When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
And if you’re in the area Tuesday you can get a rare glimpse of Alister MacKenzie’s masterpiece.
Or there’s Instagram!
A sampling from some majestic fall days on the Monterey Peninsula for the occasional Cypress Point Classic with one day to go:
View this post on InstagramCouldn’t pick a prettier spot to finish off the fall season #gotrojans #fighton #dubszn
A post shared by Kyle Suppa (@ramsdjsuppa) on
View this post on InstagramThis place is unreal🔥 Ready for a team match with my man @elvis_lin666666666
A post shared by K A I T O (@kaito_onishi) on
While there were no ShotLink numbers to validate the supremacy of Tiger’s iron play and putting, some writers have dug up some fun stuff in analyzing Woods’ 82nd PGA Tour win.
PGATour.com’s Sean Martin ponders whether Tiger can win a lot more and offers this:
He has to lean on decades of experience instead of marathon range sessions. He can’t outwork the competition, but he can outthink it. His length no longer separates him from the competition, but his iron game still does. He hit 76% of his greens last week, ranking third in the field. He was first in putts per green hit, which shows that he was hitting it close and rolling it well enough to convert. He’s by far the best iron player of the ShotLink era, gaining +1.1 strokes per round with his approach play throughout his career. Jim Furyk is a distant second, averaging +0.7 strokes gained per round. Woods hits his approach shots high and low, and curves them left and right.
Brian Wacker at GolfDigest.com reminds us of two things: Tiger hit 65 percent of his fairways for the week on a pretty tight course in sports and proved he can win without overpowering a course. And, old legends tend to remain legends longer than everyone else:
• Gordie Howe had his first 100-point season in the NHL at age 40 with 44 goals and 59 assists, and played until age 51 when he scored 41 points in 80 games for the Hartford Whalers.
• Brett Favre threw for 4,202 yards and 33 touchdowns at age 40, leading the Minnesota Vikings to the NFC Championship.
• Nolan Ryan, who threw seven no-hitters in his career with the first coming in 1973, threw his final one 18 years later, at age 44.
• Michael Jordan had three 40-plus-point games in the middle of his final season in the NBA for the Washington Wizards, shooting over 50 percent in all of them.
David Dusek looks at Tiger’s equipment through the years and it’s astonishing to see what he started winning with versus what he’s playing now.
As for straight numbers in fun anecdotal fashion, check out Alex Myers’ list at GolfDigest.com and Todd Kelly’s list at Golfweek.com while Golf.com’s Josh Sens narrows things down to nine big numbers.
We have no way of knowing the numbers, but PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh tells Golfweek’s Roxanna Scott that only 2000 were shut out of 2020 Ryder Cup tickets.
Apparently nearly all of them just happened to take to Twitter to complain.
“We’re thrilled obviously with the reaction of it being sold out to the point where we got overwhelmed with tickets,” he said, while noting the PGA went back and found less than 2,000 customers who were shut out of the online process and delivered their orders.
“I think the reality of anything is mistakes are going to happen, problems are going to come up,” Waugh said. “How you deal with them is what defines you.”
When asked how there was ticket inventory available to fulfill the requests, Waugh joked, “We’ll be a little more crowded now. We created inventory; that was fair. We had clients that did everything right and didn’t get fulfilled.”
This does not address the most common refrain from those scorned by the balky system: why were there already inflated tickets on the resale market offered as an option to those rejected?
There is a lot to digest in Dave Shedloski’s Golf World story catching up with Gary McCord, now a former CBS broadcaster.
McCord, a former PGA Tour player and winner of three PGA Tour Champions events, is smarting over the decision mostly because he didn’t have a chance to personally thank all his CBS teammates behind the scenes who have supported him through the years, people who have become like family. “You just don’t do something like this,” he said. “You shouldn’t do it this way. No chance to say thanks to the viewers, to all my CBS friends? That’s what you get for 35 years?”
“Bottom line, they fired me.”
The story says CBS offered McCord the opportunity to work the first two weeks of 2020’s broadcast schedule, but he declined.
He also shares the one bit of reasoning given to him by the head of CBS Sports, Sean McManus.
“He [McManus] tells me, and he told Peter the same thing, that ‘We think CBS golf is getting a little stale, and we need to go in another direction,’ ” McCord told Golf Digest by phone from his home in Scottsdale. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but one thing I’ve never been called is stale.”
There was a great deal of sniping in recent years over McCord’s act having grown thin, but never felt that way. He was often the one person trying to inject some life into telecasts, but without his old foil David Feherty or many opportunities to exhibit his knowledge of the swing, McCord was often limited to the role of 16th hole traffic cop. Therefore the notion of “stale” strikes me as more a statement about the CBS production elements (Yanni?) or overall energy than the work of any one announcer.
The Monday finish went much faster than the ensuing trophy ceremony, but even though he came out looking a tad tight, Tiger Woods finished off the 2019 ZOZO Championship for his 82nd PGA Tour win. He is now tied with Sam Snead for the all-time tour victory total and did it nine years before Snead recorded his final win.
Steve DiMeglio with the Golfweek game story on Woods holding off Hideki Matsuyama.
Bob Harig noted how a week that seemed about checking off come corporate boxes ended up checking off a big feat box.
The journey to Japan was ostensibly about fulfilling corporate obligations, participating in a made-for-TV exhibition and getting in some reps following knee surgery and physical challenges that dogged Tiger Woods' throughout the summer.
Nobody -- including Woods, if he is honest -- was thinking about a victory, or a record-tying one at that.
Love this from ESPN.com’s Ian O’Connor:
In his healthy prime, Tiger Woods was Mike Tyson in a red shirt and slacks. He arrived at the tee box as if he were stepping through the ropes and into the ring, where cowering, wide-eyed opponents all but prepped themselves for the knockout.
Woods is no longer that heavyweight champ who rules through intimidation. He still has muscles, yes, but they don't look as forbidding on a balding man made vulnerable by age, gravity, surgery and the disclosure of his own personal failings. And yet a diminished Woods can still win golf tournaments.
Michael Bamberger writing for Golf.com:
Tiger rolled in his 10-footer for a closing birdie, the three-shot win, his 82nd title, a closing 67. It was subdued, but it was big. This has been, in ways, one of the most remarkable years of his career. The Masters win, followed by a lot of futility. The win in Japan. The Presidents Cup coming up. The baby steps to a reconfigured life. Amazing. “I know what it’s like to have this game taken away from you,” Woods told Todd Lewis of Golf Channel. Yes, he does.
You know it’s a big win when the big names pop up on Twitter to congratulate Woods, and that was the case after win 82. And Tiger posted this Tweet:
It’s an honor to be tied with Sam Snead for most wins in @PGATOUR history. Thanks Mom and Pop and everyone who helped make this possible. Hideki put up an amazing fight on his home soil, but to do this in Japan is something I’ll never forget. It’s been an awesome year. pic.twitter.com/m9ICuVyJmX
— Tiger Woods (@TigerWoods) October 28, 2019
It was a great week for the PGA Tour’s first official stop in Japan, and I noted that along with other winners and losers for this Golfweek column. I had to file before the trophy ceremony ended, otherwise it would have been included. Then again, the column would not have been posted until Tuesday if I waited.
Rachel Bleier with a roundup of Tweets about the trophy ceremony that almost never ended. Nothing like some good Twitter snark!
Harig impressively details all 82 wins here for ESPN.com, if you have the time and need the recap.
GC Digital posts Tiger’s 82 vs. Snead’s 82 and actually calls them by the name of the tournament at the time (so no Snead Sentry TOC wins on this list).
David Dusek with Tiger’s clubs for the week.
For his effort, Tiger received this Dyson fan to remember win No. 82:
View this post on InstagramThe trophy case just got heavier. 🏆
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PGA Tour Entertainment’s highlights:
Many are still trying to wrap heads around the abrupt end to long runs for Gary McCord and Peter Kostis, particularly given their longevity and CBS’s general unwillingness to make sudden changes.
Awful Announcing’s Jay Rigdon attempted to decipher the news and added this conclusion:
CBS has their current rights through 2021, so it’s unlikely this move is the result of a vote of no confidence in their own bid. It could be a move signaling a revamp of their coverage, or at least a willingness to evolve; maybe that’s something the PGA Tour is looking for in the next round.
In a farewell statement posted by Sports Business Daily’s John Ourand, Kostis said he’d “been thinking quite a bit about requesting a reduced travel schedule, but CBS made my decision easier when they elected to not exercise the two-year option on my contract.”
More interesting was an apparent jab at the PGA Tour’s partnership with FedEx.
Finally, I have to say a big thank you to all the announcers I’ve worked with over the years. I believe that the CBS golf announce team is the gold standard. A special shout out to Gary McCord who has been with me every step of the way, (including that infamous 1989 Ryder Cup broadcast team!) and Jim Nantz who has been there for my entire CBS career. To the cameramen, technicians and support staff at CBS I simply say it was a privilege to work alongside you. Bye for now! I’m off to UPS to send some packages!”
A bit of a stunner as the two long-time veterans are out at CBS.
Here is my report for Golfweek.
With CBS having two more years on its current deal, plus two major championships, the move opens up two key positions on their broadcast team. It’s been a year of cost-cuts at CBS, with multiple longtime crew members offered buyouts in February and goodbyes said on air in May.
An unbylined APF story quotes PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan saying gambling is coming to golf next year, saying “it’s all about engagement”. The focus continues to be on integrity matters.
"Once you start to participate, you can eliminate negative bets," he said. "We've done a ton of work to make certain that that's the position we're in.
"I think when we come forward, you'll see that we've taken significant steps to address that. We're going to participate in a thoughtful way and I'm really comfortable with that."
While the engagement angle is absolutely spot-on and key to keeping people interested during languid five hour rounds that the tour embraces, the lack of concern about interference continues to confound.
As I write for Golfweek, Bio Kim’s silly three-year suspension in Korea is still a silly one-year ban that warrants compensatory sponsor’s invites.
(Full news story here on the KPGA’s softening of their original suspension.)
While Kim was no angel in flipping off a fan whose cell phone went off as he was trying to win a golf tournament and pay his bills, he’s also a victim of golf’s reversal on phones and belief that fans could behave. The sport went from from policing, confiscating or banning phones at tournaments to encouraging fans to become documentarians.
Look, we all love our phones and the younger demographic that golf wants to attract will not attend a tournament if they were to be separated from their baby or unable to promote their presence. The same goes for older adults now too. That’s fine. But policing the use of mobile devices near competition must not be solely up to caddies and volunteers to police. Golf cannot be naive to the inevitability that a noisy mobile device could be used to alter the course of a tournament (and therefore, a bet).
I have no idea what the solution is, but an incident in the gambling age seems inevitable. Then there’s the overall look is peculiar and energy deadening to a sport already deprived of fan noise. Just look at the scene from this week’s ZOZO Championship:
Feel like this should be a snarky tweet about people using their phones too much but these people are so freakin nice I can’t say anything negative pic.twitter.com/pqbq6vPg0e
— Daniel Rapaport (@Daniel_Rapaport) October 24, 2019
In 2019 Robert Garrigus and Matt Every failed PGA Tour drug tests and as Rex Hoggard notes, the views are mixed, with an amazing amount of social media hostility toward the PGA Tour. Even though, as PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan reiterated in Japan during this week’s Zozo Championship, this is not a Tour policy:
On Wednesday at the Zozo Championship, Tour commissioner Jay Monahan was asked about the policy.
“Ultimately, we don't determine what is a banned substance and what's not, we rely on WADA for doing that,” Monahan said. “We'll continue to stay very close not only to that substance but any potential substance that would come on or come off the list.”
Granted, this is a sport that has seen major changes to courses to accomodate distance gains and where huge numbers of seemingly bright people convinced themselves that athleticism was the sole cause. So maybe golfers aren’t the best a self reflection, or maybe marijuana really isn’t performance enhancing.
At some point the PGA Tour may have to study the matter and consider breaking from WADA if society continues to embrace marijuana and golfers insist it’s not performance enhancing. But for now, with only a Garrigus and an Every as the poster children, and golf’s Olympic-eligibility tied to WADA rules, I wouldn’t count on any change in policy.
Given the R&A’s progressive push under Martin Slumbers, this story from Ewan Murray of The Guardian reveals plans are (finally) in motion to add a women’s locker room to the Royal and Ancient clubhouse are finally in motion.
He provides the backstory, hiccups and an update on the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews’ very slow efforts to add a place for the many new female members to gather, change and…act like members. Not that anything related to the plight of Princess Anne and the other lucky few compares to real world problems, but this is worth noting…
“We are in the early stages of planning upgrades to the clubhouse, including the installation of women’s changing rooms,” a spokesman for the R&A said. “We are consulting with members before we finalise our plans. There is no firm timetable but it will be a phased programme which will take us beyond 2021.”
The number of women among the R&A’s global membership of around 2,000 is unknown. Princess Anne, Laura Davies and Annika Sorenstam were among the first to gain admission. Perhaps it is unfair to castigate the R&A for doing the right thing. The clubhouse, as opened in 1854, will not be a particularly easy building to modify. The enhancements will be costly.
Nonetheless, it is bizarre that having admitted women to such fanfare, the delivering of equal facilities was not an immediate goal.
The buried lede in Tiger’s comments from Japan: world No. 1 Brooks Koepka is weighing a possible surgery to repair the knee he re-injured last week in the CJ Cup.
The main headline, for now, is Woods leaving things up to Koepka to decide if he’s Presidents Cup worthy, depending on “what his protocols are going forward,” Tiger said.
From Steve DiMeglio’s Golfweek story quoting Tiger on news of Koepka’s injury:
“As of right now, we’re just waiting on what the surgeon says and what Brooks is going to do,” Woods added. “He is getting other opinions on what are his options. You want to go through as many different opinions as you possibly can before you decide what you are going to do.
“I told him to take his time. No hurry. You’re part of the team. You earned your way in the top eight spots. You’re on the team. You have to figure out what is best for your career and your knee and if you decide you can’t play, great. I totally understand. We’ll cross that bridge when it comes.”
Tripp Isenhour and I discussed this run of left knees going back today on Golf Central:
It was a neverending, bizarre and unfortunate chapter in Rory McIlroy’s career: having to decide between Ireland and Great Britain for 2016 Rio games representation. With the Zika virus a concern and most golfers largely apathetic toward the Olympic movement, he ultimately chose not to play.
Four years later he’s near Tokyo and the 2020 Games are less than a year away, with no Zika and a golf-crazy country welcoming the players, and McIlroy has declared his intent to represent Ireland should he qualify.
Rex Hoggard with that news for GolfChannel.com.
More interesting will be the reaction to his decision given how inflammatory the topic was four years ago. So far, the topic seems like old news and not particularly intriguing to most. Is that a product of the old debate, Brexit distractions, or overall Olympic golf apathy?
Powerful stuff on this week’s Inside the Ropes podcast from Australian golf great and architect Graham Marsh, talking about how quickly bunkers he placed early in his design career are now, and how little the race to add distance has done to grow the game.
Martin Blake reports the comments for Golf Australia.
“It’s been one of the great tragedies of the game. We were given this load of guff by the industry, that if we were to go with these game-improvement clubs, that everybody was going to play better, and of course the ball was going to go further, and they kept developing that with a good commercial arrangement, to make more money. That’s what you do in that industry.
“But the problem is, the players didn’t get better, the handicaps have gone up, the equipment’s more expensive and there’s less people playing the game. It was a great lie. They bamboozled everybody, including the USGA and the R and A. Completely bamboozled everybody.’’
You can listen to the full podcast here:
Here’s the distance talk:
Thanks to reader MJ for this stunning Globe and Mail story about the National Golf Club of Canada considering a $120 million sale to a real estate developer. The No. 3 course in Canada in Golf Digest’s latest ranking and an exclusive all-men’s club, is situated on prime Toronto real estate but has members fleeing due to excessive difficulty and cost.
From Andrew Willis’ story:
When noted golf architects George and Tom Fazio designed the National, which opened in 1974, it was well north of Toronto’s suburbs. Over more than four decades, the city swallowed the club. Large homes now surround the course, while shopping malls, Canada’s Wonderland amusement park and a subway station are minutes away.
In recent years, an increasing number of National members decided to unload their stakes, in part because aging golfers often find the course too challenging to play enjoyably. Not enough new members stepped forward and there are currently more sellers of memberships than buyers, according to Roxborough, who declined to comment on the exact numbers. Several sources at the National, whom The Globe And Mail granted confidentiality to because they were not authorized to speak for the club, said dozens of members are currently trying to sell their stakes, which typically change hands for around $40,000. Annual dues at the club are about $12,000.
Hundreds of course closures have occurred in recent years, but I’m fairly certain this would vie as the most significant
Bob Harig at ESPN.com assesses what we’ve seen from Tiger since landing in Japan and revealing how long the surgically repaired knee has been an issue. While Harig sets a low bar, it’s the right one given this being Woods’ first start since August and also likely his last until December’s Hero World Challenge.
He acknowledged Monday that the knee surgery he had in August was something he meant to do a year ago, but put it off after winning the Tour Championship. After capturing the Masters, his knee slowly got worse, to the point that it was difficult for him to squat and read putts.
He said the knee pain and uneasy walking led to other issues with his back. He also withdrew from a tournament with an oblique injury.
Perhaps this is the explanation for Woods looking out of sorts for most of the summer. Why the back stiffness and unsteady gait led to some unseemly scores, especially for the Masters champion. And maybe it is why he seemed so at ease Monday, knowing that things are on the right path.
He did look genuinely at ease walking, swinging and playing the role of entertainer. That certainly was a far cry from the gimpy, bruised-and-battered looking golfer we saw post-Masters. Add it all up and this increases the intrigue around his Presidents Cup captain’s pick status and more importantly, 2020.
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
