Eamon Lynch

A Farewell To Els

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In golf there are moments that define a player’s career, then moments that define his character.

Ernie Els has been favored with an abundance of the former. Like the U.S. Open at Oakmont a quarter-century ago, when he emerged as champion after 92 holes, needing extra innings on top of an 18-hole playoff. Or the four-way shootout at Muirfield in ’02, when he claimed the Open Championship. There were a couple other majors, 19 victories in all on the PGA Tour, more than 70 worldwide.

Only Phil Mickelson can challenge Els for the right to be called the second greatest golfer of the last 25 years.

There were major disappointments, too. A handful of nearlys at the Masters, a few at the PGA Championship, a gutting playoff loss to Todd Hamilton at Royal Troon in the ’04 Open. That one hurt. Legends aren’t supposed to lose to guys named Todd who bunt hybrids.

But one moment stands out as the measure of Theodore Ernest Els. It came three years ago at Augusta National, when his Masters ended after about 15 minutes, on the very first hole of the tournament. He six-putted from six feet.

Six. From six feet.

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Hank Haney Is An Easy Target. What About The Next Guy?

It’s been seven years since Hank Haney rendered himself a fringe voice on the PGA Tour by writing a tell-all book about working with Tiger Woods, and that diminished stature explains the enthusiasm with which so many critics rounded on him after his racially-charged and sexist comments about women’s golf and Asian players on his radio show.

Haney is not the first man, nor even the most prominent, to stain the game with imbecilic guff about race and gender. But the eagerness with which he was publicly denounced — even Woods offered an uncharacteristically terse rebuttal — served to highlight the timorous inconsistency with which our sport tackles third-rail topics, and proved how easy it is to stand on principle against someone with no power and no defenders.

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Brooks Koepka: An Alpha Dog With Bite

Alpha dog athletes don’t rely solely upon the tools of their trade to stake out their territory. A well-timed gesture or pointed comment can be just as corrosive to the confidence of rivals as any excellence in the arena. Roger Federer was a master of it, sometimes congratulating a victorious opponent for having played the match of his life (translation: you had to play the match of your life to beat me!). Tiger Woods is golf’s greatest practitioner of psych ops, so he’s unlikely to have missed Brooks Koepka’s exquisite mastery of the dark art at Bethpage Black.

Not that pre-tournament press conference, during which he declared majors easier to win than regular PGA Tour events. No, Koepka’s alpha doggedness was on display in subtle drone strikes targeting Woods himself.

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The John Daly Show Is Getting Old

It was a glistening, 420-horsepower Cadillac Escalade that ferried John Daly to the distant 10th tee at Bethpage Black Thursday afternoon, and a mud-spattered, 3.3 horsepower electric cart that he pointed down the fairway to begin his opening round in the 101st PGA Championship. His ride, like his career, a faded carbon of what it once was.

A man who quickly swaps vehicles deep in the Long Island woods might fall under suspicion of doing something illegal, but in the case of Daly it was merely something unsporting. And unsurprising.

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Carly Booth’s Message Is A Failure of Management

The function of agents and managers is largely dictated by their clients. For some, the job is about maximizing sponsorship opportunities. For others, it’s little more than a glorified travel agent. But whatever the varying demands, every management team shares – or ought to share – one basic responsibility: protect the client, sometimes from themselves.

If they succeed in keeping clients out of situations that could make them look like fools or jerks – even if they’re both – their most valuable work goes unseen. Fail and the world notices.

There have surely been lots of those unseen successes in golf this year, but the glaring failures have been plentiful too.

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Open Return to Portrush Will See Tales Of Redemption Trump Reality

Golf nourishes itself with low-hanging narratives, those saccharine, feel-good tales about lives redeemed or neighborhoods rejuvenated thanks to the royal and ancient game. Stories of golf as a power for good often hold a seed of truth that eventually reaps an acre of corn. Eighty-seven days from now, folks who peddle this kind of claptrap will have a field day as the 148th Open Championship kicks off at Royal Portrush Golf Club in Northern Ireland.

The parables are so predictable that they write themselves long before a single shot is struck.

Screen Shot 2020-03-23 at 12.06.04 PM — Royal Portrush Golf Club, Northern Ireland.

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Slow Play Epidemic The Tour Has No Desire To Cure

It’s doubtful Cicero had the PGA Tour’s pace of play policy in mind when he wrote “The more laws, the less justice,” but his pithy philosophy is no less applicable. The Tour’s code runs four pages and is a masterclass in authoring rules designed to be unenforceable.

Consider the particulars. Players are permitted 40-50 seconds to play their shots depending on the order of play in a group, but exceeding that limit doesn’t incur a bad time. For a group to be officially considered out of position they not only have to exceed the allotted time to play a shot but also reach a hole that is open and free of play. Only then does a group go on the clock. The punishment for that bad time is, well, nothing. A second bad time earns a one-stroke penalty, the third gets two. A DQ only comes at four. The fines levied are so meager as to be meaningless.

The most imbecilic mind on Tour would struggle to parse the policy but not to manipulate it.

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Tiger Roars, Others Whimper at Masters

On the second Sunday in April every year, Augusta National feels less like a golf course than an operating table, upon which men are laid bare and probed for frailties not readily apparent to the naked eye. And no facility in the world does a more thorough job of diagnosing a faint heart, a deficit of intestinal fortitude, an absence of daring.

Those aren’t ailments that will appear on an X-ray or a doctor’s chart, but the final round of the Masters routinely exposes each and every one of them.

Of course, the recent vulnerabilities of Tiger Woods have been more obvious: physical injury, swing woes, personal turmoil — each a test more daunting than anything Amen Corner can pose. By comparison, the crucible of the back nine on Sunday afternoon at the Masters must have seemed a welcome relief.

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Payouts Outscore Morality at Saudi Event

In the run-up to the 2016 Ryder Cup, a friend of mine sat in a meeting during which a senior official on the American side wondered aloud about the possibility a U.S. team member might take a knee during the ceremonies. It was a laughable notion, as though the official believed Colin Kaepernick were protesting slow play or high taxes — those being the only issues on which PGA Tour players are apt to take a public stand.

That reality was reinforced last week as some of the world’s best golfers competed in the Saudi International, a tournament created solely to cast Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s regime in a positive light. The players received stout appearance fees, which was only fair since they had to navigate awkward questions about war crimes in Yemen and that bone saw murder in Istanbul. The payment was more for performing in the media than on the golf course, and the well-compensated chorus remained steady of voice all week.

Screen Shot 2020-03-23 at 11.50.33 AM — Dustin Johnson won the Saudi International.

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The People (and Tom Gillis) Vs. Matt Kuchar

Public shaming has come a long way since wrongdoers were pilloried in the town square. Medieval stocks and floggings aren’t necessary if you have a keyboard and 124 characters.

That was the length of a tweet posted Jan. 11 by PGA Tour veteran Tom Gillis: “Even better. Who’s gonna b the one to identify the player the paid his caddy 3k after winning a PGA tour event last fall???”

He was referring to Matt Kuchar, who in November won the Mayakoba Golf Classic in Mexico using a local caddie, David Giral Ortiz. Cheapskate-gate had all the ingredients of a Twitter telenovela: a wealthy Tour pro with a saccharine public image, a resort bagman unfairly stiffed. Kuchar was hauled into Twitter’s town square and keyboard warriors, undeterred by the lack of evidence presented, hurdled kids and the elderly in their haste to toss brickbats.

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The Ryder Cup Buddy System Rides Again

The criteria for selecting U.S. Ryder Cup captains often has seemed to magnify qualities that are barely relevant to the task, emphasizing personal achievements of an individual over personality attributes that might galvanize a team.

Twenty-eight men have led America into competition since Walter Hagen commanded the first team in Massachusetts in 1927. Every single one of those 28 captains won a major championship during his career. A winning record as a Ryder Cup player once mattered too, but that was when points were easier to come by for Americans. It’s not so important these days since the U.S. record over the last three decades has impoverished the résumés of most candidates for the captaincy.

Steve Stricker, the presumptive Ryder Cup skipper, with Tiger Woods.

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Mike Davis Steps Away, Snipers Remain

The most popular punching bag in golf finally said “no mas.”

Mike Davis has announced that he’ll no longer oversee golf course setup at U.S. Opens to better focus on his role as CEO of the U.S. Golf Association. It’s a development sure to disorient those accustomed to j’accusing Davis for every shortcoming – real or imagined – at the national open.

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My Year in Golf

Two golfers I met this year remain lodged in my memory as 2018 sees itself out, but you won’t find their names in an accounting of FedEx Cup points or on Ryder Cup team rosters.

I met Mark Hensby for dinner in Scottsdale last February. He was four months into a well-documented suspension from the PGA Tour that left him feeling frustrated, angry and anxious to resume his career. In July, I sat beneath the R&A Clubhouse in St. Andrews with Vicente Fernandez, who had traveled from his home in Buenos Aires and successfully qualified for the British Senior Open at the age of 72. He was charming in his old-school manners, thankful for one last shot at golf’s most iconic venue.

They could not be more opposite in disposition, Hensby and Fernandez, but golf has a way of acting like connective tissue to link otherwise wildly disparate people and places. Hensby and Fernandez were two guys who just wanted to play golf.

unknown-1-e1545608402201 — Brandel Chamblee, on our visit to the Tom Morrises Old and Young in the wee small hours.

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What Rory Owes the European Tour: Zero

When Rory McIlroy recently answered a routine question about his schedule for 2019, it was treated as golf’s equivalent of Brexit – a shocking and foolhardy distancing from Europe.

“I am starting my year off in the States and that will be the big focus of mine up until the end of August, and then we will assess from there,” he said. “I want to play against the strongest fields week-in and week-out, and for the most part of the season that is in America. If I want to continue to contend in the majors and to continue my journey back towards the top of the game, then that’s what I want to do.”

McIlroy was speaking at the European Tour’s season-ending event in Dubai and knew he would draw incoming fire for his candor.

“Everyone has to look out for themselves,” he said. “And next year, I’m looking out for me.”

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The Man Behind Brooks

For Ricky Elliott, 2018 ended much as it began: going downhill fast.

In December, that meant a maiden ski trip to Colorado. January hadn’t been as much fun for Elliott, the longtime caddie for Brooks Koepka. Just a few holes into the year in Hawaii, a wrist injury benched his man for three months.

“It was worrying. I honestly thought if we could play at all this year it would be a bonus,” Elliott said. “It was one of those dark areas where there was no timetable on his comeback. It was a long period of not knowing if you’re going to have a job. I felt more sorry for him than I did for myself.”

golfus179-a read-only — Ricky Elliott, who has carried Brooks Koepka to three major wins.

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