Golfing News & Blog Articles

The remaining PGA Tour events on the 2019-20 season will be contested without specators.

Mailonline’s John Greechan has posted a lengthy set of quotes from R&A Chief Executive Martin Slumbers reviewing the decision to cancel The Open Championship, normally played this week.

But it’s his comments on technology and skill that will get the most attention. While the headline writers love the Bryson DeChambeau remarks, Slumbers makes clear that when times improve the topic of distance will be revisited.

It’s the specifics on how they may act that advance the discussion more. While the specifics should not surprise anyone who reads the R&A and USGA Distance Insights report, the regulatory approach is now pretty clear.

”Once we feel that the industry is stable again, which isn't going to be tomorrow, because we don't know what's going to happen over autumn and winter, we will be coming back to that issue in great seriousness.

”It is too simple just to say change the ball. Way too simple. You can do things with the ball.
'But it's the relationship between ball and club which is most important, to me.

”The fundamental change in the golf ball since 1999-2000, with the introduction of ProV1 technology, is the ball spins less.

”And drivers have been designed so it spins even less, which makes it go further.”

Or, farther. Either way, it’s good to know the intent is to target both ball and clubface.

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Patrick Mahomes goes golfing while life in the NBA bubble gets interesting. Plus we see what's up with Don Mattingly. Here's what you might have missed from the past few days.

I don’t want, in any way, to dimish Collin Morikawa’s exciting win in the Workday Charity Open. It’s pretty thrilling for golf to have a young star who has so much upside delivering such consistency and also showing that playing four years in college, the Walker Cup and, in general, the old fashioned way to the pro ranks.

However, it was a bit of a broadcasting placement debacle compounded by the pandemic and opportunity golf has to gain new fans. I was hardly alone in this assessment. (To be clear, CBS’s crews are doing amazing work in the midst of pandemic constraints.)

So, here’s a short Shack Show rant about Sunday’s weirdo tease of early live golf hinting at a fantastic young gun showdown in early Golf Channel coverage, only to be interrupted by beancounters, clashing corporate interests and those ironclad contracts that forget about the viewer.

.@collin_morikawa now has 2 wins and just 1 missed cut on the PGA Tour since turning pro.

He's the first player since @TigerWoods in 1996 to win twice on Tour before missing 2 cuts as a professional.

Tiger won 43 times before his 2nd missed cut as a pro.

First off, great job by the PGA Tour staff and forecasters who correctly got the final round finished with an early start to the one-off Workday Charity Open at Muirfield Village.

Second, thanks to Collin Morikawa, Justin Thomas and Viktor Hovland for a great show of some young-gun golf. Thomas had a weird day and, well he’s still a PGA Championship winner with twelve PGA Tour titles, huge upside, amazing drive, and undoubtedly many more wins the way he delivers most weeks. He said this one “will hurt” (Steve DiMeglio reports from Dublin, Ohio) but I’m not sure anyone who knows golf views this as anything but a tiny blip in Thomas’ career arc.)

But the win by Morikawa—assuming you could stomach the disastrous live golf handoff to streaming and which I addressed on an emergency Shack Show rant—was impressive. A 23-year-old who has been on the Tour just a year, and only a few weeks removed from a heartbreaking loss, and, most amazingly, a winner at storied and difficult Muirfield Village his first four competitive rounds there, speaks to the SoCal/Cal/Walker Cup star’s absurdly promising career start.

I loved the Golf.com Confidential thoughts on Morikawa’s incredible ballstriking and steadiness:

Look, don’t bother to send me your hate mail, all for pointing out that the President is lying about the frequency of his golf habit and just consider how this can’t be a good look for the sport. 266 (at least) to 98 days on the links, for those who like numbers.

As golfers, I think (hope) we’re all in agreement that it’s wonderful any President of the United States loves the sport and uses his (maybe hers someday) days off to whap it around the links.

Why President Trump has to justify his habit by lying about his predecessor’s frequency of play after bashing President Obama for the same habit, when it’s all documented, will never be clear. But ultimately it’s a poor reflection on the sport that such fudging of the truth is the embodiment of the nation’s most famous golfer.

Then again, there’s this thread of posts by Adam Davidson on Trump International Aberdeen. Yowsers (and thanks reader Don).

Anyway, the Presidential Tweet followed by several others justifying his golf, with ensuing posts belittling his predecessor:

Former tennis pro Mardy Fish, who now captains the U.S. Davis Cup team, held off former Bills defensive tackle Kyle Williams to win the American Century Championship celebrity golf tournament on Sunday.

Collin Morikawa rallied to reach a playoff then outlasted Justin Thomas once there to win the Workday Charity Open.

Carrying his own bag, Marc Warren closed with a 2-under 70 on Sunday for a one-shot victory at the Austrian Open, the first European Tour event since the coronavirus pandemic shut down the tour in March.

Justin Thomas kept another clean card at Muirfield Village and had a 6-under 66 to turn a three-shot deficit into a two-shot lead on Saturday in the Workday Charity Open.

Former tennis player Mardy Fish birdied the final five holes Saturday to take a three-point lead over former Buffalo defensive tackle Kyle Williams in the American Century Championship. Fish had a 37-point round for a two-day points total of 55.

Nicolai von Dellingshausen and Marc Warren shared the lead after a rain-drenched third round of the Austrian Open.

Collin Morikawa finished the delayed second round of the Workday Charity Open with a three-shot lead, while Brooks Koepka and Justin Rose were among those to miss the cut.

Rex Hoggard reports on what was inevitable given the COVID-19 situation and pro golf showing it’s functional without spectators. The lack of fan energy down the Sunday stretch is a loss, especially at the upcoming PGA Championship and U.S. Open where we have seen roars through a course influence the outcome of a major.

That said, anecdotal evidence suggests television viewers are not missing the commentary of drunken idiots and enjoying some of the picturesque views through courses.

On a business side, the loss of pro-ams through September will be devastating for charities given that most tournaments use pro-am and spectator revenue to fund their donations.

With the Masters 16 weeks away, The Guardian’s Ewan Murray wondered earlier this week how and event protective of many cherished traditions—Sunday roars through the pines high up the list—can be played this November without fans.

Yes, Augusta could invest in the most advanced technology that checks the temperature – or pulse, or aftershave – of spectators upon entry, but this resource might really be better deployed elsewhere.

Next weekend, the world’s best golfers should have been lining up at Royal St George’s for the Open. Given the ongoing scale of coronavirus, the R&A unquestionably made the right call in postponing for 12 months. In the absolute best-case scenario, the Claret Jug would have been awarded to the winner of a vastly diminished event, even before needless pressure on public services is contemplated.

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Collin Morikawa made nine birdies Friday for a 66 and had a six-shot lead among those who finished the second round at the Workday Charity Open.

Miguel Angel Jimenez shot 7-under 65 to take the second-round lead in the Austrian Open on Friday.

There’s some irony when contemplating the market for watches in 2020.

Specifically, it’s a situation where the original purpose of the item is no longer a defining selling point.

Remember when the primary, if not the only, purpose of a watch was to keep time? Me neither.

It’s a reasonable assumption that time is anything but of the essence; golfers are far more interested in all of the golf-related stuff that this piece of wearable technology does.

The SkyCaddie LX5 GPS watch is built around the architecture of the SX500, which was named the “Best Handheld GPS” in MyGolfSpy’s annual Most Wanted testing.

That’s the headline of a thorough Mike Diamond look into the United States “PPP” loans and Florida golf. The loans were meant to maintain “ongoing” operations at small businesses that had no other funding options.

The initial list of golf facilities taking the grants included mostly small amounts for obvious candidates in a time of pandemic, with the notable exception of courses recently hosting PGA Tour events like Colonial and Muirfield Village.

The Daily Beast’s William Bredderman published an extensive look at longtime Genesis Open host Riviera Country Club, which despite memberships costing north of $300,000, took between $2 million to $5 million, as noticed by Outside The Cut. More problematic: Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is a Riviera club member.

Anyway, back to Florida. And kudos to the Palm Beach Post for giving Diamond the space to consider a nice variety of angles to the PPP concept and golf. It’s an especially complicated subject when it comes to golf courses versus country clubs and Diamond does a fine job looking at many points of view.

Scores of other Palm Beach country clubs had applied for the PPP loans. Many were approved but decided to refuse to accept the money on both moral grounds and legal grounds after reading the fine print. Government auditors are expected to review how the money was spent and can ask for the money to be returned and penalties to be imposed if they find misrepresentations.

Fifty-seven country clubs in Florida accepted the PPP funds. According to CNBC, more than 400 country clubs and golf courses received loans throughout the country. The issue of whether it is appropriate for golf course communities to receive PPP loans has been debated.

“At the end of the day, we decided we just did not need it,” said Stephen Wolk, president of the Gleneagles Country Club west of Delray Beach. “We could see the government looking very closely at how well-to-do country clubs were using these funds. How do you justify giving it to country clubs?”