Writer's Ryder Picks

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An AP story reporting votes by some of our most esteemed scribblers suggesting who they see making the U.S. Ryder Cup squad (with their vote tally included):

Tiger Woods 18
Phil Mickelson 18
Jim Furyk 18
David Toms 18
Chris DiMarco 18
Chad Campbell 16
Scott Verplank 16
Stewart Cink 13
Zach Johnson 13
Fred Couples 12
Davis Love III 10
Lucas Glover 9
Arron Oberholser 9

Also receiving votes: Jerry Kelly 5, Vaughn Taylor 4, Tim Herron 3, Kenny Perry 2, Ben Crane 2, J.J. Henry 2, Fred Funk 2, Justin Leonard 2, J.B. Holmes 1, Brett Wetterich 1, David Duval 1, John Daly 1, Brad Faxon 1, Jay Haas 1.

Not much faith shown in J.J. Henry, John Rollins and Brent Wetterich. 

The Skill Open?

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Get the Washington Post ombudsman on the line!

We have some good old fashioned anti golf ball bias displayed by Leonard Shapiro, who not only dares to suggest a retro equipment tournament, but proposes that Nike run it!

Back in June, when the PGA Tour pulled the plug, for now, on Washington playing host to a tournament for the next few years, I received several e-mails from a friend and Northern Virginia neighbor, Howard Jensen, clearly a thinking man's golfer himself, who offered an intriguing alternative to the usual stroke play format for a tournament he'd love to see some day replace the Kemper/FBR/Booz Allen Open.

The play of Woods and Pavin over the last two weeks reminded me of his proposal, which follows mostly in his words. It includes a deep-pocketed sponsor -- he suggested Nike--that would put up the prize money -- say $5 million -- and dictate the rules of play that would go something like this:

Equipment: Nike selects a standard shaft, maybe graphite, and a standard ball (soft) that all players must use. The goal is to select a shaft and ball combination that, in the hands of the longest hitters, would only carry 300 yards maximum when hit perfectly.
See the bias. Criminal I tell you! Here's more from Len's equally biased friend:
"Skill with mid-irons and skill around the greens becomes a significant factor in professional golf again. The equipment in the bags of all players is identical, no tricked-up wedges, no fairway iron/woods, no fade driver/draw driver combinations. It's pure golf, pure equipment.

"This is not a radical notion. Every other professional sport uses standard equipment for all players, even NASCAR. The Battle Cry will boil down to a single question: Is it the player, or is it his/her equipment?
And naturally, this next point is just ludicrous. The plummetting ratings and Tom Fazio say the people want long drives, so they must want the power game, not silly stuff like this:
"Fan interest would be off the charts, drawing in even the casual golf fan. Sports radio and ESPN will have a field day hyping the event, and Washington would be the place to be in the world of golf.

 

Ogilvy At Warwick Hills

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Geoff Ogilvy talking to da medja at Warwick Hills:
Q. You guys are professional, you play all over the world in all kind of conditions, but how difficult is it to go from a golf course like Hoylake which is brown

GEOFF OGILVY: Total opposite to here?

Q. Total opposite to here.

GEOFF OGILVY: How much of a difference is that? It's harder to go from here to there than it is to go from there to here, because we play that once a year; we play this type of setup pretty much every week, you know, rough like this, just off the green.

I guess you just learn to adapt. I guess if all you'd ever done in your whole life was played a golf course around here and you went to this for one week, it would be completely bizarre. You grow up in Australia, Australians have to travel somewhere to play because Australia is on its own. It's a small country. You get to a point you have to go somewhere. So we are all used to traveling to different countries and playing different golf courses. That's the nature of doing that is you I think by the time you get good enough to be a professional golfer, you tend to play a lot of different types of golf and you learn to adapt week in, week out. The British Open, that's why a lot of players don't play the week before and will go over to Ireland and all that because it takes a while to get used to it again. But coming back from there to here, we play this type of setup so much that it's quite easy to get back into this.
Nice chance for any number of questions about Hoylake, PGA Tour setups, architecture, etc... uh no.
Q. You were talking about the field a little bit and how that makes it a bigger deal, a lot of the players say they don't pay attention to who else is here, but a field like this with Tiger and Vijay and Furyk and yourself does that make it a bigger deal? Do you get more fired up or is it a bigger deal to win?

"There must have been a hiccup somewhere"

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John Gordon on the Canadian Open's lousy date in 2007, offers this from Vijay Singh:
"For a Canadian Open, it's not right to have a date like that. It's a very odd date for a Canadian Open. Here you have one of the most prestigious events on Tour, and to have it on a date like that?

"I don't know what happened. There must have been a hiccup somewhere. You got the wrong end of the stick. I'm going to try to talk to [Finchem] and see if there is a chance of moving the dates."

Lengthy Erin Hills Review

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Rob Schultz in The Capital Times writes a lengthy story about newly opened Erin Hills and the USGA's infatuation with the Hurzan-Fry-Whitten design.

The usually staid USGA is so completely gaga over Erin Hills that the mere mention of the place makes many of its officials act like 13-year-old boys debating how to ask a girl to dance for the first time.

Many golf courses have been waiting for decades for the USGA to give them one of their national championships held annually. Erin Hills has the unique status of being given the USGA's 2008 Women's Public Links Championships even before it opened. That tournament will tell the USGA if the course is ready to handle more. If it passes, Erin Hills will be on the fast track toward getting an Open.

 

Tiger Wishes They Played Courses Like Medinah All The Time

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Ed Sherman shares the nitty gritty on Tiger's test drive around Medinah. His caddie:

 "He said about six or seven times, `I wish we played courses like this all the time,'" Conklin said.

How far into his PGA press conference before we get the dreaded "it's all right in front of you" line? 

Unprecedented Multi-Platform Simulcast!

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From the folks at TNT:

In a first for a U.S. golf event, Turner Network Television (TNT) and PGA.com, one of golf’s leading interactive Web sites, will partner to bring golf fans inside the ropes with 11 hours of live coverage featuring TNT and CBS’ on-air announcers, camera coverage and editorial content as they call the 2006 PGA Championship from Medinah (Ill) Country Club. The coverage tees off on Thursday and Friday, August 17 - 18, with PGA.com simulcasting six hours of TNT’s on-air content with coverage from 2 – 5 p.m. ET for both the first and second rounds. Also, PGA.com will webcast five additional hours of bonus coverage from the first two rounds of the championship. The exclusive bonus coverage will stream on Thursday and Friday from 12:30 – 2 p.m. ET, and then again on Saturday and Sunday from 10 – 11 a.m.  TNT broadcast partner CBS will follow late-round coverage on Saturday and Sunday to the championship’s conclusion.
Oh yeah, I'm up at 7 a.m. on PGA Sunday to watch that!
 

Here's the money quote:

“One of the benefits of providing six hours of simulcast coverage on Thursday and Friday is to build interest and viewership of the PGA Championship on TNT,” said David Levy, president, Turner Sports. “This landmark multi-platform experience is the perfect example of how, with the help and tremendous access provided by our friends at The PGA of America, we can leverage our expertise and technology to enhance our network coverage giving the fan the most complete two-screen experience. We wanted to debut this big idea at a big event, and what could be better than to do so at a major championship."
And I knew sticking with AOL would finally pay off:
In addition to the live coverage on TNT and PGA.com, AOL.com users will have exclusive access to live video coverage of select par-3 holes.  This coverage will be available free and open on the Web on Thursday and Friday at http://sports.aol.com. Announcers Grant Boone, Beau Estes and Christine Pullara will provide users with an in-depth look and analysis of the world’s greatest golfers as they make their way through the challenging par-3 holes at Medinah (Ill.) Country Club. Also offered is a unique interactive open forum where golf fans can email, log on to chat or send AOL Instant Messages to our anchors and expert analysts.
Does this mean we can IM Bobby Clampett?

 

Campbell On Cup Points

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Not the FedEx Cup silly, the Cup that matters...

The Houston Chronicle's Steve Campbell writes:

The Ryder Cup standings are as crude as they are contrived, with players scoring only if they finish in the top 10. In the Ryder Cup race, the guy who finishes 11th gets treated the same as the guy who misses the cut.

And makes this point:

The world rankings, imperfect as they may be, are a much better gauge of a player's overall performance. By that measure, the first six players on the team would be the same. Lehman would have Love, Kenny Perry (No. 32), Verplank and Couples in the 7-10 slots.

Fuzzy On Today's Tour Players

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Fuzzy Zoeller's "My Shot, from the August Golf Digest:
Many of the younger players on the regular tour today are just plain shy. They started at an earlier age than I did and from day one really had the game hammered into them. They grew up more insulated from the outside world. So they're a little less comfortable around people. It shows in their interviews, their interaction with the fans and even with each other. They just aren't people-oriented; caddies and teachers tend to get fired more often because of personality conflicts. I don't think they have as much fun as we did back in the 1970s and '80s. I have to say, I enjoyed the best years of the PGA Tour.

GWAA British Accommodations Contest Winner

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Alan Shipnuck and Barker Davis delivered memorable rants (here and here) on their Hoylake hotels, but if I were judging the (no chance in hell) Golf Writers Association of America's writing contest award for best British Accommodations story, Bob Verdi's July 28 Golf World rant (not posted) would take the Weekly division prize.

If they can build a Rolls-Royce, why can't they build a shower that works? I stepped into the shower stall the other day, and that's exactly what happened. A shower stall. Instead of a simple knob or handle, there's a control panel that looks like it belongs in an airplane cockpit. Flashing lights, arrows, diagrams, cables, dials. Everything but water. When I attempted to activate the contraption, the spigot just sort of hissed, as if to mock my pathetic body.

I yelled for help, and was informed that, in order to secure hot water, I first must flip a switch. It's 100 degrees and I've got to flip a switch to get warm? And where's the switch? It's in the adjoining room, the one with a toilet. Once water arrives, it does so reluctantly and in wild spurts, occasionally so scalding that you hang from the glass partition, hugging it for safety, as if posing for a chest X-ray. 
 

Captain's Picks: How About the Assistants?

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2006rydercup.jpgMike Aitken tries to kindly point out that Tom Lehman's assistant's might actually make for attractive Captain's picks.
WHEN Tom Lehman, the US Ryder Cup captain, urged his men to win more tournaments in the run-up to the match against Europe at the K Club next month, it's safe to assume he didn't have either Loren Roberts or Corey Pavin in mind. On Sunday, however, it was Lehman's backroom assistants who showed the others the way with victories at Turnberry and Milwaukee.

While pleased for his friends, Lehman, privately, must be questioning the lack of experience in a side which is shaping up as stellar at the top of the order - the expected partnerships of Tiger Woods and Jim Furyk and Phil Mickelson and Chris DiMarco will be crucial to US hopes of success - but something of an unproven quantity further down.

As things stand, the last four places on the US side will be filled by JJ Henry, Zach Johnson, Brett Wetterich and John Rollins, rookies who would add an element of the unknown to the American team for the first time in years. With an injury doubt over the involvement of David Toms and fitness and form question marks also lingering against possible wild card selections such as Davis Love III and Fred Couples, even the Yanks (whose qualifying race ends after the US PGA at Medinah on 20 August) accept Europe go into the 36th match as favourites.