Rory Didn't "Sack" His Looper..."Changed My Path"

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For once I admire someone leaning on euphemisms and jargon to defend a decision, because it's pretty clear from reading Steve DiMeglio's USA Today account that Rory McIlroy didn't feel good about firing longtime caddie J.P. Fitzgerald midseason.

From the story:

“There’s nothing to say that J.P. mightn’t work for me again at some point, but right now I just felt like I needed a little bit of a change,” McIlroy said. “I hate the term fired or sacked or axed, because that’s definitely not what it was. I just changed my path a little bit, but maybe in the future that path might come back to where it was. Right now I just needed to mix things up a little bit, and J.P. understood that and we’re still all good.”

Time will tell if, during a season he's mixed things up so much already, this was the right call.

Karen Crouse of the New York Times notes something that suggest McIlroy could be forcing himself into a different level of engagement that either works or backfires.

Last week, two days after finishing in a tie for fourth at the British Open, McIlroy parted with the caddie J. P. Fitzgerald. In their nine years together, Fitzgerald had shepherded McIlroy to four major championships and the top of the world rankings.

For at least the next two weeks, Diamond, a Northern Irishman who had a decorated amateur career, will carry McIlroy’s clubs while McIlroy bears the burden of determining the yardages and choosing his clubs — and living with the decisions.

“I’ve enjoyed the last couple of days of carrying a yardage book, doing my own numbers, pacing stuff out, really getting into the shot, something I haven’t done for a few years,” McIlroy said.

Another Bunker Liner Ruling: Hoffman Gets Out Of Plugged Lie

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Here's the situation: final round, 2017 RBC Canadian Open, Charley Hoffman hits into a greenside bunker at the 12th and has a badly buried lie:


Credit Hoffman and caddie for recognizing the renovated Glen Abbey bunkers for having newly installed bunker floor lining that prevented him from digging enough to take a stance on his bunker shot. (You can see a demo at the 1:30 mark of how it is sprayed in). And even cred it them for asking to get a ruling even after Hoffman can be heard saying multiple times he did not believe there was any kind of artificial lining causing an issue (his caddie wasn't so sure and convinced him to get a second opinion). CBS's Peter Kostis said exactly the opposite: Hoffman was calling for a ruling because he could feel the liner. Maybe he had a producer yelling in his ear during the conversation, but it was still misleading.

Official Gary Young arrived and seemed very reluctant to give Hoffman relief, but the player soon could smell an opening, ultimately convincing Young that he could not take his stance because of the concrete lining.

"That's so generous!" barked out playing partner Kevin Chappell, somewhat sarcastically. Young replied that it was consistent with other rulings related to the new age bunker liners designed to keep sand on faces and from being contaminated. Chappell then lightly pointed out Hoffman's smile upon getting relief:

 

 

One other comment from Chappell, again with a light touch, prompted a one-word response and smile from Hoffman as he went about his business: "Rules."

Given the behind-the-scenes grumbling still taking place over Branden Grace's BMW PGA relief from a buried lie while citing bunker lining as a stance preventative, it's hard to see how Hoffman's will be any better received by his peers (note the sampling of fan outrage below).

However, it should be noted that Hoffman was initially skeptical about even suggesting he deserved a drop from the lie. He went on to lose the Canadian Open in a playoff to Jhonattan Vegas.

The situation seems worse than it might appear given that the PGA Tour, which has signaled a desire to be in the news delivery business via the web and television, scrubbed videos of the drop after briefly posting them to official Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Here is the PGA Tour Facebook post of the ruling, deleted (thanks reader Jeremy S).

And the Tweet captured by reader MS:

The reaction below sums up the social media reaction, which offers another reminder that it's very hard to bend the rules and not go unnoticed in the age of social media:

What do we learn from this?

A) Bunker liners are going to be an ongoing problem. A product meant to keep sand from becoming contaminated and to keep sand on bunker faces is now being used to subvert the game's original rule: play it as it lies.

B) Players are increasingly unafraid to stretch the boundaries of the rules to gain an advantage.

C) Instead of embracing this as a learning situation, the PGA Tour scrubbed their accounts of the evidence, which will only make Hoffman's peers and their caddies wonder what needed hiding. Even though Hoffman was initially skeptical that the situation warranted a ruling, much less a drop, the lack of transparency will raise suspicions about what went down.

Canadian Open Tournament Director Doesn't Make The Weekend

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Profiled by the Curtis Rush in New York Times earlier this week as a "tattooed, leather-clad, Harley Davidson-driving, guitar-picking former roadie", RBC Canadian Open tournament director Brent McLaughlin was "temporarily removed" from his job mid-tournament, reports Bob Weeks.

“It’s a confidential employee matter,” he stated. “Brent will not be here for the weekend.”

Applebaum did say that McLaughlin has not been terminated but did not give any indication as to the next steps. In addition to running the RBC Canadian Open, McLaughlin also heads up the CP Women’s Open slated for late August in Ottawa.

The Times piece was in no way negative and seemed like a refreshing look at someone behind the scenes.

Davis At 53 Shoots 63

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With technology changing the game in favor of those reared on certain size clubheads and shafts, it's rare to see an old guy use modern clubs and a little hard work to stay relevant. Sorry Vijay!

Will Gray of GolfChannel.com on 53-year-old Davis Love's opening 63 at the Greenbrier Classic that leaves the two-time Ryder Cup captain two back of Sebastian Munoz heading into round two.

The round came as a bit of a surprise:

The 53-year-old has only made 13 of 24 cuts since his Wyndham victory while battling injuries, and he hasn't cracked the top 40 in 18 months. But that drought could end this week on a course where Love tied for ninth in 2013.

"I've been working really hard the last couple weeks on trying to fix my swing to kind of swing around a stiff back and stiff hip," Love told reporters. "I put a lot of time into hitting balls and trying to get back to hitting it solid. I've given up on hitting it a long way. I'm just saying, 'I've just got to hit it straight.' This is a perfect golf course for me."

In The Takeaway, PGATour.com's Teryn Schaefer recaps Round 1 of the Greenbrier where Phil Mickelson made his first start without Bones on the bag and Love highlights.

The Design Side Of Greenbrier's Recovery

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Tim Rosaforte's Golf Channel piece dealt with the human and maintenance side, and in this Golf.com story, Michael Bamberger addresses the role Keith Foster played in pushing the Old White course more toward its CB Macdonald heritage. The layout hosts the Greenbrier Classic starting Thursday.

He writes of Foster:

His first instinct was to say it could not be done. The golf course could not be reclaimed and restored in one year and open for play for the 2017 tournament. The hotel didn't even have hot water and locals suddenly rendered homeless were being put up in its plush rooms. The idea of a golf tournament seemed just...remote. But Jim Justice opened his checkbook and prodded Foster. "We just made one decision after another after another on the fly," Foster said in a recent telephone interview. If you know his name, it might be for the restoration work he has done at Colonial, Southern Hills and Philadelphia Cricket. "We did it the old way, hole by hole. We didn't get everything done the way we would ultimately like it, but it's most of the way there." On the resort guest-Tour player continuum, Foster said he was far, far far on the side of the everyday paying guest, while noting "we have our Bubba tees."

Video: How The Greenbrier Was Recovered Post-Flooding

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This powerful Golf Channel piece helmed by Tim Rosaforte, produced by Sarah Cordial and coordinating producer Kory Kozac, chronicles how West Virginia and the Greenbrier resort rallied together to recover from last year's tragic floods. Following a one year-hiatus, the Greenbrier Classic returns to the celebrated resort and while we'll hear plenty about it, this lengthy feature brings the magnitude of the flooding into perspective. 

Is Tiger's Quicken Loans National Doomed In Schedule Revamp?

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Sure sounds like it if you read from DMV insiders John Feinstein and Ryan Ballengee who each lay out the relatively short history and future of the PGA Tour stop that was started by Tiger Woods.

With the PGA Tour needing to contract to make a Labor Day conclusion work and Quicken Loans having not renewed sponsorship of the stop, the signs are not encouraging. Throw in multiple other anecdotal elements--including the Woods Foundation's involvement in the Los Angeles stop--and we could be watching the last or second-to-last playing of the tour's (mostly) D.C. stop.

All of this is set against a backdrop of a PGA Tour looking to shed a few stops to make the math work on a schedule overhaul moving the Players to March, the PGA Championship to May and a conclusion by early September.

Feinstein reports for Golf World that Congressional will not host the "National" again after contractually obligated playings in 2018 and 2020, all in hopes of luring a USGA event again.

While the members agreed to the deal, it was only to host in alternating years — 2016, 2018 and 2020. And once that contract is up, the tournament won’t return to Congressional. The board is now pursuing a U.S. Open, with USGA executive director Mike Davis telling it flatly that the association won’t even consider the course unless the tour event goes away.

But the event requires a sponsor and Feinstein says it won't be Quicken Loans.

With the contract up after this week’s event, there has been no sign from Quicken Loans officials that it plans to renew. There also has been talk that company CEO Dan Gilbert wants to take his money to Michigan, where he lives, to bring the tour back to his home state, which hasn’t had a tour event since the Buick Open outside Flint went away in 2009.

Ballengee's GolfNewsNet.com report pieces together the other anecdotal signs of an impending demise for the Quicken Loans National. With rumblings out of Minnesota about a likely new tour stop there, perhaps sponsored by a current sponsor, Ballengee writes:

At first glance, the only events on the schedule that appear vulnerable are the Quicken Loans National, with an expiring deal, and The Greenbrier Classic, which is locked up through 2021.

Meanwhile, Tiger Woods' TGR Live now runs the Genesis Open at Riviera near Los Angeles, a tournament with an established, legendary pedigree of winners and located in Woods' home state. The field is also imminently better than the National each year.

Quicken Loans, if they choose to remain a title sponsor, could latch on to the as-of-now sponsor-less Houston Open or taking over the Tournament of Champions from SBS (which sublet their deal to Hyundai before this year), both with better schedule slots and fields.

This year's even features one of the weaker fields in modern memory, with just four major winners and one top ten player. Tiger has stepped away for his back and addiction rehab as well.

Ferguson: "Crowd atmosphere can't be overlooked as key factor at majors"

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AP's Doug Ferguson does a nice job pointing out the atmospheric differences between Erin Hills and TPC River Highlands, something fans noticed. He agrees with our assessment that getting fans closer to the action makes a difference and should be a vital element to course setup.

He writes:

A big atmosphere comes from energized, enthusiastic fans. And those fans get their energy from being close to the action, feeding off the noise around them. That starts with being able to see golf without having to squint their eyes.

The lack of major atmosphere was evident at Erin Hills.

It was even worse at Chambers Bay, the public course built out of a sand and gravel pit next to the Puget Sound. On one hole, fans were perched high on a ridge and looked like a row of figurines from down below. The par-5 eighth hole at Chambers Bay didn't have any fans at all.

That's the biggest risk the USGA is taking by going to big, new courses.

The U.S. Open returns to traditional courses with a smaller blueprint over the next decade. Even after a soft, calm year, it should not lose its reputation as the toughest test in golf.

Ratings: Travelers 2.7 Second Best Sunday Overnight Of '17, Final U.S. Open Numbers Second Lowest On Record

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The PGA Tour got some good news as Jordan Spieth's win at the 2017 Travelers and his overall ability to lure in non-golf fans gave CBS a nice final round rating. This is the second Sunday in a row for CBS to finish up in the numbers (Karp/SBD).

SBD's Austin Karp with the positive overnight news:

 

As for the U.S. Open, I've put off a post on the dreary ratings news (3.6 overnight) in part because I hate the reflection it makes on the players who contended.

Now that they've had their moment and we've had time to ponder the golf at Erin Hills, it's apparent that some combination of the telecast length (9.5 hours!), protagonists, venue, Central Time Zone and seemingly reduced marketing budget effort by Fox contributed to the second lowest rating and smallest audience on record.

The combination of stunning visuals, production values and noticeable difference between Fox and other telecasts can't be blamed. I would, however, strongly agree with Martin Kaufmann's Golfweek assessment that on-course reporters were underutilized.

The overall audience size was also a troublesome number according to Karp:

 

 

Dramatic: Spieth's 10th Win; Intriguing Rush To Compare With 2017 U.S. Open

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There was much to chew on with Jordan Spieth's sporadic final round capped off by another memorable hole-out in sudden death over Daniel Berger. The Tiger comparisons are rolling in because we are already (amazingly) left to consider Spieth's 10th PGA Tour win (and with two majors he's a HOF lock).

Brian Wacker carefully made those comparisons at Golf World.

This is not a comparison to Woods, who had 15 wins by age 24, as much as it as an appreciation for Spieth’s achievement, and the memorable moments that he has compiled along the way. It started at the 2013 John Deere Classic, where he holed a bunker shot on the 72nd hole to reach a three-way playoff that he eventually won on the fifth extra hole, and concluded with his holed-out birdie bunker shot in a playoff to cap his latest wire-to-wire victory. In between came Spieth’s impressive 2015 season, in which he got nearly three-quarters of the way to the calendar Grand Slam.

“I am not comparing Jordan to Tiger at all, zero,” said good friend Ryan Palmer, who watched the finish in the clubhouse at TPC River Highlands and then from behind the 18th green as he waited to hitch a ride back to Dallas with the eventual champion. “But he has that mentality to do that kind of stuff.

The SI/Golf.com gang kick around the Tiger element in this week's Confidential...

Jeff Ritter, digital development editor, Sports Illustrated Golf Group (@Jeff_Ritter): Tiger absolutely shattered the scale by which all current Tour careers are measured. Spieth may not be on a Tiger-like winning pace, but as I learned today on Twitter, his career arc so far is Mickelsonian. And Phil never had a 73rd-hole celebration like Jordan on Sunday. Not too shabby.

Michael Bamberger, senior writer, Sports Illustrated: Tiger's personality added to his career to create an aura of Worldwide Golfing Dominance. Plus, Tiger won with a power game. It just looked more dominating. But 10 is 10—incredible, really.

The shot:

 

The round highlights: 

 

The Travelers is always fun at TPC River Highlands, but the combination of leaderboard, field and venue's ability to create excitement made today a long overdue reward for some of the hardest working folks in tournament golf. Couple in how great the latest renovation looked along with the golden natives contrasting with green turf, and it was off-the-charts visual eye candy.

And Spieth, like Tiger, brings out a certain adrenaline in observers. Still, I thought some of the comparisons to Erin Hills were unfair given different pars (70 vs. 72) making it easier to post lower red numbers. Nor would ever discourage anyone from bemoaning the scale of a 7,800 yard course versus the more intimate setting in Connecticut...

There is little question that the scale of this week's venue versus Erin Hills created more realistic golf, better spectating and more energy at the end when fans were on top of the action.

Imagine if the scale were even a little more condensed, just how much more democratic and energetic we could have things? And how many fun courses we could play tournaments at again?

Does this mean we all agree to a distance rollback for the pros? Maybe variably, depending on the course?

Whew, that was easy!

Travelers Field Quality Boost, Explained

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Rex Hoggard at GolfChannel.com looks at the field strength boost enjoyed this week by the Travelers Championship.

While we'd love to think Rory, Jason and Jordan are there for the fun of it, this is the highest profile example yet of a very shrewd PGA Tour rule change.

The circuit initiated a strength-of-field regulation this season, which requires players who didn’t have at least 25 starts in the previous season to add an event to their schedules that they hadn’t played in the last four seasons.

Video: Is-This-Any-Way-To-Treat-A-Divot Files, Schwartzel Edition

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One to file a way in the old, they just don't embrace play it as it lies like they used to files. Or perfect tee boxes? I'm utterly confused by this one. Anyway...

Charl Schwartzel at the FedEx St. Jude Classic, en route to a 74. (Here is the link as Twitter embeds have been acting strange lately):

Dufner Joins U.S. Open Discussion With Bizarre Memorial Win

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Not only did Jason Dufner win the Memorial for a long-awaited return to the winner's circle, he did it in entertainingly bizarre fashion. The weather, the wind, the rain, the delays, the quality leaderboard, the 16th hole and the 18th all tried to trip up the third-round 77-shooter. But Dufner somehow overcame it all to win at Jack's place for his fifth PGA Tour victory.

He heads to Erin Hills and the U.S. Open a legitimate threat given his play, ball striking and newfound confidence.

Kevin Casey at Golfweek on the amazing back nine turnaround.

Birdies at 10 and 12 got him in position, another at 15 pushed him into the lead and a stuffed wedge from 119 yards inside 3 feet at the par-4 17th meant another. Suddenly, he was 13 under and had a two-shot on the 72nd hole. Would Dufner cave to the pressure, especially with Rickie Fowler directly behind him? No chance.

Dufner drove it into the right rough on 18 before lightning hit and play was suspended. Again.

Inclement weather had forced suspension of play at 4:18 p.m. Eastern. The delay would last for 1 hour and 17 minutes. Another delay started with that lightning at 6:48 p.m. and lasted until an 8:05 p.m. restart.

Once play started again, Dufner knocked his second shot into more rough beside the fairway and then put one 40 feet from the hole. With that left for par and hanging onto a two-shot lead, Dufner drained the long putt to essentially seal the deal. Clutch.

Bob Harig at ESPN.com on Dufner becoming the first player since Nick Faldo in the 1989 Masters to overcome a score of 77 or higher to win a PGA Tour event.

"I've always been a fighter," said Dufner, who shot a final-round 68. "Especially since I turned professional. Doing this hasn't come easy for me. There's been a lot of struggles and a lot of setbacks. I didn't come straight out of college and play the PGA Tour. It took me almost 10 years to get out here. Took me another two after that to win and actually get to where I felt comfortable.

"So I always take pride in kind of being a fighter, trying to come back. I played really good a couple of weeks ago in Dallas and have a great history at Colonial, and I missed the cut. I was pissed. I was upset. I was disappointed. You have all these thoughts in the moment."

The winning putt:

The extended highlights:

 

Video: Memorial Tournament Honoree Ceremony

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Always one of the classiest days in golf, Greg Norman is the 2017 tournament Honoree and Jerry Tarde received the Journalism Award. Dave Shedloski profiled Norman for Golf World.

Here is the full ceremony posted by Jack Nicklaus on Facebook, with Charlie Meacham's intro of Tarde at the 20:00 mark and Jack Nicklaus's intro of Norman at the 28:00 mark following a short speech by PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan.

ShackHouse 36: Kevin Kisner, Plus Tiger, Memorial & U.S. Open

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As we march toward the U.S. Open, get ready for a fun run of ShackHouses with great guests and insights into this mystery venue.

To kick off the next four weeks of pods, we've got Dean And Deluca winner Kevin Kisner in the house to discuss life in Aiken, his big win, this week's Memorial and the dynamics of this month's Zurich Classic where he and longtime buddy Scott Brown nearly pulled off the win.

The show also includes bickering about Tiger's DUI, the Memorial (with picks!) and an early look at U.S. Open odds.

But we're most excited that the guest still has the best non-major moment of the 2016-17 season:

 

 

Kisner gave the media a fun moment Tuesday at the Memorial pre-tournament presser:

 

"You think I'm scared of @djohnsonpga because he hits it 350?"

A post shared by PGA TOUR (@pgatour) on May 30, 2017 at 2:45pm PDT

 

We also discussed House's pod appearance with Bill Simmons and Bryan Curtis where Tiger chat preceded their Frank Deford show.

As always, you can subscribe on iTunes and or just refresh your device subscription page.

Here is The Ringer's show page.

Same deal with Soundcloud for the show, and Episode 36 is here to listen to right now.

ShackHouse is brought to you by Callaway, makers of the Epic Driver that is now part of Callaway's very groovy Customs program along with Chrome Softs and other fun stuff. Check it out just in time with Father's Day, or, if you just want to enjoy some fun customization practice play with the new Customs features. It's wonderfully addictive!

Here is the Callaway Father's Day Gift Guide.

The show: