PGA Tour: Blowing In The Wind: Notes from the Ballwasher

First topic message reminder :

1).If the answers, my friends, are blowing in the wind, what are the questions?

2).Clearly Dustin Johnson is the answer to "who is the only golfer to win a Tour event over 54 holes in the past six years?" - and remarkably, not only has he won three of them, but also has a debut win at a cold and wet Turning Stone, plus a second win at traditionally inclement Pebble Beach, on his CV. Of the other three 54-hole events this century, Phil has won two, Luke Donald the other. (Adam Scott has the last 36-hole win.)

3).What is the future of the Tour's Two Tickets To Paradise"?
Pretty tenuous right now, with Hyundai still not signed up for a return to Kapalua, and Sony only signed through 2014. One would think the Tour might want to bundle negotiations on these two, clearly one significantly weaker without the other. Talks with Hyundai are complicated of course by the absence of seven top players this week. Appearance fees for the Hyundai Tournament of Champions have been rumoured, but many players would consider the $60K last place prize-money more than loose change.

4).Who else was absent without leave in the opening week of the season?
pgatour.com, whose site is but a shadow of it former self. For all its stilted, jingoistic style, pgatour.com is the premier resource for information about the PGA Tour, Champions Tour and web.com Tour, and its apparent no-show in Hawaii seems not to have been explained anywhere. No idea why not. Hopefully the smart-meters in Ponte Vedra Beach are flagging that their site is flagging.

5).What about players with new club deals, the ones who can't stand prosperity?
Kyle Stanley was one who swooshed to Nike. Assume that includes his putter so imagine he was deliriously happy with his 14 x 3-putts in 54 holes.

6).Who is planning to light up the web.com Tour this year?
Plenty of answers there of course, but David Duval is one of them. The eternal optimist now sees only one, web.com, way back to the "show", especially as the Humana event next week, where he was famously champ with a final round 59 a few years ago, is reported by Doug Ferguson not to have offered him a sponsor's invite. That presents a pretty grim future on the PGA Tour so Duval is checking the flight schedules for everywhere from South America to Idaho.

7).What about comebacks?
Casey continues his in South Africa - it'll be interesting to see his tournament schedule this year - as is Goosen, while Steve Marino plans to tee it up tomorrow at the "Sony Open in Hawaii". Probably the best long-time Tour member yet to register a win, although Brian Davis wouldn't agree.

8).Are there any Europeans switching on to the Sony?
Not many, Davis, Greg Owen (course could suit his fairways and greens game) and Russell Knox (wishing him the very best) are the only GB OK on hand. Pettersson was 2nd here last year and should be best of the rest with his countryman Norlander making his Tour debut.

9).Isn't it about time Mark Wilson won again?
Well, not necessarily, but all five of his Tour wins have been during the first ten weeks of the year and he was successful here two years back. Chuckie Howell invariably contends on the flattest course they play all year, including runnering up twice and I like the Chuckster and Tim Clark as good each way investments.

10).Who will replace Dottie Pepper on NBC/Golf Channel golf?
It has been reported that Notah Begay will be patrolling the fairways - let's hope he's done his homework on non-American golfers better than the rest of the NBC crew.
Another week saw another Poulter / Miller spat. "Poults has over-achieved." "B0ll0cks, I've under-achieved." Or words to that effect. Then the "drama" queen stuff. Shut up Miller, and your sidekicks Jacobsen and Rolfing are no better.
And Paul Azinger is not that much better, but I really miss him not being in the booth. His podcast with Jaime Diaz is always full of perceptive observations and insight. His politics are somewhere to the right of D1ckhead Cheney and probably racist, but he knows his golf, is very articulate and is a sad miss from the broadcast booth.

For some reason it's more entertaining reading this board than watching the Sony event. Shouldn't be that way, eh?

Not sure what to expect when the Aloha crowd get underway in an hour;
Rookie runaway? West of London touch with Henley and Langley up there.

Golden Oldies? Ames (49 in April), Vijay (50 next month), even Lumpy (listed as 250 lbs, but surely closer to 300?) all not far behind.

Course specialists? Clark and Howell, plus Sabbatini only one hot round away.

And then there's Smiley Face Kuchar sniffing at everyone's heels.


Leading European is Henrik Norlander, an obvious choice, who is currently T14 and can do himself a lot of good with a high finish - "Reshuffle" will be here before we know it and a big cheque early will go a long way to getting him in the Florida and early Texas tournaments.

The Daly Show:
Going along nicely: -4 until his 43rd hole. Then 2 x triples, 2 x doubles, 2 x bogeys. What an idiot. It's not that he can't play, it just that he won't play.

Maybe not much interest in the Honolulu hooley but this might turn out closer than it looked.
Timmy Clark with an early bird, the ever-combustible Pat Perez making an early move, and Vijay Singh edging in to the top ten.

So far so good for two young Swedes in their Tour debuts, with Lingmerth especially on course for a Top 20, Norlander under par so far today.

Scoring apparently trickier today; 15 holes still for the leaders and all to play for, the Simpson and Bradley 3-some characteristically dawdling with an empty hole ahead of them. Slowcoaches. Fine them!

The real story here is the chance for the young Yank to stamp a W on this tournament. Now that would be an impressive debut!

Unless pgatour.com gets their cyberhead out of their arse we'll have to assume you're talking about Tom Brady . . . . . . .

Ha! Brady on cruise control - But I loved watching the ever complaining Pete Carroll lose to the Falcons today.

But back to golf -- hopefully.

C'mon you Yank rookie!

Bloody Hell, 45 foot birdie putt on the 14th for a 3-shot lead with four to play.
Hope he gets Poults in the 2014 Ryder Cup!

Happy New Year, Kwini.

Nice watching this young rookie Henley showing no signs of nerves and holding off seasoned campaigners.

HNY Leff,
Amazing performance, good job he isn't a seasoned campaigner, almost as if he doesn't know enough to suffer from nerves. Looking forward to finding out what the total mileage of putts holed this week is - 190-odd feet the first day alone! Must be well over 100 already today. Some days the hole is as big as a bucket - tho' that might not help moi.

Boy can't miss.

Another birdie opportunity on the 17th. He will have an eagle on the 18th to finish -25!

The last time someone (John Huston) shot this low they reconfigured the course. What now?!

3 birds on #17, unbelievable. Enjoy the ride!

Poults! Are you watching??

We may see Henley winning more in 2013 and beyond. Maybe a bit too early to say, but I like his temperament.

kwini,
CHIII and Tim Clark not bad bets!

Saw some headlines on skysports news this morning. Is this Henley the same boy that turned up on the web.com tour and won 3 in a row or something? who was that?

Pedro CHIII did me a favour too! If he's not shorted than 20s for this event next year then the bookies don't know what they're doing!

pedro Wouldn't it be nice if I could bet on golf here!


Lairdy, Was that Ben Kohles? Not Henley, although his record has been pretty good, he and Langley were tied for low am at the Pebble Beach US Open.
Incredible putting last night, looking forward to catching up on his stats if only pgatour.com would feed their meter.
Is he a phenom or just another "frat boy" (just to annoy our American friends)?

GolfWorld last week in an article about Luke Guthrie and his chances for making an early impression at the Sony:
"Besides Guthrie keep your eye on fellow web.com grad Russell Henley."

They played together on Thursday and Friday.
Henley's "strokes gained putting" were over 3 per round (top last year was about .8 for the year as a whole).
Guthrie's "strokes gained putting" was about -2.5, almost six shots a round worse.
One won in great style. The other went home early.

Ah, that name sounds familiar. Kohles' profile on pgatour.com suggests he is on the web.com tour but is that still to be updated along with the rest of it? Seems he played at the weekend and finished T41st.

Henley's photo with the trophy seems to suggest he's at least a frat boy...

There appears to be a bunch of these guys right now, ie young, American (btw did we do a Happy Birthday for David Bowie last week?), not long out of college and winning golf tournaments. They all have similar names too. Is there really a clone army of bright US talent coming through or is the web.com just receiving more publicity, in light of recent changes?

Lairdy, They all have last names for first names, in the spirit of Hudson Swafford!!
Kohles should definitely have a full-blown exemption for this year's PGA Tour having "graduated" from last year's web.com.
pgatour.com hasn't really got out of first gear yet this year, not sure what that's all about, industrial dispute perhaps? Or some sort of royalty issue??
Dunno. Bloody nuisance though!

M.Laird in this week's Humana field. About time.

Now, that's some golf!

Obviously, only time will tell how "for real" this American "Frat Boy" (Man, probably a better term) is, but he sure didn't limp into this victory and stamped his ticket for this year and lots more to come.

I remember the pgatour.com site grinding to a hault at the tail end of 2011 as well. Seems the holiday hangover has lasted a lot longer this time. The stats are up to date though. I checked my new favourite item of interest - Kyle Stanley's Strokes gained-putting. Right down near the bottom but to be fair there has only been one full event so far. It could be worse - he could be Bill Haas and dead last. Not sure if thats plus or minus a belly putter?

At first I wasn't sure of its usefulness, or how it was calculated, but strokes gained-putting is a great stat.

PGA West is a desert like course no? Martin Laird seems to fair well at those. Was the Humana Challenge a pro-am last year?