Now, in the aftermath of his well-chronicled fall from grace, Woods can’t seem to hold himself together in the final round anymore, plagued as much by a balky putter as by his refurbished, inconsistent swing.   That he should founder at Pebble Beach, where he put together the greatest collection of rounds ever in a major championship (winning the 2000 US Open by fifteen shots with rounds of 65-69-71-67=272), made his collapse this year almost poignant.  It was like watching a great boxer who stayed in the game too long getting pummeled against the ropes.

At the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on Sunday, not only did Tiger lurch toward the back of the pack, he faltered while his chief rival, Phil Mickelson, put together by far the day’s best round, a clutch 64 that was three shots better than anyone else in the field.   Mickelson was splendid off the tee—using a new Callaway RAZR Fit driver—and flawless with his putter, while Woods was erratic from both tees and fairways and feeble on the greens, missing the kinds of putts he famously made throughout his career.

Woods finished the day tied for fifteenth with five other players, after starting the round in sole possession of third, four shots back of leader Charlie Wi.  (Mickelson started at nine under, six shots back of Wi, but finished at seventeen under.)

What’s really amazing is how poorly Woods played in relation to the field.  Sixty-eight players teed off on Sunday.   The median score for all players was 71, while fifty-three players shot 73 or better.  Tiger was one of seven players shooting 75, and only four players were worse than that—a pair of 76s, one round of 78, and the worst score of the day, Shane Bartsch’s 79.   So while Tiger was eleven shots worse than Mickelson, he was only four shots better than the day’s worst round.   It was not an encouraging conclusion to what had been three hopeful opening rounds.

So the questions about Tiger’s future remain: can he win again?   Can he resurrect the emotional strength that made him nearly invincible?   Can he putt well enough again to bail him out of trouble when his iron play and tee shots let him down?

Tiger is still the most important golfer in the world.   His charisma— the aura of his achievements, the prodigious arc of his success—transcends his current wobbles.   Icarus-like, Tiger flew very close to the sun, certain nothing could harm him.   Those puddles of wax dotting the fairways at Pebble are the residue of Tiger’s failed quest for immortality.

H. J. Draper's Mourning for Icarus: An Uncanny Resemblance to Tiger?

Charlie Wi and Ken Duke were in the final pairing Sunday, playing behind Phil and Tiger.   As they waited to hit their final tee shots on 18, Wi and Duke might as well have been playing a Tuesday practice round—no one was paying them any attention, even though Wi at that point still had a slight hope of making a playoff.  Wi was in fact more Tiger-like on this day, righting himself after a horrendous four-putt on one.  His third shot at 18 almost went in, and had Phil missed his birdie putt a few minutes earlier on 18, Wi and Mickelson would have met each other for extra holes.

The entire focus of the galleries and the media was on Phil and Tiger.   As long as he is playing competively, Tiger will remain at the center of the golfing universe.  But his game is in eclipse, not matter how brave a face he puts on it.

Geoffrey Cornish. A Great Gentleman and an Influential Presence for Seventy Years in Golf Course Design

Geoff’s curiosity about the history of golf course design led to a long collaboration with Ron Whitten, the architecture editor of Golf Digest, which resulted in their 1981 encyclopedic treatise on golf architecture, “The Golf Course,” which would be updated in an edition published by HarperCollins in 1993 and re-titled “The Architects of Golf.”  About a third of the book consists of mini-bios of almost anyone who had a hand in designing a golf course in the 20^th century.    Geoff always treated everyone in the profession with great respect, in keeping with his graceful personality and generous spirit, and these profiles illuminate his magnanimous character.

With his close friend Robert Muir Graves, Geoff taught a seminar every year at the Harvard Graduate School of Design for aspiring golf course architects and land planners.   I took the course in 1988 and have the certificate hanging on the wall behind me as I write this.   (Jan Beljan, a long-time associate of Tom Fazio and one of the few prominent women in golf course design, was one of my classmates.)   Geoff and Bob did a fabulous job with the course, and summoned all of the wisdom from their many years of designing courses and teaching when they collaborated on a textbook called “Golf Course Design.”   Along with Mike Hurdzan’s “Golf Course Architecture,” it’s the classic treatment of an arcane subject.

Geoff had a professorial air, but he was also witty and tough.   He had landed on the beaches of Normandy as an officer in the Canadian Army Overseas, which he joined, as I recall, in 1939, when war first broke out in Europe.   He was then already 25 years old.    Born in Manitoba, he had started his career in golf in British Columbia, working both in agronomy and design.   His professional training was in agronomy, and he learned golf design on the job.   He revered Trent Jones, and regarded him as the fountainhead of modern design, but he also had an irreverent streak, and enjoyed remembering how difficult it was for Jones, a city boy, to learn how to move dirt behind a mule and a shaping pan when they were building courses together for Thompson.  Hard work was easy for a boy from Canada’s western plains.

Geoff was a kind of Johnny Appleseed of golf in New England, and his influence spread to the west through his colleague, Bill Robinson, who moved to Oregon in the 1970s and continued the Cornish tradition of designing solid, easy to maintain, uncomplicated golf courses that the average golfer enjoyed playing.   Another Cornish protégé, Brian Silva, has also gone on to have a distinguished career.   Geoff continued to work with Mark Mungeam in Cornish Mungeam Design, staying active well into his 90s.

During the go-go years in golf architecture of the 1990s and beyond, when Trumped up golf courses with waterfalls and ostentatious “design features” seemed to push golf into unsustainable realms, the modest approach of Geoff Cornish seemed quaint and outmoded.  But in the melt-down of the post-recession era, Geoff’s approach suddenly  seemed sensible and responsible again, just like the man.

The Laurel and Hardy of American Politics

Too Big to Fail?

Piers Morgan asked the well-known political analyst Brooke Shields if she thought an overweight person could be elected president, given our well-known obsession with slender celebrities.  (To give Shields credit, she found the question sad and perplexing.)  The whole enquiry expresses a paradox in American culture: the fatter the people get, the skinnier we expect our idols to be.   This is a corollary of the curious belief among people earning fewer than fifty thousand dollars a year that they will somehow benefit from tax breaks for the rich.

Michael Kinsley of Bloomberg Views was viciously blunt about Christie’s chances: “Christie cannot be president: He is just too fat. Maybe, if he runs for president and we get to know him, we will overlook this awkward issue because we are so impressed with the way he stands up to teachers’ unions. But we shouldn’t overlook it–unless he goes on a diet and shows he can stick to it.”

But we’ve had fat presidents, some even elected to more than one term.  Grover Cleveland, although a New York resident when he was elected to his two non-consecutive terms as president, was a New Jersey native with a build similar to Christie’s.    Both William McKinley, whose term was brief because he was assassinated, and his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, were bulky men, although Roosevelt was also famously fit.

The fattest of them all, however, was William Howard Taft—also the only president to also serve on the Supreme Court.   Taft weighed well over 300 pounds when he was in the White House.   Taft was also our first presidential golfer, playing twice a week.  Roosevelt is said to have despised Taft’s golfing hobby, even though there were rumors that TR himself had a secret golfing habit.

President Taft's Pure Putting Stroke

Portland physician Jim Puterbaugh, whose brother is the well-known teaching pro from San Diego’s Aviara Golf Academy, Kip Puterbaugh, recently published an article about the health benefits of walking 18 holes, especially if you carry your clubs.  (He also denounces golf carts as health hazards.)   According to Puterbaugh’s research, as reported in Golf, Inc., if Christie were to walk two rounds a week, he would “easily meet the exercise recommended by the cardiovascular model.”

It Breaks to the Left

We have a slender president now, of course, who is also a golfer, although like Roosevelt, President Obama has tended to play his rounds under the radar.   His famously public golf summit with House Speaker John Boehner, VP Joe Biden and Ohio governor John Kasich during the battle over the debt ceiling had the political impact of a Justin Bieber concert, but at least it put golf on the front page for a day.

So maybe in his well-known spirit of political reconciliation and compromise, Obama should offer to introduce Christie to golf and get him walking on the links, a bipartisan approach to solving one small healthcare problem.   They might look like the second coming of Laurel and Hardy, but Obama and Christie together might also inspire a healthier approach to political dialogue.

Now, the reigning US Open champion owns a practice complex to rival Harrington’s.   And the link between these two great Irish golfers and their practice facilities is a Dublin company called Turfgrass Consultancy, which built and maintains these state-of-the-art practice grounds.

John Clarkin and Rory McIlroy on the Practice Ground That Helped Conquer Congressional

Harrington’s practice area was finished about eight years ago, though it’s been remodeled and added to since.   Harrington had a green built in imitation of the 13^th at Carnoustie, with a severe slope running off the back.  “The harder the shot, the happier Padraig is,” says John Clarkin, founder of Turfgrass Consultancy (“TC”) and the first Irish graduate of Penn State University’s Turfgrass Management Program.   Perhaps Harrington had a premonition, or perhaps playing thousands of shots around that practice green gave him a psychological edge, but whatever the reason it’s perhaps not surprising that Harrington’s breakthrough major championship came in the 2007 Open—at Carnoustie.

The main green at Harrington’s is used only for chipping and putting.  No full shot carrying the vicious spin imparted by a top professional’s swing ever gouges a lesion onto Harrington’s green.   It’s kept smooth and flawless, and can be maintained at Stimp speeds up to 14.  “When Padraig does hit a shot toward that green,” Clarkin notes, “he always lands it on the fringe.  Always.”

A fairway for practice with longer clubs complements the short game area.  Harrington can hone in his distance at precisely calibrated targets.  A teeing ground built at an angle across the edge of his house allows him to pound drives into an adjacent field.  Harrington has never nicked the house, Clarkin says, although a mortal golfer surely would.

McIlroy moved into his new house in August of 2009 and commissioned Turfgrass Consultancy to commence construction of his practice grounds in March of 2010.  They were ready for use by the time Rory returned from this year’s first major at Augusta National.   McIlroy already had a design in hand of his own making, Clarkin says, but Turfgrass Consultancy suggested additional features to Rory’s liking.  “The links bunker was added,” said Clarkin, referring to the deep bunker Rory can be seen hitting bunker shots from on a BBC report filmed there in June.  McIlroy wanted as tough a practice test as any championship golf can provide, which would have to include the pot bunker from the 17th at St. Andrews.   “While the Road Hole bunker is about six feet deep, that bunker is seven feet and you can’t really see where the ball ends up.  Rory would need his dad stand on the green and report to him back down in the bunker on where his shots were landing,” Clarkin joked.

Rory's Road Hole and Practice Pitch

Rory asked TC to build three “holes”: one provides a downhill shot from 170 yards; a second is a 120 yard shot from a flat lie; and the last 110 yards from an uphill lie.  The target greens for these holes are in addition to the main practice green, which was designed to allow TC to replicate conditions on championship courses from all around the world.  The grass on the green surfaces is a mix of creeping bentgrasses and poa annua reptans, a cultivar cousin of the poa annua annual bluegrass that is variously treated as a pesky weed or accepted with a sigh by greenkeepers in cool climates everywhere as part of the family of grasses growing on their greens. This is the same grass that can be found on the greens at Pebble Beach.

The collars and approaches on two of the greens are fescue, while the others have a mix of creeping bentgrass and ryegrass, enabling TC to prepare a practice ground “for every turf type imaginable—excepting Bermuda, of course.”

TC built Rory’s greens according to USGA specs and installed SubAir systems to make sure the greens remain dry and firm, given that  it does rain a bit in Northern Ireland. “The main green is about 650 square meters,” Clarkin says, which is an average green size on a tournament course.  “The other three greens range from 250 to 300 square meters.”

Greens can be fast without necessarily being firm, Clarkin says.   McIlroy wanted to practice on greens with the firmness of Augusta National’s famously taut putting surfaces, where the ball lands with a distinctive ring tone that distinguishes a firm green’s sound from the gushy plop a soft green makes.

In preparation for the US Open at Congressional,  TC had Rory’s greens “close to 12” on the Stimpmeter.   “And we can go to 14 or back down to 12 or 11 pretty quickly.”

“It may have cost him hundreds of thousands of pounds,” the BBC reported, “but McIlroy admits this unique golf range has given him an extra edge and shows his commitment to Northern Ireland as a base.”

“To have a practice facility at the back of my own house is incredible,” McIlroy said.  “It was done as an investment in my future.   Since I got it built I have won my first major, so it has paid for itself already.  It is a long-term commitment to Northern Ireland, I see myself always living here.  It would be a shame to leave it, you couldn’t do it anywhere else.”

In getting ready for the Opens, McIlroy told the BBC, “I can ring up the USGA or the R&A and say, ‘what speed are the greens going to be?’  And they’re going to say, ‘we’re going to try to get them at 10.5,’ so I can say to the guys, ‘I want them at 10.5 for the next two weeks,’ and I can prepare just like I was there, really.”

The key to maintaining consistent Stimp speeds, Clarkin says, does not depend on the height of the cut, but rather on a regimen of both cutting and rolling the greens on a frequent and regular basis.  “Whether they are rolling 11 or 14, we’re mowing at the same height, but to get them really fast we’re rolling often. Topdressing and using the Subair will help to increase speed, too”

TC has two full-time staff on site at McIlroy’s practice ground, and a full complement of equipment to maintain the greens, the fairways, the collars and rough and the bunkers.  The Road Hole bunker has sand from Portrush, McIlroy told the BBC film crew.   The other bunkers, Clarkin says, have either the type of sand the USGA typically wants in the bunkers on its championship courses—a firm sand with particle sizes that resist buried lies and drains well—or the local “rabbit” sand, a finer grained type often found on Irish links courses that is incredibly firm because its small particle sizes pack easily but can make hitting heavy explosion shots risky.

Clarkin, whose grandfather was Lord Mayor of Dublin, consults on new course projects and course preparation for championships around the world.  He was an agronomic advisor to the Robert Trent Jones II design team at Chambers Bay, the publicly-owned links course in Washington State which will host the US Open in 2015.   McIlroy calls Clarkin “The Gardener,” pleased with the work of the man whose company has helped McIlroy prepare for his ascent to the summit of the golfing world.

Many American touring professional golfers live in Texas and Florida and elsewhere in the Sun Belt, where tax laws are more attractive and there is the promise of year-round outdoor living.   But fewer varieties of grass can grow in warm climates, and the so-called “warm season grasses” have different playing characteristics from the fescues and bents and ryegrasses which flourish in cooler climates.   Bermuda greens are grainy, bermuda fairway lies are spongy and the rough can grow as bristly as a wire brush.   Practicing on warm weather grasses may be putting the players who live in the southern USA at a disadvantage.   Unlike McIlroy and Harrington (and Graeme McDowell and Darren Clarke), the Americans practice on turf quite unlike the surfaces they will be competing on in championships.

Despite its northern latitude, the climate of Ireland closely resembles that of the Pacific Northwest, where similar grass types flourish.  Oregon, in fact, has long been the center of the grass seed industry in the US, and the creeping bentgrasses and fescues on thousands of golf courses started as seed in a Willamette Valley farm field.  Belfast is at 54 degrees latitude, slightly north of Edmonton, Alberta.   But the moderating effect of the ocean currents off its coast provides Ireland with a relatively mild winter season compared to inland Canadian cities on the same latitude.

On a typical winter day in Ireland (although there’s never been a typical day in Ireland), the temperature will be in the 40s, much as it is that time of year in Portland, Oregon, which is just north of the 45^th parallel.  (For those of you who are geographically challenged, the distance from the 45th parallel to the 54th is around 550 miles.)    Belfast’s average rainfall is 34 inches—again, comparable to famously rainy Portland’s 35, but much less than Miami’s 55 inches or Houston’s 53.   But the mild persistent rains in Oregon and Ireland provide the green and embracing landscape that its residents love—and the perfect conditions for growing turf grass.  The players who winter in Ireland, choosing to be among their friends and family, may have a distinct advantage in preparing for the next season because they can practice on turf and greens exactly like what they will find on the championship courses in the US and Great Britain.

And the winner is....Darren Clarke

Clarke and Westwood were to wear the Dunlop logo on their shirts for no money up front, but each stood to collect a small fortune if he won a major.  Chandler and Clarke were betting on their own success, eschewing a guaranteed payment for the chance at a jackpot.

According to a July 13^th report by Charles Sale in the MailOnline, the web version of The Daily Mail, “the agreement was struck six years ago between International Sports Management boss Chubby Chandler…” and Newcastle United football team owner Mike Ashley through Sports Direct, a publicly traded online retailer founded by Ashley which owns the Slazenger and Everlast brands as well as Dunlop.

In looking ahead to the Open, Sale thought Lee Westwood, ranked world’s number two and projected as among the favorites at Royal St. George’s, was the likeliest candidate to earn Ashley’s millions.   David Howell was also eligible for the bonus for winning a major, Sale noted, but wrote that it was a “safe bet that neither Clarke nor Howell, who failed to qualify, will be enjoying Ashley’s millions.”  The bookmakers had Clarke at 125-1.

Matt Judy, EVP of Blue Giraffe Sports out of Atlanta, admires Chandler’s gambling approach to endorsement deals, but also sees the much different market reality in the States making such arrangements unlikely.  “The approach Chubby took was unique and is not a common one in the US market,” Judy says.   “Most deals done here have some type of compensation involved up front and are not totally based upon incentives.”

America may be the theoretical land of unrestrained capitalism, but when it comes to risk, European golfers seem a lot more willing to put their games on the line.  The all-exempt PGA Tour has created a market loaded with incentives to do well enough but not necessarily great.  Top 10s and even top 25s finishes consistently achieved can provide a grand income.

It’s perhaps not surprising that players such as the supremely confident Rory McIlroy—another horse in the Chandler stable—prefer not to commit themselves to the PGA TOUR full time.  They can earn appearance money overseas, but they can also leverage their wins through incentivized endorsement deals.

There are 54 players who have earned over a million dollars on the PGA Tour so far in 2011.  Twenty-six of them have won tournaments (including three two-time winners.)   That means there are twenty-eight players who have already won more than a million dollars this year  without winning an event.

“The kind of deal Chubby’s set up is legal on the US TOUR” says Judy, who is a graduate of Mercer Law School outside Atlanta, “but our market has not yet widely adopted this type of deal from the corporate or the player side.  With more examples of these type of successes, I think a hybrid of these kinds of deals will become more prevalent in certain situations.”

Payments under these “win to get paid” arrangements are usually funded through an insurance policy, Judy explained.  “It’s just like hole-in-one insurance” he said.   The cost of the insurance policy would be roughly the same for a company as the annual endorsement payment to a player of Clarke’s stature.    It’s not clear, however,  how Dunlop has funded its payment to Clarke.

If the payment had been provided through an insurance policy, somebody—probably through Lloyd’s of London—figured out the odds for Clarke winning a major and wrote a policy to cover that unlikely event.  (I would love to meet the actuary whose job it is to handicap players in major championships.  Meeting with the oddsmakers at the betting parlors would surely be a part of the research required.)

Dunlop was not really much at risk for the €2M, even if it has to cough up to Clarke.   Dunlop’s logo is featured in every interview and photo of Clarke, who is immensely popular already and will now be even more in demand.  Dunlop is getting its money’s worth.

Chandler’s players currently hold three major championship trophies:  The Masters (Charl Schwartzel), the US Open (McIlroy) and Clarke’s Claret Jug.   His influence as an agent and International Sports Management’s (ISM) stable will surely grow.   But unless there is a shift in sensibility, Chandler’s clever strategies for leveraging his players’ successes may never play well among American professionals.

The Swinger

The roman à clef is a kind of literary push poll.  Joe Klein’s Primary Colors was a roman à clef, skewering an imaginary Bill Clinton on the campaign trail, while Robert Harris’ The Ghost, the basis for the film “The Ghostwriter,” was the literary evisceration of a fictional British Prime Minister addicted to deceit which was clearly based on Tony Blair.

If you don’t want to know what happens in the The Swinger, stop reading now.  I don’t know how to review this book without giving away the plot.

OK

We have in The Swinger a coded version of Tiger Woods’ life post-scandal, courtesy of two of Sports Illustrated’s finest golf writers, Michael Bamberger and Alan Shipnuck.   Naming the main character  “Herbert X. ‘Tree’ Tremont” signals to readers that their imaginations will not be taxed by trying to break The Swinger’s code. Tree is a mixed-race golfing prodigy with multiple majors won, an income north of one hundred million a year, and a gorgeous Italian wife named Belinda.  He has a taciturn caddy from overseas (a Scot, not a Kiwi), an arrogant lawyer as an agent, and sponsorship by an apparel company with an eccentrically exuberant boss.

We’re left to guess what the “X” stands for, but on my scorecard, an X means surrender.   No echoes of Malcolm X and his repudiation of slave names sound in the deliberately race-neutral sagas of either Tiger Woods or Tree Tremont, but a hint of Mandingo lurks in The Swinger’s description of Tree.

“Even from two hundred yards away, Tree Tremont was an unmistakable figure.  He was built like a martini glass, with powerful shoulders and a chest tapering to a thirty-inch waist, all of it accentuated by his tight European-cut clothing that Belinda hand-picked for him, as Tree liked to remind reporters…Tree’s stride radiated athleticism, confidence, superiority.   There was something virile about his presence, certainly for women but for men, too.”

The narrator gushing thus about Tree is Joshua Dutra, a Florida-based sportswriter.   The conceit of the novel is that Dutra gets hired by the Tremont brain trust to help guide Tree through the aftermath of a tabloid’s discovery that he is not the upstanding family man his PR machine has claimed, but rather a sex-addicted narcissist who lies to his wife as readily as he intimidates his rivals.

There is a Phil Mickelson character in The Swinger called “Will Martinsen.”   He is, no surprise, Tree’s biggest rival.    “Big Herb”—Herbert X. Tremont, Senior—stands in for Earl Woods.  Some golfers appear in the novel under their real names, echoing a favorite technique in the fiction of E. L. Doctorow— Zach Johnson, Jack Nicklaus, Corey Pavin and Luke Donald are among the famous players making cameo appearances as themselves.   This pumps up the verisimilitude while providing a virtuous counterpoint to Tree’s scandalous conduct.

The sportswriter/narrator’s first person account provides an insider’s view of Tree’s self-inflicted wounds and self-destructive fall.   Dutra even accompanies Tree to his stint in rehab for sex-addiction therapy.    Tree is also hooked on a variety of pain-killers and performance enhancers.   He is not a sympathetic guy, with his yachts and his sycophants and his lies.

Then something curious happens.  Tree and Dutra’s business relationship somehow segues into something resembling friendship, and Tree’s rehab succeeds.   His therapist is drawn with sympathy and grace, and an Oprah episode breaks out on a Jerry Springer stage.   The vinegar turns to syrup, and the narrative abandons anger and parody for the sweet prospect of redemption.

The Swinger is fun to read, even after it takes its earnest turn and stops dishing dirt.    As with all successful romans à clef, it keeps the reader on his toes, looking for plausible clues about what Bamberger and Shipnuck must really know that lies hidden behind the burlesque.    If pro golfers were readers, The Swinger would surely find a receptive audience among them.

But  as much as I enjoyed The Swinger, I found this counter-version of Tiger’s life—and especially one that ends with the Tree character turning into a nice guy, a kind of St Augustine of the links—as incomprehensible as the true story of Tiger Woods’ fall from grace.

JS

Michael Bamberger and Alan Shipnuck, The Swinger.  Simon and Shuster, July, 2011.  254 pp, $25.00.

As I wrote on Friday and Saturday, McIlroy’s composure after his Masters’ disaster, his courage in facing up to the questions about his performance, his insistence that he would learn from the collapse, presaged this performance for the ages.   Not only did he shoot four rounds in the 60s on a long, strong golf course, matching Lee Trevino’s 1968 performance at Oak Hill (with rounds of 69-68-69-69,Trevino was the first player in Open history to play all four regulation rounds in the 60s, tying the scoring record of 275), McIlroy’s total of 268 broke the previous scoring record by 4 shots.  That’s Usain Bolt-level record setting, a quantum leap in a sport whose records creep forward in tiny increments.

Rory’s win was as dominating as Tiger’s Pebble romp, but equally unexpected.  Rory is 22, and his game has no weaknesses.  His swing does not explode against his joints, but goes through a graceful arc with smooth precision.  He’s here to stay.  In retrospect, the final round at Augusta will look like a fluke, the outlier in a career that is sure to accumulate more majors.

The exuberance of the performance led to some hyperbole, as when Padraig Harrington suggested that Rory might win as many majors as Jack Nicklaus, a quest only Tiger has ever seemed fitted to pursue.  When asked about Harrington’s prediction in a press conference after the third round, Rory could only shake his head and tsk, “Paddy, Paddy….”   He has the Irish instinct for repartee and a genuine kindness to sharpen and sustain it.

Golf was lucky to have someone as dynamic as Woods come on the scene almost twenty years ago, but cursed in equal measure when the game’s greatest player disgraced himself and tarnished his sport with revelations of sexual escapades and an accompanying campaign of cover-up and deceit.   Now, with Rory, the game has once again summoned a champion for the ages, but one from whom a fall from grace seems unimaginable.

Ironically, Rory’s ascendency may give Tiger room to recover and re-emerge.  The game is in good shape now, with Rory and Jason Day and the other rising stars, so Tiger can stay in his lair and lick his wounds and think about his return while the golf world’s attention is focused elsewhere.

Rory McIlroy is the real deal.  Ireland is now the world’s top producer of golf champions on a per capita basis: good on ya!

Brilliant, Calm and Unstoppable--Rory McIlroy

Sometimes the ethnic pairings were a little awkward—American Anthony Kim, whose ancestors are Korean, in a group with Korean Y. A. Yang and Japanese phenom Ryo Ishikawa, as if Japan and Korea are somehow the same, even though the historical enmity between the two countries runs deep.  They could have created an all-Kim pairing from among the four Kims qualifying for the Open, surely a surname record.    The pairings accomplished what I believe the USGA intended, stimulating excitement and  interest in a wide array of players, especially in the absence of Tiger Woods, who always attracted the largest galleries.

Paul Azinger, whose acerbic observations add a welcome element of bitters to the generally savory blend of Open commentary, crabbed aloud that these nationality-based pairings would somehow confer an advantage on the international players.   Playing with someone they know well, Zinger said, would help them relax.  He singled out the Swedes and the Italians, the latter group including not merely countrymen but the fratelli Molanari.   This was early in the first round, when players from both of those groups were scoring well—Francesco Molinari was three under after four holes, and Edfors and Stenson each three under after eight.

Professional golfers are trained to ignore outside influences, although whether or not they can succeed in doing so is an enduring challenge—perhaps the issue in championship golf.   There were many pairings of Americans, by the way, but no one saw fit to comment on that—it’s the default reality, so it seems “normal.”   Webb Simpson, Bill Hass and Jonathan Byrd, for example, played together in the first two rounds, as did Chad Campbell, Harrison Frazar and Marc Turnesa.    Did they have an advantage?

None of the pundrity seemed to think so, suggesting that the advantage of national pairings somehow is conferred only on “foreigners.  It’s highly unlikely that any of the pairings had an impact on the scoring, though perhaps someone with a richer set of statistical skills than I possess might discover a trend.   Given that 72 of the 156 players in the field at the 2011 US Open are international players, discovering any benefit in their foreignness other than skill and courage on the course seems doubtful.

What is not at issue is the extraordinary play in the first two rounds of the young Irishman, Rory McIlroy.

The USGA did not create an Irish threesome, although a group consisting of defending champ Graeme McDowell, three-time major winner Padraig Harrington, and McIlroy would have been the most brilliant on the Championship.  But the USGA stuck with its traditional approach to the champion’s pairing: McDowell in the first two rounds with USGA Amateur champ Peter Uihlein and the Open (ie, “British”) champion, Louis Oosthuizen.

Rory McIlroy, playing with Dustin Johnson, who withered as McIlroy flourished, and whose power was matched by a man who seems tiny in the big American’s presence, and Phil Mickelson, of whom much was expected but who visibly deflated when his very first tee shot, on the fearsome par 3 tenth, found the water on Thursday, quickly obliterated any evidence of an enduring effect from his final round meltdown at the Masters.  McIlroy was flawless until his 36^th hole, when he double-bogeyed after trying an aggressive shot from the rough after his first poor drive in two days, when a cautious approach would likely have yielded nothing worse than a bogey.  Still, he takes a six shot lead into the third round, set the all-time two round scoring record, and became the first player ever to reach 13 under par at a US Open.   Not bad for a 22 year old player who came to this event with the specter of his Masters’ collapse dominating all commentary and any expectations for him.  And he did it playing with foreigners.

So how would Rory do against the “teams” from Sweden, Spain and Italy?Rory shot 66-65 for a total of 131.  But if you take his best scores on each hole from the two rounds, how would it compare, for example, to the best-ball of the Swedes –Henrik Stenson, Johan Edfors, and Fredrik Jacobson?  How about against the Spaniards, Sergio Garcia, Miquel-Angel Jimenez, and Alvaro Quiros?  Or against the Molinari brothers and Matteo Manassero?  Remember, these are not the outrider qualifiers, but seasoned touring professionals.

It’s a pretty astonishing comparison, given that it is three top professionals’ balls against one player over  the course of two rounds.

The Spaniards collectively posted a best ball of 61, the worst of the three groups, although both Garcia and Quiros made the cut.  The Swedes were next, with a combined score of 60, and all three of them made it to the weekend.   (With identical 142s, Stenson and Edfors are paired in the third round—another advantage for the Swedes, Zinger?)  The Italians had the best collective score, 58, even though their average score was 73.16, compared to Rory’s average score over two rounds of 65.5.  Edoardo Molinari and Manassero are also playing on the weekend.

Rory’s “best ball” over his two rounds was 60—he birdied or eagled 9 of the 18 holes, equaling par on the rest.

So by this measure, one young Irishman is the superior of three Spaniards and the equal of three Swedes, but not quite up to a triumvirate of Italians.

What will today bring?   Rory McIlroy will stand up to the pressure this time, I am convinced, and on Sunday afternoon will take his place as a champion in the new, improved, fan-friendly and marvelously spirited, contemporary, Mike Davis-influenced version of the US Open.

Saturday Night Update:

Rory’s third round was pretty much a walk in the park.  The only drama was in the agonies of the commentators trying to find a story line that would inject some drama into the championship.  It was especially delicate talking to the other great players who at this point are so far behind McIlroy.  World number one Lee Westwood had a great round of 65 but remains 9–nine!–strokes back.  Bob Costas asked him if he still had a chance and he had to say yes, because that is what competitors say, but without uttering the graceless words “but only if Rory has another Augusta collapse.”    O.f course there is no way of knowing what Rory will feel like on Sunday.  Will the memory of the Masters intrude?  I don’t think so, in part because McIlroy handled the aftermath of his collapse so well–he didn’t shirk, he didn’t hide, he didn’t try to bully his interrogators into silence, as the world’s most recent dominant player would have.  He calmly answered questions with intelligence and poise, regaining his emotional equilibrium quickly.  The quality of his game, the skills that put him in the final group at Augusta on Sunday hadn’t abandoned him, he had simply had a bad day, which under the pressure of a major enlarged into an corrosive mess.   But he has clearly recovered, and tomorrow he will continue his march towards greatness.  By the end of the final round on Sunday, only Tiger’s peerless performance at Pebble will belong in the same discussion of the greatest major triumphs ever with Rory’s four days at Congressional.  At 22, McIlroy has the game, the temperament, and the focus to launch himself onto a path towards matching Tiger’s 14 majors.

Tim Boyle Tiptoes into the Frying Pan

Civic minded, generous and modest, Tim Boyle has always combined business acumen with civic responsibility.   I am happy to call Tim a friend.  So when I heard that he had bought a golf course, during the worst downturn in the golf business since the Great Depression, I had to ask him: “Tim—you’re a smart guy.  What in the world were you thinking?”

Tim, as I expected him to, laughed.  He originally was part of a small ownership group which acquired Gearhart after the previous owners went bust about a dozen years ago.  (The Boyles have a house nearby.)   A couple of the shareholders made unsuccessful attempts to run the restaurant side of the business, Tim said, before bailing out.  Tim recruited his friend Mike McMenamin of the McMenamins brewery, restaurant and hospitality chain, to take over, and  McMenamins continues to run the food and beverage at Gearhart.  “There’s nothing like a cold pint of Hammerhead Ale in the Pot Bunker room to top off your golfing experience,” Tim says, previewing the marketing theme for the new and improved Gearhart, coming your way soon.

Like a lot of golf course proprietors, the family which had run Gearhart Golf Links for many years went sideways when it got too ambitious.  The town of Gearhart is a prosperous seaside community, but Oregonians with money have a habit of keeping it in their pockets (or least not showing off and keeping their consumption inconspicuous), so no one in Gearhart had any interest at all in a fancy golf course designed to impress strangers.   This is not Donald Trump’s world.

After a fire burned down Gearhart’s modest clubhouse, the previous owners erected a fancy new one and spent a lot of money to renovate the course, which made the whole operation tougher and more expensive to run, which is pretty much the standard golf ownership formula for disaster.  Once a course starts losing money, it cuts costs by skimping on maintenance, which makes the course less attractive, which reduces demand, and thus the wheel of misfortune rolls on toward insolvency along the gloomy trajectory of failure.

The new improved clubhouse....where the troubles began.

“Over time,” Boyle said, “I bought some of the partners out and by last year owned about 40%.  In the fall of 2010 we decided to buy the rest.    Now it’s a family enterprise again.  My son, Joe, and my daughter, Molly, are my partners in our new family business.”

The younger Boyles are both excellent golfers, but Joe is a recent dad with limited free time, so his handicap is percolating upwards.   Molly played at the University of Washington—she’s a real stick.  Tim plays better, too, than he lets on; he’s a twelve handicap but broke 80 recently, he confessed, at Nanea Golf Club, the Big Island course in Hawaii that Oregon resident David Kidd designed for moguls Charles Schwab and George Roberts.  Boyle says Nanea is his favorite course, although another Kidd creation, Bandon Dunes, is a strong local contender.

Gearhart has a lot to recommend it, starting with its history.  It’s the oldest golf course in Oregon, and perhaps on the entire west coast.   It’s not really a links (it has tons of trees and it’s tight, two un-linkslike qualities,) but it is near the coast and its soils drain well.  Originally only three greens worth of  golf, Gearhart steadily accreted holes until it reached a full 18 sometime around WW I.    Chandler Egan, the great amateur champion who lived in Medford and during the Twenties designed Eastmoreland, Oswego Lake, Tualatin and Riverside in Boyle’s hometown (as well as laying out an extensive renovation for Waverley Country Club, where Boyle is a member), reportedly assisted in the design of the final 18 hole routing at Gearhart over the decade before his death in 1935.   Boyle said he’s going to see if there are any archives which might help establish the course’s provenance.

“We’re going to approach this in two phases,” Boyle says.  “First we want to get the course’s curb appeal restored.  We’ve already remodeled the restrooms.   We want to put the course on a solid financial footing.”

The  Boyles have hired Greenway Golf from California to put in place a plan to resurrect Gearhart, starting with improved operations.  The team is working with a well-known local consulting agronomist, Forrest Goodling, to improve turf quality.   Boyle wants Gearhart to attract players looking for a straightforward and tranquil place to play.

David Jacobsen of Portland’s well-known golfing family, himself a great amateur for many years and also a member at Waverley, is a good friend of Boyle’s and an advisor on Gearhart.   “David told me we should make Gearhart the place where you have your best round of the summer,” Tim says.

I have heard David espouse this view before, and it has always made sense to me.  The daily fee courses around Portland that are always full and crank out a maximum (if perhaps not optimal) number of rounds each year are the ones which allow medium and high handicappers to score well and not lose a lot of balls.  If a player gets really good, David says, he can head down to PGA West for some comeuppance.  But in the meanwhile, if golf hopes to attract new players and desist from discouraging its current devotees, it has to offer some opportunities for beginners and hackers to experience some success.   Boyle intends to put Jacobsen’s formula to the test.

The 18th at Gearhart Golf Links, Oregon

Phase 2 is still a bit formless, Tim says, and will depend on the pace and execution of Phase 1.  “Phase 1 is really just to make sure we’re not embarrassing ourselves.  Perhaps we’ll do some lodging somewhere down the road,” Boyle says.  “We’ll market around the history of the course.”

Given Boyle’s track record, I am sure he will achieve his goals for Gearhart, with help from Joe and Molly and the team of consultants they’ve brought aboard to assist them.  I’ve played Gearhart enough to know it can be fun and friendly and exactly the kind of golf course that can meet David Jacobsen’s low expectations.  And that’s not a slam, it’s a compliment.

You can’t build a great retail brand without having the kind of x-ray vision that can peer into the consumer’s heart.   When someone with the marketing acuity and wisdom of Tim Boyle lays down a bet on golf, no matter how modest, it’s a hopeful sign for the future of the industry.

For more on Gearhart from The A Position, see http://jeffwallach.com/golf/1378/gearhart-golf-links

Success in golf is measured on the curve—there is no absolute standard of achievement.    The best score wins in tournament golf (at least in stroke play), and scores are always a function of local conditions.  Occasionally, for example, the Open Championship is contested during a rare stretch of benign weather conditions on the Old Course at St. Andrews, which is famously toothless on a calm day. The scores then are low. But when the wind howls and the harr slides across the links the players shiver their way into scores in the high seventies and beyond.  (Over the last eight Opens played at St Andrews, the winning score ranged between -5 and -19.)

Boxing, on the other hand, is the most unmediated sport.  A boxing match explodes John Stuart Mills’ dictum on freedom’s boundary: your right to extent your arm stops at my nose.  In boxing, that constraint is abandoned, but under rules which in principle protect the fighters from permanent harm.

Golfers face a purely emotional risk when they’re competing, but that doesn’t mean the experience of faltering in a golf competition is without physical cost.  Discovering how to understand and control the adrenalin surges every players feels when championships are on the line is what finally distinguishes champion golfers from players who can hit it pure on the range but waver when it counts.  After K. J. Choi closed out The Players Championship last weekend with a solid tee shot and a two putt par in playoff with David Toms on the cruel 17^th at Sawgrass, he said “the swing I have now does not break down under pressure.”

What’s most enlightening about Dunn’s commentary on boxing is her insight into how crucial the same sort of emotional control that golf requires is to success in boxing.   It seems intuitively true that victory in boxing should arise from ferocity and rage.   Dunn says just the opposite is true.  “Good boxing requires such clear and rapid analytical thought,” Dunn writes, “that a cool head is mandatory.  Maybe the driving force is desire, what the fight folk call ‘being hungry.’  This hunger is a slippery beast with a million faces.”

Katherine Dunn Waiting for the Next Match

Because she possesses the great novelist’s genius for observing the telling detail, Dunn’s essays reveal what’s behind the appetite— the controlled fury—a boxer must bring into the ring to succeed.   She writes of “tenderness” in the gym—“a practical response,” she observes, “to wearing gloves.  Anyone with huge puffy mittens on his hands can’t blow his own nose or tie his own shoes, so those who are not gloved up help those who are.”

It’s the solitary quality of the boxer’s life in the ring which links him most closely to his brethren on the links.   Both classes of combatants depend on aides and servants to get them through their battles—“seconds” for the boxer, a caddy for the golfer.

A caddy is a kind of figurative cut-man, stanching his player’s wounds as he tries to recover from the tee shot he just blocked into the woods, or the putt drifting irretrievebly past the hole.  Golfers experience sudden death, as David Toms did on Sunday at the TPC; boxers get knocked out.

But at the end of the day, boxers and golfers are both on their own, their opportunities depending on the long hidden hours, sparing in the gym or on grinding on the range, beyond glamour or triumph.

Boxing has generated great nicknames—Sugar Ray and the Brown Bomber, Iron Mike and the Hitman.  Golfers—aside from Tiger, named in infancy, whose handle only incidentally reflects his personality—don’t have noms de guerre.    Perhaps they should:  Rory the Fury Sabbatini.  Ben the Tortoise Crane.   Paul “Glib” Goydos.

Geek Love

Katherine Dunn, One Ring Circus.  Dispatches from the World of Boxing.  Schaffer Press, Tucson, AZ.  Pb, $16.95.