Rory Steals From Tiger Playbook Again: Walk-Off WD

There was no helicopter television coverage this time, but Dave Shedloski reports from Bear Trap National on Rory McIlroy's bizarre walk-off WD. It came at the Honda Classic after taking 41 shots on his first nine holes, but before he'd putted out on the ninth.

The scene was reminiscent of last year's WGC-Cadillac Championship when Tiger Woods withdrew on the 12th hole of the final round and promptly exited Doral Resort. Woods cited an Achilles injury that afternoon. Ken Kennerly, the tournament's executive director, said he was still awaiting word on the reason for McIlroy's withdrawal. According to the Associated Press, McIlroy said he was "not in a good place mentally."

Golf Channel's Bailey Mosier posted this ominous Tweet:

Rorys agent: "He's not hurt. He's not sick. And he won't answer his phone. I don't know."

The official PGA Tour account says McIlroy withdraw from severe wisdom tooth pain.

Update on 2013-03-01 16:22 by Geoff

**McIlroy's official statement put out by the tour:

"I sincerely apologize to The Honda Classic and PGA Tour for my sudden withdrawal. I have been suffering with a sore wisdom tooth, which is due to come out in the near future. It began bothering me again last night, so I relieved it with Advil. It was very painful again this morning, and I was simply unable to concentrate. It was really bothering me and had begun to affect my playing partners. I came here with every intention of defending my Honda Classic title. Even though my results haven't revealed it, I really felt like I was rounding a corner. This is one of my favorite tournaments of the year and I regret having to make the decision to withdraw, but it was one I had to make."

Update on 2013-03-01 16:28 by Geoff

**Rory Tweeted that he is "gutted."

And he's already gotten feedback from followers.

Update on 2013-03-01 17:24 by Geoff

**Jeff Babineau was there and says McIlroy was near tears.

The defending champion at the Honda, who has captured two major championships by age 23, was near tears as his caddie placed his clubs into the trunk of his blue BMW sports car and he headed out of the lot at PGA National shortly before 10 a.m.

He was 7 over for his round (and the tournament) heading down the 18th fairway, and chose not to drop a ball and hit his fourth shot.

“There’s not really say much I can say, guys,” he said to three reporters in the parking lot. “I’m not in a good place mentally, you know?”

Update on 2013-03-01 18:25 by Geoff

**Bob Harig notes that "The tournament withdrawal rules McIlroy ineligible to win the PGA Tour's scoring title" that McIlroy won in 2012.

Jason Sobel is pretty blunt:  "This is beyond poor form. This is quitting. This is John Daly territory. This is the absolute opposite of what we expect and demand from our superstars."

Update on 2013-03-01 18:09 by Geoff

**Will Gray has this and other quotes from playing partner Ernie Els:

"I'm a great fan of Rory's, but I don't think that was the right thing to do," Els explained after firing an even-par 70, leaving him at 1 under for the tournament.

Update on 2013-03-01 19:45 by Geoff

**A nice GolfDigest.com rundown by Alex Myers of bizarro WD's, including Sergio's zit issue!

Update on 2013-03-01 19:46 by Geoff

**Brandel Chamblee on Golf Channel:

“Todd Lewis (Golf Channel reporter) hit the nail on the head when he said this is going to add to the questions that already existed due to the equipment change and the poor play, and not busting 75 in the two rounds he played over in the Middle East.  The contrast of the stories, the one saying he is in good form, another saying he did not know what was wrong and then later saying it was due to a wisdom tooth issue, will raise further criticism…Clearly this is not an equipment issue.  This is a golf swing issue, and in this particular instance, and anybody who has dealt with wisdom pain can tell you, it is almost impossible to do anything other than deal with the issue of the pain.”

Death, Misery Take Hit In 2012 GWAA Awards

Though the bar has been set pretty low, a shocking number of quality entries appear to have been honored in the 2012 GWAA Writing Contest where the judges largely shunned maudlin misery for actual writing about the sport its ownself!

If time allows I'll try to link the winners:

2013 GWAA WRITING CONTEST RESULTS

The following is a full list of the winners, including honorable mentions. There were a record 546 entries in the contest.

DAILY COLUMNS – 1, Dave Seanor, Yahoo! Sports, The false promise of Tiger Woods; 2, Jeff Rude, Golfweek.com, Vivid memories of Hogan and Nelson; 3, John Hopkins, GlobalGolfPost.com, In praise of the Amateur

Honorable mention: Ron Borges, Boston Herald, PoulterHeist; Steve Eubanks, GlobalGolfPost.com, A Selah for Furman; Jim McCabe, Golfweek.com, Remembering Furman Bisher; Josh Sens, Golf.com, Invited to The Country Club, finally.

DAILY NEWS – 1, Ron Green, Jr., Charlotte Observer, McIlroy slays field in PGA Championship; 2, Brian Wacker, PGATOUR.com, Bubba is part artist, part magician; 3, Ian O’Connor, ESPN.com, Olympic’s 16th Hole doomed Furyk.

Honorable mention: Tony Dear, Cybergolf.com, Win by Els is bittersweet; Bill Dwyre, Los Angeles Times, A new name in Masters lore; Jay Flemma, Cybergolf.com, Triple Double at Winged Foot.

DAILY FEATURES – 1, Jason Sobel, GolfChannel.com, More to The Jungle Bird; 2, Lisa Mickey, New York Times, A path to opportunity; 3, Jeff Babineau, Golfweek.com, Good attitude a must at Open.

Honorable mention: Gary D’Amato, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel; Chuasiriporn left game behind; Ron Kroichick, San Francisco Chronicle, Rory’s future is limited only by his drive; Jim McCabe, Golfweek.com, Euro teammates trust Poulter; Alan Tays, GolfChannel.com, Back on course after accident.

NON-DAILY COLUMNS – 1, Beth Ann Baldry, Golfweek, Creamer’s tearful farewell to Pops; 2, Jim McCabe, Golfweek, Jack: Heart of a champion spans generations; 3, Ron Sirak, Golf World, Pepper’s pardon.

Honorable mention – Jeff Babineau, Golfweek, A band of believers; Alan Shipnuck, Sports Illustrated, Dufner is golf’s coolest man; Alan Shipnuck, Sports Illustrated, Rory is not Tiger.

NON-DAILY NEWS – 1, Tim Rosaforte, Golf World, No rest for Rory; 2, Damon Hack, Sports Illustrated, Red Storm Rising; 3, Michael Bamberger, Sports Illustrated, Phil wins, Tiger loses at Pebble.

Honorable mention – Jim Moriarty, Golf World, Beach Party, Rory wins PGA; Jeff Rude, Golfweek, Duval returns to Lytham; Curt Sampson, Golf World, Collectibles, bidding for history; Alan Shipnuck, Sports Illustrated, Rory, globe-trotting star.

NON-DAILY FEATURES – 1, Jaime Diaz, Golf Digest, Billy Casper, Out of the darkness; 2, Gary VanSickle, Sports Illustrated, Education of Tom Watson; 3 (tie) Steve Rushin, Golf Digest, Bad to the Bone and Jeff Silverman, Golf World, Book worms.

Honorable mention – Jim Moriarty, Golf World, Upside-down world of Randy Simmons; Alan Shipnuck, Sports Illustrated, How Jhonny V made good; Stina Sternberg, Golf Digest, Christina Kim: Tears of a clown.

SPECIAL PROJECTS – 1, Alan Shipnuck, Sports Illustrated, Best Sunday ever; 2, Guy Yocom and John Huggan, Golf Digest, Rowdy Ryder Cup at Kiawah; 3, Gregg Dewalt, Times Daily, Revisiting Robert Trent Jones Trail.

Honorable mention: Mercer Baggs, Rex Hoggard, Randall Mell and Jason Sobel, GolfChannel.com, The year 1912 and how it changed the game; Peter Finch and Stina Sternberg, Golf Digest, How golf really treats women; Scott Michaux, Augusta Chronicle, Charl Schwartzel, rise of a natural.

Sunshine Tour "Affirms respect for decisions of game’s rulemakers"

None of these tours are as powerful as the PGA Tour, but a unified front from the "other" tours is quickly putting a damper on Tim Finchem and the PGA Tour's recently announced stance against the proposed anchoring ban.

The latest and perhaps most powerful written statement yet comes from South Africa and the Sunshine Tour:

For Immediate Release:

PRETORIA, March 1 – The Sunshine Tour today confirmed that it would not oppose the controversial ‘anchoring’ ban proposed by the game’s rule makers, the USGA and R&A, should it go ahead as planned at the beginning of 2016.

“The issue here is not whether we, as the controlling body for professional golf in Southern Africa, agree with the proposed ban or not,” said Sunshine Tour Executive Director Selwyn Nathan. “It is about respecting the bodies who are tasked with the sometimes unenviable job of making changes to the Rules of Golf from time to time. In our case, the body from which we take this lead is the R&A and, as we have always done, we will continue to play the game in accordance with the Rules of Golf as set out by them.”

The USGA and R&A announced the intention to ban the anchoring of putters to the player’s body during the putting stroke in late 2012 and allowed for a period of comment. The proposed rule change will come into effect on 1 January 2016.

Embedded: Musselburgh Greenkeepers Unearth 500 BC Skull

A bunker on the 4th at Musselburgh with Mrs. Forman's in the background (Click to enlarge)From the Scottish Daily Record, sounds like routine bunker repair work on the fourth hole led to quite a find.

It was initially thought the skull was about 100 years old but archaeologists discovered it dated from the Iron Age – about 500BC.

It has been sent to Dundee University’s forensic anthropology department for further examination. Experts now hope to dig up the rest of the girl’s skeleton. The nine-hole Old Golf Course, is owned by East Lothian Council.

A council spokeswoman said yesterday: “On discovery, the police were contacted so that they could determine if this was ancient or related to something more recent.”

The fourth is one of my favorite holes in golf, as you may recall from my video posted last December. And of course, Musselburgh is one of the great places in the game.

Update on 2013-03-03 05:35 by Geoff

**Jim Moriarty thinks he knows who the skull belongs to. ;)

LPGA Likely To Support Governing Bodies, Too

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.

Bubba Reiterates His Support For The Anchoring Ban

This Tweet should add some discussion material for the reigning Masters champion's next practice round with buddy Webb Simpson:

Video: Michael Breed Makes Leno's Monologue

Go to the 6:35 mark to see Golf Channel yeller Michael Breed make Jay Leno's Tonight Show monologue in a segment called "It Looks Dirty But It's Not."  (Okay, the big reveal is below the video...I couldn't help it.)

Video: Rory Stopping A Ball On The Back Of His Wedge

As if Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy don't have enough to bond over, it seems Rory might have one-upped the old geezer when it comes to wedge tricks.

While Tiger's old Nike ad remains a pretty incredible work of craftsmanship, for the life of me I can't figure out this trick Rory pulls where the ball goes from his clubface to the back of the wedge.

Thanks to Shane Bacon for pointing it out.

Tim Finchem's "No Competitive Advantage" Canard

My colleague Sam Weinman is probably right that there are probably bigger issues in the game to be quibbling over than the proposed anchoring ban. I might have agreed, until the entire episode took on a new, bizarre and disconcerting twist when Commissioner Tim Finchem made his case last weekend by severely stretching the truth. And as Frank Hannigan pointed out in his letter to this site, Finchem had a long time to prepare his case.

The wise readers of this site knew it right away, and now the media is now calling him out. It should be noted, as I pointed out on Morning Drive Monday, that Finchem may just be doing the bidding (for a change) for his players, and averting a lawsuit. But a master debater who has had over a year to prepare a rebuttal failed so badly that his national television appearance could reflect poorly on the PGA Tour.

Jaime Diaz dismantles all of Finchem's key arguments for opposing the anchoring ban in a must-read Golf World column.

The lethal paragraph:

It would have been easier to accept if the commissioner hadn't been so obviously spinning. Like claiming that 20 percent of amateurs anchor, which is patently ridiculous compared to Golf Datatech research that puts the number at less than 5 percent. Or saying that the USGA had allowed anchoring since 1975 when the first long-putter cases occurred in the mid-1980s. Or maintaining that the USGA and R&A have conceded that anchoring provides no competitive advantage, when the associations have taken no stance on that criteria. Or that Webb Simpson and Keegan Bradley "grew up" with the belly putter, when Simpson switched from conventional in college and Bradley a year after turning pro. All things the old debate champion wouldn't have done with a real opponent in front of him.

Robert Lusetich refers to Finchem's "bullying tactics" and highlights how the debate shifted with Finchem not exactly refuting the prevailing view of players that its unfair to have amateurs making the rules of golf:

Instead of arguing the merits of anchoring, proponents have twisted the debate, making it more about the USGA and R&A.

They persuaded PGA Tour players by preying on their historic dislike of golf’s ruling bodies; on the idea that amateurs shouldn’t be deciding what professionals can and cannot do.

They said that the USGA has allowed anchoring for 40 years, that’s there’s no data showing a competitive advantage for anchoring — a dubious assertion given many bad putters anchor, thus dragging down performance data — and that it won’t grow the game, as many golfers with the yips would stop playing.

“The USGA approved it twice,” Finchem noted.

And of course, they did not, something Bob Harig addressed already.

Michael Williams at GolfWRX also takes on the Commissioner and says "golf must be honest and consistent about its reasons" for banning anchoring, and he says the USGA/R&A has held up their end of the bargain. By going on national television the way Finchem did while uttering factually problematic statements, Williams says Finchem failed the game when he tried to pass off the "no competitive advantage" canard.

Finchem said in an interview there there was an “absence of data or any basis to conclude that there is a competitive advantage to be gained by using anchoring.” In one sense, he is correct. Of the top 20 percent of the Tour’s leading putters, none used an anchored putter. But the point is not if the long putter makes a given player statistically better than everyone else; the only meaningful statistic is if it makes the player better than he or she might have been using an unanchored putter with a conventional stroke. While the Tour has no way to compile such statistics, you can bet the players and their putting gurus do. If the putter works by the numbers on the practice green, then you can bet they are going to bring it to the course.

The USGA/R&A never conceded this "no competitive advantage" point. They made clear this is about the potential that an anchored stroke may provide a competitive advantage and may alter the competitive challenge of making a stroke.

The USGA/R&A emphasized that its proposal "comes in response to the recent upsurge in the use of anchored putting strokes at all levels of the game, combined with growing advocacy by players and instructors that anchoring the club may alleviate some of the inherent challenges of traditional putting and therefore may be a preferred way to play the game."

And: "The player’s challenge is to direct and control the movement of the entire club in making the stroke. Anchoring the club removes the player’s need to do so by providing extra support and stability for the stroke, as if one end of the club were physically attached to the body.”  

So here's the big problem with the "no competitive advantage" talking point Finchem presented: anchorers say that this method of lodging hand against torso does not provide them an advantage, but the moment it was suggested the governing bodies might take that anchoring option away, they said they would their living would be fundamentally impacted if not for the ability to anchor.

Who needs data when you get admissions like that?

And then there's Tim Clark's "plight."

Randall Mell talked to some players at the Honda Classic Tuesday who admitted that Clark's sad saga of genetic condition convinced them to oppose the ban.

Another canard.

“Tim Clark got up and said some things that were very sincere, about his livelihood and his family,” said Brandt Jobe, who was there. “When Tim spoke, that really impacted players who would have been on the fence. A lot of people who didn’t really care that much were affected by the points Tim made that night and decided, ‘I’m going in that direction.’”

Clark has a genetic condition that prevents him from turning his forearms and wrists inward. He has used a long putter for several years.

And under the proposed rule change, Clark will (A) be able to continue to use the same exact putter he uses now, and (B) will be able to grip that putter exactly the same way he has before, with one difference: the putter must not be anchored to his torso.

Clark and those with similar physical ailments merely have to move the putter 1/2 to 1 inch from their bodies.

Same grips. Same putters. Only now they have to use only their hands and arms to stroke the ball.

Naturally, we all know these pros are unhappy about this simple shift because they believe they have gained a competitive advantage in anchoring the putter against their torso. Trying to claim anything otherwise while also suggesting livelihoods will be impacted means the "no competitive advantage" claim is an outright falsehood. And this is why any empathy some of us might have had for professional anchorers will be abandoned. (As for amateur yippers who may give up the game, that's another subject entirely and I don't know the answer.)

Professional golfing anchorers have a little less than four years to move their putter grip just millimeters away from their chest. In light of the mistruths they've spread after a good-faith effort by the governing bodies to hear their feedback, the USGA and R&A must call Tim and Tim's bluff and usher in the proposed Rule 14-1b ban.