Chris Lewis's Golf Blog

First FedEx Cup Playoff Defection? (Emended)

Correct me if I've gotten the wrong impression-- or if I somehow missed previous verbal confirmation on this-- but wouldn't Phil Mickelson's schedule, as posted on his website, be our first indication that he already knows he'll be skipping the Barclays, the FedEx Cup playoffs' first event?

To respond to the next logical question: Yes, Tiger's site also posts a schedule, and none of the four playoff events are yet listed, but in that case I don't think it means anything-- if memory serves, Tiger only posts sponsor- or TW Foundation-related future events on his site's schedule page (click on "complete schedule).

UPDATE, AUGUST 1, 2007: Sam Weinman of the Westchester Journal News reports that Lefty will indeed play; short version here, slightly longer one, on Sam's blog, here.

Take Off, Eh? Bob and Doug McKenzie on the Canadian Open

Doug: Coo-loo-coo-coo, coo-loo-coo-cooo! Cooo-loo-coo-coo, coo-loo-coo-cooo!

Bob: Good day, eh? Welcome to “The Great White North.” I'm Bob McKenzie and this is my brother, Doug.

Doug: How's it goin', eh?

Bob: So, today we’re gonna talk about the Canadian Open. We watched it all day yesterday on CTV, eh?

Doug: Not me. I fell asleep after Weirsy made bogey on three.

Bob (disapprovingly): Maybe it was the sixteen beers you had before noon.

Doug: Maybe, eh? (Makes drinking motion and smirks.)

Bob: Okay, so, the topic for today, like I said, is the Canadian Open. Like, everybody knows by now that Jim Furyk won….

Doug: He stinks!

Bob: He stinks?

Doug: He couldn’t hit the side of a hockey rink with a slab of back bacon! (Snicker.)

Bob: Take off, hoser. He won, didn’t he?

Doug: He cheated.

Bob: He cheated?

Doug: Every time he’d go, and, like, pretend he was going to hit it, then stop, then go to hit it again, then stop again. He got everybody else all confused, eh?

Bob (shaking his head): What about Vijay Singh?

Doug: Another cheater.

Bob: Whaddyamean?

Doug: Since when are you allowed to putt with a curling broom?

Bob: Yeah, good one, eh? Maybe you’re right about that one.

Doug: You better believe it. If they stop those other guys from cheating, Weirsie wins every time.

Bob: What is it with you and Weirsie, eh? You sound like you’re a little sweet on him, eh?

Doug (angrily): Take off, eh?

Bob (rolling his eyes): This is supposed to be “The Great White North,” not “Honey, I Shrunk the Golfer.” (Snort.) So, okay then, that’s all the time we have for today… and we didn’t even get to talk about the FedEx Cup.

Doug: How many beers does it hold, eh? Okay. There. We talked about it.

Bob: Okay. So good day, eh?

Doug: Cooo-loo-coo-coo, coo-loo-coo-cooo! Cooo-loo-coo-coo, coo-loo-coo-cooo!

R-R-R-R-Revenge!

Good thing for you guys that I couldn't find a picture of Michael Palin waving around a fish called Wanda... or, for that matter, one of old cartoon star Ricochet Rabbit. In place of the latter, here's one of Andres Romero after avenging (kind of) his catastrophic carom at Carnoustie by winning the European Tour Players Championship today. By the way, did you know that there were more World Rankings points available in Germany this week than in Canada? That calls for a little champagne!

Up at Muirfield, Tom Watson almost dropped the bit again and reprised his el fold-o at Whistling Straits, unwisely hitting driver on the 72nd hole and putting it almost flush against the face of a fairway bunker (left). Yet he managed to atone for the bad decision, and redeem himself (kind of) for the stateside loss, by holding on to win. Incidentally, it was nice to see Muirfield again, even if it was covered with hay (when will they learn?) and even if ABC wouldn't pay this week for the HDTV upconvert. Also nice to see O'Meara hitting golf shots again, complete with that little signature club-twirl at the end. (At one point I had a Birkdale flashback.) I'll be darned, however, if I can explain how Steven Spielberg-- uh, Stewart Ginn-- wound up in the final group. As always, he looked like someone who'd gotten lost on his way home from the Wednesday pro-am.

Next, pretty good tournament up in Canada today, eh? Nice win for Jim Furyk, although it cost him some worry (left), and compensated, well, not at all for his discarding a reasonable chance at Carnoustie (leaderboard first page on Friday night) and of course coming within one good 17th hole driver of winning the U.S. Open. My bet is that it's killing Furyk that he hasn't won a major in four years. The Canadian Open is great-- no offense, hosts-- but in no way eases his deeper pain.

And finally, Mlle. Natalie got back at us for all those Anna Kournikova jokes. Bien fait, kiddo. But look out behind you! You can't win in Europe without getting doused!

Back Monday afternoon with Bob and Doug McKenzie's recap of yesterday's proceedings at Angus Glen! No, I'm not kidding!

The "Who's Your Buddy? Who's Your Pal?" Sunday Morning Blogpost

I am, aren't I?

So, who's giving whom the Aunt Jemima treatment in golf this week?

Over at the Senior British, John Huggan and Mike Clayton are performing the service for each other. Clayton, not just a former tour pro (and star of our popular "Putter Follies" post a couple of weeks back), is nowadays a journalist and course designer, and generally one of the most respected gents in golf (especially among the current generation of Aussie pros). Huggan, of course, is golf journalism's answer to Peter Oosterhuis, working for just about every outlet that will have him (the Scotsman and Guardian in the U.K., Golf Digest in the U.S.). He's also one of the few golf writers you've heard of who can actually play-- and not in the "I occasionally break 80" sense, but in the sense that he's competed against some of the guys he now writes about.

So, Clayton and Huggan paired up for the Senior British, with Mike swinging the sticks and John carrying them. They must have been quite a pair, running back to the hotel every night for an orgy of typing, before Mike missed the cut.

Anyhow, they're still doing the best writing from over there. I love in this Huggan piece the interesting little (accidentally restrictive) commas that make it seem like Clayton is Huggan's only friend:

"On the bag for my friend, Australian Mike Clayton, in the Senior Open Championship at Muirfield...."

Clayton, meanwhile is keeping an excellent blog over at golfobserver.

Now, what could I possibly say about this week's LPGA event, the Evian Masters, that's in keeping with our theme? Hmm. How about this little bit of trivia: Did you know that Juli Inkster, our tournament leader, is buddies with PGA Tour player Jeff Brehaut? Brehaut has told me that they often play together at their home club, Los Altos (CA) G&CC. Like I said, it's trivia. But it made Brehaut one of the funniest (if widely ignored) commentators on all the Sorenstam-Wie gender-line crossing business. "Heck, I get beat by a woman all the time," he'd say.

Over on the big Tour, looks like Mike Weir's going to need a friend on the Presidents Cup selection committee. Actually, I don't mean that. for one thing, Mr. Player will do the right thing, even if standings at the time are as they are now, with both Baddeley (11) and Appleby (12) ahead of Weir (17)in the standings. For another, Mike usually guts it up pretty well at big (point) events, so I don't doubt he'll make up some ground over the next few weeks. In the meantime, isn't it weird that the primary buzz around the Presidents Cup is who might not qualify?

Oh, one more theme-related PGA Tour note. Please, have a quick read of Furman Bisher's defense of Walter Driver at the AJC's site, and then tell me: do you think they're friends? 

Festival of Unpublished Q&As, Pt. 2: The Return of the Babyfaced Assassin (or, Who's This Guy?, Vol. 3)

Trust you've spent part of the morning learning that Stephen Allan (Stevie to friends and media stooges) is tied for the lead in Canada, and reading up on his background: once showed great promise, proving himself in Europe in the mid- to late-nineties (pic at left from 2000 Dutch Open); came over here and medaled at Q-school in late 2000; sort of got derailed when he blew what I recall as being a sizeable Saturday night lead in Milwaukee in 2003; been more or less been a journeyman since then.

Just so happens I have tucked away in the nether-regions of my hard drive a short-feature Q&A on Allan from the old Maximum Golf days: the mag assigned me the piece when Stevie won Q-school, but never ran it because he didn't play very well to open the '01 season.

It's a little unpolished, but mildly entertaining, packed as it is with tales of nickname genesis; rooming with Geoff Ogilvy; Elvis the Caddie; and a youth misspent by working at McDonalds. Want fries with that?

For Weirologists Only

What I’m positing here is, oh, I’d say about one-fifth of the 50-page transcript of an extended interview I did with Mike (for a magazine other than SI) during the summer of 2005, only small portions of which ever saw print.

Actually, it might be of interest to other people as well, for a couple of reasons—for example, Mike’s first discussion of a fan-related injury, sustained at the ‘04 Canadian Open, that led to a prolonged slide; and his weirdly guarded first thoughts on the Presidents Cup coming to Royal Montreal (first reported in SI the following week).

There's also a sizeable amount of stuff about the (pre-Bennett and Plummer) evolution of his swing, and his background, family and northerly celebrity. Oh, and some college stuff that’s (I think) pretty funny, but was just way too random ever to appear in a magazine (e.g., a nice little Vegas story that just couldn’t stay in Vegas).

Padraig-Sergio Swing Teacher Updates

Lawrence Donegan pens a fine little post-Open piece on Bob Torrance, who missed Sunday's celebration because he left Carnoustie after his morning practice session with Padraig to beat the traffic home. (Click photo left to enlarge; that's Torrance with Paul McGinley.)

The Victor Garcia update is actually just a brief mention midway through Jim McCabe's Wednesday column (which mention I've seen nowhere else) that Sergio's dad completed a bad Garcia Open fortnight by being DQ'ed in his attempt to qualify for the Senior version. (Hope sister Mar hasn't tried to qualify for the Women's.)

Memo from Shameless Commerce Division: New "Scorecard" Author Interview on MVN.com

Okay, I know: I do enough shilling on this site already. But this Q&A with yours truly does have a fun anecdote or two in it-- for example, the story of caddie Pete Bender's cruelty to Hawaiian mollusks (and Phil Mickelson's cruelty to Pete Bender).

Scott Bunface III Stunned by Open Failure, Stung By Criticism

Can't resist posting Lynne Truss's belittlement in the London Times of some of the less captivating recent U.S.-born British Open winners. This might be the most (brilliantly) biting piece of anti-Yank UK sporting penwork since someone wrote around the time of the 1999 Ryder Cup matches that all the American golfers had seemingly "married the same cocktail waitress."

Apropos of Steve Stricker, Truss writes that on Sunday morning

we winced collectively at the possibility that the event might be won, yet again, by a neat, upright Midwesterner of whom many golf fans had basically never heard. Take nothing away from Stricker’s great third round, of course. Take nothing away from Ben Curtis, from Ohio (winner, 2003, Royal St George’s) or Todd Hamilton, from Illinois (winner, 2004, Royal Troon), either. Whoever wins on the day is self-evidently the best player of the championship and should be respected accordingly.

But it remains true that the event is somehow undermined by every additional obscure, generic-looking, “run that name past me again, squire” champion – all the more so (one regrets to say) if he hails from a flat middle bit of the United States.

Almost Nobody Doesn't Dislike ABC

Jeez, and I thought I was tough on the boys at ABC. The reader comments over at golf.com were downright vicious! (At last, something to read on that site besides Van Sickle and Morfit.... Okay, and maybe Shipnuck sometimes, when he doesn't forego his writing duties to chase around a Speedo-clad Miguel Angel Jimenez.)

(By the way, my apologies for misstating in an earlier version of this post that this was ABC's last year at the British-- their contract expires in 2009. A specific apology to the eds at golf.com for mistakenly challenging their description of ABC's golf outings as "once a year.")