Golfing News & Blog Articles

Golf.com’s Kevin Cunningham follows up on a situation that arose Friday at the Wyndham. I didn’t think much of it because the ball in question seemed to be moving and that Rafael Cabrera-Bello was in his right to walk slowly, even if the period lasted over 10 seconds.

Turns out, the rules officials on site didn’t see it that way. Cabrera-Bellow told what press was assembled at Sedgefield that he had convince officials not to penalize him.

“So what they wanted to speak to me about is they felt that I took too long to approach the hole,” Cabrera-Bello said Friday night. “We reviewed the footage and the referee said that it was so, so close and so tight, but they wanted to know if I have deliberately to slow down my walk to the hole and I told them that I didn’t, I slowed down because I saw my playing partners walking in.”

According to Rule 13.3a, in such a scenario players have a reasonable time to walk up to the ball and then 10 more seconds to wait for it to fall. If it falls in after that time, the golfer receives one penalty stroke.

That would account for the overall 20 seconds here, but let that be a lesson: you have the walk-up time plus 10 seconds—should you be so fortunate to have one teetering on the edge.

The putt:

Telegraphing another long day with her slower peers at the Renaissance Club, Stacy Lewis vowed Sunday to not complain to her caddie.

This is what it has come to.

Lewis prevailed in the Aberdeen Standard Investments Ladies Scottish Open after four-player playoff that included Azahara Munoz, Cheyenne Knight and Emily Pederson.

Here is what she said after Saturday’s tepid round, from Beth Ann Nichols:

“I think the biggest challenge for me tomorrow is staying in what I’m doing,” Lewis, “and the pace of play is dreadfully slow, and that doesn’t play into my favor. People I’m playing with are pretty slow.”

I’ll admit it’s the links golf. Deprived of a proper links season, we have an epic day ahead this Sunday book-ended by links golf (and yes purists, I’m aware neither is technically a links).

I know I don’t have to tell you about the Wyndham Rewards runner-up race and Playoff(C) ramifications Sunday at soggy Sedgefield. Frankly, I just don’t want to add any stress in your life.

So let’s focus on the “other” golf. In the pandemic era this one is set up to be a doozy.

If you’re up at 5 am ET, Golf Channel will have the European Tour finale where a 2017 Walker Cupper, Conor Syme, leads a teammate, Sam Horsfield. Beef, now comfortable playing in a COVID-19 world, is lurking.

Easily the most compelling Sunday leaderboard can be found at a firmer, faster Renaissance Club in lovely Gullane, and other than the creepy Aberdeen Standard adverts on the tees, the final round on Golf Channel runs from 7-11 am ET.

While Bandon Dunes hosts the U.S. Amateur, this happened over at the Sheep Ranch. We’ll take their word for it on the ball going in giving the quality of the reactions. A putter at 16 to make 1:

Amazing golf isn't just being played on #BandonDunes in the #USAmateur this week, it's also being played on #SheepRanch. Check out this ace by @the4koehnkes (IG) on No. 16 with her putter! The boys on Bandon may want to take notes on playing the ground game more often. 😉 @USGA pic.twitter.com/hvaAuqzn72

Si Woo Kim takes a two-stroke lead into Sunday’s Wyndham final round, but it’s the two shots he hit while tape rolled (or things were beamed to the Cloud…you get the idea).

After an ace at Sedgefield’s third, Kim had a chance for another as predicted by Jim Nantz.

The next obvious question was answered by Brian Wacker at GolfDigest.com:

Only three other players on tour have ever made two aces in one round, with Brian Harman the last to do so at the 2015 Barclays. Kim, meanwhile, will have to instead settle for a two-shot lead as he tries to pick up his third career victory on Sunday.

Here’s a lede from the Akron Beacon-Journal’s Marla Ridenour I wouldn’t have seen coming a few years ago:

Reacquainting himself with Pilates and focused on losing weight during the coronavirus lockdown, Colin Montgomerie admitted he gave up his favorite foods.

Anyhow, if you haven’t seen of the Senior Players, Monty is one off the 36 hole lead and preaching about his impressive transformation. Bryson’s diet, it is not. The goals are also different:

Montgomerie said he chose Pilates because he believes it will extend his career.

“Flexibility is going to stop us,” he said. “It’s what stopped Nick Faldo, it’s what stopped Seve [Ballesteros] in his later years. It stopped Ian Woosnam, really. It stopped Sandy [Lyle] many times. There’s only one of that top five that’s kept going, and it’s Bernhard [Langer]. And I don’t know what all he does.

“But flexibility will stop us playing the game. I’m very lucky, I’m very flexible, but I’ve got to keep it.”

If you aren’t familiar with the National Links Trust and their efforts to resurrect rundown muni’s of architectural merit, you can read about them here. They are currently auctioning off some sensational golf for those with the means to overpay to play a classic or with an influencer.

You can see the full list of rounds donated for the latest auction here.

For those with the opportunity, three that still looked like good deals to me: Ridgewood, Somerset and Wannamoisett.

Maybe he was channeling his inner Danny Noonan working for Judge Smails, who knows, but Oliva Pinto’s U.S. Amateur run ended when his local looper tested the bunker surface and cost a loss of hole.

Brentley Romine with all of the details of the bizarre scene at Bandon Dunes for GolfChannel.com.

David Shefter sets up the quarterfinals here with two former U.S. Junior Amateur winners in the group hoping to match Tiger Woods as the only winner of a Junior and Amateur.

Video of the infraction:

It all came down to the 18th hole.

And then this happened.

The outcome? A 1 up win for Tyler Strafaci. #USAmateur pic.twitter.com/JFJcoSKfFQ

While ESPN and Fox led the annual Sports Emmy Award winners for 2019, CBS took home three awards and Golf Channel one. This Golf Digest item sums it all up.

For CBS at Augusta, two noteworthy Emmys of the technical front:

OUTSTANDING TECHNICAL TEAM REMOTE
The Masters (CBS/CBS Sports Network)

THE GEORGE WENSEL TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
The Masters — Every Shot, Every Hole  (CBS)

And then the equivalent of Best Picture, Album of The Year and TV Series Drama…

OUTSTANDING LIVE SPORTS SPECIAL
The Masters  (CBS)

Thanks to reader Steve for watching Hard Knocks so I don’t have to hear how Sean McVay has to tell his team where go No. 1 vs. No. 2, but also for the uplifting news that the PGA Tour’s return and some golfer’s misfortune prompted Los Angeles Chargers coach Anthony Lynn to get tested. Who knows how many were spared after Lynn tested positive and quarantined, but no one can say the PGA Tour’s return was not also helpful in educating many, including well-paid coaches on how the symptoms go.

Jeff Miller of the LA Times reports.

He said he was watching a golf tournament during which one participant withdrew after testing positive. He said the golfer mentioned suffering from symptoms similar to the ones he felt.

“If I hadn’t been watching the golf event and saw that golfer complaining about back aches and soreness, I never even would have gotten tested,” Lynn said on the show. “I never even would have known it and probably got [other] people infected.”

I’m taking a wild guess here, but Denny McCarthy in July was the player most likely to have been the one given that he shared more symptons details.

Either way, as we learn more how to deal with this whole modern pandemic thing, it turns out the PGA Tour’s transparency, while painful for the guys who have tested positive, is actually a positive in ways you we can’t always imagine.

I thought there were too many great stories and fascinating possibilities to dwell on the Brooks-being-Brooks comments prior to the 2020 final round, but with other players chiming in and Koepka’s final round collapse, he felt the need to speak.

Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch followed up with Koepka Wednesday. You’d think he was an epidemiologist with vaccine news given the space given to the put down of his peers’ major totals. Nonetheless I think Brooks has dug another hole, this time with top 100 peg board owners.

Koepka: Obviously, a lot came from it. I don’t mind the pressure of that stuff. I put more pressure on myself than anything external. At the same time, I didn’t back it up. That’s my own problem. Part of being someone who talks openly and truthfully is that sometimes I come off cocky or arrogant, and it can backfire if you’re not going to play good. That’s exactly what happened.

Lynch: Were you shocked at how poorly you played?

Koepka: Yeah. I got stunned at the bogey at 2 and other ones at 7, 8 and 9. By that point, I was already out of it. I was just trying to cheer Paul [Casey] on because he had a chance to win and my shot was long gone.

Lynch: Based on the social media conversation, half of golf fans seem to appreciate you as a competitive beast and the other half dislike you as a mouthy jerk. Are you okay with that?

Koepka: I think there are layers to that question. I’m not the typical golf guy. I don’t know how else to put that. We didn’t belong to fancy country clubs. I’m not someone who can’t wait to go play those exclusive courses around the country. It doesn’t ‘ooh’ and awe me like it does other people …

Jeremy Krinn on Twitter gets the credit for the take on Jim Nantz’s Masters motto above.

As for this new, hopefully short-lived tradition, ESPN.com’s Bob Harig reminds us how much Tiger Woods fed off of crowd support in winning the 2019 Masters.

"It was special to have that kind of support, that kind of backing,'' Woods said last fall. "I was going up against the best players in the world. I was trying to come from behind for the first time [to win a major]. And that support was so important.''

Woods clearly understands the current circumstances. He said as much last week at the PGA Championship, where there were no spectators. Golf has done tremendously well in this climate for more than two months, playing each week behind closed doors.

And having the television product for an unprecedented November at Augusta National will still be a highly anticipated and hugely interesting sporting event, with anticipation centering around the look of the place in the fall, how it will play and all manner of golf-related aspects to a year that is off the rails.

One question also answered by Harig: for the first time, there will be merchandise sold online to some. Presumably it’ll lean heavily toward items already made sporting 2020.

It will offer those who had tickets or badges for this year a special "exclusive'' opportunity to buy merchandise online, a potential windfall but one that can't make up for all the hardship of this year.

The TPCesque marble tee signs are aging gracefully

After Torrey Pines next year and Bethpage’s Ryder Cup in 2025, the major event schedule mostly returns to country clubs or high end resorts (I’m not sure how we’ll characterize Frisco’s PGA Championship course under construction, but it will be open to the public).

As Garrett Morrison wrote in lamenting the winding down of muni major sites, San Francisco hasn’t quite gotten what it hoped for with the $23 million renovation PGA Tour Design Services 2003 effort and the grifting that could have funded refurbishments on all of the city courses.

Still, there is no price to put on the images that came out of San Francisco on east coast prime time and the perfect conclusion to Harding’s resurrection. The course will have just that much more cache when it becomes the regular site of a Steph Curry-hosted fall Tour event and while it’s not a major, the schedule is booked well down the road with no obvious opening until 2031 or so.

While the front nine can get redundant or downright goofy at the 8th, as I noted here with the ShotLink evidence on my side, the back nine presents a pretty stout set of holes and grand conclusion. While the 16th may not be a future template hole, the scatter charts demonstrate a huge variety of ways it was attacked over four days. Not many holes, including Riviera’s vaunted 10th, can make that claim in the era of protein shake six packs and packages of bacon for breakfast.

With the distance discussion in mind, Golf.com’s Jonathan Wall reports on a project to identify the difference between late 20th century balatas and today’s ball. Fresh out of the package and tested with a robot, you’ll be shocked—shocked!—to learn that the ball and elite player launch conditions lead to incredible spikes in driver distance, not so much with irons.

The data and conclusions are useful for two obvious reasons: to diffuse average golfer whining about the tremendous loss in distance they would experience by a tweak of existing equipment regulations, and just how much fitting, spin rates and technology are impacting skill. In other words, the robot became a lot less athletic when hitting a balata.

Please check out the whole piece but Wall’s conclusions are fascinating, including these:

5. If ball spin is utilized to limit distance, this could potentially affect players with different swing styles in different ways. Players with lower spinning shots — for example, an “inside/out” path below 2,400 RPMs spin — will be less affected than a player who plays a power fade — slightly “outside/in” path at 2,600-2,800 RPMs spin — with the same clubhead speed. A universal ball would provide different results based upon its design parameters.


6. If you were to combine the modern-day Tour driver with a Tour-level balata at mid or mid-high spin, a distance loss of 40-plus yards is possible. 


7. Wedge spin is approximately 2000 RPMs higher on the Tour-level balata versus the modern-day solid-construction.


8. Driver distance loss varies based upon launch conditions.


9. 6-iron distance loss is roughly 1 club shorter when comparing the two balls. 


10. An increase in wedge spin would cause some players to adjust their swing to adapt to excessive spin produced with the Tour-level balata and modern-day wedge.

I’m sure point 10 will lead to first world sob stories of cruelty to the youth of golf, but since they get on launch monitors and adjust all the time, I’m confident they will not be permanently harmed in such a process.

Not a huge surprise given the times and the prediction from Augusta’s mayor last week.

Note the “hopefully” in 2021 line in Chairman Fred Ridley’s quote.

Collin Morikawa’s second round par on Harding Park’s 16th

Words I never thought I’d type: the 16th at Harding Park for of the more fascinating studies in day-to-day variety outside something we’d see at The Old Course. The credit goes to the PGA of America’s Kerry Haigh, Mother Nature and the players.

With regulatory malfeasance all but rending the risk-reward par-5 extinct, the short par-4 is all we strategy-lovers have as evidence of what we’re missing. Haigh's decision to move the tees up twice, working in conjunction with the conditions and player comfort levels as they got to know the 16th, led to a fascinating four-day dispersion of plays. None moreso than Morikawa’s, whose final round eagle will go down as one of the great shots in modern major history.

Though as I wrote here for The Athletic, the shot got even better when we learned after the round that (A) he originally had no intention of driving the green at any point (B) he caved and drove it Friday and (C) he had to get up and down off the fringe for par in round two.

Morikawa’s memory of going for it was not a positive one. Yet in the final round moment with a chance to win a major, the carrot dangled before Morikawa was just too appealing. To witness a player succumbing to temptation and pulling off the shot, just makes his decision even more bold. That may be why his caddie double-checked about the final round play:

I can’t recall a greater bamboozle, errr, negotiating jobs than the PGA Tour somehow getting Wyndham to pay out $10 million in Rewards for a pre-Playoffs field and no one turning up to claim their easy payday.

An(other) impact fund with no obligations!

Justin Thomas adds to the legacy of Wyndham Rewards winners passing on the Wyndham Championship for very good reasons: he just played a major, will have to turn up at the PGA Tour Playoffs and as Doug Ferguson reports, does not need to hit a shot to collect $2 million. Or even check-in.

Amazingly, Wyndham pays full freight even though it wasn’t even a full PGA Tour schedule (with 11 tournaments cancelled).

The hotelier recently reported second quarter losses of $174 million.

Bandon Dunes gets its first nationally televised event with the 2020 U.S. Amateur.

Wilson Furr is your medalist after posting a -11 total over Bandon Trails and Bandon Dunes. Furr posted a 62 at Bandon Trails. And 18-for-3 playoff Wednesday morning will determine the final spots in the 64-player match play and Furr’s first round opponent.

Defending champion Andy Ogletree failed to advance to match-play by just a stroke while 2019’s runner-up, John Augenstein posted a -5 36-hole total and is in match play.

Cohen Trulio, one of last year’s semi-finalists who drove to Oregon from his Mississippi with his dad, tested positive for COVID-19 and was forced to withdraw before stroke play started, reports GolfChannel.com’s Brentley Romine.

Golf Channel has all the coverage along with NBC’s new Peacock app, featuring a free option and hopefully fewer crashes per hour than NBC Sports Gold. In a clunky play to push downloads, you’ll have to watch for an hour on Peacock and then go to Golf Channel Wednesday to Friday before everything moves to Golf Channel through the conclusion. In the recent past, the U.S. Amateur final would get NBC and Fox network airings, but not this year.

The 2020 PGA Championship started a new 11-year deal for CBS and ESPN with a west coast date but without fans in the COVID-19 era. The lack of buzz did not hurt the numbers, however.

According to Showbuzzdaily, the final round on CBS drew a 3.27 average Nielsen rating, and peaked at 6.873 million during the back nine. That’s up from last year’s first-ever May playing but down significantly from the most recent August playing in 2018 when Brooks Koepka dueled with Tiger Woods and Adam Scott, among others.

ESPN’s week was also a big success, with early Sunday coverage up over 60% from last year, a significantly younger audience, and the most-watched cable portion of the PGA Championship in 10 years. From the ESPN press release:

Sunday’s final round coverage, which aired from noon until 3 p.m. ET, averaged 1,965,000 viewers, up 60 percent over TNT’s final-round telecast from 2019 and the most-viewed final round on cable since 2010. Sunday’s telecast peaked at 2.4 million viewers and was above 2 million from 1:15 – 3 p.m.

Across all four rounds, ESPN averaged 1,659,000 viewers and 399,000 viewers in the ages 18-49 demographic, up 35 percent and 54 percent, respectively, from TNT’s coverage last year. In addition to being the most-viewed PGA Championship on cable since 2010, ESPN’s average of ages 18-49 viewers was up 40 percent over the past five years.

Everything about the 2020 PGA Championship week was a success, from compliance with COVID-19 guidelines to the quality of play. But with only essential personnel, coaches and media on site—no ten-percenters though—the energy was quite different. So were the things you did not get to overhear.

—I miss having my agent here to watch me warm up and blocking everyone from learning my secrets.

—Baba booey.

—The Wannamaker Trophy’s lid is clipped on tight, ready to go for the ceremony!