Jason Dufner: Riding a Roiling Leaderboard

Posted on Sunday, May 20, 2012 by Bill Rand

The blustery and tricky winds are making for a tumultuous leaderboard at the HP Byron Nelson Championship at the TPC Four Seasons in Irving, Texas…except for one guy, Jason Dufner.

While all of his chasers from yesterday’s board fell by the wayside dropping anywhere from one to two strokes, Dufner managed to cruise around in 1-under 69:

Similar conditions as yesterday afternoon, so probably helped me a little bit, just being comfortable with the wind and how hard it was blowing.  Some of the guys who maybe played in the morning yesterday maybe didn’t have to deal with that as much, so maybe an advantage there.  Good ball striking, hit a lot of greens, a lot of balls in play.

That was helpful today and didn’t feel like I was scrambling too much, trying to save pars or out of position, anything like that.

That comes from being completely invested in what he was trying to do, knowing with some degree of confidence that he was capable of doing it and then creating and executing shots that matched his intentions. That’s all.

And since he was successful relative to his closest competitors after 36 holes, he had a relatively stress free round:

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Keegan Bradley: Holding the Memories, Envisioning the Future

Posted on Friday, May 18, 2012 by Bill Rand

At last year’s HP Byron Nelson Championship, Keegan Bradley came out of nowhere to beat Ryan Palmer in a playoff.

It made for very interesting viewing because once the playoff began, Bradley’s victory seemed inevitable. All day long, local boy Palmer managed to hold onto his vision for his victory. He looked bigger than life and, well, like the champion. But in the playoff, he appeared vulnerable and the tempo of things a little quicker. He hit it in the hazard on 18 and Bradley won.

Fast forward to this year and, lo and behold, there’s Keegan Bradley at 5-under after 36 holes and just two shots out of Jason Dufner’s lead. This is not an accident or a coincidence.

Once you’ve accomplished something, you remove all the mystery that you thought was shrouding your goal. You come to see that there was no shroud, only your lack of consciousness, only your inability to stay in the moment on each and every shot. Your inability to stay riveted to your target and the shot that you intend to hit to it.

If your mind strays, you think there’s some mysterious shroud, some knowledge you don’t have that would unlock the door, some experience where you could at least get a glimpse of it.

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Three-Tour Synopsis

Posted on Friday, May 18, 2012 by Bill Rand

The HP Byron Nelson Championship cranked up Thursday and was replete with some pretty big names: Phil Mickelson, Keegan Bradley, Adam Scott and last week’s Players Championship winner, Matt Kuchar.

There were also some great back stories. The best is Joey Snyder III who is coming back to the Tour after five years on a Major Medical Extension due to neck and shoulder issues dating back to 2006. He has 25 events to make $647,466 which would equal the No. 125 player’s winnings from 2006. He shot 3-over and is T120 going into Friday.

On the flip side, Andres Gonzales who graduated from UNLV with a degree in Journalism and still lives where he was born in Olympia, Washington, lost his card after an abysmal rookie year in 2011. Learning to play at the highest level is a tough process. He has been whiling away his time on the Nationwide Tour this year waiting for an opportunity to get into a PGA Tour event where he could make some money and earn his card back without going to Q-School. He was 5-under after eight holes and was leading the tournament. His back nine was a little more up-and-down, but he finished at 4-under and T4.

Everyone remembers that last year’s Byron Nelson was the breakout event for Rookie of the Year, Keegan Bradley. He won in a playoff and would go on to win the PGA Championship in August. But who remembers the guy he beat in the playoff? That would be Ryan Palmer who shot 6-under Thursday to lead the tournament.

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Slow Play Scourge II

Posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2012 by Bill Rand

In March of 2011, I wrote “Slow Play Scourge” as a way to keep the problem highlighted. People have been talking about it for years, but some things never change.

But because of that simple fact, even Tiger Woods has chimed in. He believes that we should do away with all of these deferential rules that give a player all sorts chances to rack up nothing more than $5,000 and then $10,000 fines. Tiger says let’s just cut to the chase; one bad time, one stroke penalty.

His theory is that if a player had to choose between a $5,000 fine or losing $50,000 or more because a penalty stroke dropped him down the leaderboard, he’s always going to take the cheaper penalty stroke. So if the Tour really wants to stop slow play, start handing out strokes.

In “Slow Play Scourge,” I chalked up the slow play problem to players not trusting themselves. They have fallen so deeply into meticulously preparing for each shot, they have lost touch with the way they used to play as kids. Then, they just used to take it all in at a glance, pull the club and let it fly.

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The Guy With the Most Toys at the End Wins

Posted on Tuesday, May 15, 2012 by Bill Rand

Remember that old half-true joke about the profligate accumulation of boys’ toys: the Porsches, Ferraris, Harley Davidsons, pointless ski boats, Learjets and big houses?

It’s one of the first things that flashes through your mind when you see the 10-page pictorial at Golf.com of short-game guru, Dave Pelz’s, home practice facility. You have to see this thing to believe it. The stage gets set with the overhead view of his entire property on page 2. And then you have photos from different angles of the various holes, most intended to be suggestive replicas of famous green complexes: the 12th at Augusta, the 17th at TPC Sawgrass, the 14th at Pebble Beach.

But when you understand a little about Pelz’s background, you come to see his “play pen” in a much different light.

Pelz was a rocket scientist, literally. Majoring in physics on a golf scholarship to Indiana University, he worked at NASA from 1961 until he resigned in 1975. He was bound and determined to bring the laws of physics to the study of the game including elaborate statistical studies and club design and manufacture.

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The Business of Golf

Posted on Monday, May 14, 2012 by Bill Rand

One of the things that helps Tour pros concentrate on their game is their agent. When your life is consumed with hour after hour of hitting balls on the range, with playing quality practice rounds that can’t be rushed, indeed, with fitness and appearances and, and, and, everything, you have to have an agent.

You have to have an agent, to negotiate your endorsement contracts, to help manage your financial affairs, to coordinate your appearances and charity work. You have to have an agent because you don’t have the time or experience to do it. A company comes to you with an endorsement idea, a term, your obligations under the contract and an amount. How do you evaluate that?  You don’t. Your agent does. He knows how long the normal contract is. He knows the going rate for a player of your status, but even more, he is always abreast of market changes.

One of the biggest agencies in the game of golf had always been IMG, International Management Group.

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Matt Kuchar: Mentally Tough

Posted on Sunday, May 13, 2012 by Bill Rand

Matt Kuchar was doing one of those quick, two-minute television interviews shortly after he locked up his victory in The Players Championship at the TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, with a two-stroke victory over the quartet of: Martin Laird, Zach Johnson, Rickie Fowler and Ben Curtis.

To clinch his victory, he had played a mere rescue club off the 18th tee just to get the ball in play, nothing more. From there he played a long iron into the green leaving himself about 62 feet to the hole. Still playing conservatively, he lagged his putt up to 2 feet. And then the fun began. (Paraphrasing since I can’t find the video clip:)

You seem to be so calm and cool when you’re out there. How do you manage to do that?

I’m not as calm as it looks. I still get nervous.

Really? It doesn’t look that way.

Let me tell you. When I got over that last putt, I’m trying to think how I could three putt from 2-feet. It’s amazing the crazy things that go through your mind.

[With dismay in his voice]: So you’re just like the rest of us?

Yeah, I’m just like you.

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Waiting on Kevin Na

Posted on Sunday, May 13, 2012 by Bill Rand

Have you seen him? Kevin Na that is. He is leading The Players Championship at the TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, by one stroke, but on each shot, he can barely make himself swing the club.

If he was a baseball pitcher, he would have balked the entire side around the bases. Just as a pitcher has a false move in his windup, Na has a problem in his pre-shot routine: he can’t hit the ball until he feels his “new” swing in his waggles.

If he doesn’t fix this soon, it will be his ruination. Sergio Garcia had a similar problem a couple of years ago: while he waited for his sense of his swing to form in his mind, he would “milk” the grip of the club until it was there.

It was a neurotic response to the unknown, the unknown of what his swing would be and how the shot would turn out. Ultimately he weaned himself out of this habit [pun intended], but he took torrents of abuse because people felt that it was unnecessarily self-indulgent and inconsiderate of his fellow competitors. And the fans didn’t much care for it either.

Kevin Na has become the new Sergio.

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Brian Harman: “What’s Up, Solo?”

Posted on Friday, May 11, 2012 by Bill Rand

Brian Harman was first alternate into the Players Championship on Thursday morning. He was on the driving range, ready to go. It’s a tough situation to be in because if you’re in the tournament, you know when you’re going and your whole pre-round timeline sets you up to play your best.

But when you’re one player over the edge of being in the tournament you don’t have that. You sort of have to get yourself loose and limber and in rhythm without really knowing if or when the gun is going to go off.

Unfortunately, that routine scenario was thrown head over heels when D.A. Points went right up to the brink, but was forced to withdraw after his name was announced on the tee.

“I haven’t got a chance to talk to D.A., but apparently he was on the tee, and he said basically, well, I am not going to go, I’m going to give whoever is an alternate a chance.  So it was nice of him to at least do that.”

That seemed a little abrupt to say the least.

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“Who Are Those Guys?”

Posted on Thursday, May 10, 2012 by Bill Rand

Remember that recurring line from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?” Butch and Sundance finally created so much mahem in the Old West, that the unrelenting lawman Joe Lefors mounted a posse and began the chase.

Butch and Sundance had a pretty good lead, but every time they turned back to look across the expanse of the open prairie, Lefors and his posse’s trail of dust grew closer. They tried all sorts of evasive tricks to throw them off but to no avail. All through the chase and finally as their straights grew desperate, Butch kept saying to Sundance:

Who are those guys?

After the first round of the Players Championship at the TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra, Florida, we have a similar sort of situation. The rest of the field looks at the top of leaderboard and says, “Who are those guys?”

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