The only course that will remain difficult under all conditions will be one that is designed and kept for golf of a stereotyped, monotonous character, and this makes a most uninteresting proposition. BOBBY JONES
"Golf Architecture for Normal People . . . should be required reading for those who are not ashamed to admit they know little about the subject, and for those who think they do . . . . Golf course architecture geeks have trouble slimming their thoughts down to bite-sized chunks, but Shackelford has achieved a remarkable success here." —Independent (Ireland)
"From the relative newcomer who’s slowly getting hooked to those that have played the game for most of their lives and think they know a thing or two, Golf Architecture for Normal People provides a solid and sober perspective that will help everyone recognize why some golf courses are worth playing more than once while a single trip around others is all you’re ever likely to want or need." —Links Magazine.
“It’s a wonderful book. An easy read that arrives just in time for your summer reading list. If you’ve never thought about how an appreciation for course design could heighten your enjoyment of the game, you must check this out.”—The Peterborough Examiner
"This new book does a great job demystifying golf course design ideas for average players, but can also be a beneficial read fro PGA Professionals and other golf course employees to get a better understanding of their home courses." —PGA Magazine
There are rumors...just rumors at this point that after several fine morning runs of the Omega HOF ad, a different placement from the man jewelry maker appeared on TNT. I'm working the phones and getting sources to confirm and will let you know.
However, there is great news for Omega: reader Tim Ryan's son is now a loyal customer for life (here and here, thanks Tim). Way to hook the kids Omega!
As for the golf tournament, we have rumblings of a potential beauty. But now that the cut has been made, let's not forget those we've left behind or those who have some amazing cut streaks in the fourth of four. Jim McCabewith those and other notes at Golfweek.com.
Regarding Tiger Woods, he has signed up for the Wyndham Championship, but as Bob Harigreports for ESPN.com, he is reserving the right to take more time to decide whether to play.
I had hoped to expense a really nice meal and glass of wine in the name of seeing how the important people are living this week at The American Club. Naturally, Michael Bamberger beat me to it. Here's his golf.com report.
On a much more serious and somber note, Ian O'Connorhas the ESPN.com story of Charles Frost, playing with a heavy heart this week for his fellow Kiawah Island golf pro pal Michael Townsend, who recently qualified for a tour event but passed away in a car accident, leaving behind a family of three.
So in that light, none of this is really important, but if you must:
Make you want to jump out of a helicopter without a parachute? Want to have a mute button chip embedded in your brain? Want to go buy a luxury time piece that your kids will sell on ebay?
These are the kind of important questions that must be posed as we move into a Weather Warning mode and, inevitably, soak up Omega's ad created for last year'sPGA Championship. But for reasons only the Madison Avnue minds can explain, the piece featuring the screaching sounds of will.i.am singing to The Script's music is making an ubiquitous return across all major media platforms. Constantly.
And pushed to social media by PGA.com! Love the progressiveness.
There is a lot to love about this one, including the suddeness of the Lake Michigan sling after walking a bit and mulling the joys of playing Whistling Straits. Though the best part may be the retrieval by a young man with dad driving the boat, and then celebrating his acquisiion. Working on finding that Vine, but for now, enjoy.
A video posted by PGA.com (@pgacom) on Aug 14, 2015 at 12:48pm PDT
Update on 2015-08-15 00:44 by Geoff
**Doug Fergusontalks to Daly about his game and toss.
"I know we all go through it," he said. "But I seem to go through it more than anybody."
He said he had his clubs tweaked to make sure he was hitting his typical right-to-left shot. But when he stepped on the seventh tee, his 4-iron sailed right into the lake. Daly went down to a 6-iron and got the same result. The third try was no different. Finally, he hit the green and then heaved the club.
"I know it wasn't the right thing to do, but it was more of a reflex than anything," Daly said. "I'm hitting draws with my irons all week. I get up there knowing the right side is not a problem and it doesn't come back.
"What do you do? If it were 14 holes, I'd be a great player."
The temperature is rising and that was before fans headed to the exit built specially for events at this remote golf course arrived to find it...closed off by law enforcement. Only to be diverted to the next exit 7 miles up the road and in a different county!
Meanwhile Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy took advantage of the calm round two morning conditions, but all eyes are on the ultimate redemption story at Whistlng Straits: Dustin Johnson. He opened with a pretty smooth 66 that might have been lower, noted Adam Schupakin his Golfweek.com story.
Johnson’s 66 looked effortless and if a few makable putts had dropped, a 63 or 64 was within reach.
“Today was pretty easy, I would have to say,” said Johnson, who hit 14 of 18 greens and made just one bogey, at the third hole. “Right now, today, I felt like I had my ball under control a lot like I did at the U.S. Open.”
“I would prefer to be in the lead, though, there’s less shots you’ve got to make up."
Even better, Johnson is now wallowing, but instead playing as if he believes this course owes him something, as Butch Harmon told Golf Channel's Steve Sands (Strege reports).
Here are you round two groupings and the leaderboard. The Johnson-Fowler-Day group goes at 1:20 pm local.
And remember telecast watchers on TNT from 2-8 pm ET: you can move a mountain, you can break rocks, you can be a master, Standing in the hall of fame. Because the world's gonna know your name.
If you look closely there between Y.E. Yang and Phil Mickelson, the ghost of Tiger Woods is there at the 2015 PGA Championship Champions Dinner.
Love how John Daly was enlisted to act as a floral backdrop for the Wannamaker. Nice touch. Wait, maybe Dan Pinohad it right, Tiger's the photographer!
**In Tiger's defense, my understanding is that the dinner table is joined by past PGA Presidents, PGA Board members, officers, spouses, partners and heaven knows who else. I still think he should show, but I certainly understand why he would pass.
On a showerly, sometimes rainy Monday here at Whistling Straits there wasn't much to do but take in the scene of the last 18th hole brouhaha here...wait, what? The Dustin Johnson bunker really as been covered by a corporate tent? And who is the company directly above the half-covered bunker?
Which means this’ll be the year YE Yang finds his touch and becomes a two-time PGA Champion?
As John Stregenotes, Bubba Watson has to be the favorite based on his WGC Bridgestone driving show. Or not, based on his play in majors?
The runner-up last time the PGA was played in Wisconsin, Bubba is certainly on my list of eleven, which does not include Rory McIlroy due to his return from injury. But he's dangerous off a layoff and can't be discounted.
Still, the 2010 leaderboard looks eerily like the list of top players in the world right now, making this, to me, a pretty easy one to take some handicapping swings. Day, Watson, Spieth, Johnson and Johnson should all be right there.
Here is my GolfDigest.com breakdown of the eleven I feel are most likely to contend, including all of the obvious names, reasons to like them, and my longshot from the European Tour who made his major debut at Whistling Straits.
In the August Golf Digest,Ron Whittendoes an excellent job counting the number of hazards at 2015 PGA venue Whistling Straits while revisiting the whole bunker fiasco as idea behind playing all sand as a bunker.
Many will not enjoy the dredging up of this unfortunate moment, but considering that Johnson is a pre-tournament favorite and the incident has never sat well with anyone registering a pulse, it won't hurt to to rehash this as we return to the Straits Course. If nothing else, the talk will serve as a public service reminder to all players to not touch any area of sand with their club before impact.
There was this from Whitten's piece on DJ's odd episode, which ultimately ended up involving his brief, barely discernable pre-shot routine club grounding, not a grounding behind the ball to improve his lie. The randomness and lack of intent makes the entire thing that much more regretable.
Johnson told officials he thought he was in a patch of rough trampled by the gallery. Trouble is, every patch of sand at Whistling Straits is considered a bunker. The course looks like a links in towering sand dunes along the western shoreline of Lake Michigan, but in a previous life, the site was a flat Army air base, crisscrossed by concrete roadways and runways and containing the type of bunkers in which ammunition was stored. When Dye starting transforming it, he found no pure sand on site. The soil was rocky and mostly clay--even the beach was mostly rock--so Dye had 13,126 truckloads of sand hauled in.
Again, in Johnson's defense, photos taken before the Straits opened in 1998 show some of the faux dunes created by Dye were covered in sand, which had been dumped and spread in an apparent attempt to make them appear as natural sand dunes. But then tall fescue grasses overtook them, and the hillsides went from white and barren to green and wavy (golden in the fall). But in 2010, spectators' wear patterns might well have exposed some of that thin layer of sand.
This bit is highlighted not to dispute the findings in 2010, but to just remind all how peculiar the situation is given that the game on links evolved with a "play it as it lies" mantra and the PGA adopted this philosophy at Kiawah for the 2012 PGA, yet not at Whistling Straits. Whitten writes:
Player confusion might lie in the fact that this all-sand-is-a-bunker rule isn't universal. The opposite rule was applied at the 2012 PGA at Dye's Ocean Course at Kiawah Island, S.C., where nothing was considered a bunker. All sand was considered a "transition area," and players could ground their club anywhere. It also differs from the rule the USGA applied at last year's U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2, where only sand having rake marks was considered a bunker. All other patches of exposed sand were treated as "through the green," and a final determination was left with the rules official accompanying each group.
From the archives, if you want to relive the episode, there was this post on intent that might be worth a minute of your time. And this from Pete Dye, who would have none of it when talking about Johnson not recognizing he was in a bunker.
"I was standing right there," Dye said. "When he hit the ball in the bunker, the referee walked up to him and said, 'Do you need anything?' and Dustin said, 'No, I'm good.' There were no beer cans in the bunker, there were no chicken bones in there. Ray Charles could have seen it was a bunker."
The CBS coverage from back then showing the "split second" grounding, as Nick Faldo called it. Feherty's return to the bunker after the episode is telling in how (A) many people didn't understand the local rule (B) and how much he felt for Johnson in trying to ID the bunker as a bunker.
Five years later, it seems as if this episode ultimately still feels unresolved because the rule seems so contrary to the spirit of the game, especially since it was so clear that the situation was frenetic, uncontrolled and carrying such hugh ramifications.
Geoff Shackelford
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning Drive, is co-host of The Ringer's ShackHouse is the author of eleven books.
However, there is great news for Omega: reader Tim Ryan's son is now a loyal customer for life (here and here, thanks Tim). Way to hook the kids Omega!
