There is always a certain amount of formula involved in writing a weekly golf column. There”s always a preview column the week prior to golf”s four major championships as well as the biennial playing of the Ryder Cup. There are local issues to cover such as the Lake County Circuit, junior golf, and the accomplishments of area golfers.
For the past 12 years, this weekend”s column has always been a feature previewing the Pepsi Celebrity Quarterback Shootout at Buckingham Golf and Country Club.
Yet with the closing of Konocti Harbor Resort & Spa last November, the Shootout is a thing of the past. True, the Shootout had very little to do with real tournament golf, but it was a nice walk down memory lane for fans of professional football and it did have an intriguing circus-like atmosphere that made it memorable.
Next weekend the Lake County Amateur Golf Circuit hosts the inaugural Lake County Two Man Pinehurst Golf Championship, a modified alternate-shot event. The circuit has always hosted a pair of one-day junior tourneys in August, but this will mark the first time than an adult-oriented competition will be contested in mid-summer.
Unlike a true alternate-shot event, such as the format we see during the first two days of the Ryder Cup matches, a Pinehurst tournament is an alternate-shot event with strategic mulligans. The two partners hit their tee shots and then they go to the other”s ball and hit the second shot. At that point in time, they choose which ball they would like to play and finish out the hole accordingly.
While playing a par-3, the decision making is pretty obvious. For instance, Player A hits his tee shot to 30 feet while Player B lands it 10 feet from the flagstick. Player B rolls the 30-footer to tap-in range and Player A guns for the 10-footer for birdie, missing and going 4 feet past the hole. Obviously, the team will take Player A”s tee shot and Player B”s lag putt to six inches. Player A will then tap in for the par. That scenario is an easy one.
However, the strategy kicks in when trouble is brewing. Player A hits his tee shot up the middle on a par-4 while Player B drives it into the trees. Player A then punches the shot from the trees to within 60 yards of the green while Player B hits the middle-of-the-fairway shot over the green and into the back bunker. Now it”s decision time. Do you want to play the third shot from 60 yards short of the green or do you want to hit the 15-yard bunker shot from just over the green? Is Player B a good wedge player? Is Player A a good sand player? Is 15 yards from the sand easier than 60 yards from the fairway?
Sometimes it all works out perfectly and that”s how a team ends up winning. In our scenario, Player B might hit the 60-yard wedge shot to 2 feet, but he might also skull it into the bunker beyond the green and now the partners find themselves in the same sand trap predicament that they had hoped to avoid, only this time they”ve taken one more stroke. It”s what makes the Pinehurst an interesting format and it should make for a most interesting new tournament experience on the local golf scene.
There is still time to enter the Lake County Two Man Pinehurst and interested contestants should contact the Buckingham Golf and Country Club pro shop at 279-4863.
Speaking of bunkers, Martin Kaymer of Germany may find himself someday viewed as the forgotten winner of the 2010 PGA Championship in much the same way Bob Goalby is minimally remembered as the 1968 Masters champ because of the Robert de Vincenzo scorecard snafu. The 2010 PGA will always be recalled as the Justin Johnson sand trap tournament.
Watching the PGA last Sunday with my son Nick, a talented golfer who has won on the local level and gone to a handful of 36-hole USGA qualifiers, he was able to immediately question Johnson”s grounding of his club prior to making his shot on the 72nd hole. I had no knowledge of a local rule at the time, and I told him that the area must be a waste bunker, similar to what one sees when playing the second hole at Spyglass Hill.
Having been to Whistling Straits a handful of times, most recently this past July, I went to my yardage book archives and got out my guide for the Straits course. The area where Johnson”s ball sat was at the far left corner of an obvious sand bunker in the yardage book. The problem was that hundreds of people were crowded around the ball and the spectators were standing in 99 percent of the bunker, making it virtually invisible to Johnson.
It was a sad way for Johnson”s tournament to end. True, he should have been savvy enough to read the local rules regarding bunkers as should have his caddie. The caddie should have questioned the ball”s position and gotten the rules official involved from the start, but then again, that”s easy for me to say when the gist of my recent looping experience entails little more than U.S. Amateur and U.S. Senior Open qualifying. Nonetheless, I do believe that an experienced caddie like Fluff (Jim Furyk) or Bones (Phil Mickelson) would have been a whole lot more actively involved than Johnson”s caddie. It was shades of Jean Van de Velde.
The Golf Channel int-erviewed the golf course architect, Pete Dye, and he acknowledged that when he designed Whistling Straits, all of the sanded areas were fully meant to be sand bunkers. Johnson was a goner the moment his club touched the sand.
What happens to the 26-year-old Johnson from this point forward is anyone”s guess. He”s had a tough summer with the final-round blowup at Pebble and then his first-to-fifth penalty on the 72nd hole at the PGA. However, he definitely will be remembered for the dignity and class he showed at the conclusion of the tourney. He took full responsibility, didn”t point fingers, didn”t go postal and willingly talked to the assembled press. If the gods of golf are truly equitable, then his day will come and he will win a major title.
