Tuesday, April 11, 2023

Tuesday Trivialities - Masters Detritus Edition

Left a few strokes out there yesterday, so shall we see what me missed?

Takeaways - If you're a grizzled veteran in these parts, you're familiar with the concept of a notebook dump, a tradition like every other.

I take this as a TMI warning from Nick Piasrtowski:

Smelled?  Are you sure about this?  First, a few thoughts on Koepka:

11. I knew Koepka would do this. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. I love it, too — no, not that I was right, but that’s nice, too — but it’s all a bit of a mind game to him. Brooks is hurt. Brooks thinks he can’t do it anymore. Brooks is playing lower-level golf. Logs on his personal fire. He’ll be back in the mix at the PGA and U.S. Open, too.

What, that he'd fold on Sunday?  At the height of his powers, Koepka definitely shared the grievance-mongering that Michael Jordan made famous.  But has anyone noticed he's not exactly a stone-cold closer any longer?

12. But next year could be his last Masters. Stinks, don’t it?

Nick, I'm going to let you stew about the field for that 2025 Masters all by your lonesome....Of course, your humble blogger would characterize Brooksie's absence as more of a feature than a bug.....

Here's one I meant to cover but missed. For most folks, their golf heroes are Tiger and jack and whatever, whereas mine is Jeff Knox. But Knox has lost his sinecure, and his replacement comes from a mold more in tune with our times:

28. The Masters marker is a bit of a celebrity — one is used when there’s an odd number of players — and GOLF’s Sean Zak wonderfully profiled the newest one, Michael McDermott, here.

Knox was a shorter hitter who was uncanny on the greens.  McDermott?

“He was playing 11 from the member’s tees and the caddies go up on the hole while you hit. His caddie comes running back up the hill,” the Augusta National member said, mimicking the high,
pumping knees of a caddie in a jumpsuit. “He’s got putter in hand and he goes, ‘Mr. McDermott, I wanted you to take the longest walk with a putter in Augusta National history. You drove the green!’”

Ladies and gentlemen, the new marker is long. His name is Michael McDermott and he can play from the big-boy tees, too, proving it Friday morning when he outdrove Mike Weir, Masters competitor, by about 40 yards on the 1st hole.

On Friday, two full years after the beloved marker of yesteryear, Jeff Knox, surrendered the role, McDermott finally felt the tap on his shoulder for a debut walk around Augusta National during the Masters. His score doesn’t matter at all. He’s just a phantom player, invisible to the television cameras, stuck in place to fill time and offer camaraderie when a contestant withdraws or an odd number of players make the weekend cut.

Handicap is +1.8.   

Paying off that header, an idiosyncratic rating of food options:


32. If you’ve somehow stumbled onto my stories before, you’ll know I’m a beer guy, and I’m taking breaks here with some treats. First up is the Augusta Peach from Sibling Revelry Brewing. Fitting.

33. Masters sandwich ratings time! No. 1 is the breakfast sandwich. No. 2 is the club sandwich. My ratings are influenced by meat — you get more with the club. I like the hamburger bun touch with it, too. It’s comfort food.

34. Barbecue sandwich. The sauce is not overpowering, but solid. (Full disclosure: I really like all barbecue, so I may be the wrong person to review here.) You get a good amount of meat. Just wish it was a little bigger — it’s slider size.

35. Chicken sandwich. A little bit of heat. Not bad.

36. Pimento. Though it’s practically associated with the tournament, there’s some polarization here — some folks give the pimento a meh. On that note, I’ve dropped it in the middle of the ratings. It’s got some kick too, but just a bit too much mayo.

37. Sausage biscuit. Oh, this could be king. The biscuit is lovely. The sausage is hot. Just a little too greasy.

38. Ham and cheese on rye. I usually don’t like rye bread. But this hit the spot. It’s a little beefier, and, again, we like that.

39. Chicken biscuit. The chicken is a little chewy.

40. Chicken salad. It’s lacking some flavor.

41. Egg salad. Same as above.

But you send a boy to do a man's job:

42. OK, this is sad. I didn’t have the Georgia peach ice cream sandwich. The ratings are tainted, yes.

 Luke Kerr-Dineen has a similar column, though with a little more heft to it:

2. Early errors only kill you if you let them

Hang around players long enough and you’ll find they’ll find a way to turn everything into a
positive if they look at it long enough, and so was the case with Rahm. No one wants to make big numbers—indeed, your avoiding big numbers is statistically the key difference between high and low handicaps. But big numbers come for all eventually. For Rahm, his came after four putts on the very first green of the tournament. No Masters winner, before Rahm, had accomplished that feat.

And yet, somehow, Rahm made it into a good thing.

"If you’re going to make a double on any hole in the tournament; four-putt or something, it might as well be the first hole," he said.

Early mistakes are annoying, but framing them as opportunities to recover from is something that stuck with me. Golf, after all, isn’t a game with an end destination. It’s a journey. Like a plane going through turbulence, there’s something rewarding about navigating your way to clear skies on the other side. Persist long enough, and good things will come in the end.

There's a lesson there that most of us will ignore.

ESPN's writers had some reflections as well.  It's hard to argue with these choices:

Who was the biggest surprise of Masters week?

Schlabach: Thumbs up to Mickelson, who picked up his fifth top-three finish and 12th top-five at Augusta National. I didn't think he had anything left in the tank. Like Woods did in the 2019 Masters, Mickelson turned back the clock and rekindled the magic that helped him win a green jacket three times.

Mickelson, 52, started the final round at 1-under, 10 shots behind Koepka. When he sank an 11-foot birdie on the 72nd hole, his fifth birdie in the final seven holes, he was 7-under, just 3 shots behind Rahm. It was the best final round by a player over 50 in Masters history. He is the oldest player to finish in the top five. It was Mickelson's best final round in a storied career at Augusta National.

Uggetti: Koepka. Perhaps there's a mea culpa to be had by all when it comes to him. The four-time major winner dominated the golf world not too long ago and, after hearing about his journey back to good health, his ability to compete at Augusta and nearly outlast the No. 1 player in the world makes complete sense and gives context to his win drought even before he bolted to LIV Golf.

 Obviously the former is way more surprising than the latter, who had won twice in recent events.

Who was the biggest disappointment?

Schlabach: Of all the former PGA Tour members who left for LIV Golf, Smith was probably the most surprising to me. He had just won the 150th Open Championship at St. Andrews and was the No. 2-ranked player in the world. The Australian is 29 years old and at the height of his career.

Smith won the second LIV Golf tournament he played and captured the Australian PGA Championship in November. He hasn't done much of anything since. He missed the cut at the Saudi International and finished sixth, 26th and 29th in the first three LIV Golf events this year.

OK, but if we're looking for guys that did a face-plant this week, Smith qualifies for nothing more than Miss Congeniality:

Uggetti: Rory McIlroy There was an abundance of expectations surrounding McIlroy heading into this week at the Masters. Even Tiger Woods himself said it's only a matter of time before McIlroy wins the Masters.

McIlroy himself didn't exactly shy away from those expectations, even going as far as to say he felt like he had shed some of the scar tissue at Augusta after backdooring his way into a second-place finish last year. But instead, McIlroy played "untidy" golf by his own admission and didn't seem to have anything resembling his best stuff all week. He missed nearly 50 percent of greens in regulation and had a particularly poor putting day on Friday on his way to missing the cut.

Rory had this:

"I feel like I am as good, if not better a player, as I was the last time I won a major championship," McIlroy said coming into the week. "I've been knocking on the door for that fifth one for a while."

You might want to get a second opinion on that.... 

Just days after posting scores of 72-77 at the 2023 Masters, Rory McIlroy has decided to withdraw from this week’s RBC Heritage.

McIlroy was scheduled to be the first golfer to meet the media Tuesday at Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

The RBC is a designated event on the PGA Tour’s 2022-23 schedule, which means a total purse of $20 million and a first-place check of $3.6 million going to the winner.

The issue being that he didn't make the trek to Hawaii to start the season, so that's two, and they're in theory only allowed to skip one.

But, as you know, there are now two PGA Tours, and the rules are only for the peons:

 Isn't it great that the Commish has a slush fund to pay off his faves?  

But this little buried detail might be the most outrageous part:

The Tour announced that the field, which started with 146 golfers, is down to 143 and noted that “WDs will not be replaced by alternates unless needed to fill the field of 132.”

I'm old enough to remember when the Tur cared about playing opportunities for its members.  Now, we just ensure that those terrific peni don't have any awkward encounters with the great unwashed masses.

Just a reminder of this, upon which I touched yesterday:

Rules Are Rules … or Are They?

Masters officials dropped the ball by not assessing a penalty after an exchange between the caddies for Brooks Koepka and Gary Woodland

Rules are for the little people....

Can't We All Just Get Move Along -  He's not wrong:

While the 87th Masters will be long remembered for Jon Rahm’s come-from-behind win over Brooks Koepka, one thing that won’t be remembered fondly was the slow pace of play in the final round.

Rahm and Koepka were frequently forced to wait for the pairing immediately in front of them – Patrick Cantlay and Viktor Hovland – to hit their shots.

Both Rahm and Koepka typically prefer a speedier pace, and when the subject was raised in the post-round news conference, Koepka didn’t hold back.

“Yeah, the group in front of us was brutally slow,” Koepka said. “Jon went to the bathroom like seven times during the round, and we were still waiting.”

No. 1 or No. 2?  I'm guessing both given the time involved.... While the above mentions them both, it's not about them both:

Cantlay was by far the more egregious offender, as Hovland even seemed to be a bit annoyed at his playing competitor. On one occasion, Hovland didn’t even wait for Cantlay and his caddie to reach the green before hitting his chip shot.

Rory Sabatini, call your office.

Best summed up by what Alan Shipnuck called his favorite tweet of the week:

Just a reminder that the only slow-play penalty ever assessed at the Masters was given to a 14-year old.

LIV Ascendant - I know, but does it change anything?  Nick Piastowski ponders the existential issues here:

Let's see what he's got?

Gone is the idea that LIV players, because of a limited schedule (they’ve played just three tournaments this year), a different format (54 holes) and a smaller field (mostly the same 48 players week after week) couldn’t handle this week. They did. Koepka finished and Mickelson tied for second and Reed tied for fourth. Twelve of the 18 here made the cut (Koepka, Mickelson, Reed, Joaquin Niemann, Cameron Smith, Abraham Ancer, Harold Varner III, Talor Gooch, Thomas Pieters, Charl Schwartzel, Dustin Johnson and Mito Pereira).

It's by no means gone, despite the LIVsters justifiable crowing.  They had a great week, but the guy that should have won this thing faded badly on Sunday.  Seems to me that puts the argument about 54-hole events front and center, no?

Gone, too, should be the discussion over world-ranking points. LIV is still waiting for them. But while there isn’t doubt that they’ll eventually receive some for their tournaments, the showing this week may have given them some more. Just look at that player list above again. You have to beat some guys to win a LIV Golf tournament.

Nick, you've just told us that there's no mechanism to replenish fields (kind of ignoring the fact that they're stuck with Phil no matter how badly he plays) and that they're locked into 54-hole, no-cut events.  I'd say LIV qualifying for OWGR points remains very much an issue, and justifiably so.

I think they are most likely to be awarded OWGR points, but mostly because it isn't worth creating an additional legal issue in denying them.  

Nick does a reasonably good job of covering both sides though he ignores the killer point to me.  To wit, if Brooks Koepka thought he could actually play, he wouldn't have gone to LIV.

The ESPN guys take a shot as well, and I think this is best in breed:

Uggetti: While Greg Norman and LIV Golf as a whole may have wanted to turn Masters week into a statement, the week felt more like a reminder of just what LIV has robbed the golf world of.

Mickelson, Koepka and Reed all finished inside the top-10, but the statements they made felt
more individual than collective. For Koepka, it reminded the golf world how much of a threat he can be at majors. Reed always seems to play well enough on this course and Mickelson, well, he is a 6-time major winner and three-time winner at Augusta after all.

It's hard for LIV, in my mind, to utilize as evidence to support their quest, let alone have this result turn into more viewers and attention for the shotgun start, 54-hole tournament. If anything, it's an indictment to the caliber of LIV events, the courses and the fields, that their best players aren't exactly thriving on their tour or particularly care about winning unless it's in service of preparing for what really matters: the majors. Cam Smith said as much this week when he acknowledged LIV fields are not as deep or strong as the PGA Tour's.

Zoom out and I think the takeaway is clear: LIV players can still thrive and win at major championships and they will no longer be overlooked. But the LIV Tour? I can't see this improving the quality of the product nor the likelihood that Mickelson's rise to the top of the leaderboard, or Koepka's near victory, get anyone to turn on the CW. Not when you have Jim Nantz getting jokes off at your expense.

It's great for them that Phil had that resurgence, but they're still trying to organize a tour around a 52-year old player.  How does that work?

And they're now departing for Australia and Thailand, so will leverage this bounty by running taped coverage on the CW.  Yeah, that's draw eyeballs....maybe as many as six of them.

I'll leave you this this bit, which I find every bit as believable as everything else he says:

Reed, who left the PGA Tour for LIV Golf, admitted to hearing “murmurs here and there” during the week but added that overall the patrons were supportive.

“The fans were good. I heard a lot of ‘Go 4Aces’ out there,” Reed said. “As a whole, everyone was great. They were very respectful, and the fans were how they always are. They’re always really good.”

A billion valuation for Patrick's franchise?  Why so low?

Tomorrow features the resumption of The Wednesday Game™, so I will see you later in the week.

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