Bryson Continues To Groan About TV Camera Coverage: "It’s just obsessive."

Bryson on "nothing burger" incident with cameraman

"People are going to make a big deal out of nothing, that's all it is. A nothing burger deal" pic.twitter.com/FP7mYZdQjC

— LKD (@LukeKerrDineen) July 6, 2020

So much for someone whispering in his ear, remember those cameras show you and the logos people pay you to exhibit.

Following Saturday’s bizarro Bryson DeChambeau beef with a cameraman filming the action as he’s obligated to do, the 2020 Rocket Mortgage champion took to Twitch following his Sunday win to answer questions. He continued to express his issue with television coverage invading his space, privacy, or something in that realm.

Thankfully for us geezers, Luke Kerr-Dineen posted the Twitch video (embedded above) and Christopher Powers transcribed DeChambeau’s doubling down on his view that cameramen are only suppose to shoot at select times and mind-read the rest of the time.

“I just felt like a minute long for videoing me was kind of a little weird, but we talked it out and it was all great, no issues whatsoever. So, I appreciate what they do, appreciate everybody that works hard out here to provide great entertainment.”

By the sound of it, he still didn’t quite get what irked some folks who were critical of his comments, but again, the news cycle moves quickly. Most of the discussion topics on Monday morning have revolved around DeChambeau’s game.

It doesn’t move as quickly when you double and triple down, however, which is exactly what DeChambeau did during a Twitch stream on Sunday night.

“The guy was videoing me for a minute after a shot,” DeChambeau said, “like a full minute. That’s just, it’s just obsessive. It’s not the cameraman, it’s nobody’s fault, there’s just got to be a little bit of respect, that’s all.”

I reached out to CBS to see if they had any comment on the matter, or if the cameraman had been disciplined for doing his job.

They respectfully declined comment.

"Of the many positive things he’s accomplished for the good of Scottish golf over the years, Paul Lawrie’s latest venture has to be the best of the lot. "

Move Paul Lawrie high up the list of pros who have stepped up during the COVID-19 pandemic to help out the sport’s aspiring players.

As Martin Dempster writes, the 1999 Open Champion may be doing his best work yet for Scotland’s up and coming players, with some tremendous courses stepping in to assist as well: Royal Dornoch, Carnoustie and St Andrews where the New and Jubilee courses will be used. As will Devenick Course at Lawrie’s golf center (for a Par 3 Championship).

Six 36-hole events on the Tartan Pro Tour will offer a place for male and female pros to compete while travel restrictions and cancelled events reduce opportunities in the Home of Golf.

Dempster writes:

Scottish golf owes another debt to one of its favourite sons.

Of the many positive things he’s accomplished for the good of Scottish golf over the years, Paul Lawrie’s latest venture has to be the best of the lot.

Put it this way, the new Tartan Pro Tour, a series of six 36-hole events around the country in August and September, could make the difference between a Scottish-based pro going on to blossom in the game as opposed to being lost to the sport forever.

Yale AD: Course Remains Closed, "Course Landscape Experts" To Be Called In

Well it’s a start, but the (ongoing) sad state of affairs at America’s top collegiate course and most affordable membership option in the area seem likely to be addressed.

Sadly, at Yale Golf Course during the pandemic—one of the few sad stories of neglect—will take time to fix. In such a short season, even the latest news below does not exactly make me optimistic for C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor’s masterful design. But at least the current Athletic Director seems concerned. This is progress.

Thanks to all who forwarded this.

What Might Have Been: The Workday Charity Open Provide A Chance To Try Something Different

Now that spectators have been ruled out for The Memorial, the back-to-back weeks at Muirfield Village will be delineated by contrasting course setups (Rex Hoggard reported on this three weeks ago).

Get ready to hear a lot about Stimpmeter speeds and rough heights. Oh, that’ll lure in the young people.

Also, the field for this week’s Workday Charity Open will consist of 156 compared to 120 for next week’s Memorial. 72-holes of stroke play for both. Scintillating.

The Workday provided an opportunity to inject something fresh onto the schedule while retaining the Memorial’s luster. Remember all the pre-pandemic talk about the need to slip in more variety on the schedule and offer alternatives to 72-holes of stroke play? I know, seems like decades ago.

Here are some options that would undoubtedly have required too many Zoom meetings and players inevitably offering their buzzkilling two cents.

—Reverse the nines. If we’re going to watch the same course for two weeks, why not use the spectator-free situation to use the less-seen, more confined front nine as the incoming set to differentiate the two weeks. This would have also protected The Memorial’s aura. Now, after two weeks of seeing the back nine, it’s likely to grow tiresome for fans.

—54 Holes. The Premier Golf League is proposing to play 54 hole tournaments with 18-hole shotguns the first two rounds. The Workday’s field size precluded the shotgun option, but a tournament shortened by a day and maybe played with a tighter pace policy would have been a solid experiment. It might have encouraged a few more players to play both tournament weeks.

—Stableford scoring. With several world class risk-reward holes at Muirfield Village, the scoring format used at July’s Barracuda Championship, combined with the less severe course setup planned, could have led to more contrast between the weeks.

—10 Club Limit. Imagine the pre-tournament talk: We tweaked some lofts and lies to fill in a mid-iron gap with the help of my partners at (Ricky Bobby/Bryson-style corporate plug goes here). We’d see some shotmaking, some tougher decisions for players who have to create something out of a reduced set of options and we might see creativity rewarded. With less to carry, Tour caddies might even be less surly for a week.

—12-Hole Rounds. With just a bit of creativity, Muirfield Village could have been reconfigured into a 12-hole layout as a salute to alternative round lengths, Prestwick and Jack Nicklaus’s view that the sport would have been better at a dozen holes. One option, screen-grabbed from Google Earth and posted above: holes 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. This would have taken the finishing four holes off of television to preserve some of the Memorial’s cache and conclude the Workday on the courses four most dynamite holes. If Bryson were playing, the last two would have been drivable fours!

—Almost All Of The Above. Let’s just go off the rails for total fun: 12 hole rounds, three days (36 holes total), Stableford scoring, 10-club limit. Let the whining begin!

Open Week To Feature "The Open For The Ages"

Let’s ignore the fan vote component (Rory inevitably opens as the 3-1 favorite!) and instead enjoy the R&A’s fresh approach to pandemic “content”. The Old Course! A tournament! On national TV! Better than most!

For Immediate Release…

THE R&A TO MARK ‘OPEN WEEK’ WITH CELEBRATORY BROADCAST OF ‘THE OPEN FOR THE AGES’

6 July 2020, St Andrews, Scotland: The R&A is inviting golf fans around the world to take part in a very special celebration of golf’s original championship following the cancellation of The Open this year.

‘The Open for The Ages’ will bring together many of golf’s greatest champions for the first time to compete against each other over the Old Course at St Andrews in a compelling and innovative three-hour broadcast production. 

This exclusive edition of The Open features 50 years of archive footage expertly edited and woven together with modern graphics and new commentary to imagine a Championship contested by the legends of the sport including Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Seve Ballesteros, Tom Watson, Sir Nick Faldo and Rory McIlroy.

‘The Open for The Ages’ will culminate in a final round programme that will air on Sunday 19 July when it will be broadcast globally to fans around the world on TV, TheOpen.com and The Open’s social media channels. The broadcast is being supported by HSBC and NTT DATA, both Patrons of The Open.

Anticipation and excitement for the final round programme will build up from Thursday 16 to Saturday 18 July when coverage of the first three rounds of ‘The Open for The Ages’ will be provided by in-play clips, live leaderboards and end of play highlights across The Open’s social media channels.

The winner of ‘The Open for The Ages’ will be determined by a fan vote, which has registered more than 10,000 responses, and a data model developed in partnership with NTT DATA that utilises player career statistics alongside the input by fans to calculate the Champion.

Martin Slumbers, Chief Executive of The R&A, said, “Golf is one of the very few sports where this concept can be created and brought to life. The way in which the sport is filmed allows us a truly unique opportunity to reimagine history and bring together the greatest players from many different eras on a scale which has not been done before, either in golf or in other sports.

“We are all keenly feeling the absence of The Open from the global sporting calendar this year and so we hope that this broadcast will generate real interest and enjoyment for the millions of golf and sports fans who closely follow the Championship every year.”

Laurence Norman, VP Sports Technology at NTT DATA UK, said, “Technology is synonymous with modern sport, helping athletes compete at optimum performance levels. What’s even more exciting is the new emphasis on technology being utilised to enhance fan experiences.

“Building stronger fan engagement through technology is the future of sports, and while it will never replace the thrill of live events, The Open for The Ages demonstrates how technology can keep pushing the boundaries of what it is possible in sports broadcasting."

The R&A’s international TV broadcast partners, including Sky Sports in the UK, NBC Sports and NBC Golf Channel in the United States of America, and TV Asahi in Japan, will televise ‘The Open for The Ages’ to fans all around the world.  It will also be made available via TheOpen.com and The Open’s YouTube and Facebook channels.

Commentators, including Ewen Murray, Nick Dougherty, Butch Harmon and Iona Stephen, will bring the Championship to life using a compelling narrative that will provide a fascinating spectacle at the Home of Golf.

‘The Open for the Ages’ will be supported by a digital and social media campaign featuring ‘in-play’ clips, leaderboards and statistics in the lead up to the final round being played when the outright winner is revealed.

The trailer:

"He won’t often have to hit mid-irons, ever."

From this week’s Golf.com Confidential, caddie and contributor John Wood on Bryson DeChambeau’s game following the Rocket Mortgage Classic win:

John Wood, PGA Tour caddie for Matt Kuchar (@Johnwould): Bryson seems to have broken the code for Bryson. And I think he has transferred what has been done at the long driving competitions for a while now to highly competitive golf. I couldn’t be more impressed. I was watching today and thought how economical this type of game is to practice. You practice drivers, wedges, chips and putting. He won’t often have to hit mid-irons, ever. Maybe a couple a day to par-5s. But for the most part, playing the game like he is playing it, and how courses are allowing him to play it through setup, why would you spend the time on fairway woods and hybrids and long/mid-irons when they will be used so seldom.

Will Gray at GolfChannel.com featured several of DeChambeau’s comments and summed up the whirlwind week at Detroit Golf Club, including this.

To that end, he’s looking to parse every possible advantage in a game where each player starts the week with the same score from the same teeing ground.

“I think the most important thing is that I’ve shown people that there’s another way to do it, and there’s going to be other people trying to come up and do it that way,” DeChambeau said. “For me, I think there are going to be people trying to hit it a little harder, some of them, but at the end of the day, it’s going to take a generation for all this to evolve into something different.”

Buck Reflects On Fox's U.S. Open Run, What Kills Him Not To Have Called

Fox Sports’ Joe Buck penned an uplifting serenade to five years of Fox handling USGA events and namely, the U.S. Open.

While he has fond memories of everything coming together for both parties at Pebble Beach, including a fitting Tap Room finish, only one thing really bugs the broadcaster. Not getting to call a Tiger win, or at least, contending U.S. Open week.

Regarding Tiger: We never got to see THE MAN do his thing. (MC, DNP, DNP, MC, T21 in our five years.) And that kills me.

Buck also offers this about golf on TV.

But I wouldn’t trade our five-year run for anything, because of the people I worked with (starting with our producer, Mark Loomis), what we experienced together, what we learned. Here are some quick lessons: Let the players and caddies talk. Less is more. From the field is better than from the booth. And the Fox Sports production-side innovations will become a big part of TV coverage elsewhere. Drone shots and more ball-tracers already are.

While Fox promised a lot and severely under-delivered for the USGA, they did end up bringing the disruptor role that was promised by pushing others into more usage of tracer, drone and maybe someday, more mic’s in the cup to hear conversations on greens.

I would add their hole graphics, which were the most artistically beautiful and useful when they worked, and their placement of cameras to better give viewers a sense of what the player faced along with the scale and details of tee shots. (The Golf.com gang touched on this and more in this week’s Confidential, point 5).

Buck also deserves credit for adjusting his style and stepping up immediately in big situations when he did not let controversy stop him from calling it as he saw it.

The Amazing Numbers And Thorny Questions Prompted By Bryson's Distance-Fueled Rocket Mortgage Win

One of several CBS graphics highlighting DeChambeau’s dominant driving

The numbers are eye-popping and impressive. So is the dedication and precision displayed by Bryson DeChambeau in winning the 2020 Rocket Mortgage Classic.

Not so great: his mood on Saturday and the resulting brand hit in whining about protecting his privacy.

He finishes a four-week run 67 under par and will leave the golf world debating about what we just saw.

A few stats of note:

• First player in the 16 years of ShotLink and “Strokes Gained” to lead a field in both driving and putting.

• Averaged 350.6 on the eight measuring holes, compared to a field average of 301.5.

• He averaged 329.8 on all drives at tree-lined Detroit Golf Club, compared to the field’s 297.6 average.

• DeChambeau reached 23-under-par to win by three strokes over Matthew Wolff, who started the day three ahead. Wolff hit five more fairways for the week, if that means anything (38/56 to Bryson’s 33/56).

• According to CBS’s Jim Nantz, DeChambeau’s drives Sunday ended up 423 yards longer than playing partner Troy Merritt’s. And 143 yards longer than Wolff’s tee shots on the non-par-3s.

There are, of course, issues that come with all of this madness. In no particular order:

• I get more questions asking if there is drug testing instead of equipment or COVID-19 testing.

• Half of most social media posts regarding DeChambeau descend into unfair character assassination about the naturalness of the weight and strength gain without any evidence this is something other than just hard work and an excessive diet.

• There are undoubtedly kids and parents watching and sending junior to the gym instead of our to play or practice golf. This has always been a risk of allowing golf to become a long drive contest, and now we have an extreme example to inspire a movement.

• Even with CBS having their best production yet, highlighted by some excellent storytelling around the DeChambeau dominance, the sight of driver-wedge golf and 8-irons into par-5s lacks any significant give-and-take between player and course. I’m not saying it’s boring, but there is less satisfaction in watching a course unable to call on a variety of skills.

The obvious question of such a dominant and shocking performance: where do we go from here on the distance debate?

Focusing on one player will only backfire for the governing bodies who have, for the moment, suspended the next steps of their Distance Insights Study and follow-up stages. The USGA and R&A will only take heat for singling him out, no matter how many unattractive episodes he has with people just doing their job.

So after rightfully praising DeChambeau for his work ethic and execution, it is not out of line to ask if this is the way golf should be played at the highest level?

Besides the well-documented issues of outdating classic courses and eliminating once-essential skills needed to succeed, DeChambeau’s success highlights a notion long mocked as a non-issue: is a weight-gain focused push for speed a good thing?

Do the leaders of golf believe it is sustainable, wise and merely human progress playing out before our eyes? Or, might a tweak to the aerodynamics of the ball retain the essential characteristics that helped golf thrive and survive for centuries?

If he stays healthy, DeChambeau will succeed in the sport no matter what actions are taken because he will adapt. His template for success should only serve as a reminder that there needs to be more than one way to get the ball in the hole, and more than one type of physique that can excel at golf.

Bryson Scolds Television Cameraman For "Watching me the whole entire way up after getting out of the bunker", Calls For More On-Course Privacy

Bryson running a little hot. Caught up with him on 7 where he took a Sergio slash at the sand after splashing out of a greenside bunker, muttered an expletive after missing the par save and spent 60 seconds in a...testy discussion with a cameraman on his way to 8 tee. pic.twitter.com/ENjQt1U689

— Will Gray (@WillGrayGC) July 4, 2020

Bryson DeChambeau was seen giving a television cameraman covering round three of the Rocket Mortgage Classic some and was asked about his outburst by GolfChannel.com’s Will Gray following a third round 67.

So he gave the cameraman grief for, what, you ask?

Keeping the camera on Bryson…too long.

Yep. His privacy was invaded. His brand tainted.

Before we dive in to Gray’s GolfChannel.com story from Detroit Golf Club (where DeChambeau trails Matthew Wolff by three), I want to highlight some layers to this bizarre moment in the “Return to Golf”.

DeChambeau’s diva-gone-awry moment illuminates, among other things:

—The value of on site reporting and a writer (Gray) observing something not seen on a telecast, then asking a simple question post-round about what the issue was with the cameraman on the 7th hole. This kind of coverage is already limited in the era of COVID-19 and dwindling media resources.

—The positively thankless job of working as a camera operator these days for CBS or PGA Tour Live. (I’m not clear yet which this lens man doing his job works for). Earlier this week, this cameraman most likely boarded a flight where you could get infected with COVID-19, sat in a cramped coach seat with no spacing, will have to fill out an expense essay detailing why he’s billing the company for an in-flight gin and tonic, only to arrive in sultry Detroit to have some bloated brat in a newsboy cap bellow on about you doing your job.

—The clubby attitude of some PGA Tour players whose ideal world may consist of no cameras, media, fans, sponsors or a sense of appreciation for the privileges of playing during a pandemic.

—The value of attending English classes at SMU to learn not to say things like “whole entire way”.

I could pile on (too late?), but let’s get to the quotes in Gray’s piece. Remember, this came after a 67 that included some absurdly long tee shots.

DeChambeau fired his club angrily into the sand shortly after impact, and he ultimately made bogey. While he described his reaction to the shot as “dumb,” he took issue with the cameraman subsequently following him closely as he approached the green and marked his ball.

“He was literally watching me the whole entire way up after getting out of the bunker, walking up next to the green. And I just was like, ‘Sir, what is the need to watch me that long?’” DeChambeau said. “I mean, I understand it’s his job to video me, but at the same point, I think we need to start protecting our players out here compared to showing a potential vulnerability and hurting someone’s image. I just don’t think that’s necessarily the right thing to do.”

Yes, cameramen, from now on drop the lens downward when you sense a grown man’s image might be tainted by their generally childish behavior.

Anyway, Gray saw the exchange where DeChambeau expressed his obviously delusional views to the unsuspecting cameraman. Following the round he was asked and Bryson answered:

“As much as we’re out here performing, I think it’s necessary that we have our times of privacy as well when things aren’t going our way. I mean, we’re in the spotlight, but if somebody else is in the spotlight they wouldn’t want that either,” DeChambeau said. “I feel like when you’re videoing someone and you catch Tiger (Woods) at a bad time, you show him accidentally doing something, or someone else, they’re just frustrated because they really care about the game. It could really hurt them if they catch you at a potentially vulnerable time.”

Oh, you mean like, a fine? Not exactly…

“We don’t mean anything by it, we just care a lot about the game. For that to damage our brand like that, that’s not cool in the way we act because if you actually meet me in person, I’m not too bad of a dude, I don’t think.”

Yep he played the brand card. But do give him credit for avoiding the first person reference.

There has been a risk in the PGA Tour pushing the “Return to Golf” in these difficult times. Commissioner Jay Monahan has said as much. So remember Bryson, you need to act grateful to be back playing. While other sports struggle to get back, everyone is pleased to have professional golf back. Please try to remember that the world is watching and if you don’t like it, stay home. Oh, and next time you spew droplets in someone’s face, wear a mask—like the cameraman you so unfairly berated.

Drop Kick Whiff: Hosung Choi Still Has A Few Things To Dial In

Fan favorite Hosung Choi has won tournaments, earned sponsor’s invites and even taken his moves to the greens.

But The Fisherman dropped anchor while playing Korea Professional Golf Tour’s Busan Gyeongnam Open according to GolfChannel.com’s Brentley Romine and because his ball had not advanced past tee markers, was able to retee this drop-kick whiff.

Nice mask though.

Hosung noooooooooooooooooo pic.twitter.com/vlND55T7Mt

— Brendan Porath (@BrendanPorath) July 4, 2020

State Of The Game 105: Geoff Ogilvy, The Bryson Debate And More

After a short hiatus, Rod Morri, Mike Clayton and yours truly discussed a nice array of topics with the 2006 U.S. Open Champion.

The should be available wherever you get your podcasts, or you can listen below.

The Apple podcast show link.

As Feared, Yale Golf Course Has Fallen Into Disrepair

With purported campus-wide restrictions on work hours and staff leaving several university courses closed, there certainly are greater problems facing America’s institutions of higher learning. That said, as feared last month when word surfaced that arguably the finest university course in the land was not open and losing key staff members, it seemed Yale’s tortured relationship with his C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor gem would not be helped by the pandemic.

Sure enough, things have deteriorated quickly based on these images posted by Daryl Brereton:

Good bye Yale golf course. @gil_hanse @fried_egg_golf @golfersjournal @golficity @insidetheleatherpodcast @nolayingup @csgalinks #golfheadz #yalegolf #charlesblairmacdonald #sethraynorsociety #sethraynor

The university intends to host students and faculty this fall on campus. The ones who like golf will not have a functioning, maintained course to return to.

Global Golf Post: The USGA Was Not Expecting Fox-NBC Rights Trade

Global Golf Post’s Ron Green looks at the still-stunning USGA media rights reversion to NBC after Fox decided to eat a sizeable portion of the bloated price they paid in 2013.

He noted this on the timing, suggesting it was strictly a deal between the networks.

The first conversations took place during the spring but gained momentum in the past two weeks.

According to multiple sources, as discussions about NBC taking the 2020 broadcast evolved and NBC Universal showed willingness to assume the deal, Fox Sports executives Eric Shanks and Larry Jones brought the idea of transferring the rights to USGA chief executive officer Mike Davis earlier this month. Davis was apparently unaware of the impending change until the time of that presentation.

Executives within the Fox Sports golf team were not made aware of the potential change until last Thursday. The rest of the crew, including announcers Joe Buck, Curtis Strange, Paul Azinger, Brad Faxon and others, were not informed until Sunday afternoon.

Dolch: "Our failure to wear a mask is costing my son dearly"

Longtime golf writer Craig Dolch returns in the Palm Beach Post pages to share with anti-mask-wearing world just one more sad and profound consequence of COVID-19’s horrifying spread among Americans: some in group homes no longer can receive visits. Including his son Eric, now 29, who was struck with a bacterial infection at age 14 and requires group home care. In Florida, visitors are prohibited in such facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Eric’s situation is no different than thousands of elderly and sick individuals throughout Florida who have been left isolated because of the pandemic. Families have been unable to say goodbye to their parents or grandparents, not to mention how difficult it is for those who have become prisoners in their facilities. More than 1,500 people have died in long-term care facilities in Florida due to COVID-19.

So excuse me when someone says it’s their right not to wear a mask. What about my son’s rights and others who have no control over how the public reacts to the greatest medical crisis of our lifetime?
Without a mask, they are the silent face of this pandemic. They have no say.

For weeks, I was counting down the days to July 1 – the date we expected the governor to allow visitors into these homes again. I stopped doing that two weeks ago when the number of positive tests in Florida started to spike.

Mostly because people won’t wear masks.

PGA of America Board Votes to Rename the Horton Smith Award

Score one for for Wendell Haskins, the PGA of America’s former director of inclusion efforts during CEO Pete Bevacqua’s years, who penned the organization to highlight how little they had done on the inclusion front. One highlight of the letter was his simple sentence noting Horton Smith’s overt racism.

Current CEO Seth Waugh reached out to Haskins and the two apparently had a healthy conversation that has now led to one noticeable change: the elimination of Smith’s name from the award for outstanding contributions to professional education.

For Immediate Release:

PGA of America Board Votes to Rename the Horton Smith Award

PGA of America sheds historic award with racial ties

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. (July 2, 2020) -- The PGA of America Board of Directors has voted to rename the Horton Smith Award effective immediately.  It will be replaced with the new PGA Professional Development Award, honoring a PGA Member for outstanding contributions to professional education. 

The PGA Board of Directors announced renaming the Horton Smith Award, which had been presented annually since 1965, based upon review of its namesake. Horton Smith, a two-time Masters Champion who served as PGA President from 1952-54, was a defender of the “Caucasian-only” membership clause, which was regrettably included in the PGA Bylaws from 1934-61.

The PGA Professional Development Award retains the previous criteria that showcases individuals who have demonstrated achievements in professional education.   

“In renaming the Horton Smith Award, the PGA of America is taking ownership of a failed chapter in our history that resulted in excluding many from achieving their dreams of earning the coveted PGA Member badge and advancing the game of golf,” said PGA President Suzy Whaley. “We need to do all we can to ensure the PGA of America is defined by inclusion. Part of our mission to grow the game is about welcoming all and bringing diversity to the sport. With the new PGA Professional Development Award, we will recognize effective inclusion efforts and honor those across our 41 PGA Sections who continue to promote and improve our educational programs. We look forward to doing more of both as we move forward.”

The first PGA Professional Development Award will be presented Oct. 27-30, during the PGA’s 104th Annual Meeting in Hartford, Connecticut.

Some background on Smith’s pretty passionate pursuit of racism during his time as PGA president, Ed Zieralski’s story on the San Diego ties to the Caucasian-only clause taking a hit.

The former Masters champion was given the USGA’s Bobby Jones Award in 1962 and is a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame.