My "5 to Watch" at the Senior Open

It's the final major of the year for the old guys, the Senior Open, and of course I can't let it go by without making an effort to pick the winner. I had Molinari in my "5 to Watch" last week, so perhaps I can do at least that well this week.



The Senior Open will be played at St. Andrews this year, which should get the blood of all the seniors pumping! We should expect another hard and fast course, with around a 15mph wind (if current conditions hold). So let's get to it and make some picks.

• Everybody has Bernhard Langer, the defending champion, as the favorite this week... and with good reason. Langer's 3-under finish at Carnoustie against the youngsters shows that he's in good form and ready for tough conditions. But did last week's challenge tire him too much to compete this week? I wouldn't bet on it, but it's possible.
• Although he missed the cut at Carnoustie by a shot, I like the fact that Tom Lehman has already played some competitive links golf going into this week, plus he has a win this season. Add the wider fairways at St. Andrews to the mix and you could be looking at a good chance for Lehman to pick up this major.
• Paul Broadhurst won this event back in 2016 -- at Carnoustie, ironically -- and has picked up another major this season (along with a 'regular' win), so he certainly knows how to get it done on the links. Like Langer, he's another player in good form entering this event.
• Miguel Angel Jimenez has been playing pretty well all season, and he did win the Regions Tradition earlier this year. Worldwide, he's got a lot of Top10s this season. You know he'd like to add an Open to those figures.
• And for my flier, I'm taking Brandel Chamblee. I know Brandel hasn't played competitively in a decade, but he did go through qualifying to play this event which means his game is in pretty good shape. The video footage I saw of his play in the qualifier looked solid as well, and -- as with Lehman -- I think the wider fairways at St. Andrews might give him some confidence.

I have to go with Langer, of course, simply because he has the scoring this season -- and especially last week -- to back him up. But I think Chamblee might place pretty well also. Since he doesn't have any competitive rounds under his belt, I think he may play more conservatively than the others... and that could help him play better than most expect.

The Champions Tour website says the coverage starts Thursday morning at 7am ET on GC.

Rules Bifurcation Arrives... in a Small Way

It appears that the USGA and the R&A finally decided that some form of bifurcation in The Rules of Golf was inevitable. And it was the pace of play issue that finally forced their hand.



There are four main rule changes that have been emphasized in the announcements over the last day or two. You can get the lowdown from this article at golfchannel.com, this one at golfweek.com and this one at golfdigest.com. The Golf Digest article also has a graphic showing how the new bifurcated rule will work. Here's what that graphic looks like, although the original is much easier to read:



Yes, it's the stroke-and-distance rule. Most of us hate the extra trip back to the tee when we lose a ball or simply hit it out-of-bounds. Here's how the Golfweek article summed up the change:

Balls lost or out of bounds: Alternative to stroke-and-distance penalties: A new local rule will be available in January 2019, permitting committees to allow golfers the option to drop the ball in the vicinity of where the ball is lost or out of bounds (including the nearest fairway area), under a two-stroke penalty. It addresses concerns raised at the club level about the negative impact on pace of play when a player is required to go back under stroke and distance. The local rule is not intended for higher levels of play, such as professional or elite competitions. (Key change: This is a new addition to support pace of play.)

There are two very interesting aspects of this change:

• It's an optional local rule that courses can use. It's not required, but it's now available as a sanctioned part of the Rules.
• Most importantly, this optional rule is NOT available to competitions involving professions or "elite amateurs."

That, my friends, is bifurcation. The Rules of Golf will now recognize a rule that affects top-level competitions but not regular amateurs. And it's a rule that will be instituted in order to speed up play.

I'm perfectly fine with this change. Let's face it, most amateurs don't obey the stroke-and-distance rule anyway! This will, as most would argue, simply bring the rule into line with the way most players already play.

But -- and this is just an observation -- I expect this change to have some unexpected side effects. After all, most handicaps are determined by casual rounds, not by official rounds in a tournament. The two-stroke penalty assumes that a player would go back to the tee and hit his or her tee ball somewhere near the spot where they take a drop... but we all know that doesn't always happen.

The handicaps determined through those casual rounds could end up being used by some amateurs when they play in various levels of tournament play. Will it be a large number? Probably not, although this local rule does open the door for some "creative handicapping" if players so choose, and they could argue that they did it legally. (Those handicaps would be better than the player actually deserves, so they might get into a tournament they would not otherwise qualify for.) I don't expect that to be a big problem, as most players tampering with their handicaps would prefer to make them worse so they could sandbag it a bit.

Again, that's just an observation and, from a practical standpoint, it probably won't amount to much. But it's the sort of problem that bifurcation brings to the table...

And I suspect the USGA and the R&A might have chosen this rule to be a test case for bifurcation. Misusing this rule would hurt a player more than help, so it seems a safe way to see how bifurcation might affect the intergrity of the game.

But make no mistake about it: The ruling bodies have given us what we wanted. For better or worse, bifurcation will now officially enter the game of golf, effective 01 January 2019.

Now we'll just have to see where it leads.

Some Thoughts on the Distance Debate

As I was watching Golf Central yesterday, I couldn't help but be surprised at some of the things that Geoff Shackelford, Jaime Diaz and Matt Adams said about the various statements that have come out from the USGA, the R&A, the PGA Tour and the PGA regarding the distance study. So I thought I'd note a few things that I believe have been forgotten in this discussion.



In case you haven't heard, the USGA and the R&A released a report Monday which they say shows an unusual jump in the distances golf balls carry on six of the seven tours that were studied. Most thought this report indicated consideration of new rules to "roll back" the golf ball. Here's a link to Golf Channel's post about that report, with a link to the report itself in it.

The first thing that surprised me was the panel's general belief that the statements from the PGA Tour and the PGA probably meant that any meaningful discussions would be stymied. Why? Because the statements made it pretty clear that the ruling bodies and the "playing bodies" had opposing views.

That makes no sense at all to me. We all know that each of the interested parties in this discussion has their own agenda. That's nothing new in any situation like this because the movers and shakers in any discussion have something at stake, and we know that they're always going to take stances to defend those stakes.

In my opinion, knowing what those stances are in advance make it easier to discuss things, not harder. If they made statements that indicated they didn't care one way or the other about the outcome, they would only be saying what they thought others wanted to hear and not what they meant. Knowing where everyone stands up front should make it easier for them to uncover the issues — the real issues — and perhaps make progress toward a solution.

Of course, it's unlikely that any real progress will be made toward a solution anytime soon. The reason? Because the only logical solution involves bifurcation of the rules, and to do that eliminates one of the things that really differentiates our sport from other sports. As it stands, amateurs and pros can compete against each other using handicaps, because handicaps take into account the things that differentiate an amateur's game from a pro's game.

You know, things like differences in driving distance.

But once you bifurcate the equipment, you eliminate even the possibility of a handicap. In fact, you eliminate the very thing which allows amateurs and pros to compete together. Because if they use different equipment, their games don't have enough in common to allow a usable comparison of their games. So the argument that bifurcation of the equipment is necessary to maintain the integrity of the game is actually a faulty one, because the ability of pros and amateurs to compete together is an integral part of our sport.

But that's only the beginning of the problems. Because the basic assumption — that rolling back the ball's distance will mitigate some of the challenges our game faces — is shortsighted.

One of the concerns is that classic courses are becoming obsolete because of the golf ball's distance. However, distance is the least of the problems. Most classic golf courses, having a smaller footprint as they do, don't have the space to handle a modern golf tournament. They weren't built to handle modern crowds, nor the parking that crowd will require, nor the rest of the infrastructure a modern event requires.

Things like grandstands, executive boxes, merchandising tents, and even sufficient trash cans and recycling receptacles to handle the waste a modern crowd creates take up far more ground space than the designers of those golf courses ever expected to need.

Rolling back the distance a modern golf ball travels will have absolutely no impact on those problems.

But can we even be so certain that rolling back the golf ball will have a major impact on the other issues that depend directly on the golf ball? By that I refer to the actual factors involved in the launching and landing of a golf ball. For the sake of this post, I'll ignore the agronomy issue, because hard and fast fairways certainly influence how far the ball travels once it lands.

Let's go back in time to 1997, Tiger's first year as a pro. That's the year the distance became something of an issue as Tiger rewrote the entire concept of the power game. This is before the introduction of the Titleist Pro V1, which debuted in October 2000. I pulled the driving distance of a few big-name pros that year from the PGA Tour's website.

• Tiger Woods, 294.8 yards (2nd)
• Phil Mickelson, 284.1 yards (5th)
• Mark Calcavecchia, 279.1 yards (14th)
• Ernie Els, 271.6 yards (52nd)
• Mark O'Meara, 261.7 yards (153rd)

The reason for choosing Tiger and Phil is obvious, but perhaps the others are not so clear. Calc was in one of his better stretches of golf, winning three times from 1995 to 1998; Els was in a dominant stretch which spanned several years, and had won his second U.S. Open that year; and O'Meara won twice that year, with his two majors to follow in 1998. (In case you're curious, the longest driver on tour that year was John Daly at 302.0 yards.)

What's interesting here is that both Mickelson and Els were noticeably taller than Tiger, while Calc and O'Meara will roughly the same height. (Daly was the only one of this crew under 6 feet in height.) The changeover from persimmon drivers was nearly complete, with Davis Love being one of the last holdouts; 1997 was the last year any significant number of players used one.

Note that Woods was significantly longer than Mickelson — and Daly significantly longer than Woods, for that matter — although the major new ball technology had not been introduced yet. All three of these players used swings which were distinctively different from most other players — Woods used a very powerful, muscular swing while Daly and Mickelson both used swings which were much longer and more flowing than the standard tour swing. While it's possible to lay some of the credit for this distance on driver technology, it's clear that strength and flexibility were a much bigger influence on their results.

Look, I'm not saying that the distance golf balls travel these days is an unimportant consideration, nor that we can ignore the challenges it poses to the future of our game. The costs involved in maintaining longer golf courses are a real cause for worry. (As an aside, I suspect that indoor golf courses using simulators may become the next great source of growth for the golf industry. They have far less overhead, it doesn't take any more time to play a long course than a short one, and they are more easily located in population centers where they might attract casual players.)

But I do think the golf ball is receiving far more than its share of blame for modern golf's problems. And I hope the industry proceeds slowly as it pursues possible solutions because, if this is mishandled, we could harm the future of our game far more than we'll help it.

The New Video Protocols

In case you missed it, on Monday the USGA and R&A finally released their new "video protocols" for dealing with -- let's be blunt here -- TV viewers calling in to report rule infractions. Here's your quick guide to what's involved.

First, here are the USGA video protocols page and the R&A video protocols page. And here is the link to the brief video clip (embedded below) from Morning Drive announcing those protocols:



Now, the short version is this:

• One or more officials will watch the broadcast to monitor possible rules violations.
• Nobody is going to take phone calls reporting said violations. (At least, that's what it sounds like.)
• The only video that will be accepted is the broadcast video. No phone or camera videos.
• And a local rule eliminating the two-stroke incorrect scorecard penalty will be enacted as a bridge to the 2019 official rule.

Sweet, simple and to the point. The language is a bit wordier than that, but that's the gist of it.

The page with the Morning Drive video also has a number of other videos related to the issue, since quite a lot of time was devoted to it. Even Thomas Pagel spent considerable time answering questions.

I see a couple of potential issues that might have to be dealt with as this protocol goes into effect in January:

• First, I suspect the monitoring officials may end up being stationed in the broadcast trucks to better monitor all of the network cameras, in an effort to catch potential problems as soon as possible. If so, there will almost certainly always be more than one official on duty. Even if you only watch a single TV showing the broadcast, you don't want anybody getting distracted for a moment and missing the very thing they're looking for!
• And second, I'm under the impression that any person physically at the event -- players, caddies or fans -- will be able to report things they see to the officials. If so, they may have to rethink the camera/phone video ban since that would provide instant feedback about the legitimacy of the report.

Having said that -- and knowing that every new protocol generally needs some tweaking -- this is a major step forward. Pagel said that their feedback from the pros had been mostly favorable and that the pros were in favor of infractions being reported and penalties enforced, even if those penalties had to be enforced in a later round. It's that extra two-stroke incorrect scorecard penalty that most of them found to be unacceptable.

For those of you who are afraid that some penalties will be missed, let me just say this... they will. Even in sports where the events happen on a relatively small playing field -- like a basketball court or a football field -- infractions are not only missed in real time but even in the replay reviews. Because we are human, there is NO WAY that all the infractions will be caught or even properly dealt with, and we'll just have to accept that. We'll just have to do our best and accept the results.

And once any little bugs have been worked out, I think everyone will be pleasantly surprised at how well it's going to work simply because our sport is unusual in that most of us want the correct ruling to be made, even if it goes against us. As Lexi Thompson tweeted regarding the new rule, "I am thankful that no one else will have to deal with an outcome such as mine in the future."

All I can say is "amen to that."

When It Starts Going Bad...

It's happened to all of us. We've got a good round going but something goes wrong. Suddenly it all goes spinning wildly out of control and all we can do is panic as the round goes to hell.

That's what happened to Dylan Perry in the finals of the British Amateur on Saturday. Although Harry Ellis played a steady back nine, Perry had roughly five chances to put Ellis away but simply couldn't do it.



Here's the deal: When they stepped onto the 34th tee, Perry was three up with three to play. I couldn't find the scorecards online but, as best I can tell, Perry went bogey-bogey-bogey in regulation, then bogey-double to lose on the 38th hole. On those same holes Ellis made five pars... and walked away with the British Amateur trophy.

I'm not going to criticize Dylan Perry. As I said, we've all been there, and Perry is just 22 years old and was trying to become only the third Australian to ever win this title. I agree with Golf Digest's article when they said "...he handled what had to have been a tough defeat with a grace beyond his tender years." As Perry said (also quoted in Golfweek's article):

“I’m pretty bummed, but at the end of the day you’ve got to take the positives out of the week. I played well all day, and down the stretch that’s what pressure does to some people. It just wasn’t meant to be, but congratulations to Harry. He played well down the stretch so good on him.”

Hopefully he'll be able to put this behind him quickly and get some more positive results under his belt. Because even though he lost, a lot of players would have been thrilled just to be runner-up in the British Amateur.

When it starts going bad, sometimes you just suck it up and remember that life goes on. That's something we all need to remember.