The Card – Volume XXXVI

The Card – Volume XXXVI

by | Apr 22, 2024 | The Card

18 observations, thoughts and predictions for the week in golf…

 

  1. I was part of the group that included Ben Crenshaw in April of 2011 when they re-opened Pinehurst #2 after the Coore/Crenshaw restoration.  I love what they did then but having played the golf course again this past Monday I have the same question with an additional follow up as it prepares for another U.S. Open in June.  Are there simply too many bare and reasonable lies in the native areas to adequately and accurately punish errant shots?  Secondly, will the new putting surfaces of Bermuda grass be an additional deterrent against the best players in the world?
  1. I spent a fair amount of time at Streamsong upon its opening in 2012 before the hotel and even before the black course.  I did walk the property with Gil Hanse during construction and marveled at the enormity of the sandpit he was playing in.  Spending the past week there with a large group who were there to enjoy all of it I’m widely impressed by how they’ve grown up as a destination.  The red, blue and black is a great lineup of courses and the addition of the Coore/Crenshaw “The Chain” short course is fantastic.  Add “The Bucket” the 36-hole putting course and Streamsong is humming.  Most importantly, the responsiveness and attitude of the entire staff is next level great.  
  1. The coming week signifies the return of LIV golf to Australia.  Of all the great golf nations, Australia has been negatively impacted as much as any with the golf calendar preventing top players from supporting their great events at the end of the year.  LIV whets their appetite and the event at Adelaide last year was a scene.  The audience for American television will likely be modest but the interest down under will be off the charts.
  1. Miles Russell made history this week as the youngest player to make a Korn Ferry Tour cut at the LECOM Suncoast Classic.  He’s a child.  I mean that respectfully.  He’s not a man child with uncommon size for a 15-year-old.  He’s representative of what 15-year-old boys look like until he gets on a golf course.  He has refined skill and course management of a 25-year-old.  The most important skill any player can possess is the skill to score.  68-66-70-66 for the 15-year-old this past week is silly good.  His public journey has begun and he’s challenging the definition of the word precocious.
  1. I was very bullish on Jordan Spieth to begin 2024 and as we approach the month of May I am concerned about his ability to make it through the season.  He spoke this past week about the condition of his wrist and the only real way to improve the condition short of surgery is extended rest.  The major season comes and goes very swiftly and his chances at his own career grand slam at the PGA at Valhalla next month appear slim. 
  1. I applaud Chevron for investing in the women’s game.  Moving the first major of the year from the historic site in the California desert was not easy but change comes to most things.  What Chevron must do is turn on the city of Houston just weeks after the PGA Tour was just in town.  The atmosphere has been decidedly flat for two years and I know the town provides options that’s why they must be more creative to initiate on site participation from fans.  Bedroom communities with few options are captive, big cities need to be motivated.
  1. The Golfers Journal film on the story of Cabot Citrus Farms is worth your time.  Formerly known as World Woods the rebirth of this property is a fantastic study.  Having gone to World Woods in 1996 I thought it was the future.  An outpost of two distinctly different courses as a true golf destination.  It ultimately failed for reasons explained in the film.  This is the good stuff being done by Golfers Journal.
  1. Rory McIlroy heads to a team event and the end of April without a win on the PGA Tour in 2024.  He won in the middle east to start the year and vowed to play more heading toward the major season and the results are average by his standards.  One top 10 and a final round scoring average outside the top 115 is simply unacceptable for Rory.  May better be his month with his annual return to Quail Hollow and the Wells Fargo Championship followed by the PGA at Valhalla.  Two places with great memories you can only hope stir his performance level.
  1. So Yeon Ryu officially ended her career this past week at the Chevron Championship.  Six LPGA victories including two major victories as well as ascending to world number 1 punctuate her career achievements.  Above all that bold type was the thing that defined her GRACE. Ryu was dignified, delightful, grateful and always accommodating.  She was and will remain such a credit to the game of golf.
  1. Gordon Sargent of Vanderbilt announced this week that he will return to school for his final year.  He has a PGA Tour card secured through PGA Tour U and with that luxury and a nice stream of income coming in through excellent sponsorship Sargent will be the biggest star in college golf for another year.  Vanderbilt has been agonizingly close to winning a national title but missed qualifying for match play last year in the NCAA tournament. This current group has tons of experience and depth and will enter May as one of the favorites.  Sargent is setting marks at Vanderbilt that will likely endure for decades.
  1. Ludvig Aberg gets plenty of attention but his consistency for a player seeing golf courses and going through the professional acclimation process would be amplified even more if he wasn’t being overshadowed by the person he most resembles in demeanor and maturity, Scottie Scheffler.  
  1. Sahith Theegala will be on the United States Presidents Cup team.  I’m anti hot-takery but that’s as close as I’ll venture into that over-populated landscape.
  1. In 2005 Annika Sorenstam and Tiger Woods combined to win 16 times including two major victories each.  The current runs of Nelly Korda and Scottie Scheffler have the elements to equal that tandem for a calendar year.  Korda and Scheffler share an equipment company in TaylorMade and an apparel provider in Nike.  The opportunities for collaboration seem bountiful.
  1. Billy Horschel winning the Corales Puntacana event marks his 8th career win on the PGA Tour.  Eight wins in any era is a bounty for a player.  His inability to contend in majors has kept him from being on more than the one Presidents Cup team but multiple playoff wins, winning Memorial and being a FedEx Cup champion is a very productive career with tread left on the tires.
  1. Nelly Korda’s career at the beginning of 2024 was eight wins and one major title.  As of Sunday night, her 2024 season is five wins (in a row) and one major title.  To say she’s embarking on a career year is just the beginning of the narrative.  We may be witness to one of the great seasons in women’s golf history and that includes a gold medal opportunity in Paris.  Where this goes with interest and mainstream appeal is the most interesting question.  She’s a golf rock star.
  1. Scottie Scheffler’s career to begin 2024 was six career wins with one major title.  As of now his 2024 season is four wins and one major title.  He’s having his best career season, and it’s not May 1.  He also has a reasonable chance to have the type of year that is comparable in many ways to the best years of Tiger Woods, omitting the 2000 season which is simply not imaginable.  A Vardon trophy, maybe multiple major victories, seven or eight wins and a plethora of top 5’s.  Dominance at a time of global parity is widely impressive.  This only gets more interesting.
  1. The PGA Tour rolling the dice on Sunday without any alteration to their tee times is dubious and confounding.  Every solitary meteorologist had storms as a distinct, if not definite possibility, for the low country of South Carolina.  Oddly, the painfully slow pace of the Chevron Championship may have allowed for a larger audience for the women while the men waited out a lengthy delay.
  1. The Zurich Classic is a departure with the team format being thrust into the heart of the spring and major championship season, but they did the right thing when they made the change because they were dying on the scheduling vine.  This week they get Rory and Shane Lowry in the field as the result of an inebriated post Ryder Cup lunch pledge to each other.  They still need to make better ball the format on the final day when you can see teams go crazy who are off the pace.
Masters Diary – Saturday

Masters Diary – Saturday

by | Apr 13, 2024 | Blog

Oftentimes golfers give the impression that they are never satisfied.  Friday at Augusta National exposed the frayed edges of a field of players taxed to the limit by a grueling examination of golf.  The calamity of Jordan Spieth on the 15th hole Friday morning that resulted in a quadruple bogey 9 was the first of so many colossal blunders by the best players in the world.  Viktor Hovland’s had a 3-inch back stab that effectively ended his week.  Zach Johnson made a triple bogey on the 12th hole and the patrons, 150 yards away gave him a smattering of applause because they truly had no clue what he made on the hole and Johnson reflexively told them to F-off.  Not a good look.  Justin Thomas was at level par standing on the 15th tee and 75 minutes later he was 7 over par and headed back to Jupiter, Florida for the weekend a fractured golfer.  The scoring was historically high, the winds were unrelenting and the path of play challenged daylight.  But the beauty of an elite golf competition is that you sleep on it three nights.

I arrived at Augusta National on Saturday morning at 7:15 am.  It was cool and serene with emerging light all around as I made my way from the press building to the area where patrons first step foot on the lush overseeded turf of this historic venue.  I had never witnessed the procession of patrons being given entry just to the right of the first fairway and after the brief instructions which included “no running and have a fabulous day” the people were off to put their chairs down at various points only to wait hours before a competitive golf shot is struck at those locales.  I proceeded up to the main entrance to the clubhouse and swiftly walked through the building and out the back door. I wanted to walk across the golf course and through all the crosswalks to see which memories would strike me first at each hole I walked across and through.  

The 18th hole was on my left as I proceeded down the hill and there are a collage of moments that sprang to mind but I stopped at the big fairway bunker on the left side of the fairway to recall the bunker shot struck by Sandy Lyle in the 1988 Masters in the final round.  From there I crossed at the front of the 8th tee and thought of the two-shot swing in the final round of the 2014 Masters.  First-timer Jordan Spieth made bogey and Bubba Watson made birdie, his 3rd birdie in five holes.  The players were then tied walking to 9 tee and Spieth would bogey the 9th to fall behind and never catch Watson again on that Sunday.  The 2nd green was my next stop and Louis Oosthuizen’s albatross is front and center in my mind as I can see his ball drip into the hole in the final round of the 2012 Masters.  The 4-iron from 253 yards would be one of the most famous shots of all time had he won the Masters, but Bubba produced his own miracle shot in the playoff to make the “2 on 2” a de facto footnote.  The 3rd hole is one of my favorites and I always am reminded of Jack Nicklaus chipping in for birdie in the final round of the 1998 Masters at age 58.  He would finish 6th, just another reminder of how well elders are treated at the Masters.

The 7th hole cross walk follows the 3rd hole and I have multiple Tiger memories from the 7th that sprang to mind.  His hole out 2 in the final round in 2010 and his bullet tee shot in the final round in 2019 when he was teetering, and Francisco Molinari looked bulletproof.  Molinari made bogey and Tiger made birdie and it was game on.  I then walked behind the 6th green and the hole-in-one by Chris Dimarco in the first round of the 2004 Masters was first to mind.  Chris almost made a one the following day as well and was agonizingly close to winning two Masters in back-to-back years.  Making my way up the hill right of the 6th hole and to the left side of the 5th fairway, one of the hardest holes on the course, where few likely remember in 1995 Jack Nicklaus made 2 not once but twice on the hole known as Magnolia.  I stopped to examine the 5th green closely as it was originally intended to be an homage to the road hole at St. Andrews and when you look at the front portion of the green you realize that green couldn’t be built today at almost anywhere.

Once I got to the long and steep flight of stairs that sits conspicuously behind the 6th tee and the 5th green, I sat down to look down at the 16th green.  Who knows what might happen there this weekend but Tiger’s chip-in in 2005, Nicklaus’ long birdie putt in 1975, Jack’s almost hole-in-one in 1986 and Greg Norman’s rinsed tee shot in 1996 flooded my thoughts.

The activity on the golf course at 8:15 this morning is uncommon since there would not be any golfers reaching the far end of the golf course for hours.  Augusta National is a severely tilted piece of the land from the top of the hill by the clubhouse down to Amen corner and the 12th green and it also disorients your mind because of all the moments we know of, witnessed in person, or saw on television for a lifetime.  This place makes me emotional.  It makes me miss my dad to the point that I am tearing up writing these words because all of my best firsts in golf were with him, including here.  I am grateful to have these moments and the motivation to venture out on the golf course early on Saturday morning considering how compromised I was several years ago by my alcoholism.  I have never taken being here for granted but now more than ever I am humbled to be given the time and filled with gratitude to seek the solitude that mornings like today can provide.

This afternoon will be tense, entertaining, stressful and filled with high drama, but I’ll remember my Saturday morning, walking alone, reliving great moments and being thankful for this precious time at this special place.