Your Friday Frisson - Pre-Masters Edition

A delayed arrival at the keyboard this morning, but for the best of reasons (or one of the two best).  But we've got time, so perhaps throw on another pot of coffee.

The Dinah Denouement - Apparently the event formerly known as The Dinah will be slotted into late April.  They'll take May off, but will cram four alleged majors into the period from early June through early August.  Not ideal, but when you squander your birthright for a mess o' pottage.... Silly, girls, if it were for a mess o' potash, you'd be excused given our current predicament.  But I digress....

For the record, Golf.com can't spare the pixels for a game story on the opening round of an LPGA major, although they are able to pimp the Bonobos 25% off sale.  Yanno, priorities....

Any, back to Rancho Mirage where they're sitting shiva:

Jennifer Kupcho is having a great 2022, and her opening round of 6-under 66 at the Chevron Championship on Thursday isn’t the reason.

Kupcho got married on February 19 in Arizona, and the sampling of wedding day photos she posted on Instagram includes a picturesque sunset shot of her taking a swing at a driving range with her wedding dress on.

She opted for the more traditional golf attire of green shorts and a black shirt on Thursday as she tore through the Dinah Shore Tournament Course. After four straight birdies on the back nine, she reached 8 under through 14 holes, which put her in striking distance of the record round of 10 under (shared by Lorena Ochoa and Lydia Ko). But back-to-back bogeys on 15 and 16 had her settling for a fine round of 66.

Kupcho singled out one club, the biggest one in her bag, for the reason she started so fast.

“I haven’t been hitting my driver particularly well recently, and that’s usually my strongest suit, so to come out and you really need to hit fairways on a major golf course and that was my big thing today,” the 24-year-old from Colorado said. “I hit a bunch of fairways, and that really set me up for my birdies.”

She's yet to win out there, and this would be a heck of a place to get over that hurdle.  It's a big ball park, which should be to her benefit, at least if the putter behaves.

But the breaking news is that dog that didn't bark:

When Jin Young Ko’s birdie putt missed on the 9th hole at Mission Hills Thursday morning, it

represented the end of one of the most ridiculous streaks in golf history.

Ko, the No. 1-ranked player in the world, fired a two-over 74 at the opening round of the Chevron Championship. The round snapped a streak of 34-consecutive rounds under par for the 26-year-old.

Ko was as shocked as anyone to see the streak come to an end.

“I don’t know what happened,” Ko said in a daze after the round.

Golf happened, nothing more than that.  She's been on an incredible heater, but I'm guessing that Nelly's absence hasn't made this week any easier.  Just hard to be such a prohibitive favorite in this maddening game.

Here's some data on that streak of fine play:

No one on Earth — man or woman — has played as well as Ko over the last nine months.

Since the streak began last July, Ko has won five times. Her worst finish is a T6, and her scoring average is a blistering 67.18. Pretty impressive stuff.

There were also mini-streaks within the streak. Two separate times, Ko ripped off gaudy runs of consecutive rounds in the 60s. Last fall, she tied the all-time mark with 14 rounds in a row in the 60s. She fired a 71 that snapped the streak, and then started another one — this time stretching to 16 rounds in a row to own the record outright.

She won the CME Group Tour Championship by hitting 63 greens in a row in regulation. It won her the biggest check in LPGA history, and earned her the Player of the Year trophy.

It's actually quite an intriguing leaderboard, with names like Ko (the first one), Thompson, Lee (Hank Haney, call your office), Nordqvist (Vanna, I'd like to buy a a vowel) and Tavatanikit featured, that last one being the defending champion.  

It's always interesting when they say the quiet part out loud, but see if you've heard this one before:

When chatting with the media at the Chevron Championship, Kang admitted she missed some greens last week on purpose. Her reasoning? To create more game-time opportunities to work on her chipping.

“I’ve been chipping kind of weird,” Kang said. “So I missed couple greens on purpose last week.”

If you’re thinking the method is a bit crazy, you’re not alone.

“I was talking about it with my coach and they thought it was the most absurd thing they had ever heard,” she said. “My friend David Lipsky was like, ‘You did what?’ I said, ‘You’ve never done that?’ [He said,] ‘No, nobody does that.'”

Kang’s method might be a little out there, but her reasoning is sound. There’s no telling how you’ll react under pressure, so the best way to prepare is by creating the situation yourself. She’s thinking unconventionally, but she’s thinking big-picture.

“I have to figure it out eventually, so I have to keep chipping in a tournament scenario when I have to make an up and down,” she said. “You can’t really recreate what you feel in a competition unless you’re in competition.

OK, I kind of get it, but has Danielle thought this through.  Last week's event had a sponsor that presumably thought they were running a competition, not practice rounds for this week's major.  You're telling them out loud that you weren't trying your hardest to post the best number, which seems like that proverbial slippery slope...

Beth Ann Nichols shares some wishful thinking:

The Dinah deserves an epic finish. Is there a more popular choice than Lexi Thompson to deliver it?

Ahem, Beth Ann, I've been reliably informed that this event has always been The Chevron, so please adjust your Newspeak Dictionary accordingly.... 

I get that Lexi caught a raw deal in 2017, though her ball-marking was criminally sloppy....  But the bigger issue is in the "Be Careful what you wish for" category, because I vividly remember Lexi with a five-shot lead at Olympic, and surely Beth Ann doesn't want a signature Lexi collapse as the Dinah Chevron swan song?  

The bigger issue is that there's no player I less want to watch swing a golf club, it's such a fuggly swing....

Masters Tease - Just a couple of items to whet your whistle, including this Shack homage to the Shot Heard Round the World:

A decade removed from his sudden-death playoff win over Louis Oosthuizen, a victory-sealing

shot by Bubba Watson has risen to all-time status. This, even with a few things going against it, starting with the lack of a dramatic hole-out or tracer technology to reveal how much the ball curved. Then there is Bubba’s admission of playoff inner-demons surfacing and just how unnerved he was by crowds.

Even without knowing these details, the hook holds a special allure in an age of laser-straight shots and one-dimensional golf. We practically throw a party now if someone intentionally shapes a ball or uses something other than power to take a course apart. Bubba’s rope-hook stands with Sarazen’s albatross, Nicklaus’s Yes Sir putt, Mize’s chip-in, Phil from-the-pines and Tiger’s bank shot at 16.

The 2012 sudden playoff ultimately ended on a down note after Oosthuizen putted for par and missed. Watson only had to nurse a birdie putt down to the hole for the win. But as he recounts in his excellent new book with Don Yeager, even that moment was haunted by images of I.K. Kim’s missed one-footer at the previous week’s ANA Inspiration.

“I was so scared,” Watson recounts in Up & Down. “I was trying to baby the putt and get the energy just right in my hands. I lagged it up to the hole to about ten inches. The patrons began to cheer and as I stood over the putt, I felt like I was about to start crying.”

To me, the story of this shot has always been the absence of any factual information about the shot.  I've re-watched that entire 10th hole sequence (Shack has the CBS broadcast cued to the 2nd playoff hole), and Nick is babbling on without a clue.  I know, just a day that ends in "y", but the difference here is that he can't be blamed for not having a clue , as it's the result of Augusta National's senseless restrictions on the broadcast, to wit, no on-course reporter and no blimp.

My memory was that no yardage was provided but, as Geoff says, they did flash that inaccurate number just as Bubba settled over his ball:

The player-caddie conversation was brief. Scott agreed the shot was a “perfect 52 degree,” given the yardage of 134 yards to the front and 164 to the flagstick. The CBS team did their best to guess and flashed 155 yards on-screen.

The other thing that jumps out is the reference to Ted Scott.  he and Bubba had a great run but parted last year.  No tears for Ted, as he landed Scottie Scheffler's bag and, as you might have heard, he's been making a living wage recently.

My other reaction of note was the extent to which King Louis made a hash of the hole, even after Bubba left him a huge opening.  Unfortunately that's become Louis' signature move, here letting Bubba off the hook to have to try to make the putt.

Golf.com had a similar item here.

You'll not be shocked to know that this is my early favorite for pre-Masters coverage:

Masters 2022: 15 people who wound up in Augusta National's penalty box

I told you to throw on a new pot of coffee... Oh, we've got your Gary McCord, but there's a shocking number about which your humble blogger was in the dark.  But first, this note about evolving standards:

It should be noted that troublemakers can turn into trailblazers at Augusta National. For example, Ken Green initially received angry letters from the club both for having his kids caddie for him at the Par 3 and for skipping a tee shot across the pond at 16 during a practice round. Of course, those former "crimes" are now beloved traditions. But we'd advise abiding by the rules if you go there. In fact, fingers crossed they let me through the gates again after publishing this.

Noted.  We'll lead with this rather tangled web:

Frank Stranahan

The crime: Hitting a second ball during a practice round

The punishment: Kicked out of that year's event

The backstory: Like the patrons I saw running, Stranahan was escorted off the premises ahead of the 1948 Masters after allegedly playing two balls during a practice round. Stranahan denies the charge, saying he only hit multiple balls around the green, which is permitted. Regardless, the reigning runner-up was booted from the tournament! Imagine if that happened today to this year's reigning runner-up, Will Zalatoris?! Golf Twitter would burn to the ground. Anyway, Stranahan was allowed back the following year when he finished T-19, and he'd play the following 10 years as well, earning low-amateur honors two more times.

(Also, it should be noted that there was probably more at play here. Rumor has it that Stranahan had had a fling with a woman who had a relationship with a member. A rumor Stranahan didn't exactly shoot down when interviewed by Sports Illustrated in 1998. He was a fitness fanatic known for being a ladies man—just look at that photo! OK, so apparently, that was his wife. But still, dude was a stud. Anyway, digging deeper into the rumor mill, that lady may have been the secretary of Augusta National co-founder and chairman Clifford Roberts. And the member may have been Roberts himself … spicy!)

Gonna be hard to top that one....

I read the David Owen's version instead of his (which included many corrections), but I don't think I ever knew this piece of the story:

Curt Sampson

The crime: Writing an unauthorized book about Augusta National's history

The punishment: No longer credentialed by Augusta National

The backstory: Unlike David Owen, who got cooperation from the club—and amazing playing priviledges!—when writing his history of Augusta National, "The Making of the Masters," Sampson went rogue for "The Masters: Golf, Money, and Power in Augusta, Georgia." In fact, he's the one who wrote about the potential Stranahan-Roberts-secretary triangle. Golf Digest's Shane Ryan wrote a chapter on the Masters in his 2015 book, "Slaying the Tiger," with the following passage: I called up Curt Sampson after reading his book and asked if he’d ever been issued another media credential. I could hear a small laugh on the other end of the line. “Oh, Shane,” he said, as if I were a 19-year-old who still believed in Santa. “No.”

Shane was lucky that Clifford Roberts was long dead by then...

This is timely as we're about to segue to his mailbag:

Alan Shipnuck

The crime: Sneaking into the green jacket ceremony

The punishment: One-year ban from covering the tournament

The backstory: The veteran golf writer has been in the news a lot this year because of the Phil Mickelson-Saudi Arabia comments he published, but he’s never been afraid to mix it up to track down a good story. That includes trying to crash the green jacket after party following Bubba Watson’s win in 2012. Shipnuck snuck into Butler Cabin, but was eventually removed. He was banned from covering the tournament the following year, but has since been allowed back.

Who knew Shippy was so chippy?  I meant besides Phil...

Give it all a read, as the pettiness will stun you.  I'll go out on this note about Golf.com gearhead Mike Stachura:

Mike Stachura

The crime: Stealing some water

The punishment: Hasn't been back

The backstory: Our fearless co-worker took a sample from the pond guarding the 15th green in 1996 after winning the media lottery to play the course the Monday after the tournament ended. The purpose was to see how the club keeps its water looking so perfect, and lab results found traces of blue food dye. While Stachura hasn't officially been banned, he hasn't thought about going back in the quarter century since. Oh well. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices in the name of big-J Journalism.

Obviously, especially under Clifford Roberts' Reign of Terror, these were the ultimate control freaks.  I do highly recommend the aforementioned David Owen book, because you'll come away with a more three-dimensional view of Roberts, who has been reduced to a cartoon villain by history.  The reality is much more complicated and therefore more interesting, as he deserves credit for steering the club through it's early lean years (the 1930's weren't perhaps the best time for a start-up), but also for many of the broadcast and on-site innovations  that make this the best event of the year.  Simultaneously, he resisted many other innovations, such as broadcasting the front nine.  Brilliant and maddening, but never boring.

But, alas, time marches on:

Answering questions in Golfweek’s annual Masters survey, Nicklaus, 82, was talking about what

he looked forward to the most when heading to Augusta.

“In many ways it is the start of the golfing season,” Nicklaus said. “It certainly is the start of the major championship season. Even though I don’t play anymore, it’s fun to be there. It’s fun to go to the Masters dinner. I’m done with the Par 3, but toward the end of my career, I used to play every year. But I just can’t play anymore.

“And then there is the honor of hitting the opening tee shot alongside Gary Player. Now, with the addition of our good friend, Tom Watson, that will be nice. I enjoy seeing everybody. It’s like a reunion.”

I suppose the good news is that he went out with a bang:

That was quite the thing...

The ceremonial tee shots on Thursday morning should be delightfully awkward.  Player and Warson share a reverence for the history and traditions of our game, but without any such reverence for each other.  My only Masters prediction of any value is that each and every photo form that ceremony will feature Jack in the middle.

We'll have lots more as we flood the zone next week.

Alan, Asked - Care to finish the week with some low aerobic blogging?  Yeah, that was rhetorical...

We'll lede with the question of the moment:

In a perfect world, if Tiger plays at Augusta, what is a realistic expectation? If he makes the cut, where does that rank in terms of great comebacks? If he wins, which seems nearly impossible, that’s the greatest comeback of all time—in any sport—right?

@opinionsvary328

It is becoming increasingly difficult to be realistic about Tiger Woods. After the chip-yips, the 85 at the Muirfield Village, the spinal fusion, the DUI and so much other strife, I thought if he ever won again on Tour it would rank among the greatest achievements of a singular career. He went on to win three more times, including the Masters, and played some of the most electric golf Royal Melbourne has ever seen, at the 2019 Presidents Cup. Clearly, you can never say never with this guy simply because he is Tiger F’ing Woods. I mean, he has won a Masters with five different swings! So, if his ankle is even nominally functional he’ll find a way to will himself back into the mix. It’s only a matter of time. A made-cut at this Masters would be a mind-blowing achievement. But if Tiger can make the cut, he might as well just keep going and nibble on the edge of contention. If he were somehow to win—tying Nicklaus’s record with six green jackets and smashing Sam Snead’s all-time victory total—it would rank alongside Hogan as the greatest comeback in sports history.

I don't know what it says about human nature but, having been served up the miracle that was the 2019 Masters, most folks seem to expect another.  I think it would miracle enough if he can walk it for four days....

Odds El Tigre tees it up at Augusta?? #AskAlan @BisteccaFan

After his spin around Augusta National on Tuesday, I’m gonna say 80%. But so much of it depends on how he feels getting out of bed on Wednesday morning.

 So, you're saying there's a chance?

Six weeks ago, Viktor Hovland was simultaneously the most likable player with the highest

ceiling. Has Scottie Scheffler surpassed him in both categories? #AskAlan @opinionsvary328

Can we just say they remain tied in both categories? Please? They are both monumental talents and charming fellows. Hovland is a little better with the driver and Scheffler significantly better with the wedge, so it probably depends on the course/setup as to which you’d give the advantage on any given week. At Augusta, I’m taking Scottie, but both of their games travel. It’s going to be so fun to watch these guys go at it for the next decade-plus.

It is fun, but I don't agree with the questioners premise in the slightest.  Viktor is quite the engaging personality, but weaknesses in his game are so profound that his ceiling is very much in doubt.  

Scheffler’s win gets an asterisk because he lost once in “pool play,” right? (And thus would have been bounced from a legit win-or-go-home match play tourney.) #AskAlan @HenriDeMarsay

Jeez, tough crowd! Scheffler doesn’t make the rules. He won fair and square.

Which might be a point if he hadn't won those two others...

Alan, do you agree that Seamus Power may go unbeaten in all his Ryder Cup matches in Rome? @Quinn_Field

I love Power’s game but in Rome he will be going against a monstrously talented U.S. team. (I mean, six months ago Scheffler was the 12th man for the Americans!) It will be a spectacular achievement if Power can eke out even 1.5 points during the inevitable European drubbing.

Seamus Power has raised his profile recently, and certainly looked like a forces early in the week at Austin, until the laws of gravity asserted themselves.  But his recent heater brought him to No. 41 in the world, so perhaps we should start by allowing him to actually qualify for the event that's still eighteen months form now, before conceding him an unblemished record? 

Is DJ’s “Be a Goldfish” mentality both a gift and a curse? For instance, does he seem to tune out at the most inopportune times? Unequivocally, yes. And while his phlegmatic demeanor has certainly helped him rebound from tough breaks, does his lack of fire hinder more than help? @opinionsvary328

It’s a net positive. I mean, the guy has put together a Hall of Fame resume and he’s not done yet. You know who has fire? Spencer Levin and Frank Lickliter. Pat Perez. Billy Horschel. Terrell Hatton. Ian Poulter. Woody Austin. Sergio Garcia. DJ has had a better career than all of these guys combined.

I actually had to Google this one, as you might as well.  It's somewhat amusing if you're old enough to remember when the prevailing wisdom was that DJ was too stupid to feel pressure.... The DJ conundrum is compelling, because there is that Hall of Fame career, yet can we help but to consider DJ and underachiever?  Discuss among yourselves...

This one has been overtaken by events:

Your favorite(s) to win at ANWA? @caia437

I thought this said ANA, the old name for what used to be the Dinah Shore, so I’m sticking with that: At this point, J.Y. Ko (below) is like Tiger circa summer of 2000: do you take her or the field? This week, I’m going with Ko. As for the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, how can you take anyone other than Rose Zhang?

Both prohibitive favorites, but neither is well-positioned at this point.  Zhang at least should make it to Saturday at ANGC, though JY Ko will need to post a number to make it to the weekend.

Watching Kizner’s success this week has me wondering: do you think a better move to combat bomb and gouge is to play shorter courses? Scores might keep getting lower, but many more players would have a chance to win, which could lessen the advantage of distance for bombers. @tombagjr

Yes, shorter courses would certainly lessen the advantage of the longest hitters. But hitting it long and straight is a skill that should be rewarded. If you take driver out of play you are fundamentally altering the sport. A better way forward would be to extract a greater penalty for wayward drives, through smartly positioned bunkers and other hazards. Firm, fast greens are also ideal, as controlling spin out of the fairway becomes paramount.

This is our modern dilemma. Firmandfast is the answer, but it's unrealistic to think we can have those conditions on a regular basis...

here's one on which your humble blogger mused recently:

Were Brooks Koepka’s majors more a product of ideal course setup than anything else? He was so hot for a few years, but is his A-game as good as his resume would indicate? It seems like he caught lightning in a bottle and parlayed that into a HOF career while being good but not great. Would you say he’s a generational talent? @opinionsvary328

Well, Shinnecock Hills and Bethpage Black are two of the great championship courses extant and he conquered both, so I’m not inclined to diminish the achievement. It’s true Erin Hills was wide and soft and Koepka could bash away with impunity, but Shinny played fast and windy. Four major championship victories is a monumental achievement; the challenge in assessing Koepka is that he’s done so little else (only four PGA Tour wins beyond the majors). He’s never been a week-in-and-week-out force. Koepka is about to turn 32, and his body is breaking down. In the second half of his career can he build on one of the all-time great hot streaks? He needs to win more before I am ready to declare Koepka a generational talent.

I don't know how to assess the guy's career, but I instinctively minimize those four biggies for some reason.  It's not that Alan is wrong about Shinny and the Black, though I think he forgets how Brooksie limped in at Bethpage.

This is timely:

Is OWGR too volatile? @gacattak

Nah, after endless tinkering I think the formula is about right. People seem bent out of shape that Scheffler made it to number one without winning a major championship but taking a major confers its own rewards. The World Ranking is more about playing at a consistently high level and no one has done it better than Scheffler this season. The ranking should be about the here and now, not what happened last summer.

I think we need to be clear about what it's for.  We tend to focus on that No. 1 slot, and if you need the OWGR to settle that debate, then the answer is irrelevant (my point being that in that case there's no consensus No. 1).  But the more important aspect of it is its use to qualify for events, as in the top 50 being exempt into next week's little event in Augusta.  I think Scottie being No. 1 is a tad early (and I've previously noted how soft a No. 3 Viktor was), but I don't watch that No. 50 line and apply the same standards to that, but that's actually where it's important.

A couple of related Q&A's to finish:

When will Phil Mickelson return? @seasidejack

The PGA Championship in mid-May. Various press reports are now stating what has seemed pretty obvious all along: Mickelson’s time away from the game was strongly encouraged and/or mandated by the PGA Tour. Whether it is a suspension or a voluntary leave is purely semantics. Southern Hills would be roughly three months since Phil offered his non-apology apology. In 2012, Dustin Johnson disappeared from the Tour for three months, citing a back injury from lifting a Jet Ski, but Michael Bamberger later reported it was a suspension for having failed a second drug test. It’s hard to imagine the Tour would keep Mickelson on the sidelines for a longer stretch than flunking two drug tests warranted. Don’t forget that Tim Finchem, who was PGA Tour commissioner during Johnson’s misadventures, is now a member at Augusta National. For more than two decades following Shoal Creek, the Tour did the Masters a huge favor by continuing to recognize it as an official event while not enforcing the mandate that any host venue have inclusive membership practices. If Augusta National did, in fact, tell Phil to stay away for this year’s Masters, that would have been payback for all those years when the Tour had the green jackets’ back. But the PGA Championship is not an invitational like the Masters; as defending champ, Mickelson is automatically exempt. Suspension or no suspension, if he were to simply show up at Southern Hills, what could the PGA Tour officials do to stop him?

The X-factor in all of this were the lines in Mickelson’s statement about having “failed myself and others too” and taking time away to work on “being the man I want to be.” To me, that had little or nothing to do with Saudi Arabia. It felt like a cry for help. When I first started working on my book, someone in Phil’s orbit told me, “He has been skating on very thin ice for a very long time. All it is going to take is the right person to tap on that ice and he’ll fall through.” If Mickelson is, in fact, doing extensive self-examination and really working to tame his warring impulses, he might not be ready to return to public life six weeks from now. Only Phil knows the answer to that.

Alan has quite the alternative take on the fauxpology, apparently buying that Phil wants become a better man....  Seems rather naive, no?  Where Alan heard a cry for help, your humble blogger sensed a raised middle finger, or maybe two.  there's lots of moving parts and Alan raises a couple of interesting aspects (though the relevance of Shoal Creeks seems quite the stretch), but I start with a more basic question, to wit, does Phil actually think he did anything wrong?

Alan does raise the interesting question of whether Phil can play as of right at Southern Hills, though perhaps that's not the deciding factor.  But how sure is Alan that Phil doesn't instead have his eye on that early June event in London?  Yanno, that $4 million first place check could, and I'm just spitballin' here, have an appeal for a guy overly sensitive to obnoxious greed....

Who is your next biography subject? @NickGoblirsch

Tiger has been done to death and I have little interest in producing yet another write-around. McIlroy and Spieth are, to me, the most compelling figures in the sport but neither has had a big enough life to carry a whole book. Not yet. If you could find an exceptionally colorful character—like, say, a Rich Beem—and have all access to their life that could be a very compelling book, but in this day and age players (and their handlers) are increasingly guarded. So, the short answer is I don’t know. But I look forward to finding out.

To paraphrase Alan, Rich F'ing Beem?  Ok, not only do I have nothing funnier than that today, I may have never written anything funnier than that in eight years of blogging.

Have a great weekend and we'll catch up on Monday morning.