European Tour 2017 DP World Tour Championship

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Selected Tee Times

Of interest per the Walton Heath discussion. http://www.bluetoad.com/publication/?i=419757&ver=html5&p=20#{"page":22,"issue_id":419757,"numpages":1}

I've played the Old course 3x and agree with Puligny's assessment. Wide open but a lot of nuance and decision making trying to pick (and hit) the correct line. Land nowhere as dramatic as St. George's Hill or Sunningdale, but still a wonderful test of golf. And my favorite practice putting green of all time.

Maybe the risk of sabotage was the reason why no American PGATour pros went to the French Open

Golf News Net wrote:
There was an apparent equipment saboteur at last week's French Open on the European Tour. Someone -- or several people -- with access to player equipment changed driver and other adjustable equipment settings for a number of players competing at Le Golf National in Paris.

One of the victims was Bernd Wiesberger, the 29th-ranked player in the world, who posted to Facebook about what happened to his equipment.

Weisberger on Facebook wrote:Just for clarification: apparently a few clubs have been altered with this week. One of them looks to have been mine. Also, I do not think that it had any affect on the outcome of my round or score and I just hope this doesn't happen to any other players this week or in the future.

https://thegolfnewsnet.com/ryan_ballengee/2017/07/03/sabotaging-equipment-euro-tour-changing-driver-settings-105763/

Those pesky terrorists will stop at nothing!

Calling it "sabotage" is a bit Daily Mail isn't it?

Tampered, but not really sabotage.

"Tampered"

"Sabotage"

"Altered"

to-MAY-to
to-MAH-to

It's a bit like turning someones car lights on and hoping they'll have a flat battery in the morning. Hardly the crime of the century.

Driving in France has never been straight forward..

Its amazing that SR trivializes this incident and gets in knickers in a knot about some geographical faux pas in the golf channel website.

super_realist wrote:I'm not sure how anyone wouldn't notice this immediately. If you change the settings of a driver or three wood, the grip is turned round.

Surely you'd notice this on the range before you even got near the first tee?

Explain please?

If you change your head orientation, i.e. 10.5 to 9.5 degree (as per this scandalous sabotage), the ONLY way this can be done is to rotate the shaft. This means any markings on the grip (i.e. name or pattern) will be different from the original position that the player is used to. The pattern or name will move left or right of its original position depending on how the head has been moved.

The only way you would not notice is if you had a completely blank grip, with no lettering on it and I rarely see any player with such a grip. Mostly because they probably have deals with the grip maker (Lamkin, Golf Pride etc) to have their logo in a prominent position.

Simple enough to understand Davie surely?

Not really - surely if it was serious sabotage they could have changed the grip too? #TinFoilHats

And BTW it was a serious and genuine question - I've never had a club altered like that so how would I know?

Well, that would be gong a bit far for what is either a prank or a club maker not re-assembling the club properly.

Can you not see how changing the loft would change the grip position in relation to the head? It's pretty obvious isn't it?

Someone tampers with my driver settings every week, that why the ball never goes where I'm aiming.

Super, not all adjustments involve rotating the shaft. A lot involve moveable weights.

If someone opened or closed my driver face I think I'd notice looking down at it, not from the grip. I have a titleist driver so Not sure if moving weights would be immediately detectable.

That is true of course, but these are guys who know the flight of their ball so well that I find to hard to imagine that they didn't notice during practice. Seems pretty lazy and I do wonder why so many players are leaving their clubs unattended.

I agree, I expect them to notice warming up on the range, unless the tweaking was so minor it made no difference.

I get the impression that these days the players are doing so much tweaking that their clubs are probably permanently in the tour truck, and given our disposable society and their wealth they get through loads of clubs all the same spec.

It looks like Poulter has qualified for the Open. One player dropped a shot on their 17th hole which would have forced a playoff.
Click here

I'm never wrong wrote:It looks like Poulter has qualified for the Open. One player dropped a shot on their 17th hole which would have forced a playoff.
Click here

CSS 77!!! bunch of hackers

And playing at Woburn should be right up Poulters alley.

pedro wrote:And playing at Woburn should be right up Poulters alley.

Poulter gets in, as does local amateur to me Connor Syme whose dad I get lessons from. Good luck to him. Ranked at #7 and worth keeping in mind for your Open Amateur pick.


CSS 77 is insane.

Interesting to compare sss and css for all the courses. Woburn was 77 in the morning but down to 74 in afternoon. Hollinwell sss76 was down to 75 in the morning.
Super - never played Gailles, but I see it was up to 77 morning? Stem very impressive last week at WH, but then I'm still reeling at the standard of the whole lot of them! Futures bright!

How do you even calculate CSS when you have a field of pros who have no handicap? And maybe a dozen amateurs, but half of those from overseas with different handicap systems not based on SSS / CSS.

Good question. Have asked every year at qualifier and never had an answer. They don't even require ams to put handicap on card!

Heading on the Sunday! Which is just ideal as it's middle Sunday during Wimbledon so I won't miss any of the tennis!

Have a good time sirb; looks like you may miss Rory unless he pulls his finger out tomorrow, two strokes behind Mcelroy as things stand.

Poulterer posted this on Instagram. Don't think it occurred to him he would look pretty silly sitting on an easyJet flight wearing a net jets shirt haha
https://www.instagram.com/p/BWJ6uFVj7ll/

That's hilarious. Njetjets for Poulter.. good luck getting your clubs back.

Never had the privilege of playing golf in Northern Ireland. Portstewart looks wonderful. Who is the Daniel Im guy? And all Rory needs is a hot putter.

Rory outscored by ten strokes in his threesome - think he needs some inspiration to go with any hot putter.

Daniel Im is a Jersey Boy in his early 30's, UCLA alum. Wonder how he introduces himself? Surname first I expect . . . . . .

Is McIlroy becoming a Rooney?

Too much too soon?

He needs more reps. He can't even blame the tournament committee. Elkington?

His season so far has been blighted by injury, he just got married and he's using new clubs. Plus there's more pressure on him to perform this week than any other week of the year. I wouldn't write the kid off just yet. He needs to bed that putter in, then play to his strengths. He'll be grand.

Anyone know why Donaldson withdrew?
Bad timing for him, whatever the reason.

EDIT:
Ah ha! Thank you Irish Times: Tennis elbow the culprit.
Perhaps there'll be some golf-related injury among all the Wimbledon withdrawals?

Interesting read heading into next week ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/09/sports/golf/two-scots-pick-their-favorite-courses.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fsports&action=click&contentCollection=sports&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0

I've played Nairn and Dornoch on the combined lists. Both amazing courses.

Interesting from Knox & Montgomerie, be interested to hear what super & others, gael?, think of their choices.

Also looking forward to reading what sirbenson has to say about Portstewart.

Rahm overpowering this course, making it into a parkland-type course without the trees, no shot-shaping required when you can bomb it with impunity and holes are cut in the middle of most greens.
'Course, it was that easy, why haven't others done it?
Impressive display, but what does it portend for Birkdale? Not sure.

Anyone notice Rahm marking ball on 6? Marked it to side of ball and then moved marker to get out of Im's way. When he replaced ball put it in front of marker. 2 shot penalty?

The coverage suggested he wasn't going to be penalised. Andy McPhee addressed (pun not intended) it with him during play.
Don't understand it myself, but also don't understand why golfers are so precious about their playing competitor's line when faced with a tap-in that they can't mark normally - in this case Im's marker.


However good Portstewart looked, don't you think they'd toughen it up a little before returning?

Rahm looking like a #1 in waiting even if the course was easy. Perhaps the most accurate long hitter.

Yes I think combination of it being a bit soft and no proper wind has made it easier than it should be. Would expect same next week.
Def penalty for me, it just watching it recorded.
Yes Super he looks VG.

If conditions continue, are we seeing a 254 at Birkdale?

Not at Birkdale!

Just heard Andy McFee explain the impossible. Apparently if it's not wildly wrong it's ok! I know golf rules can appear odd, but that explanation is just wrong! Claims it's less 'stark' than Lexi's. no he put it back in the wrong place, not dissimilar as I understand it from the move(s) made by the Scottish pro who got banned for 6 months?

Agree puligny, none of it makes sense, Rules Officials creating more trouble down the road for themselves, and when they institute the new drop rule things will get even worse.
Rules should be black and white, otherwise where does it end?

In fairness Rahm did angle his putter differently when replacing the ball so it must have ended up in pretty much the same place. The reason why he marked it to the side was because Im's marker was just behind Rahms ball. A bit sloppy, but apparently ok.

And here's a thought: why should marking the ball on the green be done more precisely than off the green? Off the green it's done with a tee and they hardly put much attention when replacing it.

Kwini - where does it end? FOOTBALL - where the rules are discretionary!
Pedro - unless it's being dropped it goes back in the same place always!

Maybe we should have coloured chalk as a marker?

Agree Kwini about Portstewart not being much help towards Birkdale....Seemed an easy enough test this week, barely remember seeing these guys hit anything but driver. Difficult event from someone from Dublin to attend to like myself. Was surprised at how small the crowds were Irish Open wise. Not a huge fan of Rahm but his driving was incredible, absolutely no fear.

With the softer conditions it really didn't play like a links at all

Interesting to see Jimmy Walker speaking out....he has a point!
https://twitter.com/JimmyWalkerPGA/status/884120140744445952

super_realist wrote:Rahm looking like a #1 in waiting even if the course was easy. Perhaps the most accurate long hitter.

Except yesterday he was all over the place. I don't think he hit more than 3 fairways (I tried to look on the European tour website for some stats but that was a waste of time. I hope they've sacked the web designers). He was smashing it miles off target but getting away with it because the course was so forgiving.

Up to now I've been a fan of Rahmbo but he went down a little in my estimation yesterday for not shouting fore when he was carving the ball into the crowd (several times) and also for a little tantrum and throwing his driver after one of those wides. Just showed a little lack of respect for his playing partner who was getting ready to play and was battling for the biggest moment in his career while Rahm throws a little strop even though he was 6 shots ahead of the field.

My take on the ball marking incident:

The referee said that Rahm hadn't marked the ball exactly to the side - "9 o'clock on a clock face" - but slightly behind as well, more like 10 o'clock. Then he didn't replace it directly behind - "12 o'clock" - but rather slightly to the side, more like 11 o'clock. So the discrepancy was really the difference between 10 o'clock and 11 o'clock, which is minimal and within a margin for error you could expect for such an action. Not sure I buy this based on the video evidence.

However - the key for me is the fact that Rahm moved his marker one putter head away. Whenever you do that, you never return it to the identical blade of grass it was on before. Moving your marker is an imprecise process and so taking the whole marking process into consideration I think it's fair to say he played the ball from close enough to the original spot not to incur a penalty.

Don't know if yesterday gave any guide to Birkdale. No wind, soft wet conditions. Of course, Birkdale could be the same, I don't know what the weather's been like in scouse land recently but down in southern England we've been roasting away so far this summer and my back garden is starting to resemble Chambers Bay on the final day of the US Open. For the US contingent, for several weeks now we've regularly had days in the 90's F, which is all a bit surprising for us islanders.

We could have non stop rain for a couple of weeks to change it all, but the Open will place a much greater premium on driving accuracy.

I noticed a lot of players struggling to hack it out of the thick wet rough. Big advantage for the beefy guys like Rahmbo who can power through that stuff.