Weekend Wrap - Optimum-Delayed Edition

Just before retiring Friday evening, our Optimum TV service suddenly went black, and the bright red light on our router indicated that our Internet service suffered the same outage.  Optimum being Optimum, the outage continued until early Monday afternoon, and we should likely be grateful that they managed to work the repair into their busy schedule.

Not a big deal, as there's obviously nothing going on in the world these days....

The Frisco Kids - Welcome to Frisco, TX and the PGA of Americas Edifice Complex, which seems to have gone just great according to Shack:

It wasn’t easy, pretty, or acceptable for a major. But they finished on time!

Riding resurgent putting and extensive major championship experience, Minjee Lee captured the 2025 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship with a three-stroke win over Auston Kim and

Chanettee Wannasaen. It’s Lee’s first Women’s PGA to go with the 2021 Evian and 2022 U.S. Women’s Open.

Lee salvaged a week marred by, well, climate-unfriendly scheduling, high heat, stiff winds, a stern setup, unprecedented slow play, and a course not yet looking ready for prime time. Oh, and don’t forget the occasional blasts of dust churned up by new home construction surrounding Fields Ranch East, the PGA of America’s new headquarters dubbed the “Silicon Valley of golf.”

Maybe it was a reference to the satirical television show?

While players were generally diplomatic about the experience as fans wisely turned out in light numbers given the conditions, it’s safe to assume the world’s best women will be running to next year’s host venue, Hazeltine National. You know it’s bleak when Hazeltine seems heavenly.

Fields Ranch East’s dystopian vibe featured half-finished homes and empty stands to go with the horrible heat. The entire affair was not helped by the occasional reminder from television coverage that Frisco’s water tower is the only iconic nearby structure.

The proceedings hit an all-time low by any major championship standard when third-round twosomes took over three hours to complete nine holes. This meant the championship blew by the scheduled sign-off with leaders still facing five holes and 90 minutes of golf to play. Coverage moved to Golf Channel.

As a result, Sunday’s final round went out in threesomes off split tees to fit NBC’s television window.

This is why they traditionally take women's or senior events to venues before the main events, though that does reinforce the patriarchy.

The first point to make is that the Nelly-centric golfing press might be missing the far better player in Lee, although someone will need to break it to Hank Haney that this Lee is technically Australian, admittedly via South Korea.

The second issue is that recent switch to the broomstick:

Lee’s strokes gained putting rank in 2024 was a dismal 137th. She ranked fifth on tour this season

coming into the week, and finished first in the field at PGA Frisco.

“Just changing to the broomstick has given me a lot more freedom, I think,” she said. “I was just – I guess I just had a lot of thoughts, and just I was overthinking probably about just the conventional way of putting.

“I think just taking my hands a little more out of it and using the broomstick has really been helping me.”

I don't have a journalism degree, but in writing about Minjee and that unwieldy weapon, wouldn't you cite a stat or two? 

Armed with a long putter to go with quite possibly the best swing on the planet, Lee gained 10.145 strokes via putting. She led the field with 113 putts for the week and 328’2” made on tricky bermudagrass greens.

Let's see, she picked up more than ten strokes on the green and won by three....

But let the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments commence:

Minjee Lee won her third-career major title Sunday at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship — or, put another way, she survived the fire-breathing test that was the Fields Ranch East course at PGA Frisco more effectively than any other player. On what was one of the toughest major setups in recent memory (firm, fast, windy, sweltering), Lee, who finished at four under for the week, was one of just three players to break par. Earlier in the week, two-time major winner Stacy Lewis told Golfweek, “The issue of this all too is, make us look good. We’re trying to get more people to watch women’s golf, and to watch us play golf, and setups like this, they don’t help us …We’re making very good players look silly.” What say you? Was the setup too difficult?

James Colgan: I think the U.S. Open at Oakmont proved beyond any counterargument that golf fans like it very much when the best players in the world look silly. Yes, there is a loaded gender connotation beneath this that shouldn’t be ignored: Female golfers fight for public recognition of their talent in a way men do not. But at its core, I say let the carnage reign.

Nick Piastowski: I understand what Lewis is saying there — birdies sell and bogeys don’t. Scottie Scheffler also said as much at the Travelers, where he said you don’t go to basketball games wanting to see fewer dunks or 3-pointers, or you don’t go to tennis matches wanting to see a slower ball. But there’s something also to be said for watching the best in the world get tested — and to use Scheffler’s example, one can also say folks go to football games to watch good defense. Would you say that last week’s U.S. Men’s Open was poor? The line should be rewarding good shots and punishing poor ones — if Fields Ranch East didn’t do that, change should be made, but if it did, then the course worked.

Jack Hirsh: I’m in the pro-carnage camp as well, but totally agree with Nick, if the test was fair that’s all that matters. The moment you have pros making bogeys after what they thought were good shots, it becomes unfair. But honestly, I’m more compelled to watch a tournament where par is a great number than a birdie-fest, especially in majors. Lewis does make a good point that the PGA of America has typically set up golf courses to showcase its players, but there’s nothing wrong with showcasing their ability to make par when the going gets tough. A multiple-time major champion won, safe to say the best player in the field was identified this week.

Mr. Colgan falls into the most common of traps, one that John McEnroe might have had some helpful thoughts about.  The logic fail is that these aren't, truth to tell, the best players in the world.  Rather, they are the best women players in the world, and the reader should feel free to insert their own Ketanji Brown Jackson joke.

What Stacy Lewis is acknowledging is heresy among the DEI crowd, but denial ain't just a river in Africa.... Nick Piastowski also dangerously approaches reality with his comments.  The men's struggles at Oakmont were embraced by the golfing world, based on the knowledge that no one could have played that beast of a course better.  Problem is, one can't say the same about the ladies, can one?  Unfortunately, their struggles trigger a different reaction, to wit, I wonder how the men would have handled it?

I have long counselled caution to the ladies over their obsession with playing the same venues as, and even with the men.  Their game doesn't compare favorably to the men's game, and putting them on a side-by-side comparison isn't necessarily in the women's best interests.  The only good news is that, by 2027 when the PGA Championship comes to Frisco, this week will be long forgotten.

The other saving grace is that, carnage notwithstanding, they ended up with quite the worthy champion.

Chaos Theory - Theresa and I were in the car early Sunday evening when I received a phone call from a good golf buddy and friend, whose first question was of course, "Did you see that crazy finish at Hartford?"  Well, no, I responded, we have no TV, so tell me about it.  Them when our service was restored yesterday, I watched the tape of that 18th hole, including Tommy Lad's fateful club change in the fairway.  

Geoff had this summary of the Southport-native's history on Tour:

As for Fleetwood, he is all but a lock to make the European Team for September’s matches at Bethpage. After 158 starts, nearly $30 million in PGA Tour earnings, memorable Ryder Cup triumphs and some of the greatest major championship rounds ever posted, it was another painful miss.

“I haven't been in this situation for a while,” the 34-year-old Southport, England, native said. When it sort of calms down -- I'm upset now, I'm angry -- when it calms down, look at the things that I did well, look at the things that I can learn from.”

It's hard to understand how he can be nails at the Ryder Cup, yet looks so tentative in trying to hold on for that first win.  Yet, maybe it's not all that confusing, since Euro's have been doing this since the time of Seve....

Dylan Dethier had this take on Tommy Lad's final hole in his Monday Finish column:

If you didn’t watch Tommy Fleetwood‘s agonizing defeat, I wouldn’t recommend it unless you. Even as a massive Keegan supporter I felt legitimately ill watching Fleetwood’s final bogey, which didn’t come from any single mistake but instead three half-mistakes — he switched clubs on his approach and left that 50 feet short, shorted his approach putt to just outside Bradley’s mark and then missed his par try well right of the hole. I’ve been deep in the film trying to figure out if that par putt swerved because it hit something, but I can’t tell if it would have missed anyway…

There's video at the link that seems to confirm that the ball his something, but it's hard for me to call pulling the wrong club and mishitting that wedge only a half-mistake, but how man commentators have informed us that leaving long putts short is a telltale sign of nerves.  Quite obviously that first putt was the killer mistake....

Of course, while the dramatic denouement is its own story, it's really about the Ryder Cup, no?

On the PGA Tour, U.S. Ryder Cup captain and New England’s own Keegan Bradley won the Travelers Championship in electric fashion, making a clutch 72nd-hole birdie to pip Tommy Fleetwood and Russell Henley by one. The win was Bradley’s first of 2025, but marked his fifth top-10 finish and third in his last four starts. He has said he won’t expend one of his six captain’s picks on himself. But if Bradley (who started the week 17th in the U.S. Team Rankings) doesn’t auto-qualify, should he rethink his picks strategy?

Piastowski: I think so, if he’s somewhere in the top 10 range. If he’s somewhere higher, then no. But yes, the U.S. team would be served well by an energized, in-form Bradley. Should he be in

line to be picked, though, he should vacate the captaincy — doing both would be detrimental to the team.

Colgan: Uhh, yes. The U.S. roster is a little light these days on players of Bradley’s recent form and energy. He should be on the roster.

Hirsh: Yes! Pick himself, then relinquish the captaincy to Tiger Woods. Then Bradley does all the PR and run-up stuff that Tiger didn’t want to do and Woods adds the shot of adrenaline to the New York crowd.

There's quite the oddity going on, in that Bradley has moved up to seventh in the OWGR, but is only ninth in the Ryder Cup points list.  I would argue that those two spots are a meaningful difference, but also note that there's a lot of golf yet to be played (although not all that much actually meaningful golf).

I'm not going to dive too deeply into this fun issue for now, but I fully expect that we'll be focusing on it with some frequency going forward.  Obviously anyone in ninth place in the points list is a credible candidate, and the way ion which he's resurrected his career after the ban of anchored putting is quite admirable.  That said, he's a bit of a conundrum, because his reputation for grittiness doesn't exactly conform to his record, specifically not his Ryder Cup record.

What sticks in your humble blogger's mind is Medinah in 2012.  To be fair, that's a while ago, but my focus is on Sunday singles.  A certain Ulsterman was confused by Central versus East Coast time zones, and arrived belatedly to the golf course (ironically driven by the woman that would become his wife), leaving only a couple of minutes to roll a few putts before their tee time.  Yet Rory easily dusted Keegs without benefit of a warm up, and perhaps the bigger point is that, as they were preparing to play, I knew exactly how the match would unfold.  Keegan is now perceived as a steely veteran, though I have trouble reconciling those two images.

The second bit is your humble blogger tearing the wings off of flies, aided and abetted by the aforementioned Dylan Dethier, who provided me a precious Easter Egg in that column linked above.  I'm assuming everyone knows what that term means, but just in case:

An Easter egg is a message, image, or feature hidden in software, a video game, a film, or another—usually electronic—medium. The term used in this manner was coined around 1979 by Steve Wright, the then-Director of Software Development in the Atari Consumer Division, to describe a hidden message in the Atari video ...

 Such as this:

Miguel Angel Jimenez, Bradley’s former sparring partner, won the Kaulig Companies Championship at Firestone in Akron, Ohio. The victory was the 61-year-old’s fourth of the season and the 17th of his Champions tour career.

That link to Bradley is merely one of my favorite moments in golf, but one in which our Ryder Cup Captain comes off as, well, there's no easy way to put this, rather fragile.

I love how Dylan played this, because he undoubtedly knows that his reference would go over the heads of virtually every reader, there being six of us that treasure this story.  But at the bottom of his column he embeds a video also included the prior week, but gives his readers an opt-out:

ONE THING TO WATCH

If you’ve made it this far you need a cold brew or a cold beer and a 20-minute YouTube video starring Michael Greller and Chambers Bay. Good news:

(Editor’s note: If you already watched this Greller feature last week, feel free to refresh yourself on that Keegan-Miguel Angel beef)

I watched that linked video once, but it seems to elide my two favorite aspects to the story.  First, there's a note below the video that refers to this as happening in the "Third round" of the match-play event, which obscures the most important part of the story.  This was the last playing of the WGC Match Play at the dreadful Dove Mountain, but the first to employ pool play.  It was the third round of pool play, the key bit being that both Keegs and Miggy had lost their first two matches and had no possibility of advancement, so they went medieval in a match that meant nothing.  How funny is that bit?

Secondly, Bradley stormed off the course and went directly to his courtesy car, where he was last seen using his girlfriend's lapdog as an emotional support animal.  I know this was ten years ago, but that guy who needed a dog for comfort and succor seems an odd choice to hold our Ryder Cup fate in his hands.

perhaps my use of the word "Our" doesn't hold up to scrutiny, because your humble blogger is a fickle fan.  For the last two away Ryder Cups, I started the week rooting as you'd expect.  Yet no more than a day of watching and listening to those Patricks (Reed in Paris and the hatless wonder in Rome) had me aggressively rooting for the Euros.  Should Keegan step aside and allow Tiger to swoop in as the hero, I think we can assume that I'll be rooting for the Euros before the first ball is in the air.

We'll return to this issue, and there's more to cover this week, just not today.  Stay cool and have a great week, and we'll catch up likely on Thursday.