Weekend Wrap - Colonial Times Edition

So, what would you guys like to talk about?  I actually had a pretty good weekend on the course, and I'd be happy to take you through it on a shot-by-shot basis?  Yeah, I get it, life is way too short for that....

The Cow-Town Boogie - The reviews are in, and the Tour has kindly requested that all major sports continue with their lockdowns.  Nature is said to abhor a vacuum, but Jay Monahan certainly does not.  But good news, Jay, Major League Baseball seems inclined to honor your request.

Sunday drama and a hard-fought victory caps a surreal week in the PGA Tour's return to golf

FORT WORTH — A feisty summer wind rose at the Charles Schwab Challenge, blowing into Colonial Country Club all manner of possibilities.

You had so many stars and so many storylines for the return of Sundays on the PGA Tour. Could Jordan Spieth prevail for the first time since the 2017 Open Championship? Could a muscle-packed Bryson DeChambeau prove the long ball can succeed at Colonial? Could major winners Rory McIlroy, Justin Rose, Justin Thomas, Patrick Reed, Bubba Watson or Gary Woodland summon a show for national television at a deserted tournament, the first since the middle of March?

Daniel Berger, you ask? He provided an answer for all of them:

Not today.

The lanky Floridian beat Collin Morikawa on the first playoff hole of sudden death to take his third title and first since 2017, when he won his second FedEx St. Jude Classic in Memphis. Berger shot a clean, four-under 66, his 28th consecutive under-par round, as he made his way through the 80-year-old doglegs and whipping gusts, telling himself along the way, “Why not me?”

The kid has made his way back from a serious wrist injury, so there's that reason to enjoy his success.  That and the fact that he was notably on-form when the world shut down in March.

I did watch the ending on tape last evening, and I usually only see that many missed short putts in my weekend fourballs.... Those were some ugly power lip-outs.

So, what did we all think about it?  The header on this piece seems designed to curry favor in Ponte Vedra Beach:

'No question about it': PGA Tour makes a safe, triumphant return

That's a header for the current times.  To me "Triumphant" is a bit rich, but we're instructed that the prevailing narrative allows for no questions, otherwise...  Well, you don't want to see Unplayable Lies World HQ torched, do you?

Shall we see how the Tour Confidential panel reacted?  

1. The first tournament after the PGA Tour’s three-month hiatus is in the books, with Daniel Berger edging Collin Morikawa on the first hole of a sudden-death playoff at the Charles Schwab Challenge. Many new wrinkles were in play in Fort

Worth. Covid testing. Players’ movements being restricted. Social distancing. Remote press conferences. No fans. Solo Nantz. And now, a charter jet to the next stop, in Hilton Head. How would you assess how both the Tour and the players handled an event that was undoubtedly being closely observed by many other sports leagues and associations?

John Wood: Pretty much an A+ across the board. The Tour did a phenomenal job of preparing for each and every eventuality. Testing and safety were the number one priorities, and there were redundancies in place for everything. I couldn’t have been more impressed with their preparation. The players were just excited to be back and playing golf, and seemed to handle all the newness in stride. Once they got inside the ropes, things were the same as always. Shoot the lowest score, win the tournament.

Josh Sens: Watching from afar, it sure seemed to go smoothly. And you could sense the genuine excitement of the players to be back out there competing, which helped make up for the lack of fan electricity. There were oddities, of course, with Nantz flying solo in the booth and no gasps or cheers from a gallery, but there are oddities in almost all of our old rituals these days. Whether there were any public hiccups, I guess we won’t know that for certain for a couple of weeks. But from a distance, it looked a whole lot safer than some pool parties I’ve seen on social media.

Here's what passes for a dissenting vote:

Michael Bamberger: It was odd. These are odd times. The Tour is being as responsible as it can be by appearance. It’s obvious that the system is not by any means foolproof. It’s not that the show must go on. It’s that the Tour has decided to let it go on. I think they’ve made the right move. But there is no bubble. Way too many variables.

Mike, I really think it's your expectations that are in question here.  Of course there's a bubble, but of course it's not 100% perfect, because nothing temporal ever is.  

To me, what we saw here is almost a first attempt at widening the circle.  I don't think our elected officials and health care experts have distinguished themselves.  It was supposed to be a two-week stoppage, yet 3+ months later they expect us to still be alone in our hovels.  If your plan is for people to do that which they are incapable of doing, it's not actually a very good plan.  

But it's that bit about the Tour deciding to "let it go on", as if folks need to apologize for seeking normalcy....  he agrees with the strategy, but seems to be setting up his conditional approval on nothing going wrong.  We get it, Mike, you'll be the first rat to jump ship.

One last answer, just because it capture the craziness of the golf:

Alan Shipnuck: Couldn’t ask for a more riveting Sunday: a vintage Rory implosion; Spieth doing Spieth things (for better and for worse); Bryson Hulk-smashing a claustrophobic, classic course; a host of appealing young players going all-out down the stretch; and two brutal spin-outs to reminds us all what a cruel game this remains. The behind-the-scenes stuff melted away, and we had a great week of golf.

Sit tight, we'll get to the Incredible Hulk in a bit.

2. To viewers at home, the absence of fans would have been the most obvious difference between this Tour event and all the others before it. How much in your mind did the eerily subdued vibe impact the tournament? 

Wood: I said all along that things wouldn’t be vastly different until the last nine holes on Sunday, and then, only if you were in contention. Everyone out here (save Tiger) plays with little to no fans sometimes, so I didn’t feel all that different for the first two days. Watching on TV on Sunday was different, for obvious reasons. But the subdued vibe didn’t take away from what was a crazy and exciting tournament. And as it always does, Colonial held up as one of the best courses we play. 

Bamberger: I felt the same way. Even Kapalua has no fans, except at the end. There wasn’t anything like the normal energy, but for guys over their shots, it felt pretty much like business as usual.

I'm expecting that quite a few of them will like it better this way.  Let's hope they understand that to be unsustainable...

Sens: It was a little strange, but I didn’t find it strange to the point of distraction, not as it would have if it had been the Ryder Cup, or the Waste Management or some other event known for its raucousness. Mostly, it was just good to be watching golf again. 

Shipnuck: Honestly, I loved it! It was such a peaceful, uncluttered TV presentation. The course looked more pure without all the grandstands, and the absence of bros braying “bababooey” was pure bliss.

Not a single mention of the absence of TIO's?  Seemed to me there was an epidemic of guys flying greens (Sir Nick was forever babbling on about flyers from the fairway), and I especially like the results thereof.  Instead of the sweet lies on offer when dropping from grandstands, these guys actually had to play it where they found it....  Now, of course they're pretty good at this golf thing, but great to see them playing a purer form of our game.

Shack did a "Winners and Losers" post, though the winners are very much the Usual Suspects.  But shall we take a peak at his losers?  I thought you'd see it my way:

PGA Tour Execution Of Distancing, Safety Precautions – The sight of multiple PGA Tour officials without masks indoors or outdoors and not even trying to physically distance was jarring enough that, oh, everyone who knows who is who noticed during Sunday’s final round. If you flipped over to rain-delayed NASCAR, masks were aplenty and the safety rules were still in full display (even as they are several races into their restart and could easily grow lax). While the CBS crew fully complied, players and caddies understandably struggled with some of the guidelines (wiping flagsticks and rakes down is pretty silly). But those with a PGA Tour employee ID number need to do better when the cameras are on. Or any time.

Apparently this is a thing, presumably on Twitter.  Bug, feature...  I think we can take comfort in the knowledge that culling the herd of PGA Tour VP's is very much a social good...Like Geoff, I did hear that the CBS crew were all in their masks, which is quite a thing in 90+ degree heat.

PGA Tour Stars – Ok, that was one less-than-idea day all the way around, especially for the world No. 1 posting 74 after a front nine 41. But Sunday was a good reminder that the excessively-worshiped official world ranking does not mean a thing once you step on the first tee.

I don't actually see where this could possibly be a surprise to any golf fan....  It's just the DNA of our game.

Golf As The First Sport Back Excitement – A 1.5 overnight rating for Saturday’s action is not the stuff of, “the world was watching” and Monahan did not make the invite list to Sportscenter’s commissioner roundtable tomorrow.

One of the organizers had predicted a 6.0.  Funny, I didn't realize that Neal Ferguson was now working for the Tour.  How's that for snark ripped from the headlines?

The only other bit I've seen on ratings was this via Shack from Thursday:

PGA Tour Return Draws 683,000 Average, Most Watched Non-Major Thursday Since 2019 Players

We'd all do well to remember that golf stubbornly remains very much a niche sport.

I had missed this kerfuffle completely:

Brandel Chamblee – Not the way to draw in a younger audience.

It's a pretty funny exchange, ironically because it's usually the left imposing their wokeism on us.  But Rich Lerner is well within his rights to continue asking Brandel what any of his rant, true though it may be, has to do with Rory.  

CBS Commercial Load – Saturday’s broadcast went along pretty smoothly but as we were warned early in the week, “Eye On The Course” would be used heavily and it was indeed, to the usual Sunday horror of social media watchers overwhelmed by make goods, ads and a pre-recorded Zoom with Charles Schwab (it was at least useful since a surprising number were not aware he is a living, breathing person-American…). With a deep leaderboard needing some time for viewers to take in, they were often hurriedly taken down. Storytelling for the new audience expected to tune in could not happen, and the telecast could have used a ticker to show us scores, stats and take some burden off the telecast having to deal with so many promotional obligations.

Everything I watched was on tape, though it did seem that the FF button was used excessively...

“Inside The Ropes” – The new on-course interview element may have been the single worst waste of time in golf television history. I think I speak for all but immediate families or maybe sponsors paying for collar logos, that we did not need to know what Jim Furyk is working on or that Keegan Bradley is happy to be back playing golf in full hostage video voice.

Lame, with a forecast of continued lameness...  I've got a few questions that liven up the proceedings, but I'm not expecting a call from CBS.

PGA Tour Live - Given the chance to be lead-in coverage on CBS, we were reminded that the Tour’s in-house effort is very much in the broadcasting minor leagues. It’s cruel to judge much in such a strange time for TV crews, but without fans the camera angles remained awful, there were focus issues and just an overall state TV vibe that made it tough sledding.

I did tape some of it intending to see how it looked, but I suspect life is far too short for that.

Golf Without Fans – The energy just wasn’t there Sunday despite the best efforts of the CBS announcers. While the week showed the PGA Tour can go on with a less exciting product and still function, the three remaining majors have to be re-examined if fan-free or even fan-minimal is how they want to present their jewels.

Yes and no, methinks.  I agree with the diagnosis, which as John Wood noted is really an issue on Sunday.  But I still very much prefer a fan-less U.S. Open to no U.S. Open... 

Of course, there were some fans to be heard:

No fans? Says who? Charles Schwab Challenge fans get creative with Wrigley-like bleachers

What's wrong with these people?  Why can't they limit themselves to activities our Lords and Masters have deemed safe, such as rioting and looting?

Eamon Lynch has a piece worth your time, though I think he too readily accepts the media's nonsense (strange for a guy in the media, who should know how the sausage is made):

Lynch: Challenges of resuming PGA Tour golf won't ease anytime soon

Oddly, while Mike Bamberger find the bubble too porous, Eamon has the opposite take:

The Tour might need to rethink those parameters, since the bubble as currently defined is so small it would barely contain Patrick Reed’s inner circle.

To be fair, Mr. Table For One came in a factory-installed bubble, which we can all agree is a good thing.

So, who caught your eye?  This guy was hard to miss:

After one week of this five-week, fan-free Return to Golf thing there’s one revelation and it’s not that Daniel Berger is good at golf. It’s that Bryson DeChambeau, over the course

of this three-month Covid-19 pause, got bigger (20 pounds bigger, by his estimate) and better. Yes, it would be easy to read too much into his four solid rounds at Colonial (65, 65, 70, 66). But when you hit it 20 and 30 and 40 yards past the game’s longest hitters, and in play, with sound mechanics, that’s not a one-off. That’s repeatable. It’s a recipe. 

How hard is any par-4 when you can cover 480 yards with a driver and a wedge? Name a single par-5 that this guy can’t reach with a driver and some kind of iron? We’re talking about kick-in birdies and low-stress golf.

Here's another take, this  one with an amusing graphic:

Bryson DeChambeau really did get huge and it’s working 

DeChambeau said back in the fall he was going to get big and hit the ball a lot farther, and he’s done that. And he’s still doing that. DeChambeau returned to Colonial bulkier than ever, saying he added 20 pounds in the three months the PGA Tour was off (putting him at about 235-240 pounds). The results are in, and they are good. He tied for 3rd and led the field in Strokes Gained: Off the tee (7.321) and driving distance (340.3 yards).

Back to the TC panelistas for their take on the beast:

3. Bryson DeChambeau’s bulked-up physique and booming tee shots (he hit 11 drives 340 yards or longer) were the talk of the tournament. If DeChambeau’s fine play continues, are we destined to see a wave of beefy bombers descending on PGA Tour tee boxes?

Wood: Yes. I think there is quite a bit of shock at how much his size, his clubhead speed and his ball speed have increased in such a short amount of time, all the while seeming to maintain his flexibility, his feel and accuracy. On Thursday and Friday, we played behind a group that included Brooks, Rory and Rahm. There was a long wait on the 15th hole, and we were there when Brooks got ready to play his tee shot. We were standing behind him, and I remarked to Matt: “You know, looking at him, if this was 10 years ago, you would have thought you were watching a long drive contest.” It just wasn’t believable that a body that big and strong would be conducive to playing great golf. We were wrong. And now, watching what Bryson has done, I can only imagine the impact it will have on the young players we know, and the younger players we don’t know yet. You better get your head out of the sand fast and come up with a long-term plan, USGA and R&A – the ball is going to get longer and longer and longer and longer.

Tank God I was reliably informed by the USGA and R&A that continued distance gains could be problematic... 

I remain a skeptic on the bulking up, as we've seen a number of such guys develop injuries that could be related.  I'm still awaiting word on what exactly was wrong with Tiger's 1997-era body, which seemed perfectly suited to his occupation.

How about our Jordan?  First, he gets graded on a curve:

Jordan Spieth: A- 

If you can keep emotional investment out of it, watching Spieth is terrific excitement. Just as he had officially exited contention on Sunday, he birdied 10, 12 and 13 to get within two shots of the lead — and then promptly blocked his tee shot O.B. on 14, went on to make a 35-footer for bogey and ultimately finished T10, four shots out of the playoff.

The golf world feels unified in rooting for Jordan Spieth to recapture some of the magic of years gone by. Maybe that’s just another reason why it’s so difficult to do so.

And this:

Jordan Spieth is as captivating as ever 

We know the numbers! We know the numbers! He hasn’t won since July 2017, he’s fallen to 56th in the Official World Golf Ranking and his weekend play has been

abysmal. (He ranked in the top 10 in first-and second-round scoring average last year, but wasn’t any better than 170th in the third and fourth rounds.) But we’ve seen some signs! Before golf’s long pause, he made seven of eight cuts this season and had two top 10s. 

He’s still shaky off the tee and isn’t putting like he did when he racked up wins in 2015 and 2016 (or even like last year, when he had that clicking despite other struggles), but he’s always been streaky and, boy, is he complex. At Colonial he briefly held the solo lead on Saturday and entered the final round just one shot back. He then went on a Spieth-like stretch of three bogeys in four holes on the front side, only to go on another Spieth-like stretch of three birdies in four holes to start the back (then blasted one O.B.). He finished T10, and we’ll be on Spieth Watch again next week at Harbor Town.

Lastly, the TC gang takes on two golden boys with one question:

5. One of the game’s great enigmas, Jordan Spieth, played beautifully for the first three rounds (65-68-68) before closing with a roller-coaster 71. Meanwhile, Rory

McIlroy, who has struggled to close out tournaments in the past couple of years also excelled for three days (68-63-69) before finishing with a dispiriting 74. Which player did we learn more about this week? 

Wood: I’d say Jordan, and although his Sunday wasn’t what he hoped for, I’m quite sure he takes huge positives from the week. For most of the week, he seemed in a much better place mentally, something I know he worked on very hard during the hiatus. I think he learned that he is definitely on the right path again, and can’t wait to get the tee in the ground next week. Rory? One bad round on a course he’s never competed on before. Much ado about nothing.

I'm not sure that enigmatic is the right concept, as Jordan has been consistently bad since Birkdale.  We should all hesitate to attach much significance to any one round, but they share a recent affinity for playing their worst when they want it the most...

But the other way to understand Rory is to acknowledge that the course firmed up over the weekend and the wind picked up on Sunday.  Those are conditions in which Rory should be shorted.

Obviously Alan has been reading this blog:

Shipnuck: It was great fun to see Jordan in full flight, but, man, Sunday was exhausting: five bogeys, including a yip of less than 2 feet, but also a birdie burst mid-round that gave us false hope. I think overall it’s a step forward for Jordan, but his unsteadiness on Sunday is worrying. Per J. Wood’s comment on Rory, this isn’t one round. It’s part of a pattern. Rory can’t win them all, but the Sunday ejections when he plummets off the leaderboard and telecast are baffling. He has way too much game to retreat so spectacularly.

On Rory, this bit from Sir Nick has been getting lots of play:

“I don’t know. I’m only guessing on this – he’s such a gutsy player,” Faldo said when McIlroy reached the 13th green. “But why does this happen, and when it all goes wrong, it’s almost like he gets so frustrated, it’s like, I can’t accept it. It seems like looking from the outside, he doesn’t have a Plan B to switch to, just to find a way to get around it. Just maybe too much frustration going on.”

When Tiger is out of sorts, he goes into grind mode and can typically salvage something from the day.  When Rory loses it, he goes into freefall....  He can lap a field when he's on, but only in soft, calm conditions (think Kiawah, Congressional and even Hoylake).

Everyone continues to like this guy, though we had hoped for more over the weekend:

Finish be damned, Harold Varner III won the week

Varner is a great guy and had everyone rooting for him this week.  But while I know why I like him, I think some of those jumping on the bandwagon might be surprised at the heresy:

No matter who you are and where you fall on the social spectrum, there’s no denying this reality. That includes golf, a sport whose slow-play issues have extended at times outside 

the ropes. The game is often deliberate in its response to social matters. But after the first weekend of protests against systematic inequality and police brutality that gripped the nation, Varner weighed in.

He penned a letter, two pages, addressing the killing of George Floyd and the fallout the brutality evoked. It was personal, detailing his life and upbringing as a poor black man in a rich white sport. It was universal, speaking to the questions this country is reckoning with.

“Sometimes life is not simple and things don’t make sense. How can we call ourselves the greatest country on earth when our standards fall to senseless killing?” Varner wrote. “That’s a tough and important question. But I still proudly say we aren’t as fractured as it seems."

It was eloquent and passionate, offered perspective and understanding. Above all else, it was courageous, a giant stride outside his comfort zone. He is disarmingly nice, kind and one of the better trash-talkers on tour. But, publicly, he likes to keep a low profile. A low profile these times would not grant.

“All of a sudden it was 'Harold should say something because he's black.' I don't like when people are like, just because you're black you know the answers to racism,” Varner said earlier this week. “So that letter was super good for me because it let me expose that even like you were telling white people they need to listen right now, black people need to listen right now, too, and we need to come together and figure out what it is.”

That's a very different message than those on the streets are advocating, and I'm guessing he wouldn't be very welcome in The Chaz.   C'mon Harold, get with the program and tell us to check our privilege or something....

I'll go out on Tiger, who gave us an epic head fake with his yacht:

Woods only played Hilton Head one time, in 1999. It was thought he might return at Hilton Head, especially with no likely appearances for him until the Memorial on July 16-19. Speculation increased when a marine tracking site indicated his yacht “Privacy” was just off the Georgia coast near Sea Island.

Leaving us to wonder whether that was intentional... The TC guys couldn't help themselves, so perhaps we should be happy that they at least didn't lead with this:

6. As the Tour enters week two of its comeback and heads to Hilton Head, Tiger Woods remains at home (despite early-week news over his yacht’s whereabouts). What are the odds we see Tiger at either of the remaining two fan-less events, in Harford and Detroit? 

Wood: I’m no oddsmaker, but I’d say Hartford is about 10-1, the 1 being the fact that Joey LaCava is a Connecticut native, and Rocket Mortgage about the same. I think we will see Tiger at Muirfield. For both weeks I’m not sure, but definitely for Jack’s event. Yes, we’ve had a huge chunk of time off, but in my mind, Tiger is working backward, not forward. “I want to be ready for the PGA, the U.S. Open, the Masters. …” Tiger is always always always sharp mentally, but he wants to make absolutely sure he’s ready physically. So I think he looks at the PGA and says, “OK, I want to play A, B and C on these weeks to be in peak form for Harding Park.”

Sens: I think we see Tiger at the Memorial. Not before.

Bamberger: Tiger doesn’t do unexpected things, in terms of schedule. My guess is Memorial. He likes what he knows. 

Shipnuck: I agree with all of the above. Tons of important golf is coming, and he doesn’t want to push too hard too early. Let’s not forget how much he was struggling with his game and body pre-Covid. Memorial feels right.

Where will Tiger play?  Where he's always played, and nowhere else.  Any thought that he'd take one for the team fails to conform to twenty-three years of real world experience.

Catch y'all later in the week. 

Men At Work

One hundred and forty-eight people returned to their place of business yesterday, a very good thing indeed.  Actually two hundred and ninety-six, at least to the extent that we count folks like Fluff and Johnny Longsocks...  No, it won't make much of a dent in those unemployment numbers, but it was notable all the same.

The Obligatory Game Story - The game is very much a secondary story here, but old habits die hard:

Harold Varner and Justin Rose lead

Last week, Harold Varner, one of the few black players on Tour, shared a letter on his social media feeds in the midst of the social unrest following the death of George Floyd

in police custody on Memorial Day. He then shot a video with Tour commissioner Jay Monahan entitled “An open and thoughtful conversation.” On Thursday, he went out and fired one of the best rounds of his life.

Varner started with birdies on his first two holes and never made a bogey on his way to a 7-under 63, giving him a share of the first-round lead with Justin Rose. Varner hit all 18 greens in regulation, only the second time he’s done that in his career, and the first time that’s happened at Colonial in 10 years.

Rose, for a while, was on 59 watch. As part of one of the featured groupings with Bryson DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson, Rose shot 4-under for his front nine, then started his back nine with three birdies. He closed with six straight pars to give him a 63.

Many accounts went with this appropriate, if a tad obvious, framing: 

Harold Varner III lets clubs do the talking en route to share of Charles Schwab Challenge lead

I don't know who Jay pulled strings with, but having the only black player in the field share the lead after Day One is a stroke of good fortune, bettered only by his position in the TV window on Day One.  

I wouldn't have necessarily liked his chances heading into the event, as the burden he bears is substantial.  I very much liked his post-round interview with Todd Lewis as well, in which he made clear that we were seeing him in his office.  He's an appealing voice and personality, to me mostly because he wants only to be seen as a man and a golfer....  Scales on which he scores very nicely, thank you very much.  But, as the old Jewish joke goes, business is business...

The chase pack doesn't suck either:

As the first tournament on the calendar since March, the Charles Schwab Challenge drew an elite field – 16 of the world’s top 20 teed off Thursday – and the leaderboard did not disappoint in terms of star power. 

Thomas was in the group of players one shot behind the leaders. DeChambeau and Jordan Spieth each shot 5-under 65s. World No. 1 Rory McIlory, Patrick Reed, Brooks Koepka and Jon Rahm were in a large group of players at 2-under.

Phil Mickelson, one of the players in The Match: Champions for Charity, a few weeks back, shot a 1-under 69. 

Tom Lehman, 61, was also part of the 5-under group, his 65 the lowest round by a 61-year-old or older since 1980.

We'll circle back to some individuals of note, but first let's talk zeitgeist.

Thursday Has No Feel -  Admit it, Thursdays on Tour can be quite the snooze.  So, what did this most important of Thursdays, feel like?

Gary Woodland played his college golf at Kansas, where he competed in 50 tournaments

attended most by parents.

The first round of the Charles Schwab Challenge reminded him of those long ago and relatively lonesome walks at a Cleveland State Invitational or a Louisiana Classic. Woodland shot a nifty five-under 65 on Thursday, good for a share of seventh, a worthy achievement witnessed by few.

“It felt like kind of a practice round out there, same kind of energy,” he said—remotely—speaking to reporters seated in a different building, another example of the highly unusual week unfolding at Colonial Country Club. “But it was kind of peaceful, kind of going back to college days, and you kind of roll with it and stay within yourself.”

There was no one else to stay within.

I'm guessing that Just Like a Practice Round™ will not replace Live Under Par™, though it's at least better on the accuracy front. 

Some other reactions from those inside the ....errr, well, no need for ropes this week:

The spectator-free return of competitive golf stoked a lot of memories. To Bryson DeChambeau, the first PGA Tour round since March 12 felt like a U.S. Open qualifier (local or sectional, he didn’t say). Ryan Palmer, who hit the first shot at 6:50 a.m., said it felt like a typical Thursday at 6:50 a.m. Except that it felt like that all the way through to when he signed his scorecard, hours later, for 72.

Tom Lehman thought of his seasons on the old Ben Hogan Tour. Phil Mickelson called it “awkward.” Abraham Ancer said he played more quickly, not having to wait for someone taking the day off from work to stop moving in his peripheral.

Brian Harman said he noticed the concussion of drivers swirling around the course. He literally said “around the course.”

Colonial is a big place. But a lack of humanity tends to shrink a piece of property. You hear cart brakes. You hear voices from the next green over. You hear helicopters and tractor-trailers and train engines you cannot see. Now, throw in the absence of wind, which is odd for Texas, and you can even hear the commotion over on No. 15.

Actually, Colonial is very much one of the smaller places the Tour visits, but the absence of fans and grandstands made it seem far more expansive.

Mike Bamberger is one of the few golf journalists actually on site, and his is an observant set of eyes:

11:50 a.m. local time — Pat Perez, because he has a sense of humor, finished up his first round of this first tournament after this pause-for-Covid break, and put his thumb and forefingers to the tip of his black flat cap brim. He had made a superb up-and-down 4 on 18 for 69 and was responding to the fans ringing the green that existed only in his imagination. He then did an elaborate series of air fist bumps with his playing partners and their caddies and trudged up a paved path to scoring, where he signed his actual scorecard with an actual pen.

Pat is a funny guy, though not one CBS can risk with an open microphone.  And who among us can resist the siren's lure of a Tour driving range?

2:10 p.m. — The driving range here is almost a half-mile from the clubhouse, its tee running parallel to the 4th hole. (It’s a two-sided range and the players were using the

east side farther from clubhouse, because it allowed them to hit into the wind, as they prefer.) It’s almost business as usual at it, except the players and their caddies are actually scooping their own balls out of giant gray round trash cans marked “Laundry.” Titleist, Callaway, TaylorMade, Bridgestone and Srixon. Each has two tubs. Yes, it’s a hardship, all that bending and scooping, but you could stand there all day, where the bleachers would normally be, and not hear a complaint. Bernhard Langer, the oldest player in the field at 62, was on the range practicing after his first-round 70, as is his custom. He remembers a day when players actually had to pay for range balls, and there were stripes on them. No stripers at Colonial.

Lastly, Mike touches on life without TIO's:

3:50 p.m. — Fans make golf tournaments complicated, because they will do the darndest things at times with golf’s foul balls, and they ease things, by finding many errant shots. Tour rules officials expected to have lost-ball issues at Colonial, where the Bermuda rough is nearly three inches long but thin and dry, which creates conditions in which the ball drops straight down. Tony Finau, for instance, on the par-5 1st, hit his second shot hole-high and 10 yards left of the green and almost stepped on his nearly invisible ball before seeing it. In a normal week, a volunteer marshal or fans would have told him precisely where it was. But there are no fans here, and there are no marshals. But after nine hours of play, there had not been a single lost ball, and rules officials, scattered through the course, sat in their carts in the shade.

Probably would have been a grandstand there in a normal year, and he'd have gotten a sweet drop...  But interesting that not a single ball was lost.  Professional golfers, even with a 3-month layoff, are still very good...

 I Saw It On TV - There's not much to be found in the media on Golf Channel's broadcast, which operated under a host of constraints. or even an overnight estimate of the ratings.  From an ESPN account, I though we would have seen more on this:

Much was made of how players and caddies would deal with social distancing because

of the coronavirus pandemic. The PGA Tour offered up guidelines, like saying the players should pull clubs and caddies should wipe flagsticks and rakes, and offered a reminder to the players after the first practice round. 

Habits can be hard to break, which is why McIlroy asked for leeway from folks watching on television if they saw players too close or not following all of the protocols. 

Rose's caddie, Gareth Lord, held a wipe in his hands as he raked the bunker and replaced the flag on No. 17. Other caddies held flags with towels covering their hands. At least one caddie was wearing a mask, complete with a Los Angeles Dodgers logo.

Please tell me he was wearing it ironically, since baseball doesn't appear to be returning anytime soon.

 We did have those reports of players and caddies ignoring the guidelines, but let's remember that the guidelines are more than a little bit silly:

"We're trying to follow the guidelines, but it's amazing how routine and what you've done for 20 years kicks in, and you've got to keep reminding yourself," Rose said. "Definitely, I'm sure we all made a couple of mistakes out there, but we're definitely very conscious of what we touch personally and therefore who touches that next and how that's dealt with. I think, obviously, all the caddies are trying to do a good job with the flagstick because, obviously, that impacts the whole field, raking the bunkers and what have you. 

"Obviously, I'm staying with my caddie -- we've been in close proximity and kind of living in a little bubble together, so whether that be touching the golf clubs with a towel, I'm kind of relatively comfortable with that, but we've got to be cognizant of other people. Every surface you look at now, you've just got to kind of treat it as an unknown. It's interesting. But we're definitely doing our best to play by the guidelines, for sure."

Not only have all these folks tested negative, but it's a young and healthy group of folks (players and caddies for sure, though there is an issue with volunteers),  So, the purpose of maintaining social distance is...what, exactly?

The two aspects of the broadcast that have generated commentary both relate to audio.  With all the focus on players wearing microphones, this from early in the broadcast had me doing a spit take:

Even without any fans to cheer, there was quite a reaction to a birdie during the PGA Tour’s return — a very audible “F-bomb” at the start of Golf Channel’s telecast

Thursday. 

The network had been on the air for only a few minutes when the first shot from the afternoon round it showed was Jon Rahm chipping in at the par-3 eighth hole at Colonial.

“Pretty (expletive) good there,” someone was clearly heard saying from off camera while Rahm was still being shown on the screen. 

Because no spectators are allowed on the course this week, there was not the usual whopping and hollering from a gallery that would follow such a shot — and drown out anything being said around the green. It wasn’t clear who made the remark. 

“Well, we were hoping for better audio with no fans, surrounding the course,” commentator Jim Nantz then said on the broadcast. “Apologize if anybody was offended with what they may have heard there.”

Someone?  Maybe someone named Brooks Koepka?  

More substantively, Brian Wacker does a deep dive on the feed from Rickie's microphone, which he found a heck of a lot more interesting than your humble blogger did:

After the first two holes of silence—sans for the sounds of Fowler’s shirt moving as he

walked—viewers were welcomed into the conversation as Fowler and his caddie, Joe Skovron, shared their thoughts on a 154-yard approach with a 8-iron that sailed about 10 yards too far.

Fowler: “I didn’t see it playing that much. That flew the full number.”

Skovron: “It’s hot, ball’s jumping.”

Fowler: “Not gonna trust it without seeing it first.”

Two holes later, the analysis picked up. Faced with an approach from 204 yards, Fowler and Skovron thought through club selection out loud.

Skovron: “I thought it was a stock 6. What were you thinking?”

Fowler: “I was thinking stock to a little off, as long as it’s right of it, obviously.”

Skovron: “Correct, I like all of that.”

Good stuff, I quite agree, just not the earth-shattering kaboom some folks might have expected.  I just interpret Brian's piece through my own idiosyncratic lens.   Rickie, a very nice guy, was out there for five hours, and Brian found a handful of short exchanges worth recounting.  But on a day when he's playing poorly, which should make the reactions more interesting, and paired with two of his best buddies, it's just not a huge pay-off....  

The biggest problem with audio is not the F-bomb above, as amusing as that can be.  It's the inevitable banality of their conversations, which need to be carefully curated to contribute to the broadcast.  I'd always rather listen to Rickie (or any player) than Sir Nick, but that's an awfully low bar indeed.

I'll be interested to see the ratings when they're available.  I struggled a bit to stay interested, even after three months of house arrest.  Hard to imagine anyone not already a golf junkie would tune in and feel that it satisfied his sports Jones.  That's not meant as a knock on the GC/CBS crew, but Thursdays in our game tend towards the soporific. Today at least provides a dollop of drama as players fight to stay around for the weekend, but I don't expect that Thursday created too many new golf fans.

What's It All About, Alfie - Unless, of course, I'm wrong about that last bit.  Remember my blogging about those 700 ShotLink volunteers?  This is why they were needed:

 This isn't the future that I was hoping for...

DraftKings first started taking bets on golf at the 2018 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. Since then there's been numerous significant golf events, such as Woods' victory at the 2018 Tour Championship, his 2019 Masters win, two made-for-TV matches between Woods and Mickelson and a Ryder Cup. Yet none saw as much money wagered as the Charles Schwab, another reason this will be looked back on as a historic week for golf.

Is this a good thing for our game?  I can't help but believe that the Tour's embrace of and financial participation in betting is troubling, but it's easy to write that off as the rantings of an angry old man...

Random Thoughts - One of the players I was most curious to see (and hear) was the aforementioned Koepka, just because he was so lost before the game went into hibernation:

Koepka never lost his cool nor his confidence during the stretch. Still, the three-month break due to the COVID-19 pandemic was a blessing. A new and improved Koepka –

check out the fresh ‘stache – arrived at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas, as the PGA Tour resumes pay with the Charles Schwab Challenge. 

“I got lucky,” Koepka said Wednesday at Colonial. “(The break) was definitely beneficial for me. I was able to kind of reassess where I was at, get the knee stronger. The knee is back. It’s a lot better. And then finally be able just to swing the club the right way and kind of get back to the process or the way of thinking that I had before. It’s been a blessing in disguise for me without a doubt.” 

Koepka has never been one to sweat, has always shouldered the blame and just moved forward. He thought he was on the right track at the Players Championship before the PGA Tour’s flagship event – and the Tour – was halted after the first round in March.

 He seemed to be swinging freely, not that he was especially sharp.

Of greater importance is that small animal above his lip.  Employee No. 2 thought it looked every bit as stupid as I did, though she categorically rejected my characterization of it as a porn 'stache.  Help me out here folks...what do we call it?

Bryson played well in the morning wave, so we'll see him in the TV window later today.  He's obviously gotten huge, and that size and strength is translating into the length he's propelling a golf ball.

But he's newsworthy today for this 15-minute cinema verite production capturing Bryson's quarantine, that I've not yet watched.  Fortunately Sean Zak summarizes his favorite moments, sparing us the necessity of actually watching it:

1. Squirrel B-Roll

Kudos to Bryson’s producer (unless it’s him working behind the camera, too!) for snagging some squirrel b-roll and having the gall to actually place it IN the montage of what he’s been up to. Was he in the backyard reading while a squirrel snatched birdfeed? Is this even at Bryson’s house?

It sounds great, so I'm sure you'll want to dive into it straight away.  Go ahead if you want, I'll be here when you get back.

As I said, he is really huge:

Tom Lehman?  I can't say I'm a fan of his being in the field, but he did have quite the day:

The 61-year-old shot a first-round 65 at Colonial Country Club on Thursday to place himself among the early leaders. It was Lehman's lowest score on the PGA Tour since the opening round of the 2011 Waste Management Phoenix Open.

To put Lehman's age in perspective, Bryson DeChambeau, one of the players Lehman was tied with in the morning wave, was still a junior in high school when Lehman last shot this low on the regular tour. Not that the five-time PGA Tour champ and 12-time PGA Tour Champions winner seemed too surprised.

"I've been aiming for this week for a while," Lehman told reporters. "I live in Arizona, and we've been able to play golf all the way through this COVID-19 thing, so I've been playing a lot, practicing a lot. My game feels pretty good. I love the golf course. It benefits people who put the ball in the fairway, no doubt. Today I hit it straight and made a few putts."

Obviously Tom himself understands my issues as per this:

With the senior circuit not resuming until July 31 with the Ally Challenge, Lehman was

happy for a spot in this week's field by virtue of being a former champ.

"I think the biggest thing is knowing that I'm not taking a spot from some young guy out here on this tour," said Lehman, who won this event a quarter century ago. "So the ability to come and play without causing somebody else to not play actually was part of what determined whether I would play or not. Because I'm a past champion, and the same at Memorial, where I can play without causing somebody else to not be able to play, I'm looking forward to playing in both of them."

But I'm thinking that can't be true, can it?  If he decided not to play, wouldn't the next guy on the priority list get the tee time?  Tom has always seemed a good guy and he's really sure of himself, so I'll just have to leave it there with my reservations noted.

Strangely omitted from the article is that Tom is a favorite son of Minnesota, which you might have noticed has been in the news lately.... 

Mike Stachura has an interesting item on the effect of the virus protocols on the equipment reps:

On the range also was different. Each player had a guest badge they could use for a teacher or an equipment rep to be with them on the range. “We were able to get out there and stand with them, properly social distanced, to watch them hit some balls which was

very helpful,” Davidson said. “The new challenge is that we can’t grab the club from the player and make the adjustments or move weight around or change a hosel setting with the wrenches right on the range. We have to advise the players on how to do that, or put the club through the cleaning protocol. That can slow down the process.”

Davidson cited a 3-wood build for Matt Wallace as an example of the new normal. After building the club, Wallace hit it on the range and sent Davidson some Trackman numbers. “We looked at the numbers and discussed them with him via phone and text [explaining] that we needed to take a little bit of loft off the club to bring down the spin,” Davidson said. “So, the club was brought back to the sanitizing station, went through that, then came back on the truck. We bent it to take the loft off, sent it back through the station, and he got it back. Then we watched him hit it and it was good. That was an example where it worked out well, but sometimes, especially if you’re bending clubs, it can take a few tries to get it right.”

A sanitizing station for golf clubs?   It's all a bit amusing, given the CDC's walkback of the concept of transmission via surfaces...  Fact is, we just really don't know much.  But while all understand the concept of better safe than sorry, a vast fortune can be spent (wasted?) on such requirements.  developing, as the kids are wont to say...

Enjoy the weekend and we'll see how this all looks and feels Monday morning.

Golf - Ready For Its Close-Up

It's actually a big day for our little game...  My first order of business was to confirm that my cable provider's digital DVR remembers the standing order to tape all PGA Tour golf.  Turns out that might be the only thing to survive the lockdown...

Scenes From Within the Bubble - The eyes of a lonely nation turn towards Fort Worth, so let's see what life is like on Tour.

Inevitably, thew bubble can only be so tight, as Mike Bamberger (one of the few regular scribes on site) explains:

But one day into this unprecedented five-week run of spectator-free golf on the PGA Tour, one thing is clear: there is no bubble. 

The players are staying here and there and the caddies are, too. That is, in the four Tour-designated official hotels and in other accommodations, too. They’re eating … wherever. They traveled here in their own cars, on commercial flights, in private planes. They’re not sheep. Professional golfers are funny. They may look and sound like conformists. A well-honed act. 

To be sure, nobody is confusing the Colonial Country Club with the O.K. Corral. Not by a longshot. There’s mandatory player and caddie testing for Covid-19 and a Tour directive to not shake hands. There were no knots of autograph-seekers by the red-brick clubhouse on Tuesday, no crowded spectator shuttle buses heading to and from the vast parking lots on the TCU campus. The Tuesday practice round at the Colonial Country Club was, surely, not like the 70 or so that preceded it. In 1946, when Ben Hogan won the first event here, he had to be more in a bubble than any of the 148 players in the field this week for the Charles Schwab Challenge.

That's a great bit at the end, because Valerie was the only other human being allowed inside Hogan's bubble....A little more from Mike:

Some players and caddies, as they gathered on the 1st tee or 10th tee at the start of a practice round, made no effort to keep six feet apart. Likewise, some players and caddies were handing clubs back-and-forth as they normally would. They’re outside, in a hot wind. Nobody has ever confused tournament golf with meal-distribution at a nursing home. Around the clubhouse, in the club’s traditional milling areas, there was one instructor wearing his mask around his left upper arm, like an old-school USGA arm bandage. A few caddies wore them. The players did not.

Word is that Karen very much wants to speak to the Tour's manager....

I'm of  diametrically-opposed minds on this, and there's no reconciling the two.  On the one hand, when Fairview opened I found myself a rules absolutest.  I knew there was no science behind any of the protocols, but I had made a simple decision to follow the letter of the law, just to avoid any reason to shut us down.  I have the same thought here, similar to Brian's tweet above, which is mostly just a hope that it goes OK.

But people are people, and what they've seen over the last 3+ months hasn't been a pretty thing.  You start with the niggling detail that our experts have been wrong on everything.  Then we've had to watch as public officials have gone out of their way to make the lockdown needlessly punitive, and God forbid a citizen push back to save their livlihood?  And let's not forget the whiplash educing embrace of public demonstrations when its for the preferred political narrative...

To me the biggest issue is the failure to embrace any kind of gradual expansion of social networks.  When they put us all under house arrest in March, we were all going on a three-hour tour two-week shutdown.  Human beings are social animals, but we can endure anything for a short period of time.  But it's now months later, and we're still not supposed to see our families?  

This is a day when I can legitimately blog about golf, so I really don't want to impose that rant on you.  But we're still worried about pins and bunker rakes, notwithstanding that the CDC still can't tell us whether the virus is transmitted from surfaces....  The point I really want to make is we now have solved or testing issues, and we have this imperfect bubble....  and a caddie still can't hand his player a golf club?  Folks, we have to get past this and understand that small, recently-tested (shall I add young and healthy?) folks can be near each other and the result will not be a public health crisis?

And can we at some point talk about the public health crisis created by the lockdown?  I know, never gonna happen...

Tim Schmitt is a new name at Golfweek, and he does reasonably well in capturing the zeitgeist:

The PGA Tour is the first major sport to return to action, but while this week’s Charles

Schwab Challenge gets pro golfers back into the swing of their daily work routines, it’s hardly business as usual.

There are no fans, no grandstands, and the traffic that would typically clog the neighborhood is almost non-existent. Volunteers and media members start the day by walking through an airport-like thermal screening system, and everyone who comes to the event is asked a series of COVID-19-related questions after having their temperature taken.

Mostly I just needed to excerpt the piece to justify grabbing that priceless imagery of the iconic Hogan statue....  Please tell me it's Photo-Shopped.

Alan Shipnuck has a mailbag up, and is asked the inevitable Garbo question:

Is the PGA Tour equipped for the spotlight of being the first major American sport back? They’re going to find out very quickly how robust their policies are to manage the spread of coronavirus. I don’t see them getting the guinea pig benefit of doubt.—@m_shrives 

Professional golf is vastly more complicated than any other sport because the playing field has to change every week or we’ll be bored to tears. The only other option would be to take over Bandon Dunes, like the NBA will do to Disney World, and rotate tournaments across the five excellent courses. I would have loved that but after, say, the third rotation, even the wonders of Bandon would get stale. The Tour has no choice but to remain a movable feast, and that brings into play an incalculable number of complications. The czars of Ponte Vedra Beach have come up with a good plan. It’s not perfect because that standard is unattainable. Hopefully the Tour gets lucky and there is no outbreak of Covid. If a dozen players/caddies test positive and they have to shut things down for a while, so be it. I’m glad they’re being ambitious and trying to make this happen. Fingers crossed that it works.

Boy, Alan does his best to avoid the actual question, no?  But ultimately he gets there, albeit half-heatedly...

To me, the question evokes the media's reaction to certain governors attempting to end the quarantine.  This from The Atlantic probably represented peak wish-fulfillment:

Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice

Can you feel the sympathy for those losing their livelihoods?  

I think it's a reasonable question, and no doubt a risky undertaking.  But first, I think the mayhem of the last two weeks has provided our game a different kind of bubble, as the media has been obsessed with the convulsions of virtue signalling and power politics.  In a calmer moment I suspect there would have been all sorts of prophesies of reigniting the black plague....

But I too am glad that the Tour is being ambitious, because if we listened to the so-called experts we'd never leave our homes.  This might be as good a time as any to share the update, as thus far there seem to be no issues in Fort Worth, but elsewhere is a different matter:

FORT WORTH, Texas – The layered testing for this week’s return to golf on both the PGA Tour and Korn Ferry Tour included 1,559 tests for COVID-19 and just four positive results. 

All four of the positive tests were from the Korn Ferry Tour, which also restarted its schedule this week at TPC Sawgrass. One positive test was from a player and three were from caddies. All four of the positive results were from tests players and caddies took before traveling to the tournament city. 

The Tour also administered 487 in-market tests at the Charles Schwab Challenge with no positive results. At the Korn Ferry Tour event, there were 407 in-market tests with no positive results. 

“Certainly pleased, but if there's one thing you learn as you look back over the last 90 days and you go forward, there's steps that you take. We've passed some important hurdles. These are important steps,” Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said.

First and foremost, I give Jay and the boys props for candor.  Yeah, I think we could get names, but at least they seem to be more forthcoming than is typical and than they led us to believe they would be.

But a reminder also that among this young (I do understand that not all the caddies are that young) and healthy group of folks, a Covid infection is likely just an inconvenience.  I'd love some follow up on the KF circumstances, as I'm guessing they didn't have their test results before traveling to Sawgrass...  

No doubt you expected the inevitable "Caddie's Hardest Hit" features, first this which troubles me from the get-go:

On the 10th tee at Colonial Country Club Wednesday, Mike "Fluff" Cowan stood apart from the golfers and caddies in his group, some of whom were getting reacquainted in 

I can't stand a mask while in a store.  I do pity them in the Texas heat.

slightly closer proximity. Cowan practiced the standard six feet of recommended social distance—“two club lengths,” according the signage around the Charles Schwab Challenge, which puts the advice in language everyone could understand.

There wasn’t much room, not with a brick wall on one side of the tee and the cart path on the other. But Cowan made it work.

“Fluff, social distancing,” said Mike Greller, who caddies for Jordan Spieth.

“I’m trying,” Cowan replied.

That’s what the caddies can do this week as the PGA Tour returns in uneasy times: They can make an effort, a gesture, a multitude of concessions. The Tour is asking caddies to change the way they work, from keeping their distance from others, to delegating who touches what, to liberally using the three packs of 10 sanitizing wipes the tournament provided to them in the weirdest kind of gift bag.

Jim, what are you thinking?  I'm perfectly comfortable with them playing, but should a guy like Fluff, who is 72-years old, really be out there?  It's easy to be sanguine about Victor Hovland getting infected, but please not our Fluff...

5 ways caddies’ jobs will be different this week at the Charles Schwab Challenge

3. High fives are strictly forbidden 

Really any form of contact between players and caddies are forbidden. Gone are the days of pre- and post-round handshakes and pleasantries. It will be quite odd to see air fives exchanged after a big shot or putt, but can it be any weirder than the eerie quiet that will accompany it? Additionally, players and caddies are allowed to wear face masks or coverings, but it is not required.

Again, both the player and caddie will have tested negative....  And this, which has exactly zero science behind it:

4. Sanitizing will be a priority 

When you think about it, caddies have a lot of mutual touch points on the golf course — rakes, flagsticks etc. With that in mind, they will be expected to sanitize these mutual touch points thoroughly. Caddies will be supplied with sanitizer and disinfectants, and there will be hand washing stations throughout the course.

For some reason my mind travels back to those lovely images of Sergio spitting into the cup....  Wasn't that a more innocent time?

I'll conclude this portion of our programming with the necessary reminder that boys will be boys:

Pretty funny in a way, but what happens when a guy's body temperature is 74 degrees?  Call in the EMTs, I'm thinking...

But if we're worried about the elderly, look no further than here:

There's a much smaller, but still enthusiastic volunteer force at Colonial this week

More than 900 volunteers originally were scheduled to work this week at Colonial

Country Club. They couldn’t wait to put on their new uniform shirts, reunite with old friends and do their parts, whether it be making sure practice balls were washed, players got safely to the first tee, corporate hospitality was satisfied or anything else needed to assure the Charles Schwab Challenge ran as smoothly as possible.

Yet this week, only 300 or so will be on hand at Colonial. The rest were thanked kindly for offering their service but told they weren’t needed with the tournament being reduced in scope and scale due to the coronavirus pandemic.

I haven't seen any follow-up on the ShotLink issue, as the original headcounts there were crazy big.  But, as that piece makes clear, the volunteer pool skews ancient, so that needs to be watched.  One hopes that anyone with any relevant medical history takes this year off.

One of the disturbing trends in recent days has been to watch the skyrocketing participation rates in the woke Olympics, including many in our game.  Shippy got a few queries of that ilk:

Since you been covering golf has a professional golfer displayed any form or protest during an event for any issue? #AskAlan

—@GoranBarnes 

Well, Forrest Fezzler wore shorts for one hole at the U.S. Open to protest the USGA’s dress code. Phil Mickelson raked a putt to protest the USGA’s setup at Shinnecock. Rory Sabbatini teed off while Ben Crane was putting-out on the previous hole to protest Crane’s tedious pace of play. Some members of the 1993 U.S. Ryder Cup team protested Bill Clinton’s very existence by threatening to not go to the White House. Otherwise, not so much.

Thank God we've evolved past that stage where athletes would threaten not to visit the White House...  But good times all...

Have any Colonial entrants indicated an intention to kneel either before or during play in support of police reform?

—@Lou_TireWorld 

How cool would it be if some PGA Tour pros got grass-stains on their lily-white trousers? To show solidarity with the protesters (and athletes from so many other sports) would be quite a statement from a game that has usually lagged decades behind any social movement. Peter Malnati back in 2016 and Harold Varner much more recently have been eloquent voices on the issue of social justice. Only Varner will be at Colonial, and it doesn’t feel fair to make the only African-American in the field be the lone golfer who takes a knee. It would be awesome if some of his colleagues did it, too, to support Varner and the millions of other Americans who have been protesting racial injustice.

How about no one ever takes a knee again to anyone?  Submission never used to be in the American DNA, and this might be my least favorite aspect of the last few weeks.  I mean besides the death and destruction...

Here we go a little deeper:

Given what is going on in the U.S., how do you think the PGA Tour will react? What steps do you think they’ll take to bring diversity to the Tour? —@ramon_ware

The Tour’s mandate has always been to conduct the biggest and best tournaments and provide a feeder system for players to advance to the big leagues. It hasn’t been in the business of helping individual players blossom. This is the moment to reflect and reassess. Professional golf likes to bill itself as the ultimate meritocracy but that’s a fallacy. Every dev tour player will tell you it takes $40-50K a year to chase the dream. Players from well-to-do families, or with connections to private clubs brimming with deep-pocketed sponsors, obviously have a monumental advantage. It would be awesome if the Tour put aside a couple million dollars to stake minority golfers. They still have to shoot the scores but at least these players would have the financial resources to make a go of it on the minor-league tours in Canada or Latin America or China, each of which can be a portal to the Korn Ferry and beyond. And I would also love to see each KFT tournament set aside an exemption or two for minority players, to give them a toehold. Professional golf spent a century actively discriminating against minorities so it will take some direct intervention to help level the playing field.

I would argue, first and foremost, that there's nothing wrong with that mission described by Alan.  In fact, I can easily make the case that the efforts Alan describes belong more appropriately to organizations like the USGA and PGA of America.

More importantly, this is another issue where we're only allowed to discuss the approved party line.  My bigger problem is that we've been watching the real world implementation of minority set-aside programs for decades now, and the evidence that they actually help the affected communities is shockingly slim.  Such a program effectively tells minority students/players that they're not good enough, and that's simply not message that I actually believe.  

I don't know anyone that wouldn't be happy to see more black faces on the PGA Tour, but we can do a lot of damage in the process.  It would be far better to focus any such efforts on poverty, not race, as the latter inevitably pits one constituency against another, almost as if that were the underlying objective.

 But I do think we can all agree with Alan here:

Which player are you most excited to see playing professional golf again? —@Sam_Beishuizen 

Literally all of them.

Wither Tiger -  He played great at Medalist, so folks are anxious to see him.  My own expectations were that Tiger would play very little, maybe only at Jack's before the early August PGA.  Then I saw this from Alan, a bit of a hot mess but also thought provoking:

My question: at which tournament is Eldrick “Tiger” Woods mostly likely to make is post-COVID-19 debut? —@AnthonyPioppi 

Harbour Town is attractive because he can stay on his yacht and enjoy a shotmaker’s course which has never really been a possibility because Tiger is exhausted the week after the Masters, when the Tour traditionally visits Hilton Head. Travelers does a great job recruiting players and River Highlands is a fun course so that’s a possibility, too. It gets interesting after that. You would think Tiger has to play Memorial, right? He doesn’t want to snub Jack, who just turned 80, reminding us all of his mortality. But I’m sure a big part of Tiger would *love* to play the week before, in the fan-free serenity of the tournament at Muirfield Village that is replacing the Deere. Then he could skip the actual Memorial, play the following week in Minnesota, take another week off (thus avoiding the draining sweat-fest of Memphis) and roll into the PGA Championship with the right mix of preparation and recovery time. But as always, Tiger’s back will determine his schedule and the rest of us just have to roll with it.

Let's deal with the profound silliness first, that Memorial fever dream.  Tiger parachuting into a fan-less tournament is about as unrealistic as your humble blogger being offered a sponsor's exemption into the event.  First, the circus would follow him into town, so really just can't possibly happen in this lifetime...  I don't think Tiger has given such a thing a second's thought, because it's so inconceivable and would be such an imposition on the organizers.

But also, Minnesota?  Where did that come from?

But he did make me see the potential error of my ways with Harbor Town, especially after seeing this:

Tiger Woods' yacht makes its way to Georgia one week before RBC Heritage at Harbour Town

 Yeah, I could see that, assuming he's feeling as good as he looked at Medalist...It is a course that might be of interest, and isn't this exactly what we'd like to see form the man?  Similar to his trip to Tampa a couple of years ago...

Capture This - Aside from the obvious, there have been two major subjects of discussion this week, the first being audio capture.  First this update:

Fan favorite Rickie Fowler will be the lone PGA Tour player miked up when golf returns Thursday at the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas. 

"Other players have agreed to wear mics. But there's only certain groups that are within the TV window," Molly Solomon, an executive at Golf Channel, which will exclusively broadcast the first two rounds, told the Sports Business Journal. "For now, it's going to be Rickie."

I had heard Graeme McDowell as well, but he wouldn't be expected to get much airtime these days.

But the more interesting take are those that are refusing to wear a microphone, surprisingly including this guy:

A few weeks ago, Justin Thomas turned in a masterful performance on the golf course.

That in itself is nothing new, he’s ranked #4 in the world, after all. But the plaudits this time came for his work as an on-course reporter during The Match. 

That broadcast featured all four competitors wearing microphones and earpieces, while Thomas asked Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods insightful questions and then mostly got out of the way of the answer. (He also called Charles Barkley a fat ass.) It was the work of someone who clearly gets what golf broadcasts need more of: entertaining while understanding what on-course thoughts and insights viewers would want to hear as they happened.

The reaction is at the least surprising:

“I would not wear a mic, no. That’s not me,” Thomas said. “What I talk about with (caddie) Jimmy (Johnson) and what I talk about with the guys in my group is none of anybody else’s business, no offense. I mean, as close as those mics are on the tees and the greens and as close as I get to boom mics during competition anyway, I basically feel like I am mic’d up.” 

…Thomas agreed that there’s a time and a place for discussion, and while many have already insisted he’d make a great TV commentator when his career is over, he said he’d prefer to offer his thoughts in a more controlled setting. 

“I can’t say some stuff that I usually say anyway, and it is not that it’s bad, but no, if I want somebody to know what I say, I’ll say it in a press conference, I’ll say it in an interview or put it out on social media, whatever it is,” Thomas said. “But I personally am not one that would care to get mic’d out there.”

Jay Rigdon (of the wonderful Awful Announcing blog) thinks Thomas (and Jon Rahm, as well) are missing the point:

Justin Thomas, it should be clear, plays a spectator sport for a living. And in a world without fans in attendance (a world that might become the new normal, for the foreseeable future), any way to remove more of a filter between the at-home audience and the action is a good idea. It also rings hollow considering the nature of the game itself; there are no signs or plays for competitors to steal, nor is there much of a strategy that other competitors could find useful for themselves. 

There’s also the fact that other sports already do this! Not necessarily with a live microphone that broadcasts can throw to throughout coverage, but NBA, NFL, and MLB players routinely wear microphones that networks use for quick replay looks or for edited packages, even as the game progresses. Just as a random example, David Ross was mic’d up during Game 7 of the 2016 World Series and still managed to perform just fine, but Justin Thomas thinks that Saturday at the Charles Schwab Challenge is a stage too important for that kind of distraction.

The whole piece is well worth your time, as there does seem to be a disconnect involved.  Jay speculates that the player take it as a command to be entertaining, which to me is not the intent.  I also think people assume CBS will be airing open microphones, which just can't be the case folks.  99% of that which gets captured is banal drivel, they'll need to carefully curate it for their audience...

Jay also makes the case that this can be an opportunity for the lesser-known players to embrace, a way of making your name amid the clutter of a full-field event.  An interesting issue we'll be discussing more and more, I'm guessing.

Will I See You In September? - The other much-discussed issue in our game is the Ryder Cup, a story whose ending remains very much in doubt.

Earlier in the week this story popped up:

U.S. Ryder Cup captain Steve Stricker to have six at-large selections

I'm a simple guy, but is it too much to ask that we decide whether we're holding the event before we tweak the qualification process?   

Shack has this graphic that makes the point that we'll likely end up wit the same twelve guys regardless of how they're picked:

Hey, just as long as Patrick is there...Selfish, but I went long on popcorn for this very reason.

Captain Stricker helpfully laid out a basis that could maybe work:

Although no decision has been made on that front, Stricker was confident a compromise could be reached, pointing out that if Wisconsin were to allow 50-percent occupancy, that would be good enough for players. 

“That's way above my pay grade to make any of those determinations," Stricker said. "You know, I still think it's up in the air. Just our whole world is up in the air a little bit with this uncertainty. There's just so many things that are unanswered and that we can't answer right now, it's hard to say whether we're going to play the Ryder Cup or not.”

With fans first allowed in early July at The Memorial, this doesn't seem unreasonable...  But, wouldn't we rather have a full-throated version in '21 as opposed to a "yawner" (Strick's word, not mine) this year?

But here it gets crazy, as there's dissension in the ranks:

“If we’re not playing in front of fans, it’s just like us playing a game in Florida,” Koepka said. “If there's no fans out there you're not going to see guys fist pumping and that passion behind it.

“The Ryder Cup is a true sporting event. It’s different than any other golf tournament we play. It’s a true sporting event, and I think if we can have fans, that’s perfect, and if we can't, it just seems kind of like an exhibition—which it kind of already is. I just don’t want to play it without fans.” 

Koepka is hardly the only one opposed to a Ryder Cup without fans. A number of players, including Rory McIlroy, have spoken out against the idea and even the captains for each team, Steve Stricker and Padraig Harrington, don’t like the concept.

I think he's making a valid point.  I don't actually take the threat that seriously, and I suspect some will over-react to that, but I take it as Brooks asking whether we really want to go down that road... 

The problem is that the indecision itself causes the questions to be asked, and then the accusations start to fly:

Brooks Koepka has already made his feelings known about the idea of September’s Ryder Cup being held without fans. He doesn’t like it. Wednesday, he took things a step further.

Asked at the Charles Schwab Challenge if he could see a scenario in which a player protests no spectators at Whistling Straits by opting not to compete, his answer was a simple “yes.”

Would he sit out?

“Possibly,” Koepka said. “I think there’s a lot more that goes into that, why they [PGA of America] would be playing, personally. As players, I think we all know why they’re playing or why we would play.”

Money is what Koepka was referring to as he rubbed his index fingers and thumb together. “That’s the only reason,” he added.

And this comes on the heel of the R&A cancelling the Open Championship to collect on their business interruption policy, so it obviously hits home.

You guys will be tired of hearing it, but this one should have been deferred long ago.   It's a crazy year in which the guys have nowhere to play, so why put us through the wringer over a 24-player exhibition?  But, alas, Brooks gave us the answer above...

I shall leave you there and hope that you'll enjoy the golf.  I can't imagine not being here in the morning to discuss the experience, though there are no guarantees in this life.