Tuesday Temblors

So, what did you think of yesterday's U.S. Open post?  Not that I've taken the time to reread it, but I'm struggling to understand my own reaction to the Bryson Experience, and I assume that has to be evident from my blogging thereof.  I'm hardly alone in that, so I think we should consider this a joint journey of discovery....  I'll play Lewis, you be that Clark fellow.

The Game Plan - Perhaps you'll find this an interesting point of entry, otherwise the Page Down key is at the lower-right of your keyboard.  Apply as required...

Young punk Dylan Dethier walked nine holes with DeChambeau during a practice round and filed this dispatch on his war planning.  You'll be shocked... shocked, I tell you, at this:

1. Hit lots of drivers

Yes, DeChambeau is planning on bashing lots of drivers this week. The goal, obviously, is to hit the
ball straight, but if he sprays a drive here or there, the benefits of hitting driver outweigh the pitfalls of finding the rough. DeChambeau said the rough is deep but manageable, especially when you’re coming out of it with a shorter iron or wedge. He feels he’ll rarely encounter a lie from which he can’t hit the green with a scoring iron.

 

“I plan to hit driver as much as I possibly can,” Bryson says. “It’s a tremendous advantage when you’re that far up, and you can hit a pitching wedge out of it. When you’ve got a 5-iron or 6-iron, it’s nearly impossible. You’ll be pitching it back into the fairway.”

Bryson is notoriously data-driven, so this should be read in conjunction with the above:

2. Rough is a 20-yard penalty

Word is that tournament officials plan to cut the rough once more this week, early, and then not again for the rest of the week. I can vouch personally that the rough looks especially juicy this week, more so than in past U.S. Opens. But how severe is the penalty for hitting it in the spinach? DeChambeau spent lots of time on Monday testing various conditions of the rough. It’s lie dependent, of course, but from an average lie, there’s an almost two-club penalty when hitting from the rough.

“So to put it in perspective, there’s about a a 20-yard penalty, for hitting into the rough. For me, that means about 12 to 15 percent extra on each club.”

Dylan seems to miss the obvious follow-up question, but I'm assuming he hits his driver way more than 20 yards past his three-wood.

This is bomb-and-gouge, quantified.  A twenty yard penalty adds a potential maximum of 280 yards to an hypothetical golf course, which equates to...well, a poorly-struck 4-iron?  But that penalty is if one misses all fourteen fairways, the actual penalty incurred from hitting driver every hole (and even Bryson doesn't, literally, do that) is a flip wedge....  and that's the Winged Foot rough.  Your mileage may vary...

James Colgan talks with a couple of knowledgeable sources, first the current Champion Golfer of the Year:

Shane Lowry, who has a bit of experience in golf tournaments with penal setups, has a theory of his own. The 2019 Open Championship winner thinks DeChambeau and Wolff have managed to avoid the carnage by simply out-driving it.

 

“I think the long, long hitters are hitting it past where the rough has been juiced up,” Lowry said after his round Sunday. “I think if you’re out late in the afternoon the rough is going to be trampled down a little bit long, they’re hitting shorter clubs because they’re hitting it longer … Matthew Wolff, I think he’s hit 12 fairways over the first few days and he’s five under, and he only hit two yesterday and shot five under. But there’s a lot of luck involved out there.”

As far as Lowry is concerned, it doesn’t matter whether the bombers are lucky or the beneficiaries of an advantageous setup, they’re getting something he isn’t.

“It’s just so difficult out there,” he said. “I get frustrated watching the golf in the afternoon when I go home because every time I see people in the rough they’re hitting on the greens and every time I hit in the rough I can’t seem to get anywhere near the green.”

Boo-friggin' -hoo, Shane.  They're not getting something you're not, they're just better than you are.  OK, I just said that to break up the pity party, because I assume that bit about the rough not being "juiced up" is nonsense.  It's really rather simple, Shane, they have shorter clubs in, therefore they hit more greens from the rough.

But there is this from a man who, while only playing two rounds there, maximized his exposure to that Winged Foot rough:

Yes, and Bryson hit some of those very shots with great success.  Phil, of course, spent his time mostly in those "Other Sites".

The implication being that the way to make the rough more penal is to make every green a forced carry....Bryson plays here once every fourteen (or perhaps eight) years, whereas the membership has to play there every day.  Who is the golf course for?

Bryson, The Reckoning - Really just the start of the reckoning, as this is way beyond the scope of one little blog post.  Let's begin with Mike Bamberger, a man I've frequently referred to as the conscience of our game:

Enter Bryson DeChambeau: Truly contending for the first time in a major, he was in complete control. Of himself.

Do you love his swing as you do Rory’s and Watson’s? Likely not.

Are you fascinated by his life story, as you are Tiger’s? Unlikely.

Would you trade body types with him as you might with Dustin Johnson? Probably not.

All the above is true, though Mike is being kind here.  Bryson is an off-putting personality, as he demonstrated in accosting that GC cameraman early after the reset.  The best case is that he's just awkwardly eccentric....but the worst case is that he reeks of entitlement.  I can't adjudicate between those possibilities, at least not yet, but we'll see how he grows into adulthood and copes with his success.

As Mike notes, his golf game is equally off-putting.  It's overly-mechanical and lacks any of that silkiness that we enjoy in our favorite players.  And the only thing more painful than watching him swing a club is watching him putt...  Of course that's just one man's opinion, perhaps you see it differently.  But I know one that couldn't care less:

DeChambeau, your new U.S. Open champion, does not care, and why should he? Think about the mental strength that requires, to do everything your own way, different from every other card-carrying member of the PGA Tour, and not care what anyone thinks or says.

Yeah, I get it, and golf is too stodgy and needs to be shaken up, but in this package it simply leaves me cold.  But please, Bryson, tell me more about your brand...

DeChambeau plans to gain 15 or so more pounds between now and the Masters, in mid-November. (Morikawa won’t.) He might have a driver there that is three inches longer than his current model. He’s not making changes because he’s looking for something to do. He’s redefining how to think about his game, much as Hogan did. It’s no wonder that Phil Mickelson says that DeChambeau is the most interesting thinker in golf.

Everybody likes praise, but DeChambeau, you can tell, does not turn to others for affirmation. He’s never shown that he really cares what anyone else thinks. (Let’s bring in Brooks Koepka for some play-by-play.) Hence, B.A.D.’s tree-trunk putter grip, his single-length irons, his robotic straight-armed putting stroke. Hence, his Hogan cap (who else is wearing one?), his 8 p.m. alone-in-the-dark driving-range session Saturday night, his two-minute analysis to pull a club on the short par-3 13th. About 210 yards on Sunday and, when all the math was done, a 7-iron for him.

I do respect it, I just don't like or enjoy it much.

Do give Mike a read, as his reference points for Bryson include Hogan and Nicklaus.   

If this Max Adler header is accurate, I'm far from the only one thinking this way:

U.S. Open 2020: Winged Foot members can embrace Bryson DeChambeau’s place in history more than they can the player

I can't not share this bit:

The USGA controlled the rough height and what time the bar opened, two things where it’s impossible to please everybody.

I'm a bit surprised that at a Gentile club the bar ever closes...

Here's a good Bryson take:

DeChambeau made his first impression on Winged Foot during the summer of 2016. Seeing some hacker guests duff their tee shots on the first hole, he decided he couldn’t suffer playing behind them and left his group as a three-ball. Shortly after in the grill room, a former club champion made small talk and inquired if he might like to get a game the next day. DeChambeau didn’t. “I don’t play golf,” he said. “I practice golf.”

Not every elite player has demonstrated an appreciation for the timeless charms of our game, though most have the good sense to at least pretend to.  Off course, he would not endeared himself to club members with this:

If the greens weren’t insulted by his rigidly unorthodox putting stance, they were when a hot mic caught his opinion of them (“These greens suck.”) during Round 1. Never mind that several other players voiced quite the opposite view of the course and conditioning. Tiger Woods grouped Winged Foot with Oakmont and Carnoustie when saying, “I think those three golf courses can host major championships without ever doing anything to them.”

Mark me down as in Maltbie's camp:

No one likes to hear another golfer say they’ve figured out the riddle of the game. That doesn’t fly in the grill room at Winged Foot, which might explain why that applause on 18 was restrained even by no-fans-during-a-pandemic standards. The club seemed to be echoing the sentiments of NBC’s Roger Maltbie, who Saturday night confided, “Every part of me wants to not like this,” before allowing, “but this is impressive.”

Every part of me still doesn't like it, but that takes nothing away from how staggeringly impressive that Sunday performance was.

Now let's spend some time with Daniel Rappaport, who has a series of trenchant observations.  These go way beyond Bryson, and I hope to circle back for those later in the post.  First, Bryson hits the ball a mile, but he's not out there alone:

1. We start, as always, with the winner. Yes, Bryson overpowered Winged Foot. There’s no other way to putit. He hit just 23 of 56 fairways (41.4 percent) for the week, four less than any previous U.S. Open champion in 40 years. He had no time for playing for position. He walloped driver wherever feasible. Course architect A.W. Tillinghast would have shuddered not just at DeChambeau’s final tally of six under, but at how he arrived there and where he hit it. The Winged Foot members weren’t exactly thrilled with what he did to their golf course, either, and surely the USGA thought its famed “U.S. Open rough” would have had a bigger effect on DeChambeau than it did.

 

 

But we have to give DeChambeau his due, because he wasn’t the only guy hitting the ball miles this week—he actually finished seventh overall in driving distance—yet he’s the one with the trophy. He was also the only player to shoot under par on Sunday, his three-under 67 three shots better than the next best guy. It was, without hyperbole, one of the best rounds in recent major championship history. And it was a surprisingly balanced attack all week—yes, he picked up 5.38 shots off the tee, third best in the field. But he actually gained more ground on his approach shots (6.98, third) and around the green (5.42, second), plus an additional 4.59 on the greens for good measure.

And that’s the thing with Bryson. He’s one of the longest guys on tour, and he may even be the longest, but it’s not like he’s playing a different ballgame than McIlroy or runner-up Matthew Wolff or World No. 1 Dustin Johnson. To reduce his performance to his driving distance misses the fuller picture. He played well-rounded golf all week, and he won it with his approach play, which typically is the weakest part of his game.

Seventh.  That's the reason I used the evolutionary vs. revolutionary distinction yesterday.  But the really scary part is how good he is with those other thirteen clubs...

As I discussed yesterday and a bit above with Phil's comments, how do we set up our golf courses?  Here's Daniel's take:

2. In hindsight, the course setup at Winged Foot played into the bombers’ hands. Length is always an advantage, and there’s a temptation to combat it by making the fairways super narrow and the rough super long. The problem is, when fairways are that narrow, everyone’s going to miss their share. The field only hit 39.6 percent of fairways this week—that’s the lowest percentage of any PGA Tour event over the last 30 years, per stats oracle Jason Ray. (DeChambeau might have hit only 23 fairways, but he ranked a respectable T-26 in the category.) And when everyone is missing fairways, the guys closer to the green are going to fare so much better than the guys further away.

DeChambeau was well aware of this, maybe more so than anyone in the field. Here’s what he said in his post-round presser: “[Statistician] Mark Broadie was talking to [coach] Chris Como, and they were talking about how they just made the fairways too small this week to have it be an advantage for guys hitting the fairway. So what I mean by that—let’s take an example of you going like a yard wide. Nobody’s hitting the fairway. OK, length’s going to win. You make the fairways too wide, length’s going to win.”

The takeaway: length is always going to win.

No, length is always an advantage, but it shouldn't and doesn't always win.   But there is a body of thought that, based upon a certain Ryder Cup in Paris, that the way to control the bombers is Winged Foot.  Narrow, bending fairways with long rough... How did that work out for us?

Of course One of Daniels colleagues had this rebuttal:

Well, when you put it like that...

I'm going to leave you with two more items on Bryson, then segue out.  First, this Dylan Dethier piece on Bryson's Sunday evening celebration might amuse.   You might be surprised by where the party moved in the dead of night, which will cause all the right heads to explode.

Lastly, this Stephen Hennessy items is well worth a scan.  he merely recounts a series of oddities about our Open Champion:

5. His autograph is the most unusual on tour. Though he's right-handed, Bryson can sign his autograph backward with his left hand. He spent hours perfecting his handwriting left-handed. "If I wanted to learn Arabic or Russian, I could. Or tie my shoes in a new way, I could. Why? Dedication," he told our Jaime Diaz in 2016. "I'm not really smart, but I'm dedicated. I can be good at anything if I love it and dedicate myself. And I love history. I love science. I love music. I love golf. I love learning. I love life. I love trying to be the best at anything and everything."

 

You always have to watch the guys that tell you that they're not very smart.

I'm sure I'll have more on Bryson Thursday (the regular Wednesday game will take precedence tomorrow), but I certainly need a break from this guy by now.  Perhaps you do as well.

Udder Stuff - U.S. Open Edition - First, I've been remiss on not giving Matthew Wolff his due.  Here's Daniel Rappaport's take:

5: Matthew Wolff showed incredibly well in his first U.S. Open. He never seemed at all overwhelmed by the history at his fingertips, probably because he doesn’t concern himself too much with golf history. On Thursday, he told me he wasn’t really aware of Winged Foot’s past, either the Massacre in 1974 or Phil Mickelson’s failure in 2006. He did notice all the pictures and memorabilia when walking through the clubhouse, but he didn’t want to get caught up in it because, as he put it, he “doesn’t want to make this tournament any bigger than it already is.”

 

As incredibly talented as he is—two major starts, two top-five finishes—Wolff was aided in that effort by the absence of fans. As has been the case at every fan-less event since the restart, there were only a smattering of volunteers, media, swing coaches and trainers on the grounds watching him chase the U.S. Open. It felt quite similar to a college tournament—not completely quiet, but pretty darn close. Wolff has played the vast majority of his golf tournaments in this type of atmosphere. (Remember, 16 months ago, he was a student at Oklahoma State).

It also led to a fun moment just before the start of the final round. Six minutes before he teed off with the lead in a major, Wolff was traipsing around the first-tee area, on the phone with a friend named Zach. As he saw a number of people staring at him—myself included—he cut the tension with a knife, flashing a cheeky smile and saying “hey guys! Hey everyone!” The opposite of nervous. You have to think he wouldn’t have made that phone call, or felt so at ease, if there were 10,000 people in a grandstand yelling his name.

I'm agnostic on the subject of who was helped or hurt by the absence of fans, which seems speculative.  Patrick Reed was alleged to be one major beneficiary, but that benefit lapsed on Saturday...

He is a good young player that hits it a mile, so one assumes his time is coming.  Of course, this was true as well:

6: Never an excuse, and it evens out over time, but man did Wolff get some tough breaks on Sunday. His lip-out on 4 could have dropped for the same price. On 10, his ball hangs up in the rough above the bunker, leaving a virtually impossible up and down. On 12, just after DeChambeau hit a drive into the right rough that bounced into the fairway, Wolff’s ball landed in the exact same spot and didn’t get the same bounce. On 17, his drive down the center of the fairway found a divot hole. This stuff happens to everyone, and it likely wouldn’t have made a difference given DeChambeau’s margin of victory, but Wolff had to feel like someone was against him. As he put it: “wasn’t meant to be.”

7: One more on Wolff. He violated one of the sacred commandments of golf: Thou shalt not giveth thee golf ball conflicting instructions. On the 14th hole, he asked his ball to SIT! And then, when it pitched on the very front edge of the green, he yelled GO! Everyone knows the ball only listens to the first instructions it hears. Not sure what Mr. Wolff was expecting here.

And where do I buys those balls that listen to even the first instruction?  He did get some bad bounces on Sunday, but he also shot 65 on Saturday when hitting two fairways.... So, it likely all balanced out, plus the margin of victory exceeded any effect of said bad bounces.

Other takes from Rappaport worth our consideration:

8: Tiger Woods’ chances of making the weekend died on the dramatic ridge that guards the front of Winged Foot’s 18th green. On Thursday, on his final hole of the day, his second came up just short of it, and he chunked his chip, nuked his fourth well past the flag and two-putted for double to finish with a 73. On Friday, on his ninth hole of the day, his second came up just short of it, and he chunked his chip, nuked his fourth well past the flag and two-putted for double en route to a 77.

 

That it happened in the same exact spot on both days is a curiosity worth noting.  To me the more disturbing thing is Tiger's inability to finish his rounds.  He wasn't in bad shape on Saturday, at even on the back nine, and then it all went pear-shaped.  Problem is, we're seeing this very same movie every time he tees it up.

Memo to all of the hotheads on Tour...This is how it's done:

11: The 18th tee was the site of maybe the coolest club-break in history. It was there on Friday that Henrik Stenson pulled a long iron into the left rough. It was his last hole of the day, and he was already nine over and knew he was missing the cut. He proceeded to stick the toe of the club in the ground, snap the shaft with his foot, then hand the remains to his caddie saying with a wry smile, “Oops.” We’d never glorify such a behavior—think of the children!—but man, that was swaggy.

 Swaggy?  I'm familiar with the word as a noun, but as an adjective?

Good to know.

And this on the limitations of television:

12: Despite living in New York for three-plus years, this week was my first time on the grounds at Winged Foot. On Monday afternoon, after finishing up some housekeeping stuff in the Media Center, I headed out to see the course for an initial look. I watched highlights of the 2006 U.S. Open on the weekend and had done my share of preparation, so I knew the greens were going to be something to behold.

And then I saw the 18th green and I stopped dead in my tracks. Couldn’t believe it was real. It is, without exaggeration, the most severe, the most wonderfully bizarre putting surface I have ever seen in my life. All the ultra-HD drone flyovers and topography graphics simply do not do the Winged Foot greens justice. They are way, way more dramatic than you could ever expect. One of those things you just have to see in person to believe.

My one visit was years ago, long before the Gil Hanse restoration.  This actually takes place on the 15th green, tentatively filed under the "When bad things happen to good people" category:

I bet Rory Sabbatini wishes he could take this putt again 🤷‍♂️😩 #nothisbest ⁦@usopengolf⁩ ⁦@WingedFoot_GC⁩ ⁦@GolfChannel⁩ ⁦@ttfgolf⁩ ⁦@PGATOUR⁩ ⁦@SkySportsGolf⁩ ⁦@eamonlynch⁩ pic.twitter.com/zUm1cnY5K3

— Fraser Cromarty (@CromartyFraser) September 20, 2020

Strike that good people bit, it's Sabbatini...

You know my thoughts on this guy:

17: Danny Lee didn’t quite go full Phil Mickelson, but it was close. On Saturday, after birdieing the brutal par-4 17th to get to a very respectable three over for the round, he hit his second shot just short and right of the 18th green. His pitch was perfect, leaving about a four footer for par. And then mayhem broke loose.

Lee six-putted. He tried on the first one and the second one, and then he stopped trying completely and went full whack-a-mole. He was obviously frustrated and ostensibly fed up with the trying greens at Winged Foot. But it wasn’t like he was playing a terrible round or anything like that. Video of the episode emerged on Sunday morning, and it wasn’t pretty. Neither was him slamming his putter against his bag twice afterward.

 

Lee then withdrew from the tournament on Saturday night, citing a wrist injury. Maybe his that was a problem, and that contributed to the frustration. Or maybe the Powers That Be politely suggested he pull out of the tournament after that childish tantrum. Who knows. But until Lee does something great in the game of golf, that’s what he’s going to be known for. And it’s not a good look.

He should have been immediately DQ'd.  I don't see why the USGA would allow him to save face by an injury WD.

I can't think of a better thought on which to exit than this:

18: Only 53 days until the Masters. See you all in Augusta.

That long?

OK, kids, I'll see you Thursday. 

Weekend Wrap - Casino Royale Edition

 So, anything you guys want to talk about today?

This captures the general tenor of the coverage:

ANY QUESTIONS?

 Bryson DeChambeau proved his revolution real and his doubters wrong to win the U.S. Open at Winged Foot.

MAMARONECK, N.Y.—He told us a revolution was coming, which we ignored. He told us how it would come and we laughed. His trials were met with schadenfreude, his earnestness misinterpreted as arrogance, and when his methods began to work, we said they wouldn’t when and where they would matter most.

But now there is proof, finalized on a hole aptly named “Revelations.” The Mad Scientist proved his formula right and his doubters wrong (and perhaps converted many along the way), and for that Bryson DeChambeau was crowned United States Open champ.

“I did it. I did it,” DeChambeau said Sunday night. “As difficult as this golf course was presented, I played it beautifully … It definitely is validating that I'm able to execute time and time again and have it be good enough to win an Open.”

I consider it more evolutionary than revolutionary, but I do agree this has the feeling of a crossroads for the game.  We'll be all over the hot takes, even offer a few of our own, but we all need time to process that which we saw.

Speaking of hot takes, Alan Shipnuck has five for us, beginning with the obvious:

Bryson is more substance than style.

It has been so easy to get distracted by all the noise around DeChambeau, whether it’s hisbookworm pronouncements, funny clubs, social media beefs with Brooks, new diet or other fluffery. But there can now be no denying that his resume’ is world-class: U.S. Amateur, NCAA Championship, 7 Tour wins by age 27 and a U.S. Open blowout on a historic course. For all the talk of DeChambeau’s distance off the tee, his Sunday playing partner Matt Wolff outdrove him a couple of times. Tony Finau and Cam Champ might be longer than Bryson, and Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka are only a notch below.

What separates DeChambeau is a commitment that borders on zealotry. While Finau gives up lots of yards with a sawed-off swing and DJ employed a conservative gameplan that saw him hitting numerous irons off the tee, DeChambeau attacked relentlessly by swinging with abandon. He has more than confidence – it is conviction. And the pursuit to exploit his advantages never ends; following his win, Bryson mused about trying to master a 48” driver to pick up even more precious yardage. That is precisely what makes this victory so exciting. Rather than grow complacent, a validated DeChambeau is sure to press on in his quest to reinvent the game, taking all of us along for the ride.

Ya got that?

Bryson confirms he'll start testing 48-inch drivers next week with Cobra. Plan is to try and hit it 360, 370 "or maybe even farther."

— Jonathan Wall (@jonathanrwall) September 20, 2020

I don't Alan quite nails it there.  It wasn't that we thought Bryson was artifice over substance, it was more that his substance seemed way out there...  Yanno, like his drives.

Shack has a winners and losers bit here, and this was his take on the beast:

Bryson DeChambeau – You’ve taken enormous risks, listened to no shortage of doubters and now are a worthy, convincing major championship winner. Most impressive is the accomplishment coming on a course supposedly rigged against your aggressive style of play. Plus, no run-ins with the rules or officials, and you gave credit to your parents for the sacrifices they made. Classy win.

And the shear level of effort, dramatically changing his body as well as the constant experimentation.  The personality hasn't been my cup of tea, but I love the fact that the last guy on the range Saturday night had the best round on Sunday. 

One assumes Rory was safely tucked in by then....

Back to Alan:

The U.S. Open as we used to know it is dead.

This has been a long time coming, but Winged Foot feels like a tipping point. It was glaringly obvious that the traditional setup of long rough and narrow fairways is no longer enough to slow down the new age bomb-and-gougers. They will still blast away with impunity, overpowering the par-5s and leaving only short-irons or wedges into the par-4s, which, even from the rough, DeChambeau time and time again played with enough finesse to leave good scoring chances.

Narrow setups put every player in the long grass more often, giving the bruisers that much more of an advantage. Even Winged Foot’s vertiginous greens could offer only so much resistance. Alas, the way forward is unclear. There is not a course on the planet long enough to challenge Tour players; 9,000 yards would be the minimum needed, and that requires an obscene amount of land and water. The USGA has shown no appetite for rolling back modern distance gains, leaving the ancient playing fields unable to contain this new generation of sluggers. Perhaps shorter, not longer, grass is the answer – wickedly fast green surrounds that require more precision and touch than long, hack-out rough, and fairways that Stimp at 12 that let errant drives roll forever into deeper trouble. The USGA has nine months to figure it out before the next U.S. Open but that won’t be easy.

Musing on DeChambeau’s nuking of Winged Foot, Rory McIlroy said on Sunday, “It’s kind of hard to really wrap my head around it.”

This is the crux of the matter, one that we'll be coming back to again and again, both in this post and in the future.  Recently a groundswell of support for Tom Meeks era U.S. Open set-ups has arisen, which seems to me an over-interpretation of the Paris Ryder Cup venue.  "Make them hit Fairways" we heard, but the takeaway from this week is that rough may not be much of a penalty...  More to come on that for sure.

The problem with Alan's prescription is that it's rare to find such conditions in the wild.  Perhaps the most troubling filter for Bryson's runaway performance is that it happened in firm and windy conditions.  In a typically sweltering June in New York, the course plays longer and takes even a bigger block of the field out of contention.

OK, this just makes me laugh:

Rory gonna Rory.

— Sean Zak (@Sean_Zak) September 20, 2020

Let Alan explain:

Rory remains as baffling as ever.

In the end, nobody was going to catch DeChambeau, but McIlroy didn’t know that when he 4-putted the first green. Just like that, any dreams of a comeback were dashed. Such Sunday letdowns have become so routine that on Twitter my colleague Sean Zak offered a succinct analysis: “Rory gonna Rory.”

Actually, Rory's signature move is the backdoor top ten.  But having spent three days of hard work positioning himself on the fringe of contention, we all knew what was coming... So, not so much baffled as frustrated...

It had been fourteen years, so what did we think of the venue?  Geoff had these winners:

Winged Foot – Sure, the winner was six-under-par and you’ll now have to wait at least eight years to wonder what the next U.S. Open winning score will be. But the restoration came off brilliantly and it’s not your fault the governing bodies are dragging their feet on equipment rules tweaks. Hey, I have an idea, why not make some form of action a requirement to host again?

USGA Course Setup – John Bodenhamer and Jeff Hall led a crew balancing architecture, science, early fall conditions, irrational Winged Foot member desires and the ghosts of USGA setups past. The task is not a pleasant one but the setup eased players into the week, moved the field around, and exuded U.S. Open difficulty all the way.

That eight year bit refers to the fact that no venue has been announced for the 2028 Open, and there's been speculation that they might have left that void to see how things went this week.  

I enjoyed the week and I'm not instinctively put off by that -6 winning score, especially since it was only the one guy under par.  I think the important point is that they exuded that "U.S. Open difficulty" without descending into parody.  

But here's the conundrum that Geoff omits to mention.  That is far easier in September (I'm speaking to a Northeastern U.S. venue) than in June, when extreme heat can further stress the greens.   It's still a high wire act in June, and there simply no way to avoid disasters unless you're prepared to have Opens that look like Congressional in 2011.

Any other winners?

Dan Hicks – You maintained great energy during NBC’s eight hour broadcast Saturday and obviously know your home club, gulp, better than most. Sure, there were too many references to “The Foot” and most of America didn’t need to know the timing on the pro shop renovation. But you balanced an unabashed affection for Winged Foot with storytelling, conveying the outcome of key shots while investing us in the venue. I wouldn’t expect anything different.

I've always liked Hicks, especially his work in tethering Johnny Miller to reality.  But to me Hicks is upbeat and enthusiastic, but the contrast is with the increasingly treacly Jim Nantz.

Strangely, though, I also agree with this from Geoff's list of losers:

NBC – Fox was missed. That’s an unfathomable notion given Fox’s early struggles and NBC’s former place atop golf television. But Fox got a lot better and corporate budget cuts at NBC clearly took a toll in too many departments to list here. The broadcast lacked the technology, production values, sense of place and other little stuff NBC was famous for bringing to golf. Worse, so much cut from producer Tommy Roy’s pallet was just the kind of stuff viewers came to love from Fox’s USGA telecasts and CBS’s recent “Return to Golf” run.

Fox had really upped their game, and pulled the other guys along for the ride.  But I miss some of their contributors (Ken Brown and Gil Hanse, most notably), though none of us understand the Covid-related limitations on this broadcast.  As for Geoff's ode to CBS, he must have been watching a different broadcast than I saw.  

Geoff has more winners, including poa and square greens that you should peruse.  But the raison d'etre of this blog requires additional focus on the losers from the week:

Green Reading Books – A rule change designed to make these silly novellas more difficult to read has only added time to rounds. Speaking of slow play…

Slow Play – The USGA miraculously got the field around Thursday and Friday, but Sunday’s last twosome took just over four hours and thirty minutes, including 2:15 on the front nine even with the duo taking just six shots to play the par-5 ninth. Yes it’s a big course with high rough and diabolical greens, but matters are not helped by the players never facing a penalty the way they are at all other USGA championships.

Can someone remind me of the patron saint of lost causes?  

These guys as well:

Tiger And Phil – This fan-free golf just doesn’t seem like your thing. Maybe next year at Torrey you’ll give it one last college try.

Fan free?  Perhaps...   But to this observer, it was the more fact that their golf appeared to be skill-free.

And this guy:

Danny Lee – A terrible look with the Saturday six-putt and putter slam into the bag, followed by a WD. That came 90 minutes after play due to a wrist injury, but it took a Tweet from No Laying Up’s Tron Carter to shake the replay of your meltdown free of NBC servers. How did this not make on an eight hour telecast, only to be aired on the early morning pre-game?

I've got great news for y'all, presumably after Tron Carter filed a Freedom of Information request.   

The Danny Lee tapes have been released!!

This is how a four-footer for par turns into a quintuple-bogey 9 followed by a WD with a wrist injury 😳 pic.twitter.com/OCvcqpKod4

— Dylan Dethier (@dylan_dethier) September 20, 2020

This has been a funny story, because we all heard that he had six-putted from four feet, which even on the glassy Winged Foot Surfaces seems, well, impossible.  It turns out they omitted a small but telling detail, to wit, that after the first putt Lee went full John Daly on us...  Pro tip, guys, never go full John Daly.

Los of folks went ballistic over the subsequent WD, and they are quite correct there.  But riddle me this, Batman, how is that the guy wasn't disqualified by the USGA?  Very much like Phil at Shinny, the basic social compact is that, in return for a precious spot in the field, that each player will try to post the best score possible.  Not dog it at the first sign of difficulty...  I haven't seen anything as revolting as theat display since John Daly deliberately emptied his golf bag into a water hazard (you can't make me call it a penalty area) at Whistling Straits...

The Tour Confidential panel is a Monday tradition here, so shall wee what these nice folks thought of it all?

1. Bryson DeChambeau overpowered Winged Foot on Sunday and won the U.S. Open for his first career major victory. DeChambeau started the final round two back of Matthew Wolff but shot 67 and to finish six under overall — he was the only player under par for the

week — and six better than Wolff, the runner-up. DeChambeau’s booming tee shots usually steal the headlines, but which part of his game — or game plan — most impressed you this week?

Sean Zak: Man, you could list so many things. No double bogeys. Worst 9-hole score was 36. But really what impressed me was that he raised the two aspects of his game that have been struggling. He was literally more efficient with his irons and his short game than he was with his driver and putter. Strokes gained backs it up. The driver and putter seem like they’ll be there forever, but look out when the other aspects rise, like they did this week.

The 36 worst nine is really a good factoid, serious consistency over four days on a tough track under U.S. Open pressure.  The weakest part of Bryson's game has long been his wedge play, thought to be related to the longer shafts he uses.  But as I said in the aftermath of his win in Detroit, he'll figure that out.  But the putting has bee good for a while, it's just hard to watch because he looks so mechanical.

Alan Bastable: Full disclosure: I didn’t think he could do it. Not at a U.S. Open. I just kept waiting and waiting for an O.B. tee shot or a three-putt double to trip him up, to rattle him. But it

never came. The only real sign of angst I noted was on the 9th green on Saturday when he appeared to chide his caddie for a poor read. So that’s what most impressed me: his even-keeled, dare I say, sanguine demeanor.

Josh Sens: I was among the doubters, too. Mostly because I thought there was no way he could play efficiently from the rough all week, no matter how far he blasted it off the tee. That’s what blew me away. The distance control and accuracy he had from ankle-deep rough. He made bombing and gouging his way around a brutally hard course look ridiculously easy.

Jessica Marksbury: His putting! Seemed like he couldn’t miss on Sunday, the most important round of the week. Once he drained that putt from the fringe, it really felt like his day.

Michael Bamberger: Prior to this week, I thought he was a contrarian without a cause. Now I know better.

Alan Shipnuck: His wedge play! That’s been a bugaboo for over a year, but he hit so many good full-swing wedges, including a bunch out of the rough to set up scoring chances. If that part of his game remains dialed in, look out!

We all doubted it would work, but it so happens that when you swing it at 130 mph, the club goes through the rough like a hot knife through butter.

 We'll be mulling this over for some time, because the implications are scary for our little game:

3. DeChambeau and Wolff missed many fairways — usually a no-no in U.S. Opens — but drove the ball so far that they still had short irons into most greens. “This tournament used to be about hitting fairways and greens,” Lee Westwood tweeted after the third round. On Sunday night, DeChambeau said: “They made the fairways too small this week for the guys that were really hitting the fairway. If it’s too narrow, length is gonna win. Too wide, length is gonna win.” What did this Open teach us about how best to set up a modern major venue to test the world’s best players?

Before we get to their answers, let me just interject this from Ryan Herrington at Golf Digest:

Consider this: Since 1981, no U.S. Open winner had hit fewer than 27 fairways, according to Golf Channel. Here’s a listing of the champs with the fewest fairways hit in the last 40 years.

Angel Cabrera, 2007, Oakmont, 27 (ranked 48th for the week in accuracy)

Tiger Woods, 2008, Torrey Pines, 30 (ranked 56th)

Webb Simpson, 2012, Olympic Club, 31 (ranked 13th)

Scott Simpson, 1987, Olympic Club, 31 (ranked 42nd)

Interestingly, while DeChambeau hit the fewest fairways compared to the four others, he ranked T-26 for the field on the week, which is the second to Webb Simpson.

That last bit is Shack, but you know I can't pas sup an opportunity to mention that 1987 U.S. Open champion.  Winged Foot fairways are hard to hit, but Olympic's are impossible to hit...with a nine-iron.

Bryson's driver was a huge weapon this week, but as per this graph, he excelled in every facet of the game:

Here are those dispiriting answers: 

Zak: This Open taught us that 5-inch grass isn’t long. Seven or 8-inch fescue is the new definition of “long.” If you think that’s a slippery slope, that’s because it is. Also, the width of the fairways doesn’t really matter. And that the greens need to be the firmest surface on the property, cart paths included.

Bastable: Yeah, fairways and rough length don’t seem to matter anymore. I mean, they matter to some — Shane Lowry said he couldn’t get the ball to the green from the rough and was gobsmacked by how easily DeChambeau and Wolff could — but not to the bombers. Crusty, fire-breathing greens are seemingly the last line of defense.

Sens: There’s some truth in all of the above, but it’s not as if Winged Foot was a cakewalk. DeChambeau just made it look that way. The rough this week was still gnarly enough to thwart most of the field. The setup favored bombers, true. But Webb Simpson and Zach Johnson finished T8, and they’re not exactly big hitters by Tour standards. Maybe this event proves we need new ways to defend U.S. Open venues. But are there really any new ways we’re not already familiar with? No. Maybe we just need to ask Bryson to go easy on everyone next time.

Bamberger: It showed us again what Nicklaus has been saying for 40 years: if the ball goes too far – yes, in combination with other factors – traditional great courses are obsolete, in terms of traditional golfing values. This game requires less finesse and is less interesting. But that’s an opinion.

Marksbury: The hand-wringing over setups has grown tiresome for me, especially when it comes to criticism of the U.S. Open. You still have to putt and chip well to win, even when you bomb it like Bryson. He played superb golf. The past two major championship leaderboards have been super satisfying. What more do we want?

Shipnuck: The U.S. Open setup as we knew it is now dead. Long grass surrounding narrow fairways just puts everyone in the rough, giving the bombers a huge advantage. Bigger, deeper, more plentiful fairway bunkers can help, along with shaved green surrounds that demand more skill and creativity in the short game than hack-out rough.

I've been reliably informed that, when and if that USGA/R&A Distance Insights Report is issued, all of our problems will be resolved.   

Sean Zak takes a crack at the statistics, reinforcing that Bryson's Sunday was historic:

Greatest final round in nearly 50 years

DeChambeau was the only player in the field to shoot under par on Sunday. The course played harder than it has all week, and somehow DeChambeau never broke. His final-round 67 was 7.9 strokes better than the field average on Sunday, which was the fourth-best U.S. Open final-round performance ever, and best since Johnny Miller’s 63 at Oakmont in 1973.

 Johnny shot 63 at Oakmont?  Boy, he spent decades in the both and hardly mentioned it at all....

But isn't this really the scary bit?

Irons and chipping were phenomenal, especially for him

DeChambeau bombs it and putts well — we all know that. But what is lost in his game, especially this year, is that his irons and wedges haven’t been good. DeChambeau was below average in strokes gained: approach and around the green during the 2020 season, but not this week.

Bryson gained more than a stroke on the field in both aspects during the event. Not only that, he was statistically more efficient with his irons and wedges than he was with his driver and putter.

Better up your game, boys.   Speaking of those boys, how did they take it?  Well, PTSD comes to mind:

Q. What are your thoughts on Bryson just in general and what he's done in transforming his body?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Yeah, he's a man of his word. I said it last night, if there's anyone that I was worried about, it was him. Everyone talked about hitting fairways out here. It's not about hitting fairways. It's about hitting on the correct side of the hole and hitting it far so you can kind of hit a wedge instead of a 6 iron out of the rough. Yeah, he's sort of trending in the new direction of golf, and he said he wanted to do everything he's doing, and yeah, happy for him. He's playing unbelievable.

He doesn't actually sound all that happy to me...

Q. Going back to what you said before about Bryson,do you feel like he's revolutionizing the game?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: No. If you look at just people that have dominated, it's always been distance. Obviously, Tiger had the mix of touch and feel and everything. If you look back at he was sort of the first guy to really hit it far with those clubs. Jack hit is really far as well. All the greats hit it pretty far for the most part. It's no longer sort of a touchy-feely game. The only way to make a golf course really hard is to firm up the greens and grow the rough. It's going to make it hard for everyone, and you'd rather be the guy in the rough with a lob wedge than with an 8 iron or 7 iron. Revolutionize? Maybe he's just exposing our game in terms of, if he keeps hitting it further and further, I don't see why he wouldn't be able to win many more U.S. Opens.

And this guy as well:

Q. Your golf followed from Tiger's and Tiger's followed from Faldo, Watson, and back to Nicklaus, very kind of straight line. Then you see this guy doing it completely in his own way, and I'm wondering what that says to you about the guy and about the game.

RORY McILROY: So I think -- about the guy, I think it's brilliant, but I think he's taken advantage of where the game is at the minute. Look, again, whether that's good or bad, but it's just the way it is. With the way he approaches it, with the arm-lock putting, with everything, it's just where the game's at right now.  I'm not saying that's right or wrong. He's just taking advantage of what we have right now.

In reaction to which Geoff said this:

DeChambeau’s approach should raise questions about whether this is where the game should head. But you have to admire how he’s taken advantage of technology and put his body on the line in ways no one ever has. McIlroy seems to be saying that with his where the game “is at the minute.”

Which is also code for: where the game is because the governing bodies did not adequately anticipate many things that are happening.

Absolutely, but it's been one of those slow-moving train wrecks...  And that's what I meant above about it being more evolutionary than revolutionary.  All of these trends have been apparent for some time, but our governing bodies have been completely passive. 

Folks are a little in shock at that -6 winning score, but let me leave you with this question.  You saw how the guy played this week, with #frimandfats fairways and greens and swirling winds.  What might he have shot in the more typically soft June conditions?  

 I'll be back with lots more tomorrow, and hope to see you then.

Open Friday

OK, kids, sorry abut that... I was ninety minutes into a Thursday post, when family matters intruded.  By the time those waned, i was too  deep into the miasma and the entire morning wave was deep into their rounds, rendering Open picks moot.

The content was mostly USGA-centric, so it remains relevant and I'll it at the bottom of this post.  We'll talk briefly about yesterday's play, then I'll discharge you to start your weekend.

Who Are You and What Have They Done To Winged Foot - That wasn't the Winged Foot of legend, or The Foot they had promised:

MAMARONECK – The gnarly rough was a constant source of aggravation for the wayward and polished green complexes demanded full attention, but there was no carnage at the U.S. Open.

Winged Foot played fair.

Justin Thomas took full advantage of a surprisingly gettable West Course on Thursday, carding six birdies and one bogey to grab the first-round lead with a 5-under 65. It’s the lowest round ever recorded on the storied West Course in a U.S. Open.

During the buildup, there wasn’t a single conversation about records falling.

Fair, Schmair!  C'mon, we demand carnage....

Fuzzy Zoeller had the record here in U.S. Open play, shooting a 66 in the second round of the

1984 championship. Patrick Reed, Thomas Pieters and Matthew Wolff matched that number and are tied for second.

In all, 21 players got into the red on Thursday.

Rory McIlroy, Lee Westwood and Louis Oosthuizen were next at 3-under followed by six other players at 2-under.

 Par simply wasn’t good enough on Day 1.

Colin Montgomerie was the lone player to break par in the opening round when the U.S. Open was last here in 2006, but the game has changed.

Reed is a special case... Had I finished my "Who Ya Got?" post, I would have noted that he has the perfect game for this venue... Why?

That's a shot one needs for Winged Foot...

Daniel Rappaport takes a deeper dive on those benign conditions:

Receptive indeed, particularly early in the day. Weather, of course, is the one thing course-maintenance teams can’t control. And on Thursday morning, there was no wind to speak of and

the ground was wet to the touch. One might think that heat would make greens dryer—that’s true in some places at some times, but not in late summer in New York. Because heat brings humidity, and humidity brings moisture. There was hardly any humidity during the practice rounds but it was there on Thursday, and it added an extra bit of moisture that made greens much friendlier to golf balls flying in from 200-plus yards.

“We’re hitting 5-irons that aren’t releasing much,” said Webb Simpson, who teed off at 7:56 a.m. and shot 71. “I don’t know if they wanted them soft on purpose with cooler temperatures and the wind coming, but they’re certainly softer today than they were when I got here on Tuesday.”

OK, the dew's gonna do what the dew's gonna do, but this astute observer knows there's more at play:

The softness helped, but so did the hole locations. Some were in the middle of the green, like on Nos. 3 and 18. Others were particularly accessible, like the par-3 seventh, where there were two holes-in-one. Others, like the first and sixth holes, were placed at the bottom of ridges, allowing players to use the dramatic contours of these A.W. Tillinghast greens to their advantage. “Augusta-like,” is how Rose described them.

“When you hit the right shot at the right time, it’s going to move toward the pin,” Rose said. “Obviously, I played with Rory [McIlroy], who shot three under and made it look relatively easy. Provided you did the right things at the right time, there were some birdies to be made.”

Yeah, those hole locations seemed perfect for...well, the women's Wednesday Night League?  Why?  Basically two logical reasons, the first being:

Why was the USGA, not necessarily known for taking it easy with its course setups, so generous? A few potential reasons. One, given the governing body’s turbulent history with U.S. Opens of recent vintage—remember Chambers Bay in 2015, Oakmont in 2016 and Shinnecock Hills in 2018—there could be a tendency to err on the side of caution.

“The greens are very soft,” Thomas said. “I thought they’d be a little firmer, but I also understood that they need to err on this side so they can get them how they want this weekend.”

Always deserves mention given the USGAs recent history, though I'm guessing this is only the silver medalist.

But this would seem to be the bigger issue:

Another potential explanation is purely logistical in nature. This U.S. Open was initially scheduled for June 18-21, near the summer solstice. The sun rises before 5:30 a.m. and sets around 8:30. The sun rose at 6:38 on Thursday morning and set at 7:02. That’s two-and-a-half less hours for the field to finish. Knowing this, the USGA cut the field down from 156 to 144, but that only corresponds to two less tee times given the threesomes off double-tees on Thursday and Friday. Everyone involved wants to avoid rounds not ending on time (three players have to return to the course Friday morning to finish up their first rounds due to darkness) or worse a Monday finish, and a gentler course setup leads to faster play.

That's wrong, I think.  The risk isn't a Monday finish, the risk is Friday spilling into Saturday morning...  Once the make the cut, pace of play shouldn't be an issue. 

Shall we visit the Daily Tour Confidential on this subject?

Day 1 of the 120th U.S. Open is in the books. Justin Thomas set the pace, firing a five-under 65 to record the lowest round ever at a Winged Foot U.S. Open. But he’s not the only one who went low. Twenty-one players shot under par and 11 more are at even par. Wasn’t this place supposed to be a brutal test? Did Winged Foot play too easy in Round 1, and what do you expect to see come Friday?

Sean Zak: Clearly it played easy, but is there anything wrong with easing our way into this thing? There was no obvious benefit in terms of morning/afternoon draw. They won’t cut the grass again, won’t apply much water, and will toughen up the pin locations. I think today was just fine.

Michael Bamberger: No. They had to get the players around before dark and barely did. This was the day to score. All good.

Alan Bastable: It’s fall golf in New York. With such cool mornings and evenings, this course was never going to be Shinnecock in late June. If there was a miss today, it was the pins. Two aces on the same hole — that ain’t the Open, that’s 16 on Masters Sunday. But give this beast time. The rough will grow over the next three days and no doubt the crew will suck some moisture out of the greens. The Foot might, and likely will, do some a**-kicking yet.

Errr, Alan, may I suggest some specific a***s?

Josh Sens: I would have liked to have seen it play a little tougher, but better to err on the side of forgiveness on Thursday. Get things too firm and fast right out of the gate, and you risk losing the course as the week goes on. There’s still plenty of time for them to toughen it up, which they will. The greens will get firmer. The pins will get less friendly. And the sadists among us will have lots to cheer about. The winning score will be nowhere as deep as where Thomas took it today.

Dylan Dethier: Too easy! The entire idea of this U.S. Open, as stated by Winged Foot’s director of golf courses, was to provide a firm, fast, fair test. The greens were big-time soft; players were shocked by how much their balls were spinning. So I think they missed their mark, though just by a little bit. Still, plenty of time to dial up something a little spicier for the next three days. Also, Bamberger does have a point about the light.

Luke Kerr-Dineen: Yes, it played a little easy, perhaps, but I’m giving the USGA the benefit of the doubt that they’ll toughen up the course over the ensuing days. Ultimately, Justin Thomas is leading because he played really, really well. He was one of just two players (Rory was the other) who ranked in the top 10 in both fairways hit and greens in regulation, so I’m not buying all the U.S. Open-has-gone-soft takes. The truth us, those making that argument are only happy when they get to complain about how unfair the course is.

Nick Piastowski: I think it was fair. Not too hot. Not too cold. Just right, Goldilocks. Justin Thomas is at five under. A fair number. Twenty-one players under par. A fair number. And 113 players are over par. It’ll get harder going forward — tougher pins, the mowers might stay in the barn, the greens might get a little thirsty — but, all in all, a fair first day.

We were all interested to see this week as part of the longer-term issues of distance and scoring.  If they're worried about pace of play/daylight, then logically to day needs to look a lot like yesterday.  But then do they turn the amps up to 11 on Saturday?

 Or maybe their hand gets forced today?

U.S. Open weather: Friday forecast calls for much breezier Winged Foot

 Also a titch of rain in that forecast, so perhaps offsetting factors...

I'm not going to dive too deep into the leaderboard, but those hoping for a Tiger or Phil miracle have been dashed against the rocks of reality.  I haven't read this item, but the header is off-putting:

U.S. Open 2020: Phil Mickelson deserved better in his return to Winged Foot

Deserved?  Yanno he deserved the tee time... after that, it's pretty much all on him... I did like this bit from that first piece linked above: 

Phil Mickelson was in trouble up to his calves most of the day, conjuring up images of his final-round collapse in 2006. The six-time U.S. Open runner-up didn’t even hit a fairway until the ninth hole.

Heh!  Phil is very proud of those calves, and we can only hope the three of them will be happy together...

Mike Bamberger has the definitive account of Phil's day, and it's a dreary affair, though deftly handled by a skilled writer:

2 p.m. PMWFT (Phil Mickelson Winged Foot Time): Last time, in 2006, he was Big Phil. He was awshucks Phil. Now he’s badass Phil, with the shades and the calves and the bombs. Oh, he bombed one on the first hole here Thursday afternoon, lefter than left. So left he drew a decent lie. He launched-and-stuffed from there and did not do the Phil nod after making his birdie 3. Not because badass Phil doesn’t acknowledge his peeps anymore. He most assuredly does. It’s just that his people are not here. No Amy. No coach. No huddled masses. Just Brother Tim on the bag, Raja Maltbie in an NBC cart in the rough and a prop plane droning overhead. Phil’s quest, at age 50, was under way. You know what we’re talking about.

To me it was pitch perfect.  His first two tee balls go left-of-left, from whence he makes birdies...  But the astute observer notes that strategy probably doesn't work over the long term, and is immediately rewarded for that astute observation.  See, you too can be a golf blogger...

And this inevitable scene:

6:22 PMWFT: Phil had been playing golf for almost five hours and had just reached the 18th tee. Golf is not supposed to be such a slow sport but it is. It was 14 years and three months since he had played a tee shot from that 18th hole in competition. You likely know what happened on that long-ago Father’s Day. Thursday’s shot was meaningful or meaningless, take your pick. He hit it short and left again.

Though in an act of mercy, the actual trees from 2006 are gone...But a shockingly dreary performance from Phil.  Just no energy to be seen, even when he was -2 after two holes.

Of course, this guy was of interest as well:

U.S. Open 2020: Bryson DeChambeau attacked with bombs, but hardly brought Winged Foot to its knees

 No, but he's not poorly positioned at -1...  I'd call it a push.

Folks are seemingly shocked by the two aces at No. 7 yesterday, but there were four aces on the 6th hole at Oak Hill in the second round of the 1989 Open.  Since you asked, Mark Wiebe, Jarry Pate, Doug Weaver and Nick

I'm going to leave you at this juncture, but remind you of yesterday's content below.  We'll see what we all think on Monday morning

USGA Stuff - Mike Davis was everywhere yesterday, so we'll deal with a few stories for which our governing body is the only connective tissue.  First, a discussion on those very first balls in the air from John Bodenhamer:

We can't wait for two local players, a little special start tomorrow. Brandon Wu from Scarsdale and Danny Balin from White Plains will hit the first shots off the 1st and 10th tees tomorrow morning when we start, and we're pleased by that.

Well played, sir.  Just a small thing, but glad to see them flush it...

Then, courtesy of Geoff, the kind of nonsense that sets our eyes to rolling (with Geoff's snarky comments included in italics):

Warning, there is now a brand anthem that you’ll be tired of by Sunday. From Craig Annis, Chief Brand Officer:

Rounds have been up. Golf courses are busy. And it's required us to think about the role that we play in helping to make the game more accessible and welcoming for everyone.

And so what you saw at the beginning was our new brand anthem, for all golf is and all that it can be. It really talks a lot about the special connection that golfers have to the game and what the game means to them. That's a message that we're going to continue to deliver throughout this week and beyond.

They sure love to spend money on PSA’s and early-retire good people. Charming. Wait, what, there is more?

There are two others that I want to share as well. The first is a spot that we're calling "openness," which not only talks about the openness of our championship and the history with that, but also the commitment that we're making as a leading governing body and golf organization to make the game more open, more accessible, and why that's really important.

We’re going to get a public course golfer to fill that empty seat the Executive Committee? Ah I got excited there for a sec.

And then the third is an ad that features Michelle Wie, our champion, as the narrator, and it's an advertisement that's in partnership with SheIS Sport, focused on their "women worth watching" campaign. And it just shines a light on the importance of people celebrating, tuning in, watching and supporting women in sports broadly but also specifically women in golf.

The partners at Barstool can help promote that one!

Silly me, I'm still wondering why a governing body has a Chief Brand Officer... But of course I agree that there is no problem in our game that can't be solved by a good brand anthem...

Ironically, in a year of pandemic, the USGA simply cannot cure themselves of a case of chronic Masters envy... Hold that thought, as we'll circle back to it in a bit.

They touched on most of the hot-button issues you'd expect, including this "Next Year in Jerusalem" moment:

And the proceedings wrapped with a distance question. In case you didn’t know it, there’s more study and dialogue to come. Also known as, we’ll get to it.

 And at the very heart of this, the USGA and the R&A do believe that, long-term, we think something needs to be done about distance, because we believe it's going to continue to increase. All the data would suggest that. We don't think that's in the best interests of the game, but we also acknowledge that there are a lot of different sectors within the industry. There's the golf courses that are really the things that have been impacted the most, that have taken the brunt, that have had to spend billions of dollars to continue to change because of what's happened with distance.

But then there's the other things, there's the elite players, there's the recreational players, there's the, you know, individual golfer. We want to make sure the game is enjoyable. We want to make sure it's sustainable. We didn't get here overnight. It took over a hundred years. And our belief is, if we collectively as an industry look at this and say, what is in the best interests of the game long-term, we're going to get there.

So essentially what we did when COVID came out is we have just delayed this project, but we believe -- or in the first quarter of next year we'll put out what's called an Area of Interest Study, which really are the topics we want to engage with the industry. We want to engage with elite players, with equipment manufacturers, with golfers, with golf courses. We want to do it on a global basis and then continue to look at this. Because, again, at the heart of this is what's in the best interests of the game long-term.

The last few months have been so very educational, for which I'm eternally grateful.  For instance, we've learned that lockdown protests are super-spreader events, whereas rioting for social justice poses no health risk.  Good to know...

Similarly, one can work on PSAs and brand anthems during a pandemic, but not on analyzing distance... Because?  Social justice, I assume...

Circling back to that thought I asked you to hold, do you remember the shock of the award of USGA television rights to Fox?  If not, this Ron Sirak classic will refresh your memories, the shock being the USGAs rather unhealthy Masters envy.  I say shocking because any of my readers could explain to Mike Davis in two minutes why the Masters will always out draw an Open, and by a Tigeresque margin...

Dave Shedloski has an item up that should be read as a companion piece to Sirak's, the headline of which will inevitably be this:

It took more than luck. FOX and NBC had to hammer out a deal in which the two sides split nearly equally the cost of the remainder of the FOX contract. Talks wrapped up in early June. But that was hardly the end of it. FOX did not have the right to simply assign the TV rights to NBC. The USGA had to sign off on it, essentially negotiating an exit deal with FOX and closing on a new deal with NBC.

FOX representatives broke the news of their agreement with NBC to Davis at a June 17 meeting at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J. The next day NBC officials visited USGA headquarters at Golf House in Liberty Corner, N.J., to start the process of negotiations.

Awkward.  B=But the fact that these negotiations happened behind the back of the USGA may be the telling detail. 

We probably need to revisit this visual from that Sirak piece:

So Fox will pay half of the inflated value of this contract, and get nothing in return?  Who's got whom by the neck?

We all understand the issues involved with NFL contracts and the like, the complications of which stretch into 2021.  But see if you can suss out the comedy gold here:

“We kept hearing that the Open Championship was going to go from July to September, that Augusta was going to reposition to November and that the U.S. Open was possibly going to go to Riviera and be the third week of December,” Miller recalled. “And we knew that we couldn't handle [the U.S. Open] if it was in December, because we have Sunday Night Football, and it would have also been the same weekend as our Father/Son event. So we didn't really pay too much attention to the U.S. Open. We were just more concerned with the Open Championship.”

There's actually a ton of information jammed into that one 'graph.  For instance, that the Open Championship could have been this week, combined with a  December U.S. Open at Riviera... That could been fun, but once Mr. Slumbers saw the number of zeros on the business interruption claim check...

But Jon Miller, the President of Programming for NBC Sports, said out loud without any sense of shame, that NBC couldn't broadcast the U.S, Open because of the Father/Son event...  Le Sigh!

About That Rota - This mini-obsession is well into the annoying category, because of course there's a rota... or something, really, whatever you want to call it...

Regarding the idea of “anchor” sites—American for rota—CEO Mike Davis offered this:

As I said, the USGA did research, we talked to a lot of players, we talked to past champions, and there was a consistent theme that they want to go to our greatest U.S. Open sites and they want to go there more often.

So really John and team started first with Pinehurst working on that. So I think let's let the future play out, but there are some treasured sites, as John has said. We have got Nick Price, who was a world No. 1 on our Board of Directors and sits on our Championship Committee, and he has said, you know, it does matter where you win your U.S. Open. And I think we, John and team, all of us took that to heart. And so that's what we're looking at right now. So as they say, stay tuned.

You mean that Jordan won't be bragging about his Open at Chambers Bay?

But, gee Mike, who was it that abandoned all those venues? And let's remember that they've already abandoned Winged Foot once... But that you need a focus group to tell you to take your events to your greatest U.S. Open sites isn't terribly comforting...

Bodenhamer had this to say about The Foot's potential inclusion in that rota:

As for Winged Foot’s future in a U.S. Open-rota world, Bodenhamer offered this endorsement:

This is not what they signed up for. And it's just been a real testament to perseverance on Winged Foot's part, and we could not be more grateful. And I assure you that will be recognized within the USGA.

By which I assume he means this:

“Our compensation was based on the number of fans that came to watch the tournament, plus the amount of merchandise that was sold in the merchandise tent, plus the corporate tents that were sold and the rental of the property,” he said. “We’ve had a 90 percent reduction in the revenue going to the club.”

But he took a long view. “When you do business with someone, it’s a partnership,” he said. “You win, they win. You lose, they lose,”

And because there is a U.S. Open in some form, with the television revenue and some advertising dollars from sponsors, the U.S.G.A. can continue funding its nonprofit partners and hope for better next year.

 Only 90%?  As for whether that relationship is truly a partnership, we'll see how they get rewarded...