The US PGA Championships

Things We Learnt From The 2015 US PGA Champs

I’m not going to bore you with all the facts and records from the event, save to tell you that it was one heluva spectacle on TV, and one of the better Majors to come around in a long time.

If you were in a cave on the weekend and missed all the action, then you missed a great one.

But, there were some great things that can be read into from the happenings at Whistling Straits.

1. Jason Day has arrived!! Not that we ever doubted his abilities, but now that he’s finally crossed the line, we can really start to expect even more from him. When he started contending in Majors 3 or 4 years ago, we weren’t sure if he’d be headed down the same frustrating road as Monty, Sergio, Luke, Lee and DJ, plus quite a few others who were written up in lights, but just never delivered. Ricky Fowler also now finds himself in that group desperately needing to produce.
2. The rivalry between Jordan, Rory, Jason (and maybe Justin) is set to take the game to the next level in the post-Tiger era, with DJ and Ricky and hopefully a few others like South African’s Branden Grace and George Coetzee also knocking on that door to be let in. These guys are all showing prolonged runs of good form, plus the ability to contend in the heat of the fiercest battles.
3. Is DJ sub-consciously backing away from the heat on Major weekends to avoid last-hole failure? I’m sure there’s a term for it in psychology, but it’s not new that it happens to many sportsmen. Lots of performers freeze at the very thought of making acceptance speeches, but can DJ almost accidentally snag a Major, or get so far ahead that weekend collapses still allow him breathing space to close a deal? His round on Sunday, after starting with a quad on the 1^st, was nothing short of brilliant, and his presence in the Big 5 or 6 going forward will ensure exciting golf nearly every single week.
4. Branden and George are poised to take South African golf into the next generation. Charl is still there, and Louis had a pretty decent year in the Majors, but these 2 youngsters are here to take over. We’re still awaiting the even-younger Brandon Stone and Haydn Porteous.
5. Whistling Straits is a massive venue for a big golf tournament. The Ryder Cup venue in 2020 and then another PGA there not long after, will cement its place in golf as one of America’s greatest public courses and Pro golf showcases. It looked unbelievable on TV, it threw up a mix of record scores and high numbers, showing that there was something in the course for everyone, and properly rewarded great shots. It’s definitely on my bucket list!
6. Tiger! He did something last week that I’ve never heard of before from him. In the pre tournament presser, when asked about his chances for the event, he spoke about the need to improve going forward and that there was a bigger picture to his play for the week. Now Tiger always used to say that he only entered tournaments if he had a chance to win, so yet again, here’s another example that the current Tiger is a pretty useless imposter of the artist known formerly by the same name. I still say that finally entering the par 3 event at The Masters after years of not playing in it, with his ex and his kids in tow, was another example of the new and open Tiger compared to the original version who always played things very close to his chest and never relaxed or let his guard down. The 4-hole Champions Challenge at St Andrews was another such example. He’s playing this week in the Wyndham event, and unless he wins or finishes high , his season is over, and he can start planning for next year.

The Open Championships

The Course

There are 2 courses in golf that stir the emotions like none other, and that appear on more people’s bucket lists, than Augusta and the Old Course at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, the much revered ‘home of golf’. We see Augusta every year in The Masters, but the Open Championship at St Andrews only comes at us sporadically, in fact every 5 years at present, and must be the most sought-after of all Open Championship venues, both for players and spectators.

And you can’t count yourself as a true golf nut unless you’re already starting to make arrangements this weekend Jackaround the TV golf schedule.

For us South Africans, the times are way more user-friendly than when the recent US Open only teed off for us around midnight. Supersport will be live from 10am to 9pm on Thursday and Friday, 11am to 8:30pm on Saturday, and from 12 to 8pm for Sunday’s final round.

Jack, Seve, Sir Nick and Tiger have all won Opens there, yet strangely enough one of the greatest Open Champions ever, Tom Watson, somehow never managed a win at St Andrews in his 5 titles. Watson bows out of Major golf this week in what I’m sure will be a very emotional farewell, as will Faldo. I see that Ernie is paired with Old Tom for the 1st 2 rounds, and that they should be finishing on the 18th hole around 7pm SA time on Friday).
The course for this 29th edition of the event to be held on these hallowed links is going to be unlike most others in that after heavy rains in the area over the last few weeks, the course is going to play long, but soft, which will make it play more like target golf than good old-fashioned bump ‘n run stuff. In other words, we’re going to have this event play more like a regular PGA Tour stop, when the recent US Open played more like a links course event.

There are some changes to the Old Course since our own Louis Oosthuizen last won The Open there in 2010. The R&A, under their soon-to-retire head, Peter Dawson, have added in some bunkers to be more in the range of these big-hitting Tour Pros than ever before, as well as some extra humps and bumps on the sides of some of the greens where they’ve noticed stray shots getting too lenient a treatment in previous events there.

The 2 main hazards on the course are the huge undulating greens (including 7 double greens serving two holes each) that make hitting greens in regulation relatively easy, but then leave lots of work to do just to get down in 2 putts, plus of course the biggest hazard of them all, the 112 bunkers that litter the course, some of them large and deep, and others small and round, but still deep enough to wreck any hope of salvaging par on any particular hole. And all the bunkers have names – like the 10 foot deep Hell Bunker on the par 5 14th hole, and of course, the infamous Road Bunker on the 17th hole – and the bunkers all have tales of woe throughout the years of Open Championship golf attached to them.

The course runs anticlockwise, outward from the 1st, with OB all the way down the right, then a few holes that go back and forth around the halfway mark, and then back home down the last 8 holes or so, and again with OB on the right. So the inside of the entire course is the safe side, always to the left. But that’s where most of the small almost-invisible fairway bunkers are, so driving to the right side of the fairway and closer to the OB, is generally better.

Amongst many other traditions at Open Championships to look out for is the starter on the 1st tee, Ivor Robson, who is expected to ‘hang up his mike’ after this Open. Robson will start his 41st consecutive Open, where he stands on the tee from 6:32am until 4:13pm, with no real break for meals, and is alleged to lose a good few kilos during the 4 days of the Championship.

The Contenders

1. Can anyone beat Jordan Spieth? Is he chasing the unchasable, the ultimate golf dream of winning all 4 Majors in 1 calendar year? As he gets closer to tee-off on Thursday, the incredible pressure on his young 21-year-old shoulders will be at an all-time high, with his every move being closely scrutinised, and the golfing world will be hanging on every word he says, and watching every swing that he makes, and every putt that he strokes. Another huge week at last week’s John Deere Classic on the PGA Tour will add even more pressure, as not many players can continue winning week after week, especially with all the extra things that will be going on in Scotland. Personally, I think the heat will get too much for him, and his odd tendency to leak a few shots right might be a problem, especially in wind and crosswinds, especially a left-to-right breeze over his left shoulder. Although he’s putting better than anyone else in history, that little chicken wing just after impact is going to become a problem somewhere along the way. Make no mistake, I’d dearly love to see him complete ‘The Slam’.
2. Can Dustin Johnson bounce back after another Major heartbreak? This question I’ll answer for you in a few days time, but there’s no doubt of his unrivalled talent and ability, save for his toughness under the gun. He’s in form, so should be around the 1st page of the leaderboard come the end of the week.
3. I like the South African connection at St Andrews. Our youngsters – Louis (playing with Tiger again, as they did together at Chambers Bay, so I can only hope that they both start a whole lot better than they did that day) Branden and Charl – are all in good form, all know the Old Course very well as they play Johann Rupert’s Dunhill event there every year (Branden actually won it a few years ago) and our oldies, Ernie and Retief both have great memories of previous events there, as well as lots of local knowledge. There’s also George Coetzee, Thomas Aiken and Jaco Van Zyl.
4. Adam Scott had a good backdoor top 10 at Chambers Bay, and with Steve Williams back on the bag, must be in the mix. The not-so-slick greens usually found in Scotland might also be much more to his liking as his putting stroke can get a bit testy at times.
5. Has Jason Day recovered from his vertigo? If so, he’ll be there or thereabouts come Sunday pm.
6. Fast-finishing new Scottish Open champ, Ricky Fowler, will be hoping to emulate Phil’s performance 2 years ago by winning the Scottish and British Opens in consecutive weeks.
7. Phil and Matt Kooch both finished well at Gullane in the Scottish Open, so you can never count them out.
8. And Tiger? Well, who knows anymore? He seemed better at The Greenbrier, but what will happen under the intense heat of Major battle?

I hope you have a great week watching.

“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!