Friday, April 23, 2021

Late-Week Lamentations

A last minute decision to play golf this morning, so I actually prepped a portion of this post for you yesterday afternoon.  See, I'm always thinking of my readers...

Zurich Stuff - The event itself wouldn't warrant much discussion, excepting perhaps their bold break from 72 holes of stroke play.  Brian Wacker shares that sentiment:

Once an overlooked stop sandwiched between the Masters and the Players Championship (more recently the PGA Championship), the tournament in recent years often lacked star power much
less an identity. And while 72 holes of stroke play is the purest determinant of the best player each week on tour, it became clear that something different was needed in the Big Easy.

The first year of the new team format was telling: It drew seven of the top 11 and 13 of the top 25 in the Official World Golf Ranking.

The luster hasn’t worn off, either. This year’s field includes five of the top 10 in the OWGR—Rahm, Morikawa, Xander Schauffele, Tyrrell Hatton and Patrick Cantlay—and 11 major champions. Two of the teams—Rose/Henrik Stenson and Louis Oosthuizen/Charl Schwartzel—include a pair of major winners. And there are seven more top-25 players in the field, too.

Watching them play two days of alternate shot is good, as is the very process by which they pair up. 

For instance, there's those guys trying to reclaim lost glory:

Justin Rose and Henrik Stenson have a unique, shared history in golf.

The two go way back to their amateur days, but are most known for their dominant partnership in the Ryder Cup, where they boast an impressive 6-2 record. Rose won the gold medal in the 2016

Olympic Games, beating Stenson, the silver medalist. Both players have won 20-plus professional events worldwide and each has earned a FedEx Cup title, Stenson in 2013 and Rose in 2018.

But that shared history and past success has yet to make its way to TPC Louisiana and the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. In two previous appearances together, the pairing missed the cut in 2017 and finished T-19 in 2018, poor performances by their lofty standards.

JR showed signs of life at Augusta, if briefly, but the last I've seen of Henrik was on a milk carton.  Another team similarly in search of lost glory can be found here as well.  

 These two might be a pick.... if it were a long drive contest:

But to hear Finau tell it, there is at least one pro who can bomb it past him: Cameron Champ, his
partner in this week’s two-man team event at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, who ranks third at 318 yards behind only Wyndham Clark and Bryson DeChambeau. When Finau and Champ were asked who was longer, neither pointed at himself.

“He’s pointing at the wrong guy,” Finau said.

“No, no,” said Champ, who explained why Finau’s “puny” average driving distance of 305 yards doesn’t tell the full story of his prodigious length. “As people notice, he takes it back a little bit shorter than normal, but when he takes it back full, he is the longest on Tour.”

One of the other bits of fun this week are the walk-up songs.  The vast majority have never previously passed your humble blogger's ears, but wasn't it just recently we were discussing mullets?

Cameron Smith’s mullet has been the talk of the PGA Tour for so long this season that it deserves its own song. But until someone puts words to music (we’re thinking of you, Sam Harrop), we’ll just have to make do with Jay Powell’s “The Mullet Song.”

For that, we have fellow Aussie Marc Leishman to thank. Someone had to come up with a good walk-up tune for the first tee at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans this week, and Leishman delivered.

“He’s already entered it. I didn’t even get a choice,” Smith explained. “We’re going to be rocking that going to the first tee.”

 How did Leishman settle on “The Mullet Song?” He googled “mullet songs” and the rest as they say is history.

They have Google Down Under?  Who knew?

These guys would be your favorites, and it appears to be love:

With Cantlay, they form the highest-ranked team in the field this week with both players in the
top-10 of the official World Golf Ranking (Schauffele No. 5, Cantlay No. 10). The budding bromance between Cantlay and Schauffele ignited at the 2019 Presidents Cup in Australia when they bonded playing gin on the flight and ended up as partners in all four of the team sessions of the international biennial competition. Ever since, they’ve become regular practice-round partners.

“It’s very competitive, and we feel like when we play against each other it sort of sharpens ourselves for the best week possible,” Schauffele explained. “We know our games inside out, I think that will give us an advantage.”

Cantlay has been on a run of missed cuts, whereas I've been reliably informed that Xander pured his tee shot on No. 16 at Augusta....  Not sure why he thought we needed that assurance, unless concerned that we might over-react to the ball coming up thirty yards short.

But just a kind word for the Zurich sponsors, who took an afterthought of an event and turned it into something different.  There's only two weeks on Tour when they're not playing 72 holes of stroke play, and this is one of them.  A bit of a trick there, though, because they are, in fact, playing 72 holes of stroke play, they're just doing it in fourballs and alternate shot.

And the leaders in the clubhouse after the first day of best ball are.... Team Norway.

Alter Cockers - Your humble blogger's game is in the crapper, but other old-timers seem to be doing OK.  You know, guys like Westwood, Cink and Lydia Ko.  OK, that last one isn't receiving mail from AARP just yet, but she's been in the wilderness long enough that she seems as old as the other two.

First up is last week's winner at Hilton Head, Stewart Cink.  Mike Bamberger has him talk about short putting, after we all saw Cink using almost a false start on his short putts.  Here's what he tells himself over the ball:

“You probably see me mouthing something to Reagan [Cink’s caddie and son at Hilton Head], or you might audibly pick it up on the coverage: I like to remind myself is that I want to be on the mountaintop of trust before every putt. Those aren’t just words to me. I’m actually trying to
construct my pre-shot routine so that that’s what I’m focused on consciously. I hate the word ‘routine’ because that’s not the right word for what we do. It’s an operation that requires focus and cadence, and I’m trying to hit my little spots along that routine. By the time I finish that routine, the ball is already rolling.

“You probably have heard me or see me mouth the words, ‘Mountaintop of trust.’ Or, ‘Mountaintop of peace.’ You know, little phrases like that. I’m really just saying it so I can hear myself and remind myself.

“It’s a path to success. Obviously, I want to make the putts. I don’t want to miss putts. But I believe that the way to keep myself the calmest and the way to keep my stroke doing what it’s supposed to do is through the process and staying calm and focusing on something I can control, as opposed to something you can’t control. If you depend on something you can’t control, you’re just going to end up frustrated, and I don’t want to be frustrated.”

Whatever gets you through the night... 

Eamon Lynch takes a well deserved break from writing about Tour compensation programs to talk about these older players and their not-so-inevitable comebacks:

Lynch: Jordan Spieth, Lydia Ko step back from abyss, but resurrections are rare, even for the greats

But whatever led them back to the winner’s circle—determination, talent, hard work,
perseverance—it was assuredly not the mawkish twaddle that they were just too good not to be there again.

Just as cemeteries are full of indispensable people, lesser Tours and broadcasting booths are peopled with those thought too good not to win again. Some of the falls from grace were so precipitous as to become shorthand reference points even for casual fans.

The obvious one is David Duval. He won 13 PGA Tour titles in under four years, culminating in his Open Championship victory at Royal Lytham 20 years ago. A few months later in Japan, two days after his 30th birthday, he cashed his last winner’s check.

The Claret Jug can seem a poisoned chalice for some of its recipients. Ian Baker-Finch won it a decade before Duval, but six years later he wept in the locker room at Royal Troon when he couldn’t break 90 in the opening round. That afternoon he withdrew from the Open and quit tournament golf.

The focus on Ko and Spieth is more than a little misleading.  They're anomalies in that they lost their form while still incredibly young.  In this excerpt Lynch details some of the many that were never heard from again:

Seve Ballesteros won three Opens but was only 38 years old when the victories dried up, his swing and body decayed beyond repair. A friend of mine once asked Seve—a man not given to modesty—who would win if Europe’s ‘Big Five’ of the ‘80s faced off at their best. “Sandy would win,” Seve replied firmly. “But I would be second.” Yet Sandy—as in Lyle, Open and Masters champion—was finished even earlier than Seve, at age 34, not counting a European Seniors win and a couple of hickory events in his native Scotland.

Lyle’s Open came at Royal St. George’s, where the championship makes its overdue return (pandemic permitting) in July. Four years earlier at RSG’s, Bill Rogers won the Jug, one of seven worldwide titles the 30-year-old Texan claimed in ’81. By ’88, Rogers was working in a San Antonio pro shop, burned out and far removed from his last win. Yani Tseng won two Women’s British Opens among her five majors and 15 LPGA titles, all in a four-year span. She was 23 when the slump started. She’s now 32 with a world ranking of 1,025th. We can reach back further. Ralph Guldahl: 16 wins, three majors, done at 29.

Tangentially related, Daniel Rappaport rates the best old-man seasons ever in golf.  Now, a spoiler alert, while there are other names invoked, on the subject of winning late in life, there's only two names that matter.  Here's the first:

Sam Snead, 1957

Snead was born within months of Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson in 1912, and while the other two players arguably had better peaks, Slammin’ Sammy had the longevity. Snead won his first PGA Tour event in 1936 and his 82nd/last in 1965, and he racked up 18 victories after turning 40—that’s second all time to a man we’ll discuss in a minute.

After turning 45 on May 27, 1957, Snead won his next start at the Palm Beach Round Robin, a now-defunct event that featured a very strange scoring system. He followed that up with three straight top-10s in the U.S. Open, the Western Open and the PGA Championship, added two more runner-ups at the World Championship of Golf and the Miller High Life Open. The highlight of the year came in his last start at the Dallas Open Invitational, where he shot 11-under 60 in the second round—then the lowest-recorded score in tour history—and shot 20 under par to cruise to victory.

In total, for a season that featured two wins and three runner-ups, he earned a grand total of $28,261.

Sam Snead, 1960

Slammin’ Sammy was back at it 1960, winning twice before May 1—at the De Soto Open Invitational and the Greater Greensboro Open. It was Snead’s seventh victory in Greensboro but not his last (that would come five years later), just before his 53rd birthday. It seems only fitting, given his remarkable 40-plus record, that Snead still holds the record as the oldest winner in tour history.

Snead played 11 times during the 1960 season—when Arnold Palmer was at the top of his game, winning eight times that year—and the 47/48-year-old Snead finished in the top 25 in all 11 starts. In addition to the two victories, he posted a runner-up at the West Palm Beach Open Invitational and a T-3 at the PGA Championship.

And the second:

Vijay Singh, 2008

Singh is perhaps the poster child for late bloomers, with 22 of his 34 PGA Tour victories coming after his 40th birthday. That’s the most for a 40-plus-year-old player, and he made quite a push after turning 45 in May 2008. Singh won the WGC-Bridgestone that August and a month later won the first two events of the FedEx Cup playoffs en route to the FedEx Cup title.

With his three victories and the FedEx Cup honors, Singh made more than $16 million in on-course earnings that season. Nothing like filling out the career earnings—Singh is fifth all time—when you’re closer to 50 than 40.

Others, such as Julius Boros and Kenny Perry deserve mention, but these are the gold standard for winning in their forties.  Cink gets a mention as well, as it's hard to quibble with two wins...  Well, my quibble isn't with the winds, it's just that they seem like different seasons to this observer.

Lastly in this category, Gary Van Sickle assesses the World Golf Hall of Fame prospects for the current generation of players, with some surprising conclusions.  For instance, who could have seen this one coming?

Tiger Woods. The Hall of Fame changed its minimum age requirement to 50 the year before Woods would’ve been eligible or he would already be inducted with his contemporaries such as Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els. With 15 major titles and 82 wins, his choice doesn’t need discussion. Prediction: A dead-solid lock. A Zurich.

 Given that he's already bene voted in, that's quite the bold prediction, Gary.  Oh, and what's a Zurich?

Here, I tend to think that he's already a lock.  But given that he's only 27, the value of a prediction seems marginal at best:

Jordan Spieth. This isn’t as easy as you might think. Two major championships ought to get you into the hall, right? Ask Andy North and John Daly how that worked out. But Spieth has three majors among 12 PGA Tour victories and is only 27. He’s coming out of a slump and appears to be getting closer to the form he had in 2015 when he chased the third leg of the Grand Slam to the 72nd hole of the British Open at St. Andrews. It’s hard to believe he isn’t going to pile up more victories. It’s also hard to believe he’s not going to win another Masters. He’s got a win, two seconds and two thirds. Augusta National is right up his alley. But let’s say he doesn’t win anything ever again. That would mean he landed his third and final major, the British Open at Royal Birkdale, at age 24. Would he be looked at as a great champion or a very good player who had a three-year hot streak? I’d invoke the Larry Nelson rule: three majors and you’re in the hall. It took awhile before Nelson finally got inducted with his three majors and 10 total wins. Spieth has three and 12, respectively. Prediction: Highly probable. Don’t mess with Texas.

the better question might be, what more would he need to accomplish?

But this is where it gets interesting:

Lee Westwood. No one has embodied The Nearly Man more than England’s affable Westwood. He achieved the rare Third-Place Slam, finishing third in each of the majors. His 19 top-10 finishes in majors include three runners-up and sixth thirds. Westwood has been all over the majors like drool on a bulldog. You can’t overlook 44 worldwide victories, including 25 on the European Tour, however, despite winning only twice on the PGA Tour. He’s a Ryder Cup warhorse who is likely to break Europe’s all-time appearance marks this September if he makes the team. In addition, he’s got the longevity factor. He was the European Tour’s Golfer Of the Year in 1998, 2000, 2009 and … 2020!. That’s a Nicklaus-esqe 22-year spread. Colin Montgomerie made the hall with a major-less record not equal to Westwood’s. Prediction: Probable. No major, no matter in this case.

To me, Lee Westwood is the perfect inductee if you want to run a Hall of the Very Nice Players.  Good career, but never a dominant player, never even the best in the world at any time (and yes, I know he rose to the top of the OWGR for an hour and-a-half, but that's just math).  But now we see the wages of enshrining Colin Montgomerie, who was a far better player than Westy.

But, at leats Gary takes a moment to make us laugh:

Rickie Fowler. No majors, but he did invent the color orange. Prediction: Nope.

He'll console himself with all those PIP bonus checks... 

Ryder Cup Fever - Daniel Rappaport updates us on U.S Ryder Cup points standings:

U.S. Points Standings (top six automatically qualify)

1. Dustin Johnson

2. Bryson DeChambeau

3. Justin Thomas

4. Collin Morikawa

5. Xander Schauffele

6. Brooks Koepka

7. Patrick Reed

8. Tony Finau

9. Webb Simpson

10. Daniel Berger

11. Jordan Spieth

12. Billy Horschel

13. Patrick Cantlay

14. Harris English

15. Scottie Scheffler

 To which he appends this assessment:

LOCKS: Johnson, DeChambeau, Thomas, Morikawa, Schauffele, Finau

Tony Finau is a lock, but not PReed or Webb?  

The buried lede is that the aforementioned PReed has fallen out of the automatic qualifiers.  I can't imagine him not being picked, but I also can't imagine anyone wanting him in the team room (or hanging with Justine at social events).

But Daniel isn't here to discuss those guys.  No, he's pushing for a guy that's still looking up at those top fifteen:

The general golf public may have just become familiar with Willy Z—that’s a thing, by the way—but he’s been rubbing shoulders with golfing elites since he was a kid. When he was 6, he got a
lesson from Ken Venturi. As a teenager, he got tips from Lanny Wadkins. He trains with Jordan Spieth, plays money games with Tony Romo. He was born in San Francisco and bred in Dallas, but doesn’t it seem like he has a bit of Hollywood in him? That, of course, is a good thing in a lights-camera-action event like the Ryder Cup.

And despite being six months older than Collin Morikawa (wrap your head around that), Zalatoris has rookie energy, another key component in the perfect team-room potion. Now, will he continue on this heater that has taken him from the Korn Ferry Tour to No. 27 in the world in the span of seven months? Golf greatness is fleeting. Players get hot and players get freezing cold. But if the Ryder Cup were today, it’s hard to imagine him not being on the team, even if he’s only 18th in the latest standings. Which is absolutely, completely and totally wild when you consider where he was in his golf career this time last year.

Zalatoris making the team isn't a crazy thought, but if the Ryder Cup were today, Will would be watching it with his buddy Tony Romo.  Which isn't to say that he couldn't make the team, but he'll have to make it with his play between now and selection day.

As impressed as we all were by the kid at Augusta (and Winged Foot, as well), he needs to show a lot more.  Not only is his rookie status a negative, but he's just not a very good putter.  Let's give the kid a little space and see how his career develops before throwing him into that cauldron.

Here's Rappaport's guess of the team per current standings:

IF SELECTIONS WERE TODAY, TEAM PREDICTIONS: Johnson, DeChambeau, Thomas, Morikawa, Schauffele, Finau, Spieth, Reed, Simpson, Zalatoris, Scheffler, Cantlay

You know my thoughts on Z-man.  Spieth is certainly a wild card, but it would great if his form holds just for the "Why doesn't Jordan want to play with me?" drama from Patrick and Justine.  I'd trade Finau and Scheffler (and Zalatoris, obviously) for Daniel Berger and Brian Harman in a heartbeat, if only because those guys can putt.

We also have an update on the Euro points list:

Euro points standings (top four auto qualify)

1. Tommy Fleetwood

2. Jon Rahm

3. Tyrrell Hatton

4. Rory McIlroy

5. Victor Perez

6. Matt Fitzpatrick

7. Bernd Wiesberger

8. Robert MacIntyre

World points standings (top five not qualified off Euro points)

1. Jon Rahm

2. Tyrrell Hatton

3. Rory McIlroy

4. Lee Westwood

5. Tommy Fleetwood

6. Matt Fitzpatrick

7. Victor Perez

8. Paul Casey

9. Viktor Hovland

10. Robert MacIntyre

11. Sergio Garcia

LOCKS: Hatton, Rahm, McIlroy, Casey, Hovland, Fitzpatrick

I too think Casey will be there, though I don't see that a sbeing locked down.  What do we think of Rory as a mortal lock?  Hard to see him not on the team, unless of course you've seen him play recently...

IF SELECTIONS WERE TODAY, TEAM PREDICTIONS: Rahm, McIlroy, Hatton, Hovland, Fitzpatrick, Casey, Garcia, Fleetwood, Westwood, Perez, Lowry, MacIntyre

Robert MacIntyre has become the flavor of the month after his Augusta performance, though he's hanging like a thread.  That team looks pretty strong, though any number of their old war horses have been off their feed lately (McIlroy, Hatton, Garcia, Fleetwood and Lowry, for sure).  And Lee Westwood's pact with the devil might have lapsed as well...

It's a home game with a historically weak Euro roster.  It should be a U.S. route, and I'm quite confident that, thanks to our Task Force, the U.S. will at least show up on the first tee.  Of course, the U.S. had the stronger roster in Paris... Remind me, how did that one turn out?

These Guys Are Good - Except, you know, when they're not.  Monday qualifying is its own dark art, as you have to shoot at every pin and make birdies by the bushelful.  Take a gander at this card from Korn Ferry Monday qualifying:

He had a very respectable 50 on the outgoing nine, but then just blew up coming home...'

 You might think that they would screen entrants, because this is big time golf.  But this is how the player in question rolled up to the first tee:

Hey, it's a collared shirt...  Well, it's collared, I'm not actually sure whether it's a shirt.

So, who is this scam artist?

A man by the name of Connor Murphy turned in a 108 at the Bridges Golf Club in Gunter, Texas, which was serving as the qualifying site for the KFT’s Veritex Bank Championship. For those of you scoring at home, that is 36 over par, a score that was last among the 139-player field by 16 shots. It was a bit of a rough start for Murphy, who opened with an 11. Wasn’t a great finish, either, carding a 12 on his final hole. Murphy did manage to make a birdie and four pars on his day, which is one heck of a bounce-back effort. Conversely, there’s a chance Murphy’s performance was just that: a performance.

Murphy is listed from Encino, Calif. The only records of a person with that name from that city show a Connor Murphy of Connor Murphy Fitness, which points to several popular social media accounts. Murphy clearly has a following, boasting over 2.46 million YouTube subscribers and nearly 500,000 followers on Instagram. (Warning: Some of Murphy’s content is not safe for work.) In his last YouTube video, titled “The Day I Realized I Was Going to Win the US Open,” Murphy shares his belief that, yes, he’s going to win the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines this summer. Whether this is Murphy’s true aspiration or a stunt is up for interpretation, although several posts from Monday signal the latter.

The Tour got played.  You'd think they'd be embarrassed, if only for this guy:

Josh Hart, a pro from Jupiter, Fla., was able to post a two-under 70 while playing with Murphy. The score was four shots out of earning a spot in the Veritex Bank Championship, but at least Hart has a heck of a story to tell.

I'm guessing that he wasn't very amused.

Is Your Arm Locked, Or Are You Just Happy To See Me? -  Support for Billy Ho. from a man that knows a bit about putting:

Billy Horschel made waves last week when he came out against the arm-lock putting at the RBC
Heritage as he said that “guys are doing it too good.” With the putter “locked” against the arm, the face is more stabilized than when the grip rests in a player’s hands. Horschel argued that constitutes anchoring, which is banned under the rules of golf.

Horschel is not alone in that assessment as Brad Faxon, commonly referred to as one of the best putters of all time, added his voice to the anti-arm-lock brigade.

“In my opinion, we have to get rid of the arm-lock,” Faxon said on Sirius XM PGA Tour Radio. “It’s absolutely anchoring. If the USGA doesn’t think it is, then they need to look at themselves in the mirror.”

While Fax will draw listeners, it's really more of a split verdict:

According to Rule 10.1, a stroke is defined as: “Fairly striking at a ball with the head of a club. The fundamental challenge is to direct and control the movement of the entire club by freely swinging the club without anchoring it. … The player must fairly strike at the ball with the head of the club such that there is only momentary contact between the club and the ball and must not push, scrape or scoop the ball.”

As Luke Kerr-Dineen detailed earlier this week, arm-locking escapes the wrath of the rulebook under that definition. Because the putter is resting against the arm, which is moving free and independent of the body, it is legal. There is no fixed point that the putter rests against.

We can all see that the arm is different than the torso, we're just unclear as to whether it's different enough.  I think it should be banned, but I also want to try it for myself... Does that make me a hypocrite?  Or just nuanced?

Bams on PIP - We went deep on PIP yesterday, and I wasn't intending any follow-up.  But Mike Bamberger's take on the ethos of our game is always worth your time.  Apparently it wasn't Eamon Lynch that broke the news:

The plan had been in the works for some time. In a manner of speaking, Greg Norman broke the story, or some of it, 11 months ago when he told GOLF.com:

“What I’m hearing is that the PGA Tour, against all their bylaws and governances, is talking about putting aside a $40 million pot for eight players, with $8 million for the top player,” Norman said then. “The PGA Tour is re-tweaking their model with the PGL out there. If you’re player nine, 10, 11 or 12, I think you’d be pretty pissed off.”

For a man who hasn’t played the Tour in 20 years, Norman, who lives in South Florida, hears a great deal. He had a keen interest in this issue because years ago he promoted the idea of a World Golf Tour. In more recent years, pre-pandemic, a group, backed by Saudi money, emerged, trying to launch something called the Premier Golf League. Norman had a heightened interest because the PGL, as a concept, was a descendant of what he was proposing.

 Yeah, which means he has baggage...  but I'd like to hear more about those by-laws...

In his own inimitable manner, Mike makes an eloquent case for the status quo ante:

What I find so dispiriting about PIP — love the name, though! — is that it undercuts what makes the PGA Tour the PGA Tour in the first place. The Tour is a series of athletic competitions, played across the country and sometimes in exotic locales beyond our borders, by which talented golfers play a difficult sport strictly by its well-defined rules and get paid on the basis of their scores.

Their scores! What they shoot! You can be cranky or aloof or gracious or whatever. Your prize money is your prize money.

It was (it is) the best example of the free market, sports division, at work. No guaranteed anything. You could have a bad haircut, crooked teeth, baggy slacks. Didn’t (and doesn’t) matter. If you and Brandt Snedeker both shoot 277 for a T3 finish, you both got $588,624 by direct deposit.

Yes, but the kids today will find that racist.... Yanno, disparate impact and all.  But Mike makes a case that I tried to get at yesterday:

Everything else was (and largely is) rewarded by the marketplace. Your shoe deal, your club deal, what you would get for a corporate day. Maybe you cared about that stuff, maybe you didn’t. That’s where these X-factors and Q-ratings mattered.

Yes, and it's extremely important that the Tour stay out of that arena, though they have no intention of doing so.

Mike really nails it here:

The core value of the PGA Tour has always been for the golfers to get paid for what they do on the course, to bring some diversion to the cities they visit and to leave those towns in better shape than they found them. (The charitable arm of the whole thing.) Other outfits, not the PGA Tour, will take care of the rest, paying players for having a pleasing swing, nice hair, large Instagram following, etc.

If the Tour thought the PGL was a threat, that the PGL could lure away its top players with guaranteed paydays, the Tour should find a way to let the top players make more money that is in keeping with its core values in the first place. In other words, something that relates strictly to athletic performance. Scores shot. Scores shot within the rules.

Like many, I'm still coming to grips with that fact that, in the midst of a pandemic that has eliminated spectators and associated revenues, that the Tour just happened to have $40 million in change under their sofa cushions.   Faced with that fact, a reasonable man might wonder why fifty employees had to be laid off last year, allegedly because of the very same pandemic.

But if there's an extra $40 mil large, that's great.  Just jack the payout schedules accordingly, but make them earn it on the golf course.  Obviously they get paid in other ways, and good for them.  But, as Mike argues convincingly, the Tour has no business awarding players based upon anything that doesn't go on a scorecard.... It's a break with tradition but, more importantly, it's a break with propriety.  The Tour should not be judging its members on any basis other than scores.

I shall leave you there and wish you a great weekend.  A reminder that I won't be with you on Monday, but we'll catch up on Tuesday and things should revert to normal after that.

Posted by at No comments:

Thursday, April 22, 2021

These Guys Are... Impactful

A crazy week has thrown our blogging schedule asunder, so let's start to pick up the pieces.  Today I'll focus on one story, a unique window in The Global Home.  Tomorrow I'll blog the rest of the golf news, though you'll have to do without the typical Weekend Wrap on Monday.  

Ulster-born Eamon Lnch has been much in evidence in recent times, even doing the talking head thing on Golf Channel.  On Tuesday he broke a story that has consumed the golf world since:

Exclusive: PGA Tour to create $40 million bonus pool for stars like Tiger Woods, Bryson DeChambeau

Of course they did, because those guys are notoriously underpaid.... But, exactly what kind of fund are we discussing?

The PGA Tour has created a lucrative bonus structure that will reward golf’s biggest stars regardless of how they perform on the course, Golfweek has learned. The new system is designed to compensate players who are judged to drive fan and sponsor engagement, like Tiger Woods, Bryson DeChambeau and Rickie Fowler.

Known as the Player Impact Program, the concept is seen as a direct response to Premier Golf League, a proposed splinter tour funded by the Saudi Arabian regime that has tried to lure golf’s biggest names with the promise of a massive guaranteed pay day. PGL has spent years trying to gain traction but seems no closer to signing a sufficient number of elite players to be viable. The stuttering PGL effort nevertheless forced the PGA Tour to devise a means to reward stars for the value they add to the overall product rather than solely for their on-course performance.

A PGA Tour spokesperson confirmed to Golfweek that the Player Impact Program began January 1 to “recognize and reward players who positively move the needle.” At the end of the year, a pool of $40 million will be distributed among 10 players, with the player deemed most valuable receiving $8 million.

Regardless of how they perform on the course?  OK, I can certainly see how Rickie would be a fan...

So, how will this work?  You might want to refill that cup of coffee, because this could take a while:

The 10 beneficiaries will be determined based on their “Impact Score,” a number generated from six separate metrics that are designed to quantify that individual’s added value. According to a document the PGA Tour distributed to players, the contents of which were shared with Golfweek, the metrics on which players will be ranked against their peers include:

 (1) Their position on the season-ending FedEx Cup points list.

*Update: While FedEx Cup rank was included among criterion in the document players received, the tour tells Golfweek that it will not be used as a metric to determine bonus payments.

 (2) Their popularity in Google Search.

(3) Their Nielsen Brand Exposure rating, which places a value on the exposure a player delivers to sponsors though the minutes they are featured on broadcasts.

(4) Their Q Rating, which measures the familiarity and appeal of a player’s brand.

(5) Their MVP Index rating, which calibrates the value of the engagement a player drives across social and digital channels.

(6) Their Meltwater Mentions, or the frequency with which a player generates coverage across a range of media platforms.

Your eye will naturally attach to alliterative awesomeness of  Meltwater Mentions, which we'll get back to in a sec.

But savor for a moment, if you will the schadenfreudalicious putdown of former Tour golden child FedEx.  They only fund the biggest portion of the Tour's operations, but they're treated as shabbily as their run-of-the-mill sponsors, which only confirms that the check has cleared..  Not only are they dissed by exclusion from the final metrics, but the initial inclusion publicly emphasizes the disdain for FedEx Cup rankings... And really, who could argue with that?

Lots of reactions, first from that original Lynch piece:

“Tiger should be No. 1 on that list no matter what,” Koepka told Golfweek when asked about the new bonus plan. “He’s the entire reason we’re able to play for so much money, the entire reason this sport is as popular as it is, and the reason most of us are playing. Not even close.”

The entire reason?  Golfers apparently didn't get paid before Tiger...

More importantly, according to ESPN, Tiger's career earnings are $120,851,706, so is that insufficient?  And that doesn't include Nike, Bridgestone or Monster Mash, or whatever the name of that swill is.  This picture was included in the Lynch story, so I assume it was Tiger's reaction to learning about this bonus pool:

Good call to inform him on a Sunday...

We'll sample a range of reactions, though don't expect logic in the presentation order.  Here's Shack in his original post on the news:

Now, we’ve heard rumors of the “impact fund” to fend off players thinking of joining the Premier Golf League and a little extra bonus money for pimping product, sponsors or ad campaigns isn’t the end of the world.

But the $40 million program outlined by Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch and also creatively undercut in the same piece, seems like an odd solution to the issues raised by the PGL. Namely: none of this will make stars play more, deal with calendar oversaturation, or improve “the product” for sponsors, fans and TV. (Unless you come from a marketing mindset looking at spreadsheets instead of watching golf.)

Wait, you thought the players' interest in the PGL was about the team competition?  The only thing about the teams that excited say, Phil, was that he thought he was going to own his team...

 No, this is a very targeted response by Jay to an existential threat, real or perceived.  And very much about the Benjamins...

Next up, Shack did a Winners and Losers post, including this scene setter:

Politics had Watergate and Whitewater. Now golf has Meltwater. You know, for that marketing metric you’d never heard of until now and still can’t believe a brand tracker put melt in the title.

Lynch’s reporting may end up permanently branding the Monahan era as nothing more than a marketing operation offended it has to be associated with golf.

Winners

—FedExCup/WhateverTheyCallTheWyndhamRewards Now. You both look so cool now as almost-legitimate points races requiring players to play golf and perform for cash. It’s all so

sportsy and above-board compared to the “PIP”. Still, not interesting at all, but definitely merit-based.

—The Premier Golf League. You sought to make the rich richer AND make pro golf more interesting to watch. Nice contrast to relying on Meltwater Mentions and a company founded by el padre de Jordan Spieth. Plus, nothing you did failed as miserably as the Super League.

—Bots. Think of the prices they can charge players in pursuit of PIP Top 10 money? “So if you finish 8th it’s a $3 million bonus? Okay, at that price we can do 800k searches that’ll set off alarm bells at The Google. Spell your last name again? Is it R-E-E-D like the things in the swamp, or R-E-A-D like a book?”

—PGA Tour Coffers. A new $65 million Global Home. Kicking in millions in purse money each week during the pandemic as revenues decline? Then spending more than all of that combined on the new TPC Sawgrass entrance drive? I guess what’s another $40 million for ten special franchise-worthy guys who never cause any headaches? Take that rainy day fund, fellow non-profits!

—The One VP Muttering To Himself. “I told them the social media mavericks would mock the Meltwater Method!”

Feel better?  Wait'll you get a gander at the losers...

Losers

—Fans. This is what the PGA Tour brass came up with as a response to the PGL’s existential threat? This is what they’ve been spending time on to make players likable and get them to play more? Oh, and betting.

—Jay Monahan. This is what you came up with as a response to the PGL’s existential threat?

—FedExCup. You were included in the initial draft obtained by Golfweek, but a correction later in the day revealed you were dropped as the PIP success barometer came into focus. So all that money you pay and still not good enough for the Player Impact Program?

—Sponsors. The PGA Tour creates a bonus pool to reward stars but the reporting suggests sponsor-relations took a back seat to metrics. Players get points for Meltwater Mentions but not for showing up at the Pro-Am party and remembering the CEO’s name?

—Media Partners. A bonus pool without a single mention of outreach to big rights-paying TV partners or something rewarding a star for playing more often? This is how they use your rights money? To pay for Phil’s Jupiter home theater system and backyard coffee bar?

—Rory McIlroy. So that new Policy Board seat, does that earn you PIP Rewards? Because we know you’ll surely abstain from any votes on its future status or the bonuses of folks who devised a way to pay you for that shiny Q rating.

—Jordan Spieth. I’m sure Tour peers have no opinions about your vote on this matter and the invocation of your sire’s “MVPIndex”.

—Almost stars. Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay barely know about the program, suggesting the pool was directed at a very select group. Sounds like the PIP futures are bleak for these ones. That’s okay, we writers like you both for being good quotes and different dudes.

—Agents. I don’t know how the ten-percenters structure their deals these days, but I can’t imagine many had a clause for something as bizarre as the Player Impact Program. But if the client would like the office interns to spend all day Google searching “Billy Horschel Players Championship Food Drive”, the client will need to pay the appropriate commission.

—The 50 PGA Tour Employees Laid Off During The Pandemic. If you accounted for $5 million in salary I’d be surprised. That’s like third place money in this pool no one was supposed to know about. Those lame pandemic layoffs get even lamer.

 —The PGL. They see you as a threat and can’t even rip-off one of your many smart ideas.

—Athleticism. Not one metric rewards players for bicep size, how fast they run the 40, their bench press max, or even ESPN Body Issue appearances. Sad.

A little overdone, but it is quite the target-rich environment.  Combined with their embrace of gambling, the sad conclusion is that the PGA Tour doesn't much care about the golf any more.  That's just a delivery system for the riches from DraftKings and Meltweather...  

Now I hope you've read that original piece from Eamon Lynch in full by this point.  Both Geoff and I sensed an underlying skepticism in that reporting, but in a follow up piece Eamon goes full state media:

On social media (always a reliable indicator of the broader world), a remarkable number of golf fans who usually genuflect at the altar of Adam Smith were apoplectic at the idea of wealthy players receiving money for such nebulous reasons, dollars that could be used to benefit the greater good, whether boosting purses in the minor leagues, rehiring Tour employees laid off during the pandemic or otherwise growing the game. In short, anything except further swelling Rickie Fowler’s already tumescent bank account.

Who knew it was so easy to convert the “up-by-the-bootstraps” brigade into Bernie bros?

Ummm...Eamon, did the grape Kool-Aid go down well?  Socialism is best understood as a protection racket for the elites, and this very much comports with that primary function.  Heretofore, the protection previously manifested itself in the allocation of playing privileges.  Now it's more of a direct deposit model...

For all its charitable endeavors, the PGA Tour is a business and businesses everywhere incentivize those individuals deemed to deliver value. That value isn’t always easy to define and
often harder to quantify. Much of the head-scratching about the Impact Fund centers on the metrics used to determine a player’s impact, a waggish assortment of measurements that achieve what any child in a schoolyard can do with the point of a finger: identify the cool kids people want to hang with.

Given the scale of the Tour’s new TV rights deal, $40 million is a small sum. There is ample left to boost purses in the minor leagues, underwrite the European Tour and otherwise gild the lily.

Wow, logic clearly isn't his thing.  The comparison to normal businesses is amusing, because there managers do have difficulty measuring performance and understanding its linkage to profitability.  Of course, the PGA Tour has a money list and used to be a meritocracy....

The logic used to be a limited, meritocratic approach.  The Tour runs the tourneys and the guys are compensated based on their individual results.  There have always been those with higher Q-scores, but the Tour never felt obligate to reward Arnie for his social media activity...  Why is that?  He got compensated for that through a combination of endorsement deals, appearance fees at non-Tour events and other business opportunities that would come their way.

But let's take a hard look at the gist of Eamon's argument:

Whatever criticisms are aimed at the Player Impact Program, it incentivizes players to engage more with fans, media and sponsors. That might be an awkward exercise for those ill-equipped for socialization, but it’s a worthy goal.

Ya got that?  These are amongst the luckiest souls on the planet, playing for seven-figure purses every week.  Yet they need to be further incentivized to engage with those paying the freight?  I don't know, I'd be inclined to throw less money at them if that's really the case.... 

Here some inconvenient facts need to be noted, including this from Shack:

Let’s just say as a nice way of not suggesting someone else runs their accounts, a lot of people have their passwords. Several of them have publicly made clear they have no use for the same engagement stuff the pool supposedly rewards. We’ve even had high profile resignations from social media in this group when the engagement grew to be too much.

Though, now that I think of it, I'm concerned that Justine Reed won't be eligible...

In fact, this might be the most frightening aspect in this story:

A PGA Tour spokesperson said that as part of the program the Tour is providing extra resources to help all players manage their social media and branding, including charitable foundations, and to maximize their off-the-course business opportunities.

Which means that they expect to control the content.  So, we'll have thousands more tweets like this:

And this gem:

Think I was joking about the Tour controlling content?  In another context, we had this update of the Hank Haney litigation yesterday:

Haney’s contention that the Tour interfered with his contract stems at least partly from a call from Tour commissioner Jay Monahan to Scott Greenstein, SiriusXM president and chief content officer, the day after the incident.

Monahan told Greenstein that Haney’s comments were “completely unacceptable, indefensible.” In his testimony Greenstein said Monahan “was clearly upset” but that he “did not threaten Greenstein.”

The Tour also argued in its motion for summary judgement that the circuit has a “supervisory interest” in SiriusXM as a result of the license agreement between the two organizations and that “programming was required to be agreed upon by the parties in advance of distribution.”

That's how Jay reacts when the LPGA is involved....  Of course, it might be that he was more motivated to settle a grudge on behalf of Tiger.... Yanno, that guy with the off-the-charts Meltlather Mentions.

Jay seems to be forgetting that social media and the like tends to be generational.  There are exceptions, as Phil has built some SM chops, but left out are the actual social media stars on Tour.  Shall we see what they're saying?

And this guy:

One more:

No soup for you, Wesley.

They will be promoting and rewarding state controlled social media engagement, and we know how enjoyable that will be.  They will do so using vague and unauditable metrics, so Jay can ensure that the money goes where he wants it to.  The bonus pool goes ten deep, so Nos. 11 through infinity will be screaming... What's not to like?

Kyle Porter at CBS has seven reasons to support the move, though it's curious salesmanship at best:

2. This was the right move

I agreed with No Laying Up on Tuesday that this is an easy thing to mock -- because anytime you get SEO scientists involved with a sport that was originally predicated on whether the sheep would clear the field, mockery is going to flow. However, I also agreed with them that this was the right move for the Tour. It was actually the only move for the Tour, and probably one that is several years behind where it should have been. The Tour's hand has been forced in a lot of different ways over the last year, and this was a reasonable (and possibly even somewhat cheap) outcome.

3. It's also going to be a mess

Anytime language like "calibrates the value of the engagement a player drives across social and digital channels and the frequency with which a player generates coverage across a range of media platforms" is used to distribute money within any organization, there is going to some manipulation of the system. It seems unlikely that this manipulation will severely affect the intent of the program itself, but there will be some truly incredible moments over the next few years.

We're supposed to like it because the manipulation of results likely won't affect the intent?  I don't even know what that's supposed to mean, but I sure know that it's bat guano crazy.

This isn't working for me either:

4. Response to ESL, not PGL

There was a lot of chatter this week about the Premier Golf League and about how this was another bucket of water on those fading embers. That might be true -- it's probably true -- but because of the timing of this, it actually felt more related to what's going on with soccer's European Super League fissure. If you missed it, the top clubs in Europe tried to break away to form a 20-team super league. It did not go well. To oversimplify it, the clubs probably overplayed their hand instead of just leveraging their position for more resources from their current leagues as well as UEFA and FIFA. This news of the Player Impact Program was the Tour's way of getting out in front of the top players leaving to form their own super league in golf. There are a thousand parallels here, but the best golfers are also the smartest ones, and they will see both how the Tour responded and how badly the European Super League has gone for Manchester United, AC Milan, Arsenal and other European clubs.

Isn't this the same logic that got us Olympic golf?  Who cares what soccer does...  This is Jay protecting his sinecure, but why should we root for that.  In fact, why should we care if the PGA Tour monopoly is broken up?   

Like Geoff, I find it an amazingly off-key view of their business and its participants.  As I noted above, it's all marketing driven, a distraction from, as opposed to an enhancement of, the underlying competitions.  It all makes me pine for those more innocent days of Nurse Ratched....

The one thing golf had going for it was a primal, eat-what-you-kill ecosystem.  What gets rewarded gets repeated, and Kubla Jay wants to reward hack social media engagement.  It can't be anything with an edge, just check with Hank Haney if you have any doubts, and rigid conformity to social justice will be required.  Media partners will be forced to comply, which will render broadcasts even more unwatchable....

They are headed towards the seemingly impossible, turning your humble blogger off golf.  But it's all for a great cause, making Tiger and Rickie richer.

See you tomorrow with the rest of the news from the golf world.

Posted by at No comments:

Monday, April 19, 2021

Weekend Wrap

We've got a lot teed up for you this morning.  An interesting weekend of golf action, one in which the old geezers dominated (though, ironically, one of said geezers is all of 23 years old), as well as flare-ups of some of our game's most contentious issues....  Buckle in.

Daddy Issues - I think we can all agree that the hottest caddie on Tour made a good move by going into the family business:

It was supposed to be a short-term gig.

Stewart Cink had a caddie, after all — veteran looper Kip Henley — and his son Reagan was a busy young man. In the spring of 2020, he’d graduated from Georgia Tech. Over the summer, he got

engaged. And he had a job lined up working in flight operations with Delta Airlines.

But first, Reagan wanted to spend a couple weeks on Tour with his dad. At 47 years of age, who knew how many more seasons Stewart would have on Tour? Reagan picked up a loop at the Safeway Open, his father’s first start of the PGA Tour season.

Then they won the event.

A few weeks later, Stewart dismissed his full-time caddie.

And they're having quite the good time, or so it seems.  Perhaps too good a time, but we'll get to that dark cloud in a bit.

This story does allegedly come with an expiration date:

The father-son caddie plan has an end date. Stewart and Reagan agreed that they’d keep playing together until the summer, when Reagan is scheduled to get married. After that, he’d return to his job at Delta. He’d take the next step in his own life.

According to the Magic 8-Ball, the outlook is cloudy.

In its own way, it was a dominating performance.  Sometimes playing with a lead can be the hardest thing in the game, but Cink pere simply refused to allow for any drama, as this article makes clear:

Stewart Cink pumped his right fist, then smiled. His son and wife cheered from just off the 17th
green at Harbour Town Golf Links. He had just done something Sunday he hadn’t done over the last 3 hours and 30 minutes or so.

Make a putt longer than a yard stick.

His 7-foot, 8-inch bomb for birdie was, surprisingly, his longest made putt to that point during the final round of the RBC Heritage — by a whopping 5 feet, 5 inches. Cink entered Sunday with a five-shot lead and ended it up by four — and through 16 holes, he hadn’t made a putt long enough to come up to his knee.

And yet, he wasn’t defensive, either. He didn’t center-of-the-green Harbour Town to victory — he hit only 12 of 18 greens — and he missed seven putts under 20 feet. But from those points, Cink simply cleaned up and moved on.

Maybe, but every one of those misses was exactly where you want to miss, leaving uneventful up-and-ins...  Low stress, despite that recoiling putter head.

The Tour Confidential panel took on this unlikely reversal of fortune:

2. Stewart Cink continued his renaissance at 47, winning the RBC Heritage by four shots. The victory comes on the heels of his win last September at the Safeway, his first win since 2009. What has Cink discovered that is allowing him to beat players half his age?

Bamberger: He has a long, rhythmic, simple swing that has never changed, not that I can tell. So he waits for good putting weeks. When they come, he can top-10. Sometimes when he top-10s, he top-ones.

Sens: The swing really does look unchanged. What has changed is his caddie. There’s got to be something in that father-son connection that has helped Cink tap the psychological Fountain of Youth.

Dethier: When he’s playing well, he swings with such conviction. Maybe that’s the trust of having Reagan on the bag. Maybe it’s the feeling that he’s playing with house money. Maybe it’s the strategy he’s worked out with his team on choosing the smartest line with every shot. He’s simplified his decision-making, and his execution has followed.

Piastowski: He just looks like he’s having fun out there. That tends to lead to good play, no matter the age.

I don't know, Dylan, but listening to those discussions over every shot it's hard to believe that ANYTHING has been simplified....  But there is certainly some kind of alchemy in play with Reagan on the bag.  

As you might have noticed, Cink wasn't ceding much distance to the young guns.  Back at the time of Kapalua, where Cink was playing by virtue of his win in Napa, Cameron Morfitt had detailed how the old man bridged the distance gap.  Spoiler alert, there's no kale or core crunches involved:

Determined to crack the distance code, he huddled with his coaches. A small change at address gave him an optimized angle of attack and an additional 15 yards of carry. He fine-tuned his equipment specs during a deep dive with Ping, leading to another five-yard gain. Things were looking up.

“I work with Mike Lipnick back at TPC Sugarloaf and also with James Sieckmann,” said Cink, a longtime resident of Atlanta, Georgia. “James, I work with more on short game and putting, but I asked him to take a look at my driver because I just felt like he wasn't really getting – I felt like I was losing distance, but my ball speed and everything was just as high as ever.”

Sieckmann watched him hit a few shots and suggested tweaking his setup, which triggered a few other small changes – all of them beneficial, as it turned out.

“I wasn't trying to change my attack angle,” said Cink. “But the setup change and the way I was using the bigger muscles in my body on my backswing, I accessed more power from stronger areas of my body, and those two changes just resulted in a lot more ball speed and a lot better attack angle.”

With more clubhead speed, and suddenly hitting the ball higher, Cink could take some loft off the driver, which boosted his carry numbers even more.

Sounds like a smarter approach than others'.... and by others' I, of course, mean Rory's.

A few loose ends from the week that touch on issues in the modern game.  This first is just a throwaway, but an interesting glimpse into how this golf course came to be.  George Cobb had designed the original layout on this site though, by the time Pete Dye was brought in, the site itself had been expanded:

The holes do have that "tacked on" feel, though it helps that they're the two most memorable holes, if only because you're not playing in someone's back yard.

Which brings us to an issue that we can't avoid, pace-of-friggin'-play.  An issue I am precluded from avoiding, because of this:

Yowser!  Not only may you hit a "moving" ball, but in such circumstances you're required to do so....

The Tour Confidential panel takes this one on, with something of a split verdict:

4. Speaking of the rules, Si Woo Kim incurred a rare shot-clock penalty during the third round of the RBC when his birdie putt on the 2nd hole fell after about a 55-second wait — the rules say you can wait only 10, and his birdie became a par. Adding to the story, Kim’s playing partner, Matt Kuchar, told a rules official that he swore he saw the ball move, only for the official to say “in this situation, the rules are modified because you could argue that there comes a point in time that we’ve got to play that golf ball. And that’s why you put that time limit on it.” You OK with the penalty in this situation?

Bamberger: Oh, please. Nearly a minute? It’s a joke. It’s golf. People have things to do, including the group behind you. Ten seconds is plenty.

Sens: For sure. But then, my general feeling is, if you’re not keeping up with Matt Jones, you aren’t playing fast enough.

Dethier: No, the rule here makes no sense and never has. It’s pretty elemental to golf that you don’t hit the ball while it’s moving. (Shoutout Phil Mickelson.) So why make an exception here? It’s not like Kuchar was making up his version of events — the reason they were waiting for it to fall is that they all agreed the ball was still in motion. This doesn’t happen often enough to meaningfully slow down play. Count the birdie putt.

Piastowski: I’ve heard a whole bunch about golf being an honest game, and if Kim and Kuch say the ball was moving, the ball was moving. I’d like to believe they wouldn’t stand there for that long if they felt otherwise.

OK, obviously Nick Piastowski has never heard of PReed, which only makes me jealous of Nick.  On the one hand, there's no outcome here that makes a lick of sense, though the saving grace is that he ends up with the same score no matter what he does.

 Shack perhaps over-interprets this incident, lumping it in with the dreadful pace-of-play:

Now that a twosome of American pro golf takes north of four hours to get around any course—even short and well-synced Harbour Town—there are signs the PGA Tour might be recognizing the absurdity of it all.

Since the Florida swing when the Tour has played twosomes on weekends (unless forced by weather to go out in three), their network partners at NBC and CBS have routinely missed their scheduled sign-off on time. This means the rules staff projects a pace hoping to have the round finish just before the network sign-off time. Yet fields are still missing the time par.

Besides being tedious to watch, the extra 45-60 minutes costs “partners” money. And every sport is trying to prevent bloat in fear of the coveted demo going back to their Playstations (if they ever left them to watch golf).

I realize we’ve known this is a problem for a decade or more going back to the Finchem era when the idea of handing out penalties was physically repulsive to Commish Moonbeam. But there were signs last weekend that the act has grown old. CBS noted when Stewart Cink or the group in front of him was put on the clock and without any defense of the slowpokes. The announcers repeatedly questioned the amount of information discussed with caddie/son Reagan. Hint, hint: there was not a lot of admiration for the extent of chit-chat. (Though I’d argue the banter and “process” has helped Cink re-focus to pull off an incredible resurgence.)

Since pace rules have not been enforced with penalties the Cink’s and other slower players have no incentive to change. Throw in green books, all par-5’s within reach in two, a drivable par-4 wait, and it’s hard to break four hours.

The weekend also produced Si Woo Kim’s one-stroke penalty for exceeding the ten-second rule. Noteworthy here is not the enforcement of the rule, but the Tour posting so much controversy on their Twitter feed and the wild sight of Matt Kuchar coming to Kim’s defense. This, as official Stephen Cox calmly explains the rule without highlighting that no ball, dangling on the edge, can move for a minute and not fall in the cup!

I get that Kim's ball was oscillating more than moving, though I can understand that he didn't know what to do.  But the winners banter with his son was charming and no doubt helpful to him, but they were quite obviously slow as heck.  

Shack's header implied that the Tour might be ready to take this one for real, though that seems at best premature.  They have changed the protocols and are now focused on individual bad times, as opposed to the pace of the group, but it seems far too early to conclude that they will actually use these new rules to make the guys move along.

But, so it shouldn't be a complete waste, here's some helpful guidance should you find yourself in Si Woo's predicament:

What if it's cloudy?

You Ko, Girl -  From Hawaii comes word of another return to form of a grizzled veteran:

Players who achieve early success receive great expectations for their careers. At 23, Lydia Ko is no stranger to those with the lengthy resume from her teenage years. She was the youngest, at 15,
to win an LPGA Tour title and became the youngest World No. 1 ever at 17 years old. She won 14 times before turning 20 and was the 2015 Rolex Player of the Year with five victories.

Ko's 16th career victory at the Lotte Championship in Hawaii on Sunday beckons back to her early years of dominance as her talent emerged like a phoenix reborn. Closing with a seven-under-par 65 at Kapolei Golf Club, she seized her first victory in 1,084 days with a tournament-record 28-under 260, beating Inbee Park (63) by seven shots. It's the third-lowest 72-hole score of all time on the LPGA, trailing Sei Young Kim’s top mark of 31 under at the 2018 Thornberry Creek LPGA Classic. Ko’s win ties her with World Golf Hall of Famer Jan Stephenson at 35th in all-time victories on tour.

Think she's on a heater?

Since closing the ANA Inspiration two weeks ago with a 62 that earned her a solo second in the year's first major, Ko has been on an extraordinary run. The eight-year LPGA veteran has shot 38 under over her last 90 holes while notching a 64.4 scoring average. According to statistician Justin Ray of 15th Club, she’s posted birdies at a 42.2-percent clip while hitting 86.7 percent of greens in regulation.

I might have been willing to jettison my Unified Theory of Lydia, to wit, that everything went South for her after she got rid of the oversized glasses, but....  Don't those sunglasses remind you of her old specs?

Amazingly, the girls kicked the lads' butts on pace-of-play this week, per this amusing tweet:


Helped perhaps by the hustle from Golf Channel cameramen?

These guys are good quick.

I was unable to confirm whether that was the same cameraman as in this video:

Good Karma?  This incident reminded me of seeing Lydia in a practice round for the KPMG/LPGA event at Westchester a few years back, when she grabbed a couple of waters from the coolers inside the ropes and gave them to two young kids that were following her.

 Mark this date on your calendar, because the Tour Confidential panel gave Lydia pride of place:

1. Lydia Ko snapped a nearly three-year winless drought with a convincing victory at the Lotte Championship on Saturday night, and over her past 90 holes, she’s now a whopping
38-under par. Analyst Karen Stupples said on the Golf Channel broadcast that this revamped version of Ko, who is 23, could be the best one yet. What do you think? Is the 16-time winner at the beginning of another run of dominance?

Michael Bamberger: I think the game has changed in the past half-decade, from what I have seen, where it favors bashers more than ever. I don’t see Lydia ever being that kind of player. So not likely. But great to see her win again!

Josh Sens: Both things can be true. She might be, as Stupples says, the best version of Lydia so far. But that doesn’t mean she’s going to dominate again. She will win again. But the women’s game is no different than the men’s game. For the shorter hitters to dominate, everything has to be clicking all the more. Which is a long ask in the age of the long ball.

Dylan Dethier: Domination looks more elusive than ever in both the men’s and women’s game. But this win seems like it should help cement Ko’s status at the top of the game. She’s been among the best golfers in the world since golf returned post-hiatus last summer — and now she has the trophy to prove it. That means good things for Ko and good things for the golf world.

Nick Piastowski: Those five rounds and, as Dylan mentioned, her overall recent play are pretty difficult to make such a conclusion, but, you know what, I’m in. She’s tinkered to add a little necessary power to her game, and when you combine that with her championship know-how, watch out.

Domination?  The girl hasn't won in three years, and now you expect her to never lose?  Very silly...

I think there's lots of good stuff in response, and I personally think Mike Bamberger makes an important point.  Interestingly, they're all too polite to reference the last tie Lydia should have won, when she had an event in her grasp and blew up on the final hole (I di hope she got a thank you note from Danielle Kang).  This strategy seems to have been a result of that incident:

Before her final round at the LOTTE Championship, Lydia Ko had a mantra in her head.

“Trust your training,” she told herself.

As a coda to our resurrection chic post, Eamon Lynch tackles the thorny issue of  players who are simply too good to not win again.  Oh, you'll hear the echoes of Jordan and Lydia there, not to mention Hideki, who ended his own three-year winless streak last week.  His poster child is Martin Kaymer:

Yani Tseng won two Women’s British Opens among her five majors and 15 LPGA titles, all in a four-year span. She was 23 when the slump started. She’s now 32 with a world ranking of 1,025th. We can reach back further. Ralph Guldahl: 16 wins, three majors, done at 29.

Every one of those stars met the treacly threshold of being too good not to win again,

Ko’s win proved that fine players can rediscover the magic, but if you knew where to look the same week bore reminders that many simply can’t, no matter how hard they try. Martin Kaymer was third in the European Tour’s Austrian Open on Sunday. The German hasn’t won since the very day he was proclaimed golf’s dominant force—June 15, 2014, the date on which he won the U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2 by eight shots, a month after having won the Players Championship. He was 29 years old with two majors on a 23-win résumé. He’s now 36 but the résumé requires no updating.

Yeah, Yani's a good one as well.... Strangely though, Eamon also mentions former Champion Golfer of the Year Bill Rogers, though no one ever accused him of being too good for much of anything...

Anchor Redux - This was an obvious issue back when the anchoring ban was put in place:

It's been more than five years since golf's anchor ban went into effect, but now one of the PGA Tour's best players is calling for another putting method to be outlawed.

Following Thursday's first round at the RBC Heritage, Billy Horschel brought up the arm-lock putting style that's become popular in recent years. And his take might not be so popular with those who use it.

"I'm bringing up something different here and I'm sort going out on a limb, but I don't think this arm lock putting is—should be allowed either," Horschel said. "I'll give the belly putter back and take away the arm lock."

Go on …

"I think when you look at what guys are doing now with the arm lock and moving the grips to the side where it's parallel or matches the face and then when you do that up against your arm, I mean, it's—you know that face is dead square and that face doesn't rotate at all," Horschel continuted. "It's just sort of locked in. Guys are doing it too good."

It's quite the thorny issue for sure:

Horschel, a recent winner at the WGC-Dell Match Play, is certainly not the first person to question the arm-lock method. Although perfectly legal under golf's current rules, "locking" the
grip of a putter into a player's forearm does serve a similar purpose as anchoring a putter into the chest or stomach. And several former anchorers have turned to it, most notably Webb Simpson.

The technique was on full display at Augusta National last week with Will Zalatoris finishing runner-up in his Masters debut. Zalatoris has said he started using the method in 2018 and that he shot a 59 at his home course two weeks later. He also just happens to be one of Horschel's playing partners the first two rounds at Harbour Town this week. . . awkward!

Other arm-lock putters on tour include Bryson DeChambeau, Matt Kuchar, and Keegan Bradley. DeChambeau tried a variety of putting methods including side-saddle before settling on the arm-lock style. He finished 10th on the PGA Tour in strokes gained putting last season. Simpson was 13th after finishing 11th and fifth in that category the two previous seasons.

"Yes, you could say it's anchored," Horschel said. "I don't know because I guess anchored is having one point against somewhere and a fixed point. I know that's not fixed, but it's something similar to an anchor style."

Forgive the long excerpts, but it's an issue that has long interested me.  How cruel would it be to outlaw a second manner of putting for guys like Webb and Keegan?  

To me, there's little doubt that the putter is anchored.  Of course, the arm isn't a fixed point such as a player's torso, so it's different....  But, enough different?

 The TC gang took a shot at this issue as well:

3. Billy Horschel, after the first round of the RBC, called for a ban on the arm-lock putting technique that has gained favor recently among pros. When arm-locking, players pin the grip of their putters against their forearms, which Horschel argued is, in essence, anchoring — and illegal under the rules. “I think when you look at what guys are doing now with the arm-lock and moving the grips to the side where it’s parallel or matches the face and then when you do that up against your arm, I mean, it’s — you know, that face is dead square and that face doesn’t rotate at all,” Horschel said. “It’s just sort of locked in. Guys are doing it too good.” Is Horschel on to something here?

Bamberger: Definitely. The USGA banned anchored putting. But not all anchored putting. This is not the free-swinging stroke the USGA seems to hold so dear. I agree with Billy. But only at the highest level. For regular-Joe golf, by whatever means necessary is my motto.

Sens: Agreed. It’s like finding loopholes in the tax code. You can make rules, but people will always find creative ways around them that are technically legal but just don’t feel right. I agree with the whatever-means-necessary approach for the rest of us as well, which is why I’m sticking to the pool-cue method. So much easier.

Dethier: Yeah, I don’t really understand why it’s still permitted when the spirit of the rules change seemed designed to make everyone a free-swinger. It was rather bold for Billy to take this stand in the midst of two rounds with arm-locker Will Zalatoris, but I guess he deserves credit for speaking his mind, regardless of present company.

Piastowski: It certainly looks like it, doesn’t it? And you do have to appreciate Horschel’s candidacy, though it does dampen the Zalatoris feel-good story a bit. But I’m going to hold off on a complete opinion here until we hear some thoughts from a few of the arm-lockers. Do they feel they’re skirting the rules?

Ummm, Nick, do we ask criminals whether they feel they were breaking laws?  I have no issues with any player using the rules to their greatest advantage, but nothing could be less relevant than how it makes them feel.... Sheesh!

I find Mike Bamberger's argument for bifurcation in this area....well, ironic.  Because it's near impossible for an amateur to experiment with this as a yip-avoidance protocol.  Not only do you need a long putter, but you need a long putter with something like eight degrees of loft.  I'd like to try it, and I think Bobby D. would concur that I should, but I'd have to buy a custom putter to fiddle with on the practice green.  

Covering The Important Issues - The world has gone gaga over Cameron Smith's hair, so why not this semi-official listing of the best mullets in golf.  This guy is competitive, no?

I'd like this guy banished from our game, though there's no disrespect intended to the mullet:


This is a four-year old piece that ranks the mullets, with the winner being golf's former golden child:

Exit Stuff - Just a couple of silly bits on which I'll make my retreat.  I caught this interesting Twitter hypothetical, see how you might answer it:

Yanno, when the kids tell you the science is settled....

Of course there's an infinite number of answers, and even in golf the name Hogan pops to mind as well.

Though I think my answer might be Micky Mantle.... Though I'm trying hard not to think of baseball these days....

On a related note, I remember a lengthy discussion by Bill James about accommodating injury in his career rankings of players.   He cited the Dodgers' Pete Reiser as his example, noting that since Reiser's mode of play involved frequent collisions with outfield walls, it seems logical to assume that being injured was an integral part of being Pete Reiser.  Of course that didn't help James decide how to deal with the war years...

Our last bit covers the all important subject of golfers' tans....  You've seen them on players like PReed, and it's not a pretty thing.  It's even worse when the golfer involved is bald, and there's no surprise that, in removing his cap on the 18th green, this week's winner at Harbor Town provided the leader in the clubhouse in this genre, specifically this old photo:


So, via No Laying Up, I'm pleased to report that the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree:

 You can have your mullets, I just hope these guys keep rocking...

That's all for today.  I have a bit of a crazy week, so you'll likely have to live without these trenchant insights until Friday.  At least, that's how it looks right now, but I'll make sure that everything gets covered.

Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)