Tuesday Tidbits

Just a couple of quick items for y'all today....

Hello Friends - Treacly Jim Nantz is back this week, after Golf Channel has held the coverage through the undesirable weeks competing with the NFL playoffs.  OK, I feel bad taking a shot at Nantz who seems a genuinely nice guy, but the CBS team has devolved into a painful mess.

Golfweek's The Forecaddie informs that they're trying to up their game with through the following:

For all 23 broadcasts in 2018, CBS will have TrackMan on each of the 18 tees as the network did at last August’s PGA Championship. The Man Out Front’s request for

comment on this move went unanswered from CBS, but he hopes this means we will get more of the tracer technology that all of us want so desperately. The 3D radar tracking system will definitely give fans and announcers more real-time insight into ball speed, distance, curve and other goodies that geeks love, while adding a high-tech modern look for the rest who see golf broadcasting as outdated.

Another big addition comes in the form of solidifying the relationship with Amanda Balionis, who injected much-needed energy into many of CBS’ telecasts last year as the primary post-round interviewer. The former PGA Tour Productions face and current Callaway Golf host has signed on as a regular contributor, meaning Balionis will continue to employ a high-tech mobile screen to review highlights with players, query them about key stats and, in general, bring some much-needed insight into the normally stale post-round interview.

Oy, sorry to have gotten your hopes up.... In addition to those, is it conceivable that they might actually show us some live golf?  Nope, wouldn't be prudent....

Post-round interviews are notoriously awkward and uninteresting, but putting them in front of a video screen just adds a dimension of discomfort where they don't know where to look or to whom they're speaking...  Trackman itself is fine, and has the benefit of giving Sir Nick something quantitative about which to mumble incoherently.  

But see what you think of this tease:

So as The Forecaddie waits to get his wish on Tony Romo adding some new energy to the broadcast team, he was thrilled to hear of two moves for the 2018 schedule kicking off at this week’s Farmers Insurance Open.

That could work, although I'm unclear as to how it would work.

I've been pleasantly surprised by Romo in the football broadcast booth, and anything to shake up the CBS crew would be a positive.  Faldo would no doubt be threatened by the guy, which might push him towards coherence....  Yeah, baby steps.  I'm just not sure they'd know how to utilize him, but it would be fun watching them fight for air time.

The Modern Pro -  It's a seven-part series, but I only awoke for Part III:

Marketing the Modern Pro: How social media and self-promotion has changed the branding game

Any guesses who they chose as their poster boy?  Who else?

Fast forward 30 hours and a victorious Fowler, decked out in flashy Puma gear, is standing next to Woods, the tournament host, as he's presented the trophy after shooting a course-record 61 in the final round. Fowler will do a myriad of interviews and grin for photos with his girlfriend, Olympian pole-vaulter Allison Stokke. In the coming hours he'll commemorate the victory on his Snapchat and Instagram accounts — a million-plus followers strong on each — and dutifully tag Cobra's new F8 driver, which he used in competition for the first time in the Bahamas. 

Fowler is a marketer's dream: a handsome, stylish, media-savvy, well-spoken pro golfer with a buzzy, athletic main squeeze. As Fowler basks in victory, there are several other winners, too: his sponsors. Mercedes-Benz, Puma, Cobra, Red Bull, Wheels Up. Rickie has done it again.

And that is exactly how it's done.....well, ignoring Step 1, the posting of a course-record 61 in the final round of the Hero World Challenge.  Though I found this a bit mean-spirited:

Among the players who have won more than him on Tour: Ryan Moore (five titles), Jason Dufner (five), Ben Crane (five), Hunter Mahan (six) and Bill Haas (six). Cumulatively those players' social followings fall far short of Fowler's, which shows you how valuable a bright, ambitious athlete with an ever-charged phone can be.

And an orange shirt....

And this is interesting:

"Golfers have a tremendous opportunity, because they are individual contractors," Badenhausen said. "It's also an extremely global sport. So these guys have opportunities to cut deals where marketing will be used around the world. That's not something that exists in baseball or the NFL, so Nike can use a guy like Rory McIlroy throughout the world, which allows Rory to command a much bigger sum than he would if he was playing in a sport that's [popular only in] one country. And the demographics are great, because the clientele that watches golf has very high disposable income that spends money on equipment and apparel and cars and watches and does a lot of financial services. So that makes these guys terrific walking billboards when they're out on the course on Sundays."

Huh?  I've been reliably informed that golf is a dying game followed only by old white men that will soon be dead white men....

To their credit, they tie it all back to Arnie, though what is new eludes me.  I get that Arnie didn't have Snapchat and Twitter, but sponsors gravitated to Arnie in the very same way that they are to Rickie, Lexi and Jordan.  There's just a few more commas in the numbers involved....

One of the prior installments covered the modern golf pro's body, and included this graphic:

Hmmm...left-to-right, I'm going with Tim Herron, Sandy Lyle, Grayson Murray, John Daly and Dustin Johnson.  Your choices?

Early Daze - John Huggan has been around for a while, and offers some practical advice to the Yanks about a certain September event:

In the day and weeks that followed the U.S. team’s utterly predictable win over a clearly inferior International squad in last year’s Presidents Cup, it appeared to many in Europe that too much was being read into events at Liberty National. Maybe it was the inspirational presence of the Statue of Liberty. Maybe it was the conclusive manner of the American’s victory over a team that, whisper it, did not come close to playing to its limited capabilities. Maybe it was just the relief of winning. Whatever, the clearly talented but still mostly callow nephews of Uncle Sam were suddenly being touted as maybe the greatest golf team of all time, one the poor old Euros couldn’t possibly hope to defeat.

The Euros thrive on the underdog role, which they're sure to have in Paris in September.  And this:

All of which has provoked much sniggering in the Old World. While none of Europe’s best have commented publicly (they know better), it is a fact that the waves of hyperbole over the last few months have done nothing but increase the determination of the home players to see off those pesky colonials come September. 

Which is probably the last thing American captain Jim Furyk wants to hear. A seasoned campaigner who has suffered more than most in close-run Ryder Cup matches, the former U.S. Open champion will surely be hoping his charges can contain their enthusiasm for trumpeting their own talents over the next few months and, not to put too fine a point on it, shut up and play. 

Besides, the European team that will tee-up at Le Golf National is already shaping up to be considerably stronger than the relatively hapless bunch that played in Minnesota in 2016. The numbers do not lie. As of this morning, nine Europeans are ranked amongst the world’s top-20 golfers. Only eight hail from the United States.

To be fair, the commentary to which he's reacting has come from the golfing press, not the players.  And Exhibit One is Alan Shipnuck's item from a few months ago, predicting U.S. dominance in the coming era.  

This guy is no better, though his excuse will be that Alan started it:

It's gonna be a crazy week.

Get Off My Lawn - I'm a bit unclear on this, but I thought that with ESPN no longer airing golf, that what Curtis Strange thinks has lost all relevance.  Apparently I was misinformed:

And this important clarification:

In that case I see both their points.

Oakmont By The Numbers - A sad but interesting take:

Egads!  Shall we let Shack do the honors?

Ryan Farrow did an aerial overlay of the famed Oakmont Country Club from 1938 vs. 2017 and found that more bunkers have been added while there has been a huge drop in fairway acreage and width. 

The club's tree removal program undoubtedly impacts the turf shift to rough, but that's not the entire story. Something else has happened in that time. Oh, right, the top players are hitting it about 80 yards longer.

This club's membership has an unusually high threshold for pain, but not a good trend line for our game.

I'll leave you there.  Hope to see you tomorrow, since Thursday is a travel day.   

Weekend Wrap

Things are a little more hectic than I expected, but we'll do a proper wrap of the weekend.....

Rahmbo Reigns - While most of his peers were off in the Middle East, Spaniard Jon Rahm added a notch to his belt:

Jon Rahm beat Andrew Landry with a 12-foot birdie putt on the fourth hole of a playoff Sunday in the CareerBuilder Challenge. 

In fading light on the Stadium Course at PGA West, Rahm finished off Landry for his second PGA Tour title and fourth worldwide victory in a year. The 23-year-old Spaniard will jump from third to second in the world ranking behind Dustin Johnson. 

"It's hard to believe, to be honest, passing Jordan Spieth, three-time major champion," Rahm said. "I only have two wins and he's got 10-plus, right? I never thought I was going to be at this point in my life right now."

OK, as I understand it, he would have passed Spieth in the OWGR had he lost the playoffs as well.... Not to take anything away from the young man, but that's just nuts.  With his great play he should now be in the mid-teens....

More importantly, did you watch any of it?  I flipped a few times during commercials, but it had zero energy, and I'm not the only one that noticed.  Shack goes delightfully medieval on the Tour:

With the Jacksonville Jaguars in the AFC Championship game, even PGA Tour VP'swho've jumped on the Jags bandwagon could not possibly have been watching the 

Not Kidding: It's the Goo Goo Dolls...

CareerBuilder Challenge final round. Not even with a young star and now World No. 2 in Jon Rahm atop the leaderboard. 

And yet here we were again, with PGA Tour golf on the west coast, in front of light crowds, somehow trying to go up against America's beloved playoff football.

In a world when we know the time NFL playoff game dates and times for months, and we know that their audiences will be massive, golf still thinks it can put up a fight. We're that dumb Chihuahua barking at a head-tilting Rottweiler, only we're not nearly as loud, entertaining or effective. 

No sports fan in their right mind watched the Careerbuilder Challenge live when Tom Bradyand the Patriots were taking on the entertaining upstart Jaguars. That is not the fault of any player involved. This is a scheduling snafu repeated for the umpteenth year-in-a-row. 

So to recap: the PGA Tour returned from Hawaii and had the boys tee up Thursday in La Quinta instead of waiting a day, starting on Friday and finishing on Monday in east coast prime time. Remember, the CareerBuilder is a Golf Channel hosted event, meaning there is programming flexibility. 

Also recall that the CareerBuilder is played in a retirement community, with a pro-am format that would actually welcome taking up both weekend days for the pro-am players instead of another weekday. 

Last point before I stop beating this too hard: the next PGA Tour stop is in San Diego, less than three hours by car and an easy turnaround for players who make the cut. Yes, they'd only have two days to regroup for the Farmers Insurance Open but bruised linebackers, these are not. They are pro golfers whose sponsors deserve to have their sponsorship positioned in the best way possible. That is currently not the case with the CareerBuilder Challenge. 

Unless...the Goo Goo Dolls are playing the 18th hole...

He's right on pretty much everything, though I'm not sure it matters....  I consider it good scheduling, hiding one of their weakest links against the toughest Sunday of the NFL.  And Torrey thereby gets the week with no pigskins in play....

You want a measure of how bad it was?   The Tour Confidential panel couldn't be bothered..... 

The Euro Beat -  Interesting week in the desert for sure:

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Tommy Fleetwood successfully defended his Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship title on Sunday after a sensational back nine to

clinch the win. 

The 27-year-old Englishman, who celebrated his birthday on Friday, started the final round two shots behind overnight leaders Ross Fisher and Thomas Pieters, and an indifferent front nine saw him make the turn five shots behind Fisher as gusty winds hit the National course of Abu Dhabi Golf Club 

But Fleetwood birdied the 10th, 12th, 13th, 15th, 16th and 18th holes for a seven-under par 65 round to finish on 22-under 267.

And this was perhaps the more important bit:

McIlroy finished inside the top-five once again — his eighth top-five in nine Abu Dhabi starts — but he was happy with the result this time. 

"It just felt great to get another tournament under my belt. It's a great start to the year. I have no complaints. My body held up really well. My game was probably better than I expected it to be. So I'm really happy with the week," said McIlroy who started well with two birdies in his first four holes, but could not get going on the back nine.

Perhaps.  And I'll just note that Sergio also won in Singapore, though against a very weak field.  That TC panel did have time for a query on Rors:

Wood: No, I think it's a great sign. After taking a good amount of time off, especially after a year he wasn't pleased with, there had to be a few questions he wanted to answer for himself, not for media or the public. Will the changes I made feel comfortable when I'm playing for real? Did the rest do me good mentally and emotionally? Did this short-term plan accomplish what I wanted it to accomplish heading into 2018? I'd say the answer is yes to all these questions. 

Shipnuck: Big picture, it's definitely progress. But I couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed — Rory has been teasing us for years, and it would have been a macho statement to kick off the year with a win. Yet on Sunday he played his most indifferent round of the week and got blown off the course by Tommy Fleetwood.

I feel strongly both ways....  It's a necessary step, but hardly sufficient....

The Euros had quite the week...  Not just the wins, but guys like Rory and Pieters showing some form.  Though they may be getting a tad cocky, as per this from Geoff's Instagram aggregation:

As long as that guy on the far left isn't on their team, we should be OK....

Torrey, Torrey, Torrey -  I'm flying back to Utah on Thursday.  I know, what was I thinking?

I'm sure you guessed as to what bumped the Hope from the TC panel:

1. Here we go again. Tiger Woods returns at this week's Farmers Insurance Open, which is also the site of his most recent PGA Tour start, when he missed the cut

there a year ago. How important is Tiger's performance at Torrey Pines (he's also playing in three weeks at the Genesis Open) in the grand scheme of this comeback?

John Wood, caddie for Matt Kuchar: It's important, but I have to believe he's viewing it as a stepping stone rather than a final destination. Would he like to play well, feel healthy, get in the hunt? Absolutely. But if he doesn't, I think he'll have a good idea where he is on Monday. To my eye he looked fantastic in the Bahamas. Healthy and swinging athletically, happy and confident. The interesting thing to me will be the early morning start times. Heat and humidity tend to be a great way to play with any injury that needs testing. Those La Jolla mornings can be quite cool and foggy, and it takes some time to get the gears moving and stay moving like you'd like them to. I'm quite sure Tiger has planned for this, though. He's worked too hard to get back to this point to leave any stone unturned.

Alan Shipnuck: It's important. At this point, every start is, because Tiger needs to build confidence and momentum after years of accumulating scar tissue. And unlike the cupcake course he played in the Bahamas, Torrey is big and brawny and will require Tiger to play big-boy golf. I'm quite curious to see how he does.

Progress.... Make the cut and no short-game yips.... You'll have guessed the next question:

2. Prediction time! Where will Tiger finish, and will we look back at his play at the Farmers and feel better, worse or the same regarding his prospects compared to how we felt after his performance at the Hero World Challenge in December?

Wood: Top 20, challenging for a top 10, with a couple of spurts on Saturday where he gets onto the leaderboard and people start to go, "Hmmmmmm, this is interesting!" 

Shipnuck: I think he'll make the cut and that alone constitutes progress. 

Bamberger: I'm with Alan. If he plays four rounds, that's good. 

Sens: I think he'll be right along the cut line. If I had to wager, I'd say he falls short. But afterwards, I suspect there will have been enough good shots for the Tiger optimists to see promise, and a enough squirrelly ones to give the skeptics cause for further doubt. Paul Simon had it right: a man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.

As I've noted often, I'll be interested in how he handles the early tee-time on Thursday of Friday.  The obvious thing to note is that slow progress will be easier to manage than if he shoots up the leader board early in the week.  I also won't be surprised if, like Rory, Sunday is a step back....  It's a long week if you haven't been out there...

Sean Zak, in taking the under, is guessing that it won't be such a long week:

Zak: I predict Tiger will miss the cut, and we will thereby feel a little worse about his comeback. Sure, pessimism is no fun and yes, he's an underdog here, but the course difficulty should recalibrate us all a bit.

If it does, then I'm looking forward to their crystal ball for Riviera, a place where Peak Tiger had no success.

Here's one more quasi-interesting note about the BIg Cat:

Tiger Woods has been a creature of habit for most of his career, but The Forecaddie hears that the 14-time major winner has made one change to his routine inspired by another legend who has battled a balky back.

The Man Out Front hears Woods told folks at the Floridian that he got the idea after chatting with Fred Couples, who is known for his driver-first warmup before rounds. Couples has been plagued with back issues for 25 years.

“Think about it. Short irons into the turf are the worst thing for Freddie,“ says a fellow PGA Tour Champions player and friend of the ’92 Masters winner. “I’ve seen Freddie with six balls teed up in a row and he hits them with driver. He has his caddie tee them up.”

“It’s a longer swing. It loosens everything up,” says one teacher, explaining the theory behind Tiger’s change.

 That's mostly interesting to me because of how set in his ways Tiger is....

Jay's Edifice Complex - In the private sector, the rule of thumb is that you sell anytime you hear of a company building a Taj Mahal-type headquarters, the logic being that they've taken the eye off their knitting.

So, what to make of this:

Like any sport, golf is a game in a state of constant evolution. Not only have the clubs

and wedges of old become relics of a bygone era, but many modern golfers have a physical appearance more akin to lean wrestlers. It would make sense, then, that the sport’s main organizer for professional tournaments, the PGA Tour, should also shed its old skin by finding a new home. Which is exactly what will be happening come 2020. 

It was announced today that the PGA Tour will be moving into a brand new headquarters designed by Foster + Partners, among the most recognizable firms in the world. Considering the headquarters of a few other major sports governing bodies (such as FIFA's Tilla Theus–designed HQ in Zurich and the NFL's nondescript midtown Manhattan location), the fact that the PGA is working with such an esteemed firm as Foster + Partners is exceptional. A quick glance at its oeuvre tells the story: Apple's new campus, the renovation to Wembley Stadium, London's City Hall, and 30 St Mary Axe, just to name a few.

Let's see.... you're compared to FIFA, a criminal syndicate passing itself off as a sports organization, is that a good thing?  As for the NFL?  Well, it's not the best of times, is it?

But of greatest importance, does the building remind you of anything?

Anyone?  Bueller?

OK, I recommend making sure that there no liquids in your vicinity....

The new, 187,000-square-foot structure will feature a clean, minimalist aesthetic, which makes the reflection off the surrounding natural lake all the more powerful, as it echoes the iconic Island Green 17th hole at THE PLAYERS Stadium Course (an instantly recognizable setting for any golf lover). Narrow pillars support an overlay, which will allow employees to enjoy the outdoors even during inclement weather.

Thud!  OK, they both have water, but so do the other seventeen holes at Sawgrass.....

Floor-to-ceiling windows spread across each of the three floors in the building, not only allowing an ample amount of natural light into the building, but also blurring the distinction between indoors and out. "Inspired by the lush greenery of TPC Sawgrass and the beautiful Floridian light, the new PGA TOUR headquarters is designed as an extension of its surrounding landscape," said Nigel Dancey, head of studio at Foster + Partners. The interior of the new headquarters will feature an open layout, which promotes a non-hierarchical identity, as well as ample space for informal group collaborations.

Yes, because the PGA Tour just screams non-hierarchical identity.  Just ask any of the 114 Executive Vice-Presidents....

Thinks I Liked This Week - Mid-week, Alan Shipnuck had a mini-rant that proved prescient:

Nothing more boring and tedious than playing the SAME HOLE for a tiebreaker, and having to wait for them to return to the tee. What idea do you have to make it more agile and entertaining? - @Fernarentes 

I understand making 18 on any course the first playoff hole, because the fans and tournament support staff are already gathered there for the end of regulation play. But quite obviously you should not play it again until at least another three or four holes have been utilized. Those fans have legs, and they can get themselves to some other holes.

Spot on, as in their four-hole play-off, we saw Rahm and Landry play the 18th an estimated three times....  Strike that, we didn't actually see it, because the dreamy Tom Brady was coming back against the Jaguars....

I also liked this one, though you have to bu up on the fact that Alan has never had an ace:

#AskAlan This time the missile attack warning is real and you have two hours before kingdom come. You're given an unlimited supply of balls and can go to any par-3 in the world to score your ace. Where do you go? - @laz_versalle 

Well, I'm lucky that I have some of the very best options about five minutes from where I live. The 16th at Cypress Point is tempting because of its sheer grandeur, but it's hard to even hit that green with a 3-wood, let alone give one a chance to go in. The 11th at MPCC's Shore Course might be the most artistically beautiful par-3 in the world, but the hard right-to-left wind makes it a tough shot. Ditto the 14th on MPCC Dunes, which is Cypress-like, demanding a full-blooded carry of the ocean, albeit with a mid-iron. 

So, I'm gonna go with #7 at Pebble Beach. Over the years I've already hit a handful of shots relatively stiff on that hole by feathering a wedge, and the steep downhill makes for a perfect view to watch the ball drop. There will also be panoramic vistas of the mushroom clouds.

There's nothing especially wrong with that choice, it's just awfully commercial..... I might have been tempted to go with the 15th at Cypress, equally special but just a chipped short iron:

And for those keeping their own scorecard, that is back-to-back Par-3's.... and on the front nine there are back-to-back Par-5's.  I've always had a thing for eccentric routings.

Don't miss Golf Digest editor Jerry Tarde's love letter to the caddies at Cabot Links/Cliffs or, as he calls it, Briga-Dune:

This past summer my wife and I packed up the SUV and drove 939 miles from our home in Connecticut through Maine and New Brunswick to Cape Breton in Nova Scotia to

play a couple of courses owned by Mike Keiser and his Canadian partner, Ben Cowan-Dewar. It was my third visit, Beth's first, to Cabot Links resort, or what they should have called Brigadoon. 

Keiser is famous for his Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon: He gives Americans a wee dram of Scotland without crossing the ocean. It's hard to believe, but Cabot Cliffs and Cabot Links are even better in my book—they rank ninth and 43rd among Golf Digest's World 100 Greatest Golf Courses. I should add that Keiser churns out masterpieces at a Picasso pace because he has more projects going in Wisconsin, Oregon, Scotland and California, but if I had to pick one spot anywhere to spend a summer, it would be in this old coal-mining town called Inverness on a beach fronting the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Here's the gist of it, with another stunning image:

The proof is in the four caddies who carried my bag over four rounds there: a Scottish farmer, a junior high school principal, a practicing attorney and a renowned pediatric surgeon. Each made their way from far and wide to live or summer in Inverness so they could caddie and play the Cabot courses.

That's just a bit, a wee dram if you will, of what makes Scotland so delightful.... And that image I promised:

I must get there....

In tackling Phil last week, I missed this amusing bit from Jon Rahm:

"I have a good time when I play practice rounds with him because we joke around

together a lot," Rahm said. "And for me it's fun to hear, now that he's with Tim [Mickelson], and we are all really close. It, to me, is really fun to hear how they talk to each other, because Tim being my coach at ASU, I don't need much. OK, it's like 120, this shot, right.

“And you have Phil, it's like, oh, this shot, the moisture, this going on, this is like one mile an hour wind sideways, it's going to affect it one yard. This green is soft, this trajectory. They're thinking and I'm like, I'm lost. I'm like, God, if I do that thought process, I could not hit the golf shot. And it's funny, he gets to the green and then it's the same thing. He's very detail oriented. He gets there and I'm like, oh, it's a foot right. And he goes, OK, he reads the green, like, oh, it's 1.8 degrees of slope here and this and that. And I'm there listening and I'm like, man, I hope we're never paired together for anything because I can't think like this."

How about a Ryder Cup singles match?   

Back to Alan's mailbag:

The golf world is not in a bubble, so how long before the first #MeToo in pro or college golf? - Eric (@GolfTrotterQc)

Oh, it's coming, and soon. I've already heard of a couple reporters who are running down leads, and egregious tales abound. It's not any consolation but golf will not be alone, as the power structures of every major professional sport are male-dominated. Brace yourself.

I've been reliably informed that golf is a game played by gentlemen.....   Of course we're not immune from the real world, but I'd be surprised if we find anything Weinstein-easque.  

A golf course in Michigan has applied to put 37 of its 95 acres under medical marijuana cultivation. Will growing weed help grow the game, or will it just cause slower, mellower play? #AskAlan - Dave (@CountDownDave) 

This is certainly a boon to the caddie industry. But all joking aside, marijuana cultivation is going to become such a huge and profitable industry across the country I can imagine it will accelerate golf course closings. Already we've seen a trend of courses folding because of rising water costs and greater demand for land for new residential developments. If you owned 100 irrigated acres on which a barely-profitable daily fee course sits and some latter-day Spicoli offers you a fortune to grow weed, well, that's an easy choice for a lot of people.

Amusing, but the pressures on golf will not be significantly impacted by increasing legalization of pot.  But the slow play issues trouble me...

Lastly, no love for Tiger from Vegas:

According to BetDSI, oddsmakers do not envision Tiger playing on the weekend at Torrey Pines, bestowing Woods with +100 odds to make it to Saturday (against -140 of missing the cut).

Of course, these are the same guys setting this line:

The Philadelphia Eagles are the biggest Super Bowl underdogs since 2009. 

The Westgate SuperBook in Las Vegas on Sunday installed the Eagles as 5.5-point underdogs to the New England Patriots for Super Bowl LII. 

Other sportsbooks went higher. The Wynn opened at New England minus-6.5, and Caesars Palace and Station Casinos each made the Patriots minus-6.

I get the Belichick/Brady factor, especially with two weeks to prepare, but Philly destroyed the best defense in the game.... 

Your Friday Frisson

Back in the saddle at Unplayable Lies World HQ, so what would you like to discuss?  OK, well perhaps in a minute....

Upon Further Review - For a brief shining moment, DJ stood firm against the forces of evil.... But then he decided he really likes 433-yard Par-3's:

"It's not like we are dominating golf courses," Johnson said. "When was the last time you saw someone make the game too easy? I don't really understand what all the debate is about because it doesn't matter how far it goes; it is about getting it in the hole."

That last bit is true, but about the former... You, Sir, never hit more than a 6-iron into a Par-4 last season, so that kinda sorta sounds like, you know, dominating golf courses....

This was DJ a mere week ago:

"I don't mind seeing every other professional sport, they play with one ball. All the pros play with the same ball," Johnson said. "In baseball, the guys that are bigger and

stronger, they can hit a baseball a lot further than the smaller guys. ... I think there should be some kind of an advantage for guys who work on hitting it far and getting that speed that's needed, so having a ball, like the same ball that everyone plays, there's going to be, you're going to have more of an advantage."

And in this latest round of comments, he reiterated that point:

If the ball is limited then it is going to limit everyone," he said. "I'm still going to hit it that much further than I guess the average Tour player."

Shack astutely picked up this relevant comment from Claude Harmon, DJ's swing coach:

I'VE WATCHED DUSTIN JOHNSON spend three hours a day in the gym, seven days a week. When he's out on tour, there are no days off. I've watched him pay the price. To want to roll back equipment and put him and guys like him in a box, so they're confined to old benchmarks, drives me nuts. Is there another sport as determined to go backward as golf? Dustin is almost a physical freak to begin with, 6-4 and unbelievably strong and coordinated. When he hits a 9-iron 185, the TV commentators usually react with a laugh and an incredulous tone, as if it's the equipment more than the unbelievable clubhead speed and technical precision. It's just wrong.

Just say no to the crazy!  It's alarmingly misguided for someone so knowledgeable....

Nothing in the arguments for bifurcation (or rolling back the ball, if you will), would reduce or eliminate DJ's distance advantage, as he himself acknowledges in the excerpts above.  DJ himself skirts the issue with the comparison to other sports, and to me baseball is the best example....  Over time, the game has taken steps to control the balance between hitting and pitching, such as reducing the height of the pitching mound after a mini-dead ball era in the 1960's.

More to the point, Claude is arguing against his client's interests.  The modern golf ball hurts DJ, as opposed to helping him.  He's the best ball-striker in the modern game, not only long but incredibly straight, but the advantages of superior ball-striking have been mitigated by the longer, lower-spinning golf ball...

As long as we've led with the freak of nature, we have this from Alan Shipnuck's weekly mailbag:

Is Dustin Johnson actually underrated? Among “active" players he is tied for fourth (with Furyk) with 17 PGA Tour W's, behind only Tiger, Phil and Ernie. - Gus (@CCGabriel) 

I agree with your premise that we have taken for granted Johnson's sustained excellence. Twenty PGA Tour victories pretty much guarantees induction into the Hall of Fame, and the way DJ is going he seems likely to hit that number this year. So we can safely call Dustin a great player. But he has the tools to be transcendent; whether he will get there will be determined by how many more major championships he picks off in the next decade or so.

 Not so much, methinks.  I think the word they're looking for is underachiever, which he was at least until 2016.  I'll concede that he seems to have settled down in the loving embrace of Clan Gretzky, complicated only by the freak injury at The Masters last year.  

Rory, Ready For His Close-Up - You've no doubt heard the building buzz, such as this:

"I'd love to win again, and I don't think there's any better feeling than winning a golf

tournament. But I don't feel like it's that far away. I've practiced and I've played and I've shot some really good scores over the past few weeks, but obviously it's different doing that to being out here on Thursday and really having a card in your hand. 

"But from everything that I've seen in practice and playing over the past few weeks, there's no reason to think that it's not that far away. 

After a rib injury and heart condition slowed him down in 2017, McIlroy is slated to play eight events preceeding this year's Masters — a heavy load for the Northern Irishman.

 I get that he's missed it while on the DL, but I'm still processing that bizarre caddie decision.....

Back to Alan's Twitter feed, where he was asked this relevant question:

I had a bet with a mate today that Rory McIlroy would get back to world number one within the next five years. Would you take a piece of my bet or be on the other side ? #askalan - @tigerpencil 

The math is not on your side, or Rory's. Right now there is a bigger gap between Dustin (11.23 average points per start) and Rory (5.35) than there is Rory and the 1,925th ranked player in the world, Fred Funk (.0004). First, McIlroy has to stay healthy after three injury-marred seasons, and he has to fix his putting. Even if both of these things happen, he will have to play at an exceptionally high level for a very long time.

Even at his best, Rory tended to have bursts of spellbinding golf followed by  inexplicable lulls. A newlywed who's turning 29 in a few months, he's likely to have a kid or two over the next five years, and how much is he going to want to grind at that point? I think Rory will continue to consolidate his focus around the majors, and if he picks off a couple in rapid succession that could propel him back to number one. Failing that, I don't think the week-in-week-out results will get him there.

Alan makes a good point about his personal life, though that seems more manageable these days....

as well as out of our field of expertise.

 As is the injury thing, though stress injuries for a guy that has bulked up that way are quite troubling...  But in terms of his game, if only it were just the putting.  But his wedge play and scrambling are way below par out there.  Let's see what he brings to the table, but I won't take him seriously until he puts a strong pro on the luggage.

That said, he makes some fair points about The Ryder Cup:

"Look, the Americans are very strong, and I think for the first time in a long time, they have a real cohesion. All the younger guys get along great. Jordan, J.T., Rickie, Brooks,

DJ, Patrick Reed, Daniel Berger, they all get on really, really well. There's a real core group of players there, young players, that will be around for a long time. So they are going to be very strong.

But if you look at Hazeltine last time and how they set that golf course up: Big wide fairways, no enough, pins in the middle of greens; it wasn't set up for the way the Europeans like to play. I think Paris will be a completely different kettle of fish, so I think it will be so different.

So I'm confident. I obviously need to make the team first, but everything being all well and good, I'll be on that team and I feel like we'll have a really good chance.

A bit early for that, no?

 Is Phil Still Phil? - We've dealt with two of the show ponies, shall we turn our focus to Lefty?  Shane Ryan has him on the couch, it seems:

I have a theory that Phil’s fixation on a logical worldview is self-administered bunkum.

It’s snake oil that he sells to himself. In real life, Phil Mickelson rides the currents of chaos. At the heart of his existence is not symmetry or structure, but pure reckless anarchy played out on the tenuous foundation of a hunch, and it’s evident to anyone who has watched him play golf for more than two minutes. 

(I’ve read before that he has a gambler’s soul, but that’s a euphemism. Phil is a literal gambler. Yes, he’s a metaphorical one on the golf course, but he’s an actual gambler in real life, so saying he has a gambler’s soul is a little like saying a Galapagos turtle has a Galapagos turtle’s soul.) 

Phil surfs the choppy waves of entropy, and trusts his fate to the stars more than any athlete I’ve ever seen. So how else to read his dogmatic insistence on the clear explanation, the sensible conclusion, except as a desire to impose order on a life whose rhythms depend on quantum bursts of intuition? I think he knows deep down that chaos is his personal truth, but he retains enough sanity to want to deny it, to live in a world governed by reason, to cast himself as a conservative rather than a radical.

I'm sorry, why did we go to the Galapagos?  Is that where we find those choppy waves of entropy?

It's worth reading, but is a tad excessive most of the time....  I'll show some self-control and not excerpt the part where he credits Phil for saving the Ryder Cup....This Mike Bamberger effort is a bit more grounded:

Which brings us to Phil. Phil Mickelson, now 47. He's a property-owner, an investor and a regular in the California desert. He played in The Hope when Hope was still around

and starting on Thursday he'll play in its successor, as the so-called tournament ambassador. It will be his first tournament in the U.S. since early October, when he finished in a tie for third in the Safeway Open, in Napa. If the Tour has an Arnold Palmer today, it is Phil. Long careers, flashy shots and shoes, patient signers, scores of wins, experts in the high arts of fan appreciation and TV readiness, relentless optimism. So here it comes, the old Hope, the 560th event of Mickelson's wildly entertaining career. He looks tanned, rested and ready, big and strong but also trim and flexible.

 Shack has this on Phil and his new BFF:

If Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal can still win majors, why can’t Tiger Woods or Phil

Mickelson? 

Practically ancient in the world of tennis, legends Federer and Nadal reasserted themselves in 2017. And that’s a sport where no one is supposed to win majors in their thirties. 

With both Woods and Mickelson seemingly healthy, 2018 will tell us if modern science, coupled with status and experience, will present us with fortysomethings battling twentysomethings for major glory. 

Golf has typically honored late-career runs by those of a certain vintage, but not since Hale Irwin at Medinah in 1990 have we seen a genuinely resurgent late-career win. That suggests the golf gods have decreed this is a young man’s (and young woman’s) game. Yet watching Woods lash away in December’s Hero World Challenge with speed, torque and a carefree aggressiveness we haven’t seen from him in years, there is an inclination to think time hasn’t completely run out on the 42-year-old who ushered in today’s power-friendly playing style.

They're two very different sets of circumstances, but it's the time of year when anything seems possible.

On the other hand, how about we watch them in their early starts and see where their games might be.  In particular, I'm a bit fixated on seeing Tiger handle that early morning tee time in San Diego, as well as how his chipping holds up with a scorecard in his pocket.

As for Lefty, I don't think anything matters until Augusta....

I'm going to get on with my day, and perhaps I might hit the keyboard over the weekend.  Might...

Midweek Musings

Sorry about yesterday, as I was called upon to play investment banker again....  I'll make it up to you for sure.

What He Said - I exercised my blogger's veto on this item, in which the British public deemed golf the most boring of sports to watch.  I have no qualms, as that which non-golfers think of our game is pretty predictable.

Shack frames his response along the lines of considering the source:

1616 members of the British public were asked to vote on the most exciting and boring sports to watch and even though it's a country that can be enthralled by a three-day cricket match, golf and American football got the most votes.

Ah yes, cricket..... the all-purpose response to any diss from the British Empire.  But the point of all this is Derek Lawrenson's spirited defense of our game:

 First, the set-up:

But, if we're being really honest here, we ought to admit we can see where the public are coming from. Golf, essentially, is a boring sport. It's designed to be boring. It takes for

ever to play — at least in a world where so many people wile away their time composing thoughts in 140 characters — with a set of rules so complex they're beyond all but the most avid bores. 

How can it compete for an instant fix alongside a 100 metres race, where the only requirement asked of a viewer is to keep your gaze on a screen for a shade under 10 seconds? Or a tennis match, where the rules are so simple and the demands so easy on the eye?

I guess Derek hasn't heard the exciting news that Twitter is up to 280 characters.... But here's the crux of his case:

The truth of the matter, though, is that golf will never score highly in such polls. It really isn't for everyone. It's like reading a book. It's time-consuming and requires serious levels of concentration but, oh, what a world awaits if you knuckle down. 

That's why people who do love golf or reading books or watching cricket tend to be such devotees. 

If you think golf's boring, I wouldn't seek to convince you otherwise. I get it.

However, just as hardback book sales refuse to dip, there will remain enough of us with an appetite for sports that fall back on the old adage: 'The more you put into it, the more you get out of it.'

What's a book, I hear the kids asking....

You know who else likes our little game?

You may know the name T Bone Burnett. You may not. (He's Joseph Henry Burnett III 

Gotta love the bucket hat.

on his birth certificate, issued 70 years ago. He was born Jan. 14, 1948.) T Bone is the perfect example of a secret legend. He has backed Bob Dylan and produced Elton John. He has won 13 Grammys (thanks in part to his work on the soundtracks to "Walk the Line," "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" and "The Hunger Games") and an Oscar for "Crazy Heart." (He reveres Johnny Cash and counts Jeff Bridges as a friend.) When I asked T Bone if he was in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, he said, "God, no." In recent months, he's been assembling a band, securing a bus, planning a tour — and hitting balls. Regarding his round-number birthday, T Bone said, "Seventy feels like 30, without the anxiety. If I can make a few putts, I look forward to shooting my age one of these days."

He and Mike Bamberger have been e-mail friends for some time, and there's much to amuse in these excerpts.   Here's a taste:

I once told the musician T Bone Burnett that one of the things I like most about golf is how it fosters friendships. This was by email. In response, T Bone wrote, "That is, of course, true, but you could say the same thing about Renaissance Faires or Civil War reenactments. Or anything, really. What I love most about golf is the solitude of it. You initiate every action — alone."

T-Bone is a Fort Worth boy, which should connote reverence for Hogan and Jenkins, and here's the latter on our subject:

While I was at the Masters a few years ago, T Bone wrote, "Please give my best to the venerable Mr. Jenkins. I hope to meet him again someday. We first and last met when I was about eight, when he came over to our house to interview my dad who had given a friend from Arkansas a pig wearing an Arkansas jacket before the TCU-Arkansas football game. We have a great old mutual friend, Vance Minter. Vance is Magoo, in the Jenkins books. Vance and I have sat up many a night discussing the close parallels between B.J. Grooves and R.R. Raskolnikov. I'm pulling for Spieth."

I assume that anyone still reading knows of Bobby Joe Grooves, but can anyone identify Raskolnikov with resorting to Google?  I could, but then I've got that degree in Russian Literature that's proven so useful.....

Read it all, if you've a any sense.... 

Insufficiently Corrupt -  Will Gray with bizarre and troubling news:

Jordan Spieth may still be relatively young, but he has gained the confidence of some of the PGA Tour's most seasoned voices. 

Spieth is one of two players selected by the current player directors of the Tour's Policy Board to run for Chairman of the Player Advisory Council (PAC). Spieth will face Billy Hurley III in an election that will end Feb. 13, with the leading vote-getter replacing Davis Love III next year on the Policy Board for a three-year term through 2021.

He's been out there about an hour-and-a-half..... Shack with the better rebuttal:

The PGA Tour's Player Advisory Council and Policy Board are about as first world as it gets in terms of debate serious life questions, but as Will Gray notes at GolfChannel.com, Jordan Spieth has been selected by current PAC members to face Billy Hurley for a chance to sit on the PGA Tour Policy Board.

In the best interests of the game, players please vote for Mr. Hurley. Golf needs its superstars eating, sleeping, practicing and doing everything but sitting in meetings voting on executive compensation. Besides, if Jordan needs anything from Policy Board member Randall Stephenson, he knows where to find the AT&T CEO.

Concentrate on your game, son.....  especially those putts withing five feet.

Coul, Not Coul -  We recently blogged the concerns of Todd Warnock, Mike Keiser's partner, about resistance to the development of the proposed Coul Links in the Scottish Highlands.  Let me acknowledge that I'm in no way qualified to address the environmental concerns, but this item is so over-the-top that it inclines one to be dismissive.

As far as we know, Botanophila fonsecai exists in only one place in the world: a roughly six-mile strip of coastline, adjacent to Dornoch and the nearby village of Embo. Its entire world is estimated to be less than a single square mile; its population size is unknown.

Hmmmm... preservation of a rare species sounds serious.  Of course, there is this from later in the piece:

There are more than 110,000 fly species in the world and more than 7,000 in the UK alone. Botanophila fonsecai was discovered in the 1960s by a fly expert called Evelyn

Cecil Muschamp d’Assis Fonseca. He visited the area during the summer, when the flies break out of their pupae buried in the ground, eager to buzz off and find a mate. A friend and fellow bug enthusiast, Michael Ackland, named the fly after Fonseca 30 years later. 

It is admittedly almost impossible to tell a Fonseca’s seed fly apart from the many other seed fly species, but an expert can make the identification by examining the genitalia under a microscope. Craig Macadam at Buglife says that, to the untrained eye, the distinguishing features are barely visible. But to an entomologist, the exact placement of tiny hairs and the subtly different shapes of the reproductive organs are a sure-fire way to tell one species apart from another. 

Though flies may seem insignificant, Macadam points out that they are important workhorses in many ecosystems. Like bees, some help to pollinate plants. Others control the populations of certain invertebrates by feeding on them. In turn, flies themselves generally provide an important source of food for birds, bats, and amphibians.

I'll leave that detailed examination of the genitalia to the experts, as I'm a happily married man.

Part I of the game reveals itself....  This fly can only be found on a six-mile stretch of beach, but it plays an outsized role in our entire ecosystem.  We're all gonna die!

I'll elide Part II, which is a conventional story of a woman that retired to Embo because it was deserted...  There's such a person in every development project.

Part III is that about which Todd Warnock expressed concern, that the Scots are p in arms because of.....wait for it....Trump!  And just because he's paranoid, it doesn't mean that they're not out to get him.  Apparently, Mike Kaiser has legally changed his first name to "Billionaire":

American billionaire Mike Keiser has enough capital to plant a golf course pretty much anywhere in the world. He made his fortune in the greeting cards business, selling cards made from recycled paper back in the 1970s, when that was a “trendy” thing to do. The firm he co-founded, Recycled Paper Greetings, still exists today.

That last bit sounds ominous....

Trump’s Menie course, southeast of Sutherland, has been a controversial project in Scotland. It was recently in the news again because of habitat loss that appears to have resulted from its construction. Keiser and the other developers are keen to discourage comparisons with Trump and his golf business, but for some Scots it’s impossible not to see one in the light of the other. Indeed, Fortune once described Mike Keiser as the president’s “biggest rival” in the golf business.

Yeah..... Keiser and Trump are rivals in the golf business in the same way that WalMart competes with Nordstrom or Saks.

Look, I don't pretend to be in a position to mediate the competing claims, but this smacks of a hit job.  Mike Keiser has a well-earned reputation for building successful and environmentally-conscious projects.  If he can make to Commissars of the People's Republic of Oregon happy, he can do the same for the nice folks in Embo.

The obvious problem with environmentalists is that they don't want anything built ever by anybody.   But Scotland is a very poor country, and the Highlands is among the poorest regions.  I don't deign to tell them what they should do, but if a course is going to be built, I'd like Keiser to get the shot.

Still Needing That Teenager - Shack's got a wonderful new feature in which he aggregates his favorite Instagram posts of the day.  My problem is that I still don't know how to embed such posts in this blog....

Here's one from his latest post, but can anyone identify it:

That's the famed Himalayas course of the St. Andrews Ladies Putting Club in late afternoon light.  One should take a quick tour of it before playing The Old Course.

And this topical shot in homage to this week's Tour event:

And this little witticism from Geoff:

A fun old image of Arnold Palmer and Bob Hope in the good ole days of the Careerbuilder Challenge. You know Palmer won five Careerbuilders, right?

I'm old enough t remember when The Hope was The Hope..... 

And this aerial view of the seventh green at Pebble:

Good stuff, but I really want to learn how to embed the posts, because many are worthwhile videos....

I'm going to leave you nice folks here.... Tomorrow is a travel day, so check back on Friday.

Weekend Wrap

Strange days here in the Wasatch Range....  I played nine hole yesterday with a ski buddy, then came home and poured through my tapes of the football games....  Then turned to Golf Channel to find out the results from the Sony.  I caught the playoff on the third hole, but WTF!

Workers of the World Unite - You have nothing to lose but your chains...  Shack seems to have the best wrap-up:

No one feels good about a labor dispute and we certainly didn't need to be caught in the middle of negotiations between Golf Channel and the union representing the channel's technicians. 

Fan feedback was obviously not kind. 

Mercifully, the NFL put on two thrilling playoff games, so thanks to PGA Tour scheduling a final round against the second game, few saw much of the broadcast. And when they checked in, there was no way of knowing what was going on without checking golf website.

The taxing day for all involved, which started with a rough Web.com Tour telecast, followed by a shockingly competent Diamond Resorts Invitational, was not helped by going deep in sudden death for the Sony. Insiders say buses took a huge haul of staffers down to the Diamond Resort outside Orlando to fill in for the striking workers, while the Sony Open was less fortunate. In Orlando, George Savaricus, Bill Kratzert and Jim Gallagher Jr. handled five hours of broadcast commentary, while the pictures were presented from on-site by a few non-striking technicians and even on-course commentator Jerry Foltz.

 It was merely a cross-training opportunity.

Of course that was the second technical glitch of the week.... This was how they awoke Saturday morning:

OK, I accept that it wasn't a drill....  But what was it?  That it was caused by a simple keystroke error seems.....well, fanciful.

I'm reliably informed that Patton "Streetcar Named" Kizzire won the playoff on the hole immediately following my turning of the TV....  But consider it a preview of golf after the zombie apocalypse....

Today in Counterfactuals - Zach Johnson started this with reasonably sensible comments about the big cat:

Johnson remembers what it was like when the entire Tour took a joint beating from

Woods for more than a decade. It was a rare era for a sport often dominated by a few big names at a time (think Nicklaus/Palmer/Player or Norman/Ballesteros/Couples). Johnson remembers, sure, but he also knows none of the current crop of phenoms on Tour do, and he'd like them all to get a feel for it in person.

"I'd love to have these young guys that are dominating the game have a piece, just one year of what we experienced."

It's not quite throwing down the gauntlet, but as a wise man once noted, it is what it is.  Alas, the Tour Confidential panel led with this silly query:

1. Zach Johnson said last week that he'd "love to have these young guys that are dominating the game have a piece, just one year of what we experienced" when it comes to facing a vintage Tiger Woods. When you consider the wealth of talent at the top of the game today, would peak Tiger be as dominant in 2018 as he was in his prime?

This seemed one of the more sensible comments:

Josh Sens: Ah, the old grill room hypothetical. Fun to ponder. Impossible to know. I believe there's no way he could dominate as thoroughly with the depth and breadth of talent on Tour today, a new generation and a new breed of athlete that, of course, Tiger helped inspire. It's tempting to romanticize the past (golf is especially good at that) but reality suggests that any player from any bygone era (Palmer, Nicklaus, Faldo, you name them) would have a much tougher time winning today. I suspect Ben Hogan in the flesh would be hard pressed to win a major in this modern era, and the outrage that comment will inspire in some quarters just further underscores my point about the romantic stuff.

And here we're only scanning a mere twenty years....  But the old guard will protect its memories:

Michael Bamberger: knowable! Tiger, could he play as he once did, would dominate now as he did then. There has likely never been a putter even close to Tiger, circa 2000. He drove the ball better than Johnson, he hit irons better than Sergio, he was mentally tougher than anybody since Hogan with the exception of Nicklaus. 

Sean Zak: Yes. In fact, he might even be more impressive. As Josh says, it's a hypothetical, and in this case, peak Tiger would still be the best player in the game above JT, Spieth, DJ and Rory or Rahm by a long shot. When "peak Tiger" wouldn't play, sure, they'd pick up victories, and I think that might spur on "peak Tiger" to play even more events. It's fun to think about, especially a "peak Tiger" playoff vs. driver-wielding DJ.

My own take is somewhere in between.  I do think Tiger caught a soft spot in terms of the competition when he first came on Tour....  More importantly, the technology continues to evolve in ways that work against the great ball-strikers.  Think, for instance of DJ using his Trackman to dial in wedge distances....  All this tech makes the game easier and has to disproportionately hurt those with the higher level of talent.

Really, I'm Not Bitter -  Regular readers might remember that I threw my hat into the ring to become a Golf Digest course rater a while back, and after a nice e-mail exchange with Stephen Hennessy, he couldn't be bothered to confirm that that they didn't want me.  

In January they released their new list, and UK Golf Guy is on the case for us....  First, with his very own worldwide ranking:

1 Cypress Point - USA

2 Pine Valley - USA

3 Royal County Down - Ire

4 St Andrews (Old) - UK

5 Shinnecock Hills - USA

6 National Golf Links of America - USA

7 Royal Melbourne (West) - Australia

8= Oakmont - USA

8= Royal Dornoch - UK

10 Sand Hills - USA

11 Augusta National - USA

12 Royal Portrush - Ire

13 Pebble Beach - USA

14 Merion - USA

15 Muirfield - UK

16= Kingston Heath - Australia

16= Ballybunion - Republic of Ireland

18 Bandon Dunes (Pacific Dunes) - USA

19 Fisher's Island - USA

20 Turnberry (Ailsa) - UK

I couldn't resist including No. 20 just to make a few more heads explode, but it's very much The Usual Suspects.   

Of greater interest is his rant about the Golf Digest rankings, including this:

Well, the 2018 edition is out and despite the title 'World's 100 Greatest Golf Courses' they have stopped bothering to rank golf courses from all over the world. Instead they

have made this a list of their top 100 golf courses outside of the USA. And thoroughly disingenuously, they have shown the previous positions of the golf courses in the rankings - despite the comparator including courses from the USA. 

This allows many courses to claim they have moved up places in the world rankings. The tweet below from Bluffs Ho Tram in Vietnam is a prime example. 

The methodology for selecting the list is fairly awful. The Golf Digest team ask 'international panelists organized by our affiliate magazines around the world'. Oh dear, that would be the affiliate magazines who rely on the course's advertising to pay their bills, the associate magazines whose staff get wined and dined by the latest new courses wanting to make a splash.

I just want to point you to his list above and the tie at No. 8, which provides a perfect reflection of how serious we should take this undertaking.  My affection for Royal Dornoch is well known, and Oakmont, which I've never had the fortune to play, is worthy of respect as the brawniest of U.S. Open venues.  But the concept of weighing their attributes and determining that they are equal (or that either one is better) is just fanciful, since it's not even the same game.  It has to be just for fun, because it can't possibly be meaningful....

Mikey Likes It - Nowhere does it indicate that this item should be considered part of Golf.com's Style Week coverage... But what's a fellow to think?  Old-school Mike Bamberger goes....well, really old school with this:

I was always going to wear the pants, no question about that. For four or five years now,

I've been buying Sansabelts (from the French sans, "without") on a website devoted to the beltless slack. And now I was on my way to a showroom in the heart of New York City's Garment District to see the man who makes them. 

Sansabelts, historically offered in colors plucked off a Froot Loops box, were a staple of the American golf scene in the 1970s, when I got trapped in the game's web. Eventually, they were replaced by another look: baggy, pleated, belted chinos, in colors ranging from off-white to tan. The Sansabelt was endangered until Peter Schwadel, a second-generation New York garmento, brought the line back in 2013. I've been buying in bulk.

Mike, isn't this why men get married, to avoid such fashion gaffes?  But there's more:

My wife was half-okay with it (I overstate) until I started ordering them for our still-in-college son. I will capture Christine's objection by citing what Tom Watson said to me at the Masters last year: "How many polyesters did they kill to make those things?" 

Schwadel, a white-haired gent wearing yellow-framed glasses and Sansabelt jeans when I saw him, waves his tanned hands when confronted with such snidery. "The American man wants comfort and ease," Schwadel said. "Look how it drapes!" He was preaching to the converted.

Are pants supposed to drape?  And how do they drape for, say Tim Herron?

But Mike's wife Christine has to be a candidate for sainthood, as they left for Europe right after the wedding so Mike could caddie on the Euro Tour as delightfully recounted here.  Including a terrifying moment on the caddie bus.....

Predictions are Hard.... - Especially about the future....  Those TC guys focus on a couple of guys, both of whom went with comfort food for caddies:

2. Phil Mickelson makes his 2018 debut at this week's CareerBuilder Challenge, and for the first time he begins a calendar year with a caddie not named Bones. At 47, with his brother, Tim, on the bag full time and now four years removed from his last win, what can we expect from Lefty in 2018?

Sens: He's still capable of winning in any given week. It would be silly to think he doesn't have any thrills left in his bag. But will he win the week of the U.S. Open?

Methinks no. And at this point, when we talk Phil, we aren't really talking about any old tournament. We're talking about events he could add to his legacy. 

Zak: He's definitely good enough to win, but we can't expect it. In fact, I don't think it will happen. Sure, it's no fun being a pessimist, but the guy simply is too wild with his driver, and my intuition tells me his all-world ball-striking will fade as Father Time continues to wear on his body.

Shipnuck: Same as the last few years — lots of mediocre play, some flashes of brilliance. But whether it's physical or mental, Phil just seems incapable of putting together the four consecutive strong rounds required to win. 

Bamberger: I think he'll win this year and there's no reason he cannot win at Shinnecock.

 Mikey Bams with the no risk call.....  After all, no one will remember in June.  I'm thinking the U.S. Open is the week he's least likely to win these days, though who knows if the wind is down at Shinny.  Still, doesn't Pebble seem a better fit for Phil?

3. In an interview with The Telegraph, Rory McIlroy revealed that he suffered a viral infection in China a year and a half ago, which left scar tissue and caused a thickening of his heart's left ventricle. McIlroy also said that he's firing on all cylinders as he kicks off his 2018 in Abu Dhabi this week and that he's ready to start winning majors again. "I don't fear any of them. Any one of them," he said of his rivals. "I've beaten them before." Where's your McIlroy Meter these days?

Sens: Where do I get one of those McIlroy Meters? My new iPhone doesn't seem to have one. I believe in taking a man at his word until his actions prove otherwise, so his confident talk alone is enough to make me bullish on him. As for the fear thing, zzzzzz. Has anyone feared anyone since peak Tiger? Doubt it. 

Zak: I'm so over the Rory Revenge Tour. It's become cliche to "expect a big year" from him since he's shown flashes but not won a major. Don't get me wrong; he's a phenomenal player when he's clicking, but there has (rather consistently) been something different missing from his game at various points the last three years. Right now, he says he's ready to get back to winning majors, but he's two steps away. He's played well, sure, but the next step is contending, and once he gets there, then he can talk about winning again.

Passov: Tough, if honest talk from Rory. Confidence begets confidence — but it all starts with results, not chatter. If the putts start dropping again, he's long enough, and great enough, to stand with anyone in golf. If they don't, we'll all be stuck in what-might-have-been land. 

Shipnuck: I agree with Sean. Rory has been teasing us for long enough. Enough talk, time to deliver again.

Let me repeat, there is no player more in need of a strong caddie than Rory, yet he chose his boyhood best friend.  That screams "Short" to this observer....  Expect to see plenty of wedges flying twenty yards over greens, as always...

Brandel Bleeds Out - That TC Panel gets it's first shot at Brandel, and it's not all pretty:

5. Brandel Chamblee called Dustin Johnson's near-ace on the 433-yard par-4 12th hole that led to a tap-in eagle during the final round of the Sentry Tournament of Champions — which helped DJ to an eight-stroke victory — the "greatest shot ever hit." Do you agree with Chamblee and, if not, what gets your vote?

These two guys acquit themselves reasonably well:

Sens: I confess that my memory isn't Rainman-ish enough to have all of history's shots recorded. But I'd take Oosthuizen's double-eagle on the 2nd at Augusta over DJ's drive any day. And I'm sure there are many, many more. Hogan's one-iron at Merion? Bob Tway's bunker hole-out to win the PGA. My buddy's second shot on the par-5 2nd hole on the West Course at Royal Melbourne many moons ago. Smoked a 3-wood from 240. Two hops and in for a double-eagle. DJ shmee-Jay.

Shipnuck: I'm a fan of hyperbole but if we're talking about long, straight drives, Palmer's opening blast on the final round of the 1960 U.S. Open has to be the king of the category. Jack's one-iron at the '72 U.S. Open? Tiger's pitch-in on 16 at Augusta? Padraig's 5-wood on the 71st hole at Birkdale? We can go on and on. DJ's shot was incredible and a sign of the times but he was already cruising to victory in a mostly meaningless tournament; pressure and history is what makes a shot truly great.

Josh scores with both the Rainman and amateur dig, while Alan scores with his closing diss of the event.

But then there's Travelin' Joe:

Passov: This has been a fun debate. I think I understand Brandel's perspective, in that (perhaps) there's never been a shot of such a great distance that was so perfectly executed by a leader of a big-time golf tournament in a final round.

Big-time, Joe?  Did you perhaps take time to read your colleagues answers above....  Those are big-time events.  Kapalua?  It's harder to win a web.com event....

Your Daily Laugh -  I'm unsure if this is the same guy we featured with his call-out of cheap club members that didn't contribute to the assistant pros' winter fund, but he has apparently lost his lucrative equipment contract:

As a professional athlete, one of the hardest things to cope with is understanding that

when the lights fade and the cheers die down, this is a business. I learned that the hard way yesterday when I was unexpectedly and unceremoniously dropped by my long time sponsor, collaborator and partner Lynx Golf.

It’s easy to forget now the earthquake that rocked the world of mini-tour golf when I forged my partnership with Lynx shortly after they declared bankruptcy in 1998. My celebrated and closely watched transition from Cleveland VAS to Lynx's signature BlackCat Irons played a pivotal role in my 44 straight cuts missed streak in ’98-'99 and their vaunted SilverCat Driver was a key contributor to the uncontrollable left to left ball flight that I became known for. The loose epoxy that audibly bounded throughout the shaft of every club they produced became a subtle and soothing reminder of why none of their checks were clearing.

I am intimately familiar with that left-to-left ball flight....Fortunately the lad has sponsors he can count upon the get him through this:

To those who have supported me throughout this process, I thank you. To my current sponsors (most notably CastleBay Iron Covers and Sparko® Manual Stroke Counters) I appreciate your friendship and your continued loyalty. As the process to find a new club sponsor begins, I ask for your thoughts and prayers as Tawny and I embark on this difficult time together.

Hmmm...I've never tried the Castle Bay product....

Pin Rotation -  As noted above, ski-buddy Mitch and I went out for a quick nine yesterday down in the Salt Lake Valley.  It was about 50 degrees, and a very pleasant walk.  I did take this one pic with my phone:

For those unfamiliar with winter, those mountains aren't as white as they ought to be....  

But I saw something new that I've not seen before.  Two holes were cut into each greens and, rather than placing the pin on the ground, the players place it into the second hole to which the next group plays.  I can see an advantage for those using range finders, who can get their exact yardages before the group ahead clears.

But other reasons for this policy?  Less wear and tear around the hole later in the day, but I suppose the lingering question is whether in season the cut two holes every day....  Something new.