Men vs. Women's Pro Golf: "Hit and Run vs. Home Run Derby"

THIS..IS..RIGHT..ON! We are playing the same great courses that @jacknicklaus @ArnoldPalmer & Peter Thomson won on. I’m excited for our future because technology has ruined these great course for the elite men. All the best for us girls! https://t.co/jELjCz94JR

— Karrie Webb AO (@Karrie_Webb) August 26, 2020

Andy Johnson wins the analogy award for summing the contrast between last weekend’s AIG Women’s Open at Troon and the slugfest at TPC Boston, aka the Northern Trust won by eleven by Dustin Johnson.

During the 2020 Women’s Open, played at a windy, 6,632-yard Royal Troon, we saw just that. Cunning and shotmaking came to the forefront. The competitors’ typical trajectories and spin rates brought slopes on and around the greens into play. Fronting bunkers were intimidating, often prompting players to aim away from a pin if they had a poor angle.

As a diehard golf fan, I felt how a diehard baseball fan must feel during the postseason. In playoff baseball games, the margins are slim, and the most successful teams manufacture runs in nuanced ways: hit and runs, safety squeezes, pitch-outs. Similarly, the Women’s Open highlighted precise driving, well-struck long irons, varied short-game play, and patience. This is the kind of stuff that tragics love and obsess over. And in golf, despite advances in equipment, the intricacies we crave can still be found in women’s tournaments because the scale of the players’ games fits the scale of the venues.

At the PGA Tour’s Northern Trust, on the other hand, those scales were completely mismatched.

Matt Brown offered a similar look from Down Under (thus, the “Monday morning” references to the final round). He lamented how “boring” the Northern Trust final round was, but appreciated how Bryson DeChambeau has brought the distance discussion to the table. And this:

At the same time the TPC Boston was giving up birdies like they were jellybeans, across the Atlantic, the world's best women's players were having a hell of a time at Royal Troon.

With 65-kilometre-per-hour winds ripping off the Firth of Clyde on Scotland's west coast, this classic 140-year-old links was baring its teeth. The leader after the first two rounds was Swede Dani Holmqvist.
She shot rounds of 70 and 71 to be 1-under, the only player in red figures.

The cut was set at 9-over par. Three golfers had rounds of over 80 in the first two days and still played the weekend.

And it was glorious to watch.

Great to see World Golf Hall of Famer Karrie Webb on board too (above).