Threesomes?

Did anyone hear a decent explanation as to why the AmEx WGC is playing threesomes with a field of 70?

Daly For President

He hits as soon as Monty plays. His caddy talks to him as he stands over the ball. How can you not love the guy!?

Here's the AP story on Daly taking the 3rd round lead at Harding Park, including the details of his 378-yard drive (no doubt thanks to the stairmaster and weight work John has been doing). Here's his post round press conference.

Q. Everybody has been incredibly enthusiastic, you, Tiger, Sergio, Colin, about this golf course and the city. Did you guys have any idea of what you were getting into? Did anybody play this before? Did anybody talk about it and say, hey, it's good, or was this completely blind walking in?

JOHN DALY: This is a hidden secret. We were at Olympic Club at the Open and I had never heard of Harding Park, I really hadn't until I got here. It's just amazing. What I was telling some other guys, you know, there's so many great public golf courses that we need to find. The older, the better, because they just seem to be more friendly towards driving and anyway you want to play a shot. Torrey Pines is well noted one of the greatest golf courses in the world and it's public. St. Andrews. I mean, I think every player that's playing in this field this week loves this golf course.

Q. What would you say if they told you this course was a parking lot for the 1998 U.S. Open, which it was? They used it to park cars?

JOHN DALY: Well, they need to park cars at Olympic Club and play here (laughter).

 

Nothing That A Fairway Couldn't Cure

The PGA Tour's finest are still slamming the 18th at Harding Park, a perfectly fine hole...with a fairway. Yes, the trees hugging the lake off the tee are not idea, but under normal setup conditions adequate fairway width makes it more than fair. But with the AmEx setup, someone decided to buffer the lake with rough in an apparent attempt to make the hole play longer (or closer to the tent village eerily resembling the cool-looking Denver International main terminal).

From Joe Stiglich in the Monterey County Herald:

 Howell arrived at 18 -- which bends left around Lake Merced and leaves little fairway to land a drive -- tied with Montgomerie. But he found the trees on his tee shot and bogeyed.

On Thursday, Woods said the tee box needed to be moved to the right. Calcavecchia's opinion was more sharp Friday.

"I don't want to say anything bad about the hole, but it's the worst one on the course," he said. "... It just doesn't really fit the rest of the course, in my opinion. Neither does the green."

The green is also not as bad as the players say. Frankly, it's one of the few interesting ones on the course, with a rightside catch basin that looks better this week because it's buried in rough.

This episode displays how faulty setup work only can't be detected and explained by today's players. (Or maybe they don't want to criticize the Tour staff?).  

Daly Unplugged

John Daly after round 2 of the WGC event at Harding Park:

Q. Tiger came in here with a turtle neck and a vest and Colin Montgomerie is wearing a sweater. You played in short sleeves today.

JOHN DALY: You put both of them on the scale and they'll weigh just about what I weigh right now. I'm a lot warmer than they are (laughter).

Q. When is the last time you played with Monty?

JOHN DALY: It's been a while. It's been a while since I played with Colin.

Q. Do you enjoy his company?

JOHN DALY: Yeah, we always chat it up a little bit.

Q. About what?

JOHN DALY: Whatever (laughter). Sometimes it's golf. I mean, both of us have had plenty of divorces so we can always talk about that (laughter). I've had a lot more than he has.

Kann on WGC's

Kraig Kann tactfully criticizes the World Golf Championship concept and it's failure to do much more than further separate the "Haves and Have Nots."  Though Kann can get overly enthusiastic at times on air, he demonstrates (again) a knack for quality constructive criticism. And The Golf Channel web site provides yet another reminder that it's doing...a heck of a job. ;) Interesting that a television channel has a more complete and active web presence than the print world, isn't it?

Faldo Q&A

An SF Chronicle Q&A with Nick Faldo talking about his announcing work.

Ostler Column On Harding's 18th

Thanks to reader Scott for this heads up on Scott Ostler's column about the par-4 18th at Harding. No mention by any player of the goofy-narrow fairway contouring.

Actually, no one really quite explains that it's a goofy setup and not the hole's fault.

This tee shot view was taken a year ago, before someone brought the rough in on the left, oh, at least 20 yards.

Erin Hills...No Signature Hole

Here's a nice story on Erin Hills and its hopes of landing a U.S. Open. Well, the story seemed well-informed until reaching this point:

Designers Dana Fry, Michael Hurdzan and Ron Whitten have done some brilliant bunkering around the greens and fairways. Lang and general manager Steve Trattner also had some input into the overall course design.

Rather interestingly, while the dropoffs, undulations, rough and wetlands come into play on just about every hole, very little earth was moved on the course. On 14 of the 18 holes, not a single shovel of dirt has been turned.

The course has no signature hole. All of the holes qualify for that distinction in their own ways.

Harding Day 1

Boy, the par-4 18th sure looked great during day one of the AmEx World Championship. I loved how the 25 yards of rough between the lake and fairway really tempts the player to cut the corner!

The player has to try to fit their ball into what, 22 yards of width resting at an angle from the tee?

And they wonder why the guys flog it out there with little regard for strategy.

Here's Doug Ferguson's Round 1 story.  And Ron Whitten's rave review of the renovation.

Hensby on Captain Player

Mark Hensby: "I'm not saying Gary [Player] was a bad captain, but he didn't know the players well enough and the personalities well enough and pick the teams well enough."

He wasn't bad, but...

"To me, the communication wasn't great all week. Our team gelled very well but I feel a lot of players weren't put together who should have been together.

"If he'd picked the teams better, we would have had a better chance."

Hensby threw his support behind assistant captain Ian Baker-Finch, implying the popular Queenslander should have had more influence.

"The team would have been better off if Ian had had more say," he said.

So his picks were bad, he didn't know the players, communication was lousy and he didn't listen to his assistant captain. Other than that, Hensby thinks Player did a heck of a job.

Trump National Victim?

Jay Coffin reports that longtime LPGA official Barb Trammell has resigned after 18 years, and he indicates that the slow play debacle at Trump National may have helped to push her out the door.

Trammell, 47, had been with the LPGA since 1987; the last major championship she did not attend was the 1991 U.S. Women's Open at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas. She was at the Office Depot Championship last week at Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles, where the course got mixed reviews – good for its scenic views of the Pacific Ocean, bad because of logistics that hindered gallery movement and contributed to rounds that lasted at least six hours for most players. The first day, 60 rulings were requested and officials had difficulty arriving quickly because of the course's routing.

 

Harding Numbers

Here is the link to my Golfobserver.com column looking at the renovation of Harding Park, with some questions about how $16 million was spent to rebuild an existing course.

More On Wie

Here's more on Michelle Wie's announcement, starting with Doug Ferguson's AP story, Chris Lewis at SI.com and Lawrence Donegan from Harding Park. Wie is still planning to go to Stanford. Tiger offered this on his Stanford experience:

"I think you [miss out] on several things by not going to college, the most obvious being educational," Woods said. "The things I learned at Stanford were just phenomenal, and the people I got the chance to talk to, like Condoleezza Rice, and all the guys in the business department - they influenced my life so dramatically."

Rubenstein On Measuring Devices

Lorne Rubenstein writes about distance measuring devices and reader email he has received on the subject.

The light is this and this only, as I concluded in my Globe and Mail column: "See, feel and swing: That's the fast way to play."

I believe it's also the best way to play, the most rewarding way to play, and the most enjoyable way to play.

I support the right of any golfer who wants one to use a distance-measuring gizmo. Lasers are here to stay, any some readers will call me a loser for not loving a laser. Let 'em have it. I don't want it.

Wie Turns Pro

A story on Michelle Wie's press conference:

Michelle Wie, the teen golf phenom, announced today that she would turn professional at a press conference at the Kahala Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Wie, who will turn 16 on October 11, also pledged to donate $500,000 to the U.S. Golf Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund.

"I am grateful to be in a position to be able to lend a hand to the victims of Hurricane Katrina," Wie continued. "Turning professional affords me the ability to give back to those in need. Watching other Americans suffer the indignities that this storm has caused really drove home my desire to reach out."

And besides charity, turning pro finally allows her to take the latest equipment that she was deprived of as an amateur:

Wie will tee off at the Samsung World Championship next week in Palm Desert, Calif. playing Nike Golf’s new Sasquatch driver and fairway woods, joining Justin Leonard and K.J. Choi as some of the first to put golf’s latest advancements in club technology into play. Her affinity toward Nike Golf’s equipment, including the new Nike One Platinum golf ball, extends to Nike’s innovative performance apparel and footwear, which she will wear exclusively on Tour.

 As she has been, for the last two years.