• The KillerFrogs

TCU Golf 2021-2022

Horns proved they had been the best team in the country the last few months. That is a stacked team. I'm not sure any of them will become superstars at the next level, but that team is deep with talent.
 

JogginFrog

Active Member
Horns proved they had been the best team in the country the last few months. That is a stacked team. I'm not sure any of them will become superstars at the next level, but that team is deep with talent.
Congrats to them. Well deserved. Although I nearly choked when I heard the Golf Channel announcer say (leading off the post-match interview with the Coody twins and their parents) that "the Coody family is synonymous with UT golf." Yelled at my screen, "Yeah? Where'd Gramps go to school?" There's that bitterness again. Gotta watch that.

@gohornedfrogs, interested in your take on the announcement of the Hanse restoration at Oakmont. It's a bit funny that after removing all the trees, they now have to address issues with intentional play into adjacent fairways. In retrospect, would it have been better to leave stands of trees near tee boxes to cut down on those angles?
 
Congrats to them. Well deserved. Although I nearly choked when I heard the Golf Channel announcer say (leading off the post-match interview with the Coody twins and their parents) that "the Coody family is synonymous with UT golf." Yelled at my screen, "Yeah? Where'd Gramps go to school?" There's that bitterness again. Gotta watch that.

@gohornedfrogs, interested in your take on the announcement of the Hanse restoration at Oakmont. It's a bit funny that after removing all the trees, they now have to address issues with intentional play into adjacent fairways. In retrospect, would it have been better to leave stands of trees near tee boxes to cut down on those angles?
I think they are making more out of the 'cross country' golf thing than is really there. Hole #11 is the only real big change. Personally, I think they could have addressed that by having #10 fairway start 100 yards further down towards the green. There were never any trees that blocked that play before. Playing #1 down #9 fairway is risky during a US Open. The #9 fairway slopes hard right-to-left away from you. I think it's harder to hit that narrow piece than the actual #1 fairway unless it's soaking wet. And, you have to hit it right over the top of huge galleries -- so the visual isn't all that appealing. Playing #3 from #4 fairway is the one where there's really not a solution. There were never any trees there to obstruct that play, anyway. It's only relevant with right-side pin locations, though. What I find interesting in all of this is that it defies what Scott Fawcett and a few other data miners have discovered -- chasing angles is not worth the risk.

The other changes will be to the green complexes. They are enlarging several to make room for more difficult pin placements (as if they already aren't diabolical).

I haven't seen the bunker plan. I'm assuming it will be to bring the bunkers into play where the pros are hitting it these days and make them more penal. When they say "reconfiguring Oakmont’s bunkers to match the intentions of founding architect H.C. Fownes," that says making them more penal to me. Like most old courses, they've stretched it about as far as they can, so adding length is not really an option. I think they are lengthening #14 -- but I think they should play it from the regular tees a day or two to tempt guys to drive the green if the wind is blowing out of the East. You'd see some wild scores. Unfortunately, they already have a true driveable par 4 in #17, and another one (#2) that is reachable under the right conditions (wind out of the West).
 

JogginFrog

Active Member
Hayden Springer had the first-round lead at last week's PGA Tour Latinoamerica event in Bogota.
Game story and post-round interview. It's clear that he still has his sights set on graduating up to the Korn Ferry Tour, and he'll need a win to do that. He ended up finishing 12th last week, which moved him up to 20th in the TotalCup standings. But he needs to make the top 5 to get conditional KFT status; top 10 would get him into the finals of the next KFT qualifying cycle.

Two tournaments left--another in Colombia this week and the finally in two weeks in Mexico.
 

JogginFrog

Active Member
Golf Digest's "Every Hole" drone series is phenomenal. The one on The Country Club shows off the weirdness of the old-school course, from it's horse-racetrack opening/closing pair, to its weaving through rock outcroppings, and to its stitching together of holes from multiple courses to create a hybrid championship course to challenge today's pros. Worth a watch.
 

JogginFrog

Active Member
This tweet caught my attention. The bone the PGA Tour has tossed to the top 15 college players (some KFT status) pales in comparison.

Now that the LIV Golf player list is out, including recent U.S. Amateur Champs Andy Ogletree and James Piot, along with former NCAA champ Turk Petit, more analysis of the impact of Saudi money on college players.

Golf Channel points out that Piot has missed the cut in all 5 PGA Tour events in which he has played; Ogletree has MC'd in 5 of 7. As a young pro, unless you strike gold on sponsor exemptions, you could grind for a long time on the lower-tier tours for a chance at a Tour career. So, why not capitalize on a high-profile amateur win for appearance money and a slot in limited-field, no-cut events with $25M purses? For young players wondering when/where/if they'll make their first million, I understand the appeal, even if it meant getting blacklisted by the Tour--which they probably can't legally do to players who have never been Tour members. It's one thing to tell PGA Tour pros that they should weigh the morality of whether to play for Saudi cash; it's another to a college grad trying to get established.

And it's not just former college players. The Golf Digest article mentions current Arizona State player David Puig, who will play LIV as an amateur and pocket some money via an NIL agreement. Not sure how he managed to slip into the mix (leverage from Sergio?), but it sends a message that every college player will think about. Hard to tell yet if this is a narrow window for a handful of college players until LIV gets fully established, or if it will lead to a much wider path to pro careers over the long term.
 

Eight

Member
anyone have any thoughts on one of the akwardly funny press conferences ever? here is a link for those who might have missed phil's comments:

 
anyone have any thoughts on one of the akwardly funny press conferences ever? here is a link for those who might have missed phil's comments:

I think it's kind of hilarious that the people who are mad that Mickelson is leaving the PGA TOUR are happy he lost his sponsors.

The irony is that he didn't lose his sponsors because he is leaving. He lost them because Shipnuck leaked Phil's comments about the Saudis being ruthless -- and the two sponsors who immediately dropped him (KPMG and Workday) -- dropped him because he offended the Saudis, whom they do business with.

Callaway is a different story. I'm assuming that since Phil won't be on TV much any more (at least that anybody will be watching), his value as an endorser has greatly diminished. I'm not convinced they've dropped him altogether, though. We'll know next week.
 

JogginFrog

Active Member
anyone have any thoughts on one of the akwardly funny press conferences ever? here is a link for those who might have missed phil's comments:

The UK reporters are good at their jobs, which led to the awkward humor. It takes moxie to ask, "Can you just clarify what you’re apologizing for? Is it sorry for speaking the truth about the Saudis, or are you sorry about the shameless hypocrisy of taking their money anyway?"

Phil's mouth bought himself the awkward spot that he inhabits. He's taking the Saudi money. But there is a real labor issue for which he is pressing. He states it clearly at 19:44: "I believe all players should have the right to play whenever and wherever they want, which is consistent with being an independent contractor." The PGA Tour transfers tens (hundreds?) of millions in operating costs to players every year because they are ICs and not employees. The Tour can't do that and also penalize those contractors from playing elsewhere. Phil is daring the Tour to penalize him and risk an antitrust suit. His lifetime Tour membership status gives him cover to do so.

This Forbes article explains how IC status has kept a lot of wealth with the Tour rather than transferring it to the players, as has happened in most other major sports. The cost of operating as an IC makes wealth generation elusive for those outside of the top 200, who generally have to find outside funders to stake them.
 
LOL. And now Muck Angle has weighed in on LIV golf. There's an obscure Ft. Worth angle. It's one of the worst-constructed, most incoherent newspaper articles I've ever read.

I won't link it. If anybody wants to find it, they know where to go.
 
I won’t watch LIV. Think it’s a bunch of whiny millionaires complaining because they always want more.
About 80,000 people watched it online today. First round of a regular PGA Tour event gets about 400,000 viewers. That's not a good start for LIV considering all the hype the last few weeks.

It's mostly some guys who are in Champions Tour purgatory -- too old to win on the regular tour, but not 50, yet. There's a few middling players who will make a lot more money with LIV than they would playing the DP Tour or PGA Tour, and not have to worry about losing their cards. Then there are a bunch of young players and amateurs who wouldn't be playing anywhere important if it wasn't for LIV.

I get why Phil is there. He simply wants the money, and Phil is all about Phil. DJ is about three years away from being on the downhill side of his career. I admire DeChambeau's talent, and his boldness to take the swing where it's never been before, but he's an outcast on the Tour in a social sense. Patrick Reed is the same. Neither of them play well with others -- really, every one of those guys above is an outcast in one way or another.

To some degree, I can understand the players unhappiness with the Tour's independent contractor status simply because the Tour has so many dates, and therefore they really have limited opportunities to play in non-sanctioned events. But what the Tour does for them in return is pretty damn phenomenal.

The Tour has been talking about moving the Champions age down to 45 for several years now. I think it's inevitable now as a response to LIV.

All in all, I don't think this will have all that much impact on the Tour. They're going to need to lose some really big names before anybody will know the difference, and I don't see that happening.

I think the worst part of the Tour's response is that they are forbidding the LIV players from playing in PGA Tour events on a sponsor's exemption. The Tour doesn't own the vast majority of their events, so I can see some of the tournament organizers being unhappy that they can't invite DJ, Phil or Bryson as a one-off. That's where the Tour is going to get the most push-back.

The fun part is going to be when this thing falls apart in a few years and those guys have to beg to come back.
 

JogginFrog

Active Member
One of the downstream effects of 17 Tour members teeing it up in England--and a certain number of others bypassing the Canadian Open due to Covid vaccination requirements--is that the Tour has gone further than usual into its priority list to fill out the field. One of the beneficiaries: J.J. Henry, who is off to a good start with a 1-under 69 (T25).
 
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