Not that she really needs that much of an introduction but 16 year old Lexi Thompson has grabbed the attention of the golf world with a convincing 17 under par victory this week in the LPGA Navistar Classic against a very strong field.  In becoming the youngest ever to win an LPGA event, she had built a 5 shot lead shooting 66-68-67 in the first three rounds and cruised home with a solid 70 to win $200,000 in her first professional victory.

This is the same Lexi Thompson who played her first U.S. Women’s Open at 12, was a standout on the women’s Curtis Cup team in 2010 going 4-0-1 in five matches, finished second in the Evian Masters last year, and led the LPGA Avnet Classic after three rounds earlier this year.  She got a golfing pedigree growing up playing against her two brothers, Nicholas who plays on the PGA Tour and Curtis who goes to LSU.  Home schooled she has been determined to stake a spot on the LPGA tour since she turned professional at age 15.

Her performance in this week’s event shows she is ready to compete with the best in the world.  Besides beating seasoned pros like Paula Creamer by 10 and Yani Tseng by 14, she just dominated the course statistically.  She combined an average driving distance for the week of 275 yards with an 88% greens in regulation percentage-that has to lead to lots of birdie opportunities.  Her putting was sound at under 30 putts a round so she converted a boat load of them. And maybe most important for the LPGA Tour starving for popularity in the biggest golf market in the world, she’s blond, attractive, and an American.

Problem is that the LPGA has a pesky rule that you cannot be a member until you are 18 years old.  One has to believe that Mike Whan, the commish, will come to some kind of accommodation to allow Lexi to cash in on this victory and claim her LPGA card.  He was already inclined to this by giving her a waiver earlier this year to earn her card by playing in the Tour Q-School.  She is dominating the first stage played earlier this summer shooting four rounds in the 60s and leads by ten shots.

In all likeliness Whan will offer to waive the age requirement and grant her that LPGA Card if she defers her claim until the start of next season when she will be 17. This way the tour can save some face by only wavering a year on the 18 year old requirement.  For Lexi this makes sense since having her card now would only get her into the season ending CME Group Titleholders event in which she has already earned a spot from this Navistar victory.

If they could only figure out a way to get her on the Solheim Cup squad for next week- now that would be a coup.  I am sure Paula or Morgan would love to pard in the foursomes with Lexi’s driving distance.

September, 2011

The Havemeyer Cup (John Mummert/USGA)

In the world of competitive sport there are very few things that have not changed precipitously over the last 100 years, but the U. S. Amateur Championship is one of them.  It is played with the same traditions, rules, and formats that governed it back at the turn of the last century when it was first recognized as one of the most coveted prizes in the world of men’s golf. Traditionally it is 36 holes of stroke play qualifying to identify the top 64 amateurs in the world followed by a grueling match play format with six matches over five days ending with a 36 hole marathon final match to determine the finest amateur in the world.   There was a brief spell from 1965 to 1972 when the U.S. Amateur was entirely a stroke play event, but fortunately the U.S.G.A. came to it’s senses and went back to the traditional format.

What intrigues most of us about this tournament is that they are playing a format that is familiar to all of us-it is the same format most of us play every Saturday with our regular group-mano-a-mano match play.  In some regards this is more forgiving than medal play-a blow up hole costs you only one hole, not the entire round.  But if we consider that the U.S.G.A. hosts this event on the most difficult and revered courses in the land and tweaks the course, as they do with the U.S. Open, to challenge every aspect of the competitor’s games, we realize that someone has to have great skill, great composure, a bit of luck, and a truck load of determination to prevail in this championship.

Most of the great’s of the game have won this championship-Bobby Jones won it five times, Jerome Travers four times, Tiger Woods three times in a row, and eight guys have won it twice in consecutive years.   The Havemeyer Cup bears the name of famous men connected to the game in so many ways-Charles Blair McDonald, Francis Ouimet, William Fownes, Harvie Ward, Arnold Palmer, Deane Beman, Jack Nicklaus, Nathanial Crosby, Jay Sigel, Scott Verplank, Phil Mickelson,  and Matt Kuchar just to name a few.  The youngest winner was Danny Lee at age 18 in 2008 and the oldest winner was Jack Westland at age 47 in 1952. There have been many winners who are not house hold golf names or even had distinguished pro or amateur careers.  But for one week these men had the best judgement, the most veracity, and probably the hottest putter in the game because it takes all of that and more to prevail marathon test like this.

Maybe equally interesting to the competitors are the venues on which this championship is held.  The U.S.G.A. has always sought to hold it on courses with the history and credentials worthy of testing the best amateurs of their time.  Many of them are famous courses like Pinehurst, Hazeltine, Merion, Olympic Club, Winged Foot, Cherry Hills, and Muirfield Village.  But the U.S.G.A. has also used the event to showcase lesser known gems or new courses like Canterbury, Plainfield C.C., Newport C.C., The Honors Course and Pumpkin Ridge.

In recent years, under the leadership of David Fay and Mike Davis, the U.S.G.A. has gone out of it’s way to identify some creative new venues that are clearly out of the mainstream of American course architecture.  Peter Uihlein beat David Chung in a gripping final in 2010 on Robert Trent Jones Jr.’s Chambers Bay links course on Puget Sound outside of Tacoma, Washington.  They introduced American golf viewership to the fact that brown is the new green.  This course, built in an old gravel mine, features the stark treeless terrain with holes meandering up and down sand hills providing the players with the steepest challenges of controlling where their golf balls sought to wander.  As they are apt to do, the U.S.G.A. used the amateur as a test case for this venue and they were so pleased with what they saw the U.S. Open will be held there in 2015.

2011 featured another pilot project, the championship was contested on a relatively new  Hurzdan/Fry/Whitten track called Erin Hills in southern Wisconsin. For all that has been said about Whistling Straits looking like an authentic Irish links course, this one looks more like Royal County Down than anything I have seen in America.  Mike Davis called it Shinnecock Hills on steriods.  It was built on a piece of ground outside of Milwaukee that was left by a receding glacier about 10,000 years ago with an array of sand and gravel mounding and a topography of such varied amplitude that it just seems like a piece of linksland in the middle of farm country.  The designers moved a minimal amount of dirt to create a course that is viscerally exciting and totally unique for the American golf scene.  As Paul Daley said in his book on Golf Architecture, “The enthusiasm and appreciation of Erin Hills has run from lavish praise to near malicious slander, so some controversy will always be part of it’s heritage”.

The entire course is fescue grass-fairways and roughs-and it can be made to play hard and fast as a result.  The length of the holes on the scorecard mean nothing because the combination of the abrupt topography and firm fairways makes the most difficult challenge picking the right club and predicting the roll out of shots on these fairways and approaches.  It takes a particularly cerebral approach and extraordinary tactical judgement to figure out how to manage your ball and be successful on this course.

Kelly Kraft and Patrick Cantlay playing the final 36 hole match was like watching Chinese water torture on grass.  This is a course where there is no such thing as finding a comfort level-there is a train wreck around every sand dune and many of them are blind shots so you can’t see them coming.  Kraft, the eventual winner, was cruising along 4 up in the match near the end of the first 18 and he took a triple bogey eight on the 18th hole.  Six holes later the match was all square and it was a nail biter the rest of the way.  The match turned on the drivable par 4 15th when Cantlay, the number one ranked amateur in the world, with a one lead after a marvelous birdie on the previous hole, decided to lay up from the tee with an 8 iron-yes an 8 iron.  He misjudged the elevation change and the bounce on the fairway leaving his tee shot up against the six foot face of one nasty fairway bunker from where he did not stand a chance to recover.  He went into bogey-bogey slide from which he never recovered.   The pros will play this place in a medal play format at the 2017 U.S. Open.  If the wind blows that week all bets are off on the winning score.

It is drama like this, man to man on a tormenting battlefield that makes this event so unique and memorable.  Woods coming back from the oblivion to beat Trip Kuehne at TPC Sawgrass, Nathanial Crosby’s emotional overtime win at The Olympic Club, and Jeff Quinney beating James Driscoll in three extra holes the next day at Baltusrol in 2000.  These are the type of scenarios play out almost every year at the U.S. Amateur it is just that the names are changed to protect the innocent.  Winning this event may not lead to fame and fortune but having this trophy on your mantel for a year with all those names on it under yours has to lead to a boat load of big fish stories that will last a life time.

August, 2011

What is it with these banks and financial service companies, these days it seems they all have a sky full of black clouds following them around.  So it is this weekend with Hurricane Irene threatening the entire eastern seaboard with a meteorological Blitzkrieg.   PGA Tour officials have wisely decided to shorten to 54 holes the first leg of the post season playoffs, The Barclays Championship (the Barclay’s logo actually has a bit of a Luftwaffe look to it doesn’t it).

Need I remind you that the last time Barclays sponsored a golf tournament, The Barclays Scottish Open in July, Scotland was hit with three months of rain in three hours. It turned the Castle Stuart Links course into the MGM set of Moses crossing the Dead Sea.

With a rain softened course playing like a picnic outing of lawn darts we are seeing scoring in the first two rounds that is off the charts.  Last year’s winner, Matt Kuchar, is already 14-under trying to pull off a two-peat in this event on the Par 71 Donald Ross course at Plainfield Country Club in Edison, N.J.  The tee times for the third and final round are off both sides between 7 am and 8:50 am in an attempt to get the full 18 in and fold up the circus tents before the bad stuff hits.  So if you turn the broadcast on in the afternoon you can expect the “Taped Earlier” overlay in the top left corner of the flat screen.

The interesting thing about this development is that anyone at 8-under or better can shoot a round in the low 60s and have a chance of stealing the first event of the 2011 playoff series.  This includes a whole bunch of familiar faces who have had mediocre seasons so far this year like Dustin Johnson, Vijay Singh, Justin Rose, Padraig Harrington, Aaron Baddeley, William McGirt (Who?), Sergio Garcia, and Camilo Villegas.

For these guys a win here would change everything-it would add about a million-four to their money market account and shove them to the top of the FedEx Kup race.  Not bad for a mediocre season.

What can I say, these PGA guys really understand marketing.  They are like alchemists when it comes to manufacturing TV ratings.

August, 2011

After watching a broadcast of what used to be referred to as The Senior Tour I have decided that with the proliferation of guys carrying staffs on the putting green we should almost expect Charlton Heston in sandals to be playing in the final group.  To me this calls for reconsideration of the product name.  The players are certainly weathered and grey enough to play the part.

If you look at the top 25 in any given week on this tour I bet 60% of the guys use something on the green longer that 35 inches or else have one of the many alternative putting grips or both.  The Claw, The Saw, The Split Handed, Cross Handed, or whatever you would call what Bernard does.  Hell, I saw a lefty today with right hand low.  Mind you, I am not saying this is a bad thing, but it certainly is changing the putting standard in the game.

If they ever outlawed these things you would not see Freddie Couples, Bernard Langer, Tom Kite, Mark O’Meara, Calc, Jeff Sluman, Nick Price or many of the other old household names playing anymore.  I think they would be down to Tom Watson and 46 no-names with club professional credentials.

While we are re-inventing this thing, I think the policy on The Apostle Tour is they only play biblical venues like Westchester, Inverness, Newport, Five Farms, Saucon Valley, Bellerive, Canterbury, Harding Park, and Merion.  At the distances these guys hit it these old venues would not suffer from same “technology effect” that has chased the regular tour away from them.  Besides, these are classic stages we associate with guys in their age group.

If last week’s PGA Championship is any indication, this gospel is starting to spread pretty rapidly.

August, 2011

In a year when all four majors were captured by first-time winners in a variety of dramatic scenarios, the PGA Championship may have proved to be the most dramatic of all.  25-year-old Keegan Bradley trumped the field with final round performance full of moxie and guile we would not have expected from a rookie on the PGA tour.

Keegan’s competitive career has always shown moxie-as a Nationwide guy last year he made the cut in 18 of his 28 events, finishing top 25 in 15 of those to earn his PGA card as the 14^th ranked player on that tour.  His first year on the big tour has been much of the same-he made 16 cuts out of 24 starts including 2 wins, 3 other top tens, and 10 top 25s on his way to earning $3,432,000.  When this guy puts the stare on an event he intends to compete to the end and walk away with a serious pile of money.  Depending on how he does in the playoffs he has a real chance at the unheard of double honor of Rookie of the Year and Player of the Year in the same year.

His performance yesterday was as riveting as his stare-you could tell that his playoff win at the Byron Nelson this year and his excellent showing in the WGC Bridgestone a few weeks ago prepared him well to deal with the unbridled pressure of winning the first major he ever played on a course that brought the best in the game to their knees, holding their head in their hands wondering what went wrong.

For Keegan, his birdie response in the final round on 16 and 17 after the train wreck triple bogey on 15 that left him five shots back of Jason Dufner was the seminal statement of the event.  Coupled with the good fortune Dufner conveyed by going three over in the last four hole gauntlet at the Atlanta Athletic Club, there was little doubt going into the three-hole playoff who was going to prevail.  Dufner hit it to six feet on the first playoff hole and Bradley one-upped him by stuffing it even closer and making the putt for birdie and a one shot lead.  On 17 and 18 Bradley fearlessly ignored the more conservative approach and took dead aim at the flag clearing the water by just feet on both approach shots.  The resulting pars seemed to deflate Dufner’s resolve and it was just a cool walk to the trophy ceremony for Bradley from there.  It should not go unnoticed that Bradley beat a host of twenty-something American hopefuls to a first major victory-guys like Dustin Johnson, Nick Watney, Rickie Fowler and others who have gotten all the press as the next great American golfing hope.

Kudos to Jason Dufner who displayed almost equal resolve as a relative unknown coping with the pressure of leading a major on the final day.  He showed real class after fumbling the trophy down the stretch saying,  “I’m disappointed now but there are a lot of good things to take from this week……I know the media tries to define careers of certain players…you did this…you didn’t do that….I want to be as good as I can be.  If that is 20^th in the world with no majors or first in the world with ten majors or never win a Tour Event, I’ll be fine with that.  Hat’s off to Keegan, he played great to get into the playoff and played great in the playoff. He deserved to win”.  This is a guy with his head on straight who will build a solid career on the tour because he has proper perspective and ambitious expectation at the same time.

On a lighter note, after it was said and done, Keegan Bradley tweeted the interested masses that he was celebrating with  “3 Bud Lights, Cereal, and P.P. & J.”.  I have a feeling that once the check clears the account he will be looking at a serious upgrade in his post victory celebrations in the future.

August, 2011

Napoleon would have felt right at home today at the Atlanta Athletic Club for the second round of the PGA Championship. The 18th hole in particular was taking no prisoners. In the last hour and a half of the day Adam Scott, Angel Cabrera, Nick Whatney, Phil Mickelson, Matteo Manassero, and Gary Woodland (twice) all saw their momentum drown in a watery grave on their approach shots into the final green.

David Feherty asked the question of the day, doesn’t the PGA think that the final hole of their most important tournament of the year should actually be playable by the best players in the world. This one clearly is not. It wasn’t about the wind, it wasn’t about the pin, it was just that the driving area was so confined the players could not find the courage to hit a driver far enough up the hole to give themselves a manageable shot at the green. As hard as the hole was in 2001 when David Toms chose to lay up on his second shot and rely on a wedge to get up and down to beat Mickelson in the PGA it has clearly been ratcheted up a notch in Rees Jones’s latest upgrade of the course for this year’s event. Tom’s strategy may the play du jour for the next two days if guys are in the hunt.

Maybe the real secret today was being fortunate enough to play the back nine first because Dufner and Bradley, the current leaders, both played the front as their inward nine and seemed able to close out their rounds without blunting their momentum. They will not have that opportunity tomorrow and will have to face the terror of fifteen through eighteen with the full pressure of trying to hold the lead in a major. Climbing over the battle casualties in front of them could be a huge mental challenge in that stretch.

August 2011

In the aftermath of Adam Scott’s impressive win in the WGC Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone CBS did the rarest of things, they decided to interview the winning caddy.  So Stevie Williams had a microphone in front of him and a world wide audience to which to crow that of the 140+ wins he has had as a caddie, 13 of them majors with Tiger Woods, “this is the most satisfying win I have ever had, there’s no two ways about it”.

His guy played flawlessly today with four birdies on the back side posting the low score of the final round and there is little doubt that Stevie was the elixir that kept Scott relaxed and focused helping him hold off a horde of young talent nipping at his heels.  Williams is one of the most accomplished caddies in the modern era, having worked successfully with Greg Norman, Raymond Floyd, and Mr. Woods and deserves a good deal of credit for helping Scott get to the finish line with the championship in hand.

While Scott was blistering the field with 21 birdies and only 4 bogies over four days, Tiger only broke par the first day and had 11 bogies and 2 doubles on the way to a mundane T-37 in the event, a full 18 shots behind Scott’s winning score of 17 under.  Tiger’s driving accuracy was 76th in the field of 76 and his putts per round stat was T43rd-not the winning combination he was looking for in his first competitive appearance in three months.

But I doubt that it was his role in Scott’s competitive revival that Stevie was referring to as the source of his satisfaction today.  He was clearly taking great pleasure in thumbing his nose at his former employer as if to say to Tiger, that hill you have to climb is going to be much steeper without me by your side.

The $140,000 share Stevie gets from this win will certainly make the steak taste very savory tonight, but I think it is the just desserts delivered to Tiger’s table that will sustain that sly grin on Stevie’s face for a good long while.

August, 2011

Steve Williams that is.

Yup the man who stewarded Tiger to seven victories at Firestone since 1999 sprinkled a little magic dust on his new man Adam Scott who shot a scintillating 62 today to grab the first round lead at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. Scott threw down 8 birdies, including 5 on the back side, coming in with just 30 shots on the inward nine. He hit 83 percent of the greens and used only 25 putts with that garden hoe he calls a putter. Clearly Steve Williams is creating positive vibes for his new man.

Steve’s ex-boss could only manage a mundane 68 and is wallowing in anonymity in a tie for 18th at the moment. Guess he did not have his “A” Game today. Driving accuracy was his Achilles heel once again only hitting 36% of the fairways (T-73rd in that category). 27 putts with his old Cameron flat stick is not bad, but he obviously has to put it in play and hit it closer to the hole if he wants to prove that he still owns this track.

I sense that Steve Williams is doing some snickering in the parking lot. If this could somehow hold up through Sunday he might just break out into a full blown guffaw.

August, 2011

Dominance on the world golf stage is a five-letter word now……….T-S-E-N-G.  Yani Tseng has transcended her sport winning her fifth major at age 22-she has won four of the last eight majors on the women’s circuit.  There is little doubt that she has the Vardon Grip on the number one player in the world spot and she is not giving it up any time soon.

To look at her numbers this year there is only one person whose name comes to mind and it is not Annika.  13 tournaments on the LPGA Tour-4 wins-9 top tens and another 3 wins worldwide as well.  In 2011 she ranks first in birdies, first in rounds in the 60s, first in scoring average, second in driving distance, second in rounds under par, and third in greens hit (which is all the more remarkable because she is 102nd in fairways hit).

When Yani bought Annika’s old house in Orlando a few years ago it seemed her goal was to fill up those built-ins with trophies over a career-at the rate she is going she may have to build a Yani commemorative addition before she is 25.

All the things they say about her are true-she is a gifted athlete, sweet kid, and determined to break that stereotype of the dispassionate Asian star. But more than anything she is a focused competitor who when she gets a sniff of the lead can be very intimidating to the rest of the field.  Sound familiar?

The only thing she is not at this point is a household name in the U.S. market-but she is getting there.  She has worked hard to improve her English and to listen to her in an interview now you can see this is an intelligent young woman with aspirations of greatness and just enough humility to make her someone you just have to root for.  In the world market of golf she is fast becoming a Michael Jordan-like figure-the sponsorships and endorsements are going to have to que up at her door.

There are mentors of little girls all over the world looking at Yani’s athletic swagger and confidence realizing that the bar has been raised-to be dominant in the world of women’s golf is going to take an entirely new level of skill and confidence.  For the next 20 years they are going to have to beat Yani and that will be no small task.

Annika’s 10 majors looks like a cake walk-I am thinking Patty Berg’s record of 15 could be seeing some company if Yani can stay motivated.

July, 2011

A Visual Embrace of the Claret Jug

Darren Clarke’s masterful ball striking helped him close with a proficient even par 70 in very blustery conditions at Royal St. Georges on Sunday to win the Open Championship and reiterate the dominance of Northern Ireland in golf’s majors.  The mouse has roared again, this is the third Ulsterman to win a major in the last 13 months which means that stocks of Guiness will be tapped as celebration will continue for weeks across the northern part of the Emerald Isle.  The “Chubby Slam” for 2011 is still in tact as Clarke’s win along with McIlroy at the U.S. Open and Schwartzel at The Masters make it three in a row for the outgoing Chubby Chandler who represents all three.  There will be a whole lot of Englishman pulling for Lee Westwood to finish that job at the PGA next month.

The windy conditions were similar to Saturday-only six players broke par in the final round.  Darren’s formula was great ball striking, more than adequate putting, and a cerebral mastery of the tactics of links golf over the four days.  Clarke hit an average of 13 of 18 greens over the tournament-3 better than the field and had just under 30 putts a round-striking the ball beautifully in a two to three flap wind the last two days.  His putting at 29.75 per round was better than average but he made all the 5 to 10 footers that mattered on Sunday and just did not give his close pursuers much hope at all.  Most important, he avoided the high score all week-only one double bogey over the 72 holes-he was just masterful at managing his mistakes in course conditions that had blow up holes lurking around every corner.

Phil Mickelson applied the pressure early with a scintillating 6 under over the first 10 holes.  But Clarke had an answer for every surge and really made a statement when he rolled in an eagle putt on the 7^th hole to answer Mickelson’s eagle earlier on the same hole.  Dustin Johnson was playing with Clarke and he too mounted a charge on the middle holes but a wayward long iron into the course next door on the par 5 14^th  slammed the door on his chances and it was a dexterous cake walk the rest of the way home for the Irishman.

Much has been documented about Darren Clarke’s personal and golf tribulations over the last decade, so this first major for him is a very sweet moment indeed.  For those who think this comes from left field don’t forget that he has 14 European Tour wins and two World Golf Championships under his belt, including beating Tiger Woods in the Accenture Match Play final back in 2000.  This is a passionate guy who enjoys his golf and you could see the special delight in his face over the final four holes of the championship when victory was within reach.

They may be bottling fresh spring Portrush water for international sale shortly-it is clear that Ponce De Leon turned his ship the wrong way when he was looking for the fountain of youth, it is just off the northern most coast of Northern Ireland.

July, 2011