The Bridgestone Update

"What were we 
talking about?"

What a great call by CBS to stick a microphone in front of Stevie Williams after his big win yesterday.  Let’s skip the subtle (like an anvil landing on Wile E. Coyote) digs at Tiger and get to the good stuff like “I’m a very confident front-runner.”  The knee jerk reaction on Twitter to this quote and the overall interview by deep thinkers like Andy Roddick (yes the tennis player) was that Stevie didn’t hit the shots so what in the hell was he talking about?  We’ll cut Roddick some slack because when your response to any and all criticism is, “oh yeah, well I’m going home to fool around with Brooklyn Decker,” you can kind of say whatever you want.  When you write something as geeky sounding as the Fantasy Golf Report, however, you don’t have that luxury, so let’s dig a little deeper and determine whether Stevie’s self-importance is justified or if he’s just an arrogant blowhard…or both.   

We need to start by accepting the premise that a good caddie helps a golfer win.  Seems simple enough.  Anyone who has played with a good caddie and a bad caddie knows the value of the difference and it’s as much about confidence as anything.  The last thing you want to hear from your caddie on the first green is “I think it breaks left.”  Stevie Williams lacks a lot of things (tact, modesty, an appreciation for the art of photography) but confidence is not one of them.  The fact that some of his confidence seeped into Tiger’s game is indisputable.  Case in point – there is no way Tiger would have had the confidence to invite a Perkins waitress back to his Escalade if Fluff was still his caddie.  That’s a 3-wood from 265 over water to a front pin.  (Unfortunately, Tiger caught it a little thin).            

"Driver again from here?
Are you sure Christophe?"

We need to also accept that Stevie Williams is one of, if not the best caddie in the world.  Prior to getting hired by Adam Scott, he worked for Ian Baker-Finch, Greg Norman, Raymond Floyd and Tiger Woods and, through yesterday by his own modest count, he has 145 wins.  (While I’m trying to make the case for Stevie’s value, it’s very hard to ignore the fact that he is claiming tournament wins as his own.  Next thing you know Wilt Chamberlain’s bodyguard will be claiming he slept with 10,000 women).  So if we accept those two things as truth, then the question is simple.  How many strokes is Stevie Williams worth compared to Christophe Angiolini?  (He was Jean Van de Velde’s caddie at the 1999 British Open.  He’s currently writing a book with Salman Rushdie and the captain of the Exxon Valdez called Can I Get a Do Over?).    

Let’s be very conservative with the answer and see where it gets us.  The winner of a golf tournament usually hits about 280 shots in four rounds.  Take out 14 shots per round for drivers off the tee and another 14 per round for tap-in putts and that leaves about 168 shots in a tournament where a caddie is likely offering some advice.  Now let’s say that out of those 168 shots, the caddie’s advice or the confidence he instills in his player that he’s hitting the right shot saves one stroke.  That’s reasonable right?  By making that assumption, all we’re saying is that a good caddie improves his player’s score for the tournament by 0.6%.  If you had a caddie next to you all day offering good advice like “you need to use a semicolon there” and “your boss just left for the day, let’s get out of here,” you’d be at least 0.6% better at your job.  Kind of like when Kramer had Stan the caddy advising him on his lawsuit against Sue Ellen Mischke.  Wait, that’s a bad example.  Let’s move on.        

"I'm Bob May. I beat Tiger in
the PGA Championship. 
Really... can you check 
the guest list again?" 

Next we need to apply our theory to the history of the Tiger-Stevie relationship (now it’s “our” theory so when it’s completely discredited, I don’t have to take all of the blame).  Tiger has won 14 majors.  He won three of them in a playoff and one by one stroke.  If “our” theory is correct, and you replace Stevie with a caddie who doesn’t make that one stroke difference, Tiger’s down to 11 and possibly 10 majors and Rocco Mediate, Chris DiMarco and Bob May are all making a lot more money at corporate outings (which leads to a serious question about the depth of the fields in some of the majors Tiger was winning, but we’ll save that for another day).  Let’s be realistic and say it only costs Tiger three majors because there’s no way he’s losing a playoff to Sergio at the ’99 PGA Championship.  As cruel as they can be, I refuse to believe that the Golf Gods would have subjected us to a preening 19 year old Sergio winning a major.                  

So through the subjective manipulation of statistics, we’ve proven that Stevie Williams was directly responsible for 3 of Tiger’s 14 majors and maybe he is as great as he thinks he is and maybe I should have stuck with the math major in college.  (Then again, when you use your notes on a take-home multi variable calculus exam, and fail it anyway, it’s clearly time to find a campus map and locate the English Department).  The potential hole in this theory is that there are other caddies out there who could have had the same positive effect on Tiger’s game.  I think we refuted at least part of that counterargument with the “Perkins Waitress in the Escalade” example.  The rest is purely subjective but the fact is that in tournaments this year where Tiger has played and Stevie has caddied for someone else, Stevie has out earned Tiger $140,000 to $58,500 so maybe he was worth more than three majors.  I know he thinks so.

The Bridgestone Preview

It's time for Top Gun week on tour as Firestone Country Club welcomes the best of the best.  Fifteen of the last seventeen tournaments played at Firestone have been won by major champions.  Tiger (Iceman) has won it seven times with Stevie Williams (Slider) on his bag.  (Considering how much Stevie looks like Slider, I can't believe that nickname never happened.  Unless someone called him that once and he beat the guy to within an inch of his life.  In fact, forget I ever mentioned it).  OK.  Let’s push the envelope on this reference and see what it can do. 

We need a Maverick.  A feel player prone to rash decisions who’s tight with his RIO (“Radar Intercept Officer” – I never knew what it meant before either).  A player we like as much for his recklessness as anything else.  The anti-Iceman.  Enter Phil Mickelson.  We’ll just have to pretend that Maverick wasn’t five feet tall and was built more like Goose.  ("Anthony, we're going to go ahead and have you keep your shirt on for the beach volleyball scene).  Let’s throw his coach Butch Harmon into the James Tolkan roll of “Stinger” and imagine his post British Open sitdown with Phil and Bones went something like this:

"Damn you Mickelson!"

Harmon:  “Son, your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash.  You have a history of errant tee shots that cost you at least five majors and definitely one U.S. Open!”

Bones:  “Winged Foot?”

Harmon:  “And you asshole, you’re lucky to be here!”

Bones:  “Thank you sir.

Harmon:  “And let’s not B.S. Mickelson.  Your course management ain’t the best on tour.  You need to be hitting it straighter than the other guy.  Now what is it with you?”

Mickelson:  “Just want to represent my country, be the best player on tour, sir.”

Harmon:  “Don’t screw around with me Mickelson.  You’re a hell of an instinctive player.  Maybe too good.  I’d like to snap your driver but I can’t.  I got another problem here.  I gotta get you two ready to play the best.  You two characters are going to Firestone.” 

"Hey. That shot went
right in the hole. Neat."

After reaching to make that reference work (sort of), Phil has to be the pick this week.  He does have some other things going for him:  (1) he didn’t make the PGATOUR.com Power Rankings; (2)  no one is talking about him and Phil gets motivated when he's not the center of attention; and (3) I’m pretty sure he’s been gearing-up his game for the PGA Championship at Atlanta Athletic Club next week where David Toms stole one from him in 2001 by making a  hole in one in the third round (here it is if you didn't see it .- DT's Ace.   Remember how Vern Lundquist’s great call of Tiger’s chip-in on 16 at Augusta added to the excitement?  Bobby Clampett goes the other way here and decides to downplay a hole in one for the lead at a major by calling it like it's a two foot putt for par in the first round.  I was wondering why you never hear him anymore.  By the way, if you think you don’t miss watching Tiger.... The Masters Chip).      


I'm tempted to pick Tiger this week because he owns Firestone with seven wins there against top flight competition.  His game has not been that far off since his stay at the Pine Grove clinic.  He's finished tied for 4th at the Masters twice and at last year's U.S. Open.  He's currently 135th in FedEx Cup points and I wouldn't be surprised if he makes a serious run at the Tour Championship but I don't think it's going to start with a win this week.  Too many uncertainties like, if a photographer takes a picture during his backswing, is Bryon Bell going to throw the camera into a lake like Slider would have?  I'm sure Bell is a swell fellow but he looks like an accountant.  Slider was part of the intimidation factor.  I don't think Bell is going to have the same effect unless he does it in a creepy Crispin Glover kind of way.    

"Do you want me to put
sugar in that guy's
gas tank tonight?"

I should pick Rory McIlroy because the weather forecast in Akron this week is for temperatures in the 80's and not much threat of rain or wind so Rory should be in his comfort zone.  I like Rory but he better choose his words carefully for the next few months because right now his post British Open quote, "I'd rather play when it’s 80 degrees and sunny and not much wind" is hanging out there like a piñata.  Golfers only get a reputation for toughness by (a) making clutch shots under pressure, (b) playing hurt, and (c) winning in bad weather.  Rory has three wins, all in benign weather conditions.  He won at Quail Hollow by 4, the U.S. Open by 8 and at the 2009 Dubai Desert Classic where he bogeyed 3 of his last 4 holes and held on to win by one.  Not exactly Charl Schwartzel making four birdies to close out the Masters.  Remember, we all liked Sergio Garcia when he was young and precocious, before he started telling us what he actually thought.
     
At the end of Top Gun, after Maverick roared into the fray and saved Iceman's ass, they're back on the flight deck and they have this exchange:

Iceman: "You can be my wingman anytime."

Maverick:  "Bulls--t.  You can be mine." 

Which leads us to our final reason to pick Phil this week.  He loves to steal the spotlight from Tiger like he did at the 2010 Masters.  My favorite thing about Phil is that he's never been intimidated by Tiger and has always been motivated to beat him.  And if that's not enough, he and Bones got these parting words of encouragement from Harmon, "...and if you screw up just this much, you'll be flying a cargo plane full of rubber dogsh-t out of Hong Kong!"  (I know that doesn't make any sense but I love that line).            

P.S. - my pick for the Reno-Tahoe Open is Bryce Molder but I'd love to see a grizzled tour grinder like Paul Stankowski or Bob May win it.                 

The Greenbrier Update

It's not easy to make a three-way playoff boring but if you want to try, here is the recipe: (1) start by including Bob Estes who is to a golf tournament what tryptophan is to Thanksgiving dinner; (2) add bland nice guy Bill Haas; (3) throw-in a relatively unknown rookie who had missed 12 of 20 cuts coming into the tournament; and (4) hold the playoff on a very short par 3 with no bunkers or water in sight.  They might as well have made it a closest to the pin contest.  I get that you want the playoff to end in front of the crowd but you have to make the winner earn it by doing more than hitting a 9-iron and a six foot putt.  If only they had a good playoff hole nearby that could have created some drama, maybe a reachable par 5 with water in play off the tee....hmmm....like the 17th hole?!? 

"The sun was in my eyes!"

The decision to use 18 for the playoff had to be related to the fact that this the whole tournament was one long ad for the Greenbrier - kind of like the AT&T Pro-Am but, instead of gratuitous promotions for unwatchable CBS shows, they just kept shooting the resort from every conceivable angle and had Jim Nantz fawn all over it.  You know it's a serious event when they close the Saturday coverage by showing Sergio Garcia playing mixed doubles - "hey we've got Sergio playing tennis on camera 12, the Greenbrier people will love that."  So we saw Sergio's partner hit five shots in a row before a ball came to him. Fortunately, he promptly hit it into the net, jumped in the air, did a scissor kick and spit on his racket.  We're clearly due for another major. 

What they needed was a camera on Spencer Levin on Sunday as he was hacking it around to a 77.  That should be the Golf Channel's next show.  "Back of the Pack" where they follow hotheads while they're either blowing-up on Sunday or just playing out the string of a tournament that they threw away on Saturday.  My order of viewing preference yesterday would have been:  (1) watching Spencer Levin sulking and seething his way to a 77, (2) watching Brendon De Jonge eat the hamburger from the Jeremiah Weed commercial, and (3) watching Bob Estes shoot 64.           

"I won the real U.S. Open. 
How do you like them apples?"

My crack at Jim Nantz notwithstanding, he confirmed again yesterday that he is the best in the business as we had the rare opportunity to hear him side-by-side with Dan Hicks who was doing the U.S. Senior Open and droning on and on about what an interesting guy Olin Browne is because he reads Malcom Gladwell.  He then he qualified it by saying, "I mean he's no Lucas Glover."  Is Lucas Glover some kind of genius?  (That would explain the Unibomber beard).  When he bumps into Olin Browne does it go down like this, "you got that from Gladwell.  Outliers, page 72, right?  Yeah, I read that too.  You gonna' plagiarize the whole thing for us?  Is that your thing?  You come into a clubhouse, you read some obscure passage, and then pawn it off as your own idea to impress some announcers?"  To quote my wife after listening to Hicks for five minutes, "who is this jackass?"                        

For the second week in a row my pick came to the 18th hole with a chance to make the playoff but Gary Woodland attempted to defy the laws of physics and hit a pitching wedge from 168, made par and missed it by a stroke.  Woodland now has a win, six top 10's and three top 30's in the majors.  He has a Samuel L. Jackson type demeanor in that, when he does something good he looks like he's saying, "that's right muther---ker" and, when he screws-up, he cracks a psycho smile.  Despite all of this, he never seems to be in the conversation about the best young American players.  Maybe he needs to dress in all orange or blow a couple of majors on Sunday to get noticed.          

  

Golf Trip to the Sun

For those not familiar with Maryland’s climate, it is diverse, especially in its eastern half where the winters can bring blizzards that deliver two feet of snow and the summers regularly unleash 95+ degree days with humidity so thick that, when you go outside, you feel like you chugged a bottle of prescription cough syrup and put on a wet wool sweater.  (Meteorologists will tell you it’s due to our proximity to the Chesapeake Bay and other topographical conditions.  Personally, I think Lord Baltimore built his city on an Indian burial ground and the rest of us are paying for it in perpetuity).  You get used to it after a few years and some even justify living in it by saying how much they love the dramatic "changing of the seasons" which is like justifying prison life by saying you thrive in a "structured environment."  The oppressive July weather is just Mother Nature's way of bringing her quality stuff to the mound and we lifelong Marylanders can scratch out a few runs against her on those days.  What she brought last Friday, however, was some no-hit cheese with which we were previously unfamiliar. 

Ah the ignorant bliss of
unlimited possibilities.

Fortunately for me and 15 other unsuspecting rubes, we had committed to a two day golf trip on Thursday and Friday to Maryland's Eastern Shore.  (Think of a breezeless marshy low country with minimal tree cover).  By the time we teed off on Thursday at 2:00 p.m., the thermometer was pushing 100 but we were all riding the high that comes with the start of a 24+ hour stretch where jobs and families give way to booze and laughs.  Picture the toast on the roof at the start of The Hangover and hang on to that reference. 

My partner for Day 1 was a casualty right out of the gate as he either had a legitimate conflict, a vulnerability to heat stroke or an ounce of common sense.  As the man riding solo, I was given the cooler as my co-pilot and made good use of it on the front nine but we were so far ahead of the other groups that access was an issue so I left it on the 10^th tee and filled a plastic bag with ice and a few cold ones for the back nine.  By the 11^th tee, the ice was gone.  By the 12^th tee, the cold ones were warm and I first said to myself, “holy crap it’s hot” (the fact that I needed to drink a warm beer to tell me that is well…sad).  The forecast for Friday was worse, much worse.  But hey, how bad could it be?

That night we followed the perfect pregame regimen for a round of golf in Death Valley…if our goal was to die.  We started with a feeding frenzy at a seafood restaurant including crabs, shrimp, oysters, fried clams, French fries, Bud Light and a shot of Absinthe (defined as a recently legalized highly alcoholic beverage).  Considering the conditions forecasted for the next day, the training table was a little heavy on salt, alcohol and uncooked bottom dwelling creatures and noticeably light on things like water, vegetables, foresight and prudence. 

Irish Gatorade

After dinner, six of us splintered off and poured a few more beers and more than a few Irish Car Bombs onto the smoldering dumpster fire.  (I don’t know where the rest of the group went but, judging from appearances on Friday morning, many followed a different but similar path).  When we got back to the hotel, we decided to continue chasing the night and asked the doorman where we could go for “one more.”  He gave us directions that no one listened to and pointed in the general direction of nowhere in particular and off we went. 

At this point, it was 1:00 a.m. and we were aimlessly wandering the streets of Easton, Maryland, a sleepy historic town that had closed-down almost 2 hours ago.  After about ten minutes, the reality that this night was over was just starting to dawn on me.  At that point, two of us were relieving ourselves on the side of a building when a bright spotlight hit us from the end of the alley.  It was at that point that I first regretted wearing my May I Suggest the Sausage t-shirt. 

That's not me in the picture.
I don't wear a bracelet and
my arms are hairy.

We must have struck just the right note of contrition and lucked into an officer in no mood to do paperwork at that hour because we were sent in the direction of our hotel along with a fairly stern warning.  That was when someone got the clever idea that we should take advantage of the deserted streets and run through the town…barefoot.  So we started running through the uninhabited center of Easton like members of the Tarahumara Tribe and I have to admit it was pretty cool until we turned a corner and BAM! Turns out the town was not completely deserted…“YOU GUYS AGAIN?!?”…“uh hello officer…we were just running back to the hotel and we must have taken a wrong…”  Now I was sure we were going to jail and I was really regretting the t-shirt.  Fortunately, the officer was in a giving mood and this time we accepted his charity and closed it down.      
  

The next morning I slept through the 8:30 a.m. wake-up call and was startled by a pounding at the door (which I initially thought was the cops) and then someone yelled what I thought was “MY NAME IS INIGO MONTOYA. YOU KILLED MY FATHER. PREPARE TO DIE!” but it turned out to be the guy who my roommate had promised to drive back to pick-up his car from the night before.  Better him than me because it only took one cracked eyelid to realize that at least two of the items I had chosen to consume the night before were engaged in a hotly contested divorce somewhere in my stomach.  I’m guessing it was the third Irish Car Bomb against the raw oysters with their girlfriends the fried clams in the background egging them on.  “You gonna take that from that drunk Irish pig?!?”  Without getting graphic, my shower was interrupted a couple of times before the dispute was resolved.  As I packed to leave, I realized I had no footwear because my flip-flops were laying in an alley somewhere in town.  Nothing says “Stay Classy Easton!” like checking out of a hotel barefoot (except maybe wearing a May I Suggest the Sausage t-shirt).

When I arrived at the course in Queenstown, Maryland for Day 2, I was pretty sure a sausage egg biscuit and a Bloody Mary were all I needed to get me back on track.  That theory was quickly discarded as I gave-up on both of them about halfway through and headed for the course.  It was 10:30 a.m. and it was hotter than anything I’d ever encountered outside of a sauna - the only difference being, there is no cruel, unrelenting sun in a sauna.  The comedian Larry Miller calls the sun in these situations “God’s flashlight.”  Apparently I wasn’t getting off scot-free for pissing in the alley.    

The booze and laughs from the day before had now given way to water and silence.  I think we were afraid that talking would make us hotter.  An hour into the round and you couldn’t even drink Gatorade as it just turned your spit orange and made you feel bloated (if that’s what PMS feels like, now I get it).  I don’t think anyone ate lunch at the turn as the mere thought of food was revolting.  One guy tried to eat a peanut butter cracker and said it was like trying to swallow sand.  By the 12th hole I think I started hallucinating because I could have sworn a marshal who looked exactly like Burton Gilliam drove-up wearing a cowboy hat and said “Come on, boys! The way you're lollygaggin' around here with them drivers and them putters, you'd think it was a hundert an' twenty degrees.  Can't be more than a hundert an' fourteen.”  By the 15^th hole, I felt like I could ignite at any minute and, at that point, spontaneous combustion was looking like an attractive way out.  We didn’t so much putt out on 18 as we surrendered.         

 A Queenstown Beatdown

By the time everyone finished, we each looked like the guy on the roof at the end of The Hangover and collectively we looked like the cast of Cool Hand Luke.  We’d pass each other wandering through the clubhouse with expressions that said “what in the hell was that?”  It turns out that the temperature in Baltimore had hit a record high of 107 that day.  Mother Nature had gone Nolan Ryan on us and we could do little more than charge the mound like Robin Ventura only to end-up in a headlock taking a series of right hooks to the forehead.  Some ordeals make you feel more alive just for having survived them.  That, however, was not one of them.  Thanks for nothing Lord Baltimore.