Golfing News & Blog Articles

We learned at least two very key things when Francesco Molinari took to Twitter confirming he’s still alive and well during this pandemic.

A) The 2018 Open Champion is fine, not changing equipment and is just moving to California and reorganizing his life.

B) Twitter has a handy translate function if you wait long enough.

Joel Beall at GolfDigest.com with the full translation and interpretation from someone who was arguably one of the world’s three best players just 18 months ago, the man who played a flawless Open final round in front of Tiger Woods, and who was a 2018 Ryder Cup star. He recently WD’d from the rescheduled U.S. Open at Winged Foot.

“It will be hard to get back to the levels of 2018 no doubt, you don’t think it was easy the first time. I am the only one who has not returned. I am well aware of it, but it is not the first time that I have made different or unpopular choices (see Rio 2016).”

Molinari, who is exempt into the Masters in November thanks to his claret jug victory at Carnoustie, thanked fans who have patiently awaited his return. Though he hasn’t decided when, Molinari promised he will eventually be playing competitively again.

“I’ll be back in a while, I won’t tell you the exact time because I simply haven’t decided it yet and it will depend on the schedule/preparation,” Molinari wrote.

Having had wedges and short irons into the first few par-4’s, 2020 U.S. Open invitees now confront a dilemma at the fifth: bomb it over the trees and try to carry is 320, or hit a right-to-left tee shot to a semi-blind fairway skirting Tillinghast bunkers?

Yes, we know how that movie turns out.

Another simple and beautiful holes with the cross bunker short of the Hanse Design-restored green providing just another example of Winged Foot’s artistry and distinctiveness. The USGA’s flyover for this year’s tournament, brought to us by Deloitte:

No. 5 at Winged Foot is a 502-yard par 4 that played as a par 5 in 2006. The drive zone is not entirely visible from the tee and recovery shots from the greenside bunkers are particularly challenging.

In collaboration with @DeloitteUS. pic.twitter.com/WRQszv9Vef

Golf Architecture’s Adam Lawrence confirms what his Instagram followers have known for some time: Zac Blair’s Buck Club dream will be realized near Aiken, South Carolina.

The PGA Tour member and well known architecture aficionado had dreamed of his native Utah but the collaboration with King-Collins Design will be in on a sandy 407 acres currently occupied by a tree farm.

The site has around 60-70 feet of elevation change, and Collins said the Coore & Crenshaw restoration of Pinehurst No. 2 had provided a lot of inspiration for the design thinking on the Buck Club.

Blair’s original plan, to build the course in his home state of Utah had to be abandoned, as land and construction costs made it impractical to complete the project. The player-developer is currently raising funds to support the development, and Collins confirmed there is no rush to break ground.

“We will leave the construction schedule to Zac – it will go ahead when he is ready,” he concluded.

Welshpool

Rankings have become redundant, or worse, the last profit centers for some publications. The sheen is all but gone from most listings, though Golf is sticking to a small panel of experts and now, three lists that will only hopefully inspire more non-18-hole, non-elitist recognition of what matters: fun places to play.

Ran Morrissett sets up this new “top 100” this way:

The earliest tracks were 5-, 6-, 7-, 9- and 12-hole affairs. The locals looked for land that drained well, with interesting natural obstacles. If the property only supported six holes, so be it. The sport wasn’t meant to soak up half the day. Work beckoned. The Industrial Age eventually created the chance for more of the population to pursue leisure activities, and golf expanded. Move the clock forward 150-odd years and courses of all shapes and sizes now exist.

The top 50 nine-hole courses features so many nifty places you’d love to play, leading off with Tom Dunn’s Royal Worlington and Newmarket, dating to 1895. While I love everything about the Winter Park 9, seeing it next to Musselburgh was a bit strange. The Cradle of Golf it is not. But we’ll let that slide for the overall grandeur of this stellar list.

Showbuzzdaily.com

Buoyed by a strong finish spilling into the prime time window, the 2020 BMW championship was up 10% from 2019’s playing, drawing a 2.3 and 3.4 million average viewers on NBC. Jon Rahm defeated Dustin Johnson after both made unbelievable 18th green putts, one in regulation (Johnson) and the latter in the sudden death (Rahm).

The 2020 BMW was played a week later than last year and without NFL preseason competition.

The 2.23 final round rating almost won the sports weekend, falling just short of NASCAR’s Saturday race but easily outdrawing several NBA playoff games on cable.

The 2020 BMW weekend lead-in coverage on Golf Channel was essentially flat from last year (.54/.73 in 2019 vs. .64/.68 in 2020).

Winged Foot’s 467-yard 4th features fairway bunkers 300 off the tee that will only come into play for those who have elected not to hit the gym regularly. With a nice right to left bend that’ll fit the eye of most, the 4th ought to be a drive and short-iron. The extraordinary green complex has seen a huge restoration effort mirroring A.W. Tillinghast’s original.

Here is the flyover from the U.S. Open Twitter account, which is currently flooded with a lot of retweeted drivel and sad attempts to seem young and cool. You’ll thank me some day for this embed and sparing you of the unraveling U.S. Open social media account:

No. 4 at Winged Foot is a slight dogleg left measuring 467 yards, with bookend bunkers in the drive zone. The approach plays slightly downhill to a squared-off green that was expanded during the 2016 restoration by Gil Hanse.

In collaboration with @DeloitteUS. pic.twitter.com/jq0WQtQlPt

I wouldn’t dare say old since they’re both in great shape but after Tiger’s four days in the 2020 BMW Championship he offered this about his back:

Q. How have you felt?

TIGER WOODS: Felt?

Q. Body-wise, physical-wise.

TIGER WOODS: It aches every day.

Q. Has it hurt you at all, just your back or your health in general?

TIGER WOODS: Well, my back is what it is. It's always going to ache and it's always going to be stiff. That's just -- when you have a fusion, that's just part of the deal. I'll have my good days, and as I've told you guys before, I'll have my good days and bad days.

Then there was this from Phil Mickelson regarding his Monday-Wednesday Champions Tour debut and win. He’s liking that cart!

Lefty seal of approval. pic.twitter.com/HyzXLqXqfw

Club Pro Guy also offered an alternate take on this bit of social insight sounding more like a young Phil.

After two weeks in Las Vegas, the PGA Tour will now move to old friend Sherwood Country Club just two weeks prior to the Masters. The “ZOZO Championship @ Sherwood” will not only give players a decent test prior to the Masters, the use of the @ symbol will resonate with the coveted 18-34 year-olds. Win-win!

Tiger Woods won last year’s inaugural ZOZO in Japan but due to COVID-19, the 2020 version of the PGA Tour’s fall Asian swing is getting replaced by a western United States series.

Sherwood hosted ten Shark Shootouts, 13 World Challenges, one prime time match and most recently, three Champions Tour events.

For Immediate Release:

PGA TOUR and ZOZO Inc. announce ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP will move to Sherwood Country Club in California in October

Oh, and that amazing putt helped Rahm claim the BMW Championship in a thrilling finish over Dustin Johnson, who also made a doozy to send the tournament into overtime.

But I digress. Why focus on the BMW when the real story is next week’s Thursday leaderboard? While we’re in the midst of this playoff let’s send it down to Steve Sands for more. Will JT be four back or two back next Friday? Could Rahm cut into his deficit next week with a win this week? Inquiring minds do not need to know.

Fourteen years into this FedExCup, we’re still subjected to the hard sell. I realize there is a gargantuan sum of money at stake. And a season-long sponsor demanding full value for their investment even at the expense of other sponsors trying to have their moment. Yet once again, a compelling final round on a penalizing parkland course was mostly overshadowed by the effort to push FedExCup narratives that no sane individual cares about in the best of times. During a pandemic, it’s nails-on-the-chalkboard stuff. Especially with a fascinating final round featuring a better-than-most variety of characters.

As NBC’s Paul Azinger noted on Saturday, the FedExCup is a “pretty prestigious” competition. That was an apparently slight he mopped up after an 904 area code undoubtedly popped-up on someone’s screen. This overall demand to focus on the perennially lame “playoff’ race was more of a shame than normal. The NBC team really never got to go deep on any topic or even do something mildly in-depth on the difficult setup conditions. There were just too many non-BMW obligations to juggle.

Even Mackenzie Hughes’s putt to get into the Tour Championship, while dramatic, felt like NBC’s team turning it into Ouimet beating Vardon and Ray. The hard sell brings down genuinely great moments.

Winged Foot’s 243-yard third is in that sour spot no one likes unless they’re standing on Cypress Point.

With a classic Tillinghast bunkering scheme, the steeply pitched green should welcome today’s 4 and 5-irons unless tournament tees are moved up. A particularly goyish house behind the green also highlights OB lurking, though such a costly outcome seems unlikely on a hole of this length.

No. 3 at Winged Foot is a long, demanding par 3 where players will be happy to take par and move on.

1959 #USOpen champion Billy Casper famously laid up, and made par, in all 4 rounds, choosing not to take on the narrow, well-bunkered green.

In collaboration with @DeloitteUS. pic.twitter.com/0TvqETe1S3

Dick’s Sporting Goods CEO Ed Stack, at one time believed to be the most arse-kissed executive in golf, deservedly lost his allure around 2014-15 after the whole PGA pro firing thing that set off a ridiculous blaming of revenue falls on golf’s “structural decline”, and then realizing it was nonsense and golfers might take business elsewhere, backtracked.

As retail sales decline, Stack also appears less powerful with the move to direct-to-consumer online commerce. That all said, even though his past actions and assessments suggest he’s all about the bottom line, his company and the people briefing him remain important observers of industry trends.

Thanks to reader Steve for Myles Udland’s Yahoo Finance story on golf’s positive numbers during the pandemic and this assessment from Stack on junior golf.

And a standout during the quarter is what the company saw in its golf segment. An area that Dick’s management expects will continue to be a point of strength for the company through the rest of the year.

“The golf business has been great both at Dick’s and [Golf] Galaxy,” said Dick’s CEO Ed Stack on the company’s earnings conference call on Wednesday.

The 484 yard second is highlighted an audacious green enlargement/restoration that took place under Hanse Design’s supervision.

The tee shot features a bend to the right and kind of odd looking outside-the-dogleg fairway bunker at 300 yards, in other words, only a minor annoyance to most in the 2020 Hale America 2/U.S. Open tournament.

Don’t hesitate to hit pause when the flyover reaches the green. Most will focus on the overhanging tree—certainly an odd hazard on a classic course. But spend more time looking at the putting surface shape. You can see a lot of intricate movements, no small feat in the era of USGA Green construction that has made contours and extreme shapes quite cumbersome to create.

Yet it’s those corners, bends and wings that add more interest and natural lines, all things you’d expect in a revered design. For more on Winged Foot’s effort to rebuild greens and retain contours, the USGA produced this video two years ago.

The countdown begins to Winged Foot and this year’s delayed U.S. Open and as is the tradition here, all 18 flyovers will be posted. While not as cool as this dreck for Executive Committee members to see youth outreach as envisioned by “adults”, we like to stick to the important stuff here.

This year’s tournament will be played September 17-20, meaning, with 18 holes it’s time to chip away at the memory banks since the West Course has not hosted since 2006’s Geoff Ogilvy win.

Much has changed, as Hanse Design oversaw restoration work of A.W. Tillinghast’s original. Out of the chute we get the drive-and-pitch first with its diabolical green. Squared corners and refreshed bunkers look superb.

At just 451 yards, a nice drive sets up a likely wedge for today’s decathletes. Maybe a Pelz nine on a cooler early fall morning.

Since 2003 I’d somehow forgotten what an absolute snoozer Olympia Fields can be on TV. As in, get out the hair dryer-to-deal-with-pillow-drool-dull, confirms the blogger coming off two amazing BMW Championship afternoon power naps.

That said, if par-protecting-fests-to-make-up-for-the-apparent-indignity-of-Jim-Furyk-winning-your-U.S.-Open, Olympia Fields is certainly a contrast from last week’s birdiefest. However, with a logjam of masterful venues in the queue, the USGA likely shrinking things down to a rota, several bigger name classics offering restored designs, Olympia Fields is not getting a U.S. Open anytime soon.

Dylan Dethier with some of the more extreme numbers for a regular Tour stop.

Billy Horschel says its fair, so in addition to deep naps, I’ll sleep so much better tonight.

The Chicago Tribune’s Teddy Greenstein is reveling in Olympia Fields playing like a U.S. Open course, reporting on the odd USGA shot taken by 36-hole co-leader Rory McIlroy.

Also, Alexander Hughes parred the first and last hole at South Lakes in greater Tulsa to post 55.

From Adam Woodward at Golfweek:

Hughes, a former player at Central Oklahoma, tied the Guinness Book of World Records’ lowest score in a single round of golf with a 55 on Thursday at South Lakes Golf Course in Jenks, Oklahoma.

After making par on the first hole, Hughes made a hole-in-one on the 155-yard par-3 second, followed by another par. Then he got hot, birdieing Nos. 4-8 with an eagle on No. 9 to make the turn at 9-under 26. His birdie streak ended on No. 10 with a par on 11, but the four-year letter winner at Central got to 10 under with a birdie on No. 12.

The card and last hole attempt at birdie.

BIG NEWS: Alexander Hughes ties world record for lowest round in golf history with a score of 55(-16) at South Lakes Golf Course in Jenks, Oklahoma.

The other 55(-16) was shot by Rhein Gibson at River Oaks Golf Club in Edmond, Oklahoma. pic.twitter.com/l5gYUr1KU2

A tough, even seemingly irrational call was made by LPGA Commissioner Mike Whan and the LPGA to remain firm on September 10-13th’s ANA Inspiration: the field set for earlier this year remains in place, despite Sophia Popov’s improbable Women’s Open win.

Some context from Julie Williams at Golfweek summing up the tough situation and membership “category” issues created by the pandemic rescheduling. From Whan:

“You don’t have to like that, you don’t have to agree with me on that,” Whan said. “But that way, from the very beginning we knew that a winner there was going to qualify for the 2021 ANA.”

As for limited membership, Whan points out it has happened before – and recently.

“I’ve been commissioner 11 years. I’ve seen plenty of non-member wins at majors,” Whan said. “And I’ve seen almost all of those non-members go onto long and storied careers on the LPGA.”

After posting a BMW opening 77, Cameron Champ still spoke to press about his show of support for protestors and other professional athletes choosing to not contest official games and matches. From Adam Schupak’s report in Chicago:

The PGA Tour posted a video on social media on Wednesday that Champ re-tweeted, in which he wore a Nike golf shoe that is black on his left foot and white on his right foot, the latter with the words “Jacob Blake” and “BLM” in blue marker. During Thursday’s round he shook up his message.

“I have Papa Champ on my sneakers, Black Lives Matter and Breonna Taylor,” he said. “Obviously there are some very important reasons why that’s on my shoes. For my grandfather, if anyone knows my story, he grew up in the South, Jim Crow, all those eras through the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s and obviously Breonna Taylor, which is another ongoing issue. For me again that’s kind of where I stand with this. I just want to show my love and support and obviously with my hat, as well.”

Champ’s full remarks here were also of note:

Q. Just to build on that, with the NBA it looks a lot different than the PGA TOUR. I just wonder, there's probably a number of players, certainly fans who have a different idea of what Black Lives Matter means. I just wonder if you feel in any way like an outlier when you support this or you wear the shoes and you're the only one here, right? Just how you kind of square that and how you feel about that.

CAMERON CHAMP: Yeah, I mean, it's -- again, I mean, I do to a sense. Like I said, it's a situation where, again, that video I did yesterday, and I've been told what some people have said. I'm like, that's just -- if you don't understand the full view of everything and realize what's going on and realize the statistics with massive incarceration to law and order to war on drugs to statistically speaking there's, what, I think 12 percent of the U.S.'s population is African-American which makes up 33 percent of the incarcerations versus 62 or 63 percent Caucasian and it makes up 30 percent. So how do those numbers add up?

The reversal of golf’s fortune is put into context in the latest National Golf Foundation update. News of big June and July’s in the U.S. came from GolfDatatech, as did word of an increase in 9-hole and evening play, prompted this analysis:

This two-month rebound has allowed us to climb from a 16% YTD deficit on April 30 to now a 3% lead over 2019. Seems almost inconceivable given the loss of 20 million spring rounds from course shutdowns and virus-related anxieties. And the good news is likely to keep coming. Several golf course management companies have told us that August has been almost as good.
 
We did a little digging for perspective. Only three times in at least the past 151 months has the industry seen a monthly rounds increase of 20% or more. All three were during a heatwave in late 2011/early 2012, yielding surges in play at courses in the north that were typically closed and at a time of year when percentage increases can be misleading. To have a jump this significant during a high-volume summer month is unprecedented and reflects approximately 10 million more July rounds versus a year ago.
 
Our latest year-end forecast has us up 2% to 6% year-over-year. Consider this  – we haven’t seen more than a 5% Y.O.Y. increase since 2012 (during that surreal winter heatwave).

Buckling under playoff pressure like he hasn’t faced since last year, Tiger bogeyed his last three holes and was not necessarily channeling his inner Norman Vincent Peale.

He made clear there was no discussion of playing as several other athletes protested or elaborated on the times.

Q. Just general thoughts on -- it was a rough finish, but how the course was playing and what was the strongest part of the challenge?

TIGER WOODS: Yeah, the course was fine. The course is in perfect shape. Not the way I wanted to finish, but the golf course is playing difficult for sure.

Q. Was it a challenge dealing with the heat? Did that wear you out at all?

Branson’s big moment this week could be upstaged in September when Tiger debuts his first “public” course design, Payne’s Valley. The Golf Channel/NBC/Excel production features Woods and Justin Thomas vs. Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose. I sense some contractually-obligated “days” are getting checked off.

Anyway, for Immediate Release:

ORLANDO, Fla. – NBC Sports and Excel Sports Management announced today the Payne’s Valley Cup, a special 18-hole charity team exhibition match headlined by four of the world’s top golfers to commemorate the grand opening of Payne’s Valley Golf Course at Big Cedar Lodge in Ridgedale, Mo. Payne’s Valley represents the first public golf course design for 82-time PGA TOUR winner Tiger Woods, who will team up with World No. 3 Justin Thomas (Team United States) to take on major champions Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose (Team Europe) in the Payne’s Valley Cup.

Airing live on GOLF Channel on Tuesday, Sept. 22 (3-7 p.m. ET), the Payne’s Valley Cup will feature an entertaining mix of some of the best competition formats seen during Ryder Cups and Presidents Cups: Fourball, Foursomes and Singles matches. NBC will televise a special encore as two separate telecasts on Dec. 26 and 27 from 4-6 pm ET. The four players competing in the Payne’s Valley Cup have an eclectic resume: all four have been World No. 1; are major champions, all have won the FedExCup and have been part of victorious Ryder Cup teams.

The made-for-television exhibition match will be produced by NBC Sports, featuring all four players mic’d up during competition while showcasing Woods’ new golf course that pays tribute to Ozarks-native and World Golf Hall-of-Famer, Payne Stewart.