Arnie’s event is in the unenviable position of being three weeks before the Rite of Spring celebration at Augusta and as a result is absent of the presence of a number of the big names in the game who have opted out of this invitational to fit their preference in managing schedules before a major.  From the top ten in the World Golf Rankings Jason Day, Fabulous Phil,  Rory, and Dustin Johnson have all taken a pass and Tiger’s aching back kept him from defending his crown in this championship.

Adam and Company seemed in total control.

With a chance to take over the number one spot in the world, Adam Scott led out of the gate with his opening day 62.  A touch of the flu slowed him down starting Friday, his lead atrophied each day and he teed it up with just a three-shot lead going into the final round on Sunday.  A sluggish start with a bogie on the first and a water ball off the tee on the difficult third and his lead was down to two.

Observing that the last four winners of this event have decimated the par fives, Adam’s ticket has been attacking them all week.  He has been going for five pars in two 75% of the time and playing them 11-under through the first three rounds.  That is 7 strokes gained on the field average of 4-under on the fives through 54 holes.  He righted the ship with this same approach making birdie on the par 5 4th with a clever up and down from just off the green.

Scott falls victim to the steep sandy faces on #7.

One of the difficult features at Bay Hill are the tall sandy faces on the green side bunkers which have a tendency to plug  high approaches rather than deflecting them back into the flat bottom of the bunker.  On the 7th this fate befell Adam when he floated his approach into the face of the right bunker on the par three.  The resulting bogie shrunk his lead to just one.

One of his pursuers, Matt Every made a “roadie” on nine to join Jason Kokrak at 12-under just one back.  After hitting his driver into the trees that line the left side of this dogleg left his ball trundled precariously up the right edge of the cart path, the left edge of the path is OB, and the golf gods ushered it safely in play clear of the tree line leaving Every with a short iron in his hand.  A dexterous approach and a confident roll he made for a three out of a five or worse.

Matt followed that with a lovely cross town birdie putt to a Clark Kent cup placement on the  short tenth to join Adam in the lead at 13-under.  An up and down birdie on the par five 12th and Every had the lead all by himself.  Failing to convert his own birdie on the 12th, Adam was looking at the back of the leader’s hat for the first time all week.

No hold back in this Every man……

The short par four 13th hosts a sucker pin just over the rocks and water that front this fortress green complex.  Though the 30-year old has yet to win on the Tour, Every showed nerveless aplomb hoisting his approach to flag high and then buried another 20-footer to extend his lead to two.

This was not your prototypical every man in contention.  No one should be that surprised at his performance-he has won over $7 million since 2008 on  Web Dot Com and PGA Tours.  With an average of five top tens each of the last three years he has had a good run this season, ranked 7th in Shots Gained Putting and 10th in Scoring Average on tour.

The tension seemed to affect reigning the Master’s champion more than Every.   The air came out of his iron shot into the Par 3 on 14 leaving him short of the putting surface and he failed to get up and down to expand the gap to three.  A creative up and down from the bottom of a steep shaved bank short side on  the 15th kept Adam in touch.

The angst grew in Adam’s putting stroke through the day.

The last three at Bay Hill make a very nervy finish where just about anything can happen. It begins with a reachable par five eagle opportunity but the diagonally set pond in front makes six a possibility as well.  The hardest three par on the course follows and the last is one of the truly dramatic finishing holes on Tour.

After an Every unforced error on the par five led to bogie, Scott failed to turn the opportunistic two-shot swing when he missed an uphill four-footer for birdie and had to settle for par.  Dodging that bullet only a fat flagstick stopped Every from holing his bunker shot on 17 so the lead remained at two.

Matt’s pitch on 17 seemed destined for the tin but was denied.

With the Good Adam and the Bad Adam having a Yalta conference debate between his ears, Scott bogied 17 from another errant tee shot and it was all over for him.  His playing partner Keegan Bradley, who had been treading water all day, managed to birdie 16 and 17 to keep a bit scare in the heart of the leader.

Placing his tee ball five steps right of the Robert Gamez plaque at 172 Every would only need a par to have The King hand him the trophy.  But too much adrenaline and his approach ends up in the juicy cabbage over the green.  The failed up and down provided an opening and now Keegan was a birdie away from a playoff.

Keegan had a similar drive right of Gamez and put his approach in the center of the green.  At 25-feet he was staring down a similar down hill left-to-right line to two of Tiger’s fist pump winning putts on this green.   As Johnny Miller said, if Keegan makes this one who knows what the kind of body gyrations could ensue.  The putt slithered by on the high side and with a deep sigh Every had his first win on the big stage.

Matt with Danielle, Liam, and the Hardware

As seems to be the weekly result this year, we have yet another previously unheralded contender for the Georgia Green Jacket in a couple of weeks.

March, 2014

The way things are going this year on the PGA Tour the only guy with an association to this number who has not been in contention is Kiefer Sutherland.

At this week’s WGC Trump Championship it is soon to be 24 year-old Patrick Reed leading by two going into the final day at the vastly improved, better than ever before, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, Trump Doral Blue Monster.   Patrick has won twice on the tour, with another six top tens, in the last 12 months and cashed in just under $4 million for his efforts.  Currently 44th in the World Ranking and rising.

Last week it was 24 year-old Russell Henley putting the smooch on the crystal at the Honda Classic, he outlasted another 1989 phenom Rory McIlroy in a four-way playoff at PGA National.  He too has won twice in the last year, with four other top tens, and added about $3.2 million to his bank accounts along the way.  Currently 46th in the World Rankings.

The week before at the WGC Match Play it was the Australian Jason Day and Frenchman Victor Dubuisson, who together average about twenty four and a half, playing an awe inspiring five-hole playoff to decide that championship in 23 holes.  Fourth in the World Golf Rankings, Day is an old man at 26 with two tour wins and close to $16 million in winnings on the PGA Tour since he toddled on the scene as an 18 year-old.  Dubuisson, looking like Johnny Depp (who the wife insists is forever 24), has won the Turkish Open, took second in the WGC Match Play, third in DP European World Championship, and fifth in the Volvo Golf Champions racking up about two million  euros in the last six months in European Tour events.

Harris English, also 24, won at St. Jude and Mayakoba in the last year along with 13 other top ten finishes.  Winning close to $6 million over that period he is currently 3rd in the FedEx Cup standings.  This 24 year-old looks like a lock for an American Ryder Cup Team position.

Better equipment, rigorous fitness, stiff competition at a very early age, and absolutely no sense of awe of their elders on the PGA Tour has these young guys feeling their oats and winning repeatedly before the age of 25.

It is obvious, these young guys do know Jack…….who happens to be returning to Fox on May 5th for a ninth iteration….24: Live Another Day.….

March, 2014

Here is a shock for you, men in Great Britain and Ireland in the 19^th century loved to bet on anything- horses, archery, parlor games, and, of course, golf.  To make the golf competitions workable they had to come up with a method for leveling the field between players of different ability so creating a course handicap became important to facilitating the wagers.

There first effort  in the mid-1800’s was to take the average of a man’s lowest three scores of the year at their home course and subtract it from the scratch score for the course to create a handicap.  This was fine at the home course but it did not travel well to away games where the courses were not of similar caliber.

The next iteration came from an unlikely source the Ladies Golf Union.  In the 1890s these adventurous women assigned a course rating to member courses to create a calibrated standard for the comparison to the average scores.  This actually worked quite well in establishing a handicap system that was reliable from club to club.

The mind numbing required reading materials from a USGA Handicap Seminar

When the game sauntered across the Atlantic it did not take much time for the blue blazers at the newly formed USGA to put their arms around this establishing a similar approach.  At first the USGA let each course establish it own course rating but it became evident in a hurry that this led to farcical results.  So they too created an objective method of issuing official course ratings.  Now they had a way to create objective handicaps that would be mobile enough to support inter-club competitions.   By using the three best scores of the year the first principle of handicapping was also clear-it would measure potential not playing ability.

As it further evolved it became evident that using only three scores a year favored the better player who could more reliably play to such a narrow sample of potential.  So they began computing it from larger subsets of the scoring records of players and eventually landed on the sample of 10 best of the last 20 scores.   They threw in the caveat of a “Bonus for Excellence” by using a multiplier of 96% to determine a player’s final handicap index.  This was to reward the better golfers a slight edge in head to head competitions with high handicappers.

The last piece of the puzzle was the implementation of Equitable Stroke Control (ESC) in 1974 which created a variegated method for maximum score on a hole based on the player’s Course Handicap.  This helped to smooth the curve on scores being posted by individual players.

It is worth noting that the word “Par” never appears in the discussions of handicaps or their calculations.  Rather the USGA created two ratings to support the handicap system.

The first is the Course Rating which is a baseline objective calculation of a course’s difficulty to a scratch player-it does not address how the course would be played by an average player. A course rater goes through the course simulating the positions off the tee of a scratch golfer (average 250 yards out) and takes into consideration factors of difficulty they face from hazards and objects they must traverse to play each hole.  By compiling these scoring factors they come up with a course rating for the relative difficulty of the course to a scratch player.  This Course Rating is established for every tee length.

In the mid-1970’s the USGA introduced a second rating through the new Slope System aimed at determining the relative difficulty of playing a course to the bogey golfer rather than the scratch golfer.   Once again they use the driving distance of a player with about a 20 handicap and determined the scoring effect of hazards and objects they face in playing out the hole.  This is called the Bogey Rating for the course.  The Slope Rating measures how steep the rise is between the Course Rating and the Bogey Rating on the course-the steeper the rise the higher the Slope Rating.  The Slope Rating is intended to show the relative difficulty of the course for a non-scratch player from each tee.

Here is the basic math.

Calculating a Player’s Handicap Index:

-Take the top 10 adjusted gross scores (after ESC)  of the last 20 for a player

-Subtract the Course Rating from each score to get a Handicap Differential

-Average these 10 differentials and multiply by 96% to get players Handicap Index

Calculating a Player’s Course Handicap:

-Multiply the player’s Handicap Index by the Slope Rating for the tees being played and divide this by 113 to get their Course Handicap for this tee.

Note: This is a measure of potential and should only be achieved about 20-25% of the time.

Using Course Handicaps in Competitions:

-If all competitors are playing the same tees the relative value of their Course Handicaps determine how many strokes adjustment needed to be applied to their medal scores.  If they are playing match play the difference between their Course Handicaps is given as a competitive adjustment to the player with the higher handicap.

-If competitors are playing from different tees the USGA stipulates an adjustment must be made to the Course Handicap of the players for the advantage of playing the forward tees.

Player A playing from a Blue Tee with a Course Rating of 70 whose Course Handicap is 10 from those tees will have a potential Target Score of 80 for the day.

Player B from the Gold Tee with a Course Rating of 66 whose Course Handicap is 9 has a potential Target Score of 75.

Player B playing from the shorter tee length it calculates to a 5 shot advantage in the potential score for the day.

The USGA says that the competitors must adjust their Course Handicaps by this additional factor equal to the difference between the Course Rating of the two tee lengths to make it a fair competition (in this case 4).  The Course Handicap of the player from the longer tee can be increased by this factor or the Course Handicap of the player at the shorter tee can be reduced.

In developing this Handicap System the presumption on the part of the USGA is that all players try as hard as they can on every hole in a posted round and that they will post all the rounds that can be posted.

The reality is that personal integrity is the only guarantee of accurate score postings.  In spite of the valiant efforts of Handicap Committees at clubs nationwide, the inaccuracy of Sand Bagger and Vanity handicaps will haunt competitions from now until doomsday.

If you yearn to delve into the nuances of the USGA Handicap system in more detail visit the website of former USGA Senior Director of Handicaps, Dean Knuth  (Pope of the Slope).  Dean is the walking and talking authority on all things handicap and his site is quite readable.

February, 2014

The leaderboard of this week’s Northern Trust Open looks more like the roster of the Witness Protection Program than a glamour PGA Tour event.  A.W.O.L. are Woods, Scott, Stentson, McIlroy, Mickelson, and much of the rest of the top 20 on the World Golf Rankings.  Going into the Sunday finish unfamiliar names like Will McGirt, Sang-Moon Bae, Cameron Tringale, and Charlie Beljan are dominating the first page.

Seemed like everyone and his cousin were in the mix come Sunday

This is kind of a shame since Riviera Golf Club, a George C. Thomas original and the host club of this event for almost a century, is one of the coolest venues the troupe plays all year.  The guys who love the place will tell you this is a player’s course.  It requires imaginative strategy from tee to green and flawless recovery execution to prevail here.  Adding one’s name to the list of past winners like Hogan, Nelson, Palmer, Mickelson, Elkington, Couples, and Faldo is a real career feather in the cap.

With the help of a four month drought drying out the greens and a couple of high tech Transformer rolling machines working the fairways this course is playing hard and fast like a major venue, which it has been on three occasions.  The normally soft and spongy Kikuyu grass has proved bouncy instead and it has facilitated seismic moves up and down this leader board for the less brawny hitters that usually suffer here.

The guys don’t see many classic tracks like this that require so much forethought off the tee and into the green.  Reachable par fives on 1, 11, and 17, brawny par fours that can be three-shotters, especially if the drive is wayward off the tee, and a gut wrenching driveable 315-yard par 4 10th which rewards and punishes with equal discrimination.

The genius of Thomas’s design is that the pin position on any given day can require an entirely different optimal approach line.  Add to that amazing green complexes which can leave an array of unforgiving short side recovery shots from the sticky, strangling Kikuyu.  Experience and humble deference to the challenges will help avoid the evil decree to the scorecard and maybe determine the winner at the end of the day.

In the early going a couple of Master’s winners, Charl Schwartzel and Bubba Watson have rocketed up the leaderboard with five birdies each in the first eight holes.  With 10 guys within 4 of the lead at the midway point this looks like full-impact bumper cars around the back nine.

The glare proves to much for the witness protection crew as they slither out of the limelight and it comes down to names more familiar down the back stretch.  After his promising first nine, Jordan Spieth makes three bogies on the back derails his chances.  Schwartzel bogies 13 and 15 with a South African sandy for birdie in between on 14 finishing fourth.  Brian Harman’s bogie and bounce back birdie sequence on 10 and 11 keeps him in touch a couple back but there is no magic after that.  Dustin Johnson birdies 11 and 15  to close within one but fails to birdie the reachable par 5 17th and comes up one shy.

Bubba among his people stares down his drive on the revered 18th at Riviera

Bubba Watson chasing his first win since the 2012 Masters birdies 11 to reach 14-under and then slips General Lee into cruise control.  He centers a couple of knee-knocker 10-foot par putts on 12 and 13 to maintain spacing and makes conventional pars over the next four.  What’s left for Bubba is to negotiate the Eucalyptus trees protecting the angle on the difficult finishing hole, find the narrow green in the greek amphitheater, and make a par-no small task at Riviera.

Bubba cooly smoothes a knock down driver about 290 down the sprinker line, a short club to 15 feet, and one putt for 64 and all the Skittles.

Wow, 64-64 at Hogan’s Alley on the weekend with no bogies….now that is trusting it.

February, 2014

The only thing missing on Saturday at Torrey Pines South during the Farmers Insurance Open was the USGA logo on all the banners.  The narrowed fairways, long rough, and firm greens of a U.S. Open setup were all present and gave the guys fits.  Average score on Saturday was a about 75.  The number one player in the world, who owns this track, shot 79 and missed the third round cut for the first time in his career.  This was an all-you-can-eat buffet of humble pie if I have ever seen one.

Apparently the shrill voices of the media powers did not go unheeded-they wanted to make sure that Sunday was not a demolition derby broadcast.  As such the set up on Sunday was much more forgiving-a little water on the greens and fewer Clark Kent phone booth pin positions suddenly made for a sporting afternoon at Torrey Downs.  By the time the last group reached the fifth tee 19 guys were within three shots of the lead.

It might take a racing form to keep track of all thoroughbreds with a chance in this race.

The sheer beauty of Torrey’s 1st hole belies the difficult test that lies ahead.

Charley Hoffman wasn’t happy with the 75 he shot on Saturday that included four bogies on the South Course.  He went out after yesterday’s round for some secluded work on his game with his Trackman and said he found something and ought to be in contention on Sunday.

His opening nine was five-under including a hole-in-one on the postcard third and three other birdies getting him to seven-under and within one of the lead.  Guess that technology did have something to share.  A bogey on ten and Charley went into a par stall over the next seven looking like one of those hang gliders just hovering a couple out of the reach of the lead. His birdie on 18 was too little too late as he would finish at seven-under.

Many guys got to hanging about the lead before their draft abandoned them.

Trevor Immelman threw two birdies and an eagle on the board in his first eight to reach seven-under as well.  But he bobbled badly on the ninth taking four shots from in front of the green to make a bogey and stall his momentum.  Two more bogies on 10 and 12 pretty much put his hopes under the posies.  But this is a major champion and three birdies over the next four holes percolated him back within one of the lead.

Even the old nags liked their chances.  K.J. Choi starting the day at two-under bogied the first and then ran off seven birdies over the next 14 holes to grab a share of the lead at eight-under.  He was the first to post eight-under so it was whittle and wait for another couple of hours for K.J.

The youngsters were to be heard, Spiething in tongues, as Jordan continued to talk to his ball trying to coax some birdies and make a run at his second PGA Tour win.  But for every step there was a misstep and so it was just another Sunday schooling for him. Jason Day, the talented 26 year-old Australian, was knocking on the door the entire day. After an opening bogie, he made five birdies to grab a share of the lead at eight-under on the fourteenth.  His bogie-birdie finish would mean that the best he would do was grab a whittling chair next to K.J.

The bombers always do well over the 7600 plus yards of Torrey Pines, the longest layout they play all year on the PGA Tour.  Gary Woodland, Marc Leishman, and Scott Stallings hit it as far as anyone out there and all have first hand experience with the trophy presentations at tour events.

The five-par 13th was one of the few good scoring opportunities on the inward nine.

Woodland had towardness problems, only hitting 3 greens in his first thirteen holes but used a reconstructed short game and a stable full of one putts to stay on par.  Leishman by contrast hit half the fairways but used his strength to find 75% of the greens and remain in the chase.  Stallings made six birdies through fourteen holes and was the first one to reach nine-under and momentarily interrupt the whittling.

There were others-La Jolla native Pat Perez,  Canadian Graham DeLaet,  young Ryo Ishikawa, and Will MacKenzie-the leaderboard permutations seemed endless.

Plenty of jockeying remained to be done down the difficult home stretch at Torrey.  Hitting the fairways and making key putts was going to decide this….it was only a question of how many noses were going to be in the photo finish image.

The 17th was a long iron-short iron but among the leaders it took no prisoners today.

When the dust settled it was just one.  Scott Stallings made a bogie on sixteen but redeemed himself on the par 5 eighteenth hitting the fairway and hoisting a long iron across the pond to safety by just a yard.  Two confident putts for birdie and his nine-under total held off the five other show ponies at eight-under.

Quite a finish this proved to be one exhausting afternoon of spectating.

January 2014

The question is when will Rory regain his form and possibly momentum to challenge Tiger as the number one player in the world.  His play at this week’s Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, the opening event on the European Tour schedule, would indicate that he is closer than others think.  The old Rory was on display all week swinging with good balance and showing precise direction and distance control throughout the bag.

Mcilroy’s game was on but his lack of rules knowledge cost him big time

But Rory’s chance at winning this championship was seriously derailed by an unforced error on the second hole in round three resulting in a two-stroke penalty after the round.  This was a mistake that just should not have occurred-he violated a well known rule that he learned from the earliest days of his junior career.  His drive into the left rough on Saturday ended up on the marked spectator crossing path which afforded him free relief clear of the path.  After he dropped his ball without penalty he failed to notice that his foot was on the white line demarcation of the path.  By rule his stance after the drop must be clear of the marked area to constitute full relief, failing to do so and playing the shot results in a two-stroke penalty.

Being apprised of the violation at the end of his round Rory and a tour official went back to the scene of the crime and recognized from the position of his divot relative to the path line that he had indeed violated the rule of total relief.   His 68 became a 70 before he signed his card and all of a sudden instead of tied for the lead he was a pursuer two shots back.

It had to seem like deja vu all over again for Rory. Two years earlier he missed by one making the sudden death playoff for this championship incurring a two-shot penalty in round two for brushing away sand on his line while his ball was not on the putting surface. Seems like a one-on-one rules retreat with Slugger White might be a good investment of his time.

His play on Sunday was solid, driving the ball well and hitting his approach irons with precision as he had done all week.  But his putting was not sharp and he edged a number of good birdie opportunities down the back nine never closing the gap on the leaders.  The final round 68 once again left him one behind and a bridesmaid.  Rory took some solace in the fact that without the penalty he played the four rounds in less strokes than everyone else and his competitive game seems to have returned.

Phil Mickelson had an important role in the evolving drama.  After a couple of indifferent rounds Phil barely made the half way cut, making the $2 million appearance fee he supposedly got for making this trip half way around the world seem a bit generous.  But Phil The Thrill played lights out on Saturday shooting 63 with 9 birdies, 1 eagle, and low 20‘s in putts. Jumping up 40 plus spots on the leader board his 11-under total was just one off the lead and earned him a spot in the final group on Sunday.

The plot thickened because Phil did what Phil always does.  After three birdies in the first eleven holes on Sunday, he had the lead in hand when he stepped on the tee at the thirteenth.  He proceeded to deposit a wayward drive under a prickly bush well left of the travelled playing area.  Turning down the option of an unplayable and a one stroke penalty, Phil flipped over a long iron and tried to punch it out right handed into the adjacent sandy waste area.  The ball clipped the pricklies and the resultant double hit on the face of the iron cost him another shot and left him in the bush.  He now had to relent, take the unplayable, and ended up with a messy triple bogey seven dropping him three from the lead with five to play.

Once again Phil rose from the ashes, making birdies on two of the next three, closing quickly in the rear view of the leader in the group ahead.  A drive and a fairway metal set up a potential eagle on the last that would have forced a playoff but the long putt from just east of Qatar never threatened the hole and his final round 69 left Phil tied for second with Rory the Golden Boy.

Pablo Larrazabal had the last exclamation point for this championship win

The real story was the 30-year old Spaniard Pablo Larrazabal who outgrinded them all.  With  a 5-under 67 on Sunday he ignored the glare of two of golf’s luminaries on the way to a 14-under winning total.  Only one bogie on the front side Pablo showed an adept short game on the inward half saving important pars to keep abreast of Rory and Mickey.  It was a pair of clutch birdies on 11 and 13 that gave him the lead and a two-putt birdie on the last resulted in a full Seve fist pump, an exclamation point to his third win on the European Tour.

Larrazabal was honest in the post game interview saying of the ten-footer he made for birdie on the last “Thank God it went in, because I would not be here if I had to go to a playoff with Phil and Rory.”   With it all on the line it was Pablo who outplayed Rory and Phrantic Phil and, for now at least, is the front runner in the 2014 Race To Dubai.

January, 2014

If you watched the Tournament of Champions broadcast from Kapalua over the weekend and were listening closely you heard Jordan Spieth constantly talking.  Strategy conversations with his caddie, last minute instructions to his ball in flight, and admonishments to himself once the ball touched down.  Based on his second place finish against a number of major winners I think all within earshot should take note and listen.

The Kapalua Plantation Course venue for the Tournament of Champions is drop dead gorgeous.

As a 20-year old in his second year on the tour Jordan Spieth is the most promising and refreshing story on the tour.  The route that he has taken in the last 12 months is nothing short of astonishing.  From no PGA status and an 810th world ranking in December of 2012 he has notched a tour win, full tour exemption,  President’s Cup appearance, 17th place in the World Golf Rankings, and almost $4.6 million in official winnings.  Not bad for someone who cannot legally drink in many states in our union.

The coolest part about all this is that Jordan does not cut the figure or have the technical golf swing of a can’t miss prodigy.  Rather he has a huge competitive will, full confidence in the competence of his home grown golf swing, and a golf IQ in the top quartile.  This combination has led to a very steep and consistent trajectory of improvement that has all his peers, even the old grizzled veterans, taking notice.

At age 17 he played in his first PGA Tour event at the Byron Nelson in his home town of Dallas.  He had the audacity to make the cut (almost missing his prom as a result) and finish tied for 16th.  He won the U.S. Junior Am in 2009 and 2011 joining Tiger Woods as the only other multiple winner of this prestigious championship.

In 2011 he was the second ranked player on the U.S. Walker Cup team that included current tour pros Harris English, Peter Uihlein, Russell Henley, and Patrick Cantlay.  He had good success halving his foursome’s match and winning two singles matches against the first and third ranked player on the G. B. & I team.  In his freshman year on the University of Texas Longhorn golf team he won three NCAA events, led his team in scoring average, and helped them win the NCAA Championship.

Consistency in performance has been the hallmark of his career so no one should be surprised at his meteoric rise through the PGA ranks in 2013.

After some fits and starts Jordan won enough money in the first quarter to earn Special Temporary Member status.  Working on unlimited sponsor exemptions he steadily gathered acorns until his breakthrough win at the John Deere Classic (formerly known as the Steve Stricker Open) in a three-way sudden death playoff.  He barged his way into this playoff holing out from the greenside bunker on 18 and went on to beat Zach Johnson and David Hearn to win the trophy and a large pile of acorns.

At age 19 he became the first teenager in 82 years to win a PGA event.  This win gave him full status, eligibility for the FedEx pot, and a spot in the next three majors.

Later in the summer at the Wyndham Championship he waged another dramatic charge on Sunday to get into a playoff with another young whippersnapper, Chris Reed.  Reed hit the side hill, obscured flight, pine straw recovery shot of the year on the playoff hole setting up the winning birdie and denying Spieth his second tour win.

Jordan played admirably in the FedEx Playoffs shooting a final round 62 at the Deutsche Bank Championship in Boston in the presence of Phil The Thrill.  A supporting call from Phil to Captain Couples was enough to make him a captain’s pick on the Presidents Cup Team.

Real risk and reward on 17……Spieth was 9 under on the last five holes through the week.

In this past week’s Tournament of Champions Jordan once again proved unfazed by the company he was keeping.  Playing a very technical golf course for the first time with major winners Zach Johnson, Jason Dufner, Webb Simpson, and Adam Scott all in the mix, his steady head earned him a piece of the lead going into the final round.  Only a par stall on the final nine kept him out of another playoff with the eventual winner Zach Johnson.

What you see in this guy is maturity beyond his years and a remarkable presence of mind when the tournament is on the line.  His chatter makes it clear that he is caught up in the moment but the clarity of his decisions and his ability to execute shots when it matters separates him from the other young hotshots.

At the end of 2013 he was 10th on the PGA Money List, 22nd in the World Golf Rankings,
9th in Scoring Average, 7th in the FedEx Cup Standings, and 8th in Back Nine Scoring.  That last number kind of tells it all about this kid.  When the finish line is in sight he knows how to sustain his momentum and challenge for the trophy.

My bet is his banter extends to some post game interviews at the Majors this year.  He may just win one of them at age 20 and surprise the hell out of all of us.

January 2014

In an interview with David Feherty, Larry David, an acknowledged expert on human behavior and golf,  was asked what distinguishes golf from other sports in his mind.  His answer was “humiliation”.  He basically said that personal humiliation is built into the fabric of the game more than any other sport we play.

As usual Larry David is right.  In most sports your moments of infamy go largely unnoticed. You can miss a backhand passing shot by a foot in tennis, lose one point, and rationalize to yourself that you were simply leaning the wrong way. In basketball you can dribble the ball off your foot out of bounds and reason that you saw someone coming in your peripheral vision and lost concentration.  Or, as Larry said, you can strike out in baseball and nobody will criticize you, everyone strikes out in baseball.

But in golf, you are in a bunker next to the 18^th green thinking simple up and down for par and after a mighty blast where sand, debris, and everything except the ball comes hurtling out of the bunker you are left staring at the ground wondering how you could have personally defeated the efficacy of the 60 degrees of loft Cleveland provided specifically for this purpose and instead bladed it into a buried lie in the bank six feet in front of you.

It is humiliating, in a semi-public way.  The three guys you are playing with saw it.  There are eight other guys who will hear about it over lunch from one your good buddies who saw it.  Your wife will hear about it-maybe the dog during this evening’s poop walk.  Maybe a man of the cloth will hear about it, especially if it cost you the back nine and the eighteen and all of a sudden you are a little short for the collection plate on Sunday.

We know the humiliation is coming but yet we still play the game.  We spend hours on the practice ground grooving a technique that will no longer sanction such acts of humiliation.  We read Bob Rotella books and watch self-improvement videos that provide us with psychological techniques to protect us from the moment of weakness that can foster such an act.  But to no avail because we know humiliation is coming, we are just not sure when.

Hell it happens to the guys who are paid the big bucks to play the game.  On any given Sunday you will witness a seasoned pro who is in the hunt short-sided in the heavy rough and faces a delicate pitch to stay in the running.  He proceeds to flip it about two feet instead of two yards dashing his hopes and making his next shot even more short sided than the last one.  The announcer will say, “He was just trying to be too cute with that one” when we really know he simply did what we do all the time, he lost total control of his skill set and threw up on his shoes…this time in front of a major television audience.

Our passion for golf apparently fosters a corresponding reservoir of willful suspension of disbelief.  Either we just convince ourselves that this humiliation cannot happen again or worse we actually relish the challenge of avoiding humiliation as an incentive to keep playing this crazy game.

Either way there is no empirical evidence to support such wishful thinking.  Humiliation is just a round away, a hole away, or a swing away…..take your choice.  And in a sardonic way we are looking forward to it.

August, 2013