When 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
Fred Woodcock reports on the Kraft Nabisco Championship opening 36-hole pairing of 15-year-old phenom Lydia Ko and former 15-year-old phenom Michelle Wie, not a 23-year-old strugging to find her game as the LPGA's first major kicks off in Rancho Mirage.
The two have played together but it still begs the question, is someone sending a message?
I'm down at the KIA Classic talking to LPGA players for a story and had the pleasure of sitting in on new World No. 1 Stacy Lewis's press conference.
In a recent SI Golf Plus story, Alan Shipnuck wrote about her improvement on the greens:
Lewis’s ongoing success on the greens is a blend of art and science. To sharpen her feel she does a drill in which she hits a long lag putt into open space on the practice green, away from any target. Without peeking to see where the putt ends up, Lewis then drops another ball, closes her eyes and tries to hit the second ball to the same spot. “No exaggeration, 90 percent of the time the two balls are within three or four inches,” says Hallett.
In the press conference, I asked her to explain the more technical side of her approach without divulging too many secrets. Her answer:
STACY LEWIS: Yep. Well, it's Aimpoint and everybody can go take a class and learn it, so I guess it's not too much of a secret. But I learned it, gosh it's been almost three years, two and a half, three years. It's really based on gravity and how water flows off of a green. So every time I walk up to a whole, I'm trying to find a straight putt, and once you find a straight putt, it's how much slope there ‑‑ what affects the read is how much slope is there and then how far away you are from the straight putt. So the further you get from the straight putt, the more it's going to break. So it's a combination of that and you have a little chart that gives you the exact read for every single putt. So it's really, it's almost like cheating. I can walk around and have down to the inch how far every putt's going to break. So I can ‑‑ and that's the thing, too, is you're walking around, you're feeling it with your feet versus looking at it, and that's kind of the big difference because a lot of times golf courses try to throw you off visually with mounds or hills or whatever it may be on how putts break.
A year ago Tillman the wonder dog visited Irene Cho at La Costa for a Kia Classic golf lesson, and the episode of Petco's Who Let The Dogs Out finally airs on Hallmark Channel Friday at 1:30 PT.
I know many of you haven't forgotten my spine-tingling post and video Tweet from last year. Because really, can you ever tire of watching Tillman riding a skateboard? I think not.
LPGA Commish Mike Whan was asked earlier in the week and made it hard to see the tour going any way but in full support of the USGA and R&A on the anchoring ban.
Whan:
On the issue of the USGA and R&A, I've said this many times, there's nobody better placed to establish the right rules of the game than the R&A and the USGA. They don't have a stake in it in any other way; in equipment or players, etc., and we have been playing by their rules for a long time. I certainly expect the LPGA will be playing by their rules for a long time from now on.
I respect the way they have gone about this which is they have given us the opportunity to provide feedback. As most of you know that follow the LPGA, and most of you do, we don't have a large number of anchored or belly putter players. I've asked Heather Daly‑Donofrio, our tour head from an operations perspective, to reach out to every player that we know that does and get their feedback; so their feedback will be involved as well.
But on a personal level, this is just Mike Whan speaking, I believe in the R&A and the USGA and their role in the game to do what is right without any stake one way or the other.
Randall Mell also got a quote from LPGA spokesman Kraig Kann who says the tour will issue a firm stance once the governing bodies decide how they will go forward following the comment perio.
Provocative story and firsthand reporting from Peter Stone on the prodigy that was Michelle Wie and her ever-present parents.
Regarding her putting:
Through the years, Wie has been tormented by her putting. She’s tried half a dozen or so different putting styles and grips, she’s tried the belly putter. Now she is using a quite bizarre stance that sees her bending over with her back almost parallel to the ground. If Laura Davies should try it, she’d probably topple to the ground.
It was reported at a recent tournament in Dubai Michelle was seen on the putting green with mum holding her head down, her father adjusting and positioning the line of her putter addressing the ball, and just to complete the exercise the caddie was voicing his opinion of the stroke.
I'm sure after a few phone calls to Ponte Vedra, Golf Channel makes the call to show 15-year-old Lydia Ko's bid to win the Australian Open live. The adjusted ET air schedule:
9:30PM – 2:00AM Final Round ISPS Handa Women’s Australian Open (Live)
2:00AM – 5:00AM Round 3 Northern Trust Open (Replay)
5:00AM – 7:00AM Round 2 ACE Group Classic (Replay)
The amateur will be playing the Kraft Nabisco next month on a sponsor's invite, but in the meantime she's won her adopted homeland's national championship.
The 15-year-old Korean-born New Zealander approached the last hole in a tie for the lead at 10-under par with American Amelia Lewis. But Lewis, in the penultimate group, three-putted from 25 feet for bogey and Ko, playing in the last group, made par to complete a final round 68.
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
