"It goes to a lot of, one, how much further the golf ball is going and how much better the equipment and the players have become."
/A common sense answer from Tiger on the rush of low rounds lately:
Read MoreWhen you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
"So the next time I hear players or media tongue-waggers squawking about how Turning Stone CEO Ray Halbritter was going to cost some pro a spot in the field and a chance at continuing his career, I am hereby hitting mute."
/Steve Elling and Scott Michaux debate the question of CEO Ray Halbritter entering and withdrawing from his own Turning Stone event this week. Elling comes down on the side of letting the guy play, and I have to say his reasoning is an eye opener:
Read More"Those Aussies were shitting themselves."
/Ernie Els today before the WGC Bridgestone, asked about low scores and his lowest:
Read More"Maybe I owe USGA an apology, groove rule has made golf easier."
/John Strege encapsulates the weekend chatter about grooves:
The new grooves the USGA ordered were supposed to help restore the integrity of par. But on the soft greens at the Greenbrier Resort, the new grooves were an advantage, as CBS' Nick Faldo pointed out on Saturday. They allowed the ball generally to stop in its tracks, in contrast to how the ball might have reacted with the old grooves, perhaps spinning back off the front of the greens.
Joe Ogilvie concurred. "Maybe I owe USGA an apology, groove rule has made golf easier, controlling wedge spin a breeze, I hope it is easier for ams too?!?!?" he wrote on Twitter. "USGA repeat after me, more spin is harder, less spin is easier."
The theory makes some sense on softer greens. How many times did we see good players strike a shot around the green with too much loft and too solid of a strike, only to have the ball check up?
"I hope we'll be able to talk at Labor Day about keeping the tour in New England for years to come."
/Jimmy Golen reports what sounds like good news for the PGA Tour: Deutsche Bank hoping to continue its sponsorship of the Boston playoff stop. Though there is some hold up to a 2-year extension kicking in but CEO Seth Waugh won't say what that is.
There was also this little buried item about the Tiger Woods, whose charity benefits from the event.
Woods, who has played in only seven tour events so far this season, was 111th on the FedEx Cup points list and would need to move up to make it into the 100-person field at the TPC of Boston.
"Obviously, we all want Tiger to be here," Waugh said. "But if he's not, we have the best 100 players in the world."
"Presidents Cup, a major, we're way down the road. We want to walk before we run."
/Randy King talks to Jim Justice about the Greenbrier's foray into PGA Tour golf and besides hinting that he'd like to bring a U.S. Open to the resort, he suggests the low scoring was somewhat intentional.
Justice wanted the tour players to enjoy their first trip to the West Virginia mountains. Players had fun taking on Old White, shooting astronomically low numbers on the short course with very little rough and receptively soft greens.
''First of all, in my world, fans love to see birdies. It adds a lot of excitement,'' Justice said. "I love to see birdies, and I don't want to see the players chipping it out back in the fairways out of the rough U.S. Open style and the green's hard as a brick bat.''
"But perhaps the more accurate assessment is that some courses simply aren't tough enough to test the game's elite."
/In this week's Golf World Monday (free for subscribers), I popped a contact lens after this eyeball roller:
Read More"With soft conditions and little rough, a Tour course needs to be 8,500 yards or more to have teeth. Seriously."
/There's so much to chat about from Sunday's exciting day of golf: Tseng winning a second major this year, Appleby's 59 to win and Langer's amazing sweep of old geezer Open titles at Carnoustie and Sahallee (how's that for opposites!).
Read More“My intention in qualifying to be eligible to play in our Turning Stone Resort Championship was to participate in a competitive opportunity which any golfer would enjoy."
/The PGA Tour VP of Whispering In Tim's Ear That This Is A Really Bad Idea must have gotten his message across as Turning Stone CEO Ray Halbritter issued a statement today through the tour announcing that he was not going to take up a spot in his own event. Naturally, the statement is a train wreck we must savor!
Read MoreSenior Open/Greenbrier Open Thread
/Yani Tseng edged Katherine Hull to deprive Pepperdine of its first major, but a couple of more compelling events await. Not sure how much I'll watch, but naturally all observations welcomed.
Read MoreRecord Scoring at The Greenbrier? Amazingly, No!
/Saturday's scoring at The Greenbrier makes for astonishing leaderboard viewing since you have to get to Matt Every at T69 to see a score not in the 60s. Naturally that means Saturday was a tour record of some kind. It wasn't even a record for 2010 according to PGATour.com's notes:
Read MoreLong Before Dick Cheney Had A Secret Undisclosed Location...
/...The Greenbrier was home to a top secret bunker, not of the golfing kind. Helen Ross writes about it for PGATour.com:
Read More"I hope they make a beaucoup of hole in ones"
/First, there was the news of experimenting with a common-sense cell phone policy and now this great Greenbrier Classic idea, which surely couldn't have originated in Ponte Vedra. I just wonder how it got past all of the VP's and legal minds. It makes way too much sense!
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