Punters Beware: Scott In Record 63 At Shinnecock

It's never too early to file away something for your past performances files, as Doug Ferguson reports on Adam Scott's course-record setting round at 2018 U.S. Open host Shinnecock Hills.

Scott made a 12 footer on the last to set the new record.

"It's pretty cool," Scott said. "The members got pretty excited when I came off the course, and it's one of the best tracks in the world, for sure. No one has ever shot that score in over 100 years off the tees I played. So that's a pretty neat thing."

"Economic uncertainty hits Asian golf"

As the playoff extravaganza winds down and the massive audiences take in one more week of PGA Tour golf before turning their attention to football and baseball, Asia will soon come into focus with a few big events on the various tours.

An unbylined APF story looks at the suddenly less prosperous times in Asian professional golf.

Asia's end-of-year golf round remains studded with lucrative, imported events, including the CIMB Classic, BMW Masters, WGC-HSBC Champions and the World Cup, offering combined prize money of more than $30 million.

But with about 20 international events scheduled across the Asia-Pacific region in the last few months of this year, it's no surprise that some are crowded out.

The Singapore Open, previously billed as 'Asia's major' and with a $6 million purse last year, is the glaring omission from this year's schedule. Its promoters are promising it will return next season, but the date, venue and sponsor are all unknown.

Meanwhile India's European Tour-sanctioned Avantha Masters has been shelved after its main sponsor withdrew due to the "current economic condition", including a plunging rupee.

And the Hong Kong Open, long a cornerstone of Asian golf, is without a sponsor and is relying on government funds to help pay its prize money.

Holly Pitches First Pitch At Rays Game

Unfortunately with the team mired in a thrilling pennant race that meant another miniscule crowd was on hand for a Rays game.

Thankfully we have video to see Golf Channel's Holly Sonders re-inventing the first pitch. Well done!

Update on 2013-09-17 17:49 by Geoff

**The Big Lead posts a live-changing GIF of the occasion along with some pre-game photos.

Medinah No. 1 A Possible BMW Championship Host Some Day?

Teddy Greenstein says Conway Farms was a big hit and is likely to host again in 2015 after Cherry Hills hosts the BMW next year--assuming Colorado hasn't washed away by then.

But a couple of intriguing venue names have come up for the long term, including the newly renovated Medinah No. 1 that sports a camel bunker in Tom Doak's first ever homage to the later work of Desmond Muirhead.

Beyond 2015, the tour and Western Golf Association will consider other Chicago venues, though few present a rigorous enough challenge, can handle 40,000 spectators and have an open membership policy.

A new option that Kaczkowski called "intriguing" will open for play next summer, when the renovation of Medinah No. 1 is completed at a cost of $6.4 million.

Architect Tom Doak, who designed such celebrated courses as Lost Dunes, Pacific Dunes and Ballyneal, is vying to give Medinah's members a worthy partner to the famed No. 3 course, which hosted the 2012 Ryder Cup.

The par-71 layout will be roughly 6,900 yards with deep-faced bunkers and a par-3 finish. If it lands an event of the BMW Championship's caliber, length could be added and the nines could be flipped to create a 600-yard finishing hole.

"Any time you are talking about a championship opportunity, our membership has demonstrated excitement," said Medinah official Mike Crance. "We will see how it plays out."

Torrey North Redo Update: Rendering Revealed

Tod Leonard files an update on the Torrey Pines North Course redo unveiling to the public, which includes a rendering of Phil Mickelson's vision for the remodeled muni.

The cartoonish drawing published with the story looks like someone who has never played golf is trying to put Aviara on the coast.

The Tuesday meeting was the third with the public, and Phil Mickelson Design Director Mike Angus spent more than an hour presenting a hole-by-hole portrait of the renovated North. At the heart of the work – estimated to be $7.8 million with a completion date of summer 2015 -- are a modernization of the greens and bunkers, more playability for the average golfer, and an aesthetic change that will eliminate 22 acres of plant material to create more “natural” terrain on the edges of the course.

And not to be underplayed: The course likely will be more appealing to the PGA Tour’s Farmers Insurance Open, though plenty of pros have said they haven’t seen any need to change the North.

There is also now a push to turn a portion of the property into upscale lodging for the Lodge at Torrey Pines, which it sounds like went over about as well with golfers as you'd expect.

Bill Evans, owner of the Lodge at Torrey Pines, said his idea for that space is to transfer a few Craftsman-style homes to the site and create a small “colony” of accommodations similar to Crystal Cove State Park in Laguna Beach. Transportation to the site would be carts only, Evans said.

Oscillategate Moves To The Forensic Analysis Stage

Before we get to the photos of Tiger's BMW ball move sent in by a reader, we have more analysis from a variety of corners.

Ewan Murray in The Guardian:

There are those who remain quick to denigrate both the game of golf and Woods himself at any available opportunity. Golf is treated as a chummy closed shop by its' critics and Woods's public profile will never recover from the misdemeanours which wrecked both his marriage and place in American sporting hearts. Yet even through that, his integrity when at his place of work was never subject to question.

Woods famously insisted he didn't "get to play by different rules" in 2010 in relation to his personal life. In the context of his golfing life, it is safe to say 2013 has now been overshadowed by a clutch of instances in which the finest player of a golfing generation should have known better.

Jim Furyk and Steve Stricker were more sympathetic, reports Ryan Lavner who quotes Furyk as saying he "didn’t realize that ball moved" and this from Stricker:

“The rules are tough,” Steve Stricker said, “and there’s always a fine line between oscillating and moving. A player can see it as one thing and the camera is going to obviously pick it up differently. … It’s unfortunate that he’s been at the center of this about three times this year. I don’t know why, if it’s just because all the TV is on him or what.”

And while many of us struggled to see the move in the first version, the zoom-in by Golf Channel was more clear and this screen grab by a reader who asked to remain anonymous does show the ball moving, not oscillating. The reader writes:

Even in this pixillated version from the original video you posted the ball clearly settled relative to the stick in front of it from this perspective, by at least one dimple in both the full-screen and blow-ups after Tiger moved piece of leaf litter or whatever he touched..  That is well within the visual resolution of any golfer and is why Tiger stopped.  He had to see it.  Had the ball oscillated, the left and center pieces of mud on the ball would have moved or rocked back up.  They didn’t.

Click on the image to enlarge:

Update on 2013-09-17 06:20 by Geoff

**The Art Department offers an even better version and it shows the ball moving, but every so slightly.

“We would not have finished today had we not covered the greens with tarps."

Granted, the Evian situation was unique because the greens were so new but it is cause for concern that the success of tarping the greens overnight could influence this practice more in the future.

Randall Mell on how tarping saved the 54-hole Evian Championship from further misery.

A half-inch of rain fell over Evian Resort Golf Club through late Saturday night and early Sunday morning. Thursday’s first round was washed out by a third of an inch of rain. That came on top of all the rain that saturated the course earlier in the week.

“We weren’t sure, honestly, how it would turn out, and if it would help because we had never done it before,” Daly-Donofrio said. “And the grounds crew had never done it before.”