Maria Fassi: Can She Inject Women's Golf With Star Power?

I’m a believer after watching her remarkable play at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, but she also just missed the cut in her “home” debut in Arkansas.

As Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols writes in an excellent look at Fassi’s prospects, the talent and star qualities are there. Read it all. As a side note, I found two things here interesting:

On Tuesday in Arkansas, she spent three hours working on her wedges with Estes-Taylor, who did the same for Lewis years ago.

It was Lewis who insisted that Fassi get out of the 100-plus degree heat at the U.S. Women’s Open in Charleston, S.C., and save her body. She’ll need truth-tellers like that in her circle.

Fassi missed her first cut as a professional at her “home” event, the Walmart NW Arkansas Championship, but handled the disappointment with class.

Whan points to the “long string of can’t-miss college kids that missed” and hopes the degree-toting Fassi puts together a blockbuster career. Lewis remains the only four-year college player to rise to No. 1 in the Rolex Rankings.

Nate Lashley Leads In Detroit: Some Six-Stroke Leads Are Much More Compelling Than Others

You might see a six-stroke lead by the world no. 353 and pass on the Rocket Mortgage Classic final round, where Nate Lashley is 23-under-par after his second 63 of the week. (Full coverage times here.)

But anyone remotely familiar with his story—or those with a pulse—will be pulling for the 36-year-old who tried to Monday qualify for this event, only to get in on his status. Though as Bob Narang’s story and interview with Lashley from three years ago details, it’s been an understandably complicated journey for the former All-American since losing his parents and girlfriend in a plane crash.

His youthful appearance belies some of the hardships Lashley has endured since his parents died. Competing in tournaments where the majority of the competitors are younger than him, Lashley said he's learned many lessons along the way.

"It puts some perspective on life because you never know what's going to happen," Lashley said. "It makes golf a little easier from looking at the perspective that golf isn't such a big deal.

"That never seems to be the case. It never seems to get easier. I try not to let it daily affect my life and be as difficult, but you have to fight through it. It happens to a lot of people. You have to keep fighting."

Darren Clarke's Caddy Needs To Get Up To Snuff On How Birdhouses Work

With Steve Stricker likely coasting to victory in a birdiefest at the Warren Course, Saturday’s incident with Darren Clarke’s penalty at least provides a teaching moment from the U.S. Senior Open.

Brentley Romine on the the effort to get relief, the decline and then the caddy attempt to move and immovable obstruction, causing a penalty.

According to Rule 15.2, free relief is allowed from movable obstructions but not from immovable obstructions, which is what bird feeders are considered at the Warren Golf Course. Also, Rule 16.1 allows free relief from immovable obstructions and other abnormal course conditions but only if it interferes with lie, stance or a ball on the putting surface.

Needless to say—or not—moving birdhouses would defeat the purpose of said house. Apparently Team Clarke did not get that memo.

The full report from Golf Central includes highlight footage:

Muirfield (Finally) Extends Membership Invitations To 12 Women

This took way too long for the Honourable Company of Edinburgh golfers to join the 21st century and now the course can actually rejoin The Open rota.

As Alistair Tait writes for Golfweek, the men of Muirfield dragged their feet “too long” especially now that it’s a non-issue for the membership.

This time 80% of membership voted in favour of women becoming members. Today’s announcement is the result of that vote.

It’s about time, too. It beggars belief that a club with “honourable” in its title has taken nearly 300 years to do the honorable thing.

State Of The Game 96: Paul McGinley And The Irish Open At Lahinch

Rod Morri, Mike Clayton and yours truly chatted for a bit with longtime European Tour player and 2014 Ryder Cup captain Paul McGinley about the upcoming Dubai Duty Free Irish Open at Lahinch Golf Club.

This is arguably the boldest venture yet by the European Tour to an exotic and historic work of architecture, surpassing even Gullane in terms of sheer audacity. McGinley and his foundation host this year.

The iTunes link or you can listen below, or wherever you get podcasts.

Nine Things To Know About Detroit Golf Club...

Not a Five Families meeting…

Fine research and listicle-ish reporting from Ben Everill at PGATour.com to get you in the mood for this week’s new PGA Tour stop at Detroit Golf Club, with its fine history and relatively unknown place in the game.

This one blew my mind…

Due to World War II, the Ryder Cup was put on hold. But before the 1939 matches were officially cancelled, most of the U.S. team captained by Walter Hagen had been selected. Gene Sarazen, a member of Hagen’s first six Ryder Cup teams, was not on the list, and he took it as a slight. Hagen said his team could not be beaten; Sarazen said he could pick other golfers who could beat Hagen’s crew. The challenge was accepted and the two “teams” of Americans played a series of matches for charity. The first one, in 1940, was at Oakland Hills, with Hagen’s team (that included Byron Nelson and Sam Snead) winning.

In 1941, the challenge matches were held at Detroit Golf Club. Sarazen was determined to beat Hagen, and so he called in a “ringer,” managing to coax 39-year-old Bobby Jones out of retirement.

Who knew!

"Can this woman save Detroit’s public golf courses from extinction?"

Great to see Golf.com’s Max Marcovitch use the opportunity provided by the Rocket Mortgage Classic to highlight the sad (and endangered) state of Detroit muni’s.

In particular, the Donald Ross-designed Rackham is in danger and Karen Peek is working to keep it going.

Rackham is six miles north of Detroit Golf Club, site of this week’s Rocket Mortgage Classic. It doesn’t get the attention that DGC does but it has rich history of its own, extending back to its opening in 1923. Ben Davis, the first black head pro at a municipal course in the U.S., taught there for 50 years. Among his students was famed boxer Joe Louis, a Rackham regular. The two would play money matches. In the 1940s, Louis hosted an annual golf tournament at Rackham, aimed at showcasing talented black players.

Rackham is also where Peek fell in love with the game. As a kid, she convinced her best friend to attend a youth golf clinic with her at the course. Volunteer pros — Davis among them — painted small circles on the 1st fairway and had the juniors swing their clubs back and forth for one carefree hour. Peek was hooked. She recounts excitedly slinging her golf bag over her shoulder and riding her bike down to the course.

Fifty years later, the details flow with a nostalgic yearn. The clinics were a staple in a vibrant golfing community. For Peek, they were the gateway to her livelihood.

Report: PGA Tour Players On A Random Clock And It's Not Ideal (Kisner Exempted)

Nice work by Andy Johnson at FriedEgg.com to time one grouping at the U.S. Open for nine holes.

While it’s still not as powerful as the visual of watching the difference in how these players work, anyone with any imagination can easily envsion the agony of watching some of the longer debate sessions that took place. As other professional sports fret about the length of their games, the PGA Tour has made clear slow play and the slowest players are just not a a big deal. Even the USGA, which has had amazing success with time par systems, backs off at the U.S. Open out of fear of upsetting the most important people on the planet.

Given that players have 40 seconds to play a shot, the regularity with which they break the rules is, frankly stupefying given how rarely penalties have been dished out. And we know how hard it is to watch in person.

Unless Kevin Kisner is playing or Justin Thomas is hitting a tee shot…

As DeChambeau, Kisner, and Thomas worked their way through Pebble Beach’s front nine, I recorded the amount of time it took each player to hit each shot from the moment that it became clear the previous shot had ended. I also noted the order in which they played their shots within the group. To determine the exact start time for each shot, I simply used common sense. On approach shots, I started the clock when both caddie and player had arrived at the ball and the group ahead had vacated the green. On successive shots within the group, I started it when the previous shot had clearly ended—that is, when the previous player had picked up his tee, or when the preceding putt or chip had been marked, etc.

The results are below. The numbers in the left column—1, 2, and 3—represent the order in which the player hit the shot within the group. 1* signifies shots for which a player was first in the order but had to wait on the group ahead or called for a ruling. Finally, I have color coded the times: green = a time under 40 seconds; yellow = a time between 40-60 seconds; and red = a time over 60 seconds.

Oh and the red flows…

How Notre Dame's Warren Course Landed The U.S. Senior Open

John Fineran does a nice job summing up how Notre Dame’s Warren Course by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw made the right moves in earning it’s way onto the national stage this week with the U.S. Senior Open. The course struggled in its early years with maintenance issues but eventually got those right and now is the first university course to host a senior major.

That’s one of the reasons the United States Golf Association — after seeing Warren play host to the 2010 Women’s Amateur Public Links, several NCAA men’s and women’s regionals and several USGA qualifying events — announced in 2016 that Warren would be the first university golf course to host the event.

“The USGA was on board from the start,” Cielen said. “They said, ‘Look, we don’t have to change anything significant here.’ In fact, they paid us the ultimate compliment, ‘We can tee it up just the way it is.’”

Ben Kimball, the USGA’s senior director of championships, confirmed that in May.

“We’re here first and foremost for the golf course,” he said. “This is a fabulous Coore and Crenshaw venue. It’s going to be intimidating. Let’s face it, when you play in a USGA national championship, (the golf course) should be a little intimidating. Fair, yet intimidating. This is the biggest championship in all of senior golf. We want (players) to have butterflies in their stomach.”

The story also includes a sidebar explaining this week’s re-routing.

This 7-year-old video offers some insights and visuals as well:

Matt Wallace Berates Caddy, Does Not Earn Plaudits For His Performance

Actually, the rising star from Europe’s on-course temper and behavior has quietly been a thing that surfaced in new ways at the BMW International last weekend.

Whether this is a trend or just the product of better on-course sound, I’m not sure.

Dylan Dethier does a nice job compiling comments and Tweets from this and Matt Wallace’s erratic actions at Pebble Beach.

There was this:

The behavior was the second time in as many weeks that Wallace has run hot on the golf course. Despite a strong T12 finish at last week’s U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, Wallace was captured in several moments of frustration, tossing a putter on one occasion, turning his hat backwards on another. The behavior drew pointed criticism from SkySports analyst Rich Beem. “I’m sorry but I just don’t enjoy watching that,” he said. “I know you’re intense, but get over yourself.”

The Munich moment:

I watched him play the 18th and this is the only dialogue with the caddie on my DVR pic.twitter.com/tbPXZReTmS

— Matt Sylla (@mattsylla) June 24, 2019

PVB VP's Wonder What Will Become Of Their BWM Leases: BMW Wrapping Up PGA Tour Playoff Sponsorship

Teddy Greenstein says BMW is shifting its U.S. golf spending from the PGA Tour’s old Western Open to the 2020 Ryder Cup, undoubtedly at a much lower cost than they’ve paid as sponsor of the FedExCup’s second playoff event.

From Greenstein’s story quoting several saying they were very confident a replacement will be found, But at this price, the list of options has to be getting short:

“Golf remains an important global platform for BMW,” said Tim Rittenhouse, experiential marketing manager of BMW of North America.

Industry sources put the annual cost of title sponsorship of a FedEx Cup playoff event at $16 million to $18 million, and a new partner — or partners — could be announced soon.

“We are in active discussions with several companies,” said Vince Pellegrino, senior vice president of the WGA, “and are very confident we’ll have a long-term agreement in place starting in 2020.”

This year’s event will be played at Medinah, while next year’s edition heads to Olympia Fields.

And don’t forget the event will now be played two weeks after the Wyndham Rewards has been decided, so fans may yet be over that excitement.

"Detroit Golf Club workers threaten strike before PGA Tour's Rocket Mortgage Classic"

Well here’s one you don’t hear every day: members of the Teamsters are threatening to walk off the job at Detroit Golf Club over stalled negotiations.

Greg Levinsky reports for the Detroit Free Press on what’s in dispute and how the action could impact the PGA Tour’s return to the area for the Rocket Mortgage Classic.

“Come (Thursday) when this tournament starts,” said Kevin Moore, president of local union, Teamsters Local 299, and executive board member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, “we’re going to do what we have to do. Demonstrations, strikes, whatever is at our disposal.”

A seven-member group of mechanics and groundskeepers represented by Teamsters Local 299 saw their contract expire in 2018. The club had been asking for a contract that included a “3% pay raise, health care relief and job security language,” according to a news release on Monday..

Tiger Dropped From Woods Restaurant Suit After Lack Of Ownership Stake Confirmed

The wrongful death lawsuit dropped on Tiger’s plate at the PGA Championship will move forward but without Woods as a defendant, reports ESPN.com’s Bob Harig.

The reason is fairly simple: Tiger is not an owner of Woods Jupiter where the young man who bartended there ultimately lost his life in a car accident.

According to Woods' attorney, Barry Postman, Woods invests in but does not own the restaurant.

"The decision was clearly appropriate and reflected the fact that Mr. Woods should not have been included in the lawsuit in the first place because he had nothing to do with Mr. Immesberger's death,'' Postman said in a statement. "While the situation was tragic, the facts will ultimately show that the cause of Mr. Immesberger's car accident were the many decisions made by Mr. Immesberger on the night of his passing.'“

Why The World Golf Hall Of Fame's Street Cred Is Suffering, Files: Hannah Green Declared One Major From HOF Eligibility

A big congratulations to LPGA rookie Hannah Green on her first win and first major win in the KPMG LPGA Championship, nearly doubling her career earnings and already bringing her within one major win of World Golf Hall of Fame eligibility.

As the World Golf Hall’s Twitter account reminded us:

Of course we all know Hall eligibility does not ensure induction. Shoot, non-eligibility but amazing lives in the game are not even ensured a place in the Hall.

Steph Curry, Under Armour Getting Into The Golf Fashion Business

You know I’m just going to leave it to the commenters, but there was confusion over the insignia on Steph Curry’s hat as he unveiled a perfectly classy looking collection of golf clothes with partner Under Armour. (Upside down would be a big problem, in case you want the short version on the golf logo matter.)

The Range Unlimited Collection is detailed here.

The launch at Mission Hills…

🏀 @StephenCurry30 is ready to make a bold statement out on the golf course.

He's in Shenzhen, China this week promoting his upcoming golf clothing line for @UnderArmour. pic.twitter.com/pqvREc4Jn9

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) June 24, 2019