IN THE LEAD-IN to this year’s PGA Championship, Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee took a run at conventional wisdom by pointing out that this is the most “democratic” of the majors, citing its penchant of throwing up surprise winners.
Your Jimmy Walkers, your YE Yangs, your Rich Beems.
Virtually everyone else, including your too-easily-humiliated correspondent, was busy shouting out as to how the world’s best players were arriving into Quail Hollow in such great form that it would become a playground for the A-Listers, and that you should pick your winner from Scheffler, McIlroy, Schauffele, DeChambeau, or Thomas.
Well.
The first-round leader is Venezuela’s Jhonattan Vegas (-7), followed by Ryan Gerard and Cam Davis (-5) and then Luke Donald, Ryan Fox, Alex Smalley, Stephan Jaeger, and Aaron Rai (-4). You’d hardly be happy with that leaderboard at the end of the first day’s play at an Irish Open.
None of the world’s top 10, meanwhile, are among the top 10 in the leaderboard, for only the second time in this championship since 1994.
Here’s a quick check-in on where the top 10 in the betting pre-tournament ended their opening rounds:
Scottie Scheffler T20 (-2)
Rory McIlroy T98 (+3)
Bryson DeChambeau T46 (E)
Justin Thomas T73 (+2)
Jon Rahm T29 (-1)
Xander Schauffele T60 (+1)
Collin Morikawa T29 (-1)
Ludvig Aberg T29 (-1)
Joaquin Niemann T98 (+3)
Tommy Fleetwood T29 (-1)
So rather than truly contend on the opening day, the world’s best players were left stuck in the mud.
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It’s a natural law of any sport: the better you are, the more hostile you are to randomness. Why spend your whole life carving yourself away from the masses of competition only to be brought back into contact with them by lousy bad luck?
For the best golfers in the world, this tournament’s organisers have been too keen to embrace unpredictability.
While the rain has cleared away for the week now, Quail Hollow was deluged by rain from Monday to Wednesday, and its after-effects were not evident on television across Thursday but were painfully real for the best players. The fairways were sodden to the point that balls and feet were landing on them with a squelch.
This made it much more likely that any golf ball landing on these fairways would pick up mud, which can play havoc with that ball’s next flight. Any clinging mud can effectively lopside the ball, meaning players can lose control of where that ball ends up.
This was showcased in bizarre fashion early on Thursday, when the headline group of McIlroy, Scheffler, and Schauffele took on the 16th hole. McIlroy went out of position on the tee and then slipped as he tried to lay up onto the fairway, and ultimately made double bogey.
Remarkably, both of his playing partners found the fairway with their drives. . . and both also made double bogey. Scheffler and Schauffele both attacked the left-sided pin but both saw their shots pull left and skip into the water. Both later said there was mud on their ball.
On the eve of the tournament, the tournament organisers proactively sent an email to all media to stress they wouldn’t be allowing players mitigate the effects of these mudballs by introducing lift, clean and place, which would allow the players wipe any mud from their ball before taking their next shot.
While these rules are common place on the PGA Tour, major championships generally try to avoid handing out these stabilisers to the pros, given they are supposed to be the greatest tests in the sport.
That didn’t stop the moaning, mind.
“It’s kind of stupid”, said Schauffele, arguing that players were not being rewarded for finding fairways.
“I understand it’s part of the game, but there’s nothing more frustrating for a player”, continued Scottie Scheffler on the same subject.
“You spend your whole life trying to learn how to control a golf ball, and due to a rules decision all of a sudden you have absolutely no control over where that golf ball goes. When you think about the purest test of golf, I don’t personally think that hitting the ball in the middle of the fairway you should get punished for.”
These complaints seem likely to fall on deaf ears, and with no rain forecast for the rest of the week, the fairways may dry out and the issue will thus become less contentious as the days trundle by. Either way, it appears the tournament organisers are not for turning on the subject.
And nor are objectors like Scheffler and Schauffele enjoying total support for their views: Golf Channel read out a message from the 1977 PGA Champions Lanny Wadkins urging the players to, effectively, get over themselves.
“Show some damn talent, drive the ball lower where it won’t pick up mud and it skids, we did that many times.”
Given this was another fraught and controversial stand-off in which both sides believe they are right, we figured the best course of action was to turn to the corner of golf’s conscience that has no truck with excuses: Pádraig Harrington.
“I was fine”, said Harrington on the mudball matter. “I hit most of the fairways coming home. I had no problem. It’s amazing how much it cleared up.”
The sport’s current batch of A-listers don’t have Harrington’s same sense of zen and sheer lack of entitlement.
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Upsets galore on PGA leaderboard as world's best players get stuck in the mud
IN THE LEAD-IN to this year’s PGA Championship, Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee took a run at conventional wisdom by pointing out that this is the most “democratic” of the majors, citing its penchant of throwing up surprise winners.
Your Jimmy Walkers, your YE Yangs, your Rich Beems.
Virtually everyone else, including your too-easily-humiliated correspondent, was busy shouting out as to how the world’s best players were arriving into Quail Hollow in such great form that it would become a playground for the A-Listers, and that you should pick your winner from Scheffler, McIlroy, Schauffele, DeChambeau, or Thomas.
Well.
The first-round leader is Venezuela’s Jhonattan Vegas (-7), followed by Ryan Gerard and Cam Davis (-5) and then Luke Donald, Ryan Fox, Alex Smalley, Stephan Jaeger, and Aaron Rai (-4). You’d hardly be happy with that leaderboard at the end of the first day’s play at an Irish Open.
None of the world’s top 10, meanwhile, are among the top 10 in the leaderboard, for only the second time in this championship since 1994.
Here’s a quick check-in on where the top 10 in the betting pre-tournament ended their opening rounds:
So rather than truly contend on the opening day, the world’s best players were left stuck in the mud.
It’s a natural law of any sport: the better you are, the more hostile you are to randomness. Why spend your whole life carving yourself away from the masses of competition only to be brought back into contact with them by lousy bad luck?
For the best golfers in the world, this tournament’s organisers have been too keen to embrace unpredictability.
While the rain has cleared away for the week now, Quail Hollow was deluged by rain from Monday to Wednesday, and its after-effects were not evident on television across Thursday but were painfully real for the best players. The fairways were sodden to the point that balls and feet were landing on them with a squelch.
This made it much more likely that any golf ball landing on these fairways would pick up mud, which can play havoc with that ball’s next flight. Any clinging mud can effectively lopside the ball, meaning players can lose control of where that ball ends up.
This was showcased in bizarre fashion early on Thursday, when the headline group of McIlroy, Scheffler, and Schauffele took on the 16th hole. McIlroy went out of position on the tee and then slipped as he tried to lay up onto the fairway, and ultimately made double bogey.
Remarkably, both of his playing partners found the fairway with their drives. . . and both also made double bogey. Scheffler and Schauffele both attacked the left-sided pin but both saw their shots pull left and skip into the water. Both later said there was mud on their ball.
On the eve of the tournament, the tournament organisers proactively sent an email to all media to stress they wouldn’t be allowing players mitigate the effects of these mudballs by introducing lift, clean and place, which would allow the players wipe any mud from their ball before taking their next shot.
While these rules are common place on the PGA Tour, major championships generally try to avoid handing out these stabilisers to the pros, given they are supposed to be the greatest tests in the sport.
That didn’t stop the moaning, mind.
“It’s kind of stupid”, said Schauffele, arguing that players were not being rewarded for finding fairways.
“I understand it’s part of the game, but there’s nothing more frustrating for a player”, continued Scottie Scheffler on the same subject.
“You spend your whole life trying to learn how to control a golf ball, and due to a rules decision all of a sudden you have absolutely no control over where that golf ball goes. When you think about the purest test of golf, I don’t personally think that hitting the ball in the middle of the fairway you should get punished for.”
These complaints seem likely to fall on deaf ears, and with no rain forecast for the rest of the week, the fairways may dry out and the issue will thus become less contentious as the days trundle by. Either way, it appears the tournament organisers are not for turning on the subject.
And nor are objectors like Scheffler and Schauffele enjoying total support for their views: Golf Channel read out a message from the 1977 PGA Champions Lanny Wadkins urging the players to, effectively, get over themselves.
“Show some damn talent, drive the ball lower where it won’t pick up mud and it skids, we did that many times.”
Given this was another fraught and controversial stand-off in which both sides believe they are right, we figured the best course of action was to turn to the corner of golf’s conscience that has no truck with excuses: Pádraig Harrington.
“I was fine”, said Harrington on the mudball matter. “I hit most of the fairways coming home. I had no problem. It’s amazing how much it cleared up.”
The sport’s current batch of A-listers don’t have Harrington’s same sense of zen and sheer lack of entitlement.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
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