{"id":546,"date":"2011-02-27T12:09:21","date_gmt":"2011-02-27T17:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnstrawn.com\/?p=546"},"modified":"2011-03-02T09:55:12","modified_gmt":"2011-03-02T14:55:12","slug":"state-of-the-game-the-golf-channel-s-collaboration-with-nbc-sport-gets-off-to-a-good-start-mostly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/golf\/personalities\/546\/state-of-the-game-the-golf-channel-s-collaboration-with-nbc-sport-gets-off-to-a-good-start-mostly","title":{"rendered":"“State of the Game”–the Golf Channel’s Collaboration with NBC Sport Gets Off to a Good Start….Mostly."},"content":{"rendered":"

After the third round of the Accenture World Match Play Championship at the Ritz-Carlton Dove Mountain Resort in Tucson, AZ, last Friday, the Golf Channel launched its new alliance with NBC Sports by broadcasting an hour-long round table on the state of the game<\/a>.\u00a0 Dan Hicks moderated a lively discussion featuring alpha commentator Johnny Miller, pretender to the throne Nick Faldo, and reliable aides-de-camp Roger Maltbie and Brandel Chamblee.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

What's Next?<\/p><\/div>The state of Tiger Woods\u2019 game occupied the first long segment of the discussion, an interesting choice given that Tiger had lost in the first round of the match play, and hasn\u2019t won anything since 2009, an eternity in Tiger years compared to the long era of his dominance.\u00a0\u00a0 The panel\u2019s consensus, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, was that Tiger was now unlikely to surpass Jack Nicklaus\u2019s great benchmark of 18 majors and assume the mantle of \u201cgreatest golfer ever,\u201d a foregone conclusion three years ago. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0Miller, whose commentary bristles with conviction, noted that for Tiger to pass Jack now would require a career from this point forward roughly equal to what Phil Mickelson has accomplished in two decades\u2014an astonishingly high standard, given that no currently active player\u2014discounting for the moment the possibility that eight-time major champion Tom Watson will make another run at The Open Championship\u2014has won more majors than Mickelson\u2019s four.\u00a0\u00a0 (Vijay Singh, Ernie Els and Padraig Harrington have each won three.)\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Put in those terms, Tiger\u2019s chances now do seem slight.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Faldo focused on the incredible challenge of recovering the conviction that the shot you\u2019re about to hit is in your arsenal, especially when you’re feeling the squeeze of competitive pressure.\u00a0\u00a0 Watching Tiger take practice swing after practice swing, as he did during his first round loss to Thomas Bjorn, Faldo pointed out, was to witness a declaration of doubt.\u00a0 \u00a0And the results\u00a0reinforced the uncertainty clearly crippling Tiger\u2019s psyche\u2014he couldn\u2019t hit fairways that were 80 yards wide.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Padraig Contemplates Retroactive DQ in Abu Dhabi<\/p><\/div>The experts went slightly astray when the topic of odd rulings, post-round penalties and disqualifications came up\u2014particularly Harrington\u2019s recent accidental rules debacle in Abu Dhabi, Ian Poulter\u2019s ball marker-mishap in Dubai, and Camilo Villegas\u2019 casual divot toss in Hawaii.\u00a0\u00a0 The DQs especially seemed too harsh, given that the violations were inadvertent and no one believed the players were trying to cheat.\u00a0\u00a0 A post-mortem two stroke penalty at most seemed more equitable to the panelists, but the entire issue of changing the outcome of an event after the scores have been officially recorded seems absurd.\u00a0 (By this standard, my beloved St. Louis Cardinals would be declared the retroactive winners of the 1985 World Series in six games rather than losers in seven, because everyone knows the umpire blew a crucial call in the top of the 9th<\/sup> in that sixth game.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Everyone agreed that something needs to change\u2014perhaps not so much in the rules themselves, but in their retroactive application.<\/p>\n

Brandel Chamblee, who is as knowledgeable and articulate as anyone writing or talking about professional golf today, noted that \u201cthe biggest travesty\u201d as far as arcane rulings go was Roberto De Vicenzo\u2019s \u201cdisqualification\u201d at the 1968 Masters \u201cfor signing a scorecard with a higher score.\u201d\u00a0 What\u2019s amazing about this comment is not simply that someone as well-informed as Chamblee recounted what is in fact a persistant myth about that Masters, but that both NBC Sports and the Golf Channel\u2019s leading experts let Chamblee\u2019s comments stand.\u00a0 But Chamblee’s version of the De Vicenzo debacle is not what happened.<\/p>\n

If you sign a scorecard recording a lower score than you actually made, you are of course disqualified.\u00a0\u00a0 But if you sign for a higher<\/em> score, the erroneous score stands.\u00a0 And that\u2019s what happened to De Vicenzo.\u00a0 He signed a scorecard that recorded a “4” on a hole where his real score was “3”.\u00a0 Curt Sampson, author of a small shelf of fine golf books\u2014among them Hogan, The Eternal Summer<\/em>, and Royal and Ancient<\/em>\u2014wrote a wonderful, comprehensive account of t the 1968 Masters, but despite his corrective\u00a0effort the legend of De Vicenzo\u2019s \u201cDQ\u201d persists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In The Lost Masters: Grace and Disgrace in \u201968<\/em>, Sampson tells this remarkable story through the eyes of the two\u00a0 men whose lives were most affected by it:\u00a0 De Vicenzo, and winner Bob Goalby, who many people persist in believing kept the wrong scorecard that De Vicenzo signed.\u00a0 In fact Goalby was not even playing with De Vicenzo’s group, and put together\u00a0a great final round that would have put him in a playoff with De Vicenzo had the Argentine signed an accurate scorecard.\u00a0\u00a0 So Di Vicenzo didn\u2019t \u201close\u201d the Masters because of the errant scorecard: he lost the chance<\/em> to win it in a playoff.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

What Really Happened at the 1968 Masters--the Inside Story from Curt Sampson<\/p><\/div>\n

Another topic the experts chewed over was the dominance of the European Tour players in the world rankings and in the Ryder Cup, a harbinger of the overall shift in the axis of the game away from North America.\u00a0\u00a0 The proof was evident in the next day\u2019s matches, which left two men standing: new world number one Martin Kaymer, and match play monarch Luke Donald, who dominated every long-hitting challenger who dared to step on the course with him at Dove Mountain.\u00a0 As I post this commentary, today\u2019s final match is a couple of hours away.\u00a0 Whoever wins, we can only hope no bizarre rules infraction will\u00a0mar the outcome, and that the match is competitive at least through the 18th hole.\u00a0 Golf can use a shot in the arm, especially in the USA, and nothing tops the competitive\u00a0thrill of a great mano-a-mano golf match.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the third round of the Accenture World Match Play Championship at the Ritz-Carlton Dove Mountain Resort in Tucson, AZ,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,2980,3729,18,17,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf","category-news","category-golf-travel","category-lifestyle","category-courses-and-travel","category-personalities"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2011\/02\/jan21-padraig-harrington_372x3881.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":552,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions\/552"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}