Weekend Wrap - Motown Edition

This will not be the wrappage I anticipated, because my weekend golf viewing was exclusively of the iconic Newport Country Club.  The good news is that we have more golf to watch today.

Motown Mayhem - As noted, I didn't see a lick of it, but apparently Akshay does a spot-on Rory impression:

Davis, the 2021 Rocket Mortgage Classic champion, shot 2-under 70 Sunday at Detroit Golf Club to get in the clubhouse at 18-under 270, and that was good enough for the title when Akshay Bhatia took three putts from 32 feet to make bogey at the last.

“I wouldn’t wish what happened to Akshay on anyone, but I’ve done a lot of grinding to get myself out of a hole,” he said. “It’s pretty good.”

Davis, 29, hadn’t recorded a single top-10 finish this season, and conceded he didn’t see a week like this coming to get him “out of the doldrums.” Since May, in his last six starts, Davis was a cumulative 32-over par, and had missed the cut at the PGA Championship and U.S. Open.

“I saw a little bit of a spark last week” said Davis, who finished T-48 at the Travelers Championship, his best result in his last six starts, “but nothing to show this coming, so this is crazy.”

Ironically, the Aussie is no better than the third most famous Cameron in golf, although his two wins are, checking notes, two better than one of those above him on that list (a buried segue for those keeping score at home).

I don't know, but perhaps we should be buying some hypnotherapy futures?

Question 5: Should we talk about hypnotherapists?

Cam Davis truly seemed to be at his wit's end, and more than a little down in the dumps, after a series of mediocre finishes on Tour and two missed cuts at the PGA Championship and the U.S. Open. Now here he is a couple weeks later winning on Tour, and the first person he credited was his hypnotherapist, named Grace. Not to pat ourselves on the back, but we were on this trend a decade ago, and Davis' experience is just another indication of the various ways golfers are honing their mental games in 2024.

"I honestly haven't been in a very good place mentally at all for the last six months or so," Davis said Sunday night. I felt like all the opportunities have been slipping out of my hands as the year progresses without playing very good golf. I had a great week at the Masters and it feels like since then it all had just left me. I felt like a change of direction was definitely needed, something that I was actually going to stick to because I'm definitely someone that will start doing something and if it doesn't feel like it's helping straight away, it's very easy to drop it. Sticking with the work that I'm doing with Grace has made a very big impact very quickly. I felt a lot better last week even though the score didn't show it, and to have it turn into this this week is hard to believe really because I was not in a good place two or three weeks ago."

You can bet the hypnotist trend is only going to continue after Davis' success...whoever Grace is, we expect her phone may be ringing more than usual in the next couple weeks.

My trainer wants me to keep a stash of his business cards in my golf bag so that every time I crush a drive I can hand a few out...  Maybe Cam should do the same for Grace?

Not much to be found about that Bhattia 3-jack, but the Tour Confidential panel had thoughts about the young man:

1. Cam Davis won the Rocket Mortgage Classic for his second PGA Tour win of his career after Akshay Bhatia three-putted the 72nd hole for bogey. The bogey robbed Bhatia of a playoff and a chance to win for the third time of his career, which only five players have done on the PGA Tour before turning 23 in the last 40 years (Tiger Woods, Sergio Garcia, Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth and Tom Kim). Bhatia doesn’t turn 23 until Jan. 31, 2025. Do you think he joins this list? And, despite the loss, is he the game’s youngest rising talent?

Nick Dimengo: Crushing ending for Bhatia, who’s one of the brightest stars in the game — at a point when the sport really needs one. However, it’s tough to envision him joining that list quite yet. He’s been

on fire lately, so maybe he’ll prove me wrong and perform like this moving forward, but it’s going to take a major to really get my attention. As for young guns, I still have Aberg and even Cameron Young ahead of him in terms of “next up.”

Josh Sens: My only concern about Bhatia is that, at 6-foot-1, 130 pounds, he might be condemned by building inspectors who deem him structurally unsound and in danger of collapsing in high winds. He could win another by January 1, with chances all the better if pegs it a few more times against lower-wattage fields. He’s an impressive talent. But Aberg is still the alpha among the barely legal crowd.

Dylan Dethier: Oh boy. He could definitely win by January — he’s been knocking on the door! — but if Davis’ Sunday win was a reminder of anything it’s that winning is hard and it doesn’t necessarily happen very often. Always take the under.

That's quite the list, but they're also including some awfully cheap wins for Akshay and Tom Kim, though at his age he still has time to go after the big game.

Akshay did have a post-round quote that succinct and to the point:

Akshay Bhatia: "It sucks, no other way to put it. I mean, just sucks."

There's no shortage of suckage in golf....

But did someone mention Cam Young?

2. Meanwhile, Cameron Young started the day one off the lead but shot 73 — his worst score of the week by six strokes — and tied for 6th. He’s still yet to win on the PGA Tour, and the 27-year-old pro’s seven runner-up finishes since joining the Tour in the 2021-22 season are the most of any player without a win in that span. What’s holding him back?

Dimengo: Young is easily my favorite young talent (see previous), but he’s really missing the “it” factor. Cliche, I know. His short game is the most glaring weakness in his game, but I also think it’s between the ears for him. He’s got to feel that taste of victory before he releases the pressure in his mind — then look out. Remember, it took Phil seven years on Tour to win his first major — and he’s now got six on his resume.

Sens: The short game for sure. The stats back that up. He’s 127th in strokes gained: putting and 118th in strokes gained: around-the-green. That doesn’t get it done very often on Tour, no matter how many lasers you hit from tee to green.

Dethier: This Sunday felt different than other Young close calls. Steam was coming out of his ears. The guy was right in the mix and broke his driver shaft on the 14th tee! Had Young made a four-footer on 16, two-putted on 17 and parred 18 he would have tied Davis at 18 under par. Instead, he finished three shots back. I hope for his sake this ends soon — the pressure looks like it’s understandably worn him down.

Josh has the right answer, at least statistically:

If a player with the above statistical profile were to go medieval on one of his fourteen clubs, wouldn't you think there was a more obvious choice:

 I get the anger, but he was seemingly still in it at that point:

That meant a missing weapon as the leaders came down the stretch at the Rocket Mortgage. While Young managed a par on 14, he likely would have preferred his driver on the last three holes at Detroit Golf Club which are two long par-4s sandwiching a reachable, but into the wind par-5 at 17.

He wound up finished bogey-par-bogey, though the driver was hardly to blame — he missed a four-footer at 16 and three-putted 17 to finish T6, three shots behind Cameron Davis’ winning score.

Young is still seeking his first PGA Tour win after seven runner-up finishes to start his career. That’s the most such finishes without a win on the Tour since 1983.

The funny thing is that I remember Rory using the same subtle move to snap a shaft, though it was long iron for Rors.  But, Cam, being compared to Rory in terms of decision-making down the stretch isn't a compliment, although that gaggle of missed short putts has the feel of deja vu.

Lastly, are you curious as to how America's newest hero fared?  Which hero?  Well, this guy of course:

'Do you know that you’re famous?': Inside a wild 48 hours for the beer-drinking, Golf Galaxy-working Rocket Mortgage Monday qualifier

No issues with him making his Monday morning shift at Golf Galaxy, as he shot 75-75 to miss the cut by nine strokes.  Reality is a bitch!

Newport News - Links season begins July 11th, though we've gotten a wee tease this week with the Senior U.S. Open.  Newport isn't a links, of course, but it can have a linksy feel to it, although it's quite the shame that the USGA landed there in a year where it's so lush.  If you go back to the footage of Tiger's U.S. Amateur there in 1995, you'll see it's delightfully brown and balls kicked p dust as they landed.  

Unfortunately, the broadcast included recurring graphics of an approaching storm, one with vibrant reds, oranges and yellows that spelled trouble:

Goody, more golf to watch later today, assuming I can get Optimum to tape the golf for me (they're a little slow to update the program guide).

Newport is old school to say the least, including an eccentric routing that includes back-to-back Par-3's, not a regular feature of U.S. Opens.  I can't imagine this record ever being broken:

But the odds of what Bensel just did at Newport Country Club Friday morning are a heck of a lot longer than that.

After opening his first U.S. Senior Open with a 75 Thursday, Bensel, a former pro at Winged Foot who now splits time between Purchase, New York’s Century Country Club and the Country Club of Mirasol in West Palm Beach, Florida, started his second round with two pars and a bogey before coming to the first of Newport Country Club’s back-to-back par-3s at the 4th and the 5th.

Bensel played both holes in just two strokes.

That’s right. He made back-to-back aces.

Big deal, it probably happens all the time:

The National Hole-In-One Registry lists odds of making two holes-in-one during the same round at 67 million to one. This has been done three times on the PGA Tour, most recently by Brian Harman in 2015. But making aces on back-to-back holes? While it’s probably happened in recreational golf, happening in a professional tournament is another story, let alone a major championship.

On the golf course yesterday we were musing on the prevalence of back-to-back one-shotters.  One of the guys came up with Quaker Ridge, and your geekish humble blogger was able to add Cypress Point and Pacific Dunes.  Both of those two are crazy routings as Cypress has both b-to-b Par-3's and Par-5's, whereas Pacific Dunes features a back nine with only two Par-4's (you can do the required math).

The funniest bit?  It's truly an Open, and they're serious about that qualification process, at least up to a point.  We all know the qualifiers aren't going to contend, and a spot in the field doesn't mean you're going to love your tee times.  Why do I mention this?  Because, while history was made, it happened too early for Golf Channel/NBC to have their cameras up and running:

The only video of the aces came from the USGA Twitter account, which posted the video of Bensel plucking his ball out of the hole on the wind-swept 5th green at Newport Country Club. Winds were in the 6-12 mph range with gusts up to 18 mph Friday morning, making Bensel’s feat all the more impressive.

One other very odd note.  They showed something that included the ball that Bensel used to make the back-to-back aces, but am I the only one that finds that curious?  That means he made a hole-in-one in the U.S. Senior Open, and kept the ball in play?  Would you?

If you watched the any of the broadcast, you'd have heard of the events of 1895, in which the first U.S. Amateur and U.S. Open were played on successive days, with the Father of American Golf Architecture (I for one think we could elide the word "Architecture"), Charles Blair Macdonald, winning the first Amateur.  That's true enough, though the truth is a tad murkier, as Wikipedia informs:

In 1894, the Newport Country Club and Saint Andrew's Golf Club both held "national championship" tournaments. Macdonald finished second in both, and on both occasions he angrily denounced the manner in which each competition was held, with the result that both tournaments were declared unofficial.[2] That fall, delegates from the Chicago Golf Club (including Macdonald), Saint Andrew's, The Country Club, Newport Country Club, and Shinnecock Hills Golf Club met in New York City to resolve the problem. The result was the formation of the United States Golf Association (USGA), which would administer the official championship. Macdonald was named Vice President of the organization. The first U.S. Amateur was held in 1895 at the Newport Country Club, and this time Macdonald won, beating Charles Sands 12 & 11 in the final (which is still the record winning margin).

It's an amusing moment, at least to this observer.  The USGA's official sanitized history is one thing:

The U.S. Amateur Championship was born in 1895 because of a controversy. In 1894, two clubs - Newport (R.I.) Golf Club and New York's St. Andrew's Golf Club - had conducted invitational tournaments to attract the nation's top amateur players.

Newport's stroke play tournament was won by club member W.G. Lawrence, who triumphed over a field of 20 competitors. The match-play competition at St. Andrews attracted 27 golfers and was won by Laurence Stoddart, of the host club.

Both clubs proclaimed their winners as the national champion. Clearly, golf needed a national governing body to conduct national championships, develop a single set of rules for all golfers to follow, and to promote the best interests of the game. With that, representatives from five clubs founded the USGA on Dec. 22, 1894.

I haven't made it terribly far into my Macdonald biography, but I have made it through 1895.  The first of these "unofficial" events was held at Newport, and Macdonald squandered a first-round lead when he lost his game and failed to break 100.  He incurred a two-stroke penalty for moving his ball away from a stone fence, causing him to lose by one stroke.  At least he lost by a stroke until he threw a hissy fit...

A second event held at St. Andrews was even more embarrassing.  After losing the match-play final (and, amusingly, his opponent was penalized for moving his ball off a wall, which we thought Charlie was against), he contested the result on jurisdictional grounds, to wit, that this one club was not authorized to declare a national champion. 

Macdonald was a great man that did much to promote golf in the U.. in its infancy.  That doesn't mean that he was a nice man or a gracious man....But that does conclude our history lesson.

Confidentially Yours - Just gonna riff on the remaining Tour Confidential Q&A's, then allow us all to get on with our week:

3. PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh announced he’s leaving his post after six years on the job. Much has happened with his organization during his tenure, but what do you think was his most important contribution?

Dimengo: Maybe I’m just a big softy since I’m a new dad, but much respect to Waugh for his belief

and promise as CEO to expand the PGA REACH Foundation, which helps grow the game for younger and diverse players, as well as for those without much access to golf. It’s such an important initiative to introduce a wider audience to the sport, and Waugh led the charge by securing hundreds of millions of dollars to support it.

Sens: Under Waugh’s watch, what springs to mind for me is PGA of America’s move from Florida to impressive new headquarters in Texas, and a long-term TV deal with CBS and ESPN—something that looks better and better all the time, given all the tumult in the game. Maybe both would have happened with another CEO in place, but Waugh’s business acumen couldn’t have hurt.

Dethier: I’m not sure how to assign credit here, so this is probably more correlation than causation — but the PGA Championships have been quite good in recent years. Valhalla wasn’t the test that fans want from major championships but it produced Sunday drama with a high-wattage leaderboard and Oak Hill, Southern Hills and Kiawah did the same in years before. The tournament has established a slightly stronger identity, they’ve stuck to a setup philosophy that keeps players happy and fans have flocked to its photo finishes. Here’s hoping his successor has the same success.

The jury is still out on Frisco, and I find the PGA of America mostly irrelevant these days.  They have little business owning those tow major properties, and little interest in their 31,000 members.

But I have no idea what Nich Dimengo is talking about.  Seth loves to talk about participation numbers, I'm just unclear as to whether he deserves any actual credit.

But shall we talk TIOs?

4. This week’s Italian Open on the DP World Tour — won by Marcel Siem — included a curious placement of hospitality suites just steps behind the 18th green at Adriatic Golf Club. In some cases, a shot into the suites resulted in a free drop nearly onto the green. We’ve seen setups like this influence play before, although rarely have they been this close to the action. What’s your take? Harmless? Despicable? A tournament oversight? A fun fan experience? Something else?

Dimengo: Hey, course management is a thing, right? In this case, maybe the least popular opinion was actually the best golf decision! So, in that vein, I look at it as a fun fan experience. Sure, people are

going to get pissed about it, but they’re probably the ones yelling at young kids for chipping onto their lawn. Let’s bring this to the Open Championship in a couple of weeks (partly joking).

Sens: Terrible. Bad shots should be punished. Obviously, tournaments need infrastructure, so you can’t entirely eliminate the occasional fortunate bounce or drop off the grandstand. But they essentially gave the players a risk-free backstop. It was bad.

Dethier: I like Sens leaning directly into Dimengo’s bait there. Stop chipping onto his lawn! But yeah, it’s bad. There should be punishment around exciting greens. Find a way. In the meantime it’s sort of tough to blame the players for doing what they can to shoot the lowest possible score — this is on the setup team.

The term of art is "Grandstanding", and these guys are good.

Just a minor LIV taste:

5. LIV Golf’s first streaming partner, Caffeine TV, shuttered midway through its first season of their partnership, meaning LIV Golf is without a paid streaming rights partner in the U.S. with six events still remaining in its 2024 schedule. While there are still ways to watch LIV Golf, what does this mean for the league? And how much will it hurt LIV’s quest to reach viewers and expand its footprint?

Dimengo: Golf viewership is down across the board, so this isn’t that shocking, but it is a major blow to the league. In the end, what makes LIV, LIV, are the events. It’s not quite on par with the environment fictionalized in Happy Gilmore, but tournaments are much more relaxed and accessible than many PGA Tour events.

The product is still a new one for golf fans (with the whole team concept and 54-hole idea), so until more people understand it and can experience it for themselves, the league will continue to struggle — which is the biggest impact that losing a streaming partner has.

Sens: I don’t think the question is so much what this means for LIV but what it tells us about the product. LIV can easily afford to strike another streaming deal, but that doesn’t mean people will want to watch it. That’s been LIV’s problem from the start, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Dethier: I don’t think it meant much for LIV when the Caffeine TV deal was announced and I don’t think the streamer’s death means much, either. The streaming numbers they trumpeted around Caffeine were weird and nonsensical and ultimately pretty meaningless. What’s the big picture? Tough to say. LIV’s cable numbers are not good. I would love to hear the app numbers — I get the sense that’s where the league’s diehard fans watch — but I don’t think the release of those numbers is imminent, either.

LIV has shown progress and has rightfully claimed victories for certain successful events, like its well-attended Nashville tournament last week. But from a business perspective, LIV is spending money like crazy, making money at a much lower rate and would still benefit from some sort of alliance with the rest of pro golf.

Given that I had never heard of Caffeine TV, I'm gonna suggest that its demise is the least of LIV's worries.  And we know that those CW ratings have failed to find a discernable audience so, per Ian Faith, their appeal is becoming increasingly selective.

6. Speaking of LIV Golf and its reach, there was a report last week that said there’s early but mutual interest between LIV and Chambers Bay to potentially host a future LIV event. While pros had mixed reviews about Chambers when it hosted the 2015 U.S. Open, it shined on TV and is now a popular public track. Could LIV generate more interest by aligning itself with unique, well-known courses we don’t see on the PGA Tour like Chambers? Or do you think golf fans have already made up their mind if they are interested in LIV and few things (including the aforementioned streaming deal) can change it?

Dimengo: I live in Seattle, so anytime we can get a big-time golf event that features globally recognized players at Chambers, bring it on! LIV would be wise to align with unique courses in golf-crazed areas (which is sort of their strategy already), so expanding that even more could help the brand overall. The league is made up of superstars, and, as long as that doesn’t change (and it becomes a B-level league), I think it has potential to grow.

Sens: Great venues never hurt. But LIV already has plenty of differentiators that set it apart from what we get week in, week out on the PGA Tour. The league will need more than a handful of cool courses to draw the kind of fan interest its organizers are after.

Dethier: Like Dimengo, I live in Seattle and love Chambers Bay. I love it! The Pacific Northwest is underserved as a golfing host and the failure to bring a PGA Tour event here at least semi-regularly feels like an institutional failure. Speaking specifically there are some spectator challenges that come with watching golf at Chambers, so it’ll be interesting to see how they tackle those and how they’d put one of the world’s most aesthetic tournament golf courses on display. Speaking generally I think venues do matter some — I’d rather watch the LIV guys tackle Chambers than Bolingbrook outside of Chicago, for instance — so I’d expect a slight boost. But it won’t solve all the league’s challenges right away.

I watched the Senior Open this week because of the venue, so it matters a lot (not that it solves all the other LIV issues).  But maybe a distinction is in order, there are great venues and there are dramatic venues, and Chambers is most certainly the latter.  Need to see more to decide it's worth architecturally, but I don't hold the weather anomaly of 2015 against the course (not that U.S. Opens should be played on links).

It would be an upgrade for LIV, but won't change any of the facts on the ground.

Have a great week and we'll catch up soon.