The holiday schedule caused a one-off Wednesday closure at Fairview, sending The Wednesday Game™ into hibernation, perhaps a good thing only because of the sultry weather. It does ensure that the boys will not see me for a full month, leading to an assumption that a permanent replacement will be found before my return.
Of course, it did free up the day for the first dip in our pool for grand-niece Harper Rose.... I don't mind giving up a few hosel-rockets to share that....
But travel prep is paramount, so we'll keep this short and sweet.
Pebble Preview - The ladies get their day in the sun marine layer, and they are positively giddy over it. We'll lede with this changing of the guard item:
The first two slots on the U.S. Women’s Open press conference docket on Tuesday were two of the biggest names in the field: Michelle Wie West and Rose Zhang.Wie West’s name has long been one of the weightiest in the game. Ever since her early teens, she’s been in the spotlight. She won a USGA championship, played multiple PGA Tour events and became the first woman to qualify for a USGA men’s championship — all before she could legally drive. By the time she turned 16, she was ready to turn pro.In a game desperate for a new star in the women’s game, Wie West was the chosen one.Nearly two decades later, Zhang’s name is held in a similar regard. She dominated in junior golf, winning the U.S. Women’s Amateur and U.S. Girls Junior (in that order, incredibly), and then continued her success at the collegiate ranks. She won 12 times at Stanford — including back-to-back NCAA individual titles — and added a victory at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. She turned pro at a slightly older age than Wie West, waiting until she turned 20, and then promptly won in her first start.In a game once again searching for a transcendent star, Zhang seems destined to fill that role.This week at Pebble Beach, the two stars’ paths meet. For Wie West, it’s the end of the road. For Zhang, it’s the beginning.
It's an obvious framing device, given the overlapping Stanford and phenom circles on that Venn Diagram. But it's fascinating how divergent their golf games are, Wie overpowering golf courses but struggling to get the little white ball into the hole, whereas the concern with Rose being that she's awfully short for an elite woman player.
But, irony alert, Wie is a cautionary tale for Rose. They'll celebrate her U.S. Open win at Pinehurst this week, but her career was quite the disappointment except for that one week. Rose's game projects her as a far more consistent talent, but there's very little from Micelle's career that Rose would choose to mimic. I would not expect it to take very long for Rose to blow by Michelle's win and major totals.... Like, I'm surprised she hasn't done so already, notwithstanding having only played in two LPGA events.
Geoff has some course notes:
In recent years Pebble Beach’s standing has slipped in various course rankings and witharchitecture nuts after odd tweaks, softening of greens in less than exciting fashion, and a design evolution that’s drifted farther from the pre-1929 U.S. Amateur redesign by Chandler Egan and friends. That effort put Pebble Beach on the map after years of maintenance issues and an overall sense it was not much beyond the brilliant Jack Neville and Douglas Grant routing. Yet even with the details often just missing the mark, the “links” remains a thrill ride along the Pacific with many of golf’s greatest holes.Even better, the women will allow us to see a more relatable Pebble Beach in terms of par, yardage and overall scale. They will be playing the par 5 second hole as a, wait for it, par 5. They won’t walk a full wedge shot back to a ninth tee, while the clever 11th may actually see more than a flip wedge approach shot. Things like 13th and 15th fairway bunkers should matter. And the 18th should regain some of its luster as a grand finisher instead of a quest to find the greenside bunker in two.
This was new to me:
On the business side, it’s unclear what fan and hospitality will look like after the lavish spends at L.A.’s U.S. Open and the high cost of tourist travel to greater Monterey in July. As is custom, the purse will be announced on July 5th. Last year the USGA gave out $10 million as part of a partnership with ProMedica, but the medical device company backed out of its deal on a Friday in late March while all eyes were on the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. The company cited “extreme financial challenges” and the USGA suggested the loss of sponsorship would not impact the championship.“This change of direction will not curtail the USGA’s commitment to the U.S. Women’s Open, which remains stronger than ever,” the organization said in a statement. “We will continue to elevate the entire championship experience, including the purse, television coverage and host venues. While we are open to identifying a new presenting partner that can push women’s golf even further, we won’t stop our plans in the meantime.”No matter the purse, it’s Pebble Beach. It should be grand.
I'm sure the Saudis would kick in...
- Pebble Beach will play to a par of 36-36–72.
- The 78th U.S. Women’s Open is the 14th USGA championship to be conducted at the resort.
- Pebble Beach will also host the 2035, 2040 and 2048 U.S. Women’s Opens, as well as the 2027, 2032, 2037 and 2044 U.S. Opens.
- A record 2,107 entries were accepted.
- Qualifying was conducted at 23 U.S. sites and three international sites.
- A field of 156 golfers will be cut after 36 holes to the low 60 scorers and ties.
- Minjee Lee of Australia is the defending champion after setting a new 72-hole scoring record at Pine Needles with a 13-under total of 271. Lee became the seventh player to win both the U.S. Women's Open and U.S. Girls’ Junior titles.
Not too hard to look at either....
From this week's Tour Confidential gang:
6. The U.S. Women’s Open begins Thursday at iconic Pebble Beach Golf Links. What’s the storyline golf fans need to know about?Hirsh: This tournament is huge for the equality of the game and for more reasons than you might think. Yes, playing a U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble is a move that culminates a really nice movement of getting more women’s events at these legendary courses (see: Baltusrol, Muirfield, Congressional, Olympic, etc.). It also will be the first women’s event EVER to have Shotlink. That’s crazy that the women’s game has never had access to that level of data (or really any level of data) and it’s about time.Dethier: There aren’t many golf courses that non-golfers are familiar with, but Pebble Beach is one of ‘em. You’ve played it on your Xbox! You’ve seen it in your Tiger Woods highlights! You’ve googled how much it’d cost you to play there yourself! The LPGA has been chasing venues that make its events feel big. Pebble Beach as venue does that.Melton: That many of the players in the field have never even played Pebble before this week. The men visit the course each year, but for the ladies, this is a brand new experience. It’s easy to get caught up in the grandeur of the property, and early in the week, the same will be true for the pros. It’ll be pretty cool to see them compete there for the very first time.
It is, but also surprising how little heat the USGA takes for it not happening up until now.
But reality bites, and I suspect that this aspect will disappoint:
The other “victory” in this long-awaited meeting of the best women with land, sea and history: first-ever prime time coverage on NBC. For all the intrigue in what happens when Pebble is presented at a more scalable 6,509 yards, the real breakthrough this week may be the visibility the women’s game gets in America. It’s a far cry from 2021 when the women played Olympic Club and NBC had them teeing off early to accommodate Olympic trial coverage that forced a mid-playoff switch from the network to cable.
We'll see, but I'm inclined to bet the under where ratings are concerned.
Should be a great week for the ladies. To the extent that I watch any golf this weekend, it will be this event.
LIV Musings - A few odd notes as relates to the issue of the millennium, beginning with a Tiger sighting.... well, a Tweet at the very least. Over the years, Tiger has taken a bit of incoming over his reluctance to take positions on the issues of the day, criticism that has seemed a bit unfair at times. That said though, given his involvement in the anti-LIV movement and his participation at the Delaware meeting, his disappearance from the public stage at this very moment is hardly a profile in courage.
But that he felt compelled to rebut this is equally curious, no?
In response to the talking points memo released this weekend, I have never seen this document until today, and I did not attend the players meeting for which it was prepared at the 2022 Travelers.
— Tiger Woods (@TigerWoods) July 2, 2023
It would be foolish to read too far into this but it would be even more foolish not to read a little bit into it. The memo Woods is referring to is a list of talking points for a hypothetical Woods appearance at last year’s Travelers Championship. In those notes, Woods’ lines included praise for commissioner Jay Monahan and encouragement for Tour pros to stand up against LIV and to “tell the Saudis to go f— themselves.” They also included Woods invoking the hypothetical future career of his son, Charlie.Woods claims he never saw these notes and he didn’t attend that meeting, at least not in person. It’s not clear whether they were ever presented to him in any form, whether this was an early draft later abandoned, whether these had anything in common with the message he delivered at the later Delaware meeting or what. It’s also not clear which part of the document Woods is objecting to in his tweet. Was it the invocation of his son’s name and future? The hard stand against the Saudis that hasn’t aged well now that the two have shared business interests? Or perhaps just the idea that the Tour would put words in his mouth at all? For now, all we know is that Woods is objecting to its contents in some way. As the Tour tries to get him on board with its vision for the future, this makes for some awkward timing.
Kinda weird, no? I get the instinct to push back against the concept that he's just a drone reading talking points presented to him, but in the month since that June 6th bombshell he's revealed himself to have no original thoughts at all. The guys all tells us he's the one they look to, and he's got nothing for them.
It also kind of shames the golfing press, who didn't even know these docuemnts had been released:
Over the weekend the golf conversation in the internet’s defective public square, Twitter, took a turn when user desertdufferLLG began posting screenshots from a series of legal documents. Some of the more intriguing bits involved the PGA Tour’s discussions around (and blueprint for the acquisition of) the DP World Tour, Saudi involvement in professional golf and talking points drafted by the Tour for key figures in its operations, including Tiger Woods.In other words, the story had a little bit of everything.There was also the story behind the story, which is an enthusiastic golf-fan-slash-lawyer beating establishment media to the documents. As it turned out, the documents weren’t leaked; they were released last week as a part of a 357-page document dump from lawyer Larry Klayman‘s lawsuit against the PGA Tour. Desertduffer was eager to point to the fact that he had noticed them first as a collective failure of the establishment. I guess having a byline on this website makes me a part of the “establishment,” and I’ll readily admit there’s plenty of stuff we get beaten to, especially now that our top doc-diver Sean Zak has set sail to England for a fortnight or two. But if media-bashing is your thing desertduffer expanded on those thoughts in a victory-lap manifesto here in what is a mix of cutting analysis and gleeful disparagements — although I think he overrates the quality of the media center lunch buffet.What’s the point? The point is, as golf coverage has ventured further into defection rumors, lawsuits and geopolitics, news has come from — or been first reported by — less traditional sources with greater frequency. This began with LIV-related rumors (people had varying levels of insight into the question of “is X Player going to LIV?!”) and has continued. Lawyers seem disproportionately represented among the ranks of hardcore golf fans, which means there are people who spend significant time thinking (and tweeting) about golf who are better equipped to handle a court document search than traditional golf media types. That’s not to say you should be eschewing establishment media for a sea of anonymous blue-check Twitter accounts, which range from excellent and insightful to trollish and terrible. But it does mean that the desert duffer was the one to draw Tiger Woods‘ first public comments in months.Strange times!
Somehow, in Dylan Dethier's mind, expecting the media to actually do their job has morphed into "media bashing".... If they didn't have low standards, they'd have no standards at all.
Then comes the curious case of Adam Scott..... he's long been a candidate for luckiest man on the planet, those movie start good looks combined with just enough, but not too much, golfing talent. I remembered this curious piece from the aftermath of that D-Day bombshell:
Adam Scott explains his 'emotional' response to PGA Tour-Saudi deal
Adam Scott emotional? Clearly a man-bites-dog story....
But to the folks at Golf Digest this passes for strong emotion:
“I think as far as the deal goes, I'm happy to wait and see how the deal points are worked out andsee whether that really suits as a whole,” Scott explained. “Of course I have some emotional—I'm caught up emotionally because I stayed on the PGA Tour and this looks, it was put to us that if we left we were never coming back, and it seems there is going to be pathways back. You know, eventually we'll find out if that's the best for the game and how we feel. So I have some emotions about that, but kind of time often plays a big part in these things so see how it advances.”Scott clarified he never felt “angry” about the proposed deal, although did say last week’s U.S. Open felt like a respite of sorts from the drama.“Even though we were all there and the same players are there, it wasn't a PGA Tour event. It was run by the USGA and felt like a break,” Scott said. “We're straight back into it with player meetings here this week. I think that's like what I said before, just when you're very surprised, some emotions are stirred up, and I think you can't help but feel—you can't help but feel left in the dark even though I don't expect to run the PGA Tour and them to run everything by me. It was just sooner than maybe anybody thought. That's all.”
That's some Rage Against The Machine, no? The loose translation is, "I'll suspend judgement until I see how may millions are coming my way."
So perhaps that's just a disconnect between the headline and article writers, though the news value is limited to the fact that Scott was one of the guys that turned down those thirty pieces of silver....
But he's got a new post up at Instagram in which we wades further into the maelstrom:
Here's Dylan Dethier's take:
I can’t remember seeing a social media post quite like the one Adam Scott made on Instagram this week, which included a thumbnail image of a Golfweek article paired with white text over a black screen, accompanied by the caption “Serious times require serious perspective.”Strange Photoshop job aside, the post was notable because its contents consisted of Scott sticking up for Patrick Cantlay, who’d been accused of staging an “artless coup” by columnist Eamon Lynch. (Cantlay, who barely uses social media, was unlikely to challenge the article on his own.) It was also notable because it was reposted by Rickie Fowler and shared by other high-profile Tour members including Justin Thomas and Max Homa.It’s no secret that Cantlay — who is in his first year on the PGA Tour’s Policy Board — likes hunting for truths and answers. And Scott, who’s serving as chairman of the Player Advisory Council, seems to support whatever he’s currently pursuing. His reference to the “about-face” by Tour management suggests that, for the second consecutive year, top Tour pros are banding together. It’s just that this time the players seem understandably more skeptical of the Tour’s leadership.Mostly I wanted to highlight this moment because it feels important but will probably make more sense in hindsight, once we see how everything has played out.
Wow, we are in full rationalization mode, not to mention full entitled a*****e mode.
First, circle back to that lead item, in which he calmly awaits the detailed arrangement. What Adam has confirmed is that the source of the money was always a red herring. After the bombshell from Jay the players were either going to rebel or roll over and play dead, this being an example of the latter. Opposition, if it was to take root, had to be immediate, so awaiting the details is nothing short of capitulation.
But good to know that Adam is against incendiary language, although I don't remember any principled opposition to Phil's "Obnoxious greed" comments or their treatment of the Tour and its sponsors.
But Patrick Cantlay as a truth seeker? Oh, he's seeking something, but that comes with a dollar sign and lots of commas....
Adam's Tour had maintained a position that Saudi money was tainted, and they just turned on a dime and Adam can't even be bothered to get angry about being lied to. So, Adam wants proof.... did he demand proof from Phil? Or Sergio? Don't be silly....
But isn't it a coup that Patrick is exploring? perhaps that's not the perfect word, but Eamon Lynch is an opination journalist and I'll not that Adam demand proof, with imposing a similar burden upon himself. I mean, what is it that Patrick is doing? The Tour has cut a deal with the enemy, and Patrick is pushing players to reject that deal, but on a cynical basis utterly at odds wit the rhetoric of the last 18 months.
This is equal parts ironic and disgusting. Shall we look at the evolution of Jay's positions:
- Blood money, "Have you ever been embarrassed to be a PGA Tour member?"
- Legacy vs. leverage
- Those Saudis sure are a nice group of guys.....
- George Orwell;
- Otter from Animal House, and;
- Vladimir Lenin
“You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.' - To Neville Chamberlain”― Winston Churchill
Patrick Cantlay, on the other hand, is demanding both legacy and leverage, and will likely end up with neither. That guy that dubbed him a "terrific penis" was quite prescient, no?
One last bit about Talor Gooch, whose thrid win on LIV this year has generated a Ryder Cup boomlet, that triggered this Alan Shipnuck tweet:
I think Gooch deserves strong Ryder Cup consideration but, unlike Koepka and DJ, he sued the PGA Tour and has been a shit-stirring troll, so that hurts his chances of getting a captain’s pick lol. https://t.co/UaFGpLA0fw
— Alan Shipnuck (@AlanShipnuck) July 2, 2023
I completely agree on the shit-stirring, but differ strongly on the merit argument. beating Harold Varner and Bubba Watson doesn't tell us anything useful. His T34 at the Masters, MC at Oak Hill seem more on point, though I actually think he should excluded for other reasons:
When it comes to the LIV Golf Invitational Series, Talor Gooch can’t stop putting his foot in his mouth.
After shooting a 2-under 70 in the final round of this week’s event near Portland at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club, Gooch was asked if he felt the energy of the fans – who were stuck in traffic for hours trying to get to the parking lot from the highway – and the 30-year-old gave an answer that sent golf Twitter into a frenzy.“I haven’t played a Ryder Cup or a Presidents Cup, but can’t imagine there’s a whole hell of a lot of a difference,” said Gooch. “This was as cool as it gets. We’ve been saying about it all week. The energy is different. It’s awesome.”
Simply put, anyone that stupid should be permanently ineligible for the competition, although obviously those rules have been previously waived for Hal Sutton and Lanny Wadkins.
That's likely it for this week, as travel prep will take precedence. Unless, yanno, someone else says something incredibly stupid, though that only happens once an hour or so. If not, I'll see you from the Scottish Highlands.
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