Lots to cover, including a few bits that have been out there for a while. We still have some Ryder Cup leftovers, but we'll get back to our usual mélange as well.
As Autumn unfolds, you should expect to see me here a couple of times a week. No need to enflame my incipient case of blogger burnout, but no need to miss important or amusing bits as well.
The Caddie Shuffle - Actual breaking news on the loopage front:
Jim ‘Bones’ Mackay will return to caddieing full-time for Justin Thomas, a representative from Thomas’ management agency confirmed to Golf Digest on Thursday.
“It came out of left field very recently. I have just tremendous respect for [Thomas] as a person and a player,” Mackay told Golf Channel. “It was an incredible phone call to get, and I said yes.”
Mackay has spent the last four years as an on-course analyst for Golf Channel/NBC after spending 20-plus years caddieing for Phil Mickelson. Mackey has caddied sparingly since then for a number of different players including Thomas, who won the 2020 WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational with Mackay on the bag.Thomas has had Jimmie Johnson as his full-time caddie since turning professional in 2013, and Johnson worked for him at last week’s Ryder Cup.Thomas, 28, is a 14-time PGA Tour winner and the reigning Players champion.
Note To Readers: Every day blogging is like a box of chocolates, as I never know what function of Blogger will be misbehaving. As of this moment it's the inability to embed pictures, so you'll understand that absence should it continue.
This comes as quite the surprise. He's obviously filled in some looping for Thomas, Matthew Fitzpatrick and others when his announcing services were not required. But there hadn't been a hint that he wanted back in the arena, though Thomas would be considered a top get in the caddie yard...
But, Bones, when you say you respect Thomas as a person, have you been paying attention lately?
Now, the thought might occurred to some of you, wasn't there an incumbent? Well, yeah, and an incumbent who was treated as a member of the family:
— Justin Thomas (@JustinThomas34) September 30, 2021
Well, obviously Jimmy's been watching... Was it the whining about unconceded putts ( we'll have a bit more on that below) or the shotgunning on the first tee? Perhaps all of the above. Or was it the backstopping, that bit where JT asserted his constitutional right to play quickly before an opponent could mark his ball? So many choices...
It so happens there's another player-caddie break-up of note:
They have been like the brothers in the neighborhood who are wrestling in the dirt one minute,about to send each other home bloodied and crying, and the next moment they’re united against the world. Bubba Watson and his caddie, Ted Scott, are among the most recognizable pair on the PGA Tour, and they're also the couple about whom everybody scratches their head and says, “How have they stayed together for so long without clobbering each other?”Success, mutual admiration and a whole lot of forgiveness in the partnership overcame the occasional public tiffs, and it was a good run for Watson and Scott, who won two Masters and 10 other tour events together over the last 15 years. Now, it’s time to go their separate ways.Watson announced in a Twitter post on Thursday that he and Scott decided to “end our on-course partnership.”“We recently came to the decision after some deep talks, not only about golf but life,” Watson wrote on the post. “When we met I don’t think we ever imagined how much we would experience together. Teddy deserves more credit than anyone can imagine for our success on the golf course, but I am just as grateful for his friendship and the way he has helped me grow as a person.
This might be the more interesting of break-ups, just because of Bubba's anxiety and Scott's importance to him on the golf course. But Bubba is about the unlikeliest of major champions, so Scott deserves much of that credit.
Ryder Cup Remainders - No shortage of follow-up stories, and we can pick up some time without the need to add photos. First up, the U.S. rout, explained:
So, what's he got?
1. The U.S. team has better players
Obvious, yes, but it must be our starting point: the U.S. players are superior. More firepower, better putters and more in form than their European counterparts.
Heading into the week, the Europeans had just one player in the top in the world ranking (Jon Rahm) and their third-highest ranked player, Rory McIlroy (No. 15), had admitted to being run down in recent weeks. Meanwhile, the U.S. team’s average world ranking was a staggering 8.9. “It was really just getting out of their way,” U.S. captain Steve Stricker said Sunday evening. “Let them go. Provide an atmosphere and camaraderie that they enjoyed and wanted to be a part of.”
Simple formula, devastating results.
Ya think? Of course, they always have the better players, so that doesn't explain much.
2. The U.S. rookies played like veteransBetter on paper hasn’t always translated into Ryder Cup wins for the U.S., but this U.S. side was buoyed by the fact that most of the team hadn’t been exposed to the U.S. team’s past baggage. With six fresh-faced but undaunted rookies, this was a markedly different squad from the fractured team that Europe hammered in Paris three years ago. Having experience never hurts in the cauldron of the Ryder Cup but it also has proven not to be a requirement for success. At Valhalla, in 2008, the Paul Azinger-led U.S. team also had six first-timers and cruised to a six-point win.“We have a team with no scar tissue,” Tony Finau said earlier in the week. “There’s only a handful of us that has even played in a Ryder Cup, and the few of those, we have winning records. So we actually don’t have guys on our team that have lost a lot in Ryder Cups … We’ve got a whole different group of young guys that are hungry. You guys see six rookies. Man, in this team room, I don’t see any rookies. I see 12 guys that are confident and none of us are wide-eyed. We want to win.”And win they did. The half-dozen rookies combined for a gaudy 14-4-3 record: Collin Morikawa (3-1-0), Xander Schauffele (3-1-0), Patrick Cantlay (3-0-1), and Scheffler (2-0-1), Harris English (1-1-1), Daniel Berger (2-1-0). “The notion that rookies can’t come out here because they don’t have the experience can kind of be thrown out the window,” said Daniel Berger, who won the record-setting 19th on Sunday, dispatching Matt Fitzpatrick on the 18th green, 1 up. “All of these guys are competing at the biggest events, the major championships, and winning big golf tournaments. That’s what it comes down to is being able to perform at the highest level.”
Kinda silly to think of Cantlay, Schauffele and Morikawa as rookies....
While I think the team bonding is way over-emphasized, it's always hard to be in the pro-cancer lobby:
6. Patrick Reed stayed homeOf all the calls Stricker made to alert potential captain’s picks that they didn’t make the team, Stricker said his call to Reed — a Ryder Cup dynamo — was the toughest. “Kind of lost sleep over that one,” Stricker said. Left unsaid, however, was that leaving Reed off the squad reduced the chances of any more Team USA weirdness. Reed is as gritty a match-player as any top American and might well have been a force for good in Wisconsin, but that pettiness in Paris won’t soon be forgotten by the deciders of future U.S. teams.
Do we think Patrick as watching at home rooting on his mates? Yeah, not a team player, so to win one without him is a plus for civic hygiene.
This comparable offering from the Euro side will prove silly:
What now? How Team Europe’s Ryder Cup system broke down
I doubt that the author, Englishman Luke Kerr-Dineen, wrote the header, because it's clear from the lede onward that it's not so much the system:
World War II general Douglas MacArthur once said that generals are only as good or as bad as the troops under his command make him. There’s a parallel that tracks between MacArthur and the current European Ryder Cup affair.The 2021 European Team had no shortage of generals. Stalwarts like Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter, and Sergio Garcia. World No. 1 Jon Rahm and Rory McIlroy are undoubtedly the now-and-future leaders of this team, too, despite the latter’s struggles this week.Generals are not the issue for this European team. It’s the lieutenants — or lack thereof. The class of golfers who could one day be tapped for a leadership role, but until then are will serve an essential supporting role upon which the rest of the system relies. It’s a system, intentional or not, that they’ve had for decades.
But the real issue is that the cupboard is bare:
The issue is that that there’s not much beyond that, because those who should be around have gone missing.Three of Europe’s last six major winners: Francesco Molinari, Danny Willett, and Martin Kaymer should all be primed for this role. Rafa Cabrera Bello, a once-trendy dark horse major pick who impressed at Hazeltine, isn’t far behind. Matt Wallace, whose form ahead of the 2018 contest had some clamoring for a captain’s pick, seems further away than ever. It has left the European team in an unenviable position of needing to default to the old guard once again.Try as they might, it was one battle too many. It was the opposite of the problem during Europe’s last loss in 2016, but of the six rookies on that team at Hazeltine, only one of them — Matt Fitzpatrick — made it to Whistling Straits.
Lots of criticism of Padraig taking the old-timers Poulter and Sergio (Westy automatically qualified), but that's truly misguided. Not only did his picks not play any worse than the other nine, but who else was he going to pick? It's profoundly silly yo think that the alternatives, Oliver Perez or Robert McIntyre, would have changed the results.
Shall we set aside the players for a second, and focus on the more important aspect (at least to Phil), the captains? Eamon Lynch makes a case that should have us screaming, "Hell, No"!
Lynch: Win or lose, Ryder Cup captains are out of a job. It’s time to let winners stay.
Ummm, no it's not, but the rationale is even weaker than you might expect:
Bruce Arians stayed on as head coach of the Bucs after their Super Bowl LV victory last winter, just as Andy Reid remained in charge of the Chiefs after winning LIV. Success in the biggest game tends to provide job security, unless you’re a Ryder Cup captain. In which case even winners must step aside because, well, it’s just someone else’s turn.
Eamon is literally comparing the captain in an exhibition match to the coach of a professional team?
But Eamon's control of logic is even more fleeting than the above demontrates:
The problem with treating the Ryder Cup captaincy as an entitlement is that it sometimes means swapping a proven leader for the promise of a glittering résumé. Some of golf’s most accomplished individuals, notably Nick Faldo and Tom Watson, had much less impressive turns as Ryder Cup skippers than men with more slender curricula vitae.
Nick Faldo is a babbling moron, so no argument there. But that Tom Watson reference is pretty dicey, because it actually is an admission against interest for the logic-challenged Ulsterman. Why? Because Tom Watson got his ordinary-course-of-business captaincy in 1993, which remains the last away-game win for the U.S. team. Then in 2014 the U.S. brought back the...what's Eamon's phrase, the proven leader, for another go in 2014. How'd that work out?
Eamon, it might just be that the players matter more than the captain or the system? I know, it'sd quite the radical thought, especially since it means that Watson was correct, and Phil was blowing smoke.
So, who will be the captains in 2023?
The leading candidate to lead the U.S. side in 2023 is Zach Johnson, who served as an assistant captain again this year and has been groomed for the role. Phil Mickelson is considered a shoo-in for the 2025 Cup at Bethpage Black. Tiger Woods, who led the Americans to victory at the Presidents Cup in 2019, should have his pick of the litter down the road.
That seems to be the prevailing logic right now, as the alpha dogs will, I expect, gravitate to the home games. I'm not over the moon about it, but Phil seems to have a lock on Bethpage. Tiger could certainly have Adare Manor in 2027, though my guess is that he'll opt to wait for Hazeltine in 2029.
And for those other guys?
What of the Europeans? Englishman Lee Westwood, who tied Nick Faldo by playing in his 11th Ryder Cup, already has raised his hand for the job of replacing Padraig Harrington.“I’m assuming I’ll get 3-4 months to think about,” Westwood said Sunday evening. “People keep coming up and saying you’re going to be the captain in Rome. I’d prefer to play. I don’t want to let go yet. But father time is not kind.”
Logical. I know Tiger would have a yen to be a playing captain, so it would be funny if Westy beat him to it. But 2025 will be lit:
Ian Poulter is presumed to be in line for 2025, and Northern Ireland’s Graeme McDowell could get his home game at Adare Manor in 2027 much like Stricker getting to play host in his native Wisconsin.
Memo to World: As with Shane Lowry winning at Portrush, calling a Graeme McDowell captaincy in the Republic of Ireland a "Home game" is eliding quite a lot of real-world complications.
As we touched on in the prior post, the aforementioned Shane Lowry was noticeably pissy at the end of his singles match with Patrick Cantlay. He explains:
Unfortunately, after Europe ultimately suffered a 19-9 defeat, Lowry’s perspective on the experience apparently darkened. In an Instagram Live appearance with Paddy Power (a restricted profile in the U.S.), Lowry vented about the gamesmanship employed by several members of the U.S. team — especially Sunday singles opponent Patrick Cantlay, who defeated Lowry 4&2.“Yeah, [Cantlay] pissed me off a little bit on the 8th, to be honest,” Lowry said. “I was lining up my putt and he was riling up the crowd which I didn’t think was great. In Rome, we’ll hopefully win and win in a different style, that’s how I’m looking at it.”Lowry’s frustrations didn’t end with Cantlay’s cheerleading. Tension over unconceded putts became a major theme of this year’s Ryder Cup, with U.S. players like Bryson DeChambeau and Justin Thomas visibly measuring their putts with their putter shafts to demonstrate that the length they were being made to putt was “inside the leather” — that is, a length that is widely viewed as being deserving of a concession.
OK, so Cantlay failed to maintain the high standards of sportsmanship set by....Seve? I had heard elsewhere that Lowry's wife was the recipient of abuse from the crowd, and I'm way more sympathetic to Lowry on that than this bit from the 8th green. But you know who else whined about putts not being conceded? Yeah, though he's now saying he meant it ironically:
“For a start Bryson Dechambeau’s putter shaft is about four feet long so it was definitely not a gimme,” Lowry said. “Justin Thomas did the same thing and then I did the same thing but purely because Justin Thomas did it. They made me hit a putt from literally 18 inches on the 1st so I did the exact same thing as Thomas did just because I was annoyed with the picture I’d seen of him that morning.”Lowry also said that the charged atmosphere made him less inclined to concede putts.
According to Mike Bamberger, the putt was "literally" 28 inches, which data I assume comes from ShotLink. Is an Irish 18-inches anything like a Jewish 6-inches? I know, it's gotta be a hate crime in this day and age.
For anyone inclined to think through those 2023 rosters, there's this that I'll link to without excerpting:
Ryder Cup 2023: Our way-too-early predictions on who plays for the U.S. and Europe in Rome
All I can say is that, after Rahm and Hovland, the talent pools falls off rather dramatically....
So, was Steve Stricker a captain for the ages? I think he probably was a good fit for the team and he dodged a bullet or two with alacrity, and by bullet I of course mean Phil. But strategically?
Ryder Cup 2021: 7 smart decisions Steve Stricker and Team USA have made (and one word of caution)
Shall we see what passes for strategic brilliance these days?
Choosing the correct captain's picks
Jim Furyk has said that his main regret in his Paris captaincy was not selecting picks that fit the course—the Matt Kuchar/Kevin Kisner types whose accuracy would have been more suited to the narrow fairway at Le Golf National. That said, Furyk’s hands were tied. How do you not pick Tiger after he won the Tour Championship? How do you leave off Bryson DeChambeau when he won two playoff events? Maybe it would have been easier to leave Phil Mickelson at home, but Phil is Phil—a mainstay. So he took those three, the course baffled them, and they combined for a startling 0-9-0 record. (His fourth and most controversial pick, Tony Finau, was better at 2-1.)
Stricker vowed early not to make this mistake. In his case, the situation was reversed, with a Whistling Straits course that rewarded length. As such, he left players like Kevin Na and Kisner at home, bypassed Webb Simpson and passed over Patrick Reed. Easier choices than Furyk had to make, but the fact is that he learned the important lesson and chose the right players for Whistling Straits.
Alas, poor Furk, though he should take solace in the fact that his was far from the first captaincy ruined by Tiger and Phil. But Mr. Furyk was beholden to those two guys for his gig, so their selection was assured. But picking him is oe thing, playing him in alternate shot is Suttonian in its stupidity. In fact, after grabbing a 3-1 lead in morning fourballs, Furyk put together some of the worst foursome steams I've ever seen, the Phil-Bryson pairing being the high-water mark, and lost all four matches by 3&2, 4&2, and 5&4 twice. Yeah, those captain's picks weren't great, but they were the least of it.
So, how bad was the beatdown? Shack makes a strange case that is was closer than it appeared:
As we drive away from the USA’s record 19-9 win, something about this Ryder Cup blow-up has bothered me: the 43rd seemed much closer than it appears. I might even have a stat that proves the Europeans fought pretty hard.Subscribers who opened Wednesday’s letter laying out a case for The Ideal Ryder Cup design may recall what I wrote about routings and the desire to re-route courses with the finish in mind:Of the 28 matches at Whistling Straits, all reached the 15th hole. Five matches finished at the 15th, five ended at the 16th, nine called it a day at 17 and nine went all the way to 18. These were closer matches than 19-9. Yet we often see Cup courses re-routed to ensure the best or most dazzling holes are played, though this is nearly always a corporate chalet play with little regard for the design flow.Going back to 1979 when the rest of continental Europe joined the party, I checked to see how many times all 28 matches made it to the 15th tee. You guess it, this year’s Ryder Cup was the first time in the 28-point, all-Europe era where every match made it to at least the 15th tee.Here’s how the Ryder Cup played out by year:1979 - 23 of 28 made it to the 15th1981 - 251983 - 251985 - 251987 - 271989 - 261991 - 261993 - 251995 - 251997 - 241999 - 262002 - 262004 - 252006 - 262008 - 272010 - 252012 - 252014 - 242016 - 252018 - 22 🤭2021 - 28If Captain Padraig Harrington and his squad want to feel less nauseous about the beating they suffered, maybe knowing they were competitive in every match will help? Doubtful. But I do think it speaks to a certain doggedness displayed by Team Europe.
There's a point to be made I suppose, but losing on Nos. 15 or 16 is itself a beatdown. Perhaps not the level of futility from 2018 cited above, but I wonder what aggregate holes won and lost numbers might look like. But if you're looking to convince me that Europe 2021 was no worse than U.S. 2018, I'm on board.
Tod Leonard posts data that cuts very much the other direction:
- The three par-5 holes at Whistling Straits played a huge part in the U.S. win. The Americans won 34 times on them, shooting 46 under par. Europe captured only 14 at 22 under.
- The U.S. won or tied all five sessions for the first time since 1967.
- The six American rookies combined for a record of 14-4-3, including three who went undefeated—Collin Morikawa (3-0-1), Patrick Cantlay (3-0-1) and Scottie Scheffler (2-0-1).
- Nine of the 12 Americans had winning records. Those who didn’t: Jordan Spieth (1-2-1), Harris English (1-2-0), Tony Finau (1-2-0).
- It’s the first time the U.S. has won two consecutive times at home since 1983.
- The three European rookies—Shane Lowry, Viktor Hovland, Bernd Wiesberger—combined to go 1-8-2.
Television ratings for the 2021 Ryder Cup are in and they’re solid given a number of factors.
- These were the first matches played this century without Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson
- It was Sunday runaway going up against some stellar NFL action
- The Friday to Sunday broadcast windows were all 11, 10 and six hour
- Plenty of cords have been cut since the last domestic playing and almost all ratings are down
They're up from 2018, but that was in France with the associated late-night and morning airing times, but down from 2016, when I'm pretty sure the NFL played as well.
Bowing to Reality - Shack has the news that the PGA Tour has decided to duck the behemoth:
The PGA Tour, Farmers and CBS have wisely decided not to fight the behemoth that is the NFL, moving up the Farmers Insurance Open to a Saturday finish. In previous years the NFC and AFC Championship games finished the Sunday oftheHope/Clinton/Phil/Chrysler/Humana/Careerbuilder/AmEx. In one of the many mysteries to rule the day in Ponte Vedra, that event stubbornly stuck to its Sunday finish and rarely saw much of a final round audience.
With the NFL’s expanded schedule for 2020-21, the Championship games have been pushed into Farmers weekend, the traditional start of CBS’s broadcast schedule.
How about that formatting from Blogger in the top 'graph? Just crazy how bad the template has gotten.... I've spent more time arguing that the LPGA should stagger their schedule to avoid the PGA Tour behemoth, but whatever.
Back To Portrush - This story broke a few weeks back and I never worked it into my blogging:
Royal Portrush previously had to wait 68 years to host another Open Championship. Its current wait won’t be nearly as long.The R&A announced Wednesday morning that the Northern Ireland links, which hosted The Open in 1951 and 2019, will get its third major-championship hosting duties, in 2025.“We could not be more thrilled to be bringing The Open back to Royal Portrush in 2025. There will be huge excitement among golf fans around the world to see the best men’s players facing the challenge of this magnificent links once again,” said Martin Slumbers, chief executive of the R&A. “The Open in 2019 was a massive success and showed just how much collective enthusiasm, passion and commitment there is to make Royal Portrush one of the leading venues for the championship.”
I'm personally delighted by this, bot on account of the quality of the venue, as well as its importance to Northern Ireland. Employee No. 2 and I have a strong tie to the community where our friends Lowell and Carol live, but it's also great to see them move past those times of, well, Troubles.
But what's most curious in all this is delay in a return to the Honourable Company. I had assumed that 2025 was being held back for a return to Muirfield, where the event has not been since 2013. This site speculates on awards past 2025, though there's one that undermines any faith that they know what of they speak:
Potential future British Open Championship sites2026 -- The Old Course at St. Andrews: There's no reason to believe the R&A will stop its tradition of hosting the Open at St. Andrews every five years.2027 -- Muirfield: The Scottish links, and the shortest course in the modern Open Rota, gets the Open about once a decade nowadays. Phil Mickelson, who won there in 2013, will be 52 years old when the Open returns. It could be a good send-off for the lefty.2028 -- Royal Lytham & St. Annes: From 1952 until 1979, Lytham was hosting the Open practically at the same frequency at St. Andrews. Then it fell off and seems more of a fill-in than a a regular venue.2029 -- Turnberry: Site to Tom Watson's 2009 close call at the age of 59, Turnberry is going to see the Open sooner than later, not face the 15-year gap it did between hosting in 1994 and '09.
Absent a change in ownership, that 2029 projection seems unlikely, no? It is a pity, because the changes to the Ailsa were very well received and some of the venues, Lytham and Troon most notably, seem a bit tired.
No comments:
Post a Comment