Golfing News & Blog Articles

ESPN.com’s Bob Harig talks to Rory McIlroy in advance of next week’s rescheduled Masters where an already wet course is expected to see more rain.

Besides the softness, I was intrigued by the role McIlroy sees Bermuda playing versus an April playing of the Masters.

"A lot more Bermuda [grass] in the fairways and in the surrounds of the greens,'' McIlroy said. "The greens are exactly the same as they always are. But for the fairways, it just hasn't been cold enough for the Bermuda to die off. That's going to make things very interesting around the greens. Chipping will be a lot trickier.

"[The fairways], instead of being thin it can be a little grainy or a thicker patch. But it was soft. There were a lot of mud balls and looks like some rain during the week so that can be an issue. It's just going to play very different. They haven't done anything to the golf course -- it's just the way it's playing.''

The current forecast calls for rain possibilities Tuesday to Sunday, with the remnants of Eta also a possibility next weekend.

5600 of us owners enjoyed a Breeders Cup Classic win today and I thought of buying a $49 “Authentic” hat to commemorate. But that’s a lot for a cap. Unless, you’re Phil Mickelson and Melin.

For $69 ($82 and change after shipping/taxes), this Melin cap armed with Mickelson’s logo is now available and will help your game. After all, it repels water and helps for those morning workouts when you don’t want to take a shower, according to the hall-of-famer. Operators should be standing by to take your order for just three easy payments of $32.99!

Warning! Here’s the launch video with several gratuitous calf shots.

My favorite @MelinBrand hat can now be your favorite hat too. Check out this link to get yours before they run out! https://t.co/PUBEBBOiVG pic.twitter.com/7ZyVhXwXFO

The rescheduled Masters lost its first player to a COVID-19 and a particularly painful WD by Joaquin Niemann given his current form.

The 2018 Latin America Amateur champion announced the news on Twitter (below) and ESPN.com’s Bob Harig shares the statement in English:

"I have tested positive for coronavirus and unfortunately I will not play in the Masters next week as a result,'' Niemann wrote. "This event means a lot to me, and I have had incredible memories playing as the LAAC champion. I am disappointed but will do everything possible to recover quickly while keeping my family and team safe."

As you might expect from Augusta National, the announcement was handled differently than the PGA Tour, which has disclosed COVID-positives/WD’s with a statement.

The Lords, at least in this case, left the announcement up to the player to announce:

Desafortunadamente testee positivo para coronavirus y no podré jugar @themasters la semana que viene. Este torneo significa mucho para mi, tengo muy buenas memorias de cuando lo jugué como campeón del LAAC y ... pic.twitter.com/QVJobIbcIx

There is plenty to whet your (fall 2020) Masters appetite but you can’t go wrong with the virtual panel put together in the name of Save Muny: 1984 & 1995 Masters Champion Ben Crenshaw, 2017 Masters Champion Sergio García, and broadcast great Verne Lundquist.

Enjoy!

This week’s Vivint Houston Open benefiting the (cheating) Astros Foundation marks the first time in the COVID-19 era that a tournament is welcoming back significant crowds. (Announced at 2000 a day compared to last week’s 500 a day in Bermuda).

While face covering is required at all times and spectators at Memorial Park are forking out over $100 per ticket, they’ve been asked to socially distance. Yet even a Thursday crowd, typically the lightest of the week, appeared to struggle with both requirements.

While the obvious first concern involves virus spread, the responsibility placed in Houston’s hands will also determine how soon upcoming events can welcome back fans.

Golf.com’s Art Stricklin was on site and quotes players who felt safe inside the ropes but also addresses what was obvious to telecast viewers: a lot of people standing around side-by-side with the usual mixed-face covering buy-in.

In fact, the only complaint Texas native Jimmy Walker had was there were only 2,000 fans.

Adam Schupak caught up with Adam Scott following his COVID-19 positive test and symptoms. The Australian was scheduled to play the ZOZO Championship as a key Masters tuneup but tested positive and road out a brief fever at a hotel and then rental house.

The Genesis Invitational winner earlier this year—seemingly a decade ago—is now entered at this week’s Vivant Houston Open Benefitting the Cheating Astros Foundation and admits to a pre-Masters preparation setback.

“Not only not getting Zozo in, not getting any practice in for those 10 days either is a little setback, but I’ve actually come out swinging good this week and at least feel fresh,” he said. “Hopefully that works in my favor…What I had planned in preparation was to kind of peak at the Masters and Houston’s a big part of that. It’s even more important since I tested positive and had to kind of not play in Zozo and not really get practice in and make sure I got healthy again. So, this is an important week for me. There’s a lot to take out of it.”

This was an interesting and typically thoughtful admission from one of the game’s more cerebral players:

“It just becomes harder for guys getting well into their 40s to be consistently competitive. It just takes a bit more. They’ve got to find their right weeks and take advantage of that,” Scott said. “Hopefully there’s room for a couple of older folk to hang in there like me for those next five or 10 years.”

Tod Leonard reports on World No. 1 Dustin Johnson returning to the PGA Tour after a positive COVID-19 test and brief bout with the coronavirus.

A Masters favorite, Johnson will prep at this week’s Houston Open and remain pleased about one thing and one thing only.

“The first day I didn’t hit balls for very long because I got kind of tired,” he said. “Then kind of practiced a little bit more each day. My health is good. The state of my game is undetermined.”

While Johnson said he isn’t sure how he got coronavirus—everyone around him, including his fiancee Paulina Gretzky and two kids, River and Tatum, tested negative, he said—there is at least one positive he is happy about.

“The only good thing that came out of this,” Johnson said, “is I know I'm playing next week at the Masters.”

Evan Priest talks to looping legend Steve Williams about his favorite Masters memories for Golf.com. Eventually the topic returned to his old boss, the defending champion Tiger Woods—and how he might handle next week’s fall Masters.

I do wonder if Tiger’s lackluster showings in the COVID-19 era are impacted by an intangible we cannot ever measure…

Williams himself has reservations about Woods at a November Masters. Cooler temps will make the course play longer, and they won’t be ideal for Tiger’s iffy back. More concerning is that Woods will be in unchartered territory at a gallery-less Augusta. He uses every fiber of the Masters experience — including the tournament’s unrivaled stresses — to his advantage. Without the thousands of patrons and their piercing, adrenaline-pumping and equally nerve-rattling roars, will players feel the pressure?

“It could be really difficult to get the competitive juices flowing,” Williams admits. “When you turn up to a major, they have a different feel from regular PGA Tour events; there is a buzz and an excitement about them. With that element missing, for someone like Tiger who hasn’t played a lot of tournament golf this year, it’ll be hard to get that spark you need. But Tiger is going to give it 110 percent.”

One of the stranger recent Traditions Unlike Any Other: Masters amateurs doing an obligatory night in the Crow’s Nest around Monday’s Amateur Dinner, then moving to a rental house with their “team” (because you know, amateurs need to be with their agents).

With COVID-19 making the sharing of a living space possibly problematic—it’d still be nice to hear that one amateur stayed all week in what most normal human being-Americans would call one-off lodging opportunity-of-a-lifetime: the Crow’s Nest during Masters week.

Well, the rest of us can dream next week to the club providing a little bit of access to golf’s ultimate lodging spot:

Golf.com’s Alan Bastable was able to access the first-ever Masters patron-only shop. He reviews some new and surprising items, and also explains the setup:

How long the inventory will last is anyone’s guess. God willing, we’re unlikely to see another November Masters anytime soon, which means this year’s gear will have a special one-off cachet for collectors. The tournament has leaned into the timing with fall-themed course prints and holiday decorations, including tree ornaments and a Santa garden gnome.

Buyers are limited to two check-outs, but given the ease of online shopping (and the fact that fans won’t have to lug their merchandise home with them from the course), it’s not hard to imagine Masters-happy customers’ buying more than they would have if they’d been shopping in the brick-and-mortar shop at the tournament.

Which, makes the future of this approach something plenty will watch.

But back to those surprising items. The most bizarre of all has to be the Masters food spread.

Even with a Masters invitation (somehow) on the line and of course, the all important FedExCup points, Brian Gay’s Bermuda Championship win still had fewer Golf Channel viewers than the Timbertech Championship.

That event featured Darren Clarke holding of Jim Furyk and Bernhard Langer for his first PGA Tour Champions win.

Saturday’s third round of the Timbertech “won” the weekend and averaged 43,000 in the coveted none-Villages demo.

The Bermuda Championship’s Thursday and Friday telecasts draw enough of an audience to crack the top 150 cable shows.

ShowBuzzDaily with all the numbers.

One key to pro golf’s athleticism canard: this marketing narrative serves as a distraction from the real reasons the distance discussion never goes away. With more and more golfers hurt when their masculinity is damaged when it’s revealed their “athleticism” is only as good as the driver they are fitted with, the debate gets sidetracked. Then we easily forget that it’s the lost strategy of this great game fueling the the rollback question.

As Mike Clayton lays out for all schools of thought, strategy should still be the soul of the game and enough people miss it.

A key question for professional golf (a version of the game increasingly separated from the version played by the masses) is, “is brilliant, interesting design and the age-old concept of what constitutes strategy compatible with, and capable of, testing the best players in the game?”

“Increasingly not” is my not unreasonable conclusion.

I also enjoyed this as Clayton and friends do not downplay Bryson DeChambeau’s accomplishment at Winged Foot, but instead use it as fuel for the discussion.

With a 2020 title in the pocket and the injection of real muni golf onto the PGA Tour schedule, I will set aside my feelings about the cheating Astros*. And this week’s host, their cheating, thoroughly remorse-free owner, Jim Crane (along with various dishonest players).

While I’ll never quite fully grasp why this murky crew pushed one of America’s elite golf associations aside to take over a storied Tour event, we at least have Tour players prepping for the one-off Fall Masters on a low priced public course. This is a long overdue victory for the Houston Open and validation for the Bethpage effect we hoped had taken a stronger hold by now.

Josh Sens gives the revitalized Memorial Park a positive review and explains how the Tom Doak-Brooks Koepka effort does not try to protect par for this week’s Vivint Houston Open.

The work that made Memorial Park Tour-worthy once more — bringing the Houston Open back from the suburbs, where it was held for decades, to within the city limits — began in earnest in late 2018.

The first phase alone cost $18.5 million, but the money didn’t come out of taxpayers’ pockets. It was furnished by the Houston Astros Foundation (a non-profit founded by Jim Crane, the owner of the baseball team), which, in consultation with the city, tapped the noted architect Tom Doak to renovate the course.

I’m not sure there is much news here beyond the obvious: top players endorsing sports better. Even then, not exactly groundbreaking at this point. More intriguing will be what happens if any of these players grows uncomfortable with bettors feasting on a negative portrayal of their game by an official, PGA Tour-sanctioned site.

For Immediate Release:

DraftKings to Make Debut at 2020 Masters with Bryson DeChambeau in Exclusive Multi-Year Deal

Collaboration with the World’s Sixth-Ranked Golfer Underscores Significance of Golf Within the Gaming Industry

BOSTON—November 2, 2020—Today, DraftKings announced an exclusive, multi-year relationship with Bryson DeChambeau, who will become the first active professional golfer to represent the digital sports entertainment and gaming company via an integrated brand, content, marketing, and VIP centric collaboration that will feature Bryson DeChambeau as the face of DraftKings golf.

I’m feeling a distinct Studio 54 vibe to Bryson DeChambeau’s pre-Masters speed build-up teased not long ago on Instagram. Maybe some strobe lights and a disco mirror ball?

From Steve DiMeglio after he caught up with the U.S. Open champion preparing for next week’s Masters.

As was the day he crashed the 400-yard barrier for the first time. DeChambeau, 27, who topped the PGA Tour in driving distance with an average of 322.1 yards last season, posted on Instagram a picture of his FlightScope X3 launch monitor screen that revealed eye-popping numbers – a ball carry of 403.1 yards and a ball speed of 211 mph. And he did so with a 45-½ inch shaft in his driver, not the 48-inch shaft he’s experimenting with.

“I was speed training, there was a lot of electricity in the air, a lot of music going on. I’m up there for 45 minutes swinging my butt off and the numbers go up and they go down and they go up and they go down,” he said. “And all of a sudden, I swung as hard as I could and caught one really good in the middle of the face.

“I turned around and saw 211 and I just went, ‘Oh, my god.’ I was jumping up and down and then I saw the carry distance over 400 and I went, ‘Oh, my god.’ I was going crazy. That was moving it. It was a bit of a draw but it was really good.”

The Palm Beach Post’s Tom D’Angelo followed up with Jack Nicklaus following last week’s provocative endorsement for President Donald Trump’s re-election. D’Angelo says the idea to make the social media endorsement came from Vice President Mike Pence.

“I’m delighted to do that,” Nicklaus, the North Palm Beach resident, said Friday, speaking about the controversial post for the first time. “I said, ‘You know how I feel about him. He’s been very supportive to everything we’ve ever done. He’s asked for nothing. If I can just on my own do that, I would be happy to do it.’

“And I know it was going to cause me some grief. So, that’s what I did.”

Later in the story, D’Angelo reports Nicklaus’s claim of hospitals attempting to profit by false-reporting COVID-19 deaths, a recent claim of President Trump.

Nicklaus told a story about two people he knows whose parents died from something other than COVID and, according to Nicklaus, they were asked if the cause of death could be changed to COVID and declined.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s announced lockdown measures were announced last week and include golf getting a not-so-special shout-out for England.

Outdoor exercise and recreation encouraged and is unlimited - only with your household/bubble, on your own or with one other person from a different household (golf is not allowed)

Sean Ingle and Ewan Murray report that a reprieve may be coming for golf, tennis and swimming.

The possible compromise could come after Johnson has been pressured by England Golf and its chief, Jeremy Tomlinson, to reconsider. A petition has garnered over 250,000 signatures.

In an open letter to “fellow golfers”, Tomlinson took issue with protocols revealed by the prime minister on Saturday. “I would like to make clear England Golf’s intention to respectfully challenge the government’s rationale for closing golf courses. We will do so utilising all in our network – MPs, colleagues, media and friends – to make sure we are heard by government,” he said.

Aljean Harmetz’s NY Times remembrance of Sean Connery (thanks reader Chris for sending):

Like the months that 12-year-old Charles Dickens spent working in a factory that made shoe blacking, Mr. Connery’s deprived childhood informed the rest of his life. When he was 63, he told an interviewer that a bath was still “something special.”

His anger was never far below the surface. What he called his “violent side,” he told The Times, may have been “ammunitioned” by his childhood. The same was true of his odd combination of penury and generosity.

A passionate golfer — he discovered the game about the same time he discovered James Bond — he was the only player at the Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles who carried his own bag.

Other stories, including one from Jim Nantz (embedded below), indicate he was a lifelong walker/carrier even where caddies were required.

Morning Read’s Shaun Tolson reports on a very exciting collaboration: Pinehurst and Tad Moore Hickory.

The rental sets are a steep $50, but anyone who has played unsuitable hickories can attest that the price is worth it given the quality of Moore’s clubs. The rental sets can be used on any Pinehurst course, though the resort is advocating their use on Nos. 1, 3 or the Cradle.

Tolson writes:

Yes, playing a round with hickory clubs may open doors to a new social circle of golfing compatriots, but it will definitely open newcomers’ eyes to the challenges that the sport’s greatest players faced a century ago.

“They’re just fascinating to hit,” Smarrelli said of the clubs. “You get so much satisfaction when you hit the ball solid with those things. When you hit a good shot, you say, ‘Wow! This is how they played golf way back.’”

On State of the Game 107 we welcome author Daniel Wexler to discuss his new book A Timeless Game but quickly run off topic into the future of golf in urban centers, technology and the distance debate along with a brief addressing of Brandel Chamblee's uncomfortably dishonest attacks on co-host Mike Clayton and pro-regulation types.

I highly recommend Wexler’s latest, available here on Amazon. The paperback features ten essays. Topics include the life of Willie Anderson, to heavyweight boxing champ Joe Louis’s life in golf, to the dominance of Korean women golfers. And of course, the modern equipment issue. It’s a steal at $14.95!