This post is being drafted with the Women's Open on in the background. We'll get to that one in a sec, but first we'll get a booster shot to control our playoff fever.
Northern Trust Swan Song - This event's history, including of course the Barclays years, is its own microcosm of all that's wrong with the FedEx Cup playoffs. The first was held at Westchester Country Club in 2007, but Tiger shocked us all by giving it a miss. This was all brand spanking new, and nobody had realized that you could skip a playoff, but the Tour responded immediately and forcefully , removing the storied venue from its schedule because the one guy didn't like it.
The event then evolved to include an interesting mix of worthy venues, including spots like Ridgewood, Plainfield and Bethpage Black. But such an interesting mix of venues couldn't be allowed to stand, and in the contraction of the playoffs to three events, those notable clubs were abandoned for a two course rota of Liberty National and TPC Boston. That last for an hour-and-a-half, and next year at this time the boys will be working up a sweat in Memphis, about the only thing that could make your humble blogger miss Liberty National.
Perhaps the best prism through which to assess Liberty National is through the eyes of Tiger Woods. This was his take during his first visit to the place in 2009 (when he finished a stroke behind Heath Slocum):
Tiger Woods made no secret of his dislike for Liberty National back in 2009 when the Barclays first visited this former New Jersey landfill turned swanky Wall Street hangout.
While speaking to reporters after his first ever round at Liberty National, Woods described the course as “interesting.” When probed further as to whether or not the course was interesting in a good way, Woods just smiled and again said, “It’s interesting.”
That was, of course, Woods speak for “I hate this place.”
But does he hate it as much as he hates Westchester?
That was his public response, though the more telling bit was this to a pro-am partner about the Bobby Cupp-Tom Kite design:
According to sports writer Ian O’Connor, Woods also told Sanjay Jha—one of the three amateurs that played with Woods during his Wednesday Pro-Am round back in 2009—that Woods said “Maybe Tom did this course before his eye operation.” The “Tom” Woods was referring to was Tom Kite, who had co-designed Liberty National along with Bob Cupp.
To be fair, he had kinder words when he next saw the course in 2013:
"They made some really nice improvements," Woods said. "Some of the landing areas have been changed. Some of the greens have been changed, and a couple bunkers have been repositioned, but they have made some really nice, positive improvements."
That, of course, is Woods speak for, "I still pretty much hate the place". Tiger, I've got good news, should you ever be well enough to make those playoffs, you won't have Liberty National to kick around anymore.
Steve Stricker will no doubt be happy to see this guy showing some form, although I had been reliably informed that bullying is wrong:
Justin Thomas, bullied into going back to his old putter by a teenager, shoots 63 at the Northern Trust
Bullied?
"I had my AJGA event last week in Louisville, went right from Memphis," Thomas said. "Wentout and kind of saw some of the kids playing their practice rounds, and Tuesday was the Junior Am. But my dad had a couple students, and I went out to go -- there's a girl Abigail that he teaches that I went out to go see because I played a couple rounds with her. She's a really good player, and she was playing with, I think, another two girls, a girl that my dad teaches and then a boy."
This mysterious boy happened to be using a model of Thomas' old putter, and he liked what he saw from it. Enough to basically bully Thomas into putting it back in his bag this for this week's Northern Trust, the first leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs.
"He was using the putter, pretty much my putter that Scotty Cameron, the line that we kind of came out with, and he was like, you know, when are you going to use it again? Are you still using the long neck? I was like, yeah, I am, and I was kind of explaining it, and he's just like, well, when are you going to start using it again? And I found myself defending myself to this 15-year-old.
"I was like, why am I not using this thing? I've had a lot of success. It's not like I'm making a lot of putts with what I have. If you're putting well, any of us can go out and putt with anything. I don't know, it kind of hit me. I'm like, the kid's got a point."
And dontcha know it:
Not only did the kid have a point, he may help propel Thomas to his second win of 2021. The 14-time tour winner opened with an electric eight-under 63 on Thursday at Liberty National, giving him a share of the lead with U.S. Open champion Jon Rahm. Thomas struck it well, as he often does, putting on a tee-to-green masterclass, but he didn't let it go to waste like he did in Memphis. He gained nearly 2.5 strokes with the putter, which ranks eighth in the field.
There's not a ton of difference between the two putters and it's only the one round, but JT has seemed completely lost lately. But looking past the money grabs to that late September exhibition match, it sure seems like the U.S. roster is top-heavy with guys well off form, including JT, DJ, Bryson and his BFF Brooksie.
There were a couple of odd bits from yesterday's action, including this involving Scottie Scheffler:
Scheffler, on the par-4 15th at Liberty National, hit his tee shot in the thick stuff left of the fairway, and his second shot into the even thicker stuff even farther left. Then, in both a rare and honest scene, he’d hit two balls.
With the help of players, caddies, fans and officials, Scheffler would find his second shot. Sort of. According to Rule 18.2, players are allowed only a three-minute search, and there was some question how long Scheffler’s was.
“I mean, I hit my second shot just short left of the green, probably 30 yards short from the front edge,” Scheffler said afterward. “I had like 75 pin, and then we couldn’t figure it out.”
According to Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard, Scheffler and a rules official determined that Scheffler would play both the first ball and a second one, from where he originally hit his second shot, and under a one-stroke penalty. Hoggard reported that after the round, Schefler and playing partner Daniel Berger then agreed that the search was over three minutes, and he would take the score from the second ball, a double-bogey 6.
“They didn’t have data or ShotLink data or anything, so just went with it was over three minutes,” said Scheffler, who finished with a one-under 70.
“Just too long.”
Scheffler seems to have handled it well, though I'm unclear as to why this wasn't settled until later, given that "officials" were involved in the search, though perhaps I'm assuming that those officials were of the rules variety...
Golf provides breaks of all kinds, the good, the bad and the ugly. This is an especially good one, though:
There are breaks. And there are great breaks. And then there are laugh-smile-laugh-again breaks,the kind where you know you got away with something so silly, that all you can do is laugh, smile and laugh again.
“That might be worth three shots to him if he knocks that in,” analyst Nick Faldo said on Golf Channel’s broadcast.
Indeed. Davis, during Thursday’s first round of the Northern Trust, sliced his tee shot right on the par-4 16th at Liberty National, then he leaned over as his ball nosedived toward the water right of the green. Only it finished 9 feet from the hole. The ball bounced off a small collection of rocks, ricocheted forward about 30 yards — then bounced off a tent behind the green and ricocheted backward toward the green.
Eagle on the rocks.@CamDavisGolf making the most of a WILD bounce. 🤯 pic.twitter.com/euSnuNYbBl
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 19, 2021
Nothing but net!
As we approach Ryder Cup D-Day, this bit is potentially interesting:
Two-time Northern Trust champion Patrick Reed pulled out of the tournament, the first of three FedEx Cup playoff events, on Thursday morning citing an ankle injury. Golf Channel later reported that Reed sprained his left ankle at the WGC FedEx St. Jude.
But missing this week and battling an injury could impact the chances of “Captain America” making the U.S. Ryder Cup team. Reed, who won the Northern Trust in 2016 at Bethpage Black and again in 2019 at Liberty National, site of this week’s tournament, is currently ninth in the U.S. Ryder Cup point standings. The top six point-getters will automatically qualify for the team after the BMW Championship. U.S. captain Steve Stricker will make his six captain’s picks after the Tour Championship, the following week. The Ryder Cup will be held Sept. 24-26.
Reed, who ranks No. 17 in the Official World Golf Ranking, doesn’t have a top-10 finish in his last six starts. He has played a heavy schedule since the U.S. Open in June, including traveling to Japan to compete in the Tokyo Olympics as a last-minute replacement for Bryson DeChambeau when he tested positive for COVID-19. He finished T-31 in his last start at the WGC FedEx St. Jude Invitational.
The points race ends after next week's Western Open BMW, though Stricker's picks won't be made until after the Tour Championship. I have no clue as to where Stricker and the Ryder Cup Cosa Nostra stand on the PReed conundrum, though it's feeling like the team room will be might be just the slightest bit awkward.... Of course a Bryson-PReed pairing (only in fourball, one hopes) might be the path of least resistance, though I've not checked that UseGolfFacts Twitter account in some time.
We'll close this section with an Eamon Lynch item that aims high, attempting to fix the FedEx Cup playoffs. I might have advised him to save his breath, as those to whom he's speaking aren't a particularly responsive audience:
I'm largely in agreement with Eamon's solution, though I think he slightly misdiagnoses the problem:
In every other major sport, regular season performance matters about the same in the post-season, which is to say not at all. At best, it earns home field advantage but has no material impact on the remaining action. Only in the PGA Tour’s playoffs is weight still given to what a man accomplished during the last administration.
The FedEx Cup Playoffs began Thursday with The Northern Trust at Liberty National, which sits a 15-minute ferry ride across the Hudson from lower Manhattan. Now in it’s 15th year, the FedEx Cup has undergone more tweaks than a Wall Street trophy wife. And yet it remains a tweak shy of perfection.
Perfection, Eamon? How about coherence first?
This mathematical manipulation stems from a desire on the part of the Tour to partially engineer an outcome, though it would never admit to such. It’s not that the Tour wants to see a particular player win, just that it wants to help star players remain in contention until the end. Elite players are usually flush with FedEx Cup points thanks to the majors and assorted limited field tournaments, so the Tour achieves its goal by ensuring those points still count all the way to the finale in Atlanta two weeks from now.
It’s a crafty methodology, but a counterproductive one because it involves reducing volatility, and volatility is what provides playoffs with drama and shock value.
Maybe misdiagnosis isn't exactly the issue, but the comparison to team sports playoffs misses an important point. While there's great variability among the various sports, they're rooted in a world where the better team usually wins, thus the frisson of upsets is an important element. But the playoff concept is an awkward fit for golf, in which the best player in the history of our game can't be expected to win more than ten percent of the time.
The funniest bit is Eamon's assertion that the Tour isn't looking for any one player to win, though at the start of this experiment in 2007 that was exactly the problem and you know which player was the subject of their obsession. But I've always felt that the issue was the Tour's inability to choose between a season-long competition and a high stakes shootout, which resulted in the various tweaks to which Eamon refers, none more embarrassing than the current staggered start at the Tour Championship.
But I've always argued for turning it into a high-stakes shootout, and Eamon is on a similar page:
The best drama in Tokyo wasn’t the gold medal-winning performance of Xander Schauffele, but the seven-man playoff for bronze, which included Collin Morikawa, Rory McIlroy and local hero Hideki Matsuyama. It proved that excitement doesn’t exist only at the top of the leaderboard, that scrapping for something other than first prize can be compelling.
Herewith, a counter proposal for the FedEx Cup: Use the points system to qualify 125 guys for the playoffs, but dispense with it at the close of the regular season. In the first post-season tournament—which next year will be the FedEx St. Jude Championship—everyone plays four days with the top 70 finishers in the field moving on to the next stop at the BMW Championship. And if that means a 10-man playoff for the 70th and final spot, all the better. Everyone else goes home. Similarly, only the top 30 finishers at the BMW survive to the Tour Championship.
Which offer the added benefit of finding some good in Olympic golf... Win-win, baby! So, how might this have played out?
Last year’s BMW Championship ended with an eight-way tie for 25th. If we conduct an exercise in what-ifs to illustrate what might have been, that would have delivered an 8-for-6 playoff involving Schauffele, Justin Thomas, Louis Oosthuizen, Adam Scott and Kevin Kisner. Surely that has more value for fans and sponsors than totting up of points accumulated over the previous 340-odd days.
And Eamon hasn't even dealt with the most ridiculous feature of the inane system, those arbitrary points resets.
OK, I stand corrected, those resets are only the second most absurd factor:
Discarding points for the post-season ends the need for the playoffs to culminate with a widely-mocked scoring format at the Tour Championship, where those points are effectively converted into birdies so that the leader in the standings begins the tournament 10-under par, with lesser head starts for those well-placed on the rungs immediately below him. In 2020, Dustin Johnson began the Tour Championship at 10 under and cruised to a FedEx Cup victory. But the winner’s share of world ranking points went to Schauffele, who shot the lowest total of the week, handicapping aside.
Eamon concludes by noting that the Tour can reward season-long performance, which was the intent of the now abandoned Wyndham rewards. But where I think Eamon errs most is in calling this an "easy fix", which it most certainly is not, if only because of FedEx. It fundamentally changes how the event is perceived and promoted. I think it creates a far more exciting event, one that I might actually watch, but I'm unclear on whether a certain Memphis-based company would agree.
Udder Stuff - I'm not going to keep you very long, but I'll do some quick hits that you can explore on your own.
First, Golf.com has its panelists identify the five best opening shots in golf, and it's quite the varied list. This one for sure belongs, as there's nothing comparable:
1. Old Course at St. Andrews
St. Andrews, Scotland
“Knees knocking, everyone watching.”
“So wide yet so scary.”
“The hair stands up on any normal neck.”
“It’s so wide…and yet the OB stakes on the right are so white.”
“100+ yards wide never looked so narrow. Did I mention the burn?”
It's not actually much of a golf shot, but the feel of it, with the R&A clubhouse looming over the player like a Leviathan (that's a wee private joke for Bobby D.), can't really be explained, one just has to experience it for themselves.
There is one U.S. based course cited, but the rest are all in the Old World. This one I just love, even though it's not quite as daunting as it's ,\made out to be:
3. Machrihanish GC
Argyll, Scotland
“All of Scotland to the right.”“That drive over the Atlantic!”
“How much do I take off the first shot of the day?”
“Entire rounds have been mentally surrendered here.”
“Better hope the wind is not directly into your face.”
“It’s the ultimate in risk/reward in a dramatic setting.”
“Scary and unique…think of the permissions needed to build this today.”
The tee box is on some kind of defensive embankment, which makes it quite unique and memorable. Many consider it the finest opening hole in golf, which I think is excessive, but this one belongs on the list as well:
4. Portstewart (Strand)Portstewart, Northern Ireland
“How steep is that drop?”
“Nothing prepares you for the stunning view down the 1st.”
Sure, if you like this sort of thing:
As you can no doubt tell, your humble blogger is fighting a case of the links DTs...
It's bad form to embed videos that I haven't actually watched, but given the Old Tom connections above and that it comes with Geoff's seal of approval, I think I can be excused this once:
Yeah, That's The Ticket - How's that Ryder Cup Task Force working out? We all might have different opinions about who should be on the team and all, but do we think this will help?
Yes, the U.S. captain is reportedly giving Ryder Cup hopefuls written questionnaires as part of alarger effort to assess their capacity for representing the U.S. side — a revelation that came courtesy of one of the hopefuls, Scottie Scheffler.
“Yeah, I mean, they’ve asked us all a couple questions,” Scheffler told reporters at the Northern Trust on Thursday. “I think they send out the stuff to like the top 20, 25 guys on the list.”
Scheffler, who currently sits 14th on the U.S. Ryder Cup list, told reporters he was asked to fill out the questionnaire as part of the run-up to the event — a sort of self-assessment to help Stricker better understand how players view their own games.
“It’s funny, we filled out some stuff kind of like that. ‘What are you good at, what are you bad at.’ I think so he can get a feel for all the guys,” Scheffler said. “I’m not going to tell what you I wrote down. He promised me no one else would see it, so it’s between us. Yeah, I mean, I feel like I’m a good player; I would help the team. Like I said before, it’s really up to those guys, not to me.”
Remember when we were in our job interview stage of life and advised that, when asked about our weaknesses, to answer that we work too hard? Scotties seems to have gotten the same advice:
“Yeah, ‘I care too much. I try too hard,'” Scheffler said with a laugh. “No, it’s a simple question. He didn’t ask what are you bad at, he said, ‘What are you trying to improve on?’ I could talk for 30 minutes with you about how I am trying to improve my game. That’s why I don’t set long-term goals. I have the stuff that I know I need to get better at in order to be where I want to be, and that’s that.”
Hmmm...as a wise man once said:
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
So, Paris was the tragedy and Whistling Straits will be the farce?
Of course the wise man in this case was Karl Marx, and his advice has always worked out well, no?
That's a wrap for the week. I'll see y'all on Monday.
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