Tuesday Tastings - TGL Preview Edition

Mostly kidding in that header, though we do have an item....

Gonna start with this from Dylan Dethier's Monday Finish column, in which he does a side-by-side homage to those two dominants forces in the professional game, beginning with Nelly:

Late on Sunday night I got a call back from Nelly Korda‘s coach Jamie Mulligan. He was at the Houston airport, sipping on a celebratory beverage, dried off from his plunge into (the new)

Poppie’s Pond but still soaked in the secondhand satisfaction of a dream delivered. That’s what Korda’s Sunday win — her fifth in a row and the second major of her career — amounted to. A dream.

“It’s everything that I’ve always wanted as a little girl, to lift that major trophy,” Korda said Sunday evening.

Mulligan has worked with Korda for several years, which is why I’d messaged him asking a simple, impossible question: what’s the difference? Korda was an excellent golfer a couple years ago, but she wasn’t like this. What’s changed?

He paused.

“There isn’t really a difference,” he said. “More simplicity in her own bubble is all. But it’s the same thing. Cleaner, more efficient.”

He cited Korda’s shots coming home, protecting a dwindling lead. The short iron into the par-3 17th. The drive and second into the finishing par-5. The way they’d demanded different things and the way she’d delivered.

“Imagine a ship,” Mulligan continued. “She’s been throwing stuff off the ship. Anything she didn’t need. And right now the ship is cruising along pretty good.”

Ya think?  There is the little matter of being healthy, but that bubble was all Nelly would speak of all week.  Of course, being in Houston will make a person retreat into their bubble....

Dylan had this on that other player on a tear:

MULLIGAN’S LINE REMINDED ME of a different description from a different person about a different golfer. That was Max Homa on men’s No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who was on the doorstep of victory at the RBC Heritage before play was called for the day on Sunday night.

“Scottie is tremendously talented and a hard worker and sadly, a better person,” Homa said. “I wish I could hate him. But it’s not utterly shocking what he does. He just does it over and over and over again. That’s amazing. I feel like he almost makes it seem very realistic that we should do that. He just seems like he’s playing on the driving range every day.”

There’s more to be said of this current professional golfing moment, particularly the two golfers — Korda and Scheffler — in the midst of historic runs. There’s more to be said of the fact that Korda has won five in a row and Scheffler has won four of five and finished runner-up in that fifth. Of the way this very rarely happens on either the LPGA or PGA Tour and right now it’s happening on both. Of the way it’s happening against the backdrop of a pro game mired in toxic discourse, with our focus too often centered on money and ratings and that dreaded phrase the product and not often enough on excellence. Of the way they’re making their competitors look flawed and ordinary. That’s what excellence does. This weekend was excellence continued. That’s worth celebrating. That’s golf stuff we like.

Yeah, I also don't love the "product" stuff, though the bigger issue is that the guys insist on believing that they're the product.   Also that it somehow helps sell the product to be rich beyond measure and angry about it.  Just sayin'

Scottie is a welcome respite from that, though he's perceived as being too milquetoast to move the needle.  It's probably a fair rap, but I like him all the more for it, as if somehow Patrick Cantlay is the more engaging personality.  

The always-interesting Mike Bamberger takes his own shot at these two dominant players, though it's his offhand comments that caught my eye, beginning here:

When your swing is the envy of the free world — when it is rhythmic and repeatable, with tried-and-true sequencing — unflappability can be your ultimate superpower. (Check out the Tiger

highlights, circa 2000.) When you have all that, you can take you-do-you to the mountaintop. The actual competition part of it becomes less of an issue. Mickey Wright lived her golfing life that way. Wright’s wins were ultimately a tribute to her superior technique, her spectacular swing. That’s what we’re seeing in Nelly Korda. Her older sister, Jessica, now out of action with a back injury, has a similar approach.

This kind of mentality is not what you would instinctively expect from two golfers raised by two successful tennis players. Tennis is closer to boxing. In a match of equals, the over-the-net smackdown always lingers. Golf, at match play, often has that, and one of Korda’s five victories this year was at a match-play event. But it’s not baked into the DNA of all winners of all 72-hole stroke-play events. You could say that of Korda, and you could say that of Scheffler, too. A clear mind is a beautiful thing.

Mike, I'll have to take your word for that last bit.  That's where good parenting comes in, because I suspect the senior Kordas allowed their kids to try all sports and gravitate to that which suits them best.  And, going way out on a limb, I'll posit that Nelly has indeed found a game that suits her.

Mie continues:

In golf — because its playing fields are so varied, because any single swing has so many moving parts, because the amount of time it takes to play is so long — it’s hard to keep it all going. Dark thoughts and bad luck are often lurking.

And what if your bad luck is having so many dark thoughts?  Asking for a friend....

This is a misfire:

Also, every time Nelly Korda plays, she faces the best golfers in the world, from all over the world. (Elite, global men’s golf is simply more spread out, and always has been.) Korda sees the likes of Lydia Ko and Brooke Henderson and Rose Zhang and a dozen or more golfers with similar profiles 20 or so times a year. Scottie Scheffler, in his PGA Tour life, cannot say that. It’s not his fault that he can’t, but he can’t.

Are you done laughing?  Wow, how does one even take the club back with Brooke in the field?  And exactly what has Rose done to date?

The point is that there's a point to be made, but Mike doesn't see it.  The asterisk (how was your Masters week, Talor?) it deserves isn't because Jon Rahm isn't there, regrettable as that may be.  The issue is the 70 players that Scheffler didn't have to beat because they weren't invited to Hilton Head, just to keep Patrick from whining.

But then Mike has to morph into a social justice warrior:

Nelly Korda has made $2.4 million on the course so far this year. With his win at the RBC Heritage (that was worth $3.6 million), Scheffler has made more than $18 million this year.

Something is out of whack.

Great, Mike.  Now do the relative TV audiences.....  Maybe it's not so out of whack after all?

But what a crazy moment, with the two best players on the planet on impressive heaters.  When will it end?  Who knows?  Is anyone watching?  Not on a Monday morning, that's for sure.

Hilton Head Leftovers -  Patrick Cantlay, you might have noticed, isn't my cup of tea, but this seems quite bizarre, though admittedly he probably found himself in an awkward spot.  Alan Bastable sets the scene:

When the RBC Heritage was suspended due to darkness at 7:50 p.m. Sunday, the tournament’s winner already had been all but decided. With a three-shot lead with just three holes to play,

Scottie Scheffler was not going to kick away his fourth title in his last five starts, because, well, he’s Scottie Scheffler.

But further down the ’board, other business still needed to be settled.

From that group, Cantlay’s Sunday-evening decision-making at Harbour Town was particularly intriguing, because when the horn blew he had only half a hole left to play. To finish his round, or not to finish his round? For Cantlay, that was the question. Under the rules, if play is suspended for darkness after a player already has teed off on a hole, the player may elect to complete the hole or mark and finish out when play resumes. Players generally shudder at the thought of having to come back on Monday mornings, especially if they have only a few shots left to play, so if they’re on the 72nd hole under these circumstances, they’ll make every effort to hole out. Then again, when millions of dollars are on the line, rushing or fighting the darkness is not always the wisest tactic.

See the inherent tension?  We know how players feel about coming back Monday morning but we also know how Patrick feels about millions of dollars..... But, for the record, wasn't Scottie five up with three to play?  It kind of matters...

So, we're in the 18th fairway when the horn blows:

Cantlay had hit a good drive at the par-4 18th, but when play was suspended he still had 214 yards left into a stiff wind and light rain and over marshland — not the most comfortable shot even in the best of conditions. Decision time: mark and come back the next morning, or swing away. Cantlay talked over the options with his caddie, Joe LaCava, and made the call: they would forge on with a 3-wood into the gloaming.

“It got dark,” Cantlay would say later. “But yeah, I could see okay.”

Cantlay’s effort cleared the penalty area but came up just short and left of the green, from where at least one observer — and surely others, too — assumed Cantlay would have elected to finish up his round. But Cantlay didn’t. Instead, he marked. He would sleep on his up-and-down attempt.

“Can’t believe my eyes watching Patrick Cantlay,” tweeted Ian Woosnam, the 1991 Masters champion, “why on earth would you hit your second shot then mark your ball absolutely crazy, maybe says a lot.”

It seems to me that the threshold question would be, did he have any kind of chance to win?   That's why it matters whether the lead was three or five, because at lesser margin there's always that outside chance.

Here was Cantlay's take:

But on Monday Cantlay explained his decision, saying: “I really did want to finish last night, so I felt like if I could get the ball up there maybe in an easier spot, maybe I would have finished. But as I got the ball up near the green, I realized it would be easier to finish this morning. Just thought it might be easier to get the ball up-and-down this morning.”

I'll not object to any professional grinding to the finish line, but it just seems odd to play the second shot Sunday night into that cold, wet breeze.  Could it be that LaCava wanted to get home, but then found out why Patrick is called a Terrific Phallus when he refused to hole out?

What, you think Bones is the only caddie reconsidering his career decision?

In case you're wondering why the Tour didn't move up the Sunday tee times, Dylan has a brief explanation:

Monday Finishes

Unlike this column, Monday Finishes on Tour are best avoided. So why didn’t the PGA Tour move up tee times to dodge impending bad weather? How’d we get here? Some combination of preferred TV window and overly optimistic meterorology. Here was the explanation from Gary Young, the Tour’s SVP of Rules and Competitions:

“The golf course was really very dry. We felt that could handle it easily. It actually held up very well through the rain that we got, but it was really the thunder and lightning that put us down. We did not expect that. Our meteorologist Stewart Williams felt that the front would be to our south when we came in in the morning, so we would be on the cooler side of the front, and it would keep the probability of thunderstorms down quite a bit.

“Unfortunately when we arrived this morning, the front had stalled to our north, which kept us on the warmer side and allowed for the temperatures to warm up, and of course late in the day we saw the thunderstorms develop.”

They sure did.

There was a longer piece on this at Golfweek, but I'm just too damn lazy to find it.  The forecast they had available on Saturday, when they would have had to decide, called for a 30% chance of thunderstorms during the afternoon window.  The problem, of course, is that morning play and an afternoon rebroadcast is ratings euthanasia, a tough call given the run of dreary ratings.  

A skeptic might note that they're putting civilians in harm's way, at a time when golf fans are feeling abused already.  I'll also note that this is a further argument against the Tour's new format, under which we've already seen two money grabs undermined by weather.  Rory tells us we need to know when he's playing, but that also alerts the weather gods....

Chevron Leavings - Has anyone seen Chevron ratings?  Nelly has been transcendent, but why do I suspect that about a dozen people saw it?

Given that, I was remiss in not posting this craziest of good breaks:

Wait for it..

Jasmine Koo BOUNCES it out of the water 🤯 pic.twitter.com/JCkiAW9fOf

— LPGA (@LPGA) April 21, 2024

She doesn't exactly bounce it out of the water, but how lame is that Chevron float?  Not exactly putting money into their signage, are they?

Has Jim Nancy-Boy reached his sell-by date?

Let me be the first to congratulate Kelly Norda 🔈🆙 pic.twitter.com/SETh5onTiL

— robmillertime (@robmillertime) April 21, 2024

The good news is that he was, in fact, the first to congratulate Kelly.... 

Hasn't He Done Enough Damage? - You're either a cool kid or you're not, and they're not accepting new applications:

A week ago, Rory McIlroy was once again emphatically squashing rumors that he was leaving

the PGA Tour for LIV Golf, saying he would play on the American-based tour for the rest of his career. On Monday, it was reported that McIlroy is doubling down on that promise by once again returning to the PGA Tour’s Policy Board.

The Guardian reported the Ulsterman is expected to return to the board as a director for both the Policy Board and PGA Tour Enterprises as a replacement for Webb Simpson, whom, the Guardian said, offered his resignation with the request that McIlroy take his place. McIlroy is expected to be re-elected onto the board this week ahead of playing in the Zurich Classic.

This is beyond outrageous at this point, not least that Webb Simpson should be allowed to designate his successor, but also that he would designate for Rory, who has most recently argued that the money grabs should have even smaller fields.

Imagine you're a Tour Rabbit, and these are your player directors:

Tiger Woods

Patrick Cantlay

Rory McIlroy

Adam Scott

Peter Malnati

 Do you feel that your interests are going to be well represented?

Do you see why I've been calling it a coup?  Do you see how they take care of themselves?  Remember, those last two guys have been compromised by sponsors' exemptions.  

I think Rory and Yasir will get on famously.

Anticipation... - Wow, this is gonna be lit:

Tiger Woods is fired up for the start of TGL: 'It’s starting to feel real'

Hey, it's golf without walking, so no surprise that he's excited....

He's the man, so I expect his roster will be loaded, no?

Q: How did Jupiter Links GC come together?

A: “TGL league policy was to prioritize player schedules first so that all the guys could commit to and play their normal, desired PGA Tour schedule. Last thing we wanted was a player to not play in an event due to a TGL match.

“With that, I have three guys on my team that I enjoy being around, that I know are going to work hard and grind as team members, can talk a little trash and will have a great time. If I compete in something, I want to win. Jupiter Links now has one of the top all-around players in the world in Max Homa, one of the fastest-rising young stars in Tom Kim and I’ll put Kiz up against anyone in team play. So while I didn’t hand pick this team, I’m thrilled at where Jupiter Links Golf Club stands.”

Tom Km and Kiz?  Really?  Was Webb Simpson already taken?  

But don't ignore that first 'graph, in which I detect a certain defensiveness.  The untold story of the TGL is how challenging it is to get these guys together on Monday nights, and I suspect it will have an effect on playing schedules.  Which means that the Tour is competing with its own sponsors, and you know those with non-Signature events will be further impaired.  This is just SOP with the Tour, as the nice folks at Honda could testify.  Hey, they had only sponsored the event for 42 years, so they had it coming.

Tiger has perfected the art of the non-answer answer, so enjoy his tradecraft:

Q: What do you like about how each players’ game fits the TGL format?

A: “I think each player is going to bring a lot of game and personality to Jupiter Links. TGL’s format, which includes a shot clock, time outs, and both team and individual match play, is really going to highlight our players’ talents and bring a fresh, modern, and fast-paced twist to the game we all love so much.”

Which talents are those?  I mean those K-boys haven't shown much of anything recently, but never mind.

Homa almost single-handedly saved the last installment of the Match, but I'm unclear whether this be more or less dreadful than that franchise.  I imagine many of us will tune in for the first broadcast, but don't we think yet another ratings implosion is the most likely outcome beginning in week two?

That'll have to do you for today.  See you later in the week.