By: GRATIATPosted on
By Ben Alberstadt ([email protected]; @benalberstadt on Instagram)

August 29, 2019

Good Thursday morning, golf fans.
1. Remembering Tiger’s pro debut
23 years ago! Good grief.
Golf Digest’s John Strege with a couple of notable morsels from that week in Milwaukee…
  • “…In Milwaukee, Woods paid for dinner one night with a gift certificate he had received upon his arrival. A day later, when Woods and his instructor Butch Harmon were driving to Brown Deer Park Golf Course in the Milwaukee suburb of Glendale, Wis., Butch asked him whether he had his checkbook, so he could pay the $100 entry fee. “Butch, I don’t have $100,” he said, despite having already signed a $40 million contract with Nike. Harmon floated him a loan. Later, Woods said, “I haven’t seen a penny yet. I haven’t seen any check in the mail yet. I’m still broke.”
  • “…”A fatigued Woods was never in contention, yet on Sunday, he still found a way bring the focus back on him, as he was wont to do. On the 202-yard, par-3 14th hole in the final round, Woods made a hole-in-one using a 6-iron. Woods earned $2,544 for finishing tied for 60th, a sum of money he appreciated more than than the $43 million in contracts he had signed. “That’s my money,” he said. “I earned this.”
  • “En route via a commercial airline from home in Orange County, Calif., to Portland, Ore., for his final amateur event, Woods turned to his father and said, “I’m never flying coach again.” Indeed, the day after his U.S. Amateur victory, he had a corporate jet standing by to take him to Milwaukee. Suffice it to say, he was right.”

Full piece.

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2. McIlroy questions major calendar 
Per Nick Menta at Golf Channel…”But I feel that if I keep doing the things I’m doing, sooner or later I’ll get another one and all this noise will then go away. However, if the narrative becomes that the majors are the only important thing in golf, then that’s dangerous because are fans not going to care for the other 48 weeks of the year?”
“McIlroy does recognise the majority of the interest will always focus on the big four and is concerned by the majors being condensed into four months. “If they are spaced so closely together will fans only care from the second week of April to the third week in July?” he added to the BBC. “I’d like to see them spaced out like tennis does. With the Australian Open in January and the US Open going on now, they’ve a nice nine-month window of relevancy.”
Full piece.
3. ROY race
The rise and fall of Cameron Champ opened the door for the likes of Matthew Wolff and Colin Morikawa.
  • After this look a Champmania…”He had a short-game prowess to match his prolific power, and his iron production was miles ahead of were it had been on the Web.com circuit. The results backed it up: Cam Champ, hailed as the “Future of Golf” by several publications-this one included-had a win, four top-11s and five top-25s in his first six starts of his rookie campaign. The then-23-year-old was so hot that he was listed as one of the Masters favorites, despite not receiving an invite to Augusta National. He was a lock for Rookie of the Year.”
  • …Golf Digest’s Joel Beall assesses the chances of Im, Morikawa, and Wolff.
Full piece.
4. JT’s failed bid to improve his putting
An interesting note, via the AP’s Doug Ferguson, who starts emptying his voluminous notebook this time of year.
  • “When I was hurt, putting was really the only thing I could do, and I putted so much that I was trying to be perfect,” Thomas said. “And striving to find that perfection, I got worse, which is – quite frankly – mind-blowing and a bit concerning. So I came out of that thinking I was going to putt better than I ever have, and I putted worse than I have in a couple of years. So that was pretty frustrating.”
  • He went back to the start – same putter, same golf ball, same drills, and eventually pulled his way out of it.
  • “We just were like, ‘Let’s go back to what got you here and stop trying to be somebody you’re not,’ because I did really well doing what I was doing,” he said.
Full piece.
5. Back-to-back holes-in-one 
Austin Danforth of the Burlington Free Press with the story…
  • “Rob Gaboriault knew he’d stuffed his shot pretty close. Bob Maritano couldn’t quite tell what happened to his – maybe pretty good, maybe a little left. His eyesight isn’t what it used to be.”
  • “At any rate, a small knob on the front of the green obscured their view of the hole from the tee box.”
  • “That’s why we couldn’t see them go in,” Gaboriault said. “I still can’t believe it happened.”
  • “The duo’s friendly afternoon round at the Links at Lang Farm had barely begun when it graduated to lore Tuesday afternoon. Gaboriault bagged his first hole-in-one from the white tee on the 156-yard par-3 10th hole and Maritano, playing from the red tee a few yards closer, followed suit moments later with the 18th of his career.”
Full piece. 
6. Lyme disease sidelines Sandra Gal
Golf Digest’s Keely Levins…”Sandra Gal, a two-time member of the European Solheim Cup team, will not play the remainder of the 2019 LPGA season after being diagnosed with dormant Lyme disease, the LPGA.com reported on Wednesday. The native of Germany said that she’d been feeling run down since the 2018 U.S. Women’s Open. She would come into tournaments with energy, ambition and goals, only to crash during the competition and feel as if she had zero energy. This continued in the 2019 season, and got bad enough that Gal, 34, was forced to withdrew from the Mediheal Championship in May.”
“I felt like I wasn’t myself,” Gal told LPGA.com. “I would come to a tournament, practice, I would have intentions of what I would want to do on the golf course, but I wasn’t able to execute it.” 

Full piece. 

7. Senior Am
Todd Kelly at Golfweek with the update on what’s going on at the Senior Am…
“Roger Newsom of Virginia Beach, Va., will square off against Bob Royak of Alpharetta, Ga., in the final of the U.S. Senior Amateur on Thursday…Each golfer won a pair of matches on Wednesday at Old Chatham Golf Club in Durham, N.C., with Newsom the first to advance to the final. He defeated Paul Jett of Southern Pines, N.C., in the quarterfinals and then Rich Cloninger of McDonough, Ga., in the semifinals to punch his ticket.”
 More.
And on the women’s side…”The 58th U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur final on Thursday will be an historic one, as Lara Tennant and Sue Wooster, who met in last year’s final, will meet once again in the first-ever rematch in tournament final history.”
“In Wednesday’s semifinals, Tennant defeated Patricia Ehrhart, while Sue Wooster knocked out Caryn Wilson….Tennant defeated Wooster 3 and 2 to capture the 2018 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur title at Orchard Island Golf and Beach Club in Vero Beach, Fla.”

Full piece.

8. Jamie Sadlowski reflects
Golf Channel’s Michael Shamburger with the Canadian’s look back at his start in long drive…”A buddy of mine invited me to a local [qualifier] in Alberta near where I’m from,” Sadlowski recalls. “We were going to Edmonton to play golf and he had this qualifier later that afternoon, and the guy that was running [the qualifier] played hockey with my dad. He said there was a junior category and invited me to hit. I ended up hitting it like 367 [yards] and got through to the district qualifier. I think I had just turned 15, and I went to worlds that year and finished fourth [in the junior division], and the year after I think I finished second or third. And then after that I won back-to-back in 2005 and 2006.”
Full piece. 
9. Self-driving golf ball! 
Our Gianni Magliocco...”Problems on the green? Well, Nissan’s self-driving golf ball will dispel all of those issues – a ball which is guaranteed to find the hole on your first putt. Every time.”
  • “Using Nissan’s Pro Pilot driver assistant technology, which the company plans to unveil with the new Nissan Skyline in September 2019, no matter how off the line or speed of your putt is, as long as you make contact the ball will find the hole.”
  • “How does it work?…Inside the Pro Pilot golf ball is a motor which is complemented by cameras which are placed above the ball’s trajectory. On each strike it allows the ball to find and execute a path to the hole.”
  • “Unlike Sphero’s self-navigating golf ball, Nissan’s motorized ball is the first to implement overhead cameras, and the same technology being used in the ball from Nissan will also help the new Skyline navigate roads and traffic by using map data, cameras, and a radar.”
  • “Alas, for those wondering if they might get the chance to test the ball out around their local course, Nissan has no intention of releasing the balls.”

See the video here.

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