PGA Championship Thursday

Balls are in the air within the hour.  I'm late to the keyboard and far from fully committed, but what the hey...

The Architect - On Golf Channel yesterday, Gil Hanse referred to Perry Maxwell (along with William Flynn) as the most over-looked of the golden age architects.  That seems about right, as this golf.com piece explains:

Let’s play “match the architect to the course,” starting with Augusta National and Pine Valley.

If you said Alister MacKenzie and Harry Colt, you’re not wrong, but you left out a designer who

touched them both.

No points docked for your omission.

Lots of folks are unfamiliar with the complete portfolio of Perry Maxwell, a hidden gem of the Golden Age. From 1914, when he broke ground on a course in his own backyard, until his death in 1952, Maxwell laid his hands on a long and luminous list of projects. He tweaked National Golf Links of America and co-created Colonial. He stamped his name, with either full or partial credit, on Prairie Dunes, Crystal Downs and Old Town Club — all GOLF Top 100 courses.

And we haven’t even gotten to Oklahoma, where he built his most expansive body of work, highlighted by Southern Hills Country Club, which will host the PGA Championship next week. Like a great sleeper course, Maxwell has always been esteemed in architecture circles. But he cut a low-key profile that belied the size of his contributions.

Gil specifically credited Maxwell with the 14th green at Augusta, but those guys collaborated so extensively that attribution remains difficult.  One assumes it was all about the art, although more likely they just enjoyed a drink or six with kindred spirits.

It's been far too long since our last Zelig reference:

Though he wasn’t everywhere, he often seemed to be.

“He was Forrest Gump-like in that way,” says Ed Oden, founder of the online Perry Maxwell Archive. Aside from rubbing shoulders with movers and shakers, he had a knack for making cameos at historic occasions. In 1930, Maxwell was at Merion when Bobby Jones captured the Grand Slam. Five years later, he was standing by the 15th green at Augusta when Gene Sarazen jarred his “shot heard ’round the world” for double eagle.

The list of folks that saw that shot is it's own Hall of Fame, but I didn't know Perry was among them.

Shack has some bullet-pointed backgrounders on Maxwells curious career path:

• Born in Kentucky, Maxwell contracted “consumption” known today as tuberculosis and withdrew from University of Kentucky, spending the next many years traveling various areas in the Midwest and south in search of curing what ailed him.

• Married his childhood sweetheart and moved to Ardmore, Oklahoma in search of warmer weather to aid in his recovery. He became respected community figure as an officer at the Ardmore National Bank and as the spearheading figure driving the creation of Ardmore Presbyterian Church.

• He was an accomplished tennis player but his wife, Ray Woods, was concerned it was too strenuous and gave him a Scribner’s article about the construction of National Golf Links. At age 30 he gave up tennis and turned to golf.

• In 1913 Francis Ouimet won the U.S. Open at The Country Club over Harry Vardon and Ted Ray. The dramatic upset ignited a golf boom that drove Maxwell to attend the 1914 U.S. Amateur at Ekwanok also won by Ouimet. At some point the two met, became friends and Ouimet helped Maxwell pick out a full set of clubs for $9.

Leading to this cosmic convergence:

This is the point where I point out how those zany Golf Gods work: Maxwell’s design at Southern Hills hosts the PGA Championship the same year The Country Club hosts the U.S. Open next month. Now back to regularly scheduled programming…

After playing his 14th green at Augusta as well, though I'm pretty sure he never touched the Old Course, but three out of four ain't bad, especially when you've been dead for seventy years.

The Course - We had previously warned on this issue:

The Logjam!

I already wrote about this at length for GOLF.com earlier in the week, but the far west corner of this course will definitely create some awkwardness this week. Shots from the 5th hole could bound into the 6th tee. Shots from the 6th hole are sure to bound onto the 7th tee. “We’re right in the firing zone,” Brooks Koepka said Tuesday.

Then there’s approach shots on 2 that players on 6 will want to wait for. Those players on 6 will cause players on 3 to wait some more. When a great shot echos from the 5th green, there will be a wait on the 7th tee. This chaos is going to make for some irked pros, some slow rounds, and absolutely delightful viewing for the fans in Tulsa.

"Stupid slow" was the term one player used.  This does afford on-site spectators some juicy spots in which to park themselves, but the players will be itchy-scratchy anticipating unexpected noise.

Zephyr Melton does a deep dive on the bunkers, though frames his piece with a decent precis of the course's defenses:

Let’s state the obvious real quick: Southern Hills is a hard golf course. How hard? According to stats expert Lou Stagner, a 5 index would have a course handicap of 13 from the back tees at Southern Hills — and that’s not even factoring in major-championship conditions.

The greens are devilish and errant approach shots are punished as they settle in a variety of collection areas. Canted fairways abound throughout the course, and flat lies are a rarity. Plus, the course is long; 7,556 yards to be exact.

Why exactly a 5-handicap would want to play a course 7,556 yards escapes your humble blogger, but there are no 5's in the field, although those twenty club pros might have a tough go of it.

About those bunkers:

All those factors combine for a substantial test. But what might turn out to be the most difficult challenge players face this week is the bunkers surrounding the greens. As you watch the action on TV (or from the grounds in Tulsa), you’ll notice the sand is a bit discolored from what pro

golfers typically face. Instead of pearly white sediment, these bunkers have a tinge of brown to them.

The slightly different color makes for a gorgeous scene, but the different sand also presents a unique challenge for golfers. As Ian Poulter pointed out on Instagram on Wednesday, the “coarse fine gravel type sand” makes it immensely difficult to control spin when coming out of the bunker.

“There’s tiny little rocks that can get between the blade and the ball,” Poulter told GOLF.com. “And if you do get a little rock, the ball can come out super fast. No spin; side spin. So it just makes it a little interesting.”

This might seem like much ado about nothing to our weekend warriors hearing Poulter’s gripe, but for the best players in the world, even the smallest things can have a huge impact. One tiny rock can be the difference between birdie and bogey — and that can decide the championship.

Worse yet, there’s no change in technique that can guard against the tiny rocks in the sand. It’s all up to chance.

Your humble vlogger is old enough to remember when bunkers were hazards, so perhaps they won't be yelling at their balls to "get in the bunker."

One of the major features of the Gilification of Southern Hills is removing the long rough and creating run-offs around the greens.  Shack has been all over this in his Quad posts:

The idea of grain’s impact on putts was occasionally overstated by Johnny Miller. At least if you asked most golf course superintendents. But Johnny would be utterly fascinated by this week’s

tight-mow surrounds at Southern Hills.

The Astro Bermuda grass cut at .375” does point in a direction depending on your location at Southern Hills. It will dictate how players try to recover around the greens. Tiger Woods explained Tuesday in his press conference.

“With the surrounds being cut down how they are, there's a lot more grain than we every had to deal with,” he said, referring to the previous majors here bathed in lush rough. “There are going to be different shots. I've seen guys using hybrids, and I've seen guys use 3-woods, putts, wedges, 4-irons. You'll see a lot of different things.”

To state the obvious: based on my deeply unscientific research, trying to bump and run or putt into the grain is pointless. But when it’s helping, as Tiger said, there will be options.

Then this:

Well-placed golf industry sources with intimate knowledge of the situation suggested I would be wise to ask Jordan Spieth how to chip around Southern Hills. So I lobbed the question out there and he delivered beyond my wildest expectations.

I think I'm fortunate in that I grew up on this really grainy Bermuda and grainy Bermuda

run-offs where I grew up playing. The interesting thing out here is a lot of times on grainy Bermuda, a lot of times, you're hitting onto Bermuda greens, and so you can actually drive it into the grain, onto the greens and not have to bank shots up. Bank shots are really hard on this Bermuda grass because it can just snag it so quickly, and it's hard to committing to hitting it so firmly into the hills. But I think you might have to do that quite a bit this week. So that's a shot I've been working on.

They mow it down grain through the green. So if you stay short of pin-high, you actually are hitting off of a down-grain lie, and that changes things dramatically. So I think keeping it short of the hole is important if you are missing greens. Sometimes you're not going to be able to necessarily totally control that, and if you get into the grain out here, you're normally hitting downslope as well, and that's where it really gets tricky on this golf course.

How’s that for some All-World analysis from a beautiful mind melding maintenance, design, skill and some Grade A golfing genius?

How many pro golfer notice that people mow the grass, much less the directions in various places on the holes and how it impacts a variety of factors?

The name that pops to mind is Hovland.  On the one hand, he's a Cowboy and certainly familiar with the area and the grasses used on local golf course.  But the flip side is that he's one of the worst chippers out there, so he's a guy I'd steer clear of were I the betting sort.  If that seems odd singling out the one guy, it's because folks seem to like his chances this week:

The Weather - Weird:

That's a 22 degree swing in high temps from Thursday to Saturday and there's that guy who won the last PGA here that doesn't like the cool temps...

Quotes -  Hey, I warned about my lack of full commitment, but I'm just going to grab these interesting quotes from Shack:

Shane Lowry on the game plan: “The guy who wins this week is going to hit 13, 14 greens a day, and he's going to miss four greens and he's probably going to get up-and-down a lot of the time. That's what you're going to need to do.

Dustin Johnson on how he’s handling the Southern Hills surrounds: “You can get to some good lies where you can use a 60 and kind of hit it in the air with a little bit of spin, or you get some uphill into-the-grain ones where 60 -- you can hit it but you've got to play it low, kind of back of the stance. I've been using like sand wedge a lot or 54 just because I can catch it more consistently solid. So using that a lot.”

Jordan Spieth on the possibility of winning the career Grand Slam this week: “If you just told me I was going to win one tournament the rest of my life, I'd say I want to win this one, given where things are at. If you told me that before my career started I was going to win one tournament ever, I'd say the Masters because that was my favorite tournament growing up. But things change, and this has obviously significant meaning. Long term it would be really cool to say that you captured the four biggest golf tournaments in the world that are played in different parts of the world and different styles, too.”

Jordan Spieth on missing the Masters cut while Tiger made the weekend: “I didn't feel very good about myself knowing he was on one leg and he made the cut and I didn't. (Laughter.) But he also beat everybody in a U.S. Open on one leg, so when I thought about that, it made me feel a little better.”

Tyrrell Hatton on the tee setup: “They're going to have to be fairly careful with how they set the golf course up because of where some of the tee boxes are. You might not be able to tee off while the group that are waiting on the tee are having to wait for the guys to tee off on the next hole to then get out of the way before they can hit their shots in. So if they don't set the course up in a way that -- the rounds could be just stupidly slow, which at the end of the day no one wants.”

Nicolai Hojgaard on differences he sees between Americans and Europeans: “I think the majority of players here are just better than Europe. Wedges, putting, I see a difference. I enjoy watching how good these guys are with their wedges and putter. That's why you can get it around with your ‘C’ game instead of just relying on really good ball-striking.”

Adri Arnaus on the Southern Hills arboriculture: “I think it's like a walk in the park. I don't think I've seen trees this tall in a golf course. It's quite impressive to see when you're walking down the fairway. There are not many trees, but the ones that are around the fairway, they are huge, and it makes it amazing to walk.”

 Copy-and-paste remains my core competency....

Watching - here are today's TV coverage windows, although the important question is unanaswered:

Thursday, May 19

8 a.m.-2 p.m.

Main broadcast coverage on ESPN+

9 a.m.-8 p.m.

Featured groups on ESPN+

9:30 a.m.-8 p.m.

Featured holes (Nos. 16, 17 & 18) on ESPN+

1 p.m.-2 p.m.

PGA Championship with Joe Buck and Michael Collins on ESPN

2 p.m.-5 p.m.

PGA Championship with Joe Buck and Michael Collins on ESPN2

2 p.m.-8 p.m.

First-round coverage on ESPN

8 p.m.-conclusion

Coverage on ESPN+

I've read that the CBS crew will work a 3-hour shift on Thursday-Friday, but nowhere can I find the specific window.  I am interested in the Buck-Collins "Manningcast", but principally as a means of limiting exposure to Sir Mumbles.  Not sure how it will play out, especially since I'm unsure as to whether I'll be watching live or on Memorex...May have to tape everything. 

I'm going to leave you here.  Enjoy Round 1 and I'll likely have some thoughts tomorrow morning, although this five-day-a-week thing sure is draining.

UPDATE: Just a few minutes after the original posting, but we love funny here at Unplayable Lies, especially when it's directed at one's own self:

Rory McIroy shows his press center mural to his daughter, says Thats when Daddy was good.” Sweet and hilarioys. ⁦@McIlroyRory⁩ pic.twitter.com/IRd8WQu7A8

— Gary VanSickle (@GaryVanSickle) May 18, 2022

It's just so perfect.  Rory seems such a good guy, as frustrated as I am with his golf game.  Exit question:  How old will Poppy have to be before Rory can tell her about the 2011 Masters?