Woodmont Country Club does not have a par three course like Augusta National or Bandon Dunes.  Yet this weekend our club hosted a Three Par Competition with over 60 of our members in attendance turning our storied North Course into a 2115 yard Par 54 championship venue.

After a Grill Room wide search, the D & D Design team, in their first collaborative effort together, was tapped to create an intriguing array par three holes with a blend of the characteristics of the Golden Age and a touch of modern design.  Using alternative routing the team discovered holes with playing lines never imagined by the original designer Alfred Tull back in 1950 .  Like all timeless designs, holes like Ode to Pine Valley, Redan, Blind Man’s Bluff, The Road Hole, Ball Washer, and Tear Bucket brought out the best the topography had to offer and provided long time members with shot challenges they had never experienced before.

Throw in chilly temperatures, a steady breeze off the Rockville Court house, and slick greens with double digit downhill readings and it was all the field could handle.  There was a lot of head shaking, mumbling, and staring up at the heavens as players meandered to the next tee.

For the men and women competing for gross and net honors holes ranging from 75 to 190 yards brought imagination and the full use of their shot making skills into play.

Ode to Pine Valley-160 yards of carry over rough, trees, and a waste area of macadam rock and dirt-would feel right at home in Camden, N.J.

Gooseless, an homage to the tireless work of our Border Collie, had a phone booth pin location which only a man with a red cape could get at.

A true Redan this required a deft right to left curve landing softly on the top tier feeding to the pin below.

Pondering the line on the Tree Hugger seventh.

The green staff showed no mercy in setting Sunday pins throughout.

Pinball, in the finest Irish tradition, was a blind three-story pitch from 90 yards  requiring the creative use of side and back cushions to get a look at birdie.

Tear Bucket- a deft running pitch over water, rock wall, and a five-foot transition in the green to a shelved pin.

As you can see, the crew had the bucket surrounded.

At Wooten’s Worry players had to focus beyond the drop dead beauty of this green complex and hit one with sufficient enthusiasm to carry the false front and stay below the hole for a reasonable chance to convert a par.

At The End  the back bunker, which rarely comes into play on the normal line of this finishing hole, is the first hurdle. A green that steeply pitches away from this line means an effective shot has to be played away from the flag and rely on a ground fade to get it close.

All I can say is that based on the exit polls of the participants, this unique competition is a tradition in the making.

April, 2013

It has taken over a half a century to correct one of the great statistical anomalies in golf.  Australia, a sporting nation with a rich tradition of golfing champions, had never had one of it’s own fitted for a Green Jacket.  Until now.

Adam Scott, with a dramatic display of unflappable shot making and clutch putting, won the coveted Masters prize burying a 12-foot birdie putt on the second playoff hole against two-time major champion Angel Cabrera.

Besides setting the historical record back on it’s keel, Scott swept away with his broom stick putter the haunting memory of his fold at last year’s Open Championship at Lytham and the notion that a guy with rock star looks and the talent to match could not win the big one.

On a soggy day in Georgia the leader board was full of Australian flags with Jason Day, Marc Leishman, and Adam Scott jockeying for position down the back nine with Cabrera, Tiger, and Sneds.  But most fell victim to the change of pace of rain-soaked greens or the rapid pace of their own heartbeats.

In the end it was just two guys-the Argentine and the Aussie-who played a sequence of riveting shots over the last four holes of regulation and two playoff holes in a most dramatic finish at a place known for dramatic finishes.  It would be a charismatic mano-a-mano duel of two of the most-liked characters on the global golf scene.

After a birdie on fifteen got him to 8-under Scott edged the hole on sixteen and settled for par, parred seventeen from the mayor’s office, and then set the mark at 9-under as he snuck in a dramatic 20-foot birdie putt on the 18th with Angel watching from the fairway behind.

Cabrera had a wrestling match with the five pars on the back nine and had fallen out of the lead until he buried a 20-footer on the pivotal par 3 sixteenth to get back to 8-under.  He burned the edge on seventeen and made a par.  After watching the hoopla of Scott’s heroics in front of him on 18 this great champion hitched up his pants and did his best Arnie imitation stuffing his approach from 165 to three feet to set off the crowd again and force the playoff with a matching birdie.

It almost ended in Angel’s favor on the first playoff hole when his birdie chip from in front of the green did a drive by, staring down into the cup before slipping by the right edge to the agony of the green side patrons.  The theater continued on the second playoff hole where both players nuked their drives and hit articulate irons to set up a putting duel on the stage of the tenth green.  Angel stroked another perfect putt, up the hill with a three-foot break from about 20-feet, just to see it skim the right edge.  The golf gods denied him again.

With the sage Stevie Williams hovering over his shoulder, a man with a closet full of positive Major experience under his previous employer, Scott heeded the advice and slipped the game winner into the front of the hole setting off a nuclear celebration down under.

Like so many of his country’s golfing greats Scott has won all over the world.  Nine wins on the PGA Tour, seven on the European Tour including the Alfred Dunhill in 2001, the Players Championship in 2004, the Tour Championship in 2005, the Australian Open in 2009, the WGC Bridgestone in 2011, and the Australian Masters last fall and now the coveted championship of the state of Georgia.

Scotty stands alone (wikipedia.org)

At the tender age of 32, with the old Tiger swing, the old Tiger caddie, and a refreshed confidence on the short grass with his walking stick, Scott has moved to third in the world ranking behind Tiger and Rory and is poised to fill his cabinet with many more major championship trophies over the next 10 years.  Kangaroos rule!!!!!

April, 2013

Brandt Snedeker says that your scorecard is not safe at Augusta until you have played Amen Corner.  The travail that your scorecard can experience in the three hole stretch of 11, 12, and 13 is well documented in Master’s lore.

Sneds entered the corner at one-under after a roller coaster front side with four birdies, a bogey, and a double.  So some trepidation was in order when he hit his approach into eleven and saw it disappear into the green side pond.  A pitch and a marvelous 20ish footer to “save” bogie had him gasping for air.

His approach into the short par three at twelve did not provide any oxygen as it carried through the green leaving a delicate pitch back at the shallow green and the water.  But from there he executed a near impossible up and down to save a par.

On the risk-reward par five thirteenth his second shot found Rae’s Creek but he drew a playable lie in the lush grass within the hazard.  A dexterous up and down to make a birdie and Brandt had somehow negotiated Amen Corner even par with his C iron game.

Coolest part is that I could enjoy all of this from the comfort of my desk at work.  Visiting the Masters website www.masters.com and clicking on Live At Amen Corner I watched every group negotiate this slippery corner of the course.  It is free and gives you the full HD experience with CBS/Golf Channel camera coverage and their announcers doing the play-by-play.

With his scorecard in tact Snedeker slipped back into cruise control and, with a birdie on the fifteenth, he posted a respectable two-under 70 for the opening round of the 2013 Masters.  If he goes on to have success this weekend he will look back with a bit of reverence to how he managed to get through Amen Corner unscathed on Thursday.

April, 2013

Kootch and Rose…….sounds like a new brand of a southern comfort whiskey. Instead both, in their young thirties entering the prime of their golfing careers, are rising stars in the game steadily building resumes that have put them solidly in the top ten of the World Golf Rankings.

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The two burst on the golf radar screen at the same time in 1998 as pedigree Amateurs elbowing their way into the major Championships that year. They had competed against each other at the Walker Cup at Quaker Ridge the previous year and became friends when they played a practice round together at Loch Lomand the week before the 1998 Open Championship. Kootch introduced his 20 year-old telegenic smile to our TV screens with flash performances in The Masters (T21) and U.S. Open (T14) that year. Rose stunned the British golf fans as an 18 year-old holing out a dramatic wedge shot from the rough on the last hole to tie for fourth at Royal Birkdale.

But then the waiting began. As is common with young players both of them hit the pot hole laden developmental road soon after they turned pro. Kucher won the Honda Classic in 2002 but did not hoist a trophy in the winner’s circle again until Turning Stone in 2009. Justin Rose suffered the indignity of missing the cut in his first 21 pro events but broke through to win The Dunhill in 2002 and three more times on the European Tour before he won The Memorial on the PGA Tour at Jack’s Place in 2010.

The breakout year for both of them was 2010-Kootch won the Fed Ex Barclays in 2010, The Players in 2011, and finished top ten in the World Gold Championships 7 times since then including his win at the Accenture Match Play this year over Hunter Mahan.
In the majors the last three years he has been top ten 4 times with a T3 at The Masters last year. For Rose it was the Fed Ex BMW in 2011 and 4 top tens in WGC events including the Cadillac Championship at Doral in 2011. In 2012 he finished tied for eighth at The Masters and third at the PGA.

Between them they have 13 PGA and European Tour wins, 2 FedEx Cup event victories, 2 WGC wins, 5 Ryder and President Cup appearances, 5 World Cup appearances, and a Players Championship.

So what is missing……a Major. The two are at the top of that infamous list of the best players in the world yet to win a Major. But I sense the wait could be over for them over the next 24 months. Both have been in top form so far this year and I would not be surprised to see Bubba slipping that Green Jacket over the shoulders of one of the distillery brothers this April.

March, 2013

34 year-old Kevin Streelman starring in those Wilson Staff commercials as the super confident pro juxtaposed to the high bravado slacker seemed like a stretch to me.  Maybe those producers knew something the rest of us had missed about a guy who had yet to win on the PGA Tour.  Winning the Tampa Bay Championship from behind Streelman displayed unexpected moxy of someone who had been there and done that.

Boo Weekly came from nowhere shooting a sizzling 63 in the final round to set the clubhouse lead at 8-under.  But he would have three hours to eat pizza and sip hard lemonade and see if anyone could match his number and extend his day.  The pursuers included Streelman, Justin Leonard, Jim Furyk, and defending champ Luke Donald. Most of them wilted under the pressure struggling to hit fairways and greens on the tight tree -ined back nine of the Copperhead Course at Innisbrook.

Streelman donned his red cape on the 13th tee and hit a baby fade boldly into a phone booth location between water, bunker, and high rough on the par 3 to set up an unlikely 6-foot birdie putt and grab the outright lead at 9-under.  A couple of routine pars on the next two brought him to the fabled snake pit, the last three holes on the Copperhead Course, with the task of making pars to protect a slender one shot lead.

On sixteen he put the thrill back into a three-footer slipping a putt into the right side pocket to save a par.  At the long par three seventeenth he put that same aggressive baby fade on his tee ball covering the flag line all the way leaving him a 20-foot birdie putt right up the gut that he buried for another unlikely birdie and a sweet two-shot lead at 10-under going to eighteen.

It was evident that close call misses pursuing in previous events had taught Streelman that playing conservative with the lead is a formula for disappointment on the tour.  He played full bore. flag hunting all the way in to close out his first win in style.

We should not be all that surprised at this because Streelman has been on an uphill trajectory for years.  After winning a million bucks in the year-long Kodak Challenge in 2009, he had 11 top-10 finishes on the tour in 2010 and 2011 and another 3 in 2012 to compile over $6 million in career winnings.

Guess it is time for a Streelman image rethink for the rest of us.  At least this day that “Seriously” line in the Staff commercial seems to fit like a glove.

March, 2013

It seems incumbent upon most of us to cut Rory McIlroy a bit of slack when it comes to day-to-day behaviors. He is young, likeable, and seemingly without an enormous ego that prompts rash acts of selfish behavior.

But his withdrawal from the Honda Classic this morning after going 7 over on his first 8 holes is the stuff of youthful indiscretion and probably worse. I don’t doubt that the pain in his wisdom tooth was very discomforting and trying to maintain his focus on mundane things like reading the grain or factoring in the crosswinds was extremely difficult.

As the defending champion and one of the two marquee players fans had paid their hard earned money to venture out to see today, he owed it to the sponsors and the paying public to bear with it for two more hours, sign the card with an 82, and then head to the periodontist’s office.

The media should take him to task for this, but they won’t. There will be lots of we feel your pain rationalization of his action. But truth be told most of us go to work with aches and pains like this every day to perform what we are paid to do. Unless Rory had Swoosh golf ball like swelling in his cheek or puss pouring from the abscess I think he should have shouldered on and finished the round for posterity sake.

Maybe I am being a bit harsh but when you are the main attraction at the circus it is your responsibility to do everything in your power to make sure the show goes on as planned.

March, 2013

Rory took ownership of this mistake in judgement in an interview two days later with Michael Bamberger of Sports Illustrated.

(Click to read Rory’s apology interview with Bamberger)

Tim Finchem’s did the full Jim Baker in his award winning performance announcing the PGA Tour’s objection to the intended ban on anchored putting.  The man was smooth building his case on the interest of everyman, or at least an inflated 20% estimate of all amateurs he says are using this method as a salve for their putting woes.  He carefully left out of his explanations any mention of the old guys on his Apostle Tour or the equipment manufacturers who have the deepest self interest in keeping these walking sticks in play.

With the PGA Tour and the PGA of America now weighing in against the ban the USGA and R & A are almost without a tether on this issue.  These two professional organizations will be putting on the full court press over the next month through their access to broadcasts, press conferences, and probably public service announcements trying to rile public opinion and force the USGA to relent on this intended ban.

The self interest represented in these two bodies is simple.  The PGA of America and it’s member club professionals sell tee times, lessons, and equipment to the broad spectrum of amateurs playing the game.  They view the anchored putting method as instrumental in keeping the interest and resulting cash contributions of players whose putting acumen has gone south.  BTW the equipment goliaths of the game will be more than happy to provide financial support to present this position to the wider public.

In spite of what Tim said, the PGA Tour could give a rat’s behind about the young players who grew up honing this method, they would throw Keegan, Webb, and Carl off the plank in a heartbeat.  Their concern is sustaining the competitive level and public interest in their second cash cow The Champion’s Tour.  Now there is a place where the 20% estimate might be low and without it many of their marquee guys-Freddie and Bernard to name a couple-might not be shilling Pro-Am slots and Mitsubishi Electric air conditioning units any more.  Without Vijay, Sluman, Michael Allen, and the like we could be watching club pros competing for the Charles Schwab points each weekend.

Tim made it sound like his constituency, the PGA Tour pros, were solidly behind their position opposing the ban.  Yet many of the best players in the world, including Mr. Woods, have sided with the USGA saying that the anchored method is not really a putting stroke and it does provide an advantage to tour players who have adopted it.

My view is that the ruling bodies picked a fight on the wrong issue because in the end the implementation of the ban is more about principle than tournament results.  They should have pointed their arrows at the ball or the trampoline club heads instead.  These are the things that have radically changed the way the game is played and marginalized some of the most revered traditional venues in the game.

February, 2013

As the reigning FedEx Champion Brandt Snedeker really has nothing to prove to anyone.  Yet there are those in the pundit chairs that say that to be a truly great player he has to prove able to play with the lead and win from in front.  We know that he can win from behind, he did it last year at Torrey Pines when, a full half a dozen furlongs behind, he snuck up and swiped the trophy from Kyle Stanley who was having some trophy gripping issues down the stretch.

It is not like Sneds has been dogging it this year.  He leads the FedEx Cup and has $1.7 million in earnings including a 3rd at the Tournament of Champions at Kapalua, a 2nd at The Farmers Insurance at Torrey Pines, and a 2nd at the Waste Management in Phoenix.  And that’s in just four starts.

He began the day tied with the gangnam dance king James Hahn and quietly eagled the second hole to make a champion’s statement that the field needs to get on it’s horse if it  was going to chase him down.  Three more birdies ensued before an unfamiliar three-putt bogie on 9 to finish the front side in 32.

It is that pop putting stroke that makes Sneds a special player and he popped in birdie putts of 25 feet on 10 and 15 feet on 11 to build himself a four shot cushion heading for home. Pretty much on cruise control the rest of the way he made one more birdie for good measure at 17 and a par on 18 for 65.  It sealed a comfortable two shot win at 19-under par and validated his new parking place as the #4 player in the World Golf Rankings.

Not that he needed something else to concern himself but Sneds and his fellow Vanderbilt patron Toby Wilt were in the hunt for the Pro-Am prize on Sunday as well. Their connection is deep in that Wilt played football at Vandy and created the athletic scholarship that facilitated Snedeker attendance at Vanderbilt.  In the end both guys missed putts on the last hole and they had to settle for a first place tie at 31-under in the Pro-Am competition.  It was two for the price of one for Sneds today.

Now the only thing missing from his resume is that major championship.  For Snedeker the ultimate would be the Green Jacket and he was very close to that in 2008 before a heart breaking final round.  Considering the fact that he hit close to 80% of the fairways, 80% of the greens, and putted like Crenshaw this week it might just be the U.S. Open at Merion that bests suits his game.  Opie wins the Open…..has a nice ring to it.

February, 2012

(Click to read a wonderful Mike Bamberger article on the Snedeker developmental years)

More than anyone of his generation Phil Mickelson has come to exemplify the competitive and personal demeanor of the King, Arnold Palmer.  Whether it Phil’s swashbuckling willingness to take on any risk/reward shot, his penchant for coming from back in the pack with a scintillating charge, or his connection with the burgeoning crowd thing.   He even freely proliferates Arnie’s signature thumbs gesture to any man, woman, or child with whom he can make eye contact.

Playing in front of a quasi home crowd at the Waste Management Phoenix Open this week, Phil was driving it in play, sticking it close, making the putts, and smiling on all burners as he scorched TPC Scottsdale with a 28-under total on his way to his 41st PGA Tour win.  The adoration meter was in the red zone all week as the locals cheered him to his record sixth win in the Valley of the Sun.

Only a full Seabiscuit lip-out on the final putt on Thursday kept Phil from a folkloric 59 in the first round.  On day two he needed par on 18 to set the tour record for low 36-hole score ever on tour only to find the water off the tee and make double.  By the end of day Saturday he was 24-under carding a 64 for a six shot lead over Brandt Snedeker.

It was a bit of a grind on Sunday with Sneds parlaying a 31 on the front side and catching Phil’s full attention.  Within four shots after a birdie on 6  Sneds threw down the gauntlet  sticking it to 10 feet on the par 3 seventh.   Phil delivered the required message with an over-hill, over-dale 55-foot putting effort that traveled across 20 feet of fringe before finding the bottom of the cup for birdie.  His five birdies on the day were good for a 67 and a four-shot margin at the end of the day.

Bones Mackay, Phil’s longtime wingman has seen it all over the years but he has never witnessed one man’s mastery of the three pars like he has this week. Phil had nine 2’s on the par threes for the week-on Thursday alone he had a total of 8 shots for the day on the short holes.  Now that is some kind of distance control with your irons.

The Waste Management is known for huge crowds (179,000 on Saturday alone) and raucous revelry in the coliseum atmosphere of the 16th hole and no one stirred them like their favorite son Phil when he stuck it to two feet on Saturday.

At the end of the day the biggest winner is the PGA Tour who, in the first five weeks of the 2013 season, has seen both Tiger and Phil dominate on their way to victory.  Seems to me there could be a bushel full of thumbs up come the Masters in April.

February, 2013

Those who have played the Coore-Crenshaw Plantation Course at Kapalua in Maui know that the overall elevation change of over 400 feet presents players with exposed places on the course where normal winds can play havoc with the flight of the ball.

An elite field of 30 winners of the 2012 PGA sanctioned events are playing the opening event of the 2013 season at Kapalua in the Hyundai Tournament of Champions in winds that will crease your forehead.  What is usually a low impact event with guaranteed paychecks, no cuts, and four days in the paradise of Hawaii has turned into an excruciating endurance test with wind and rain canceling the opening round three days in a row.

Holes like one and two, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, seventeen, and eighteen sit with the barest exposure to the wind.  All of these holes have severe elevation transitions as well wind influence which makes finding ballast and maintaining balance during a swing a supreme challenge.  There were hats separating from their owners and doing the mamba 150 yards down the fairway.

The crying and whining over the weekend was vitriolic with guys standing over putts only to watch a sudden gust blow the ball from under their feet right off the green.  Sideways rain made keeping bodies and equipment dry an impossible task.  Baby draws were turning into snorgeling duck hooks without warning.  This was not what these guys had visualized when they stepped off the plane last week anticipating four days of leisure and a fat check.

Finally on Monday, the scheduled final day for the event, the players hoofed 36 holes up and down the severe inclines of this course in winds gusting over 50 m.p.h. setting up a final 18-hole showdown on Tuesday to make this a 54-hole official tournament.  They should have been handing out purple hearts to the caddies for whom it was the Myth of Sisyphus hauling the freight up and down these hills.

In spite of all the verbal grousing these guys are professionals and they can play some amazing shots under the wind.  You don’t see this many three-quarter swings at a three-day Dave Pelz golf school.  The bigger hitters seemed to be able to best mitigate the wind effect.  Bombers like Dustin Johnson, Keegan Bradley, Bubba Watson, Tommy Two Gloves, and Nick Watney dominate the leader board with two notable exceptions, the putting geniuses of Steve Stricker and Brandt Snedeker.

Dustin Johnson  hit it green side 410 yards downwind at 12, drove the green 300 yards into the wind at the 14th, and hit a 275 yard fairway metal into the wind to reach the par five 15th in two.  One last five iron to five feet on the 603-yard 18th to make eagle and set the pace for two rounds with a 11-under score.  This is far from over, especially if the wind dies down tomorrow.  Dustin is going to have his hands full on Tuesday trying outrun the show ponies looking over his shoulder.

As is always the case in Hawaii, the reak bonus is having Mark Rolfing doing the coverage.  His knowledge of these islands and the type of golf it takes to be successful here is a breath of intelligent wind on the Golf Channel broadcasts.

January, 2013