricky if a shot finds the wrong level. Bunkers surrounding the putting surface await anything pulled, pushed, or under-clubbed.”The bunkers surrounding the green can be quite penal and difficult to escape. The 6th is one of the most popular spectating spots at Royal St. George’s because of the high dunes surrounding the green. It is one of the coolest natural theaters in major championship golf.
In Part II of his interview with Martin Ebert, Shack addresses this very hole:
GS: After the success of the Dell during the Irish Open—thanks to the large screen displaying the shot outcome--do you think that creates an opportunity to ever revisit a blind par-3 like the Maiden? Or is that just too much to ask of good players since Royal St George’s once fell out of favor many years ago due in part to blindness that has since been modified by Frank Pennink?ME: On the right site I think that it would be appropriate. We were involved with two completely blind greens at the 15th and 16th at Askernish where we followed in Old Tom Morris’s footsteps trying to find his original holes but they are both par 4s. If a par 3 had worked, we would have had no hesitation in including it.
Wow, quite the flood of memories in that short bit. Geoff is spot on in comparing the original Maiden to Old Tom's Dell hole at Lahinch, a completely blind Par-3 with the green nestled between two dunes (though the green itself doesn't hold the interest of the original Maiden's green). But Ashkernish? I dragged the long-suffering Employee No. 2 there in 2015, which you can read about here.
Geoff provides this photo of the Maiden in its current, less interesting configuration:
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| Today’s 6th is partially obstructed from view, but lacks the dramatic carry over the Maiden and plays to a manufactured green complex (Geoff Shackelford) |
Yup, nothing is as good or as interesting as it used to be....
Argentinian Angel Cabrera, a former Masters and U.S. Open champion, was sentenced onWednesday to two years in prison on assault charges against his former partner.
A court in the province of Cordoba, 500 miles (about 800 kilometers) northwest of Buenos Aires, convicted the 51-year-old for assaulting, threatening and harassing Cecilia Torres Mana, his partner between 2016-18.
Cabrera, who denied in the trial any wrongdoing, will serve his sentence immediately.
I often say that the blog's tag line, that "Random Musings" bit, should be changed to Golfers Behaving Badly. But please, Dear Lord, not this badly....
In fact, I've never heard a full accounting of Cabrera's behavior, but Employee No. 2 assures me it was no one-off, which this seems to confirm:
“His situation is much more complex than this, he has other charges for which there are arrest warrants, too. There are other victims,” prosecutor Laura Battistelli told TV channel Todo Noticias.
My enduring image of Cabrera is his great sportsmanship in that Masters playoff with Adam Scott and, needless to say, this story isn't very compatible with that image.
But have you taken a close look at that accompanying photo? Most will inevitably focus on the masks, but our Shack was all over the telling detail, to wit, that Cabrera showed up for his sentencing in Presidents Cup swag. Ummm, kids, this isn't how we grow the game.
Over To You, Alan - is there a better way to finish the week than an Ask Alan feature? If so, it would be a Phil-centric Ask Alan column:
Who is the “real” Phil Mickelson? The guy known for the $100 tips to people selling lemonade? FIGJAM? The guy who signs autographs for hours? The guy who was caught for insider trading? Does anybody really know? Even Phil? #Ask Alan @TheSecretDuffer
He is all of those things, which is what makes Mickelson so fascinating. He is a complicated, multifaceted guy, defined by contradictions. I’ve been working on a biography of Phil since the middle of last year, and after interviewing nearly 100 folks from different stages of his life I’ve learned a ton about who he really is. It’s gonna take more than a couple of paragraphs here to answer your astute questions–I’m thinking 300-400 pages. Sorry to be a tease!
As I've long noted, there's Good Phil and Bad Phil, and probably a whole bunch of iterations and permutations within. But were you puzzled by FIGJAM?
But not everyone is a Mickelson fan. Earlier in his career, he acquired the unflattering nickname "Figjam," which is an acronym that begins with a profanity: "F---, I'm good, just ask me." Thenickname is rarely heard these days. In fact, Golfweek listed Mickelson as one of the most approachable players on tour in a 2016 article.
The insulting moniker was known among the tour players, but outside of the locker room, the fans were mostly unaware of it—until early 2006 when GQ magazine went public with the story. The article was entitled "The Ten Most Hated Athletes." His loyal fans were shocked to see Mickelson on the list.
According to the article, during the 2005 PGA Championship, a reporter remarked to a tour player how popular Mickelson was with the fans at Baltusrol in New Jersey, The player was reported as saying, "They don't know him the way we do. ... He annoys everybody."
Seriously, where else can you go to learn this important stuff?
Do you think Phil really follows through with not coming back to this event? @jasleeack
Oh, he’ll be back. How lame would it look if Mickelson let a meanie at the local newspaper run him out of town? And no doubt Phil will arrive in the 3-1-3 next year with a well-thought-out charitable initiative for the people of Detroit, who had to put up with so much from him this week. As for his overreaction to The Detroit News story linking him to a mobbed-up bookie, it’s interesting that Phil and his attorney would dismiss it as old news when, according to the paper, the facts of Mickelson getting bamboozled for half a mill weren’t discovered until a few weeks ago. This is the crux of Mickelson’s ire: It’s not that he lost the money, or even that the News printed a well-reported story. It’s that this whole sordid tale makes him look like a pigeon and a palooka and a putz. That cuts deep for someone who always wants to be the smartest guy in the room.
I've long noted that his need to be the smartest guy in the room seemingly explains much of Bad Phil. Though I've long been more puzzled by his seeming unwillingness to pay his own gambling debts...
This might make some sense:
In spite of all the drama, Bryson is not playing as well in ‘21 as he did in ‘20. He may be oneof the players for whom the return of fans is a negative? @DanielJTerry2
No question about it, especially now that he’s being bullied by Koepka and regularly heckled by Brooks bros. The atmosphere around Bryson at tournaments is increasingly carnival-like. He’s a big cause of that, with all of his preening and the cartoonish windup before every drive. But despite all the machismo, DeChambeau is a sensitive, brooding soul and I think there is zero doubt that the fans and their caustic energy are getting in his head.
I haven't had much appetite for the Brooks-Bryson cage match, mostly because they both seem like entitled frat boys. But I will link you this alternative explanation of the infamous eye-roll.
One more on Bryson:
Is anyone more sick of Bryson’s act than I am? #AskAlan @jamiekutzer
No doubt a lot of folks are, and that to me is a bummer. I recognize that Bryson can be awkward and obtuse, but I think he’s great for the game: an iconoclast who is forcing plenty of folks to reexamine the conventional wisdom. And, like it or not, DeChambeau is building a Hall of Fame resumé. I, for one, want to see more of the 2020 Bryson, where’s he winning tournaments and reimagining the game, and less of the 2021 Bryson, where he’s getting fired by his caddie and acting too self-important to speak to reporters at an event underwritten by one of his biggest sponsors.
One of my golf buddies knows Bryson's agent, who attests that he's a great guy. I don't rule out that possibility, but that's certainly not how he's come across to me.
Smart players talk to the press because 1) TV contracts pay the sponsors and their non-endorsement wages and 2) they can use them to improve their image. Media lifts up and tears down players. They do ask dumb questions sometimes and use the players for their own benefit too, Alan. @CaddyMikeCorrao
Yeah, maybe we should live-stream the weekly Fire Pit meeting during which we vote on which players we’re going to build up and tear down. I mean, c’mon. Players do dumb stuff and they get called out for it; far more often, the golf press celebrates their achievements and virtues. It’s true that there is the occasional inane press conference question but those tend to come from local folks who don’t cover the Tour for a living. I saw a lot of people on Twitter defending Bryson’s petulance by saying that post-round interviews are of little value. That can be true, too, but they can also be intensely revealing: think of Rory McIlroy breaking down on Friday evening at Royal Portrush. What the Bryson apologists don’t seem to fully understand is that the players are increasingly hard to know as they retreat behind the bland, sanitized content pumped out by the Tour and their own safe, carefully curated social media feeds. If the fans want to feel closer to the players—who they really are, what makes them tick, their hopes and dreams and flaws, their triumphs and tragedies—it’s dogged reporters who are going to make this happen. Anything that makes it harder for us to our job (like normalizing pouty players running to the parking lot) doesn’t serve the fans well.
Probably not the time for it now, but this bit about skipping out on post-round press availability seems a pretty substantial misstep. Isn't it part of the job description? You'd think the Tour would fine players who do so but, of course, the Tour doesn't feel compelled to share disciplinary actions with us. So, Bryson didn't stiff the press, he just had a jet-ski accident ...
Of course, the players will tell you that the golf press is all about tearing them down, to which I can only respond, "If only". To me they're bunch of sycophants, overly concerned about access and therefore playing slow-pitch softball. In his blogging from Detroit last week, Shack had this bit that has me still shaking my head:
For me, the most telling sign of trouble came a few years ago when I learned some players referred to golf writer Tim Rosaforte as “TMZ”. The implication being, he writes gossip and sleaze. The recent Memorial Tournament honoree and recipient of the PGA of America Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism.
This, even though Rosaforte diligently reported stories shared by families, agents and “teams” that enhanced player images. While he did report the less positive stories, the overriding majority of his reporting was helpful to the players. He told those tales in Golf World or on Golf Channel when people still watched the surrounding shows and they carried real influence. The “teams” often wanted to get their player’s story out through Tim and his audience heard reasons to root for golfers.
I sat next to Rosaforte several times in press centers, listening to him get every detail about Louis Oosthuizen’s love of tractors or some players’ ability to bench press some imaginary number, or a light story of barista butchering a player’s name and it helping the drone shoot 65. These stories got shared around the 19th hole and were the kind of details that delineated certain players and caused people to pay them endorsement money.
TMZ? Give me a break.
Rosie? Sadly, Tim has left the golf world due to dementia, but he didn't exactly write hard-hitting features....Egads, what a pampered and sheltered lot.
Now we get to the important stuff:
What food would be golf’s version of the hot-dog-eating contest? The Olympic Club’s burger dog? Winged Foot’s gingersnaps layered with peanut butter? Pine Valley’s snapper soup? Fishers Island’s PBJ and bacon sandwiches? Castle Pines or Muirfield Village’s shakes? And who’d win? @HogansBookLied
These are all excellent choices but I’m going with the lobster at National Golf Links; when you sit down for a meal they plop a whole one in front of you as if it’s a slice of bread. What speaks to the excesses of the golf world more than that?! As to who could eat the most, how can you bet against a guy whose nickname is Beef?
Look, I welcome any mention of The National and its whole, cold lobster appetizer. But that bit about excess is a little undermined by the inclusion of Mac and cheese and creamed corn.
Wouldn’t the Presidents Cup be a lot more fun as a mixed team event? #AskAlan @JakeAnd86788485
This presupposes the Presidents Cup is even a little fun now. Yes, yours is a spectacular idea and I would love to see it. The women’s game has never been more interesting and all the great international players deserve a grand stage. And making the Prez Cup coed would give it a unique identity rather than being a knockoff Ryder Cup that generates no heat.
This is a most interesting, though it seems Alan misses the tip-in. Yeah, the Prez Cup has its limitations, but the event that makes no sense at all is the Solheim Cup. The U.S. vs. Europe probably seemed a good idea at the time, and it mirrors the Ryder Cup in some of the bad feelings between the teams. But in the world of today it's a bit silly, as here's the breakout of the top 20 women players in the current Rolex rankings:
U.S. - 5 players
Europe - 0 players
Asia, Canada & South America - 15 players
For the record, the top-ranked European golfer is currently Sophia Popov at No. 23. So sure, U.S. vs. Europe seems like the junior varsity match. What the questioner proposed solves an obvious problem, it's just not Jay Monahan's problem...
That'll be a wrap for this week, and I'll look forward to seeing you again on Monday.
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