Pure Frustration

Around a roaring log fire last Sunday evening, just before the start of the last round of the US Open, and over a few wee drams of Speyside’s sweet and fruity mother’s milk, an old Sunshine Tour friend and myself soon got around to the state of the greens at Chambers Bay last week, and started reminiscing about some of our own stories from years of playing, and of Pros “losing it” and “tossing their toys out of the cot”.

And these tales weren’t only due to adverse course conditions. Most were self-inflicted!

And the one that stood out the most vividly for me concerned 2 good friends who I was paired with during a Winter Tour event on the West Rand. One was local Krugersdorp born and bred boy Roger Wessels, playing on his home track, and the other was Nic Henning, he of the famous South African golfing family.

We were headed down our back 9 (the front nine of the course) in the second round, with a cut looming, and where I was playing quite well, Nic was doing ok, but Rog was going to need some help from the birdie gods just to make the cut. He was also feeling the heat, being one of the locals, and who are always expected to run away with any event played at home.

I knew Roger very well, yet his occasional tendency to a short fuse were definitely not on view as the ball bounced every which way but where he wanted it to, and several lip-outs were starting to become the order of the day for him. I had no idea what the temperature was under his collar, but then on the short downhill par-4 5^th hole, he finally caught an iron shot right out of the screws, and the ball was headed high and handsome, and straight for the pin. He held his pose, allowing just the thinnest of smiles, but then his jaw dropped and he watched in horror as his ball sailed about 30m over the back of the green and into some of the thickest bush in the Krugersdorp magisterial district.

He immediately reached into his back pocket for his yardage book, and quickly worked out that he had added metres instead of subtracting them from the sprinkler head he’d walked past en route to his goen. He then reached into his other back pocket, retrieved my scorecard which he was marking, walked calmly over to me to hand it back to me, and stated very matter-of-factly that “that’s it, I’ve had enough and I’m heading for home”!

I was always one to see the lighter side of things, and once he’d turned his back and started the long trek back up the hill towards the house, I could not contain myself any longer and broke into fits of laughter. Nic, who was chopping wood in the trees, figured out what had happened and also started cracking up, and we then continued the round, caught in between our feeling of pain for a fellow Pro’s suffering, but thankful and happy at the same time that there’d been no tantrums, f-bombs and helicopters flying around.

The drama was by no means over as Nic dumped one in the soup on the following par 3, ending the hole with a nasty treble-bogey, and leaving himself now perched precariously on the cut-line.

But then on the next hole, a short but tricky par 5, I was reaching down to replace my ball on the green for a short birdie putt after Nic’s much-needed effort for his own birdie had rimmed out, when I sensed some unusual noise and movement around me as I was down on my haunches. As I looked up, I saw Nic’s putter bouncing and rolling around the hole, just narrowly missing hitting his own ball, but taking a small chunk out of the green, and which just happened to be right in my line.

Apparently, after his putt lipped out, he almost threw his putter at the ball, but it slipped out of his grasp, and flew straight for the hole, and his own ball. Luckily it didn’t make contact, otherwise more penalties would have doomed him to a certain missed cut, but as they say in cricket, “it was all happening”.

It was a crazy 3-hole stretch, and we all have had a few laughs about it over the years.

The tensions that tournament Pros play under comes out in many weird and wonderful ways, and that was certainly the case last week at the US Open, although modern day press and social media have made it a much bigger audience today, and also on a global scale.

“The Kid”

After reading through lots of various websites, articles and blogs on this past US Open, I couldn’t find any nicknames for the new double Masters and US Open champion, so please allow me to call him “The Kid”, because at just 21 years old, Jordan Spieth’s not much more than that, even though he’s possessed of a maturity well beyond his years.

That finish must have been one of the most exciting Major climaxes ever, and we had some local South African interest in a Major for the 1st time in a very long time.

The changes in ownership at the top of the leader board were fast and furious.

When I got up at 1am SA time, the world #1 had just lit up the Pacific Northwest with a load of birdies, but then just as I had settled down with some caffeine and a few rusks, so Rory missed a short birdie putt and a par putt in consecutive holes, and that blew his chances. But another backdoor top 10 – just as he did at The Masters – shows that Rory McIlroy is still around, and that he still has the ability to “move the needle” on the last day of a Major.

DJ Dustin Johnson then seemingly had a steady hand on proceedings, but then contrived to drop a few and appeared, to all intents and purposes, to be out of things.

And that was when attention turned to Jordan Spieth and Branden Grace, and they seemed to match each other for a few holes, before Grace uncharacteristically pushed one right and Oscar Bravo at the drivable par-4 16th hole. He then followed that up with a 3-putt and lost 3 strokes in that one fateful hole as Spieth finally rolled in a birdie putt.

But Spieth hastily doubled 17th to bring everyone back into the equation, including the very fast finishing Louis Oosthuizen, and DJ, who was still lurking.

And then everything came down to the ultimate hole. King Louis had birdied it earlier to set -4 as the benchmark. Grace couldn’t do likewise and finished tied 4th at -3 with the also fast-finishing Ozzie Adam Scott, who showed some form that has been AWOL for a while. Spieth hit it close on the par 5 for an eagle chance, but squandered that and led at -5.

And then, the drama came down to DJ, who after birdieing the short 17th to get to 4 under, had hit a massive drive down the closing hole, and eased a 6i to 15 feet away for an eagle chance that would give him the title. His ensuing 3-putt is now history, as is another Major title slipping out of his grasp, and he’ll have the task of picking himself up for St Andrews in just over 3 weeks time.

Here’s my overall take on this 115th edition of the US national golf Open.

1. Jordan Spieth owns 2 Majors now at the very tender age of 21 – I’m trying to imagine my own 21 year old son as a double Major-holder – as well as the 1st 2 Majors of 2015, leaving him halfway to the proper Grand Slam, a one-season jackpot that has never been achieved.
2. Dustin Johnson is one of the best golfers on the planet, with ball-striking skills and distance aplenty, and it must be just a matter of time until he closes a big deal.
3. Branden Grace showed not only patience and skills, but his bulldog fighting spirit under the intense magnifying-glass scrutiny of Major Championship golf, and the golfing world has taken note. The Open Championship can’t come quick enough for him, and I just hope he kicks on even further from here. He sounded confident in all his interviews, and he looks a most likeable man.
4. Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel are still alive!! And possessed of talent in abundance, these 2 Major winners are hopefully back from 3 or 4 years of injuries & mediocrity, and once again, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel for them, and for us SA golfing addicts. I maintain that if Louis hadn’t been caught up in the media circus that surrounded his pairing with the duo of Tiger Woods and Ricky Fowler – who shot 80 and 82 respectively – in Thursday’s opening round, that he would have been streets clear of everyone this week, just as he did at St Andrews in 2010. BTW, Louis’ back nine 29 and last 3 rounds 66-66-67 were all US Open records.
5. Adam Scott, with Stevie Williams lugging his sack, is also still around!
6. And – my hero for the week – Jason Day. He gamely battled vertigo from Friday afternoon onwards, and only faded in the intense heat of battle late into Sunday’s final round, and his efforts to keep on trucking in search of his maiden Major must be highly commended. I hope he gets it sorted out before St Andrews rolls around.
7. The World #1 Rory McIlroy, is still there, ready to pounce.

8. And Tiger’s issues continue unabated.

And then there was the golf course. Here’s my (very humble) opinion, to add to the cacophony of others.

I was very disappointed as I’d been following the Chambers Bay story for a good few years now after hearing about it as a future venue for the 2010 US Amateur and this US Open, and not having heard of it before, I went to that great big search engine online and brushed up on my Chambers Bay. What I found were luscious green fairways on a links course setting, with the blue waters of Puget Sound in the background. It looked spectacular, and I was unbelievably excited to see this US Open on TV. Instead what we saw were burnt brown fairways and a barren landscape, and the whole dream was shattered.

Plus, the USGA screwed up the greens!

When there is so much player criticism and media hype about the course and the greens that it becomes one of the main stories of the event, then Mike Davis and his USGA did something wrong. Plain and simple!

Getting the course to run firm and dry is OK. Getting a US Open course to play like a proper Scottish links track is not really OK.

Lots of variation in the teeing grounds is wonderfully OK, but changing pars is not, as it breaks with a tradition that wasn’t broken and didn’t need fixing. That this event was the 115th edition of this huge championship says enough for that tradition.

Lots of undulations in the greens are OK to challenge the world’s best, but – worst of all – allowing poa annua infestations to ruin the putting surfaces was definitely not OK!

Poa generally grows faster than other grasses, especially the fescue at Chambers Bay, so it becomes more and more uneven as the day gets longer. Three greens – the 7th, 11th and 13th- had been re-laid recently, and were pure and perfect versions of golden fescue greens, but the rest were fast and bumpy, and drew the ire of too many players to leave people in no doubt that it was not just 1 or 2 disgruntled Pros whining and bitching as an excuse for their bad golf. If this course was designed with the US Open in mind, then they got their planning horribly wrong.

I remember countless events on our local SA Tour, especially during the winter months, when greens became fast and bumpy, and nothing pees off the better putters more than those kind of surfaces that negate their skills.

We saw lots of low-down camera angles that showed the roll, sorry bounce, of the ball on the greens, sorry browns, of Chambers Bay, and to me, that was the biggest problem. Why Fox continued to feed the problem for their new partners at the USGA left me baffled as well, thinking that the ‘powers that be’ were actually delighting in the pro’s suffering.

And then there was Fox Sports TV coverage in general.
They missed countless shots, especially from contenders in the final groups. You knew that a player was just over a green and about to chip, but wouldn’t see him for a few minutes, and then he’d next be shown marking his ball after chipping about 4 feet past the hole. Then they’d go back and show you his chip “from just a moment ago”, but by now we already knew the result.

We saw tons of Joost Luiten and Tony Finau on the final day when they just weren’t factors in the event, but they picked up Louis’ final 9 charge way too late, missing probably more than half of it. Ditto with Charl and Adam Scott.

Their cameramen tried in vain to follow tee-shots through the air and bouncing down fairways, but often they missed everything. Granted though that the dried out fairways made picking up the ball quite difficult.

And what irked me more than anything else was the absence of their poster girl on their broadcast team, Holly Sonders. She’s an absolute babe, and is knowledgeable on all things golf as well, and we never got to see her once!!! Twitter went mad on Sunday as she was apparently wearing a short skirt that didn’t leave much to the imagination. Us normal gutter-minded men needed some feeding in that department. Maybe it was some arrangement with the local Supersport airing, but we never got to see her, or Greg Norman and his anchor Joe Buck in the studio.

I’m sure there’ll be some intense meetings at USGA HQ with the execs from Fox in the coming weeks about the future of their 10 year contract, as Fox were just nowhere near as slick as the other major golf networks. Not too unexpected though!

And yet, despite the greens and the TV coverage, the tournament ended in high edge-of-the-seat drama, so were the USGA that bad? Or did they just get lucky that it came to such a head, and with so many top players in the mix? I can only think that if Joost Luiten and Tony Finau had finished 1st and 2nd, that the Fox brass would’ve been summoned to appear before Congress this week.

Lastly, I expect the USGA to come back to Chambers Bay fairly soon. I see that they’ve already determined future venues until 2023, and they’ve probably invested way too much time and effort, not to mention money, in getting this venue this Major championship, so I think that after a few lessons learned, that they’ll be back in 2024. We can only hope then for slightly greener fairways, but I’m sure there will be different – and better – surfaces on the greens.

US Open Preview

I’m afraid to be the bearer of bad news for South African TV viewers for this most-eagerly awaited (in my humble opinion) of US Opens in recent memory.
As I feared, and wrote about a few weeks ago, the time difference to the West Coast is really gonna screw us SA fans. The 1st group out on today goes at 7am PDT (Pacific Daylight Time), which is 4pm our time, and the last group off goes at 3:12pm PDT, which equates to 12:12am Friday morning our time! Supersport is scheduled to cross from 10pm on Thursday and Friday nights to 5 the next morning, and then a fraction earlier from 9pm to 4am on the weekend. Damn!
Anyway, here’s my 5 cents worth on how this Major is going to play out, and just who the main contenders are.

1. Phil Mickelson – aka ‘Phil The Thrill’ – can he hold things together and go down in history with his maiden national title (after 6 runner-up finishes), claiming his 6th Major, as well as a completed Grand Slam. The Chambers Bay course – brand new on the US Open rota – is by all accounts well-suited to someone who hits it long (with a bit more space that might give some wild hitters a bit more breathing room than normal) and also has lots of creativity and imagination. Amongst the game’s current contenders, that sounds ominously like Phil! His 65 to close the Memphis tournament on Sunday shows he’s peaking at just the right time, so will it be history, or heartbreak again?
2. Young phenom, Jordan Speith, whose caddy Michael Greller is a local boy and knows the course like the back of his hand. One of the best short games around, Speith’s going to need it on the greens at Chambers Bay, which will offer lots of uneven and awkward bounces.
3. Current world #1 Rory McIlroy must be the favourite, but a slight drop in form recently after a wonderful run is slightly worrying. Was it a slump, or was he just distracted and tired, and will bounce back after 2 weeks off? If his driver’s on song again, then everyone else will be playing for 2nd!
4. Mickelson’s playing partner for the 1st two rounds is Bubba Watson, another long-hitting and creative lefty, but will he have enough width of fairway (like Augusta) for him to shine? Not really, I’m inclined to think.
5. Dustin Johnson must be regarded in the same category (long and wild) as Phil and Bubba.
6. Players Champion, Ricky Fowler, after a great 2014 in the Majors, is ready to claim one for himself.
7. And if accuracy off the tee box is not too much of an issue, can Tiger play well? I didn’t think he’d make the cut at the much narrower Muirfield track for Jack’s Memorial, but he managed with some short game heroics. But then when his fragile short game abandoned him … well nobody could ever have seen that 85 coming. Makes the cut again, then fades on the weekend again.
8. I heard a wonderful expression the other day about golfers who play within themselves and always seem to contend on tough Major courses. “Plodders and plotters” are exactly what Jim Furyk is all about – a lone US Open his only Major – and the testament to his type of game. Matt Kuchar is not far behind Furyk in this category.
9. And a couple others? Defending champion Martin Kaymer, and in-form Justin Rose, who won this Open at Merion 2 years ago.

10. Anyone else?

Dark Horses?
Of course there are always some golfers who seemingly appear out of nowhere, so try these 2 names.
1. Byeong-Hun An.
Who?
Have I lost my marbles?
Ben An, as he prefers to be called, is the big 23 year old South Korean, Americanised through the US college system, and who won the recent flagship event on the European Tour, the BMW PGA Championships at Wentworth, in record style. That’s who! And what’s more, he’s played a Major Championship at Chambers Bay before. The USGA scouted out Chambers Bay before it awarded the 2010 US Amateur to the course, and An entered the event as the reigning US Amateur champions after winning it in 2009 at Southern Hills. He progressed to the semi-finals that year in defence of his title, so he does have some pedigree, and he is in some kind of form, and he has been recognised as a star of the future by some ‘people in the know’.
By the way, if both An and Kevin Na are in contention, even playing together, then dyslexics around the world won’t know which way to look whilst watching it on VT!!
2. Colin Montgomerie!
Now, you’re thinking, Kaplan’s definitely smoking some weird stuff. But the seemingly grumpier-than-grumpy Monty is also in form, having won 3 of the last 6 Senior Majors, and even more importantly, seems to have shrugged off his unease with US galleries and their previous animosities (read Ryder Cup defeats) towards him. He’s still a ball-striker par excellence, and will work his way around this devilish layout with the consummate ease of one of the game’s greatest players never to have won a Major. Just saying!

3 things to look out for.

1. The golf course. The 8 year old Robert Trent Jones-designed Chambers Bay is totally different from any other US Open test ever before. It’s a links-style course – with only 1 tree – that will possibly offer cooler weather (the current forecast looks decent, with possible rain on Saturday) and more wind than most other USGA venues prior.
There are many different teeing grounds on all the holes, which will allow USGA Director Mike Davis lots of latitude to set up the holes almost completely differently from one day to the next, and it is this kind of course set-up that really intrigues me. To be able to change the way a hole plays so that it doesn’t offer golfers (and members) the same boring challenge every single time they play the course, is one of the joys of both playing and setting up courses, and tests the architect’s ability to design things which can be re-arranged and adapted, and also tests the golfer’s ability to vary his game plan accordingly. As the saying goes, variety is the spice of life!
It has quite a few big wide fairways where crooked drives will still find some short grass, as well as some dog-legs where the big hitters might be tempted to fly everything.
The greens are undulating in the extreme, where some bounces from good shots will move away from the hole, but also where some off-line shots will gather back towards the pin (reminds me of some course called Houghton). And the pin won’t always be attacked, as on regular target-golf layouts.
And trains running alongside the course, and ‘ancient’ ruins around the course, will be reminiscent of the proper links courses of Scotland, as will the par-3 9th hole, which is similar to the famous Redan 15th hole at North Berwick in Scotland.
There’s no doubt from the pics and videos we’ve been seeing of the layout and its surrounds that the course will look spectacular on TV, especially with the great contrast between drier and browner rough to the greener fairways, plus the idyllic waters of Puget Sound in the background.
And lastly on the course, it looks as though Davis, the man behind getting this Major to this course, intends to change the par of the 1st and 18th holes around on different days; one being a par 4 and the other being a par 5 on one day, and then switching the pars (and the tees) around on another day. Wind forecasts will likely determine this change.
2. The TV coverage. Ok, so the timing’s not going to be ideal for us in SA, but a long nap on the couch after a large Father’s Day lunch at Houghton will set you up well to ‘pull an all-nighter’ for the final round. But what I’m really looking forward to is seeing what Fox Sports offer up during this Major. New to big time TV golf, their crew includes Greg Norman as lead analyst, and I for one can’t wait to see and hear him. “The Shark” is still one of the legends of the game, and his insight is most anticipated. Of course, there’s the drop-dead gorgeous Holly Sonders in their team as well, so that should be worth keeping an eye out for as well. And just what special and different stuff Fox are going to come up with is anybody’s guess. With their football background, I imagine lots of interesting stats, plus camera angles and shots from drones (the Fox Flyover) that will highlight the breath-taking scenery of the course and the waters of Puget Sound and Fox Island in the background, as well as the rest of the Pacific North-West region. Look out also for microphones in the cups and long-distance mikes which will zoom in and capture the players and their caddies discussions over club selections. Can’t wait to hera the legendary debates between Phil and Bones!
3. There’s quite a few SA golfers teeing it up this week, in fact we’re the 3rd most represented country in the event. Former winners Ernie and Retief both start (in fact they’re playing together in the 1st 2 rounds), and there’s also Charl, Louis, Branden Grace, Tjaart VD Walt, Garth Mulroy, George Coetzee and Thomas Aitken. Here’s hoping!

 

Jack’s Memorial tournament

I managed to see (in between neck-jarring naps) the exciting finish to Jack’s Memorial tournament, where Swede David Lingwerth beat the more-fancied Justin Rose on the 3^rd extra hole of the playoff, and after he made a few huge putts under pressure. He was very solid against one of the World’s Top 10, and fully deserved the victory.

Jack’s Muirfield Village course was exceptional as always, and comparisons with Augusta are always expected.

Rose had plenty of chances during the round, plus an awful opening few holes, so it could’ve been a runaway win for him, but still puts him in the front line for a favorite’s spot at Chambers Bay next week. His shank from the fairway bunker on the 72^nd hole was unbelievable, as was his incredible up-and-down for the par and the chance to play off against Lingwerth.

Jordan Spieth finished fast with a 65 to finish just outside all the main action, nevertheless another sign that he’s gonna be hard to beat in the US Open.

And Tiger?

How embarrassing must Saturday’s 85 have been for him?

From 5 wins and Player of the Year 2 years ago to now finding himself at #181 in the rankings is just beyond any normal comprehension. Teeing off first with a marker, hitting 4 balls into the water, and capping off the 85 with a quadruple-bogey 8 on the par 4 18^th hole in front of the huge gallery must have been so draining that I can’t even begin to imagine what mixed emotions he’s going through at the moment.

And from 14 Majors up to 2008, to winless ever since, and right now seemingly so far away from even contending, let alone winning, is exactly the rock bottom that he now finds himself at.

The question is this: is he still digging deeper, or can he start hauling himself back out of the hole?

I started thinking about Seve, and what happened to him when his game, and in particular his driving, went off, and how he turned to the quirky and eccentric – some would say a genius – Mac O’Grady for help. Mac was a Tour player in the 80’s and 90’s, and was also a very good golfer standing on the other side of the ball, so much so that he wanted to enter the annual end-of-year Teams Championship on his own, playing 1 ball right-handed and the other ball left-handed. He fought long and hard with the Tour when they denied him an entry. He started teaching, and was known to be one of the earlier proponents of stack and tilt, a method that has never really stuck with golfers of any ability. Seve, meanwhile, never straightened up his driver, and slowly but faded away into the golfing wilderness.

Do you think Tiger will find a swing that can hit the ball straighter, and if not, do you think he’ll continue struggling like this for much longer?

Memorial Week

How about Rory missing 2 cuts in a row? Should we be worried? Is it too much golf and too many distractions from hosting what he helped become a huge event on a grand old golf course? I think a 2 week break will get him over all the fuss of the last 5 week stretch, and have him still firmly instilled as the favourite at Chambers Bay for the US Open in 2 weeks time.

• After many of the big names missed the cut and fell away, there were few big names around on the Irish Open weekend, and for me that is, the tournament on this wonderful links course just fizzled out. I never like to take away from the great golf being played by a lot of very good golfers, but there was just no-one in the field that would stop me from having a lazy Sunday afternoon nap on the couch!

• Dan Jenkins has been at it again, and having a go at Tiger again this time. He said that if you took away his leading contenders for Majors at the time he was winning (Phil, Ernie & Vijay) then Tiger won many of his 14 Majors against “nobodies”! I think Jenkins must have some fixation for trying to get under Tiger’s skin!

• Ozzie Stephen Bowditch won the Byron Nelson event in Texas, making him the umpteenth Ozzie to win in the Lone Star State over the last 10 years or so. Baddeley, Scott (4 times), Appleby and Allenby have all won in Texas, so there must be something in the Texan air that makes them feel at home and play well there.

• Bowditch by the way, had 6 different equipment manufacturers in his bag. TaylorMade driver and fairway, Adams hybrid, Mizuno irons, Cleveland wedges, a Bettinardi putter, and Titleist Pro V1X ball. In these modern days of being tied down to one club-maker only, or maybe 2 max, that’s quite a smorgasbord he’s accumulated for himself there.

• Talking of Adam Scott, I see he’s teamed up with his ex-looper Steve Williams again for 4 big events coming up in the next few months. 3 of them happen to be Majors, and the 4th will be the WGC Bridgestone event where they’ve won together before.

• Tiger and Phil have both been spotted up in the Pacific Northwest whilst on scouting trips to Chambers Bay, where the head of the USGA has advised the players to play 10 practice rounds before the US Open if they want to win there.

• And talking of Chambers Bay, click on this link to see some spectacular photos of the new and much-anticipated layout. It looks like a typical links course, with wide open and undulating fairways, lots of wild grass and waste bunkers, and I’m sure wind is going to play a factor there. Ernie said that his 4 rounds in trying conditions at Royal County Down last week was the perfect warm-up for Chambers Bay.

• Can Tiger compete this week at Muirfield Village? Will he even make the cut?
• Can the DC, the sweet-swinging Hideki Matsuyama win again, or even contend?
• Kevin Na seems to be in form, but can he close a big one?
• And will Jordan Spieth once again underline his star status with another week hanging somewhere close to the lead?