Golfing News & Blog Articles

Rex Hoggard looks at the “hosted experiences” apparent at last week’s Wyndham and does so through the eyes of Tournament Director Mark Brazil, a way to get some sponsors on site and commence what will be a slow, strange process in keeping sponsors happy and eventually welcoming spectators back to tournaments.

“It’s better than nothing and it allowed us to give a special thank you to Wyndham and all the key sponsors who stayed with us,” said Mark Brazil, the Wyndham Championship tournament director. “It wasn’t the 5,000 we planned on a day but I think the Tour has made the right call as far as fans go.”

Brazil built three hospitality-style tents adjacent to the 18th green to accommodate what the Tour has dubbed a “hosted experience.” What that means varies wildly from market to market depending on local and state COVID-19 regulations, but at the Wyndham it meant that 25 guests were allowed to gather outside and 10 were allowed inside the tents.

It seems, at least based on what we know now about COVID-19 spread, that the golf course and even hospitality areas will generally be safe if spaced and mostly outdoors. It’s getting to the site—without a long shuttle bus ride—that will be the long term issue for many tournaments.

Oh, and we’ll need some form of rapid testing or a system to confirm one is asymptomatic and eventually, inoculated against the virus. No problema!

Slow play is a focus as the women turn up at Royal Troon for a major and, other than Laura Davies going out first to set the pace, the forecast calls major gusts by 9 am. So how long golf can be played remains to be seen.

From Beth Ann Nichols story on Davies, playing in her 40th Open, also working this week for Sky’s broadcast team.

“I played 18 holes yesterday morning at 7:30, basically on my own, in two hours and 15 minutes,” said Davies, “played every hole properly, chipped and putted on quite a few. I’m not saying we can get ’round in two hours and 15 minutes, but we should be ’round in under four, as long as the weather is not crazy. If the weather is crazy then obviously you get up on those holes around the turn, anything can happen. You can spend half an hour on the tee if you’re unlucky.”

The weather on Thursday doesn’t look promising, with wind gusts of up to 55 to 60 mph predicted around 9 a.m. Tournament Troon will look nothing like what they’ve faced in the practice rounds thanks to what they’re calling, “Storm Ellen.”

Martin Dempster points out how the R&A is preparing for delay scenarios, including shortening of the tournament or a 36-hole Sunday. A Monday finish is not in the cards.

The R&A has lined up some incredible future hosts for the AIG Women’s Open, including surprise of all surprises, Muirfield in 2022. The home of the Honorable Company of Edinburgh Golfers is not currently penciled in for a men’s Open but is still in the rota after relenting and agreeing to admit female members.

Also of note: all but Walton Heath can be classified as a links, steering the championship to primarily links courses after a mix or predominant number of inland courses. Wales will also be hosting its first Women’s major with Porthcawl’s berth.

The full press release:

WORLD-CLASS VENUES ANNOUNCED FOR THE AIG WOMEN’S OPEN THROUGH TO 2025

19 August 2020, Troon, Scotland: The R&A has underlined its commitment to enhancing the AIG Women’s Open’s status as a leading major sporting event by announcing five world-class venues for championships being played from 2021 to 2025.
The future championship venues for the AIG Women’s Open are:

2021 – Carnoustie

That’s the question I can’t get past after reading John Hawkins’ Morning Read rant about the $60 million “playoffs” forging ahead this week with the same purse and winner’s total ($15 million).

While we can all snicker at forced talk of seedings and birdie putts that move someone up five spots, on Thursday, with a stroke play reset before East Lake, I’m struggling to see how even the most rabid capitalist feels good watching players compete before the full $60 million with pandemic-induced 10% unemployment.

Shoot, the money wasn’t even enthralling fans when times were good. And that’s why Morning Read’s John Hawkins wonders out loud and in great detail if this year’s FedExCup playoffs—starting Thursday—will hurt the Tour’s mostly successful “return”.

Public perception is important, but it doesn’t pay the bills and it sure as hell doesn’t cover the $1.35 million awarded to Daniel Berger for his victory at Colonial.

Call them money-grubbers. Question their collective conscience. But don’t ever forget that the folks who run the most powerful organization in pro golf are overseeing a mighty empire at which the top priority is to serve its players. Always has been, always will be. That’s not going to change just because Aunt Gladys is now pumping her gas with a facial covering.

Perhaps, but hopefully money talk will be emphasized and at the minimum, some players pledge to do offer some of their winnings to a noble cause or two. We’re glad to have the game showing it can function in these bizarre times, up to a point.

Knowing how heartbroken so many with the European Tour must be, I can only say that Kate Wright was one of the great friends to golf media members and players. Maybe you weren’t so sure upon meeting her but in time you quickly appreciated Kate’s wit, brains and efficiency at running what is, essentially an adult day care center. AKA a media center.

Her tragic passing at 36 from cancer was noted in this lovely European Tour write-up, and while nothing about losing such a young, valued member of the golf world and planet earth can be spun in a positive light, I did get a nice smile imaging her getting coaching from Poulter. What a scene that must have been:

As the Tour’s Media Relations Co-ordinator for the past 12 years, Kate was a hugely popular figure amongst staff and players, but also amongst the journalists and broadcasters she worked with in media centres around the world.

Known affectionately as ‘Wrighty’, Kate was an accomplished golfer at Leighton Buzzard Golf Club, in Bedfordshire, England, where she was coached as a youngster by future Ryder Cup legend Ian Poulter.

After graduating from Staffordshire University with a BA Hons in Journalism, Kate initially worked in cricket, another sport she had a passion for, taking the role of Media Relations Assistant for England & Wales Cricket Board in 2006 before joining the European Tour’s Media Department in January 2008.

She quickly became a familiar and popular face in Media Centres as the main point of contact for all accredited international media and broadcasters and, through her role, helping to co-ordinate European Tour press conferences.

Kate passed away at her family home in Great Brickhill with parents Brian and Sue and her cat Frankie at her side.

She will be missed in so many ways and for those visiting from afar, the European Tour will never be quite the same without Kate. From her boss and friend, Scott Crockett:

The signature hole at #RoyalTroon and one of the most famous names in golf, the 'Postage Stamp' 8th is set for this year's @aigwomensopen

The AIG Women’s British Open weather forecast positively stinks and I’m well aware the masochists will adore that. And while a links hosting a major should get some Mother Nature support, I also hope the players also get to display their skill at Royal Troon hosts its first women’s Open.

Players have been posting their enthusiasm even as August feels like January so far this week.

Morgan Pressel did what most golfers would do, posted her first crack at the Postage Stamp which has pushed back at most of the all-time great male golfers. And now, it takes on the best of women’s golf.

Sending you a postcard from the (cold and rainy) postage stamp! 📬

I believe that Justin Thomas was booked on CNBC to hype the playoffs and instead the appearance turned into a Winged Foot preview discussion. I’m sure the folks in Ponte Vedra Beach won’t mind a little lunch time talk around the U.S. Open, oh wait, they will.

He did, however, compliment the effort and suggest that golfers are just happy to have the opportunity to be playing safely. For that grasp of reality, he should get some extra FedExCup points on his reset. Or is it off?

Anyway, the world No. 2 reports that he had never been to Winged Foot, found it “very difficult” and already says its “one of my favorite courses”. Thomas said it’s an “old school design”, “not a lot of trees out there”, “holes have defined-definition” (!), “extremely severe greens” and will be a “true U.S. Open test” this September. So if you’re eyeing him for a second major win, take note, he liked the place.

The full segment:

The vagaries of television ratings can sometimes be chalked up to who knows, who cares! And maybe it’s best we remain unaware of what makes Nielsen families click.

Take, for instance, the first mens major of 2020. ESPN saw healthy increases with Tiger Woods in their various broadcast windows. The final round on CBS, in eastern prime time, failed to draw a monster number given the alignment of stars and close finish. The so-so rating could be explained by not having Woods in contention as he was in the last August PGA Championship. And there is cordcutting, or summer viewing habits or, who knows. The PGA Championship’s final round rating certainly wasn’t the fault of too few shots shown or too little excitement.

So we move from that unforgettable final round with several stars in contention to last week’s Wyndham Championship, won in compelling fashion by Jim Herman over Billy Horschel. It was soggy, hot, with an ok field, but sports television offered plenty of competition: NASCAR, an NBA play-in game on ABC, NHL playoffs and MLB games across the country. Oh, and sports fans have lives, too, reportedly.

Yet the Wyndham held its own against the heavy competition. From ShowBuzzDaily.com’s roundup of sports ratings where you can see how the other sports fared:

The 1.62 edged out the Portland-Memphis NBA play-in game on ABC, which did draw a much younger audience, but just a 1.29. While this was not a true playoff game and the NBA/ABC combo is off 45% from 2012, this is still an eye-opening victory for pro golf. (The Athletic’s Ethan Strauss looks at the NBA’s falling ratings here.)

"At some point somebody is going to have to do something. Why not now? What's holding everybody up?" Slessor adds.

Since another year will pass before the USGA and R&A decide to (maybe) address distance, I was glad to see Tom Pilcher’s piece on the topic and a reminder of my favorite solution: a larger ball. (Thanks to reader Tim for sending.)

That came from European Golf Design’s Jeremy Slessor. FYI, European Golf Design is a collaboration of the European Tour and IMG, so they deal with distance issues, oh, hourly.

"When I started in the design and construction industry in the mid-1980s, we were putting in fairway bunkers at about 230-240 yards. We're now putting them at 300-350 yards," said Slessor, whose company were behind Ryder Cup courses at Celtic Manor (2010), Le Golf National (2018) and Marco Simone (2023).

Slessor spoke highly of the Hong Kong Open, where the 6,700-yard course and its small greens are always a test for the game's best.

And…

"The simple thing is to make the ball bigger. The pros should play that ball, and the manufacturers can use all their research and development to make the longest-flying big ball."

The 'small' ball (1.62 inches in diameter) was barred from competition in 1990, replaced by the standard ball (1.68 inches in diameter).

"At some point somebody is going to have to do something. Why not now? What's holding everybody up?" Slessor adds.

Picturing a Masters going forward without fans has been challenging. But now that November’s playing is going that route and we’ve seen how good courses have looked without clutter, I’m feeling better after this exchange in the Golf.com weekly roundtable.

Alan Shipnuck, senior writer (@AlanShipnuck): By then we’ll have had five months of tournament golf without fans, including two majors, so it’ll be old hat. But there is an intimacy at the Masters that will be missed — think about those fans right behind the green at 7, or the tee at 12, or 16, or the amphitheater around 18 green. But it will be awesome to see Augusta National uncluttered. The course is going to look so pure.

Josh Sens, senior writer (@joshsens): I think it will be extremely strange, even with all the experience we’ll have had by then with fan-free events. With the possible exception of the Ryder Cup, roars help define the Masters more than any other tournament. The sounds are so familiar that longtime viewers can tell a birdie roar from an eagle roar. And we’re all familiar with the TV experience of hearing a roar during the broadcast, then waiting at the edge of our seats to see the highlight of what brought it on. So yeah, very weird. Unbelievably great that the tournament is happening. But it will still be strange.

Michael Bamberger, senior writer: It’s just so fitting that this golf year will end in this way, completely the opposite of what millions experienced last year. BUT it will surely be a memorable Masters and therefore a good TV show.

Is it too early to ask for some live drone shots too?

The signs were there all along.

First, the pandemic came along and eliminated the notion that anyone wants to live under par (actually, pre-pandemic no one wanted that life).

Then the lame slogan rolled out in April 2018 got pushed aside by the USGA’s even less authentic but equally as expensive “From Many, One”. That word salad never came to fruition due to this year’s elimination of U.S. Open qualifying.

Last week Si Woo Kim was spotted at the Wyndham sporting Live Under Par on his shirt and we were briefly taken back to happier times when bros in pink shirts were encouraged to Snap all of their drunken on-site experiences.

No Laying Up noticed:

Last week MorningRead.com’s Alex Miceli praised the PGA Tour for taking the painful but prudent path by reducing staff. (The staff layoff news is here.)

Miceli reported some eye-opening numbers based on a video address Commissioner Jay Monahan gave to staff.

Commissioner Jay Monahan, in a video address to his staff, said the negative impact on revenue without spectators and hospitality income since play resumed in early June and projected through the end of the year will total more than $90 million.

At the same time, the Tour must shoulder the unbudgeted expense of implementing a health-and-safety program, which further erodes the bottom line.

And there was the price placed on the new Norman Foster-designed headquarters (the entrance drive will be Maybach compatible btw…big relief that the turning radius works for the preferred limo of dictators.) Monahan reportedly addressed the idea of stopping construction with the staff to save jobs since all were already working from home.

The 187,000-square-foot, $65 million building, which is scheduled to be finished by the end of the year, was designed as an adaptive office space, with an open-concept approach that will give 700 employees a better working environment.

According to sources, a halt in construction would cost the Tour more money than it would take to finish the project.

Two Rolex Series events. Two new dates.

📅 Aberdeen Standard Investments Scottish Open (October 1-4)

📅 BMW PGA Championship (October 8-11)

While the Alfred Dunhill Links is cancelled this year due to its pro-am format and COVID-19, the European Tour has scheduled two of its Rolex events for early October: The Aberdeen Standard Investments Scottish Open at The Renaissance Club in Gullane, and the BMW PGA at Wentworth. The Dubai Duty Free Irish Open at Galgorm resort precedes.

Both events are listed as $7 million purses.

The Augusta Chronicle’s Damon Cline considers the economic impact of a fan-free Masters and some of the numbers are eye-opening.

The tournament historically could be counted on to fill up metro area hotel rooms – currently 7,200 – and rented homes, which exceed 4,000 listings. On the Georgia side of the market, which has the majority of rooms and short-term rentals, visitors pay “tournament-priced” room rates as well as a 6% lodging tax, $1 a night local fee and a $5 a night state fee.

Richmond County, for example, collects an average of $1.4 million in hotel-motel tax revenues from the month of April, which is about three times higher than the average month.

Augusta Metro Chamber of Commerce CEO Sue Parr, who oversees the Masters Housing Bureau, the sole Augusta National-sanctioned home-rental service, said she believes homeowners and renters will work out arrangements for refunds or will hold reservations over for the 2021 tournament.

“All of the above are opportunities for the homeowner and the renter to find that win-win,” she said.

One are not addressed: how many are willing to rent their home out in these times?

The New York Times’ Ben Smith looks at the last week or so of bad but inevitable news for the studio system as streaming services outmaneuver the famous brands owned by the AT&T’s, Comcast’s, Viacom’s and even Disney’s of the world.

But this being a golf blog the last quote was quite the golf analogy from legendary investor/executive Barry Diller.

“Disney will remain relevant into the future,” said Barry Diller, who once headed Paramount and Fox and is now chief executive of the digital media company IAC. “All of the rest of them are caddies on a golf course they’ll never play.”

As for sports streaming and golf, the same change still seems a ways off given the inconvenience and clunkiness of streaming sports. But the inevitable change is coming.

Nice to see all-around nice guy Jim Herman find something with a remarkable 61-63 run at Sedgefield CC to win the 2020 Wyndham Championship. The win is his third, and tops his previous best finish this season, a 27th at the 20 player TOC at Kapalua.

Herman turned it around and—besides that 2021 Masters berth (don’t ask)—that all-important spot in the playoffs. Or in the latest lame FedExCup parlance, he worked his way in. Many others worked themselves out Sunday. Work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work.

Loved Herman’s post round remarks on finding his putting in Adam Schupak’s game story:

Herman, 42, made one critical switch this week, changing to a Bettinardi putter he’d used before and going to a cross-handed putting grip. It did wonders as he holed 444 feet of putts this week and rankled third in Strokes Gained: Putting. The short stick has always been Herman’s bugaboo. He used the claw putting stroke when he won the Shell Houston Open in 2016 and a conventional grip at the 2019 Barbasol Championship.

“For those that struggle putting, you definitely experiment often. I thought maybe last summer when I putted so well at Barbasol, maybe I was on to something, it would be something that stuck,” Herman said. “Then I was off the putter and out of that style by the end of the wraparound Fall start.”

A week after Collin Morikawa posted the lowest final 36 by a major winner, Herman tied the lowest weekend 36 by a winner in PGA Tour history, writes GolfChannel.com’s Will Gray.

Brentley Romine reports for GolfChannel.com on Tyler Strafaci capturing the Havemeyer Trophy in a 1 up thriller against Ollie Osbourne. The two combined for 25 birdies and an eagle despite, at times, zero visibility in the late Bandon Dunes evening hours.

Strafaci is now the fourth Georgia Tech player to win the Havemeyer Trophy, joining Bobby Jones (1924, 1925, 1927, 1928, 1930), Matt Kuchar (1997) and his former teammate Andy Ogletree (2019). The Yellow Jackets are the first program ever to have different players win two consecutive U.S. Amateurs.

I loved seeing these names today as Georgia Tech became the first to have duel back-to-back U.S. Am winners on top of their other former winners.

The last school to have two different players win consecutive #USAmateur titles: University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

H.J. Whigham (1896-97)
Findley S. Douglas (1898)@GTGolf with Tyler Strafaci and last year's winner Andy Ogletree could join them today.

Steven Gibbons’ images for the USGA.

Golf.com’s Kevin Cunningham follows up on a situation that arose Friday at the Wyndham. I didn’t think much of it because the ball in question seemed to be moving and that Rafael Cabrera-Bello was in his right to walk slowly, even if the period lasted over 10 seconds.

Turns out, the rules officials on site didn’t see it that way. Cabrera-Bellow told what press was assembled at Sedgefield that he had convince officials not to penalize him.

“So what they wanted to speak to me about is they felt that I took too long to approach the hole,” Cabrera-Bello said Friday night. “We reviewed the footage and the referee said that it was so, so close and so tight, but they wanted to know if I have deliberately to slow down my walk to the hole and I told them that I didn’t, I slowed down because I saw my playing partners walking in.”

According to Rule 13.3a, in such a scenario players have a reasonable time to walk up to the ball and then 10 more seconds to wait for it to fall. If it falls in after that time, the golfer receives one penalty stroke.

That would account for the overall 20 seconds here, but let that be a lesson: you have the walk-up time plus 10 seconds—should you be so fortunate to have one teetering on the edge.

The putt:

Telegraphing another long day with her slower peers at the Renaissance Club, Stacy Lewis vowed Sunday to not complain to her caddie.

This is what it has come to.

Lewis prevailed in the Aberdeen Standard Investments Ladies Scottish Open after four-player playoff that included Azahara Munoz, Cheyenne Knight and Emily Pederson.

Here is what she said after Saturday’s tepid round, from Beth Ann Nichols:

“I think the biggest challenge for me tomorrow is staying in what I’m doing,” Lewis, “and the pace of play is dreadfully slow, and that doesn’t play into my favor. People I’m playing with are pretty slow.”

I’ll admit it’s the links golf. Deprived of a proper links season, we have an epic day ahead this Sunday book-ended by links golf (and yes purists, I’m aware neither is technically a links).

I know I don’t have to tell you about the Wyndham Rewards runner-up race and Playoff(C) ramifications Sunday at soggy Sedgefield. Frankly, I just don’t want to add any stress in your life.

So let’s focus on the “other” golf. In the pandemic era this one is set up to be a doozy.

If you’re up at 5 am ET, Golf Channel will have the European Tour finale where a 2017 Walker Cupper, Conor Syme, leads a teammate, Sam Horsfield. Beef, now comfortable playing in a COVID-19 world, is lurking.

Easily the most compelling Sunday leaderboard can be found at a firmer, faster Renaissance Club in lovely Gullane, and other than the creepy Aberdeen Standard adverts on the tees, the final round on Golf Channel runs from 7-11 am ET.