I have to say that the greatest disappointment at the Quicken Loans National this past weekend was not Tiger’s shabby short game and him missing the cut, but rather his unconscionable decision not to be a presence on the final day of a tournament that has poured so much support into his personal foundation.

The Washington heat and the lack of reps had Tiger in a lather

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This was an opportunity for Tiger Woods to respond to those who criticize him for his unwillingness to reveal anything personal other than a clichéd description of the current state of his game. A friend of mind said, it was a shanda that Tiger was not at the awards presentation to thank the volunteers and patrons for their support and bestow the oversized check to Justin Rose.

This event has struggled in recent years to get a top players to participate. Only a thimble full of guys from the top 20 were present this year and Tiger has flat out refused to recruit in the locker room to enhance the field. The gate and the TV ratings are in serious decline and the head of the major beneficiary of the event is not inclined to try to do anything about it.

Contemplating his ball and not much more

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Further he could have made that cameo appearance in the broadcast booth on Sunday providing a little personal insight into how the players were coping with the major-like challenges of one of his favorite courses. That would have been worth a tick or two in the Sunday TV rating. With Sir Nick and Jim Nance, the king of softball questions, he would have been in a non-hostile atmosphere that would have allowed him to provide a teeny glimpse of his personal side without revealing any trade secrets. Instead we got a four-star general in a golf shirt telling us how much the rank-and-file appreciate all of Tiger’s support for the military.

Tiger seemed in a hurry to get out of Dodge

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I know the forced time off for Tiger has helped him appreciate his two lovely kids, the yacht, and the personal time in Jupiter but he could have made waffles for the family Sunday morning, hopped on the Gulfstream at noon, and been on the grounds in plenty of time for some positive image exposure and a chance to do the right thing vis-à-vis his corporate patrons.

Tiger’s Privacy…where he likely spent Sunday afternoon

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At their marquee events Arnie and Jack never fail to appear behind a mike on Sunday for some 19th hole jabber and await the winner coming off the 18th green with a big smile and a shoulder handshake. There is a reason for that-it elevates their brand and proves that they are engaged with supporters on a level that has nothing to do with their current or previous golf aptitude.

Entertainment superstars understand the importance of polishing their image and using controlled PR opportunities to tout personal aspects of their lives. It is just good business, especially when it benefits the gates and coffers of events that support their causes. Tiger buffets the criticism that he really does give a hoot about anything but chasing majors when he does not seize these opportunities.  If nothing else he is setting a bad example for his children.

July, 2014

The most common unsolicited remark a golfer hears from a playing partner when a shot goes awry. Doesn’t matter if it was popped up, skulled, foozled, or socketed, the advice is usually the same. Depending on the chutzpah level of the person rendering the remark it could also be you are lunging, swaying, coming over the top, or the over-rotation of your hips is affecting your club head speed (if the Traveler’s dog happens to be in your group). My thought when I witness these retorts is “Do you have your name embroidered on your bag or do you have a PGA teaching certification I don’t know about”?

Why a 20-handicap guy who breaks 90 twice a year feels it is his obligation to try to instruct a fellow player on the error of their ways is beyond me. The worst iteration of this helicopter partnering is when it involves a husband or father. There is some familial
obligation being implemented here to direct their helpless wife or inexperienced child through the trials and tribulations of discovering a competent golf game.

The problem with all of this is three-fold.

A. The guy giving the corrective directions is not objective, the weight of the personal relationship blinds him to the real athletic aptitude of their relative.

B. The guy barely can hit it consistently out of his own shadow so his advice is like the
blind leading the blind out of a burning building.

C. Who asked.

It is really no better if these kind of “suggestions” come from a single digit advisor. There is a reason there are so few good certified teaching pros, it takes a gift for full speed diagnosis, lots of fundamental knowledge, and an ability to communicate. Just having a low handicap does not mean you have any of those.

I have been playing golf for going on 55 years and have enjoyed the golfing company of my wife and/or son for a good half of that. When my wife asks me on a particular shot what club to hit my response is “you are 120 to the center of the green, slightly uphill”. If my son asks me what was wrong with the swing that just rendered the snapping turtle ball flight that has his Titleist now residing in the knee-high stuff on the left my answer is “so what did the pro tell you the last time you were together?” Truth is golf is a game of self direction and self discovery it needs no tour guides unless they are professionally trained and being paid for their services.

My idea has been that couples and father/son tournaments should have a stipulation that you must have someone of no relation as your partner. It would remove the urge for frivolous on course correction, be more fun for your partner, and give your team a much better chance to win sweeps.

This tirade extends to all kinds of advice given on the course. How many times did a person in your group standing above the cup on a steep green ask you whether it is fast or not? Your answer is “like a greased duck on a slip-n-slide”. The result is they leave it hanging half way to the cup with a four-putt now hovering in the balance. Or they are 130 to clear the pond in front of the green and want to know if they should lay up. No matter what you say they manage rinse the next one botching the aggressive or conservative advice rendered.

Best answer to these kinds of rhetorical inquiries is “you’re holding the club, go with your gut” it usually leads to an acceptable result.

It is my hope that when the USGA finishes the Pace of Play/While We’re Young advocacy campaign they will tackle this one. My suggestion is Charles Barkley as the spokesperson of the Zip-It…No more golf disinformation please.

In the meantime, if you hear “Keep your head down” in your group politely respond with
“Keep it to yourself”. It should help your game the rest of the day.

June, 2014

Martin Kaymer, Pinehurst #2, or Erik Compton….in all three cases an emphatic YES!

Martin Kaymer torched the field by 8 shots in this U.S. Open return to Donald Ross’s fabled Pinehurst #2. As the fourth biggest margin of victory on record, this performance is on level with the runaway wins of Tiger at Pebble in 2000 and Rory at Congressional in 2011.

The scoreboard doesn’t lie

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His back-to-back 65’s in the first two rounds were the first time anyone has had two 65’s in a U.S. Open. The 9-under finish was the third lowest score to par in U.S. Open history. With stats like 77% fairways hit, 63% greens in regulation, average driving distance of 305 yards, and 110 putts, an average of 1.53 per hole, he was hitting it in play, sticking it close, and making the putts that mattered. There is no wonder he waxed the competition.

Another first, Kaymer has won a quasi-major (The Players) and a major (The U.S. Open) in just six weeks……and he beat two of the strongest fields of the year….leading wire-to-wire. This is Ubergolf if we have ever seen it….it puts him comfortably among the top performers of his generation.

Kaymer got everything he asked for and more

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Golf journalist Rex Hoggard said, it was like Kaymer was playing the more pedestrian Pinehurst #5 for four days while the rest of the field was playing the championship Pinehurst #2. As we saw with Tiger and Rory sometimes one player shows up at a major with a game the rest of the field cannot recognize.

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Pinehurst #2 held up to the expectations of the USGA in fine fashion. Mike Davis continues to break the mold of playing U.S. Opens on monster long emerald green layouts with knee high rough. It started with bringing the Open to a municipal course at Bethpage Black in 2002 and continued by returning it to the more modest distances of Merion last year. Aligning with the Pinehurst powers to restore #2 to it’s original Ross character by removing 40 acres of Bermuda rough and allowing the adjacent areas to the fairway to return to their native roots, the USGA presented a fast and firm challenge that looked more like an Open Championship than a U.S. Open. With Chambers Bay and Erin Hills on the schedule two of the next three years this sand based, brown is beautiful campaign will likely continue.

Pinehurst #2 was not your typical day at the office for these guys

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The players seemed to relish the challenge presented by unpredictable lies off the fairway and the unique domed greens of Pinehurst #2. Sand shots took on a totally new connotation when any ball was wayward. The green side recovery shots we witnessed were a far stretch from the typical hack and flop of a U.S. Open weekend. Putts on greens in regulation took on a whole new meaning since more than one of the guys putted off a green he had already hit in regulation. If you remove the outlier of Kaymer’s 9-under performance there were only two others in red figures at 1-under par. That passes a U.S. Open litmus test every time.

Then there was the Erik Compton story. Clawing his way to a second place finish at 1-under par in the pressure cooker of a U.S. Open with his second transplanted heart (the useful life of his original and it’s first replacement had been spent) Compton mustered resolve, courage, and fortitude that would make John Wayne feel proud. For the last three days Compton did what major winners like Justin Rose, Keegan Bradley, Adam Scott, Rory McIlroy, and Jim Furyk could not do-he took on every challenge that #2 presented shooting 3-under when it mattered and did not give any ground to the blitzkrieg of Martin Kaymer.

Erik Compton handled all the challenges at #2

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This from a man who has seen his life pass before his eyes at least twice already and who takes more medications in a month than many of us take in a life time.
As Randall Mell said of Compton’s inspirational play, “They’ll never forget what this remarkable man did here……nearly trumped the Miracle at Merion, Ben Hogan’s victory in his return from a nearly fatal car accident in the 1950 U.S. Open”.

LPGA pros in the on-deck circle

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And if you haven’t had enough of the all-you-can-eat Pinehurst experience the Women’s U.S. Open Championship begins at the same venue starting today. Shorter tees, hotter temperatures, same native rough areas and turtle back greens…..just another stern USGA test with a different set of protagonists in soft spikes.

June, 2014

The BMW PGA Championship is the flagship event of the European Tour and it has been 50 years since an Irishman has hoisted this prestigious trophy. Starting the day seven shots behind the leader Thomas Bjorn, it seemed highly unlikely that Rory McIlroy would be the guy to break that streak. What it took was a frantic afternoon of jockeying bumper cars at the Wentworth Club in Virginia Water, England.

It was all blue skies for Bjorn until this unforced error on the 6th

Starting the day five shots clear of Luke Donald, Bjorn seemed on cruise control when he made a two-putt birdie on par five fourth to get to 16-under par. But the yarn in his socks began to unravel when he bogied the par 3 fifth and then tried to do too much from the fairway bunker on six, heaving it into the bank the ball settling at his feet. A few more misdirected blows and the Dane made a triple bogey 7 to watch his lead enter the vortex. Another bogey on 9 and two more on 14 and 15 and you can say it was not Bjorn’s day finishing at 12-under.

His playing partner Luke Donald was hovering about but the sixth did him in as well with a matching triple bogey. Luke valiantly threw five birdies down the rest of the way but could not muster anything under par on the two five pars that end this unusual track. He too finished at 12-under par.

Lowry looked strong after his birdie putt went down on the Par 3 10th

Shane Lowry was the hottest Irishman on the course most of the day and Bjorn’s main concern. An eagle-birdie sequence at four and five got him to 12-under and clearly in Bjorn’s rear view mirror. The ninth was a speed bump for all the leaders and a bogey there seemed to stall Lowry’s advance. He showed perseverance with five birdies on the inward half but two bogies in the stretch were enough to leave him one short at the end of the day.

McIlroy off the course looked like a dead man walking in the wake of his public breakup with Twitter gal and tennis starlet Caroline Wozniacki. Somehow he put all distraction at bay and played some of the most focused golf he has in the last year. A solid 69 on Saturday that included 5 birdies after an opening double bogey got him at least a mention in the pre-game talking head circles.

After a strong mid-iron into the par five 4th he buried the putt for an eagle that seemed to jolt the rest of the field as he got to double digits at 10-under. He watched the leaders behind him veering off the leader board and saw an opening developing for a run to the finish. A short miss at nine and a short-sided leave on the par 3 10th narrowed the opening.

Like a bolt Rory crashed the party with this unlikely short side birdie

What separates superstars from regular stars is the bottled lightening in that back pocket they can call on when you least expect it. From a hairy lie with little room to work with, Rory holed the pitch on 10 to make birdie and pry his way back into contention at 10-under.

It was now a question of putting his foot down to post a score and see if the competition could match him. Birdies on 12 and 13 got him to 12 and a marvelous up and down save on 16 set up an opportunity for an heroic sprint to the finish line.

On the first of the finishing two par fives he needed his short game prowess once again to get a birdie and the lead. His length off the tee on the risk-reward finishing hole left him a conservative approach on the way to a two-putt birdie. Rory set the number to beat in the house at 14-under.

Birdie-Birdie on the final two leads to a vindicating dance

It would have taken a holed approach from the fairway from Shane, Bjorn, or Luke to force a playoff and the golf gods apparently were going to have none of that. As Rory said in the post game, the guys ahead of him made enough mistakes to give him an opening and an opportunity to apply some magic and steal the most prized event on the European Tour for the first time.

Rory has the look of a man who got away clean

Against the melancholy hovering above his personal life this win cast a beam of light into his sporting closet just in time for the second Major of the year at Pinehurst in three weeks time.

May, 2014

Who would have thunk they were referring to fisticuffs and not hemlines when they named this event? For four days a couple of world-class bantamweights (maybe 118 clothed and drenched) traded jabs and hooks in a classic toe-to-toe donnybrook at Lake Merced Golf Club outside San Francisco in the first LPGA Swinging Skirts Classic.

Any thing but Peace and Love at Lake Merced
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The young phenom Lydia Ko, who just turned 17 this week, vs the grizzled veteran Stacy Lewis in “take this, no you take this” as they never left each other’s sight over the four days of the event. It wasn’t decided until the last two phenomenal up-and-downs for birdie on the par five eighteenth. Ko prevailed by a shot, looked elated, and Stacy looked drained like Sponge Bob Square Pants after a week in the Mohave Desert with no canteen. This was golf competed at it’s highest level.

Playing together in the lingering marine layer on Thursday Lydia opened with 68 to Stacy’s 69. Chilly rains on Friday and Stacy answered with 69 to Lydia’s 71 to take a one shot lead.  Saturday the weather improved and the two playing together again matched cards with a pair of 68’s to set up Sunday’s showdown with Stacy up one at 10-under par.

The skies were clear on Sunday and they treated the fans to a major-like struggle between two of the best in the game today. Lydia had a roller coaster front side with a bogey-bounce back birdie barrage over the last four holes to make the turn at 10-under. Stacy matched the scorecard with nine pars on the outward half and the two were tied as they headed to the 10th tee.

They both flinched with a bogey on 10 but stayed even through the 12th at 9-under par. At this point Lydia found another gear and birdied 13 and 14 to take what appeared to be a commanding three-shot lead as Stacy dropped a shot with a bogie on the 13th.

But as anyone who watches the LPGA Tour regularly knows Stacy Lewis never leaves the table until the counting is done. She throws down a pair of birdies on 15 and 16 and all of a sudden was within one again.

As always Stacy Lewis is all business
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What happens next is the stuff of lore. Lewis hits it within 20 feet on the difficult 17th and Ko is over the green with a very difficult downhill pitch from the heavy rough. Displaying a short game all week that would make Phil drool, Lydia delicately filters her pitch to gimme range to save par and Stacy cannot convert the birdie to tie. In the spirit of full disclosure Jenny Shin has quietly snuck her way into the mix at 10-under and one behind heading to the last tee.

The par five eighteenth has not yielded birdie to any of them all week but it is evident it will take just that to force or stave off a playoff. Three solid drives and both Jenny and Stacy lay up on Main Street about 100 yards from a tight front pin on the elevated green above. Lydia makes an unforced error and pulls her lay up into the heavy rough just off the fairway.

Lewis and Shin play a pair of remarkable pitches to strong birdie range and now it is obvious that Lydia needs match their deed with a ball she cannot spin and no green to work with. Perfect judgment and perfect execution, one bounce on the front collar and it trundles up to six feet. Lydia delivers the haymaker by slamming the birdie putt home leaving Stacy distraught and dismayed over a now meaningless birdie putt.

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Final putt splits the uprights
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The LPGA Tour suffers from a lack of TV viewership and the recognition that would bring but it does not lack for talent and competitive feistiness.The ladies’ game is in good hands, with or without Allstate, as was shown by the riveting, competitive display of these two champions over four days in the hills of northern California.

All smiles, Lydia hoists the glass honorarium

April, 2014

Making his Champions Tour debut at the Greater Gwennett Championship this week Miguel Angel Jimenez continued to build his resume as the golf guy in the Dos Equis commercials. He was always a someone who enjoyed fast cars, fine wines, and a bit of revelry but his golf of late is developing an eclectic reputation of it’s own.

This is a man who marches to his own drummer…., ”he gave his father ‘the talk’”. Witness the now famous Miguel on course warm up routine as recounted at the Open Championship by Mike Tirico and Paul Azinger.

The beginning of his pre-game warm-up

No stranger to the winner’s circle Miguel has won 20 times on the European Tour over his 22-year career. He became the European Tour’s oldest winner in December when he won the Hong Kong Open in a playoff with Stuart Manley and Prom Meesawat. So far this year he is 8th in the Race to Dubai standings with over 670,000 Euros in winnings to his credit. Apparently, “Superman has pajamas with his logo”.

Just last week Jimenez, at age 50, was low European at The Masters. His Saturday 66 at Augusta National put him in contention and a solid 71 on Sunday got him to 4-under and earned him a 4th place finish behind winner Bubba, Jordan Spieth, and Jonas Blixt. He is currently 9th in the Ryder Cup European Points and has a good chance of being a veteran anchor for the European squad at Gleneagles this fall. Makes sense that “The Holy Grail is looking for him”.

After besting the youthful Rickie in the final round of The Masters

Since he was in the Georgia neighborhood and just passed the age requirement, he decided to throw his pony tail and aviator shades into the mix at the Champion’s Tour Greater Gwennett Championship this week. Miguel came out of the gate on Friday shooting an unbelievable 7-under par 65 in on and off monsoon conditions. Freddie Couples, playing with him, said that he made it look easy, I guess this is expected from a guy who’s “lives vicariously through himself”.

A solid 70 on Saturday got him to 9-under and one ahead playing in the final group with two of the powerhouse icons of the Champions Tour, Bernhard Langer and Freddie Couples. This is a man who “has never waited 15 minutes after finishing a meal before returning to the pool”. After starting the day with five pars he made five birdies over the next eight holes to distance himself from the field at 14-under. He did not make a bogie in the last 32 holes of the tournament and his tight iron game down the stretch put him on cruise control to win by two. He is only the third man to win wire-to-wire in his Champion’s Tour debut.

The man has a bit of Jerry Garcia style for a senior

Now Miguel has the luxury of deciding whether to spend the next five months on the home European Tour turf collecting more Ryder Cup Points or pursuing the low hanging fruit that is within his grasp competing with the round bellies on this side of the Atlantic.

Either way, I am sure his advice to Bernard, Freddie, Jay, Colin, and the others is:

“Stay thirsty my friends”.

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April, 2014