Wednesday, May 7, 2025

Midweek Musings - Bonus Edition

I try to give a roadmap to my blogging so you'll know when to check the site, but things change.  In this case, we've moved the Wednesday Game™ to the afternoon, freeing up my morning.  Win-win, baby!

Monday Finish - That's Dylan Dethier's weekly feature, from which I shall pluck the gems of interest to me, necessarily entailing some jumping from topic to topic.  We'll begin where Dylan begins, and I'll beg forgiveness for the long excerpt:

Remember after the Masters, when Bryson DeChambeau said that Rory McIlroy, his playing partner in Sunday’s final tee time, hadn’t talked to him at all? I thought the “controversy” from
that interview clip was silly; fair play by McIlroy, who was locking in, and also good on DeChambeau for just answering the question honestly after a long, frustrating day. Still, it was a revealing answer, and a reminder of the ways in which these two titans of the modern game are distinctly different, in both approach and personality. DeChambeau is the YouTube entertainer chasing engagement, while McIlroy is the old-school competitor chasing history. (That’s a wild oversimplification, of course.)

But where did McIlroy learn to stay in his own zone — and has he always been this way? Let’s rewind.

A bunch of people on [gestures broadly] the internet wisely pointed out that this is hardly the first time one pro has stonewalled the other in the final round of a big-time event. One recent and particularly high-profile case: Tiger Woods in the 2019 Masters, en route to one of the most incredible major wins in golf history. Tony Finau has now told the story a couple times, including here on Subpar, about their first and last exchange of that round, which came as they walked off the tee together at No. 7:

Finau: “Hey Tiger, how are the kids?

Woods: “They’re doing fine.”

And that was it. Finau got the message.

“The next time we spoke was when I congratulated him on winning the green jacket,” he said.

Sound familiar? Where it gets interesting is if we rewind two weeks further. The Tiger-trackers among you may recall that in early 2019, Woods showed signs of serious form at the WGC-Match Play, where he advanced through pool play to make it through to the round of 16, where he faced [drum roll] Rory McIlroy.

McIlroy was in stellar form at the time; he was coming off a Players Championship win and a string of top-six finishes. Woods and McIlroy had become friendlier in the preceding years, spending time together on Tour as well as at home in Florida. But here was an alpha-dog showdown, mid-comeback Tiger against mid-flight Rory. How did the dynamic play out on course between two of golf’s modern greats? Here’s how the New York Times described the day:

“McIlroy tried to draw Woods into casual conversation early in the match only to have his attempts peter out like short putts,” wrote Karen Crouse. She described Woods as “a dispassionate adversary intent on making putts, not conversation.” In other words, back in 2019 McIlroy was the one who got rebuffed and got the message, the would-be talker rather than the tunnel-vision stoic. The story described a lengthy wait on the 5th tee where the two just killed time and didn’t talk at all.

Woods wound up a 2-and-1 winner, sending McIlroy home early. Later, McIlroy corroborated Crouse’s report as part of his epic interview series with Paul Kimmage of the Irish Independent:

“Tony Finau told a similar story … about Augusta,” McIlroy said. “So, same sort of thing.” In the context of the scorpion vs. the frog, McIlroy described Woods as “majority scorpion”, while “my natural tendency is to be the frog”.

You know how the next several years went for McIlroy at majors: close call after close all, each one heartbreakingly closer than the last. After one such near-miss at the 2023 U.S. Open he said he’d “go through 100 Sundays like this” to win his next major — and that it would be that much sweeter when he did.

And then came this Masters Sunday, April 13, 2025, where McIlroy made some shocking mistakes but hit just enough preposterous shots to win the craziest tournament anybody could remember. It’s impossible to know how to tally the X-factors involved, but maybe, just maybe, ripping a page from Woods’ book and shutting out DeChambeau plus the rest of the world gave him the tiniest edge he needed to finally get over the line.

I didn't realize there was a sequel to Mean Girls.  None of this matters, folks.  Tony didn't dump his tee shot on No. 12 into the water because Tiger didn't respond expansively about his kids, and even Bryson wasn't implying that it mattered, yet somehow it's supposed to matter?  Even if they were chatty, that would happen early in the day and as the round intensified it would get quieter and quieter....

If it helped Rory stay focused, I can accept it to that extent.  But there's an implication that the quiet treatment affected playing partners, and that to me is quite the stretch.  To the extent that any of them were affected by the silent treatment, that just means they weren't going to win anyway.

This is an amusing factoid:

One last crazy connection: Before Tiger won the Masters in 2019 he hadn’t won a major in 10 years, 304 days. That’s almost identical to Rory, who entered this year’s Masters Sunday without a major win in 10 years, 249 days. No, Rory isn’t Tiger; we’re not so swept up in the moment to make that declaration. But as of April 13 they are the only two guys to win the career grand slam in the last 50 years. And to think that Rory won the Masters while leaning on a lesson he’d learned from Tiger Woods himself, his childhood hero, six years ago?! I think that’s pretty cool.

Amusing and ironic, but for completely different reasons.

This caught my eye:

Bryson DeChambeau won LIV’s event in South Korea, fending off Charles Howell III — his Crushers teammate — with a furious finish; he holed a 50-footer for birdie at No. 17 and birdied 18 as part of a six under par back nine. It’s DeChambeau’s first win on LIV since 2023, although he’d held 36-hole leads at the league’s two most recent events. (DeChambeau’s Crushers also won the team title.) He also led the Masters through two holes on Sunday, making this close-out a bit more satisfying.

“I feel like I’ve been playing some great golf, but I just haven’t gotten the job done,” DeChambeau said. “That was a lot of tension. Just glad I was able to step up to the plate and get it done.”

Who cares, right?  But as God as my witness, not only didn't I know that Chucky Three-Sticks was still a professional golfer.  Let's just say that it's been quite some time since that name has crossed my field of vision...

This bit just made laugh because, well, Maxfli:

1. Last week’s Zurich Classic wasn’t just a massive win for co-champions Ben Griffin and Andrew Novak — it was the first Tour victory for reinvented golf-ball brand Maxfli. Our Jack Hirsh has the story of a 22-year win gap, plus what’s next.

If you're gonna revive the Maxfli brand, isn't Pinnacle next?

RYDER CUP WATCH

Spieth?!

With all due respect to third-place finisher Sam Stevens, this was a notably strong week for the Ryder Cup cases of Jordan Spieth and Sam Burns, who finished fourth and fifth, respectively. Spieth has been posting a series of strong results; he has six top-20s, three top-10s and now two top-fives in 2025.

Burns played well to finish 2024 but struggled earlier this year, including three missed cuts in a row beginning in March. But his T13 at Hilton Head combined with this fifth is promising.

One encouraging number for both players: strong strokes gained numbers with their irons. Spieth gained 2.13 strokes on the field on approach, while Burns gained 2.56.

Dylan, I believe you're falling into a trap that catches many folks.  The correlation between performance and captain's picks is far more tenuous than you perhaps realize.  I expect Sam Burns to be on the team, but I believe he will be selected for the wrong reason, to wit, that he's Scottie's BFF.

To this observer, the most important aspect of Dylan's column gets buried by that long Tiger-Rory dissertation, though I'll segue into with this from a Golf Digest piece:

Or have the Signature Events, particularly this season, actually been good? Look no further than the last two, the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the RBC Heritage, which both delivered on the entertainment front. Strong leader boards, strong winners, strong ratings. But are they really all that different from LIV events, which get a ton of hate for their small, top-heavy fields and exorbitant purses?

You know what else they remind of?  Those WGCs that died an ignominious death.....  I couldn't resist that LIV reference, but here are the source comments from Erik Van Rooyen:

He was also thrilled to have played in way into next week’s Truist Championship, a Signature Event on Tour. But he didn’t mince words when it came to describing his feelings on the new limited-field structure of those events.

“How honest do you want me to be? I hate it,” he said, to laughter. “I strongly believe that the strongest fields are the ones with the most players in them. The guys on the PGA Tour are so good. It’s so deep. I get that you’ve got the Scotties of the world, the Rorys of the world, and people want to see them, it’s entertaining. But like, the PGA Championship coming up, for example. I think it’s the strongest field in the game, similar to the Players. I love competing, so selfishly I want to compete against those guys. Again, really proud of playing my way into it.”

Van Rooyen clarified that being able to play your way in is “100 percent a good thing,” and he sang the praises of the Tour’s meritocracy. He’d just draw things up a little differently. In the meantime, he’ll change his own plans instead.

“I’ve got my wife and kids here as well. I guess we’ll all just go to Philly and go to Quail [Hollow, for the PGA Championship] the week after.”

I encourage you to read that second 'graph over again, as i can only concluded that he must a closet reader of Unplayable Lies.

Compare and contrast the differing views of golf.  Van Rooyen (and your humble blogger) believe that the best events should have the best fields.  The PGA Tour seems to believe that the only way to grow the game is to ensure that Cantlay gets paid..... 

One last point before I move on.  That event Van Rooyen played himse4lf into is going to be special.  Quail Hollow is one of my least favorite venues on Tour, so you can imagine my excitement at the PGA of America taking their flagship championship there.  But there is one benefit, to wit, that regular Tour stop invariably moves to a far more interesting venue.  In the past this has allowed us a glimpse of  Aronimink, the Donald Ross gem outside of Philly.  This year we have another treat, as they're going to the Philadelphia Cricket Club, specifically the Tillinghast Wissahickon Course, which was faithfully restored recently by architect Keith Foster.  

It's insane to schedule Signature Events the weeks before and after majors, yet they do it, thereby diminishing their own events.  At least in this case they've given us one reason to tune in, the golf course.

LIV v. PGA - Just a snapshot of one week, but...

A gnarly storm in the New Orleans area, home of the PGA Tour’s Zurich Classic, was to thank for LIV’s open waters, along with a longer-than-expected blackout at the broadcast compound affecting both CBS and Golf Channel.

By the time the PGA Tour came back on air after a 2-hour delay around 5 p.m., many of LIV’s more vocal social media supporters were giddy. This was the moment they’d been waiting for — a real opportunity to showcase LIV’s competitive product…and maybe even steal some viewership from the PGA Tour.

So, how’d it look?

Spoiler alert, pretty much like it always does:

THE RESULTS ARE IN…

LIV clocked in at 110,000 average viewers on FS1 for Niemann’s victory in Mexico. The PGA Tour delivered 1.63 million average viewers on CBS in roughly the same timeslot.

Of course, there’s a zillion different caveats available here, including that LIV’s broadcast aired on cable while the PGA Tour’s aired on a national over-the-air network, and that LIV aired the final round of a very compelling tournament for much of Sunday while the PGA Tour spent a good chunk of its telecast airing last year’s competition due to technical difficulties and weather delays.

LIV, still a train wreck....  though maybe that's unfair because people can't take their eyes off a train wreck, because they seem to have little difficulty taking them off LIV.

Udder Stuff - This header is just a reminder that one of may favorite golf events of the year is coming up:

The NCAAs are great mostly because of their embrace of team match play. The ladies start next week, the men come the week after.

Scenes from Scotland, first the good:

Excavations at site of new Tom Doak golf course site in Scotland nets prehistoric findings

Artifacts spanning thousands of years have been uncovered during work on a new golf course in
the Scottish Highlands.

Traces of ancient dwellings, a ceremonial circle and a wheel which belonged to a Bronze Age chariot have been among the "properly exceptional" finds revealed during the construction of the Old Petty Championship Golf Course at Cabot Highlands, near Inverness.

Excavations were conducted by Avon Archaeology Highland across the site, which covers 50 hectares, during its construction phase.

These revealed at least 25 prehistoric wooden buildings, alongside relics such as flint tools, quern stones, and the rare prehistoric chariot wheel.

Other discoveries include remnants of Neolithic wooden buildings, a 3,500-year-old Bronze Age cremation urn and evidence for medieval field systems and grain-drying kilns, adding to Scotland’s rich and layered history.

Castle Stuart is a wonderful new links built on a spectacular site overlooking the Moray Firth.  But mostly this a reminder to myself that the bride and I will be in the Scottish Highlands in a couple of months, which brings a big smile to your humble blogger's face.

Much as I romanticize the place, Scotland has gone down a political rabbit hole and suffers from all the ills of contemporary society:


Unfortunately, on Friday 136-year-old Braid Hills Golf Course in Edinburgh, Scotland was vandalized by a gang of nearly 15 e-bikers in broad daylight. Head greenskeeper Gary Rodgers shared the following footage (and its aftermath) to X, calling the incident “absolutely heartbreaking.”

As Bunkered reports, this has become something of an epidemic in the UK, with vandals damaging all 18 greens at Bootle Golf Course, a similarly accessible community golf course in Merseyside, last week. A commenter from another course near Braid Hills also posted, “They are ripping us up to. They are hard to catch!”

 What a world we live in.  Any guesses as to the punishment?  

That will be it for today.  there is golf Friday morning, so I expect I'll see you again to wrap things on Monday morning.  Have a great weekend.



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