Bay Chill
I enjoyed watching golf this past week. There, I said it. No, I was not watching the Cologuard Classic in Arizona, or the Puerto Rico Open. I watched the signature/elevated/designated event taking place at Bay Hill in Orlando. There are mountains of negativity in golf right now. The tour should be doing this, here’s what the fan doesn’t understand, the players should not stop whining and just play better, he broke the rules! It’s exhausting. I prefer to watch the golf that is presented on tv and check twitter a few times a day to see what the hotheads are squawking about. Here are some things I noticed this week:
Min Woo Lee did not win. I stuck my neck out there and declared Min Woo as the winner last Wednesday. He shot a 69 on Thursday, followed by a dissapointing 76 and 73 over the weekend. Mr. Lee has a lot of buzz, let’s get a win soon.
Smylie’s Happy Hour was awesome. Some logistical and transitional snafus were evident, but they had the right idea. Jordan and Max were perfect first guests, but NBC should just let those guys run with it without worrying about tossing it back to Dan Hicks.
Wyndham Clark is there, but he has not been here for long. The incumbent US Open victor has been backing up that victory with solid play. But, his most watched clips this week were centered around a few on-course tantrums/scandals and an answer he provided on a proposed new structure of the PGA Tour. The ball moving scandal is whatever, he had to put his club down there in preparation for the shot. Any fool is doing the exact same thing, but most of us don’t have a camera zoomed in so far you can see the thread count on our socks!
Wyndham did say that he is in favor of a smaller PGA Tour for the top 100 most elite. Is this trickle down economics? Wait, doesn’t the cream always rise to the top? Or is it the one about rolling stones collecting moss? Anyways, I see both sides of this question. In a vacuum, a golf tour that solely boasts the top 100 players competing on a week to week basis where they can all take a week off at the same time would be incredible. But lets suck ourselves out of that vacuum. As many people have pointed out, Mr. Clark only recently made his way into the upper echelon of golfers. He battled, and he’s not right out of school either. He’s 30 years old and joined the big boy tour in 2019. He has played in 149 events. Wyndham probably isn’t the best spokesperson for this conversation at this exact moment, but that’t also not his fault. We must consider that Wyndham did not take the podium and jump right into this dialogue. He was asked about his opinion on the idea of an elite tour, and he gave his answer, and he was actually very civil about the whole thing. I wonder how many of the top 100 golfers agree with him. Can someone send out a google form to the top 100 in the FedEx Cup rankings or OWGR and see if the numbers lie?
So, to give my final take on all this, I would love to see a tour of highly elite events that organically create a Sunday leaderboard like we saw on Sunday. The big names sell. And while we’re at it, with my extreme nearsightedness being evident, a tour that is a step below whatever this hypothetical elite tour is would still play at PGA Tour level courses, still have purses the size of Vermont, and still have eyes on TV. There would be a relegation system creating upward and downward mobility, fair competition, all that good jazz. Sign me up. I’ve just convinced myself. All you whiners on Twitter trying to bury Wyndham should go throw your clubs in a lake.
A quick addendum to this: the big names gotta start playing better. cough…Rory…cough… Viktor…achoo, excuse me.
The rough was too thick. I think I would shoot a 150 at Bay Hill. Unless my driver was en fuego, if that was the case the course record better keep its head on a swivel. But there were some comical lies in the thick cabbage and hacky Mchackerson revealed himself once again. Approaching one dimensional golf, at least from my vantage point on the couch.
There were so many commercials, and “playing through” sucks ass. I would rather have there be a full commercial because then I can go take a piss or pour myself an apple juice. But no, we have to watch a little box of golfers in the corner while some old actor tells me about his A1C level.
Scottie Scheffler is so good at golf. He is so fun to watch. We saw some emotional fireworks from Scottie on Saturday, but he was in full cruise control on Sunday. Many talking heads called his effort “Tiger Like”. Scottie is 1/4 of the way to the amount of wins Tiger has at Bay Hill. He went bogey free, put the ball where he needed to out of harm's way, and made the makeable putts for birdie. This new mallet putter has him putting into a hole the size of his forehead and everyone on the tour shouldn’t even show up next week at The Players.
That red cardigan is pretty slick too. Scottie’s whole scene is so wholesome. His expecting wife is so delightful and his parents seem to be incredibly proud, duh. You can’t help but root for the guy.
I haven’t watched Jay Monahan’s presser yet. That’s for another blog.
Stay Curious.
