It has been an interesting midweek in the world of golf, all without a single shot being struck. Last Tuesday, the PGA of America announced that it would schedule the 2019 PGA Championship for the Bethpage Black Course on Long Island. A well-known public golf course designed by A.W. Tillinghast (Baltusrol, Winged Foot, San Francisco Golf), one of the godfathers of American golf course architecture. Bethpage has previously hosted the 2002 and 2009 U.S. Open. The U.S. Open will be at Pebble Beach in 2019, meaning that two of the major tourney sites that year will be contested on golf courses that are open to the public.
The PGA also announced that Bethpage will host the biennial Ryder Cup Matches in 2024. If you truly want some sort of crowd-motivating home course advantage, then obnoxious New York golf fans are the way to go. Already there is talk that New York fan favorite Phil Mickelson, who will be 54 in 2024, would be a popular choice as the American team”s captain.
On the other end of the spectrum, the world”s top golfer, Tiger Woods, continues to complain about what he contends was an unjust penalty assessed by the PGA Tour at last week”s BMW Championship held at Conway Farms outside of Chicago. Tiger was quoted as saying; “I was pretty hot because I felt like nothing happened. I felt like the ball oscillated, and that was it. I thought that was the end of story. But they saw otherwise.”
“They” who thought otherwise was Slugger White, a highly regarded rules official who is the vice president of competition for the PGA Tour. White saw the same video that millions of Americans saw on ESPN and the Golf Channel and he concluded that Tiger”s ball moved slightly as he was removing loose impediments from the ball. Because the ball moved and because Woods failed to replace it, he was assessed a pair of one-stroke penalties.
PGA Tour Entertainment filmed the rules infraction by Woods. They follow around the top players throughout the season. While top-level linksters such as Tiger, Phil, Adam Scott and Rory McIlroy end up under the unyielding eye of the camera, more so than the likes of Glenn Day or Billy Mayfair, they”re also assisted by a camera that helps them in other instances with regard to issues such as the point of entry into hazards. They also play before large galleries that sometimes keep their shots in play and even move gigantic boulders on occasion. In the end, the camera is golf”s version of instant replay.
I have viewed the Tiger incident tape dozens of times and while it is very clear that he didn”t gain any sort of advantage when the ball moved, it definitely did move. If the golf ball were planet earth, then the logo moved from Greenland to Nova Scotia on the globe. It was just a bit of movement, but it is certainly incorrect for Woods to say that the ball merely oscillated. That is simply a self-serving comment.
Of course, Tiger Woods is no stranger to rules controversies in 2013. In January at the Abu Dhabi Championships, he dropped his embedded ball from a sandy lie. He was assessed a two-stroke penalty for doing so. Had his ball been in a closely mown area, he would have been entitled to free relief, but doing so from the sand cost him two strokes and a missed cut.
In April, Woods hit a wedge shot that deflected off the flagstick at the 15th hole at the Masters, took an illegal drop from two yards farther back, and lucky was assessed a two-stroke penalty after the fact. The following week the USGA and the R&A sent out a three-page memo stating that the Masters officials erred in their ruling Woods should have been disqualified for signing an inaccurate scorecard.
Of course, while all this was going on, I was lost in a Golf Channel rerun of the 2005 Presidents Cup. It featured a last-second win by the American team due to final-hole heroics by Phil Mickelson and Chris DiMarco. The highly regarded team captains that year were Jack Nicklaus for the American side and Gary Player for the International team.
With Nicklaus and Player on the screen from 2005 and Mickelson being talked about as a team captain for 2024, a somewhat negative thought came into my head. There is no doubt that the greats of golf, including Jack and Gary alongside Arnold Palmer, Byron Nelson, Bobby Jones, Gene Sarazen, Walter Hagen and Tom Watson, have given back more to the game then they have ever gotten out of it. Each and every one of them has clearly stated that. Phil Mickelson, an engaging sort with the fans in the Arnold Palmer mode, seems to fit that mold also. They are or were fan friendly, supportive of the tournament sponsors and their issues, and committed to the game and to their home tour.
How will Tiger Woods be judged when compared to Jones, Nelson, Palmer and Nicklaus? Sure, he”s talented and gifted and he has brought a lot of positive interest to the game. If nothing much changes over the next five years, Woods will be regarded as the game”s second greatest golfer. But has he given back accordingly?
As a rookie in 1996, Tiger got a handful of sponsor”s exemptions into B-level events in Milwaukee, Las Vegas, the Quad Cities and Disney World among others. He never went back to support those tourneys in subsequent years. When Esquire”s Charles Pierce wrote an article about Tiger in 1997 based upon face-to-face interviews, Woods and his handlers attempted to destroy Pierce professionally. It turned out that Pierce”s article was dead-on accurate. Tiger has historically blown off the end-of-the-year tourney for the four major winners. His vulgarity on the golf course and his tantrum-like behavior puts professional golf in a negative light. Now the camera is wrong when Woods states, “but yesterday I didn”t feel like I did anything.” Tiger is big in the world of golf, but even he has to realize that the game doesn”t revolve around him.
It was an interesting midweek in the world of golf, prior to the Tour Championship and the Web.com finals. It was great that some of the focus was on Bethpage Black and Phil Mickelson. Too bad we also had to put up with the petulance of the world”s No. 1 golfer. After all, the game is far bigger than its biggest star.
