Jessica Korda Dumps Caddie Mid-U.S. Open Round For BF

Randall Mell reports a real oy veyer from the third round of the U.S. Women's Open at Sebonack.

Korda shot a 5-over 40 on the front nine. She shot a 36 on the back nine with her boyfriend on her bag. By day's end, she was tied for sixth.

“The first few holes, I was very shaky, but my boyfriend/caddie kept me very calm out there, and kept it very light,” Korda said. “And it was kind of funny seeing him fumble over yardage. Like I said, it just kept it very light out there.”

Korda said her boyfriend will remain on the bag Sunday, but he won’t continue to caddie longterm.

“I think everybody has problems every week,” Korda said of the disagreements with Gilroyed. “You blame the caddie, the caddie blames you. It's just up in the air.  I just felt like enough was enough today. I just wasn't mentally ready for it.”

Her post round interview:

U.S. Women's Open: Doak Stalks Creamer!

Fun anecdote from Randall Mell from Tuesday at Sebonack on the eve of the U.S. Women's Open at the Tom Doak-Jack Nicklaus designed course:

When Doak first inquired whether he could follow Creamer around, Creamer didn’t believe it.

“I asked my dad,`Is it a joke? Is someone playing a trick on me?'” Creamer said.

Creamer, who won the U.S. Women’s Open in 2010 on Oakmont’s treacherous greens, relished the chance to grill Doak on nuances of his designs.

“Why would you do this to us?” Creamer playfully asked Doak of the toughest greens. “I didn’t give him too much grief about it, but he laughed.”

Dave Shedloski talks to architects Nicklaus and Doak about the unusual design collaboration.

Nicklaus said the routing of the course is predominantly the work of Doak, but the tee-to-green strategy shows more of his influence. He figures he moved perhaps as many as half of the bunkers into more strategic locations. Doak designed the greens. Nicklaus liked them, but softened them.

“The look is more Tom’s, and the golf is a combination of both of us,” Nicklaus said. “My idea was to have good, playable golf. Tom will throw bunkers in different places for the aesthetics, so that’s the look. I think the combination turned out well. I learned a lot from this golf course; it’s given me another dimension on how to do golf courses.

There's also a nice USGA slide show of course images.

Video Preview: U.S. Women's Open At Sebonack

Here's a nice video overview and the first glimpses of the Doaklaus design making its debut on a grand stage, this week's U.S. Women's Open.

Mark Herrmann has the backstory of Sebonack and the odd design pairing of Jack Nicklaus and Tom Doak:

Logic insisted that, when the time came to design Pascucci's dream course, he hire Nicklaus to do it, which is what happened. Logic left the room, though, when Pascucci insisted that Nicklaus share the job with Doak, the current architecture whiz. The course owner held a meeting at which neither of his guests wanted to be present.

"I remember the tension in that office was incredible,'' said Mark Hissey, who was project manager while Sebonack was being built and is executive director of this year's Women's Open.
At one point, Pascucci left the room, pretending he had a phone call, just so the two men could start talking. Before it was over, they had an agreement, and when they were all done, they had a course that the U.S. Golf Association found major-worthy.

Kraft Nabisco Thru 36: Another Anchorer Contends In A Major

John Strege tells us about England's Jodi Ewart Shadoff, a belly putter since November, 2011 who doesn't seem too concerned about a possible ban on anchoring.

"If they do decide to ban it, it wouldn't be a huge issue for me," she said, following a round of even-par 72 on the Dinah Shore Tournament Course at Mission Hills Country Club. "I'd have to spend a couple months really working out with a short putter, but it wouldn't be a huge deal.

"Honestly, I've said this a lot of times, but all you have to do is look at my putting stats to know it's not a huge advantage."

Ewart is three back of Inbee Park who leads at -7.

Storyline Pairing? Lydia Ko & Michelle Wie?!

Fred Woodcock reports on the Kraft Nabisco Championship opening 36-hole pairing of 15-year-old phenom Lydia Ko and former 15-year-old phenom Michelle Wie, not a 23-year-old strugging to find her game as the LPGA's first major kicks off in Rancho Mirage.

The two have played together but it still begs the question, is someone sending a message?

Stacy "Lewis’s ongoing success on the greens is a blend of art and science"

I'm down at the KIA Classic talking to LPGA players for a story and had the pleasure of sitting in on new World No. 1 Stacy Lewis's press conference.

In a recent SI Golf Plus story, Alan Shipnuck wrote about her improvement on the greens:

Lewis’s ongoing success on the greens is a blend of art and science. To sharpen her feel she does a drill in which she hits a long lag putt into open space on the practice green, away from any target. Without peeking to see where the putt ends up, Lewis then drops another ball, closes her eyes and tries to hit the second ball to the same spot. “No exaggeration, 90 percent of the time the two balls are within three or four inches,” says Hallett.

In the press conference, I asked her to explain the more technical side of her approach without divulging too many secrets. Her answer:

STACY LEWIS:  Yep.  Well, it's Aimpoint and everybody can go take a class and learn it, so I guess it's not too much of a secret.  But I learned it, gosh it's been almost three years, two and a half, three years.  It's really based on gravity and how water flows off of a green.  So every time I walk up to a whole, I'm trying to find a straight putt, and once you find a straight putt, it's how much slope there ‑‑ what affects the read is how much slope is there and then how far away you are from the straight putt.  So the further you get from the straight putt, the more it's going to break.  So it's a combination of that and you have a little chart that gives you the exact read for every single putt.  So it's really, it's almost like cheating.  I can walk around and have down to the inch how far every putt's going to break.  So I can ‑‑ and that's the thing, too, is you're walking around, you're feeling it with your feet versus looking at it, and that's kind of the big difference because a lot of times golf courses try to throw you off visually with mounds or hills or whatever it may be on how putts break.