PGA Tour: "I'm Alright Jack": Notes from the Ballwasher

First topic message reminder :

1).That's probably Tiger Woods's message to the Memorial Tournament host as Tiger prepares to win his sixth Memorial, second in a row. (As well, clearly, as inserting a Peter Sellers reference in these notes.) Curious that Jack said a few weeks ago that he's never had a proper conversation with Tiger, especially given his propensity for reaching out to young players. To which Tiger could well say, "I'm alright, Jack".

2).Looking back briefly at last week's action in Fort Worth, Colonial once again provided an opportunity to ball-strikers rather than bombers as Boo Weekley earned a richly deserved victory. Boo's worked hard at his "drivers and irons, can't putt" image but last week saw him hole 400+ feet worth of putts and, golly gosh, he wins the tartan jacket (except he didn't seem to know what "tartan" meant when Feherty asked him about it!).

3).Weekley's stat's these past seven years rank from sublime to ridiculous:
Total driving: Best: 1st, Worst: 34th,
Greens hit in reg: Best: 1st Worst: 54th,
Putting: Best: 161st, Worst: 189th.

He'll be taking this week off and returning for Memphis, where you'd think he will also play well on a course that seems to suit him.

4).PGA Tour observers have been raising eyebrows recently at Kevin Na's continued absence from Tour events - his only start since early March being The Masters.
When players take an extended time out, it's usually because of a suspension (which are almost never disclosed unless by the player concerned), unreported health problems or personal issues. Na has recently had to deal with family illness in South Korea but nothing official has been reported so one can only speculate - if he's in Finchem's dog-house, he'll have his work cut out when he finally returns as his playing exemption expires this year and he currently ranks 169th and falling in FedEx points.

5).Just to revert to last week's "Senior" theme, perhaps it is interesting to report leaders of non-American Champions Tour earnings, especially relevant if anyone questions why there's not a Seniors Ryder Cup.
Top five career earnings:
Europeans:
Langer: $11.1M (15th overall)
Canizares: $7.2M (44th)
Smyth: $4.5M (78th)
James: $4.4M (80th)
Barnes: $1.9M (148th)
Christy O'Connor Jr next, followed by Roger Chapman.

Other Internationals:
Aoki: $9.4M (20th)
Marsh: $9.2M (21st)
Charles: $9.0M (24th)
Fernandez: $8.9M (26th)
McNulty: $8.3M (31st)
John Bland next, still ahead of Canizares, with $7.2M, though David Frost is stacking the cash at an impressive rate.

More of the same last week as only Langer (78-67-67-67) finished in the top 40 amongst a "strong" European entry.

6).And so to Muirfield Village, rightly named Jack's masterpiece, and the site of Europe's first Ryder Cup win in the United States: Arise, Sir Tony . . . . . .

The course has changed little from the 80's to now, a tweak to the 17th a few years ago, and most recently a redesign to the par-3 16th. Not sure that the 16th is much improved - although a water hazard has been (unimaginatively?) introduced in front of the left-hand side of the green, the right-side pin positions are benign and the left-side positions too severe for the length of shot.
Nicklaus talks about the old 16th being an uninteresting hole that merely gets you from #15 to #17, but I would argue that the 13th hole is one of the most bland in tournament golf, especially as it comes between one of the better par-3's and a great short par-4.
Regardless, the pros welcome the wide open fairways, course conditioning and clubhouse milkshakes, not necessarily in that order. It rates 6th in the 2011 ranking of Tour courses, just behind Colonial!

7).And great fields are invariably attracted, this year being no exception.
The Presidents Cup will be staged here in early October and Nick Price has presumably been trying to get invites for those likely to play. Unfortunately Oosthuizen is still out, and Clark, Jaidee and Sterne of the current Top Ten qualifying places are not playing (wonder Jaidee and Sterne were invited?), while Cabrera is also absent. Too bad.

8).Europe has a strong presence and there's surely no course on Tour that you'd expect to suit McIlroy more than this. Westwood and Donald, Gonzo and Laird (should be right up his street also), former winners Pettersson (2006) and Rose (2010), plus Karlsson and Stenson are all in town. Another important week for Karlsson who has let decent early positions slip these past two weeks.

9).In normal circumstances you'd think that this is one event Tiger Woods can win without his proverbial "A" game, but weather could play a part with the tournament starting out hot and windy and morphing into potentially wet and windy on Friday and Saturday. Wouldn't recommend betting against Woods though, but a "bet without the favourite" might turn up some good value. Joint runners-up last year, Sabbatini and Romero, rather curiously neither qualified or warranted an invite. Shame.

10).The web.com Tour is trucking along, in Maryland this week with its usual quota of up-and-comers, Tour rejects and old lags prepping for the Champions Tour. At least 25 Tour Past Champions or "Veteran" members are in the field, plus young'uns like Cantlay, Peterson, Lovemark and Danny Lee.
Russell Knox, Chopra, Cejka and Richard Johnson are all well-placed to contest the four tournament Tour qualifying finale but all outside the automatic graduate placings.

PS: Nicklaus and his "Captains Club" Committee welcome an Honoree (or two or three) into their "Memorial Park", and this year's inductee is Ray Floyd. No doubt an extremely worthy choice, long time rival of Jack and Hall Of Famer.
But why wasn't he named a few years ago? No-one (except perhaps Nicklaus himself) credited his wife with influencing his golf achievements more than Floyd credited ( his missus) Maria, and sad that he saw her call it a day before receiving the "Captains'" call.

Disappointing for Westwood, did what he had to do for eight holes but then got let down by the "strength of his game", his driver. Still, they should be back underway in half an hour and some birds and about "three beers" and he could be OK.
More chance of three beers than three birds methinks.

The early look at the Memphis field shows a modest turn out from Europe:
Christian, Davis, Fisher, Knox, Owen, Poulter
Harrington (but no sign of Lowry)
Hanson, Jacobson, Karlsson, Norlander,
plus Coetzee,

Pretty average quality field; doubt if princedrac will conjure much more than about 36 pts for the lucky winner.

Garrigus WD because of the birth of his son.

Scheduled resumption of Round 2 at Memorial @ 7.30 a.m..

Round 3 expected to start, in threesomes off both nines, at 9.30 a.m.. Almost sure to be further disruption later today, possibility of "damaging storms", but Sunday forecast very good.

Westwood withdraws.
pd, Noh was apparently dq'd because he didn't understand the protocol for withdrawing - as he failed to notify anyone he was ruled a dq rather than a wd!

Butch Harmon in the Twitter dog-house for ascribing Nick Watney's abysmal "effort" (82 - 77) at Memorial to "personal problems", all the more bizarre as Harmon is Watney's long-time coach.

"Interesting", said Nick, "No comment."

Watney just one of a number of top players struggling in this year's FedEx points table:
31st: McIlroy
36: Schwartzel
38: Westwood
43: Watney
44: Garcia
47: Fowler
49: Furyk
52: Donald
55: Zach Johnson
57: Bubba Watson
79: Van Pelt
84: Pettersson
85: Poulter
Hanson, Els, Oosthuizen, Harrington, Kaymer, Colsaerts, etc, etc, even worse.

Rory seems to be making himself work to make the cut when at obese stage it looked comfortable.

I live about 400 miles WSW of Columbus and it poured rain with thunder/lightning here last night. IMO, 72 holes is out of the question if they want to finish my tomorrow evening

If they goto Monday, they bump into US Open Sectional qualifying.

The key will be getting in as much of Round 3 as they can today, so would think they'll be reminding the players to get a move on. Columbus is certainly in the tornado zone for later today though - they should be playing in VT.

Poor conclusion to Round 2 for Team GB&I: One withdrawal, Laird +2, McIlroy +1, and Donald and Rose even.
McIlroy's reward will be to play as a twosome (presumably) with Mike Weir at the back of the field, probably not the position he expected when he birdied 15 first thing this morning.

Fortunately, 73 players is more manageable for the tour to finish in 5 hours than a 80+ player after cut field.

No doubt the 120 starting field (rather than 156) impacted this number. If there was a full field, I am sure the cut would have been +2 (if not +1) rather than +3.

Mr. Tont is kaput...?

princedracula wrote:Mr. Tont is kaput...?

Going to the dentist.

Tont kaput?
Not as kaput as my fantasy effort.

All the Tiger fans predictably silent, if this was horse-racing the Stewards would be having him in for being a non-tryer.

Did Westwood bother giving an excuse for his withdrawal or would anything he could have said been so obviously false when put against the truth that he couldn't be bothered to hang around just to play 2 holes?

Wow, the worst 9 hole score of Woods' career. Really gobsmacked by how poorly he's playing on a course he loves. At least we know Tiger will never give up unlike some others.

incontinentia wrote:Wow, the worst 9 hole score of Woods' career. Really gobsmacked by how poorly he's playing on a course he loves. At least we know Tiger will never give up unlike some others.

You mean like Cadillac 2012?

Players 2010?

c'mon dude he had genuine injuries, not like he invented a toothache or anything...

OK, you think a mysterious facet joint injury and achilles injury are legit. When he was playing less than two weeks later?

He gave up at the 2010 Quail Hollow Tournament and the 2010 Bridgestone too.

Just settled down for the coverage and only 3 holes left doh!

Tiger 44 looked silly, middle of the fairway on two holes and big misses to the green. 18 pin being nice is challenging, in reality a joke but hey ho - they get paid for it.

Note, Adam Scott up on the rails, whilst the rest of leaders bar Kuchar look like pedigree chum at the moment.

I bet that, if Tiger had been told that JJ Henry would beat him by 11 strokes before play started, he'd've expected JJ to shoot in the fifties.

Strange old day though. The Woods meltdown, and Langer went thru a few too many Senior moments with a six-over-par run through five holes.

Bet Tiger feels a bit silly tomorrow morning pulling on the obligatory maillot rouge. "Chapeau!".

44

Nice of Tiger to contribute to the super_realist recovery effort this week... :-)

kwinigolfer wrote:Bet Tiger feels a bit silly tomorrow morning pulling on the obligatory maillot rouge. "Chapeau!".

Ha... well TW's thanking Zach, Jordan and Justin for saving him the indignity...

NO WAIT... you didn't mean this kind of maillot rouge did you? http://www.lapresse.ca/arts/arts-visuels/201102/02/01-4366201-le-celebre-maillot-rouge-de-farah-fawcett-au-musee.php

GPB wrote: OK, you think a mysterious facet joint injury and achilles injury are legit.

I believe every one of TW's injury WD's were legit... Some turned out to be just a scare an not serious... but some most certainly were more serious...

Amazing how "scandalous" that Farrah poster was 35 years ago, compared to how much skin is being shown these days!

I was horny teenager when Farrah became FARRAH and there is no way my mother would have allowed that poster in the house.

Farrah always wore her swoosh in a different place to Tiger . . . .

s_r, what if you have nine of them??
http://www.pgatour.com/news/2013/06/01/ross-column-memorial-saturday.html

GPB wrote: He gave up at the 2010 Bridgestone too.

His divorce was finalised that week! cut the guy some slack!

I actually think it's good that Tiger stank the place out this week, means he will be fresh and super-motivated at Merion.

incontinentia wrote:

GPB wrote: He gave up at the 2010 Bridgestone too.

His divorce was finalised that week! cut the guy some slack!

You didn't qualify this statement: (emphasis mine)

At least we know Tiger will never give up unlike some others.

GPB wrote:Amazing how "scandalous" that Farrah poster was 35 years ago, compared to how much skin is being shown these days!

I was horny teenager when Farrah became FARRAH and there is no way my mother would have allowed that poster in the house.

My first memories of Farrah was those Noxzema commercials with Joe Namath (early 70's I think)... whew.... talking about "lathered up"....

Ha... I was already married when that poster came out in 1976... so me owning one would have been a "non-starter". But luckily... my wife shared a similar aversion to the cold... and she had no problem with me drooling over Charlies Angels... so all was cool... :-)

Snap Hook,
Adam Scott still moving up on the rails as you said last night, getting closer now.

Big chance for Justin Rose today; some poor form recently but overdue to make a positive statement. Rest of Europe back in the pack.

I wonder if Gonzo and Tiger are talking about their common friend, Sergio, today... Judging by their start, they probably do...

C'mon Koooch!

Woods's game is somewhat at sixes (2) and sevens (3) so far this week.

You know, pd, a diplomatic word or two in Tiger's ear from Gonzo - who he seems to have some respect for, and why wouldn't he? - might do American/Spanish relations a power of good.

Looks like I put the mockers on Adam Scott . . . . but half the field are posting big numbers.

Tom Gillis doing his best to save Tiger's non-white(-ish) @ss: 11 over after 11.

Justin Rose has got to start taking his opportunities . . . . .

Davis, Donald and Pettersson stealthily earning themselves a good payday.

Great finish by Kuchar. I used to think he was fake, but I think he is genuinely goofy now.

Flawless from Kuchar - who'd've thunk he turned his career around in a hail-infested tournament where he had to outlast a very unlucky Vaughn Taylor to win a lengthy play-off.

0-2 in Ryder Cup singles, lest we forget.

It's turning in to a "nearly" season for Justin Rose and he missed enough short putts in must-make situations today to make one think he won't be winning a big one anytime soon.

Fine finish for Brian Davis who can start to plan out his 2014 season. Hopefully that will inspire him to a win at Hartford.

Kuchar clearly establishing himself as an "in form" major contender. Time to step up and get one, or become that "Best player to never bag one" award? (Currently held by Lukey, but now not in Kuchar's form, so best to hand it over.)

Next stop on the fabled R5 line at Ardmore Station. Kids around here taught "Old maids never wed and have babies" (Overbrook, Merion, Narberth, Wynnewood, Ardmore, Haverford, Bryn Mawr).

Well played Matt Kuchar.

Led the final round from the front, contenders getting close on occasions but not managing to get past and seals it with a lovely birdie on 18. Can't think who else wins like that. Greens in reg 13/14, very impressive. Also Ian Poulter note Kuchar has played 14 events this year, nowt like playing competively.

As others have said, Adam Scott, Justin Rose doh.

My US open betting thoughts are all over the shop - now this Kevin Chappell might be a cheeky each way bet, top 10 in last two US opens but has he shot his bolt this week?

Nice point about Kuch paying 14 times already.

Are more players now trying to play tiger style limited schedules?

Does this work or backfire for your normal player?

Sr,
Is Luke really ahead of Lee in the 'best never to have won a major'? Sounds like a good thread to me..

Some other news from the US before we look forward to next week:

1).Champions Tour: 55-y-o Ian Woosnam recorded his best ever solo finish, 7th, in the "Principal Charity Classic" in Iowa, earning himself $45K. Woosie still hits the ball beautifully and maybe this could jump-start him in to taking a more positive interest in "Senior" golf. Roger Chapman was one stroke further back.

2).The Swedes entertained in Swtockholm and Columbus, and Daniel Chopra wasn't to be left out of the fun, earning a T3 result in the web.commer. He's now inside the web.com automatic qualifiers for a 2014 "Tour" card; he may be eccentric but Desperate Daniel can still play.

3).And Thomas Pieters, 2012 NCAA individual champion, was the only Illinois winner as the Uni of Alabama beat Uni of Illinois in the Collegiate final. One of the officials apparently asked him where in Illinois he came from to which Thomas responded "Belgium". Sounds as if he's turning pro now, but where? Watch this space.

4).And Karrie Webb won her 39th LPGA tournament. Fantastic achievement.


PS: Unfortunately neither the 2013 models of Donald or Westwood are among the best players without a major.
Looks like they're both avoiding the Scottish Open which is tres disappointing. Scotland's loss is apparently France's gain. Aren't they the two leaders of the "Why aren't there more events in Britain brigade"? Don't expect to see them in Wales or Ireland either, and certainly not at Gleneagles. Pathetic.

kwinigolfer wrote:PS: Unfortunately neither the 2013 models of Donald or Westwood are among the best players without a major.

True Kwini, however given their shared status as only previous world no1s without a major title to their names, they're still with the front runners for this. Despite Lee's Sunday meltdown (73) at Wentworth, I still fancy his chances more so than Luke's. He needs to get himself into a comfortable position going into the Sunday though.

Yes, jesting a little barra.
Actually think Lee's best chance is to go out ahead of the leaders and "post a number" a la Webb Simpson or Geoff Ogilvy rather than leading from the front; too many scars that won't heal until he wins one.
Lukey just needs to start hitting it straight again - he's 159th in greens-hit-in-regulation so far this year, 136th in "ball striking". Not good enough and no short game in the world can make up for those inefficiencies!

I would only put Lukey ahead of Lee in that it's exceedingly rare for a player to win their first major at age 40 or higher.

Another reason I don't expect Steve Stricker to do it either.

But, it would be a pleasant surprise!

Merion could be Stricker's last best chance . . . . .

Good piece about Merion in yesterday's NYT, Shotrock, by Bill Pennington, who is usually quite insightful - does he have Haverford College connections?

Kwin - Yes, I did see that piece. Very well done. Don't know if Pennington has Haverford College connections, but it would be impossible to run that event without HC help, that's for sure.

Merion just might be striker's last best chance -- shorter, rewards tee ball accuracy, putting at a premium ...

Brilliant win from Kuch.

Mike weir apparantly now gets his caddy to line him up a la the LPGA.

https://twitter.com/StephanieWei/status/341719044073873410/photo/1

And someone else has a child caddying for them!

He just missed out on the US open but secured the first alternate spot. Are there any known or as good as certain WD at the moment?

Some news of US Open qualifiers, and they include:
Irishman Kevin Phelan, currently at the Uni of North Florida (which I've never previously heard of).
Scotland's Russell Knox (and call me stupid but I reckon he'll play well at Merion)
Sweden's Robert Karlsson and David Lingmerth


and we talked about Gavin Hall's great golf when he was about 15, and doing great things in amateur golf. He's now just about to enrol at University of Texas and he will be at Merion - looking forward to that.

Plenty of big names fell short, including Kyle Stanley who was 3rd at Memorial but a few shots off the pace today.


Mac: Goosen and Sterne are both definitely out. Not sure of anyone else but David Lynn won't be playing (he never entered).

So does that mean first alternates get the spots or people further down other qualification rankings? eg 61 in the world etc