PGA Tour: The Memorial Tournament, At Jack's Place: Notes from the Ballwasher

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1).Jason Dufner's march through April and May hit the buffers after 62 holes at Colonial, but all credit to Zach Johnson for being willing to wear that faux-tartan jacket for the second time in three years. Dufner will be taking the next two weeks off and has suggested his "regular tournament schedule" is finished for the year, with plans to play just the Majors, WGC's and FedEx Play-Off events. Who does he think he is? Tiger Woods??

2).Meanwhile, Zach Johnson has won twice now at Colonial, twice at the old La Cantera site of the Texas Open, and twice at Greg Norman's Sugarloaf design, site of Atlanta's now defunct AT&T Classic. The only other Tour venues he's triumphed at are Waialae CC, site of the Sony Open, and Augusta National, site of youknowwhat. Where are you placing your bets for his next win?

3).Good to see Tim Clark enjoying his first top twenty finish since his extensive absence due to elbow injury. But how fit is he really, and will he return to the world-class player he proved himself to be just two years ago at The Players?

4).And what of Timmy's runner-up that Sawgrass Sunday, Robert Allenby? Time was when Allenby was all ball-striking and no putt - now he's no neither, 94th in the Tour's "ball striking" stat, and a ghastly 185th in putting. I'm sure the illness of his protege Jarrod Lyle must weigh heavily on Robert's mind, but finishing 120th of 123 starters at Colonial, and only one top twenty finish all season, is the sort of stuff retirement is made of.

5).Golfchannel.com has a Jarrod Lyle update that I'll poach:
With his cancer in "remission", "he is currently preparing for a bone marrow transplant". "He is hoping to go into treatment soon and hopefully after 18 months to 2 years he will be able to begin the rehabilitation process and return to normal life."
I've mentioned before that Lyle is about the funniest guy on Tour, nothing cerebral, he just flat-out makes you laugh; always tried to follow him at events I attended. We'll miss you at Hartford in a few weeks, Jarrod, get well soon mate.

6).With today's announcement that Couples and Nick Price will lead their respective Teams at next year's Presidents Cup, and KJ Choi presumably in the driving seat for a Captaincy role in South Korea in three years' time, one wonders who will captain that American Team. Fred doesn't do overseas unless he's on a mission or a big fat appearance fee, so maybe the door will swing open for one of the forty-somethings who'll miss out on the Ryder Cup job. Duval perhaps? Or Justin Leonard??

7).Next year's Presidents Cup will be held at Muirfield Village, the course that Jack built, outside his boyhood home of Columbus, Ohio. And that's where the Tour is this week, for "The Memorial Tournament". Fabulous tournament, outstanding course, possibly the most enjoyable to walk at any event I've attended. Wonderful par-5's, superb conditioning and invariably a top class winner. We've made a fuss about "International" golfers being awol from Victory Lane this year, but that may change this week and I've got a sneaking hunch that golfers born in South Africa might challenge. So that includes Justin Rose of course, Branden Grace, Els, Oosthuizen, Sabbatini and Schwartzel. And how long before Immelman turns middle-of-the-road finishes into contention?

8).Eyes will be on Woods, of course, this week, Rory McIlroy and his playing partner Luke Donald. In normal circumstances I'd suggest McIlroy and Woods as the two to beat, but their recent form has hardly been inspiring. If the current American winning streak is to be stretched, I'd fancy Fowler or Furyk. Or Carl Pettersson.

9).What do you make of Roger Chapman's stunning (hate that word but it seems to fit) upset at last week's Senior PGA? Just out of curiosity, I checked out the alumni from his 1981 Waker Cup Matches at Cypress Point.
*GB&I included Peter McEvoy, Philip Walton, Ronan Rafferty and Paul Way (what a shame both of those two Ryder Cup heroes never really developed their pro careers).
*And the US featured Jodie Mudd (ditto), Pavin, Jay Sigel and Halimony Sutton. And two who have dropped off the radar. And with names like these it's easy to see why: Frank Fuhrer and Dick von Tacky. I'm serious, you think I'd make them up?

10).And let's leave the last word to Gary Van Sickle of Sports Illustrated, on the much-talked about subject of slow play and ideas to get serious about penalising it:
"The Ryder Cup would be the best place to get serious about slow play. It seems as if slow-playing the Americans has long been a European tactic, although several Americans are also guilty of turtle-like paces."

So that's why Europe has such a terrific recent record in the Ryder Cup - we've been slow-playing the Americans all these years!
Good Lord, if you played slower than Chip Beck, for instance, you'd be walking backwards.

Mac,
They've lenthened some holes, dug some bunkers a little deeper and, of course, the 16th is basically a completely new (par-3) hole. It was cool yesterday morning and scoring improved as the day grew warmer.

Almost 3/4 inch of rain overnight and more on the way, "windy, rain and a few thunderstorms this morning," but should be clearing for this afternoon and then gorgeous the rest of the weekend. So: Possibility of a delay this morning, but the course could play soft this afternoon, which won't help short hitters.


I think Rory sees this tournament as almost a Major, his respect for Jack Nicklaus who he sees as a mentor, etc, etc. Plus this place suits him down to the ground.
Interesting that the gca gurus describe Muirfield Village as getting increasingly difficult as you approach the green. Expansive fairways, but shots in to the greens need to be precise with little margin for error when "out of position". Then the greens themselves are US Open fast with some relatively severe slopes.

Kwini I had a look through the holes at Olympic club yesterday on the open website and many have put in closely mown run offs really quite severe and then the other extreme par 3s surrounded by 6 inch rough no first cut.Looks a cracking course though no water. GIR will be critical.

Hi dyna,
Yup, that's what I remember from previous Championships; all strategerie and wildness off the tee will not escape punishment!
Steve Stricker played really well here last time and his game is the sort that prosper.

Would fancy Mahan and Westwood but not if an excellent chipping game is crucial.


Meanwhile, they're off on time at Muirfield Village, still rain in the area but presumably no lightening. Be interesting to see what the scores are early.

Looking for Ryan Moore to go well. Got a little e/w on him this week.

Something wrong with Phil and he's not letting on what!

Agreed about Olympic, from what I read sounds like chipping could be a very important skill to have around that course... There's a link with some interesting and insightful info about the way the Olympic has been set up for the US Open coming directly from Bill Love, the chief-architect in charge of preparing the course for the big event.

http://jayflemma.thegolfspace.com/?p=4372

I'm not familiar with how the course looked like in the past, but cutting off over 600 trees sounds pretty dramatic...

Great article pd, Thanks! Dovetails pretty much with the previews in June's Golf Digest.
I think a large percentage of the trees they removed were dead or diseased, don't think it was an Oakmont-like clear-cutting operation!

The slopes of the fairways will drive the guys crazy.


Lairdy,
I also really like Ryan Moore this week if he can keep his putter going - only 8 greens hit in Rd 1 and just 21 putts! In decent form and always seems to play well here.

Is Belgium going to become a force in European Golf??

Great to see Nicholas Colsaerts' success, but I wasn't aware of Thomas Pieters who plays US College Golf at the University of Illinois. Pieters just won the individual title at the NCAA Div 1 (College Golf's highest individual honour) at Riviera.

Seems he's in the European Team for the Palmer Cup and is also headed for the US Amateur. A name to watch in the future for sure.

Early doors but Stenson's -3 after six holes makes him the hot golfer on the course. (He'll like that!)

I see D. Ferguson is saying that players have been taken off the course 'by boat', is it that bad? Haven't been watching today...

Good move up by Scott ...

Can't be that bad, they're supposed to resume at 11.30 a.m. Perhaps DF just got soaked!

Adam Scott can focus on golf now as I see his Ana was upset today, in more ways than one I imagine.

On balance seems that the golf-tennis relationships impact more negatively on the tennis players' side, both Caro and Ana struggling of late... I recall reading a while ago a comment from Ana praising Adam's tennis skills with a very interesting choice of words: " he aced me a few times"....

Talking of which, he wasn't too far from acing the 8th hole @ Memorial a few minutes ago...

Presumably that's the golf termination of "Ace", pd?

No Welsh golfers making the cut in the Usk Valley, and none on the Nationwide either as Colwyn Bay's Ben Briscoe has withdrawn from this week's event.

Cool and windy in Ohio but most of the rain looks to be clearing out. If my fantasy guys are anything to go by, the gusty winds are playing havoc as there seem to be a lot of balls in hazards.

Stenson continuing his relentless march up the leaderboard, but some big names will miss the cut, Bubba Watson likely to be among them.

dynamark wrote:Kwini I had a look through the holes at Olympic club yesterday on the open website and many have put in closely mown run offs really quite severe and then the other extreme par 3s surrounded by 6 inch rough no first cut.Looks a cracking course though no water. GIR will be critical.

http://www.olyclub.com/Default.aspx?p=DynamicModule&pageid=342338&ssid=243551&vnf=1

http://www.usopen.com/en_US/course/hole.html?n=1

Am I the only one that experience a problem with the live Scoring at pgatour dot com?

Most days, the live scoring works just fine, as in the scores update automatically. Other days, like today, I have to refresh the scores which is a pain in the neck.

FWIW, My browser is google chrome and I don't do anything different when I load up pgatour dot com.

GPB,
That happens to my internet explorer sometimes but it's working well today - usually starts failing on the weekend. Agree, bloody annoying, but Nationwide and Champers leaderboards refresh properly so definitely pgatour.com's problem.

Thanks neutral . . . . . .


Only two rounds under par so far today, Lucas Glover coming in from the cold with a 68, and slowcoach Matteson.

I wonder how a mixed double match would go between Matt Kuchar and his wife against Wozzilroy or IdamaScott ?

Mrs Kuchar was a pretty good college player and Matt played competitive tennis when he was a kid.

At least it should be a quiet match... unless any of the Kuchars are grunters themselves... In fairness to them, Ana and Caro are two of the very few women tennis players left out there who keep it quiet and civilized in that respect...

Good start for Tiger, not so good from Rory and Luke....

Hmmm, El Tigre in the lead... what's going on here...

El Tigre is playing stress-free golf, missing two par-five fairways when, if they had been par-4 holes, he likely wouldn't have had a shot at the green, holing out quite well.

Luke's righted the ship, Rory shipping water.

Continued poor play from Bradley, Watney and Simpson.
Meanwhile by "one and done" for the week, Oosthuizen, is well and truly done.

Ben Curtis the best of those with an outside Olympic chance on his way early to qualifying, Allenby looking as if he'll join Curtis in about three hours.

Woods group a full hole+ behind. Given that they're trying to get a move on in an effort to get Round 2 finished tonight, you'd think it was time to put them on the cloche.

Hang on, Rory's not just shipping water, he's being attacked by Smali pirates hiding in the creeks.

Lucky for Tiger's group - they can catch up due to Rory's shipwreck.

No bogeys in 30 holes for Woods - he's furious about that double but everyone is leaking oil. In reality, anything under par this afternoon is pretty darn good.
Continuing to play really slowly though.

Europe's best markedly absent ... Rory abysmal ... Luke "luke warm" at best ... Tiger playing to his potential. Great to see!

But, it's only the halfway point ... still expect the cream (Luke) to rise to the top.

3 MC's in a row for McIlroy then, didn't see any of it as was on the long jaunt home from Chester. Was it as bad as I've been reading, if so great warm up for US Open defence!

Fader

Rory basically stopped playing in a manner that the conditions required after he made a very silly error in some lateral water.

It was a par 5 and his second (a lay up to about PW range) went into the hazard. He tried to chip it out sideways but it hit the bank and ended up back in the hazard.

He could have taken a drop out and be playing his fourth onto the green.

By chipping out he would have been playing four to the green.

Work that one out? I know we are not allowed to criticise his caddie but he should have been on the ball.

So in the end he took a drop out and was playing five to the green.

McLaren wrote:I know we are not allowed to criticise his caddie but he should have been on the ball.

I wonder if Rory is coming to a point when he needs a 'divorce' (or two) in his life... A bit like it happened to Tiger when he had to decide between wife, agent and caddy (still think Tiger made the wrong choice then ). Rory's (lack of) interaction/consultation on the course with his caddy (specially in critical moments) is hard to understand...

McIlroys overexposure is getting as intolerable as that of Woods.
I'm happy to see Mcilroy continue to miss cuts.

Strangely enough, s_r, the more missed cuts by either, the more attention they will get.
But nothing like a steady string of top ten performances to bore the pants off the journos and have them write about someone else.

True kwini. I'm hoping for the traditional third round collapse from Woods.
I must say though I'm finding a lot of US tournaments to be pretty boring lately. Low quality golf and uninspiring venues.

Super - Have you ever been to or played Muirfield Village in Ohio?

I have to say I dont understand the logic behind some of the holes at Muirfield village. Too many of them are like separate compartments within a hole instead of one entity. When the players bash a 4 iron off the tee on a par four with no other option I dont get it.

Whatever I think however, it looked brutal yesterday with the wind and cold - not mcilroys favourite mixture - and I though Furyk looked to have been in total control of what he needed to do. Unlike rory who seems incapable of playing the game the conditions demand instead of how he wants to play.


Also, did tiger really hit a 187 yard wedge in 50F???

No I haven't, I wasn't referring to this tournament in particular, more some of the other pga events although nicklaus designed courses have a history of not being terribly imaginative.

Mac - I agree with that ... never a fan of a par 4 that doesn't reward a long and straight drive.

Super - Also agree that the Nicklaus design group doesn't have many imaginative courses to their credit. MV, however, the highly regarded exception. Sebonack GC in that same level (but a co-design with Tom Doak).

For heavens sake shotrock, please don't mention Doak on these boards. We'll never hear the end of it from Mac.

The only hole I can think of that "doesn't reward a long and straight drive" is #3, which is a strategic placement off the tee (which Tiger messed up yesterday) and a short iron over water.
Even the par-4 14th rewards a long straight drive, though the creek will swallow up anything mishit. Fact is though, hardly anyone goes for it!
Apart from two rather unimaginative par 3's on the front, and the filler 13th (a bit like the 13th at Pebble is a filler hole) I'd say Muirfield Village is a beautifully designed layout; perhaps TV doesn't do it justice?.
Now, given yesterday's wet and cool weather, it may very well be that some golfers chose to keep their driver in the bag occasionally because the rough was wet, but overall it looks like it's playing as a course should. Hard but fair with plenty of birdie opportunities.


The rain has passed through and today will start off cool and breezy, and by afternoon it will be mild, mid-70's but windy.

I just feels a little like paint by numbers golf to me.


It is a bit of a shame that Woods wont get to play with sabbatini, we all know how much they love each other.

If so Mac, that is the fault of the TV perspective.
I can assure you it's not like that at all. Lots of strategy and a classic example of a course where it's crucial to stay "in position", lots of risk/reward, but bombers need not apply unless their short games are working well.

super_realist wrote:No I haven't, I wasn't referring to this tournament in particular, more some of the other pga events although nicklaus designed courses have a history of not being terribly imaginative.

Maybe you can enlighten us with courses that you do think are "terrbily imaginative". So Mr Nicklaus might have a blueprint.

====

Muirfield Village has hosted the Ryder Cup, Solheim Cup , a US Amateur and in a couple of years, a Presidents Cup.

I have a feeling the 14th tee will be moved up today, making it drive-able.

GPB

Surely Super_realist would like this place

http://www.dismalriver.com/

Muirfield Village presenting quite the examination this morning, only four golfers on the course are under par for the day, nothing better than -2. This course is a much more attractive proposition when conditions are amenable to risk and reward.
And not the sort of risk endured by Villegas on #18, a ten without a penalty shot as far as one can tell.

Slow start to Round 3 from Team England, all four of whom made the cut quite easily.

Plenty of very fine golfers having a miserable time of it in Ohio and only Vijay Singh (69) breaking 71 so far.

Spencer Levin has reached minus eight. Will that make the others play more aggressively to try and catch him. Or do they just concentrate on playing golf waiting for him to come back to the field.

Nice backnine by Justin Rose, but a poor day at the office for Luke Donald. Henrik Stenson flying the European flag.

Kwini

Do you think Tiger will worry he wont be able to catch or even stay up with Levin? Or as you say, do you think he will be happy to bet on him coming backwards (The jack strategy on a jack course).

On a side note.

I have always assumed the fedex was designed with a play off system to stop Tiger winning it every year as the top points/money/whatever over a whole season. Now that there is no dominant player like him is there an argument to make it a reward for more than just four weeks at the end of the season. Or at least a points tweak so that maybe only the top 4 or so have a chance going into the play offs?

Tiger should be thrilled with his form I should imagine!

He's been the most consistent all week, two mistakes but no bogeys; plus he knows this place like the back of his hand and all the leading players have already wilted.

Would think -10 will be enough to win and he's almost there.

Conditions should be perfect on Sunday.

Mac,
I think the Tour is very happy with its FedEx structure now; don't see any changes a-coming, at least until the new PGA Tour season structure is resolved. Big differences still on that.

PS: Wozza out as well as Rory. Wonder if she'll be off to Memphis?

kwini

Speaking of tennis, is there a chance any new PGA tour structure could have mandatory events like they do in tennis?

Because of the ranking system, whereby there's little or no impact from going walkabout, a la Phil, Rory, Webb, Keegs, Bubba, Oosthuizen this week, I'm not in favour of mandatory events. Would rather see discretionary increase in prizemoney applied to encourage more of the best players to turn up and do their level best.
The owgr system has some perverse effects that cashmoney mitigates, at least to some extent.

Oops, Tiger's first boge of the week.

Not sure what I think, it was just mentioned today on the tennis commentary that Murray had missed a mandatory event through injury (madrid masters?). It got me thinking whether the pga tour would consider creating such events to ensure they have events almost as strong as the WGC's. I guess as a long term strategy to cover of any threat from else where.

If anything it would maybe sink the european tour if players had the WGC's, Majors and then mega PGAT events to play. Double dipping would be difficult and almost pointless.

I guess it may also sink the smaller pga tour events.

I think we're already there, Mac.

The Players, Quail Hollow, Memorial, perhaps Riviera and Bay Hill.

Don't think the European Tour should worry about it; they need to be more concerned about their own Tour, building up traditional events, securing long-term contracts etc, etc.

Still not sure how to read what is happening, can tiger really count on those ahead folding?