Tiger Goes Entire Press Conference Without Celebrating Firestone's It's-All-Right-In-Front-Of-You Architectural Brilliance

/

Though I do understand he dropped his favorite design compliment in a rare post-victory gabfest with his most beloved on-course annoyance, Peter Kostis. Actually, his post round Q&A with the assembled inkslingers featured several entertaining exchanges.

Meanwhile, what is missing from AP's Doug Ferguson's game story here:

Woods earned $1.35 million for his 58th career victory. Since the start of the 2005 season, Woods has not gone more than five starts on the PGA Tour without winning.
And, and, and? The points Doug? Sheesh. The playoffs? Hello?

 

"When everything's said and done we'll lose $3 million. It's a concern."

/
John Strege files a fascinating (and sad) Canadian Open game story in this week's Golf World, though I could swear only part of it made it online and I read some other interesting stuff in the print version about the slugs who used the chartered flight provided by the tournament, but skipped out on playing. Anyway:
Two of the preeminent stars in golf gave the top of the leaderboard a sheen that belied the troubles lurking beneath the surface. For the second straight year, the Canadian Open was played without a title sponsor. "When everything's said and done," tournament director Bill Paul said, "we'll lose $3 million. It's a concern."

This, too, was the first year of a six-year contract for the tournament to be played in this dubious place in the schedule. It will dramatically hinder its ability to secure a field worthy of a national championship that began in 1904 and counts among its winners Walter Hagen, Sam Snead, Byron Nelson, Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino and Tiger Woods, an event Furyk said once "probably had a feeling about it that it was the fifth major." Tournament management even chartered a plane to ferry players from Scotland to Canada, as an inducement to British Open participants who might have been balking at playing the Canadian Open because of the logistics. Among the 18 players who accepted the offer was Furyk, who was coming anyway.

"I wonder if the members of the Green Bay Packers when they won the very first Super Bowl in 1967.."

/

The bigwigs gathered to plug the upcoming Deutsche Bank event at TPC Boston, and they even included my pal Gil Hanse to talk about the course architecture. Even though you and I know we'll be watching to see those exciting FedEx Cup point permutations unfold.

RIC CLARSON: I wonder if the members of the Green Bay Packers when they won the very first Super Bowl in 1967, which wasn't even called the Super Bowl then, realized their place in history. The fact of the matter is they knew it was a big game and an important game, but they didn't realize that the way that New England's fans realized it when the Patriots won the Super Bowl. Thus we embark on a new era in golf called the FedExCup.
Wow Ric, how long did you spend sculpting that gem? 
Adam Scott, the very first winner of the Deutsche Bank Championship, you never get a second chance to be first, and we're delighted on behalf of the PGA TOUR after 24 years to actually have a season now that is structured like other sports where our athletes have the chance to not only perform over a 33-week regular season but a four-week Playoffs.

Some of the greatest moments in sports come from Playoffs. Some of the greatest moments in golf have happened right here at the Deutsche Bank, and when you combine those two ingredients, we think we're in for a great new era in golf.

Some of the greatest moments in golf have happened at the Deutsche Bank? And you say you don't learn things coming to this website?

BRAD FAXON: I just want to say here, I've been part of the TPC since day one when we broke ground here. It's been six or seven years ago we broke ground. We always needed a facility like this, and I'm proud to say that the TPC of Boston is the best TPC in the country, especially now with what's been done, with everybody partnering now to make this tournament, the Deutsche Bank tournament, Seth, the TPC, the PGA TOUR, to go ahead and let us make changes to make this tournament-worthy golf course.

Easy Brad, let's break 'em in slow!

Like Seth said, everybody knows Deutsche Bank is on Labor Day. We're going to have an unbelievable field, and I'm pretty excited to see the reaction of all the players when they come here and see a course that was maybe liked but not super-well-liked, and hopefully the changes that you're going to get to see now, you're going to say, wow, this is different, this is a New England-style golf course, this looks old, it looks like it's been here. The bad lies and the bad shots that you get today are going to be Gil's fault (laughter).

And from Gil:

As Brad mentioned, what we were really hopeful of doing was trying to create a golf course that looked and felt a little bit more like New England. So I think the touches that you'll see out there will really be reflective of we borrowed literally and liberally from The Country Club, places that are close to our hearts, great old New England golf courses, drop mounds, some blind shots, fescue edged bunkers, fescue out in the rough areas. So hopefully the golf course will feel and look a little bit more rustic and a little bit more like New England.

From a playability standpoint, these guys are so good that I'm skeptical that there's anything we can do from a physical standpoint to limit or restrict what they do. You can always make bunkers so deep, you can only grow rough so thick and tall and you can only have greens so fast.
But what we really tried to concentrate on is the place where I think is the most vulnerable is the mental aspect, trying to make them have to think significantly of different options and different ways to play golf holes, making them feel uncomfortable over shots because they can't quite see the bottom of the flagstick or they might have been in a bunker or on an island and they don't quite have a perfect lie. I think these are the things that architects are going to have to rely more and more on as we go forward with technology and as good athletes as these gentlemen are and the way they play the game.

So hopefully you'll find more strategy, more areas -- I think Pete Dye has a phrase, "Once you get these guys thinking, they're in trouble." I think that's what we're hoping for is we can make them think a little bit more as they go around the golf course and explore different options and opportunities.

Tiger then joined in at this point and he artfully sidestepped questions about the course changes he hasn't seen yet.

Love Takes Week Off To Better Position Himself In FedEx Cup

/

Secure at 84th in the FedEx Cup standings, Davis Love only has to secure six top-8 six finishes (or the top 6 eight times), or win twice, or give Senior VP Ric Clarson a ride on his camper to accumulate enough points to get in the Tour Championship. Therefore he has opted not to enter this week's Canadian Open, even though he just finished a design redo of host site Angus Glen's North Course.

 

Since the first week of May, Bill Paul has been expecting Davis Love III to be playing in this week's Canadian Open. But not having him in the field, on a course he was paid handsomely to tweak, represents the biggest disappointment of the year to the tournament director.

"Every time we talked from The Players Championship on, he was going to play," Paul said yesterday of Love. "He is the biggest disappointment ... obviously, he should be here."

Love, who missed the cut last week at the British Open, is the name behind the design company that made several subtle changes to the 7,320-yard Angus Glen North Course.

When he was in Markham to discuss the changes he made in early June, Love was noncommittal about his plans for the $5 million (all figures U.S.) championship that begins Thursday.

He said one factor in the decision would be his form heading into the final few weeks of the PGA Tour season; if he needed to crowd his schedule to make enough points to qualify for the season-ending FedEx Cup playoff, he said he'd give the Canadian Open serious consideration.
Just look how that 144-man cut off is making guys add events!

 

Of course, getting to Toronto from Carnoustie was very, very, err...easy.

Woods Wants 20-Year Deal At Congressional

/

Isn't this the same place where, in 1997, he stormed off without talking to the scribblers?  I miss that Tiger.

Jerry Potter reports that mercifully, the members aren't so sure about that.

Congressional President Stuart Long said Monday the members were delighted with the tournament but added, "We're busy" when asked about the future. Congressional will hold the U.S. Amateur in 2009 and the U.S. Open in 2011. "Oh, no," he said when asked if it could take the AT&T in 2010. "We need a year to get ready for the Open."

As for the long term, he said, the board would have to decide, adding, "The board turns over every six years. The board members who will make that decision haven't even been elected."

 

Reason 7,812 PGA Tour Pros Should Not Be Architects

/

Congressionalhole18.jpgGiven the choice between TiVoing the old geezers playing one of the twelve majors over a colorful, textured, rich, eccentric and slightly nutty design or an elite field playing a "classic" "U.S. Open style" "test," you can imagine what I picked.

Honestly, told I have six months to live, it's a toss up what I want to watch to make time stand still. Medinah or Congressional?

Now that Congressional's old 18th has been bulldozed by Rees Jones and replaced by a hole only he could design (click here for Tim Taylor's photos on GCA...but view with caution, it's not pretty), the final stroke of quirk has been stripped from the place. Therefore, as much as it pains me to not single out Medinah's relentless mediocrity, I think Congressional gets the nod for not taking better advantage of interesting terrain.

Ah, but the players love it! Why, I have no idea other than to merely confirm that they have no architectural sense whatsoever.

Billy Mayfair said:

"You put Tiger Woods as host and a great course like Congressional and you've got something people want to be involved with. What happened here this weekend was amazing. You put it down the street [at Avenel], and you're probably not going to have the same kind of field. Guys will come here, to Congressional. Guys want to play old-fashioned, U.S. Open-style courses, and that's what this is."

And Robert Allenby...

"This is a great golf course," Allenby said. "It's easy to run a good golf tournament here. You've got a great venue. It's pretty awesome."

It may be what you want to play fellas, but in terms of viewing it's deadly.

whistling_straits_straits_course_7.jpgSure, Whistling Straits goes over the top and the fairway widths looked absurd (exposed for their lack of room as soon as the wind came up Saturday). I also don't know what the USGA was trying to prove playing the 17th so far back Saturday, making it a 250 yardish shot when the hole is plenty brutal at 160 yards in benign conditions.  

But wasn't it fun to see all sort of different shots, including a few played on the ground?  And recovery shots. And most of all, a colorful, lively example of architecture's most inspired possibilities.

At Least Two Players Might Be Open To Returning To Avenel After It Is Completely Demolished

/

Leonard Shapiro writes that Phil Mickelson and Fred Funk are the two who found something to like, though Funk's comments are a tad frightening:

"I've been somewhat involved with the redo at Avenel," Funk said yesterday of a $20 million renovation of the course and clubhouse scheduled to begin next month. "And if they do a really good job, as far as making it look like it's a finished product, I think it will be well-received. When you go to Muirfield Village [site of the PGA Tour's Memorial in Dublin, Ohio], you see the streams that are through the golf course. It looks like it's well-manicured and not overgrown.
Those darn creeks and wetlands that capture all that storm runoff and provide wildlife with sanctuary have no business being all messy! Man can do sooooo much better with flower beds and chemicals!
"There's a lot of attention to detail, and Avenel never quite had that look. You have to make it look good and really present the best product, even off the areas where you don't play, where you hope the ball doesn't go. I think it could be a really good golf course, but it still is not ever going to be a Congressional."

Hmmm...let's hope it's not that boring. 

"In the seventh-, eighth-, ninth-largest market in the country, we weren't comfortable with that."

/

Tarik El-Bashir and Marc Carig file a lengthy Washington Post story on the evolution of Tiger's new D.C. event. Thanks to reader Sean for this, which includes one nice ironic bit.

Finchem said last week that he kept Booz Allen in the dark to avoid a leak of the Tour's planned schedule changes. But he also was less than generous in his assessment of the tournament's performance.

"All of this happened in the backdrop, candidly, of recognizing that the event in Washington had not performed over the years at the level we want to see a PGA Tour event perform generally, but particularly an event that we want to see perform in the nation's capital," he said. "In the seventh-, eighth-, ninth-largest market in the country, we weren't comfortable with that."

Asked for his response to Finchem's comment, Shrader said: "I felt we tried hard to earn a world-class event here in Washington. I feel that the event we had at Congressional in 2005 was a world-class event that demonstrated given a golf course and a date, we could have a world-class event here in Washington, one that the city and the people deserve. I'm happy Tiger and AT&T have come and I look forward to it being a big success."

Somehow I'm having a hard time believe Booz Allen was the problem here. It can't be all technology driving the $20 million being put into TPC Avenel.