The Golfer's Wife

The PGA Championship

This weekend is the PGA Championship. This is the 4th, and last, major on the PGA tour. Which is not in any way responsible for the PGA Championship.

Let’s review shall we? 

1st major – The Masters. Run ( absolutely controlled ) by Augusta National.
2nd major – US Open. Run by the USGA.
3rd major – The Open Championship. Run by The R&A.
4th major – The PGA Championship. Run by the PGA.

And the PGA is NOT the same as the PGA Tour. Which is a totally different organization. Professional golfers are members of the PGA. They play on the PGA Tour. The PGA Tour runs the The Players Championship. Which they are lobbying hard to have declared the 5th major. Because they feel it’s kind of silly for the organization the professionals play for not to have it’s own major.

A slight digression. What would it take for TPC to become ‘the 5th major’? To understand that we must go back to the basics. Actually the basic. TRADITION. Remember, golf is nothing if not tradition. And tradition says there are 4 majors. There is no set of criteria a tournament must meet before being declared a major. It is just a matter of over the hundreds of years tournaments have been played, these 4 have emerged as Majors. So all that the PGA Tour needs is for the players to decide that TPC can be referred to as a major. Sounds easy enough. But there is a huge road block. Tradition. Tradition says there are only 4 majors. And, repeat after me, golf is nothing if not tradition. So, as easy as it sounds, the chances of a change in the status of TPC are slim.

Here is a scenario where I could see it happening. After being off for 5 months ( or more ) Tiger decides that it’s a lot more fun to play golf with Sam than on the tour. So he announces that he is cutting way back on his tournaments and is only going to play in the 5 major tournaments: The Masters, US Open, Open Championship, PGA Championship, and TPC.
That would do it. Tiger is perhaps the one player who has the stature to establish a new tradition. But here’s the thing. Tiger is A Golfer through and through. And Golfers don’t mess with Tradition. So I’m afraid the PGA Tour will never have it’s major.

Anyway. Back to the PGA. The winner is awarded the Wanamaker trophy. Which is a huge heavy silver thing. They actually take home a copy. The PGA is played on a different course every year.  This year it is being played at Oakland Hills Country Club, which is just outside of Detroit. Oakland Hills has a long and storied history of it’s own. It has hosted many US Opens and 2 previous PGA Championships.

In addition to the trophy, this year players are playing for Ryder
Cup points. The Ryder Cup will be the subject of it’s own post ( or two or five ) here in just a little while. For now just know that every player out there would looovvve to be on a Ryder Cup team ( of which there are 2, US, and European ). The 8 players with the most Ryder Cup points, plus 4 ‘Captains picks’ make up a team. So finishing high enough in this championship to get a large number of Ryder Cup points is almost as important as actually winning the trophy.

The field this year consists of the usual suspects. I’m not pulling for anyone in particular to win. But I would like to see John Daly make the cut. And I would really like to see Rocco and Woody Austin finish high enough that they get enough Ryder Cup points to make the team ( Rocco is currently 12th and Woody is currently 9th in points ).

But even more important than that, at least as far as I’m concerned, is the announcing team will contain David Feherty. And we all know how I feel about Mr. Feherty.

The Golfer on The Masters

[Editors note: I had my turn. Jigger had his turn. So it's only fair after all. ]

There have been two previous perspectives on The Masters on this blog. However, they both missed the beauty of The Masters, and why it is the most important tournament to A Golfer.

It is the only major that is played at the same place every year. And that place is amazing. The layout is incredible, the dogwoods are beautiful, and every player in the field is truly playing to win.

Why do they want to win here, more than any place else? Because Arnie won it. And Jack won it. And Sam won it, and Hogan won it, and Sarazen, and Nelson, and Watson, and Player, and Faldo, and of course Tiger. The only people missing from any Golfer's top 10 list of the greatest golfers of all time are Harry Vardon ( who was retired long before Augusta ), and Bobby Jones ( who created the tournament ).

In other words, if you want to be considered among the true greats, you have to win The Masters.

Before The Masters it is still winter. After the winner is given the Green Jacket it is Spring. The grass is impossibly green, and the thousands of flowers are all blooming at the exact same time. Every year. Some people look for crocuses and robins, others look to Opening Day.

A Golfer looks to The Masters.

The first time I watched the tournament I was 9. My grandparents had gotten me a junior set of clubs and I had just started playing with my parents. I saw Jack win his 4th Green Jacket in 1972. I haven't missed it since. Every summer when I visited my grandparents, Granddad and I would talk about that year's tournament. They were patrons for 20 years.

I watched Jack leave Bear Tracks in 1975 on the 16th hole. I hated Watson when he beat Jack in 1977. I watched Seve bring the course to it's knees. I have never yelled as loud as when Jack rolled in that putt on 15 in 1986. I cried with Crenshaw when he won in 1995 for his mentor and friend Harvey Pennick. I never felt more sympathy for a person than when Faldo put his arms around Norman after his collapse in 1996. And the next year Tiger won his first. And hit that amazing chip in on 16 to seal the deal for his last.

When you have all that history and emotion, coupled with the greatest players in the world, on the most beautiful course in the world, you have the greatest event in all of sports.

Grass 101

[Editors note: The Golfer may be out of town, but these days being out of town hardly means being out of touch. He read Jiggers ran..uh post. And he offers this response( I will get back to doing my own posts eventually)]:

Apparently there are those in The Household who feel golf commentators are obsessed with grass. While I do think they could spend a little less time talking about grass( insert your own 'watching golf is like watching the grass grow' joke here), the grass is important. In the interest of furthering your golf education , here are some basics about grass.

There are 3 basic areas on each hole, the tee, the fairway and the green. The tee is where you hit the ball for the first time on the hole. The grass on the tee has to be pretty hardy. it is cut pretty short and people walk on it and hit balls off it all day long. The individual tees usually aren't very big, so a lot of walking is done on just a few square yards of grass. The fairway is the area between the tee and the green. The grass on the fairway has things a bit easier. Carts drive on it and people walk on it, but not always in the same place. And it is not cut nearly as short. The cut on the fairway is about the same as a typical lawn just after mowing. On the sides of the fairway the grass is allowed to grow long. This long grass is called The Rough. Depending on the course design there can be different 'cut's' of rough, from almost the same as the fairway, all the way to letting the grass grow naturally and not mowing it. Most courses have at least what are referred to as the first and second cuts of rough. This means for a certain number of feet off the fairway the grass will be cut a little longer. Beyond that the grass will be kept even longer still. And there can be other 'cuts of the rough' after that. The green is where the hole is. The grass on the greens needs to be able to take being cut VERY short, like 1/2 an inch or so, and being walked on all day.

Which grasses are used on a golf course depends on where the golf course is and the characteristics of the grass. Some grasses to better where it's warm and dry - Southern California or Arizona. Some only grow well where its warm and humid - Florida and other southern states. Some does better up in New England and the northeast. And all grass has a dormant period. Even if the weather is warm all year around the grass will go dormant for a period. It may even still look green, but it will be less resilient and more straw like. Courses use at least 2 different grasses, one for tee and fairways, and one for greens. Most courses use more than 2, and come courses seed the greens and fairways with 2 or more different grasses, so when one is dormant the other is growing strong. So at Torrey Pines( the course that was being played this weekend when Jigger heard all the grass talk ), the rough is Kikuya( which is dormant right now ) overseeded with Rye( which is nice and green ). Most expensive courses with dormant winter grass overseed with Rye to make everything green.

Different grasses play differently. Zozia is an easy fairway grass because it's strong and the ball will set up nicely. However it's a grass that only grows well in certain parts of the south. Bermuda is a warm weather grass that is nasty as part of a rough. It's not a strong grass so the ball sinks down, and it can be brutal trying to chop it out. Some grasses are more slippery, and some tend to grab the ball. The grass that Jigger hear the commentators refer to as 'cauliflower like' is Poanna. It is used on a lot of greens. It is hardy and can be cut very short. Poanna is an annual blooming grass that, when in season, forms a seed head. Once the seed head forms, it will affect a rolling ball. Greens with seed heads can be bumpy.

And as for 'watching the grass grow'. Well. For tournaments the greens are cut first thing every morning. This ensures a nice even cut all across the green. Then you have 10 to 12 hours of sun shine while the tournament plays. The grass grows. And it grows unevenly. So the players later in the day don't have quite the nice even surface the morning players do. Remember, on the green the grass is cut very short, so even a little bit of growth can matter. For 99% of players Jigger is right. That tiny bit of growth doesn't matter at all. But if you are trying to make a putt that will get you 2nd place and another $100,000, the fact that the grass grew is something you probably want to take into account.

So to sum up, the grass does matter. Before hitting every shot those tour players take into account what kind of grass their ball is in. How thick is it? How tall is it? Does this grass grab balls or let them go? 'It's all green' is fine for Jigger to roll in, and occasionally munch on. But when you are playing for big money, grass matters.

As for 'shaving'. The issue there is how the USGA will set the course up for the US Open, which will be played there ( Torrey Pines ) this June. The grass conditions will be different that time of year. If you are really interested here is an article that explains things.

The Mystery of The Handicap, and Introducing....

In the previous post we discussed scoring. But no discussion of scoring would be complete without talking about The Handicap. So in this installment of Understanding The Game I will tackle The Handicap. Well, actually I won't. I have picked up a lot of things living with The Golfer, and one of those things is how important The Handicap is to the game. But I haven't managed to actually pick up on the details, as it were. This is what I know. The lower your handicap is the better golfer you are. After I play a round I enter my score and the slope and course rating into the GHIN and it spits out my current handicap. And that pretty much covers it. So, to explain The Handicap I turned to an expert. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you The Golfer........

The Wife asked me to write an answer to the question 'What is a handicap?'

There is the simple answer and the complicated answer. The simple answer is the handicap is what makes Golf the perfect game. Anyone can compete against anyone else and have a realistic chance of winning.

For example, The Golfing Family occasionally goes out for a round of golf. Generally, Golfing Offspring #3 (GO3) and I play against Golfing Offspring #2 (GO2) and The Wife. We play for milkshakes. Because you MUST play for something. The level of skill is somewhat lopsided, GO3 and I together being somewhat higher than GO2 and The Wife (because of me, mostly). However we still end up buying the milkshakes about half the time. Why? Because of the handicaps. At the end of the round each player's handicap is subtracted from their gross score to give their net score. Lowest net score wins.

For a simple example lets say two people play a round. Player 1 has a handicap of 10 and Player 2 has a handicap of 25. Little bit of difference in skill level (the lower your handicap the better player you are). Player 1 scores an 82. Player 2 scores a 95. Player 1 subtracts his 10 handicap from 82 and his net score is 72. Pretty good. Player 2 subtracts 25 from 95 and his score is 70. Player 1 is buying the milkshakes. And that is why the handicap system makes Golf the perfect game.

The complicated answer is that there is a complicated formula that takes several things into account and produces a number that is a handicap.

Each course has several sets of tees. Traditionally there have been 3 sets, blue( farthest away from the green. The Back Tee.), white ( middle distance ) and red (closest to the green. The Forward Tees). Recently courses have been adding gold, or champion, tees, which are farther back than the blue tees, and green, or super forward, tees, which are closer to the green than the red tees. Even more recently courses have begun naming the tees with names other than colors. There can be hundreds of yards of distance between the most back and most forward tees. The farther the tees from the green, the better the player you have to be to play from those tees. Each set of tees has both a Course Rating and a Slope. If you look at a scorecard for a given golf course it will show the rating and slope for each set of tees. The slope and course rating go into the calculation of your handicap.

Golfers in the US keep track of their handicap using GHIN - Golf Handicap Information Network. Most courses have a computer linked to the GHIN. When you finish a round you enter your score and the rating and slop for the tees you played from, into GHIN and it re-calculates your handicap for you. You can look up your current handicap before you play a round.

You must enter 5 scores before you can get a handicap, although your first handicap will only be based on the best score of those 5. After that each time you post a score your handicap is recalculated. When you have entered 20 or more scores ( those of us who have played for years have entered thousands of scores ) your handicap is calculated on the best 10 scores of your last 20.

If you have a handicap of 0 you are considered a 'scratch' golfer. Professional golfers carry no handicap.

As for the actual calculation. Here it is in a nutshell. If you really want all the detail look here or here.

Let's say I shoot a 79 at a course with a rating of 70 and a slope of 130 on the blue tees. To start subtract the rating from the score:

79 - 70 = 9 to get what's called the differential

Then you apply the slope adjustment. Multiply the differential by 113 ( the slope of an average golf course ), then divide that by the slope of the course I played.

(9*113)/130 = 7.823 which is called the adjusted differential.

Of course, you must account for equitable stroke control which says that for a given handicap range you have a maximum number of strokes you can take on any one hole. So, because my handicap is under 9 I am only allowed to take a maximum of a double bogey on any hole.

Take the best 10 adjusted differentials of my last 20 scores, add them up and divide by 10. Then we take 96% of that number (why 96%? Even I can't explain that. But it's the rule. ). That is my index. Each time I play my index is used to determine the handicap I play with on that particular course.

Let's say my index is 3.3, and I'm playing a course with a 132 slope. My handicap that day is:

3.3 * 132/ 113 = 3.85, and with the magic of rounding, I will be playing with a handicap of 4 that day.

(Editor's comment: While The Golfer would love to have a 4, he currently carries a 7.6 handicap )