PGA Tour: 2017 Part of the 16/17 Season, The Inauguration: Notes from the Ballwasher

First topic message reminder :

1).No silly, not the season-opener for the bloke that wanted to make Colin Montgomerie GREAT again, tweeting: "Colin . . . . so proud of you and your GREAT playing! You made winning MAJORS look easy!"

2).But the Happy New Year for 32 deserving chappies who tee it up this week on the drop-dead gorgeous Plantation Course at Kapalua in the "SBS Tournament of Champions". Unlike their compadres from the entertainment industry who mostly declined their invitation to perform in Washington DC in a few weeks, all the eligible Americans, and a few Internationals, will be on parade, the only six absentees being Garcia, McIlroy, Schwartzel, Scott, Stenson and Willett.

3).And that also means that Jason Day will return from his latest sabbatical, hopefully fit and healthy. It's probably a bit early to call him the Darren Anderton of the PGA Tour, but suffice to say the going price about Day withdrawing from a Tour event in the next two years is about even money. He'll be wearing a hat decorated with the Nike swoosh but sadly the possible wish that he might swoosh up his pace of play seems father to the thought:

4).According to Golf Channel, Day spent some of 2016 trying to speed up his game, but felt he got away from what makes him good. "If that means I have to back off five times, then I'm going to back off five times before I have to actually hit the shot."
It is somewhat depressing to note that the Tour doesn't penalise the first bad time, charges the culprit a stroke for a second bad time during a round, and dishes out a $5,000.00 fine for the second. Petty cash to most pros, and especially to Jason Day, who's surely too good a player to burden himself with questions about his dawdling rather than the clinic of great shots that he so often produces? Mike Dean would have him outathere, cooling his heels in the locker room at the merest hint of "deliberate" play.
Well worth checking veteran caddie Kip Henley's twitter account to see his take on this: @KipHenley. Spot on, I'd say.

5).With Garcia (who's a past Champion here, beating today's 50th birthday boy David Toms in a play-off), McIlroy, Stenson and Willett sitting this one out, Russell Knox is the only European entered. He'll be looking to be the first European winner here since Daniel Chopra - remember him and his hair?

6).But there's a strong field of Americans with Dustin, Bubba, Spieth, Reed, Snedeker, Walker, Ryan Moore, Justin Thomas and Dufner leading the way. Various degrees of interest in most of them, especially to see which Jordan Spieth turns up - he spreadeagled the field last year, putting superbly and beating Reed by 8 strokes. Others that I'll be interested in include Badds and Jimmy Walker.

7).David Toms was mentioned here last week as a likely debutant on the Champions Tour, though he'll surely play a few PGA Tour stops as well. Good for him, but it's curious to note that Bob Estes, almost 51, recovered from injury and carrying a 21-event "Major Medical Extension" for 2017 plans to play close to a full Tour schedule. He's earned that, but he's miserable to follow and taking the place of a youngster; nothing personal, Bob, but hope a few missed cuts send you to the Champers Tour.

8).Stories in the press about Wayne Westner's suicide in South Africa. Westner won twice on the European Tour, retiring after failing to recover from a 1998 on-course accident in Madeira. He didn't play much in the US, but there used to be a very mini mini-Tour event, the Genny Open, in NYS and a load of friends of mine, and possibly Shotrock as well, were playing at Higby Hills when Westner won. Demons have been chasing him for years, not necessarily because of drinking too much Genny, but this is a sad end for someone who won the 1996 World Cup in tandem with Ernie Els.

9).The Tour visits Honolulu next week, then the old Bob Hope event in the Californian desert, San Diego (with Phil, but possibly Tiger as well), Phoenix, Pebble Beach and Riviera before heading to Florida in late February. By that time the season will be more than 25% done.
The hottest player in late 2016 was Hideki Matsuyama; he's in this week's field and defends in a few weeks in Phoenix. He's the hottest player, is he close to being the best?

10).QUIZ! After robo's interesting piece about cuts made, one player who doesn't currently pretend to be the best has the longest streak of owgr points made. Who is he?

n.b.: The web.com season starts next week, in The Bahamas on Sunday. We'll be following that on this thread.

And we even started talking about the web.com! (Of course it helps when winds are blowing 40mph and players post scores even we are familiar with...   )

In the spirit of fairness, if anyone is going to dump on Trump, at least take the time to barrack Obama.

I'll get me coat.

Again

raycastleunited wrote:

MontysMerkin wrote:
It's a paper girl as it happens (this is the 21st century!) and yes I see her passing by on her bike every day.

Twitchy net curtains. For how many hours a day do you station yourself at your window? What happens when you need to go to the toilet?

I just go, man.

MontysMerkin wrote:

raycastleunited wrote:

MontysMerkin wrote:
It's a paper girl as it happens (this is the 21st century!) and yes I see her passing by on her bike every day.

Twitchy net curtains. For how many hours a day do you station yourself at your window? What happens when you need to go to the toilet?

I just go, man.

Fair play. Trump would pay good money to watch you (allegedly).