Tuesday, May 23, 2023

Tuesday Tastings - Name Of The Rose Edition

I'm having to push myself to blog this morning, but golf will again intrude tomorrow....  we'll begin today with actual golf news, but then sort through our PGA Championship leftovers....

Zhang Dang Doodle - Yeah, I'm not so happy with that header myself, but I've already burned through every pun I know involving a rose.  But the girl is good at this golf thing:

Queen of college golf: Rose Zhang captures 2023 NCAA individual title, first woman to win back-to-back NCAA championships

Stay tuned, because this girl will be doing many things for the first time in women's golf:

Zhang won the NCAA individual title for the second straight year, becoming the first woman to do so. She shot a bogey-free 4-under 68 on Monday, finishing at 10 under and beating USC’s Catherine
Park and San Jose State’s Lucia Lopez-Ortega by one shot. The victory was also a crowning achievement on an incredible season that saw Zhang win eight times, tying Lorena Ochoa’s single-season NCAA record for victories, and set a new record for lowest scoring average in a single season, coming in at 68.81, besting her 69.68 record from last season.

“I still don’t know what is going on,” Zhang said. “And it’s really hard to process because when you’re chasing from behind, you really don’t know what’s happening.

“I genuinely just… I can’t believe this is all happening. It’s just simple to say I’m super grateful.”

She's just that much better than the other girls, so even a couple behind she seemed in control of things.

In addition to her eight victory of the season, it’s also the 12th of her career, the most of any Stanford golfer in school history. Tiger Woods, Maverick McNealy and Patrick Rodgers each had 11 on the men’s side.

She also helped the Cardinal secure the top overall seed in match play, which begins Tuesday. Stanford will first face No. 8-seed Pepperdine with a chance to win its second consecutive team title.

Until twelve months ago, that top seed was the kiss of death.  But then this very Stanford team ran the table, and I'd be reluctant to bet against them this year as well.

This is one of my favorite events of the year, with the fun stuff, team match play, starting today.  The shame is that it comes immediately on the heels of the PGA, when one tends to be golfed out already.  But I recommend it highly, as the format rocks and watching them carry their bags and tend the pin for each other is delightfully retro, at least to this observer.

My constant whining about open browser tabs might hvae gotten old, but here's an example of one open for more than a month that we'll make useful:



Almost three decades after the Masters debut of another Stanford 19-year-old, Rose Zhang introduced herself with a gutty win at the ANWA

For anyone unfamiliar with Michael Bamberger's 1996 reference, the photo will connect those dots:


 Although Mike's lede requires a spit-take warning?

Over the years, the Masters, bless her green soul, has introduced scores of interesting golf figures to the world—major and minor and in between. Arnold Palmer and Ken Venturi and Jim Nantz. Carl Jackson. Alister MacKenzie. Ed Sneed. Hideki Matsuyama. Hideki’s caddie. Tiger. Hootie. Earl. Jennifer Kupcho. Maria Fassi. Rose Zhang.

Ed Sneed?   Worth keeping the tab open just for that.... Yanno how you always hear about how only two players won a Masters in their first attempt?  Well, one of those is Horton Smith, who one the first Masters Augusta National Invitational.  The second is Fuzzy Zoeller, and Ed Sneed is the reason he's on this list.  Sneed was three up with three to play and, as you can guess, mentioning him in the same piece as Rose is quite the curious editorial choice....

I'm not even going to excerpt from it, as you can peruse it at your leisure.  Or not.

But I have closed that browser tab, and isn't that what's most important in such things?

Phil in Phull - he made the cut on a difficulty driving course at age 52, so he's still got some game.  Damn him for that!  But, curious times for sure, as this bit off the 18th green on Sunday shows his inability to read a room:

When speaking to reporters from the Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, New York, where the
six-time major winner finished tied for 58th at 10 over after Sunday’s final round, Mickelson was pressed about his former PGA Tour, which he has continuously jabbed on social media following his defection to the rival LIV Golf last year.

“I guess it’s because I know some things that others don’t,” Mickelson said, according to ESPN.

“I just want to make sure everybody’s held accountable.”

Win-win, baby!  Couldn't agree more that everyone should be held accountable, so in that spirit of agreement I'd like to offer a selective list:

  1.  MBS for the murder and dismemberment of Jamal Kashoggi;
  2. Saudi Arabia for those 81 public beheadings last year;
  3. Anyone with unpaid gambling debts;
  4. Those using insider information to profit in the stock market
  5. Anyone who doesn't pay their caddie in full.
I'm sure I could come up with more, but you'll have discerned that Phil's desire for accountability has certain obvious limitations....

Of course, my favorite times are when they say the quiet bits out loud:

Furthermore, Mickelson was asked by reporters what he felt the biggest accomplishment of LIV is so far.

Pulling no punches, the 52-year-old, six-time major winner said: 'It's provided 48 new professional golf opportunities at the highest pay, which is incredible.'

Phil, don't think you were supposed to admit that it was all about the money, not that we hadn't guessed.

But something quite weird happened Sunday, and it seems that no one wants to acknowledge it.  Here were the early morning pairings:

7:50 a.m. — Ben Taylor, Mark Hubbard
8 a.m. — Joel Dahmen, Kazuki Higa
8:10 a.m. — Taylor Montgomery, Taylor Moore
8:20 a.m. — Phil Mickelson, Justin Thomas
8:30 a.m. — Rikuya Hoshino, Lee Hodges
8:40 a.m. — Sihwan Kim, Zach Johnson
8:50 a.m. — Padraig Harrington, Matt Wallace

Any of those jump out at you?  That 8:20 group catches my eye, because I can't quite remember who is looping for JT these days....  Didn't he used to work for another player?

But the weird part is that there seems to be a press blackout on this grouping, as not a single report on the event seems to even acknowledge this highly awkward pairing.  Although Googling the names did remind your humble blogger that this wasn't the first time they've seen each other since the split:

When Justin Thomas needed an emergency fill-in caddie on Tuesday, he called Jim "Bones" Mackay, one of the best to ever carry a bag on the PGA Tour.

Thomas could have never imagined the circumstances in Sunday's final round of the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational, when he was paired in the third-to-last group with Phil Mickelson, who was Mackay's boss for 25 years, when they worked together to win 42 times, including five majors.

Thomas came from four shots back to win for the third time this season, shooting a 5-under 65 to beat Brooks Koepka, Daniel Berger, Tom Lewis and Mickelson by three shots at TPC Southwind.

That was way back in 2020, before Bones' ex-boss became a non-person, but also before we learned from Alan Shipnuck's biography that Phil couldn't be bothered with such niceties as actually paying his looper.  A man I simply can't hear enough from about accountability....

But why no coverage of the pairing and the awkwardness?  Are the protecting Phil or Bones?  I'd guess the latter, but just not clear on how that wouldn't be news, especially when they were all over the Saturday Bryson-Brooksie pairing.

The Legend of Michael Block - That 15 minutes should be up by now, but we can all use laughs such as this:

Gee, tough one....Shall we start with the lead?

Michael Block - Adam Sandler

Works for me, mostly because I've actually heard of Adam Sandler....

In contrast to this guy:

Viktor Hovland - Rory Culkin


To be clear, I know who Viktor is, it's the other guy....

Rory McIlroy - Barry Keoghan

Sad that the only thing that would get Rory a role this week was that he's the one that told Block his shot on No. 15 went in..... 

Nick Piastowski did solid for your humble blogger.  His 50-item notebook dump lumped all of his Michael Block observations sequentially, limiting your humble blogger to just the one copy-and-paste:

23. OK, it’s time. Block o’clock. Let’s talk Michael Block. He could probably get his own 50 observations. We’ll keep it to five. First off, I love that the 46-year-old club pro from California was as surprised as you were.

24. I love the emotion. You’re OK in thinking that it was an act — but that’s only because we’re used to robots.

25. Speaking of that, I loved meeting all of his friends and family this week. And my favorite quote from Block came when he was talking about his wife, Val — and how she coached him to talk to reporters.

“My wife used to give me so much crap because for the first 100 interviews of my life back in the day, not with you guys but much smaller interviews, I was very, yes, yes, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, kind of what I hear honestly with a lot of the guys here when I see them doing this. It’s just like, dude … I just became way more natural. My wife really kind of told me to do that, and it’s worked out beautifully, so she was right.”

26. I love his game. He knows who he is. And plays to it. No matter that he was playing in the PGA. Or with Rory. That helped with the nerves. 27. I loved this moment. After the trophy ceremony, ahead of his final press conference, Block stood outside of the press tent — with a glass of pinot noir. He told me he wasn’t much of a wine drinker, but hey, why not. He sipped on it. When it was time to talk, an official told him to put down the half-full glass — at which point he chugged the rest, put the glass down and gave one of the best interviews of the week.

28. OK, one more. I love that when (if?) things go back to normal for him, he says he’s going back to being Michael Block.

It was great fun, though probably time to move on....

Well, maybe not just yet, because this might make you love the guy any more.  First, the photo:


 In case that isn't clear, the header will explain this Friday shot:

What a week for him and us.

How Many Is Too Many -  Eamon Lynch uses that Blockfest to propose....well, not sure this will be very popular:

The PGA of America has a right, an obligation even, to honor members. But inviting the top 20 finishers at the PGA Professional Championship to compete in the PGA Championship dilutes its premier asset while inflating the value of its member tournament. The bar ought to be raised. Awarding places to only the top 10 finishers sets a higher standard for both events. A top-10 cut-off would not have denied us the Block storyline, since he qualified by finishing tied second in the PPC.

There are accomplished tour players who sit home watching club professionals routinely underperform in a major. The obvious retort — that they should just play better to get into the field — has limited utility. They have played better, they just lost out to someone who played okay and finished 20th in the PPC. Club pro loyalists might validly point out that this is the only major not to invite amateurs, and that the PGA Championship is giving members spots that other majors grant to the young and innocent.

Or, yanno, they could just cut the field to seventy players, because our pampered alpha dogs don't like having to beat the riff-raff.

Eamon is mostly right, the problem is that this year was a wacky one-off.  Mostly we get maybe one of the twenty making the cut on the number.  With only ten, in most years no club pro will even sniff the cut line, and that won't, as Eamon put it, honor the organization's members.

The dissenting opinion looks like this:

That's a little rich, as you no doubt discerned.  The club pros get no air time, so you hardly have 20 golf clubs with members glued to their TVs.  This major only exists because of a historical oddity, so I would think the club pros might just want to go low profile on this.

Jay Monahan has bigger issues, so chances are he won't be looking for opportunities to squeeze Seth.

Ryder Cup Chaos - Yeah, this will get interesting for sure....  Do we think Zach had any sense of what he might have taken on?  I'm guessing that he felt for Trevor Immelmann, but didn't foresee that his circumstances could be even touchier.

Shane Ryan channels the early, funnier Woody Allen, and cross examines himself on this very subject.  First, he indicates that I was in error yesterday, not that I'll take responsibility:

In a Ryder Cup year, it's never too early to ask the big questions about what's coming in the fall. And this year, after Brooks Koepka's win at the PGA Championship, we have a really big question: Should he make the U.S. Ryder Cup team?

Before we begin in earnest, let's acknowledge that there are six spots for automatic qualification, and with the win at Oak Hill, Koepka moved into second place on that list. You get lots of points for winning a major, and he'll have two more chances to rack up even more points at the U.S. Open and Open Championship. If he finishes in the top six, this question is moot—he makes the team.

Why should I own it, when this official Ryder Cup page shows him still in 22nd place, indicating that the results have been updated as of today?  Obviously, like your humble blogger, they don't want to deal with this issue, but have they been slow-rolling it since the Masters?

But Shane does at least note that, whatever comity was displayed at the two majors, the parties are still very much at war:

Why is it more complicated than a simple "yes"? Because there's something to be said for solidarity. A major factor in the U.S. Ryder Cup resurgence of the last six years, complete with two blowout victories at home, is that the team learned some hard strategic and psychological lessons from the past. Koepka still seems to be well liked by his peers, and certainly respected as a competitor, but it doesn't change the fact that he's on a breakaway tour that stands in direct opposition and poses an existential crisis to the PGA Tour. LIV Golf is suing the PGA Tour. No matter how Koepka distances himself, he's part of that; being paid by them, driving profit for them. Even if they smile and get along, there's a de facto conflict here, and the U.S. leadership at Ryder Cups and Presidents Cups has been masterful at diminishing conflict. There's very much a question of whether adding someone like Koepka is worth it, or if they even need him in this new era of success.

There's also a competitive imbalance worth mentioning. In Europe, the Ryder Cup is managed by the DP World Tour, and most European players in the course of the schism withdrew their memberships from that tour after sanctions were imposed on them, and in some cases paid a fine. The minute they resigned, their Ryder Cup eligibility was at an end. It was technically possible for them to retain membership, and with it eligibility—Thomas Pieters and Paul Casey have thus far done so—but practically it doesn't compare to the American situation; most LIV golfers with DP World Tour ties aren’t going to be eligible to play.

This ties into one of my frustrations, that so many of the LIVsters and their apologists (Alan Shipnuck, call your office) want to portray LIV as just another choice being made by individual players, the accretive nonsense.  Which is great, at least until you realize that the4 LIV business model will destroy the PGA Tour and that, as Shane notes, they're suing the Tour for the purpose of destroying their business model and existing sponsorships.  So, sure, we can all get along just great...

But is this correct?

In the U.S., the PGA of America runs the Ryder Cup, not the PGA Tour, and thus the PGA Tour is powerless to impose any kind of Ryder Cup ban. The American players on LIV start in the hole because they can't earn points in actual PGA Tour events (only majors), but they're still eligible for captain's picks and can still play their way into automatic qualifying through the majors. You can't do anything about automatic qualifying, but is it "fair" for Johnson to use his captain's picks on a LIV player when Luke Donald and Team Europe are prevented from doing so? Is it OK to exploit an imbalance that arises from the circumstance of which governing body oversees which team?

Powerless?  Isn't it PGA Tour players that fill out the U.S. team?  I'm not saying Jay will get his way, but I wouldn't characterize the Tour as powerless...

Could Zach get away with not taking a LIV player out of fairness to Luke Donald?  They'd scream bloody murder, though I'm not sure there's much they could do about it..... After all, they don't get paid that week, which would lead most to the logical conclusion that the LIVsters wouldn't be interested....

I haven't watched this, but you can write the script yourself:

Brandel Chamblee-Brad Faxon Ryder Cup debate got tense Sunday night

But this may have been the funniest bit:

'I didn't know that': U.S. Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson didn't know the CW broadcasted LIV Golf

 Don't feel bad, Zach, no one does.

I'll see you later in the week.

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