PGA Tour: Seeking The Grand Slam: Notes from the Ballwasher

First topic message reminder :

A busy time of year for moi, and a change of sport for a couple of days, so just a few thoughts to get the PGA Championship thread going:

1).Jordan Spieth goes for the Grand Slam this week, as Rory will do at the Masters, and Phil will also at the US Open - think I'd place my money on Rory to be the first, probably Phil will never do it, but it's a reminder as to how difficult it is to achieve. Palmer and Watson missed out on the PGA, Trevino had two of each, US Open, Open Championship and PGA but no Masters. Wonderful achievement to bag three nevertheless!

2).I'm not a fan of the changes to the Tour schedule and there are bound to be consequences, a ripple effect throughout the golf world (which, after all, is not 100% USA). It seems there's a hidden agenda in play, what with golf making an unnecessary intrusion into the Olympics, and the resultant dominos that are now falling and will continue to do so. I also fear what Pelley will do; the date of the BMW PGA is now in jeopardy, but where will it go? Perhaps the R&A will shift The Open back a fortnight, thus accommodating a summer's date for Wentworth? One possible benefit that Pelley could insist upon is keeping the Ryder Cup where it currently is - at a time when the Tour is starting downtime, but Europeans can play competitively in Europe.

3).One suspects that an "Asia" agenda is in play somewhere, just can't quite figure out how!
Regardless the Tour now has to cram in the:
WGC-Mexico
Arnold Palmer Inv
Players
Masters
WGC-MatchPlay
PGA Championship
Memorial
US Open
. . . . . . all in a 3-month span. Not to mention well-supported events such as "Honda", "Houston", "Quail Hollow", etc, that have loyal player followings. Something's got to give. If Pelley plays his cards right, Europe could be a big winner, if he overplays his hand, he could damage his Tour for years to come.

4).Quail Hollow has undergone changes since we last saw it, at last May's Wells Fargo - the first six holes have been almost totally redesigned, and the other twelve tweaked to bring them up to date. Nevertheless, Rory has a fantastic record there with his two wins and a play-off loss to Rickie Fowler. Would still expect course specialists to do well, including Lucas Glover who has a win, a runner up and other strong finishes. Hopefully the course will be allowed to stand on its merits without PGA set-up guys tricking it up - there are some super Par-5's and my favourite "short Par-4" on Tour, the 14th.

5).The owgr rankings this week saw Bubba wave bye-bye to the Top 50 for the first time in 7 years. While Charley Hoffman, after what seems like forever hanging around the rankings' second 50, all of a sudden is propelled to #20 on a string of fine play and nearly man finishes. Meanwhile, as suggested last week, Patrick Reed continues his slide down the rankings proving that playing every week wears even the young guns out.

6).Seamus Power squeaked into the FedEx Top 125 and could conceivably stay there this week even though he's not in the field. Will still need a good result at Greensboro and it may not be entirely certain that he'll make the field. Fingers crossed for him there.
And Henrik Stenson may have to play Greensboro too; he's only played 11 events so far this year, so still has to find four more. At 84th on the FedEx points list, he's not sure to go deep into the Play Offs so he probably has to play:
PGA, Greensboro and Northern Trust to reach Round 2 at TPC Boston.
Henrik being Henrik may choose not to do that, but hopefully a strong week at Quail Hollow will make that a moot point.

That's my lot, more on the Play-Offs and ramifications of FedEx points next week. Looking forward to seeing the changes at Quail Hollow - think they rebuilt all the greens and new greens are never as good as they're cracked up to be, could be on the firm side which is not necessarily a bad thing - and hoping Rory wins his 3rd PGA Championship.

kwinigolfer wrote:http://www.golfchannel.com/news/golf-central-blog/police-woods-had-5-drugs-system-when-arrested/?cid=rr_editorial_p1

Impossible to believe that the Tour didn't know he was doing at least some of this stuff. Where's the testing, where's the transparency?

Weird that the Tour goes so far out of its way to condemn Vijay and buries its head in the sand in this case.

Already mentioned in the Woods DUI thread Kwini HERE
But I agree with you. I don't know what (if any) the testing regime is, and if there is any "out of competition" testing, but it makes you wonder. And as somebody mentioned on the other thread, what is his management company doing?

Moved to DUI thread

Read the "Application" from Joel Dahman's caddie, then watch the vid (with voiceover) at the bottom

http://www.golfchannel.com/news/grill-room/caddie-applies-rorys-bag-rory-gives-conditions

Call me Rocky and don't forget the twix.

Hilarious.

Brilliant

Very good impression.