Will Guan Make Condi A Masters Sidebar?
Jason Sobel makes the fine point that "next year’s Masters will skip evolution and go straight to revolution." Actually, the entire thing figures to be one epic circus."
It’s safe to say Clifford Roberts didn’t have any of this in mind decades ago. He never envisioned a champion named Bubba who owns the Dukes of Hazzard car, never foresaw women being members of the club, never anticipated a 14-year-old competing in his world-class invitational.
Geoff
**Scott Michaux takes issue with those who were questioning a 14-year-old's place in the Masters.
Guan’s victory is the kind of heralded triumph that should make sports fans stand up and cheer. With his considerable talent despite the obvious limitations of his size and strength, he succeeded and earned himself the most coveted invitation in golf.
Reader Comments (16)
Personally I suspect Condi won't make an appearance on site at the 2013 Masters, she shuns that sort of limelight. Blondie, that's a different story!
One of these days a wrinklie, or an enfant terrible, is going to show the Tour up. And I doubt either Bobby or Clifford would turn in their graves.
Up front...cannot believe the the Masters gives a spot to the champion of this event. Winning the Fla State Am has to be WAY harder.
A few snippets...
--> event is an "invitational".
--> all 36 "member" countries of the Asia Pacific Golf Confederation (APGC) get 2 spots each.
--> spots are awarded to players based on their World Amateur Golf Rank (WAGR).
--> if a country does not have any ranked players, they can pick 2 as long as their index is below 5.4 (I'm thinking about establishing citizenship in Nepal!).
--> a country can have up to 6 entrants as long as they have a WAGR.
--> 22 of the 36 countries could only produce 2 "qualified" players, Nepal only produced 1 player.
--> the 36 countries managed to scrape up 121 qualified players.
--> the "host country" (Thailand) is allowed to send 10 players.
Two countries of note, Australia, and Thailand....and the rankings of their players:
Australia....28, 41, 58, 94, 132, 206
Thailand....80, 145, 426, 428, 832, 850, 1055, 1092, 1289, N/R.
I'm assuming the bulk of the players from countries that only produced 2 entrants, did not have a WAGR...but I could be wrong.
More snippets...
--> only 11 of the top-100 amateurs in the world were in the event, 4 of them were Australian.
--> 23 players shot par or better.
--> the guy in 29th was 5-over.
--> scoring page only goes to 61st place, guy shot 22-over and only broke 78 once.
--> 5 of the 6 Aussies finished in the top-7.
Closing thoughts;
--> extremely weak field.
--> extremely shallow field.
--> effectively it's a 15 man (or child) shootout with a Masters invite hanging in the balance.
--> PR stunt. (was that too harsh?)
However the Masters is an invitation and they chose to give a spot to the winner.He played great to win so good luck to him.
This is obviously only about advertising revenue-but thats not the kids fault!
That's quite a lot of effort you've gone to. But if you're going to cull every invitee who has zero chance of winning the tournament, you need to start a little higher up the chain.
Granting an exemption to the winner of the tournament in question may seem to be a little too generous at the moment, but in 10 years time?
Perhaps, just perhaps, the folk at Augusta have taken a longer term view of what they hope to achieve with this exemption than your short-sightedness will allow at this point in time.
People forget that Masters has had Jack win it 6 times, and Herman Keiser once. Shingo Katayama showed up once in a goofy hat. the 14 yr old will be gone by the weekend and so will this story
The Masters is an 'Invitational' as well.
The invite to the winner was setup by the Masters folks as part of their effort to grow the game in Asia.
It's their tournament and they can do anything they want.
I respect the research you did, but it all adds up to a hill of beans.
The future, in terms of golf and economics is not the USA and this invite will do way more for generating interest than some Fld. amateur or even the US. amateur who goes completely unnoticed in some years.
PA, I know it's their tournament. I know they can do anything they want with it. I know it is an invitational. Like ol' Howard Cosell routinely did, you've mastered the obvious by pointing out these things. As for the conomic development of golf in the region, prove it. Next year if Nepal comes up with 2 players I guess you could say they were up 100% What's funny though is that if I could somehow establish citizenship in Nepal I could be that guy! I will agree that the whole exercise creates some publicity for the Master in a time of the,year they wouldn't otherwise get noticed...don't think it really helps anyone though.
What I do know is extending an invite to the winner of this event is surely an eye-brow raiser for winners of events like The Amateur Championship and the US Amateur.
Steven Fox had to contend with a field of 6,443....Asia-Pacific (AP) winner had to beat about 14 tops. AP winner had to contend with only one top-10 WAGR player (Matsuyama #9) and 6 of the top-50...100% of the WAGR top-50 are exempt into the US Amateur. I could go on....
Now a player like Matsuyama, he loves it. If he remains an amateur he's probably odds on to pickup 6 Masters invites in a 10 year span. Not bad work if you can get it....
As for the "feel good"......do you feel less good about the situation now that you know the facts surrounding the Asia-Pacific Amateur? If so, don't blame that on me. All those numbers and statistics were sourced almost exclusively from the Asia-Pacific Amateur website. Just the facts ma'am...
I'm certain Guan doesn't feel any less good about his invite. Hey, entered, showed up, and shot the scores to win, I certainly have no problem with that. Good on him. But if I could get the right odds I'd make a bets that (i) he won't break 80, and (ii) he posts at least one score of 85 or higher at Augusta.
The Golf Channel and Golfweek serve up a lot of puffball feel-good stuff that's real short on facts if that's the kind of thing you are looking for...
Stop digging, you'll end up going all the way through to China.
And having recently caddied a friend into matchplay of the mid-am I can assure you that it's brutal as well. Which makes Nathan Smith's accomplishments even more stunning.
9,006 total entries. From this group 8,527 had to go to local qualifying at 109 sites. Max index to try is 1.4 vs. 5.4 to play in the Asia-Pacific Am.
Zhang's local site was Lake Wales, Fla. 73 players showed up with 5 spots on the line. Zhang shot 69 to finish T-3 and make it on the number, beating seasoned professionals like Len Mattiace and Steve LeBrun, and tying Patrick Sheehan.
Only 550 players (6.4%) advance from local qualifying to the sectional, and there they are joined by 476 players that were exempt into sectionals, the vast majority being professionals from various global tours. Sectionals were held at 11 sites in the US, as well as 1 in England and 1 in Japan.
Zhang's sectional was Black Diamond Ranch where 57 players were competing for 3 spots. Zhang again was T-3 with a 142 total (2-under). He lost the playoff for the 3rd spot and was 1st alternate, for which he was ultimately called. Again a field of mostly seasoned pro's (Derek Fathauer, Sam Saunders, Andres Echavarria, etc) and some solid amateurs (Blayne Barker!, TJ Vogel-Publinx Champ). This field alone would destroy the Asia-Pac Am field by any metric you want to choose.
The final US Open field was 156 and about 50% come out of the qualifiers. So let's call is 77 spots available from a pool of 8,930 all of which are either professionals or low handicap amateurs (1.4 max vs. 5.4 max for Asia-Pac Am). So the odds are 1-in-116 vs. 1-in-121 for the Asia-Pac Am....hypothetically speaking anyway. In reality the odds were 1-15 at the Asia-Pac because the other 100+ stood no chance. And then there's the fact that US Open qualy's also includes pro's, and lots of them, etc...
Zhang's achievement was much more meaningful that Guan's, IMO.