PGA Tour: Jeux Sans Frontieres (et Tigre, Adam, Phil): Notes from the Ballwasher

First topic message reminder :

1).Hanson plays with Dustin, Rory plays with Boo,
Jonas plays with Keegan, Beats him three and two,
Lukey plays Matteo, Sterne plays with Zach,
Poulter beats young Rickie, With eagles on the back.
 
2).Yes, It's a Knockout!
And if looks could kill they probably will.
For Tim Finchem at least, as his contracts with both venue and sponsor expire this year. The unpopular Dove Mountain course and Title Sponsor Accenture will both have to be replaced. No tears for Dove Mountain which has seemingly been rejected by players and fans alike, but perhaps Accenture can be persuaded to continue? If not, why would Volvo not want to step in and take this Championship around the World instead of its European event??
 
3).What a shame that the sponsor has been rejected by Woods, Scott and Mickelson, all playing next week at Honda; Civic duty? Or a Prelude to appearance fees??
Who knows, but this lack of Accord can't help their benefactors as high-end sponsors are right to expect most of golf's marquee names to patronise their events.
Alternatively, if a major reason for not making this a proper World event is that top Americans won't travel, well they're not travelling to Tucson so, frankly my dear, who gives a damn?
 
4).Let's hope a beneficiary in all this will be the old Tucson Open and their Conquistadors who managed a perfectly fine event on Tour, including three years as match play, from WWII to well into the Shock and Awe era. But that's all speculation and one imagines something rather more concrete will be forthcoming soon.
 
5).A fine win at the "Northern Trust Open" by Bubba Watson, with Dustin Johnson (and Princess Paulina) breathing heavily in his wake - As Greg Maddux so rightly said, "Chicks dig the long ball".
Only a few weeks ago Faldo and Bubba were joshing each other (good-naturedly?) in Phoenix about the respective merits of "How" and "How many", as sirnick was criticising Bubba's course management. Nothing to question about a bogeyless weekend of 64-64 however, with some excellent putting when it mattered most. Bubba says this is a year for "Rejoicing", but it could also be a year of redemption as his only sniff last year ended in an unseemly snit with caddie Ted Scott as "Hartford" was lost with one careless swing of the club.
 
6).Another grisly performance by the golfing Internationals with Americans monopolising the top eleven places.  
KJ Choi (playing well this year after a couple of seasons in the doldrums) finished 12th, Sang-Moon Bae 14th, Badds and Senden tied for 18th, and Westwood dawdled home in 20th.
Bae is the most recent Asian winner on Tour and Choi his immediate predecessor - the Tour is full of the eastern promise of young Asians but they haven't delivered so far.
 
7).It's been almost two years since Ernie Els became the last South African - I'm guessing it was Sabbatini at, yes, Honda before that. And Adam Scott is the only Aussie to win a Tour event since Leishman blitzed the Hartford field two years ago.
Having said which, this was a better week for the older Aussies with:
Badds (almost 33) scoring only his 6th Top 20 in 18 months.
Senden (42) with his 3rd Top 20 in a year.
Allenby (42) has been in a 2-year funk ever since throwing away the 2012 Mayakoba Classic (or since Jarrod Lyle's recurrence of leukaemia) with only 2 Top Tens since, both in Memphis. But even he has 3 x Top 30's this year now.
Appleby (42) has been in a funk, Greenbrier 59 and win excepted, since a wonderful 2008 season with only 6 Top 10 finishes in the past 5 1/2 years until a T9 at last month's "Humana".
Geoff Ogilvy (36) seems more in demand for his journalistic bon mots recently so it was good to see him with his second 29th place result of the year.
 
Australia only has Jason Day as a 20-something up-and-comer on Tour these days, a sure sign of the times, but perhaps he can do this week in MatchPlay what he's struggled to do in StrokePlay: WIN!
 
8).And the Europeans are doing no better, at least not since Stenson's tour de force of last season. Henrik looks to have been running on fumes so far this year but perhaps he can rediscover success in the Arizona desert?
One terrific high last year from Rose, minor wins from Blixt, Laird and McDowell, and it's been one long struggle for Europe's best. A few years ago the MatchPlay could be counted on for European dominance but last year's results were pretty dreadful and it's difficult to see where our next win is going to come from.
At least the ever-enigmatic Alex Cejka waved the European flag last week, albeit in Columbia's web.com event. Nevertheless, even Alex will find it difficult now not to earn his 2014/15 Tour Card, tho' he'll doubtless make hard work of it.
 
9).72 owgr points this week to the "WGC-Accenture MatchPlay" Champion, then.
Day has proved himself, in this tournament anyway; perhaps it's because of his good play, maybe because he can be a bit of a pr1ck and perhaps he and Swatton can get on their opponents' nerves? Or a combination of all three.
But he won't care although there's a potentially combustible Round 2 match-up with Billy Horschel.
 
10).Finally, what do people think of the new pgatour.com site with its huge fonts and tortuous navigation? Looks bloody awful to me; adverts bigger than ever and can only imagine their next improvement will be to publish it in braille.
 
On the bright side, the forecast for this week in Arizona is very much on the bright side, temps nudging 80F and apparently no snow in the offing. Hoping for a wonderful week.
In games without frontiers, war without tears.

Didn't the ghastly Bubba Watson say something along those lines about something else recently?

Davie,
As Jason Sobel deals with this stupidity so well:

http://www.golfchannel.com/news/jason-sobel/elkington-again-proves-be-golfs-biggest-twit/

s_r:
I think Bubba's was heavily cloaked in "faith" wasn't it? Think he was more anti-same-sex marriage than anything personally directed at an individual.

kwinigolfer wrote:Davie,
As Jason Sobel deals with this stupidity so well:

http://www.golfchannel.com/news/jason-sobel/elkington-again-proves-be-golfs-biggest-twit/

s_r:
I think Bubba's was heavily cloaked in "faith" wasn't it? Think he was more anti-same-sex marriage than anything personally directed at an individual.

Perhaps Kwini, just another shining example of how intolerant Christians are though. I'm sure the irony would be lost on someone as thick as Watson though.

Actually Bubba himself does seem to be in a same sex marriage? He even has the courage to use a pink driver...

Elk had a pop a Stephanie wie last week as well, something to do with the size of her breasts.

The sad thing is, does elk say anything most of the pga tour wouldn't say behind closed doors?

Mac,
I think Sobel references that/those as well.

Fact is, Mac, that's irrelevant, though I hope it also isn't true.

People are a lot more decent than one may sometimes think.

Mac does seem hell bent on assuming that all golfers are horrible right wing, Daily Mail reading, sexist, homophobic, racist, high earning people who look down on the poor.

I expect a tap in from Mac here.

Super

Are you admitting that being right wing is a horrible attribute?

Are you surprised that golf produced one of the first ignorant comments about an openly gay athlete?

Not necessarily Mac, although it does seem that you equate that being anything other than left wing is not an acceptable political stance to you and instantly identifies you as a bad person.

If you want to hear ignorant comments, just go to a football match.

Super

Being right wing means you fail to be a decent human and in terms of morality on almost every stance you hold.

That's ridiculous Mac and you know it.
Explain how a right wing person is immoral or how you aren't a decent human being.

Pick any right wing policy and I will explain why it is immoral.

I'm not biting Mac.

It's all handbags at dawn

Mac judging what is immoral and what is not. Thought that was God's job (or that of 17th century bigots).

pedro wrote:Mac judging what is immoral and what is not. Thought that was God's job (or that of 17th century bigots).

Whether I agree with Mac or not on many things, he is more moral than the god of any religion, as far as I know, he doesn't advocate, slavery, human sacrifices, genocide, r***, etc.

My point is that nobody should judge other peoples moral. It's all relative. We may have more or less common standards on most things in Western Europe - but what you may think is immoral or not may be different from what your neighbour thinks.

I don't necessarily think political views are related to morality.

Really? So cutting services for say old people (which will definitely cause premature death) in order to cut taxes for higher rate payers doesn't have a moral angle? Strange.

Expecting politicians to be moral is like expecting pit-bulls to make great baby sitters.

That said, it's also a false position to assume that any action taken by politicians is immoral just because it has distasteful outcomes.

Monty is right in that you can't divorce politics and morality.  He's also picked a particularly emotive example but even then I would say it is the RIGHT decision (note not "moral" but "right"), if by rewarding a certain group that stimulates the economy or somehow effects an outcome that means we can treat our elderly and disadvantaged better in the future than we might be able to otherwise.  BTW, I don't know if the if condition in this case is true or false.

Whilst I'm hugely cynical about politicians in general with due cause, I do recognize that they often have to make difficult and unpleasant choices.  That said, they are all a-holes.  But then mostly so are the people who voted them in - people get the politicians they deserve.

MontysMerkin wrote:Really? So cutting services for say old people (which will definitely cause premature death) in order to cut taxes for higher rate payers doesn't have a moral angle? Strange.

Precisely why I said "necessarily".

You could equally say that limiting benefits to the average national salary is reasonable and moral.

You can't please everyone, and simply because you don't agree with a policy, doesn't automatically make it an immoral decision.

Bob_the_Job wrote:Expecting politicians to be moral is like expecting pit-bulls to make great baby sitters.

That said, it's also a false position to assume that any action taken by politicians is immoral just because it has distasteful outcomes.

I don't expect them to be moral, that would be too much!
But if an action has distasteful outcomes how can it be judged to be moral? Especially if there are alternatives that could be judged to be moral?

MontysMerkin wrote:
But if an action has distasteful outcomes how can it be judged to be moral? Especially if there are alternatives that could be judged to be moral?

That's exactly my point - it's only moral if it's the lesser of two evils, works out for the best in the long term or is for the greater good.  Or any other cliche you can think of.  

I'm not sure anyone outside of the inner political realm has the depth of information and data to really know if there is a even lesser evil - which is why when electing people to positions of power we talk in terms of putting our trust in them.  It's a politician's day job to be informed, understand and make the right judgement calls.  For everyone else, it's just a hobby and I suspect that they are never as well informed or as forward looking as they believe themselves to be (or I would want them to be).

Bob_the_Job wrote:

MontysMerkin wrote:
But if an action has distasteful outcomes how can it be judged to be moral? Especially if there are alternatives that could be judged to be moral?

It's a politician's day job to be informed, understand and make the right judgement calls.  For everyone else, it's just a hobby and I suspect that they are never as well informed or as forward looking as they believe themselves to be (or I would want them to be).

Not sure about that, it would seem that most politicians are in it for long term gain, they seem to be unduly influenced by lobbyists (not as bad as the idiots in USA, agreed) and not too bothered about the people that elect them. However (as this board shows) I suppose that there are some people who can easily justify what they believe to be right (to themselves anyway!).

Somewhere in the world, they're playing golf

Moral is all in the eye of the beholder. Objectively there is no such thing as good or bad moral. Just as Golf is a "gentlemans" sport.