Fan On Tiger's Stolen Ball: “I know for a fact that I did not see anybody who rushed away"

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You'll be shocked...SHOCKED...to learn that a fan, Chris Kroeger talking to Steve Elling, is disputing the notion someone might have picked up Tiger's ball on Friday at the Wells Fargo Championship.

Kroeger's morning-after version is pretty convincing.

He said he was standing on the left side of the putting green on the fifth hole when Woods sent his approach from 261 yards deep into the trees.

“It came behind us, over our heads,” he said. “I heard nothing but leaves, and not any clean contact with any trees. I don't think the ball kicked out and I did not see any ball on the ground.”

He estimated that perhaps 50 people were in the area when the shot was struck, and they began searching for the ball immediately. As the rest of the Woods gallery caught up, it swelled to at least 300, Kroeger said. Marshals began moving fans back as Russell arrived and asked spectators what they had seen.

Two male fans, including one very vocal man, insisted they had seen the ball on the ground. Trouble is, Kroeger is pretty sure they were not among the original throng of fans who were greenside when the shot was hit in the first place.

“I had never even seen that guy,” Kroeger said.

Moore: “Today I got a penalty stroke for absolutely no reason."

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Ryan Moore is three back at Quail Hollow even with a one-shot penalty that he mistakenly thought had been something addressed in this year's book when Rule 18 2-b was changed to exonerate a player whose ball moved due to an outside agency. Unfortunately, Moore remembered it as people had hoped to see the rule changed, not as it was changed.
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“These are the kinds of stories you hear from the past.”

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He trails the first round Wells Fargo Championship leaders by one but as Sean Martin explained before an opening 66, Patrick Reed is just the kind of refreshing, retro, free-market success story that the tour needs more of. But with fewer Monday qualifiers and Q-School's demise, don't count on them coming along too often.

Reed was a first-team All-American last year at two-time national champion Augusta State but is without status on any major tour. After finishing 35th at the Texas Open, he made the nine-hour drive with his fiancee, Justine Karain, to New Orleans. They arrived at 2:45 a.m., sleeping four hours before the Zurich Classic’s Monday qualifier. An 8-iron to 2 feet on the second playoff hole earned him a second consecutive start. He birdied five of his final eight holes at TPC Louisiana to tie for 24th.

The pair took a circuitous route to this week’s Tour stop in Charlotte. Their first flight went from New Orleans to Chicago’s Midway International Airport. The next one landed in Greenville, S.C., some 90 minutes from Charlotte. They arrived at the hotel around 1:15 a.m. Monday, with another Monday qualifying round awaiting. He shot 65 to advance to the Wells Fargo Championship.

Reed is accompanied by his fiancee, Justine Karain, who works as Reed's caddie.

“It’s been a very hectic couple of months, but a very happy couple of months,” Reed said. “I’m in a great state of mind and very happy. She’s keeping me calm. She’s the most positive one on the golf course. When I get down, she picks me up.”

Reed proposed to Karain, whom he met while attending high school in Baton Rouge, La., in January, shortly after returning from a victory in a professional event in Trinidad & Tobago. They also moved to Houston that month.

She does more than carry the bag. Karain, a former high-school golfer, helps read the putts.

USGA's Davis On Trump: "For all that comes with Donald as a business icon and media personality, he couldn't have been a more gracious host."

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Translation, even though he seems like a blowhard, he actually can host a championship well enough that we'll put up with a "partner" that would have made Joe Dey jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.

At least, that's how I took USGA Executive Director Mike Davis's remarks, though a transcript from the day can't be found at the usual spot USGA transcripts appear.

This was an interesting element in the decision to take the 2017 Women's Open to Trump National.

"We really get to showcase our museum and we get to showcase where we test balls and clubs," Davis said. "Far Hills is not the easiest place to find, so to get the golf world for a week here, it's very exciting and we will expose the campus."

Brad Klein got to spend some time driving around the course with The Donald and came away swooning about the man, even dropping the "h word. (Humble...really).

Enthusiasm and attention are why he got to Trump National 90 minutes before the news conference. That gave him time to inspect work in progress on the club’s new 10,000-square-foot locker room. And it’s why he insisted on accompanying me on a drive through the back nine of the Old Course. His discourse during such a trip is filled with superlatives, about this being the largest single green in the world and the whole course being the best in all of New Jersey and worthy of a top-10 national ranking. He’s an incessant follower of course ratings and thinks that Golfweek, in rating Trump National-Old at No. 72 Modern, we’ve not shown the course (or him) enough respect.

USGA.org featured a slideshow from the media day. This one had a caption, but somehow I know you can do better:

Tucson Golf: "We've cut about as much as we can cut."

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Thanks to reader Jim for Greg Hansen's morbidly depressing story about the state of golf and our economy in Tucson, where the golf courses are literally ghost towns. Tucson Parks and Recreation Director Fred Gray says the numbers don't lie.

Gray tells the commission that 299,583 rounds of golf were played on the city's five courses in 2001. A decade later, 2011, that total was 193,166. It is a staggering decline that reflects national golf numbers and, of course, the nation's struggling economy.

Gray and Hayes have chopped the equivalent of 81 full-time jobs from the golf payroll over the last year, from 145 to 64. That's 176,280 reduced man-hours off the books.

"We've cut about as much as we can cut," Gray says. He acknowledges that the courses will not be mowed as precisely or as often. If you desire golf instruction, you must now work through an outside contractor, not a Tucson City Golf pro. If you buy a beer from the cart lady, her paycheck is coming from an outside firm contracted to sell you that beer.

This is golf in Tucson, golf in America, 2012. If the industry worked like TV ratings, the whole sport would've been canceled.

These are the numbers that stop the audit commission and raise a collective eyebrow: In 2011, Tucson City Golf had operating revenues of $7,015,000 and operating expenses of $8,275,000.

Romans: "It's like a guy from Augusta putting on the green jacket."

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Randy Beard on trainer Dale Romans, who I know you all revere as the Preakness-winning trainer of the great, legendary and unforgettable Shackleford, really wants to win Saturday's Kentucky Derby.

And how can you not root for a Louisville native who wheels out a golf analogy?

"It's like a guy from Augusta putting on the green jacket," said Romans, referring to The Masters golf tournament. "The (Kentucky) Derby is the dream."

Based at Churchill Downs, Romans trains Dullahan, an 8-1 deep closer in a speed-heavy race who drew the five post and who so far has largely shown himself to be a synthetic specialist. Kind of like a golfer who really only plays well on Nicklaus courses.

Bubba Skipping Players For "Bonding" With Infant Son; Taking "At Least" A Month Off

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What's going to happen when little Caleb is actually aware he has a father?

Will Bubba ever play again?

From Twitter today:

Trevino: "We were hoping somebody would invite us into the clubhouse and buy us dinner."

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Okay, so Lee Trevino sounds like a geezer talking to Paul Fogleman of the Hickory Daily Record** before a speaking gig in front of the Hickory Sportsman’s Club. Still, it's always fun to hear what's on his mind. Two highlights:

When did you come to that determination to retire? How did you figure out that you had had enough?

I’ll tell you what brings you to that decision. It’s real easy. It’s when you can’t wait to get to a tournament, and then when you drive in you say ‘What am I doing here?’ And then you can’t wait to get out of there. In other words, I don’t care about competing any more. I came to grasp with everything when I realized I couldn’t compete any more, If you’ve won as many tournaments as I’ve won and competed the many years that I competed, you understand that you’re not gonna go play just to be playing.  When you drive into that golf course, you want to have a chance of winning, and if there’s any doubt inside of you that you can’t win, it’s time to hang it up.

And...

When you go back to your heyday, there were players like yourself, Arnold Palmer and others who were characters of the game. One of the biggest criticisms of the PGA Tour today is it doesn’t have the personalities like it did in your prime.

If you’ll look back at the old days, most golfers when we came to the course we had a sport coat on, and we hung it up in the locker. Today, these kids come to the course in shorts and a pair of tennis shoes on, and a T-shirt, and then they dress while they’re there. And then they leave the same way. It’s almost like the rock band Kiss. Once they take the makeup off, nobody recognizes them. It was different back then and we were more personable I think back then, and the reason for it is simply because we didn’t play for a lot of money. We were hoping somebody would invite us into the clubhouse and buy us dinner. That’s why we had the coat there.

**Link working now.