State Of The Game Podcast 63: Iain Carter & The 2015 Majors

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Looking at the major winners over the last decade, there have been some great years though on closer inspection, each has its events that look less-than-satisfying in hindsight.

As we discuss with Iain Carter, author of The Majors, the BBC golf correspondent picked a very good year to write a book about the men's Grand Slam events. Because history will look very kindly on the year. Even with Augusta being way too green, Chambers Bay too brown, St. Andrews' greens were too fast and Whisting Straits apparently defenseless (though who knows how anyone breaks par there!), the players picked up the slack for the governing bodies and delivered four very memorable weeks.

Carter joins us to discuss the season, his book and the upcoming year.  Happy listening via your free podcast app subscriptions (hopefully auto downloading), at iTunes, on the show page or as an MP3 download.

Or below:

“What would have happened if he had two-putted the eighth?”

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End that question with the eighth green at the Old Course and anyone who follows golf closely knows the topic: Jordan Spieth, holder of the green jacket and the U.S. Open trophy, with a chance to win The Open and he inexplicably putts uphill, way past the hole, intp the only spot you can't putt your ball, well off the otherwise benign green.

James Corrigan, in reviewing Spieth's year for the Telegraph, goes back to the same spot that I keep thinking of in remember 2015. Because that putt encapsulates the historic majors season posted by Spieth by reminding us how close he was to winning the first three majors of 2015. But it also reminds us that someday he'll lie awake at night knowing the first three were so within his grasp and yet even the world's best putter could throw in a shockingly average putting week and still miss a playoff by one.

Corrigan writes:

The point is that if Spieth had enjoyed even one of his average putting weeks, he would, by his own reckoning, have become just the second golfer to win the Masters, US Open and Open in the same year and become the first to have the chance to win all four at the USPGA. In the event, he finished second at Whistling Straits behind world No 2 Jason Day, but who knows much how the Claret Jug could have inspired him in that August week?

We could easily have been talking about the greatest season in golf instead of just “one” of the greatest and with the strength in depth in the game we can only wonder when we might witness a player coming so close again; especially a player of his tender years.

Considering The 2015 Open After Playing The Old Course

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Of course I’m rubbing it in by mentioning the great privilege of playing St Andrews the day after The Open. But move past the envy stage! Because there is still plenty to consider from the 2015 Open Championship.

The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play after such a fascinating Open also meant getting to play the final round hole locations in far more pleasant conditions than the leaders faced. (Though we did get an opposite wind direction: into the breeze going out, downwind coming in.) The greens were not cut, but there was no shortage of speed.

More on that and some other random observations…

-The hole locations. I can only recall two pin placements that seemed genuinely accessible. The 9th was so center cut that it was almost deceptive due to the lack of definition. The 5th hole was cut 85 yards deep. I faced a third shot yardage of 73 yards to the front.  Now there’s something you don’t experience everyday. The rest of the holes were tucked, hidden or stuck in places the caddies had rarely seen. I heard the same observation from locals who were pleased to see some new locations used, but who also groused about the inability to come up with a few more creative uses of these amazing greens.

- Were these tucked pins offering risk-reward possibilities? Not really. The third and seventh holes featured locations that a ball could be funneled to by a player who could recall how to use the contours, but the rest seemed designed to prevent scoring. Which only makes the final round 66’s from Zach Johnson and Marc Leishman that much more extraordinary. They performed in some of the worst weather and managed to take advantage of the limited opportunities.

- The putting were shockingly good. Consider this: no mowing, a full tee sheet from 6:50 am on and play to hole locations that were used the day prior. Our group, that included Australian journalist Ben Everill and Golf World editor Jaime Diaz, teed off at 3:40 (and behind Americans…you know who you are!). Yet I felt like anything inside six feet was going in if you started the ball on the proper line. The greenkeeper and his crew really do work wonders there. But clearly there is also something very special in the St Andrews turf that allows it to withstand the abuse it gets. 


- Jason Day’s 18th hole birdie putt could very easily be left short. On our list of key putts to try was Jason Day’s final effort that would have gotten him into a playoff. Day left it short and many were shocked how well he took it or that a player could leave that putt short. We tried it and sure enough the cup was on a spot where the ball slowed dramatically near the hole. Whether this was an intentional choice or mere coincidence, we won’t know. But we all agreed to appreciate Day’s point of view.

- Jordan Spieth’s first of four putts on No. 8 was, to be fair, pretty terrible. I was pin high of the back left hole and because of the contours, had a nearly impossible two-putt from about 75 feet. I pulled it off but had to make about a 20 footer. Jordan Spieth’s path to the hole had very little contour in the way. It was just long and you couldn’t leave it above the hole (the green rises up and then falls down to the collar area). It was just a very, very bad attempt that could only happen on greens that large and with an immense amount of pressure.

- Jordan Spieth’s par putt on 17 was very good. Many pointed out that his putt for four at the Road hole missed and forced the need for an 18th hole birdie was actually quite difficult from our late evening sampling. It took quite the dive at the hole if you didn’t hit it firm.

- The Road hole plays better and just as tough with light rough. Naturally. Without the pitch-out rough to the left of the 17th fairway like we saw in 2010, the Road played as hard as ever. Many players curiously took an Auber-conservative route to the hole by playing into No. 2.  Yes a new back tee was required, but I can assure you the difficulty is maintained by the difficulty of the green and not the bizarro work down to the area around the Road bunker. Let’s hope they remedy that and then leave the hole alone.

- The course remains a marvel in so many ways. From the way it handles all of the traffic to the magical contours, to way the greens are mere extensions of the fairway, the endearing qualities written about for so many years remain as ever-present today as they did 150 years ago. And while some don’t care for the commercial quality to the place with so much tourist play, the Old Course at St. Andrews is the world’s most important course and the Links Trust ably balances the needs of the local clubs, the town and the university player with the desire of golfers worldwide to experience this historic place.

Classic TV's 2015 Open Championship Shot Tracking...

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Reveals that ESPN showed many more shots during Monday's final round from St Andrews than last year at Hoylake.

From their write-up, which includes links to the breakdowns at the year's other majors.

ESPN showed 358 shots during this period which worked out to 1.23 strokes per minute - a sizable increase over the ESPN shot rate of 1.01 from the 2014 Open Championship.

This was also a higher shot rate than I tracked for CBS from the 2015 Masters and Fox from the 2015 US Open, but trailed the rate that NBC showed during the 2015 Players. The Masters post contains links to the shot charts I did for the 2014 majors.

As WatchESPN was blocked here in the UK, I wasn't able to see much of the Road hole coverage or other digital feeds. Anyone watch and any thoughts?

BBC Apologizes For Peter Alliss…Twice

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While ESPN had a great week under difficult circumstances according to Golf World's John Strege, BBC's coverage was pretty weak visually. While I couldn't hear the announcing, apparently Peter Alliss made a few remarks that haven't gone over well.

An unbylined Telegraph report says two comments in particular didn't go over too well.

Alliss, 84, had already sent social media alight on Sunday night with his comment about young Irish amateur Paul Dunne being hugged by his mother as he came off the course with a share of the third-round lead.

"Ah, that must be mum," said Alliss. "Perhaps he likes older women. I don't know but I hope I got the right one."

And this when Zach Johnson's wife Kim was shown congratulating her husband.

As the camera focused on her, Alliss mused about how the couple would spend the prize money: "She is probably thinking - 'if this goes in I get a new kitchen'," commented Alliss.

The BBC has one more Open to televise in 2016 before handing the rights to Sky Sports.

Putting Ultimately Ends Spieth's Grand Slam Quest

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The AP's Tim Dahlberg considers the Grand Slam quest and suggests the putt which will ultimately haunt Jordan Spieth came at the 17th green.

He writes:

The Road Hole was playing so long into the rain and wind that Spieth couldn’t reach the green in two. No matter, because he plopped his pitch just eight feet from the hole.

“If I stood on 17th tee box and you told me I had that putt for par on the hole,” Spieth said later, “I would have certainly taken it.”

Almost shockingly, he missed it right. The best putter in the game didn’t make the one that mattered the most.

Ryan Lavner at GolfChannel.com points out the statistical and ironic notion of Spieth, the world's best putter, costing himself a shot not with loose ball striking, but with his blade.

Because after blowing away the field at Augusta and then watching Dustin Johnson crumble on the 72nd green at Chambers Bay, this time it was Spieth who cracked on the biggest stage.

The greatest irony? His magical short game – his greatest strength – was the part that let him down the most in his quest for a third major in a row.

Ranked first on Tour in three-putt avoidance, Spieth’s speed control was off all week, leading to a career-worst 37 putts in Round 2, including five three-putts, and a four-putt on the eighth green Monday.

Spieth's post round comments about his trouble with speed all week led to the miss that was so uncharacteristically poor: his first putt on the par-3 8th.

Q. Take us through 8. You said you made a mental mistake there.

JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, I believe we played 8 and 17 as hard as anybody -- as hard as any group today, were those two holes. It was the hardest rain and the hardest wind at the same time of the day. We stepped on that tee box, and you'd like to maybe have a downwind hole where it doesn't really make that much of a difference, but when you look up from the ball and you're getting pelted in the face, it's a hard shot, and I just tried to sling one in there and I left it 40 yards from the pin on the green there, and it's just a no-brainer. If you make bogey, you're still in it. If you make double bogey, it's a very difficult climb, and there's absolutely no reason to hit that putt off the green. I can leave it short, I can leave if eight feet short and have a dead straight eight-footer up the hill where I'll make that the majority of the time. My speed control was really what cost me this week, the five three-putts the second round, and then just my speed control in general wasn't great. On that hole I had left so many of them short throughout the week, I said, I'm not leaving this one short, I'm going to get this one up there, and instead hit it off the other side of the green where it was really dead there, so that was a mental mistake on my part. Instead of being patient and just accepting eight feet from 40 yards  like I do on a 40-yard wedge shot, I instead was a little too aggressive with it when it wasn't necessary.

And this regarding taking putting from the practice green to the course and his first putt proximity talents.

JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, it wasn't 100 per cent. It wasn't the way it felt at Augusta. I just didn't feel like I was getting aligned perfectly. My stroke was good. I had really good practice. On these practice greens you're not able to get a good feel for the touch. It's tough to get pace practice because they're so small, so I didn't have much of it this week, and I kind of had to go off my feels, when typically you've got enough room -- I did plenty of work on the golf course, it's no excuse, but as far as right before the round getting a pace for that day and the conditions and how the greens are cut, it's tough. You have to kind of go with it after you have one long putt. That was the struggle for me in this tournament was what my -- I think my biggest advantage over anybody in the world is, and that's my first putt proximity, and that was -- I think on the lower half of the field this week, and it certainly cost me at least a couple shots.