PGA Tour: Houston has a Problem: Notes from the Ballwasher

First topic message reminder :

1).Houston has a problem, no sponsor! And the very real possibility that it might be one of the tournaments left standing without a seat when the PGA Tour's "Musical Chairs" department publishes its schedule for 2019. Shell looked after the event for more than 20 years before abruptly capping it's gusher prior to last year's event. Houston has been preoccupied since then with more important things, like life, in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey's invasion last summer; the GC of Houston was mostly underwater, but by all accounts is in fine condition again for today's action - though overnight storms may have left a puddle or two.
Nice article on pgatour.com about Chris Stroud, Bobby Gates, etc:
https://www.pgatour.com/news/2017/12/14/chris-stroud-texas-charity-hurricane-harvey-relief.html


2).The Houston tournament has offered an attractive warm-up destination for Masters competitors; apart from the winner earning the last invitation from the Hooties, green complexes are manicured to go someway to replicating those that might be anticipated at Augusta. The pre-Masters week next year will go to San Antonio, an event which, despite a lousy date (usually) on the schedule and a course that's never been fully embraced by Tour regulars, thrives with a long-term sponsor - Valero - and one of the largest charitable contributions of the Tour year.
Unless I'm mistaken, the juxtaposition (if Houston keeps its tournament) of 2019 dates is a one-off quirk caused by the calendar, as in 2013 when Martin Laird won (from R.McIlroy), but it surely adds to the uncertainty.

3).Will Tour players flock to San Antonio if the pre-Masters date switch DOES turn out to be permanent? Not likely if JB Holmes, winner at Houston in 2015, is to be believed: I think the Tour "will be surprised with the people who normally play (Houston) who won't play (Valero)".

4).Martin Kaymer returns from injury this week and he's one of a number of Europeans who are in danger of missing the FedEx Play-Offs as we close in on the halfway point of the pre play-offs season. Currently outside the all-important Top 125 are:
130th: Pieters -Terrible season so far, streaky is fine so long as there are some good streaks to go with the bad - 13th at the "Honda" is his only Top 25 finish in a PGA Tour event since August, second since Augusta.
139th: Jaeger - some promising starts, heart of his season still ahead of him.
154th: Lingmerth
178th: Blixt
185th: Donald - Luke's Major comes in a fortnight, at Harbour Town. No Top Ten there and you'd think a fine career is fizzling out.
190th: Fisher - Deja vu, incomprehensible, Lowry-like, scheduling, with only four events played so far. Imagine he'll be foregoing his "privileges" by default.
194th: Lowry - Speechless.
211th: Davis - Lucrative journeyman career fizzling out.
218th: Harrington - Only Past Champ status this year, presumably will take a "career earnings" exemption for 2019.
223th: Chopra
234th: Kaymer

5).Not much to say about the MatchPlay last week, d'ya think? Bubba a worthy winner, interesting to see guys like Poults and Kisner (and Thomas?) "hit the wall" - and disappointing to see Noren's putter go cold when he needed just one more holed putt to put Kis away. By and large a missed opportunity for a number of Europeans, and their limited field, easy pickings tournament opportunities are dwindling rapidly.

6).Irish eyes smiled for Power and Paul Dunne last week in the Dominican Republic, Dunners' return to form earning him a place in Houston this week, alongside Padraig, Shane & Seamus.

7).Paul Casey won Houston nine years ago, but has largely avoided the place since, or "mailed it in", one 9th place finish excepted.
Don't know why players avoid events they've done well at, but then he's only returned to the Irish Open once, and the KLM not at all, since winning each event to help resurrect his career 4 or 5 years ago. As "snap hook" remarked on his "villain" Poulter in his very excellent post on last week's thread: Don't forget you meet the same people on your way down as you do on your way up, or words to that effect.

8).An exception to that would be gents like Steve Stricker whose invitation to "Houston" when he was down on his uppers, with only "past champion" status remaining, helped lift his career back from beyond the brink. He's almost always returned to Houston since, and is back in the field this week as he continues to double-dip, two wins in two weeks as the new sheriff in town on the Champions Tour.

9).Last year, my one-and-done for Houston banked on the confluence of decent current form and consistent course form: Russell Henley had finished 45-7-4-5th in his career at Houston, and won by three. Not sure he's playing quite as well coming in as he was last year, but knocking at the winner's door is Luke List, and I like his e.w. chances, provided he doesn't have to putt with his wedge.  

10).Lastly, a shout out to "snap hook" for his "Heroes and Villains" post on last week's Ballwasher thread. Don't necessarily agree with his choices but that's the point.
Hope he reposts as a stand alone thread. Otherwise, interesting and thought-provoking . . . . . . (as in McLaren's and Shotrock's five "villains", presumably Garcia x 5.)

A lot of in form top players you can add to that list: Rory, Rose, Thomas. Even Fowler, DJ, Garcia, Rahm. Also Noren, Fleetwood, Stenson, Casey, Day, Kooch. Difficult to predict this one.

You beat me to it Digs.

Think we better watch the show.

Behind the headlines!

Paul Dunne will be disappointed with his horlicks (two water balls in an 8) on the 8th hole, but still earned himself a Top 10 finish, and a place in the Valero Texas Open if he wants it - Julian Suri too.

Poults only missed 2 fairways & one green (chunked chip on 15); pretty good golf, no shankapotomous to be seen.
Up to #57 on the Tour's career earnings list. Top 50 would be a big deal, effectively an extra year to the 2-year exemption he just earned. Great week for him - this time last year he had fallen out of the owgr Top 200.

Taking aside my complete dislike of excemptions, if somebody were to overtake Poultry before he takes the excemption, so say he slips back to 51 from 49, would he lose the excemption?

Without being sure I would assume there is an (annual) cutoff date for the career earnings exemption, similar to other ranking exemptions. So you’d basically have to be inside the top 50 at that date.

pedro wrote:Without being sure I would assume there is an (annual) cutoff date for the career earnings exemption, similar to other ranking exemptions. So you’d basically have to be inside the top 50 at that date.

That's correct. Harrington will most probably take his career earnings exemption next season, and Paul Casey's Valspar win also catapulted him into the all-time Top 50 - a big win for Casey in many arcane ways quite apart from the obvious.

Poulter has a long way to go (probably at least another $2M when other factors are taken into account) to climb from 57th into the Top 50, plus he has Justin Thomas right behind him who, despite yesterday's heroics, will likely zip by IJP leaving the Ferrari in the dust. Still, it's a big deal for his 40-something career.

Poulter earned a two year exemption (thru 2020?) and is well inside the owgr top 50 meaning free pass to the 2018 majors and WGCs. He should comfortably rack in $2-3M over the next few years.

Looking at the list you'd fancy Hideki to go past him, maybe Fatrick Reed as well. A few currently in the 40's like Casey and Dufner will keep earning. Other than those and a few others everyone else is probably largely done. Interesting to see Garcia and Rose at 7 and 10 respectively.

I know this might be an impossible question to answer, but as we are now half way through the season, could anyone give me a rough idea of how many FedEx points would be needed to get into the various play off tournaments?

GPB would know this.

Agree GPB would be the best source.
But 365 FedEx pts made the play-offs last year.
Would say earning 400 points should be pretty safe. 50 pros are currently at 400 points or better.

Worth a watch.

https://twitter.com/TheClub/status/980779181377245184

Who do people make the favourite, I know you could make the case for at least 10 players...I think I'd have Spieth as marginal favourite

sirbenson wrote:Who do people make the favourite, I know you could make the case for at least 10 players...I think I'd have Spieth as marginal favourite

My Top 3 favorites to win would be; Spieth, JT and Gerry.

http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/22969155/tiger-set-return-masters-new-generation-fans-watching
Great article!

sirbenson wrote:Who do people make the favourite, I know you could make the case for at least 10 players...I think I'd have Spieth as marginal favourite

Put my money on Bubba, and two outsiders. Poulter and DeChambeau.

Tough call. It’s a left hander course and with Bubba and Phil in form you can hardly look past them. But JT and Spieth won’t be far away either.

Outside the top 20 I’d be looking at Reed and The Barnrat.

What I WOULD put my money on though is that the US TV ratings will be the highest in 10+ yrs.

The latest forecast for Augusta starts of nicely, but there's supposed to be a cold (14C) rain for Saturday, warming up to about 18C on Sunday.

Will these conditions suit any particular player(s)? Don’t they say that hard and firm would favour Rory (which then wouldn’t be the case here)?

pedro wrote:What I WOULD put my money on though is that the US TV ratings will be the highest in 10+ yrs.

Can you imagine all the TV execs rubbing their .......... hands at the prospect of Tiger turning up at one of their tournaments? The BBC producer for The Open must have done cartwheels when he returned to form.

The Tiger Tracker must be close to meltdown...

Diggers wrote:

super_realist wrote:Incredible display of guts from Poulter.

Hyperbole much. He is only playing golf in a standard tour tournament. Not dragging children from a fire.
Was missing the shorter putts earlier a display of a lack of guts, if holing one long one is showing guts?
Tiger must be the bravest golfer in world with all his wins.

Jesus Diggers, why have you come all over all American and started taking EVERYTHING so literally. You're supposed to be a teacher, you ought to know the difference between literal and figurative language.

Just because he wasn't winning a Victoria Cross, doesn't mean we can't use such adjectives to describe the particular occasion.

There was a lot on the line here, not just in this tournament, but also in the context of his career going forward and just because he didn't give a miracle cure to someone with downs syndrome, doesn't mean it wasn't a fairly miraculous (sic) event. I'll presume you've never done anything at any level of sport if you don't realise the impact that particular situations can invoke in people and how it might cause someone to completely bottle it. What if Sunderland escaped relegation, would you just say "good" and then get back to your daily drudge, or would you actually have a bit of marvel to the event even if it doesn't measure up to world peace or something more fitting of a gushing description?

I can just imagine that you get your big red crayon and take it through all your pupils work when they start to use language deemed too sensationalist for your disposition, or I can see you going through The Graudian sport and crossing out all the superlatives and replacing it all with "good" or "nice" and the title to "Poulter wins golf tournament" because it's not on the same scale as a "truly incredible" event like finding a cure for cancer.

In the context of

a) what happened last week, ie. he thought he had clinched a Masters berth but i missed it by 0.01 points, had a meltdown, and only went to Houston for one purpose,

and

b) the Ryder Cup’ish putt he made on 18 to force a playoff,

his win was pretty incredible.

Christ, it was Easter Sunday. You’d like to believe Poulter resurrected.

It is pretty rare for a European to win a PGAT event and Poulters achievement should be viewed in the following context.

Here are the number of PGAT wins by some of his peers.

Poulter 3

Sergio 10
Rose 8
Paddy 6
Donald 5
Clarke 3
Gmac 3
Casey 2
Westwood 2

And there are many Europeans who have never won on the PGAT and have actually buggered up their careers trying to play on the PGAT. Poulter has done pretty well over the years keeping his card and qualifying for the majors and WGC's.

McLaren wrote:Worth a watch.

https://twitter.com/TheClub/status/980779181377245184

I presume you've had a dozen or so chugs over that Mac.

super_realist wrote:

Diggers wrote:

super_realist wrote:Incredible display of guts from Poulter.

Hyperbole much. He is only playing golf in a standard tour tournament. Not dragging children from a fire.
Was missing the shorter putts earlier a display of a lack of guts, if holing one long one is showing guts?
Tiger must be the bravest golfer in world with all his wins.

Jesus Diggers, why have you come all over all American and started taking EVERYTHING so literally. You're supposed to be a teacher, you ought to know the difference between literal and figurative language.

Just because he wasn't winning a Victoria Cross, doesn't mean we can't use such adjectives to describe the particular occasion.

There was a lot on the line here, not just in this tournament, but also in the context of his career going forward and just because he didn't give a miracle cure to someone with downs syndrome, doesn't mean it wasn't a fairly miraculous (sic) event. I'll presume you've never done anything at any level of sport if you don't realise the impact that particular situations can invoke in people and how it might cause someone to completely bottle it. What if Sunderland escaped relegation, would you just say "good" and then get back to your daily drudge, or would you actually have a bit of marvel to the event even if it doesn't measure up to world peace or something more fitting of a gushing description?

I can just imagine that you get your big red crayon and take it through all your pupils work when they start to use language deemed too sensationalist for your disposition, or I can see you going through The Graudian sport and crossing out all the superlatives and replacing it all with "good" or "nice" and the title to "Poulter wins golf tournament" because it's not on the same scale as a "truly incredible" event like finding a cure for cancer.

Yes, we regularly hear you heaping out that kind of praise on here. Sorry, typo, you never heap out any kind of praise on here so it's fairly amusing when you do and it's reserved for your favourite, Poultry.
We don't use red to mark, not many schools do. Pink and green for us, to be honest I try and keep marking to a minimum.
Surely you cannot profess to admire Pouter's chest beating celebration, you normally utterly despise that kind of thing. Or is it OK in this instance for your football shirt wearing hero?

Poulter is not my favourite at all, I just don't dislike him as much as you do. I thought it's one of the most impressive , fairytale stories of the year, so thought it worthy of mention.

Of course I didn't like his celebration, but should be grateful it wasn't any of the bible bunch or they'd have been pointing to the sky, or if it had been Rumplestiltskin Watson he would have drowned in his tears.

What's wrong with red ink? I suppose the softies think it's "too aggressive" now?

I think he's your favourite. I literally (as I'm so literal) cannot remember seeing you use a phrase even remotely close to that completely OTT one. Feel free to find one to prove me wrong (even a remotely imaginative adjective would do). Being called a killjoy by you is like having Donald Trump calling me arrogant and then following it up by saying I've got bad hair.
Apparently red pen gives a negative connotation to the colour red. As far as I can see you just swap that for whatever couloir you highlight mistakes in.

Negative connotations in regards to red? In what way?

I think I was very complimentary in regards to the Phil Mickelson Henrik showdown, I've been complementary about Phil in general in regards to him, and Justin Rose being classy guys, I've even been nice about Shane Lowry, only recently I said at one point he was probably the number 1 European.

super_realist wrote:

McLaren wrote:Worth a watch.

https://twitter.com/TheClub/status/980779181377245184

I presume you've had a dozen or so chugs over that Mac.

Even Mac had to wear a golf glove for that one...

super_realist wrote:Negative connotations in regards to red? In what way?  

I think I was very complimentary in regards to the Phil Mickelson Henrik showdown, I've been complementary about Phil in general in regards to him, and Justin Rose being classy guys, I've even been nice about Shane Lowry, only recently I said at one point he was probably the number 1 European.[/


I think I was very complimentary in regards to the Phil Mickelson Henrik showdown, I've been complementary about Phil in general in regards to him, and Justin Rose being classy guys, I've even been nice about Shane Lowry, only recently I said at one point he was probably the number 1 European.

You're comparing the word probably with the phrase massive guts, or whatever it was. Very complimentary maybe amounted to "did really well". I've been on here a long time and you never, ever say anything like that, I thought you'd been hacked. If you can't take a bit of ribbing about it you must be feeling a bit curmudgeonly...
No idea re the red pen, I'm sure you could Google some study if you were that bothered, I've certainly never been.

I didn't say "massive guts", but if you want to rib me about it, fair enough.

I guess massive guts would be your more usual Lowry comment.

You know me very well Diggers.

super_realist wrote:You know me very well Diggers.

Very decent finish from Gutsy Shane yesterday, incidentally, T14, for runner up in the Ireland division. Another dozen of them and he can start to think about Majors & WGC's again.

kwinigolfer wrote:Agree GPB would be the best source.
But 365 FedEx pts made the play-offs last year.
Would say earning 400 points should be pretty safe. 50 pros are currently at 400 points or better.

269 pts required to get to STM, and no limit on Sponsor's invites. Barnrat is just 18 pts away. A Top 40 finish will get the Barnrat to STM

Dunne has 140 Faux FEX pts. A player gets 135 pts for a 4th place finish in a regular event.

Chances are the FEX Top 125 will be a little higher this year. The Tour added the Korea event this year. It also added the PuntaCana event in the Dominican Republic, which was offset by losing the Puerto Rico event. I would guess the number is going to be around 375 FEX pts. 400 pts will definitely be enough to get into playoffs, unless the FEX points list gets very top heavy.

Thanks GPB. I hope to go to the BMW and wondered who I will get to see, as well as hoping to see one or two of my favourites.

Anyone watching Drive Chip and Putt? They can really put it out there. 7-9 year olds hitting 175 yards.

Diggers wrote:...We don't use red to mark, not many schools do....

And in a nutshell, I see why the HE sector has to deal with so many students unable to cope with any 'stress'. Not getting at you Digs, but avoiding red ink for marking is seriously ****ed up. Sorry, way off topic....

pedro wrote:

super_realist wrote:

McLaren wrote:Worth a watch.

https://twitter.com/TheClub/status/980779181377245184

I presume you've had a dozen or so chugs over that Mac.

Even Mac had to wear a golf glove for that one...

Lets face it you would definitely need to wear protection with Tiger.

Tiger and Phil playing a practice round tomorrow!!! Who’d have thought it! Playing with Thomas Pieters and Couples

sirbenson wrote:Tiger and Phil playing a practice round tomorrow!!!

Fore!

Giggle

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/this-comedians-collection-of-top-golfer-impressions-is-phenomenal/amp?__twitter_impression=true

pedro wrote:Giggle

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/this-comedians-collection-of-top-golfer-impressions-is-phenomenal/amp?__twitter_impression=true

Ha ha, The Blubba Watson one is brilliant. I didn't realise TPFKANC was Irish though.

navyblueshorts wrote:

Diggers wrote:...We don't use red to mark, not many schools do....

And in a nutshell, I see why the HE sector has to deal with so many students unable to cope with any 'stress'. Not getting at you Digs, but avoiding red ink for marking is seriously ****ed up. Sorry, way off topic....

Depends very much on the individual school and teacher Navy. Agre the red pen is silly, however there is far more pressure in school on the final SATS exam in Year 6 than there was in my day at school. We have really high expectations and kids are tested fairly regularly, I get them to read their mark out to me in front of the whole class. The kids love the competitive element when you do your best to make sure everyone is making progress.
All the difficult conversations I've had aren't with kids, they are with parents. You would not believe how cosetted some of the kids home lives are, parents thinking they know best re their kids day to day education, wrapping them in cotton wool.
Schools get a lot of stick (remember policy is govt driven), from what I've seen they do a really great job but it can't redress every little change in society.

Presumably Poulter is giving up his work for Sky at the Masters. Wonder if they will ask Westwood?

pedro wrote:Will these conditions suit any particular player(s)? Don’t they say that hard and firm would favour Rory (which then wouldn’t be the case here)?

I would have thought soft conditions favour Rory. He flies the ball so far and so high in the air. He obliterated the US Open field at Congressional when the course was very soft.

http://www.masters.com/en_US/players/pairings/index.html
Masters pairings are out....Tiger playing with Leishman and Feetwood

Bubba, Stenson and Day..

If they show slowmos of this group people will think it’s a frozen powerpoint presentation.

pedro wrote:Bubba, Stenson and Day..

If they show slowmos of this group people will think it’s a frozen powerpoint presentation.

Bubba will be wondering how on earth he got paired with two of the slowest golfers on tour