Fat Tuesday

Well, it is Tuesday, and your humble blogger is getting fatter by the hour....

I hadn't been planning to blog, but there's actual news.  We'll just call it a provisional schedule, the perfect analogy because we find ourselves lying three.

Mark Your Calendars - No doubt you've caught the headlines.  Golf's Four Families have chosen dates for their events:

In an attempt to salvage a season severely disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, golf’s leaders released details of a revised schedule Monday with the British Open being canceled altogether and a shift in dates for the remaining three majors.

The 84th Masters, which was supposed to be played this week at Augusta National Golf Club, has been re-scheduled for Nov. 9-15 in Augusta, Georgia. 

“We hope the anticipation of staging the Masters Tournament in the fall brings a moment of joy to the Augusta community and all those who love the sport,” said Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley. 

Instead, the PGA Championship will become the season’s first major. It is still expected to be contested at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco and has been pushed back to Aug. 6-9. The PGA had been played in mid-August for many years before relocating to May last year as part of a schedule change to finish the season before football began. To accommodate the PGA, the Wyndham Championship has shifted back one week to Aug 13-16, and the trio of FedEx Cup playoff events have also been delayed one week, with the Tour Championship in Atlanta now scheduled for Sept 4-7. 

The U.S. Open, which was originally to be held at Winged Foot in Mamaroneck, New York from June 15-18, will now be played Sept. 17-20, the week before the Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin, which remains intact.

Thank God they've addressed golf's biggest concern, and we can all breathe a huge sigh of relief that the Wyndham Rewards lives.  But still no word on the Hero World Challenge, so do stay tuned for that event's resolution.

No doubt you've noticed my genetic predisposition to second guessing, but this stretches those legendary capabilities beyond  load-bearing capacity.  Yesterday I noted that the PGA's August date seemed wildly optimistic.  If you'll allow me to add nuance, I actually think it's quite possible that virus contagion fears will dissipate quicker than it seems possible, I'm just skeptical that it will happen sufficiently early for an event with such a long lead time.

Ewan Murray, who recently wrote an unhinged column screaming at the USGA and R&A to immediately cancel their events, has this detail about that early reboot:

The US PGA Championship, to be held at Harding Park in San Francisco, is now due to tee off on 6 August. This appears optimistic given news from California over the weekend. After Donald Trump projected an “August or September” start for sport with spectators in the US, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, asserted: “I’m not anticipating that happening in this state. We have to be careful not to over-promise.”

It's interesting that the PGA of America would grab this date over the stated skepticism of the governor.  Every model that I'm seeing is overstating the numbers, but still it seems a strange choice.

But the strangest part is that they seem to be prioritizing the Ryder Cup over the PGA Championship.  Why not just move the latter to a date in September/October?  The golf ecosystem has been shut down and hundreds of players are losing their opportunity to play their way up the food change, but the PGA's priority is a 24-man exhibition?  

Perhaps this timeline from Geoff will help the reader envision how this all might play out:

TO BE CONFIRMED: June 15-21 (formerly U.S. Open week) – potential PGA TOUR event

CANCELED: July 13-19, The Open Championship, Royal St. George’s GC, Sandwich, Kent, England

TO BE CONFIRMED: July 13-19 (formerly The Open Championship week) – potential PGA TOUR event

TO BE CONFIRMED: July 27-August 2 (formerly Men’s Olympic Competition week) – potential PGA TOUR event

CONFIRMED: August 3-9 – PGA Championship, TPC Harding Park, San Francisco, California

CONFIRMED: PGA TOUR’s season-ending event/FedExCup Playoffs

August 10-16 – Wyndham Championship, Sedgefield Country Club, Greensboro, North Carolina

August 17-23 – THE NORTHERN TRUST, TPC Boston, Norton, Massachusetts

August 24-30 – BMW Championship, Olympia Fields CC, Olympia Fields, Illinois

August 31-September 7 (Labor Day) – TOUR Championship, East Lake Golf Club, Atlanta, Georgia

CONFIRMED: September 14-20 – U.S. Open, Winged Foot Golf Club, Mamaroneck, New York

RECONFIRMED: September 22-27: Ryder Cup, Whistling Straits, Kohler, Wisconsin

CONFIRMED: November 9-15: the Masters Tournament, Augusta National Golf Club, Augusta, Georgia

Now peak opprobrium is being reserved for the R&A, who simply can't be bothered to hold their marquee championship:

Royal St George’s, in Sandwich, will still have an Open slot but in July 2021. Martin

Slumbers, the R&A’s chief executive, said: “I can assure everyone that we have explored every option for playing the Open this year but it is not going to be possible.

“There are many different considerations that go into organising a major sporting event of this scale. We rely on the support of the emergency services, local authorities and a range of other organisations and it would be unreasonable to place any additional demands on them when they have far more urgent priorities to deal with.”

Perhaps you could consider reducing that scale....  You know our local rules at Unplayable Lies, when they tell you it's not about the money, it's about the money:

There are also commercial factors. Insiders have confirmed the R&A has a pandemic insurance policy that is almost identical to Wimbledon’s – cancelled last week – meaning it will be reimbursed for losses. The R&A’s funding of various grassroots projects will not be affected by a cancellation that ends the Open’s unbroken run since it resumed in 1946 after the war.

Wait for it... it's for the children.

I'll be interested to see how this decision ages.  To me, the money grab isn't a good look, and I suspect it will look far worse if these events come off remotely as per the schedule above.  At least the USGA and Fred Ridley are trying to hold their events, which up to now I would have thought would be the least we'd expect from golf's governing organizations.

Venue Blues - We can hope for a replay of Tiger's second U.S. Amateur, but lets' take a moment of sadness over this cancellation:

NEWPORT — Figuratively stationed on the 18th fairway with nothing more than a wedge to the pin, the U.S. Senior Open became the latest major sporting event to fall

victim to coronavirus pandemic. 

The United States Golf Association made a number of announcements Monday morning, including the cancellation of the U.S. Senior Open, to be played at Newport Country Club from June 25-28, and the U.S. Senior Women’s Open, slated for July 9-12 at Brooklawn Country Club in Fairfield, Connecticut.

 Here's a brief history of the club's outsized role in American golf history:

Newport Country Club is one of five founding members of the USGA, the others being Chicago Golf Club, Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in New York, St. Andrew’s Golf Club in New York and The Country Club in Massachusetts. 

Newport, with its historic clubhouse, hosted the inaugural U.S. Open and U.S. Amateur in 1895. In more recent times, the course along the Ocean Drive that overlooks the foot of Narragansett Bay, was the site of the 1995 U.S. Amateur, when a young Tiger Woods prevailed, and the 2006 U.S. Women’s Open won by Hall of Famer Annika Sorenstam.

That '95 Amateur was quite the week, as the mixture of Earl Woods and the patrician members proved to be highly combustible.  Brooklawn, by the way, might just be the best Tillie of which you've never heard.

Let's hope they can get back to Newport soonest, as we have too few opportunities to see her.

Today's History Lesson - Got a history question for you?  Can any of you history buffs tell me the winner of the 1871 Open Championship?  Anyone?  Bueller?

No doubt you've heard that this will be the first Open Championship cancelled since 1945.  There were also cancellations during the Great War, but also one other year in which The Open was not contested:

It’s the 26th time a major has been canceled. Fifteen majors were canceled during World

War II, and nine others were scuttled because of World War I. But more than 40 years before the war to end all wars, nearly 70 years before the war after that, and almost 150 years before the coronavirus pandemic plunged tournament golf into darkness in 2020, another major championship was canceled, and this one had nothing to do with a global war or the world-wide threat of viral Armageddon.

No, the 1871 Open was canceled for the lack of a trophy. 

OK, that might be a bit simplistic. But it’s somewhat true. When Young Tom Morris, the 1870 champion, earned the right to keep the tournament’s trophy – a challenge belt – by winning the championship for the third straight year, organizers couldn’t agree how to proceed with the tournament. The Open, soon to enter its teenage years, was going through growing pains and was in the process of evolving into the tournament we know today. That it wasn’t played in 1871 involved more than just a prize for the winner.

Couldn't they just give them participation ribbons?

If you haven't read Tommy's Honor (and, why the hell not?), here's a brief accounting for that first Open:

The Open was first played in October 1860, when the members of the Prestwick Golf Club, eager to provide an annual competition to determine the game’s best player, invited the various golf clubs of England and Scotland to “name and send the best players on their links” to play for a championship on the club’s 12-hole course. According to the Glasgow Herald, “the game was viewed with great interest by professionals, both in England and Scotland.”

You'll note that 12-hole course laid out by Old Tom Morris, but you might be surprised to know that the first hole was 575 yards....  And guess what par was?  Wrong again, the term par was still some fifty years away from being used in golf.

Quite the drama in 1870 as Young Tom sought the threepeat (a term even further into the future):

By 1870, The Open, then often referred to as The Challenge Belt, was a highly anticipated event, drawing many spectators, “including a goodly sprinkling of the fair sex,” according to the Herald newspaper. Much of that anticipation must have come from the fact Young Tom Morris was gunning for his third straight title and permanent ownership of the belt, a right that was denied his father Old Tom in 1863 when he finished two strokes back of Willie Park, Jr., after winning the championship in 1861 and 1862.

Young Tom didn’t disappoint, touring Prestwick in rounds of 47-51-51 to win by 12 strokes. “It will thus be seen that Young Tom Morris was yesterday the successful competitor for the third year in succession, and consequently carried off the belt,” reported the Herald.

Young Tom won in 1872 as well, but tragedy struck thereafter.  There's much more, including the history of the Challenge Belt's successor, the Claret Jug.

Got Your Masters For Ya - No Masters?  No problem:

We simulated the 2020 Masters using hard data. Here’s how the wild week unfolded

That’s what we asked DataGolf to help with. The wizards at DataGolf (check them out here) use statistics from the golf world to do all kinds of things: determine win percentages, aid golf gamblers, rank which players are actually the best in the world, etc. Much of that work reacts to players’ recent showings and analyzes what has happened and how it happened. But they have impressive predictive powers, too, so we asked them to turn their sights on golf’s ultimate target: Augusta National. 

DataGolf’s Masters modeling accounted for player skill and recent form, but also factored in historical performances at Augusta. That means a Sunday charge just might happen on the back nine with some tasty pin positions. (Hint: get ready!) Is there an element of randomness to the process? Of course! The first time you run a simulation, for example, will produce different results from the 7th or 23rd time you run it. But it’s still a ton of fun to see how things shake out. For what would have been the 84th playing of the Masters, we asked for the 84th single-run simulation of how DataGolf’s system would predict this year’s event. 

The 2020 (simulated) Masters kicked off as usual with Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player hitting ceremonial tee shots in front of giddy patrons. And we’re off!

Wait, before we get to Jack and Gary, who won the Par-3?  Any hole-in-one injuries?  Who caddied for Jack?

No spoilers here, you'll have to red it for yourself.  But they seem to have extrapolated from the real world as we knew it in early March:

With the 36-hole lead all but set at five under, the talk of the afternoon surrounded the cut line. Did reigning champion Tiger Woods have enough in him to make the weekend? After being sidelined for more than a month with back stiffness, Woods made it clear to the press he just couldn’t resist an opportunity to defend his 15th major. But while he may have made an appearance, his all-world ball-striking did not make the trip up from Jupiter. Tiger made just two birdies in an opening 74, and somehow one fewer in the second round. As we’ve come to understand, sometimes it’s there and sometimes it’s not. Woods was just off this week, and that was never more apparent than when he yanked an 8-iron short and into the bunker on 16, leading to a double bogey. 

After a second-straight 74, Woods’ placement on the weekend relied on the finish of Bubba Watson, who reached five under with a birdie on 16. But Watson missed birdie putts inside 8 feet on both 17 and 18, enacting the local 10-shot rule, keeping many hopefuls around for the final two rounds. Koepka and his 149 strokes were spared while Marc Leishman, Justin Rose, Collin Morikawa and fan-favorite Fred Couples were all sent home, missing the cut by one shot each (+6).

Freddie missed a cut at Augusta?  I guess it has to happen eventually...  Read it all if you can do so without deepening your despondency.

 I'll leave you with a wonderful present, this Dan Jenkins love letter to the Masters.  Strangely, I'm not even going to tease you with an excerpt from the piece itself....  If you don't know enough to read it...  well, there was that Heinlein quote from yesterday.  In stead, I'm going to quot this great bit from Editor Jerry Tarde's introduction to the piece:

At the 1984 British Open won by Seve Ballesteros, the legendary Dan Jenkins was 55

years old and at war with the managing editor of Sports Illustrated, who was a know-nothing knucklehead who didn’t appreciate golf, Dan or, for that matter, the English language. Perhaps to punish his boss, it’s been said Dan maybe didn’t give the game story his best effort, which led to a parting of the ways after more than 20 years of Dan being SI’s most important staff writer. He picked up the phone and called Nick Seitz, who was the editorial director of a group of sports magazines owned by The New York Times Co., which included Golf Digest. Seitz asked the editor of Golf Digest at the time if he were interested in hiring Jenkins and was told, “No, he’s over the hill.”

Sure.  After all, he only gave us another thirty-five years of his unique brilliance.

 It was a wonderful look back at a foregone era, one you'll be glad you read.

I'm sure I'll be back later in the week, just probably not every day.

Weekend Wrap

We remain among the lucky few, with our course remaining open for walkers.  Given the uncertainty that we can remain open, my strategy is to play as often as the body will allow.  I'll admit that two rounds on our alpine track with the pushcart has me feeling it...  But that's a vast improvement over that which I'd be feeling otherwise.

Schedule Stuff - The Four Families continue to jockey for position, with Jay Monahan maintaining his now trademarked long face.  This seems highly optimistic, no?

I never thought I'd live long enough to see a PGA in August....Joking aside, it seems wildly optimist for San Francisco, no?  Let's dive into this week's Tour Confidential to see just how aggressive that might be:

2. President Trump said in a conference call with commissioners from various professional sports, including golf, that he hopes games and tournaments will resume by August or September. Does that timeline seem realistic for the major pro golf tours? 

Bamberger: I have no idea. Speculation is not helpful to one’s mental health right now. Trying to make every day productive, I think, is. 

Sens: With fans? Hard to imagine. But to echo Michael, I have no clue, and unless Dr. Fauci is on our forum tonight, I don’t think anyone in this discussion would have an especially educated guess. 

Shipnuck: Seems wildly optimistic. Even without fans, you’re asking many hundreds of people to fly in from all around the country to conduct and televise the events. Will that be feasible? The heart says yes, but the mind says no. 

Dethier: I guess I hope so, too? Insurance claims aside, I like the idea of waiting to cancel events until we have to, at least. It’s nice to have things to look forward to, even if we have to push them back eventually. Needless to say, it’s disheartening to keep seeing cancellations rolling in — but obviously necessary.

Now I know the world has a mancrush on Dr. Fauci, but can I remind folks that he's hardly infallible:

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Donald Trump’s top adviser on matters related to the coronavirus, 

said in a January interview that the virus was “not a major threat” to the U.S. 

“Bottom line. We don’t have to worry about this one, right?” Newsmax anchor Greg Kelly asked Fauci on January 21. 

“Obviously, you need to take it seriously, and do the kinds of things that the CDC and the Department of Homeland Security are doing, ” Fauci responded. “But, this not a major threat for the people of the United States, and this is not something that the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about.”

As William Goldman famously said in a different context, no one knows anything. 

Plus, I don't know how big a priority it is for the state.  Seems like they're all in on making the current Martial Law permanent:

Newsom says coronavirus is an ‘opportunity for reimagining a more progressive era’

Those keeping a scorecard know that it's that progressive wet dream that fueled the virus' spread.  Put me with the majority on this:

POLL: Most people unimpressed with their 30-day free trial of Communism

Of course, I've been reliably informed that real Communism has yet to be tried...  

Let me bounce to another subject, then try to tie them together.  Back to the Tour Confidential:

3. If the Ryder Cup keeps its place on the calendar (it’s currently scheduled for Sept. 25-27 at Whistling Straits), it’s unlikely much professional golf would be played before that date. When asked by Sportsmail about the status of the matches earlier this week, European captain Padraig Harrington said, “It wouldn’t worry me if we were the first tournament back and I had to go with 12 picks with no qualifying.” Is an all-captains-picks Ryder Cup a viable option? Or would pushing it to 2021 make more sense? 

Bamberger: No, it would be great to have the Ryder Cup if you can have it sensibly and safely, and having the captains pick their rosters would be fun. But if the choice is a major or a Ryder Cup, I’d go with a major. 

Sens: Absolutely viable, with all the health and safety caveats. Would an all-captains pick roster be wildly different from a regular qualifying roster? Probably not. Besides, at this point, you could outfit 24 hamsters with miniature clubs and set them loose on a course in ugly shirts, and I’d be happy to watch. 

Shipnuck: A team of all picks would be a fascinating subplot. Deep down, the captains already know who they want on the team. A lack of qualifying events hurts young players without a big body of work … but so what? We’ll take any Cup we can get. 

Dethier: I think Sens is onto something. Josh, did you send that idea to our bosses? But YES, I’m obviously all in on a Ryder Cup comprised of all-picks teams. They’d look extremely similar, I’m sure, to the real thing — but those awkward picks announcements would be so much more fun! Imagine if Captain Woods had had to pick 12 guys from the Woods Jupiter last year. Maybe they should get rid of qualifying systems altogether, because I like this idea regardless of situation.

It's not that I'm anti-Ryder Cup, but I do think it's a luxury we're not likely to have.  It further seems that exactly no one has focused on the optics of holding an event that specifically excludes Asian players....

But let me further posit that the PGA of America might have jumped at an earlier date in the hope of salvaging both of their premier events, and the penalty for that greed should logically be that neither happens.  

Since we seem to exhuming unrelated quotes from recognized authorities, this seems a good time for my favorite Robert Heinlein quote:

“Stupidity cannot be cured. Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death. There is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.”

So, how's that Frisco course coming along?  Oh, and how are the dues collections for your 28,000 pissed off members?

There's little doubt that Mike Whan has schooled Jay Monahan in this thing we call leadership, first as relates to the LPGA's first major:

Bohannan said there was at least something positive when Whan’s decision became public. “I thought it was key when the LPGA announced that the Founders Cup, the Kia

Classic and the ANA were postponed,” Bohannan said. “They didn’t want a year without this particular tournament. It has more history and tradition than the rest of the LPGA tournaments combined, between the course and the great list of Hall of Fame winners.” 

There’s also good news in the fact that the major championship already has been rescheduled for Sept. 10-13. The date has its own challenges, notably the fact that many of the snowbirds, those who winter in the desert and summer at home in northern states or Canada, will not yet have returned. The volunteer pool likely won’t be as deep and the crowds surely will be smaller. 

No matter, the show will (hopefully) go on on a stage that won’t remotely resemble what it is in early April, save for the course routing.

And the U.S. Women's Open has been rescheduled for December.  How many men's majors have new dates?  Exactly.... Jay has foregone his salary, yet doesn't seem to know how to make himself worth even zero....

To further ruin your day, The Athletic's Daniel Kaplan suggests that access to venues could change dramatically (Original is paywalled. Link and excerpt are from Shack) :

“Whether it’s a digital certificate or a wristband, that typically sounds really bad, but this has actually been done before,” said Mark Miller, CEO of TicketSocket, an event

management and ticketing platform that works with sporting events, food and beer festivals, races and obstacle runs. “Certain kinds of events you have had to have had a health check … to provide certain records because otherwise, you were a liability.” 

Miller is referring not to fans, but participants in endurance contests, whether for Spartan races or marathons. But the concept of liability is similar. A marathon organizer does not want to let physically unfit competitors into the race. Now, does a team or event want a sick fan who could infect others? 

There are of course complicated logistical and privacy issues. How and when do fans buying tickets send over their medical proof? And what if they don’t want to? Surely there are medical and personal privacy laws that come into play, though in a post-pandemic world such laws might come under scrutiny.

 Le Sigh.  The reference point here is 9/11, and we're still needlessly removing our shoes almost twenty years later....

Too Soon? - Salt, meet wound:

Opinion: Poor taste or good cause? Popular brand’s COVID-19 headcover sells out

On a day when the death toll surged to more than 7,000 across the country and the CDC

recommended all Americans wear a mask when going out in public, a popular golf brand that produces gear, bags and apparel launched a campaign aimed at raising money for COVID-19 relief efforts. 

The #Driveitaway headcover uses a design we’ve all seen when reading about the serious public health consequences that novel coronavirus presents. According to the CDC, it’s an illustration of spikes adorning the outer surface of the virus as if it were viewed microscopically. It’s meant to reveal “ultrastructural morphology exhibited by coronaviruses.” 

I’m not a scientist, but I think it’s safe to say the CDC didn’t expect a riff of the image would be used for commercial purposes, particularly for golf equipment – a headcover created by Stitch – that seems frivolous if not insensitive for the times we’re living in.

Just don't be leaving them on the ground.... I'm going with bad tatse, but only because most of their potential customers can't actually play right now.

Masters Stuff -  Back to the TC gang for an intriguing question:

1. Sorry, golf fans, but it’s officially what-would-have-been Masters week. Because of the coronavirus, the golf world’s rite of spring has been postponed for the first time since 1945. Yes, it’s a drag, but instead of sulking, let’s use this stretch constructively! With a little extra time on its hands, what improvements could Augusta National make to its invitational? 

Michael Bamberger: Get rid of the rakes. Put in some nasty beach sand in the bunkers shipped in from the beaches at St. Andrews. 

This is a good point, but one not limited to the Masters.  Lots of us think that bunkers have gotten too perfect over the years.... 

Josh Sens: At this point, the Masters is so dialed in, messing with it much doesn’t make a lot of sense. As an improvement, I propose they stop trying to make improvements. Quit lengthening the course. Let the winning score fall where it may. 

Alan Shipnuck: Eliminate the rough. Chop down a bunch of trees. Stop using precious words like “patrons.” Expand the TV windows. Improve the telecast by incorporating Shot Tracer, ShotLink and other basics the modern fan has come to expect. Lose the treacly piano music in the commercials. Allow reporters to use cellphones on the grounds so we can offer better real-time coverage. 

Alan has given us much to ponder, on two important subjects.  The course itself has been moved away from the original vision.  The rough for sure, but also the trees choking landing areas.

But the Masters has long denied viewers the full gamut of technological features, for reasons that remain unclear.  It's a long story for sure, and now isn't the time...

Dylan Dethier: Press CBS to have Tony Romo on the ground at Amen Corner and see if he can predict who’s staying dry. “Ohh, I dunno, Jim! The wind — it’s SWIRLING down here!”

Color me surprised that no one mentioned the weak field.  It's getting harder and harder to justify the fact that we barely fit fifty top tier players into he event each year.  Obviously it will never match the other three majors in its field depth, but it just needs to bridge the gap a bit more.  We can live without many of those former champions, Fred.

I'm deeming this quasi-related, only because of Mikey Bams' answer:

4. Our Michael Bamberger reported this week that Tiger Woods’ and Phil Mickelson’s camps have been in talks to involve NFL greats Tom Brady and Peyton Manning in a match that would raise funds for Covid-19 relief. (For it to happen, the PGA Tour will need to give its blessing.) The possibility of the match raises the question: In what ways could the PGA Tour get creative and entertain fans/fundraise during the layoff? Would televised challenge matches be a good idea for the Tour to explore? 

Bamberger: If you do it with all necessary safeguards, yes. Alex Miceli at Morning Read had the idea of playing it at Augusta National (where Peyton is a member). That would be fun. Could do it just as a club event with no spectators. TV camera stands are already in place.

One of the few things that could actually motivate me to watch it....

Dethier: Your caveat about charity made me cringe, Sens, thinking about the picture of Tiger and Phil with piles o’ cash in front of them before The Match v. 1. Feels like a million years ago. For my part, I’d like to see pros play Speedgolf, televised. (The basic rules of speed golf: total strokes + minutes to play 18 = your final score.) You could do the whole thing pretty easily and safely: one drone tracking each player from overhead — no need for any unsafe interaction! Would be an incredible test of stamina, composure, creativity, personality, etc. And there’s a couple guys who I’d love to see run 6 miles.

You mean this one?

I'd say it didn't age well but, then again, it wasn't a good look at the time either.

I like Dylan thinking out of the box, though I'm guessing that Phil and speed golf would prove an awkward fit.  How about they play with 3-4 clubs?  Show us some shotmaking, boys....

I'll leave you with this sad image from the Holy Land:

Let's hope folks are back out there soon.

Late-Week Laments

I got my first eighteen holes in on Wednesday, though it was two loops on our front nine.  Given my exhaustion, it was just as well to forego the mountain pass that is our 15th hole....  I feel for those whose clubs are closed, as it's the furthest I've gotten away from the darkness of our current mood.

Open and Shut - This story broke yesterday:

The R&A is expected to cancel the 2020 Open Championship, multiple sources tell Golf Digest. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak about the cancellation publicly. 

The decision, which could be announced as early as this week, comes after the All England Club canceled the Wimbledon tennis tournament (scheduled for June 29) on Wednesday. Sources told Golf Digest last week the R&A was awaiting the decision on Wimbledon before proceeding.

The big takeaway is, of course, the use of the "C-word" as opposed to the more popular "P-word".  Really, Martin, we can't interest you in a September date?  Why might that be?

However, sources reiterated to Golf Digest that it is anticipated the tournament will ultimately be canceled. 

The Open was set to be contested starting July 16 at Royal St. George's Golf Club in

England, which would have hosted its 15th Open and first since 2011. The last time the Open wasn't played was in 1945 because of World War II. 

Part of the reason the championship is being canceled rather than postponed like the Masters and PGA Championship has to do with insurance, a source says. Similar to Wimbledon, the R&A has a policy that shields against a global pandemic, and a source indicated the Open would have to cancel by a certain date in order to collect on its insurance premium. 

“The R&A is the most [insured] of all the tournaments,” a source said. “They have complete cancellation insurance. I just don’t see any golf [being played] before August.”

Yowser!  And I thought that Chainsmokers concert was a bad look...  I had mused over this minor-not minor detail just the other day:

The R&A is still weighing whether to return to Royal St. George's for the Open in 2021, or to stick to its previously announced future dates. The Old Course at St. Andrews is slated to host the Open in 2021, with Royal Liverpool on the docket for 2022 and Royal Troon in 2023. The 2021 Open at St. Andrews was supposed to be the 150th playing of the Open, but a cancellation would impact that and perhaps cause the R&A to shift all venues back a year.

It's not like any of us were counting on the event to be played as scheduled in July, but note the inconsistency herein:

Earlier on Wednesday, the USGA and R&A formally announced that the 41st Curtis Cup, set to be held at Conwy Golf Club in Wales, will be pushed back to summer of 2021. The R&A also pushed back the British Amateur and British Women's Amateur from June to August.

So, the two Amateurs were moved to a later date, but their marque championship?  To be fair, Martin Slumbers is singing a different tune for now:

In a press release issued Thursday, Slumbers said “we are continuing to work through our options for The Open this year, including postponement.”

“Due to a range of external factors, that process is taking some time to resolve,” he continued. “We are well aware of the importance of being able to give clear guidance to fans, players and everyone involved and are working to resolve this as soon as we can. We will give a further update as soon as we are in a position to do so and thank everyone for their support and understanding in this challenging situation.”

Not sure what's going on here, especially in light of the original Golf Digest attribution to "multiple" sources...

But this aggressive Ewan Murray column seems...well, he might want to do a Zoom session with a therapist over his anger issues:

We have been left to guess what, precisely, the Royal & Ancient is limping towards. This 

huge golfing institution, presiding over one of the staples of the British sporting summer, felt compelled to react to a report claiming the 149th Open is set for cancellation. The missive from the office of Martin Slumbers didn’t actually mention the c-word at all.

Being kind, this could be labelled a holding statement. If “external factors” are key, one is left to ponder how much control the R&A has of its golden goose. It was reported days earlier that postponement of the tournament, scheduled for Royal St George’s in mid-July, was borderline inevitable. Forensic detective work was hardly required to deduce that much. The suggestion of cancellation, somewhat curiously, rattled Slumbers or those close to him sufficiently to deliver an example of words that say nothing at all.

Ponder?  Let me make this easy on you, Ewan, Martin Slumbers has no control over anything in the present moment.  But he continues to pound on this drum:

If the R&A doesn’t know precisely what to do about this year’s Open, something is seriously amiss. Sport has been paralysed by coronavirus, with events and seasons dropping from billboards one by one. It is fanciful to suggest the Kent coast can – or should, in respect of public services – host 200,000 visitors and global competitors in a golf event in little over three months’ time. The R&A, for its many faults, cannot be ignorant over a pandemic.

Is it inconceivable that the event could be held in July?  Probably, at least with spectators...  Of course sports officials are paralyzed... Is that the least bit surprising given that society is paralyzed?

At the very least, if not providing a full explanation of contingency, the R&A should have put a public line through Sandwich in its standard slot long before now; spectators alone deserve that much. Augusta National is still to issue detail of a 2020 Masters alternative but it was swift in postponing when coronavirus took hold. That the United States Golf Association hasn’t ditched plans for the US Open in New York in June catapults golf into territory beyond Clubhouse Cuckoo Land. They and the R&A set the rules for this game, you know.

Ewan, I'm thinking that the fans don't much care right now, as they've got bigger issues on their plates.  But the argument about the Master is profoundly silly, given that the Open is three months later on the calendar.  And Ewan doesn't distinguish himself in failing to note the March 27th postponement of the U.S, Open in an item dated April 2nd....

It's just a weird worldview, attacking the R&A for its mendacity in not knowing what to do about the Open, then acknowledging all the complications in picking an alternative date:

Which isn’t, of course, to suggest complications don’t exist. The R&A is just glacial in dealing with them. In professional golf, not uniquely, key deliberations relate to a word starting with “m” and rhyming with honey. 

There has been speculation regarding the R&A’s insurance provision, say, which may ensure a fiscal gulf between cancellation or postponement. The new date window itself is small; September is realistically the latest month in which the Open could be held, with even that subject to daylight restrictions either curtailing the field or triggering two-tee starts. 

With every body in professional golf – the R&A, USGA, PGA of America, Augusta National, PGA Tour and European Tour – fighting to play their tournaments, negotiations will be inevitably messy. Television companies, bereft of material yet heavy investors in golf, will have a seat at the table.

It's just pure invectum completely unburdened by fact...  To the extent that the R&A cancels the event for the purpose of cashing in its business interruption insurance policy, then I'll be the first to pile on.  But Murray's gripe is about their pace of movement, and it's just still unclear that that is in fact what's happening.  As for them keeping their powder dry and calmly assessing whether they can make a Fall date work, isn't that what we want them to do?

As for this...

The R&A has a weird obsession with anniversaries; St Andrews was to stage the 150th playing of the Open, with 2023 marking 100 years since Troon’s first one. The calendar can of course be shuffled around but it’s messy, including in respect of Hoylake, where vast ticket sales send the R&A’s bean counters into a state of delirium.

The 150th Open Championship, an event that been held since 1860, is now just a weird obsession?  Ewan, maybe you'd be happier in another line of work.

We can all agree that the 150th Open Championship is hardly the most important issue of the day.  Which is likely why the R&A has been quietly allowing events to unfold before making an announcement.  But to chastise them for their prior work in promoting their marque championship is to argue that the world will never get back to normal....  And that might be the most depressing message of all.

 All Things Augusta - We all have way too many hours to fill, but this may help in that regard:

There’s been an interesting dance behind the curtain of the networks that cover professional golf. No doubt dozens of phone calls and emails have been traded between

executives and Augusta National Golf Club trying to solve this riddle: In the absence of the Masters in the second week of April, postponed because of the COVID-19 epidemic, how do you satisfy the public’s desire to get lost in the beauty of Amen Corner or experience even modest green-jacket goosebumps? 

It’s taken weeks to work out the logistics between the broadcast partners, but they finally came up with a solution. 

CBS will show the final rounds of two memorable Masters on Saturday, April 11, and Sunday, April 12, and this isn’t much of a shock: It’s Tiger and Phil. 

The Saturday broadcast, from 2:30 p.m. to 6 p.m., Eastern time, will feature the 2004 Masters victory by Phil Mickelson—his first major win and an otherwise highly entertaining final round. Then on Sunday (12:30 p.m.-6 p.m. EDT), it’s Tiger Woods day. CBS had four wins to choose from, and it picked last year’s improbable triumph that ended a nearly 11-year drought in majors for Woods.

Here's a bit more, including one that I will certainly tape:

Kicking off Saturday’s coverage on CBS, from 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. EDT will be a look back at the 1975 Masters, with Jack Nicklaus outdueling Johnny Miller and Tom Weiskopf. 

With much more time to fill, ESPN, starting on Wednesday, will take care of a couple other Woods’ victories (1997, 2005), as well as arguably the greatest Masters final round of all time—Jack Nicklaus’ 1986 win at the age of 46. Other final rounds that ESPN will show: Bubba Watson’s playoff win over Louis Ooosthuizen in 2012 and Adam Scott’s 2013 victory in a playoff over Angel Cabrera.

To me, and Jack is my golf God, '75 is even more interesting than '86.  The latter was the more emotional and improbable, given Jack's age, but '75 features the three best players in the game all at the peak of their powers.  But also a young Tom Watson in a critical cameo on the 16th hole...

We'll be back for more, but in this excerpt the great man agrees with your humble blogger:

If CBS replayed a Masters from years past next week, what tournament would you want to watch? -@JasonKrump 

I think 1975, because I’ve never seen more than the highlights. Or maybe 2011 — that was one of the nuttiest Sundays ever and I couldn’t fully enjoy it because I was too stressed out about the story I had to write. But honestly I’d watch any of them… except 2008. That was a snooze.

This is well worth your time as well:

The 7 chairmen of Augusta National are as interesting as the club itself

Raymond Floyd has known all seven Augusta National chairmen. Not many can say that. When Floyd won the Masters in 1976, Cliff Roberts, the club’s first chairman, still held

the reins. Fred Ridley, the current chairman, was in the field that year, as the U.S. Amateur champion. The next year, Roberts was found dead by Eisenhower Pond, on the club’s Par-3 course. 

Roberts built and loved that Par-3 course. Floyd loves it, too. “We used to go straight from 18 to the Par-3 course to settle our bets,” Floyd said the other day, glee in his voice. Roberts and friends got a kick out of a standing wager among Floyd and friends. Each man would put $10 in a pot. Hit all nine greens, take the pot. “Nobody ever did it,” Floyd said. “Somebody would hit eight greens, but one ball would roll two inches off a green.” 

Nothing defines Floyd’s professional life more than his Masters win, and at the pumping heart of his Augusta experience is his relationships with the various chairmen. “Arnold introduced me to Cliff,” Floyd said. That was in 1965, in a practice round, coming off the 10th tee. “He was in Bobby Jones’s cart, with the three wheels.” It’s funny, the things you remember. “Roberts was a pussycat,” Floyd said. Maybe you’ve heard otherwise. “He sat with Maria at my winner’s dinner and absolutely charmed her.” Maria Floyd, Raymond’s late wife.

Clifford Roberts a pussycat?   If you've never read this, now might be as good a time as any.  If you're not familiar with the history of the club and the tournament, you'll be surprised by much of it.  And Roberts is, as per David Owen's subtitle, the driving force and most interesting personage.

Today's Long Read - Exhumed from the Golf Digest vault, this David Owen (the same writer as linked above, and also the source of that New Yorker treatise on the "Y-word", to which I recently linked) feature on the legendary Moe Norman.  It's lede is this great anecdote:

Sam Snead played an exhibition match with Ed (Porky) Oliver and Moe Norman in Toronto in 1960. On one par-4 hole, a creek crossed the fairway about 240 yards from the tee. Norman, a Canadian pro who lived in the area, reached for his driver. 

“This is a lay-up hole, Moe,” Snead warned him. “You can’t clear the creek with a driver.” 

“Not trying to,” Norman said. “I’m playing for the bridge.” 

Snead’s and Oliver’s tee shots ended up safely on the near side of the water. Norman’s drive landed short—and rolled over the bridge to the other side. 

Every golfer hits a lucky shot from time to time. But Norman, who recently turned 66, has hit so many lucky shots during the last half-century that you begin to search for a different adjective.

A great character in the hands of a skilled writer.  What's not to like?

Flops Don't Get Sequels - Except, you know, when they do....Michael Bamberger seems to think this is a good idea:

Match II is a real thing. That is, various parties are coming together — Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, their people, Turner — to try to make it happen, according to a source familiar with the plans. Should it materialize, when would this 18-hole match be played? Two weeks before any major league gets back to business. 

Let’s say the NBA resumes its season on June 1, which is a wild guess. Then Match II would be played in mid-May. 

It will have none of the baggage of Tiger v. Phil, in Las Vegas, Thanksgiving weekend, 2018. That was a gaudy winner-takes-all event with $9 million on the line. This event would not be a cash-grab for either pro. It would be a fundraiser for people who have suffered through the Covid-19 pandemic.

You can't make me watch this.... though perhaps boredom can:

The 2018 match was a pay-per-view show beset by technical problems. The 2020 match would be shown on Turner as regular programming. Advertisers would buy spots as they 

normally do. That money would become the charitable arm of this venture, coupled with Phil and Tiger’s efforts to turn the event into a telethon. “We are the World” meets the old Jerry Lewis telethons. 

The 2018 match was mano-a-mano. Match II would be a team affair, with Tom Brady playing with one of the golfers and Peyton Manning playing with the other. By personality type, you would think that Manning and Mickelson would be a natural pairing, as they are both talkative extroverts. But Woods has played with Manning before, including the pro-am round at last year’s Memorial tournament. There is a comfort level between them. 

The match would be played at a Florida course. There would be no spectators. The players would keep six feet from one another, in accordance with CDC guidelines.

All I want is a Fall Masters, yet the only thing in my stocking is this lump of coal....As for Florida courses, unless its Seminole you're boring me.

Shippy had these thoughts as well:

If the Tiger/Phil rematch happens, at which course would you enjoy seeing them play? -@CTcard44 

For sure, the course is an important part of the show. That was part of the problem with the first Match: Shadow Creek had a lot of mystique but turned out to be kind of tacky and outdated. Phil has a lot of friends at Cypress Point, and in these troubled times an otherwise cloistered club might open their doors knowing how much we all need a break from the gloom and doom. That would be my first choice but Pine Valley, National, or Fishers would be quite swell, too.

 Gee, a Fazio course built for high-rollers turned out to tacky?  Who coulda seen that one coming?

Now Cypress Point?  That could make me tune in....What's the over-under for water balls on No.16 from this foursome?  What clubs would Tiger and Phil hit?

But no, I'm sure they'll pick something far more exciting, like Palm Beach Gardens....  Of course, Doral would be fun, but for completely different reasons.

Important Matters - Adam Schupak and Brentley Romine has the item for our age, a six-page dissertation on great caddie nicknames.  Git time for some faves?

Tommy Bennett 

Nickname: Burnt Biscuits. 

Augusta National caddie burned his leg as a kid trying to steal his grandma’s freshly baked biscuits.

Great nickname, though a bit of a complicated back story...

Of course you'd want to know the origin of this one:

Mike Cowan 

Nickname: Fluff. 

Longtime caddie for Peter Jacobsen and Jim Furyk as well as Tiger Woods’ first caddie when he turned pro, Cowan earned his nickname not so much for his fluffy mustache as for his resemblance to pro Steve Melnyk, who had the nickname Fluff in college.

Haven't heard Melyk's name in an eternity....

Another good one, though no explanation is required:

Steven Hale 

Nickname: Pepsi. 

Known for drinking several Pepsis during a round – and hiding cans around the course.

You'd think a carbonated beverage in a golf bag would be an issue...but these guys are good.

 I like this interplay between Raymundo and Maris:

Dolphus Hall 

Nickname: Golf ball 

Hall worked for several prominent players, most notably

Raymond Floyd, who reportedly fired Hull six times, only to watch his wife, Maria Floyd, hire him back each time. The nickname stems from his round eyes, which bulged, especially when he got mad, as big as golf balls.

This is good as well:

Lee Lynch 

Nickname: Two Shot. 

Al Geiberger famously said, “Having him on your bag was like being penalized two shots.” But in 1977, Lynch was on the bag for Geiberger’s historic round of 59. Does that mean Mr. 59 really would have shot 57 that day?

Heh.

You've probably heard of Paul Casey's man:

John McLaren 

Nickname: Johnny Long Socks. 

It’d be hard to find another caddie with a better sock game than Paul Casey’s guy.

best story of these two was in Mexico (I think) where Johnny Long Socks mistakenly pulled the pin sheet from the Tour's off-field event, which they used for the first few holes before realizing the error.  It says something about the partnership that Casey laughed it off.

This might be the best back story of all:

Willie Poteat 

Nickname: Cemetery 

He served as President Dwight Eisenhower’s caddie at Augusta National during his presidency and beyond. As the story goes, Poteat woke up in the morgue after surviving a knife fight in which his throat was slashed by a jealous rival.

Some stories are simply too good to fact check.

This guy played a bit on Tour before his looping career:

Lance Ten Broeck 

Nickname: Last Call. 

Former PGA Tour pro turned caddie was famous for closing the bar. At the 2009 Valero Texas Open, he famously played and caddied in the same tournament, beating boss Jesper Parnevik by two strokes after enjoying eight happy-hour special orders of a 22-ounce beer and a jug of sake for $6.50.

Lots of fun, making it perfect for this moment.

More Alan -  This lead query draws quite the thoughtful response:

The ‘Ronapocalypse is upon us. You’re filling the time capsule to ensure golf survives. Books. Film. Footage. Equipment. Course drawings. What are you passing down to ensure the game’s survival on the other side of disaster? -@1beardedgolfer 

Man, so much pressure! 

Books: Down the Fairway. Golf In The Kingdom. To The Linksland. Golf Dreams. The Bogey Man. The Spirit of St. Andrews. The Story of American Golf. The Confidential Guide. Jenkins At The Majors. Bud, Sweat & Tees. Alister MacKenzie’s Cypress Point. The Golf Courses of the British Isles. A Good Walk Spoiled. The Golf Omnibus. Tiger Woods. Arnie. 

Film: Tin Cup. Caddyshack. Follow The Sun. 

Footage: 1986 Masters. 1997 Masters. 1953 Open Championship. 1935 Masters. 1977 Open Championship. 1960 Masters. 1975 Masters. 2000 U.S. Open. 1960 U.S. Open. 2019 Masters. 2006 Open Championship. 2000 PGA. 1984 Open Championship. 1996 Masters. 1930 Open Championship. 

Course Drawings: Cruden Bay. Old Course. North Berwick. Lahinch. Ballybunion. Pine Valley. Pebble Beach. Cypress Point. National Golf Links. Pinehurst #2. Tobacco Road. Sand Hills. Royal Melbourne. New South Wales. Cape Wickham. 

Equipment: Calamity Jane. Little Ben. Sarazen’s sand wedge. Tom Kite’s 60-degree wedge. Phil’s 64-degree wedge. Hogan’s 1-iron. Nicklaus’s MacGregor driver. Ping Eye2s. The first TaylorMade metal woods. Big Bertha. Pro-V1s.

We've tread this turf previously, though the last couple of categories are fun additions.  Though I beg to differ with Alan on Golf in the Kingdom... 

If you were a touring pro, who would be your staff bag sponsor? -@WallDwarf 

See’s Candy.

And yours?  I think mine would have to involve bacon...

I could have included this with his bit on The Match II:

If you had to choose the most perfect hole to hit that highly unlikely hole-in-one, where would it be? Then, please name your dream fourball? PS: sorry if some of

these were answered before – not sure! -@TiaanEllis 

I’m sure I have but these are evergreen. Given my roots at Pebble Beach — I was a cart boy there for three summers — number 7 or 17 would be quite sentimental. The 12th at Augusta would be utterly cool because of its place in golf mythology. Same with #5 at Royal Melbourne. But I think I have to go straight chalk and take the 16th at Cypress Point, probably the most epic hole on the planet. Dream fourball: the 1930 Bobby Jones, 1960 Arnold Palmer and 2000 Tiger Woods.

 Can't you find a spot for Marion Hollins in that fourball?

We coverd this on Wednesday, though not in the highly personalized manner of this questioner:

If you flushed your tee shot at Pebble’s 7th to a raised COVID-countering cup and your ball went past the pin then screwed back to be resting against the plastic/ noodle, would you count it as a hole-in-one? -@GeorgeBooth73 

It’d be a helluva story but I couldn’t count it as my first. The magic of the ace, or so I presume, is the delicious anticipation as the ball tracks toward the hole and then finally disappears, setting off all manner of delirium. In this case you wouldn’t even know it was an ace until standing over the ball. Now, if I’d already made one I might add this to the tally, but even that is kind of weird.

I assume everyone will revert to the upside down cup, so we'll be spared this drama...

What are you looking forward to the most in golf? -@JayRevell 

Playing with my friends. I miss spending time with them! That’s what golf is all about for me. I’ve been invited by strangers to play some pretty sparkly courses but I have zero interest in that. The game to me is mostly about who you’re with, and that’s the void I’m feeling now.

We all are, Alan.  We're lucky to have our course open at the moment, and I hope others will soon as well.

You just won five free lessons with the teacher of your choice. Congrats! Will it be Cameron, Butch, or Brandel? -@BobbyTeeItUp 

I love George Gankas’s vibe and his philosophies. I’m friends with Tony Ruggiero and I’ve profiled Joseph Mayo. All would be great choices… but I’d probably choose Butch. I’ve seen him give lessons to amateurs and he keeps it simple, which I need. But more than that, he’s one of the great storytellers on the planet. I would mostly want to pick his brain about the players he’s taught, though I would need him to dispense a few swing thoughts along the way.

An easy call.

This stuff is not ageing well:

Ship, just get the feeling that with all the time off, a healthy TW may have his best chance to snag a couple quick majors if they get played in relatively short time and if he’s playing well. If he’s on 17 going in the next 2-3 years, watch out Golden Bear. -@cavedoc 

The only problem with this theory is that all the majors could be clustered in the fall, and it could be chilly weather all the way through; when the temperatures fall so do Tiger’s chances of winning, given the creakiness of his back. Just today Toronto banned public gatherings through the end of June — there are various loopholes in the edict but it is a bellwether for where we are all heading, especially in the U.S., which is in much worse shape than Canada. I think the play-by dates are going to creep further and further off into the distance and late-autumn will become our only chance to cram in a bunch of majors in 2020. If it happens, you’re right that a player can go on a heater and forever alter his legacy… but I don’t think Woods will be that guy.

I just can't get interested in the prospects for him when we don't even know if he can swing the club.  or, you know, whether there will be any majors in 2020.

If the coronavirus was a major championship layout which one would it be? ’99 Carnoustie? ’02 Bethpage? -@MidwesternGator 

’74 Winged Foot.

Le Massacre...nailed it.

Hearing rumors that they may postpone the Ryder Cup. How do you balance the

“fair qualification process” argument vs “pro golf is entertainment and we are going to NEED the RC come September”? -@mjcostel27 

The balance tips heavily in favor of playing it any way we can. I’m totally fine with each captain being allowed to fill out his team with 12 picks. Deep down, Harrington and Stricker already know who they want on their squad. Sure, the lack of a lengthy, transparent qualifying system hurts younger players who don’t have as much of a body of work, but, to quote one of our great thinkers, it is what it is.

I don't know that this heavily partisan event fits the moment all that well.  Plus, while folks will have to pry the name "Wuhan virus" from my cold, dead hands, the exclusion of Asian players seems problematic to me.

Alan exits on this heartfelt story of rejection:

What’s the one golf shot you play over in your mind the most? -@ThomasMantz 

Panama City, Fla., April 1994. I’m an intern at SI sent out to write my first big story, about the scene on the Nike tour. I was utterly stressed-out by the magnitude of the opportunity, to say nothing of the complications of trying to figure out a crappy loaner laptop. I wound up staying in a weird condo complex redeemed only by the fun, funky par-3 course on the grounds. There was a mish-mash set of janky clubs in the garage so one evening I walked out to play a few holes to clear my minds. I know this sounds like a setup ripped from the pages of Penthouse Forum but just as I arrived on the tee box of the hole closest to my condo — number four, I believe — a very attractive young woman in short-shorts arrived, playing with her mom, whom, it must be said, was also kind of a babe. They invited me to join. 

After a practice swing or two I teed up a 7-iron. I don’t recall the brand but this club was at least 20 years old. Somehow I found the sweet spot, which was the size of this period: . It was the purest strike of my life and all these years later I can still summon the sensation of it radiating through my body. The ball traced a majestic arc toward the heavens and then landed about a yard right of the flag, on a little slope. My ball trickled ever closer and the gals I was playing with started hooting and hollering. I thought for sure I was gonna make an ace but it lipped out. That wasn’t my only heartbreak, as at round’s end I got the Heisman from both mother and daughter. Still, I’ll never forget that shot.

Probably about time to move on, Alan.... But you had me going with the mother-daughter daily double.

Have a good weekend, though I'm no longer certain that weekends are still a thing.

Midweek Mishegoss

I had no intention of blogging this morning, but then I remembered how little you all have to live for...  And, luckily, I just happen to have some free time.

Salt, Meet Wound - There's no shortage of folks having bad weeks and months, but this guy belongs on the list.  He;s been furloughed from his new job, though I suspect those direct deposits have continued...  And it might prove to be a break, because it's delayed the moment when folks realize how incidental he is in that new position.

But still, this sucks:

The home of longtime St. Simons Island, Georgia, resident Davis Love III was destroyed by a fire early Friday morning. Love and his wife Robin were the only people in the residence at the time and escaped without injury. 

Any similarities to the Reichstag fire are merely coincidental.

“While everyone in our family is saddened at the loss of our home that was filled with so much laughter and incredible memories, we’re very blessed that everyone is safe and unharmed,” said Davis Love III, in a statement he released through Melanie Trotter, media relations director of the RSM Classic, the PGA Tour event Love hosts each fall at the Sea Island Club. “We’re very thankful to the first responders who made a valiant effort to save our home, and we’re keeping things in perspective as people across our community and around the world are struggling with the current unprecedented health crisis.” 

It’s unclear at this time what caused the fire.

Not a good time to be homeless, though they of course have the resources to muddle through.  Here's another golf venue that will need to be replaced, though:

For several years, Love has hosted the Pro-Am draft party for participants in the RSM Classic in a tent in his backyard.

I might not think much of Davis as a golf announcer, but he's always seemed a genuinely nice guy, and his statement indicates a grasp of the obvious.

Problem, Solved -  Since I first heard of the raised cups, I was all over the cheap hole-in-one issue that this guys has just landed upon:

In trying times, we all need distractions. Here’s a theoretical one.

Let’s say you’re playing golf, at a course abiding strictly by the current health and safety

recommendations. No rakes, no cart service, no high-fives, and so on. Stepping to the tee of a par-3, while keeping an appropriate distance from your partners — natch — you strike a pin-seeking shot that hits the elevated cup-liner of the hole (a precautionary tweak, made in the name of sanitary conduct). 

Question: is it a hole-in-one? To paraphrase a former U.S. President: that depends on what your definition of is is. 

In recognition of our new temporary normal, the United States Golf Association has issued a local handicapping rule for raised holes that allows you to post the “most likely score” you would have recorded under ordinary circumstances. If you’re putting, for instance, and you roll a ball that glances off the raised cup, it’s up to you and your partners, discussing the matter in good faith, to determine whether the ball would have dropped into a normal cup.

If your golf course is open, it would seem to be more than just theoretical.

I mostly agree with this:

A hole-in-one made against a raised cup is, in the view of the Etiquetteist, not an official ace either. It’s an ace with an asterisk, and is that the kind of ace you want to leave as your legacy? It is not. You want an ace that you can be unabashedly proud of. An ace you can recount to your buddies at the bar without any caveats or qualifications. 

So, be patient. Someday in the not-too-distant future, this crisis will pass, golf courses will return to their traditional setups, and in the company of witnesses, the stars will align and you will strike a tee shot that arcs elegantly through the air and lands in the cup. Talk about good reasons to celebrate.

I think that all aces with a raised cup would be discounted, so the losers would be those that hit shots that actually would have dropped.  Of course, we can't know for sure which ones those are.  Fortunately, the truth is out there:

One assumes that all supers will copy this because of the labor savings of not having to remove the cup when mowing and/or rolling greens.  Since most greens staff will be undermanned, this would seem to be of some import.

A Sad Moment - As those who have been with us for a while will know, Geoff Shackelford, a man to whom I only occasionally link, has always gone all in on April Fools Day.  Over the years he's come up with some awfully good stuff, often managing to hit the sweet spot of believability, typically with a ripped-from-the-headlines feel.  That's why today's desultory offering makes me so sad:

Postponement: April Fools Eyes Fall Schedule Slot

It's not bad, given the schedule jockeying under way, but it just makes me profoundly sad.  Geoff has link back to prior posts on this national holiday for those needing amusement.  Which is pretty much all of us...

Not Even a First World Problem - Shane Ryan wastes valuable pixels failing to deliver on this premise:

Inside the Ryder Cup’s tricky scheduling conundrum

For those playing at home, Merriam-Webster provides this definition:

 There is nothing intricate or difficult here, just cancel the damn thing.  

Shane seems not to realize the significance of his own reporting:

The PGA of America has reportedly looked at the vacated Olympic dates in late July or early August for a rescheduled PGA Championship, with the other three majors considering fall dates that come near—and in some cases after—the Ryder Cup’s current competition dates of Sept. 25-27.

For entirely logical reasons the PGA of America has chosen to prioritize their flagship event over a friggin' exhibition....  Are you taking notes, Shane?

This what passes for complications:

There has been some speculation that postponing would be a good thing. It would allow this year’s majors to be held in the fall without conflict, and it would put the Ryder Cup back in odd years, eliminating it's co-existence every four years with the Olympics. But the aftershocks would be far-reaching. The Presidents Cup (run by the PGA Tour) and Solheim Cup (LPGA) would likely be forced to postpone their 2021 events by another year, reverting to an even-year cycle, which would impact both tours’ revenue expectations and opportunities. The European Tour would also take a hit; it depends on the Ryder Cup as its “financial bedrock,” and would suffer an economic setback if the next European version wasn’t held until 2023.

Boo-friggin'-hoo... More importantly, Shane, I'm thinking that Italian Ryder Cup isn't the highest priority for the Italians just now....

What doe surprise me is that folks don't seem to get that, in a year of a dramatically curtailed schedule, an event for a mere 24 players seems less important.  Oh, and while I insist on continuing to call it the Wuhan Virus, is no one else worried about the optics of excluding Asian players?

Aren't We Already Depressed Enough? - Golf Digest has been celebrating their 70th anniversary by exhuming classics from the vault.  This, you would think, would be an unalloyed positive, yet I'm thinking it's not moment to revisit this one:

The Yips—If You’ve Had ’Em, You’ve Got ’Em

The will to live seems as scarce as toilet paper, yet they remind us of our frailties.... So much for being in this all together.

The article is from the estimable Henry Longhurst and is well worth your time, if you're able to keep social distance from the subject-matter.  Here's a little history lesson:

There can be no more ludicrous sight than that of a grown man, a captain of industry perhaps and a pillar of his local community, convulsively jerking a piece of ironmongery to and fro in his efforts to hole a three-foot putt. Sometimes it is even a great golfer in the 

twilight of his career, in which case the sight is worthy not of ridicule but of compassion. He will battle on for a year or two, but twilight it is, for “once you’ve had ’em, you’ve got ’em.” I refer, of course, to what Tommy Armour was the first to christen the “Yips.” 

When he wrote a book called The A.B.C. of Golf, Armour had no difficulty with the letter Y. The Yips drove him out of tournament golf. On a somewhat humbler level, they drove me out of golf, too, and a long and agonizing process it was, ending on D-Day, 1968, the anniversary of the invasion of Europe. On that occasion, I put my 25-year-old clubs up into the loft with the water tanks, where they remain to this day because I am too mean to give them away. 

Armour wrote graphically of “that ghastly time when, with the first movement of the putter, the golfer blacks out, loses sight of the ball and hasn’t the remotest idea of what to do with the putter or, occasionally, that he is holding a putter at all.” This confirms the description of that most distinguished of all sufferers, Bob Jones, who recorded that just before the moment of impact the ball “seemed to disappear from sight.” Jones also recorded how he once was partnered with that sterling character of the late 1920s and early ’30s, Wild Bill Mehlhorn. Poor Mehlhorn! He was only three feet from the hole, said Jones, but gave such a convulsive twitch at the ball that it shot across the green into a bunker. He then had the humiliation of exchanging his putter for his niblick, and, we may assume without being unkind, that was the last seriously competitive round he ever played.

To be clear, the mere ravages of aging I don't find meaningfully less depressing than the Yips...

It is, of course, a fascinating subject, given how little we know about the underlying neurological condition.  I've often recommended this David Owen scholarly treatise on the subject, though I always include a warning that it might hit too close to home for some.

It just seems a funny moment to depress your readership further....

Maybe Golf Digest is trying to make amends by subsequently posting this slideshow:

THE 23 MOST CALMING THINGS IN GOLF

Sorry, guys, too damn late!

Stay safe, kids.