PatrickMurtha

OK, OK, OK, you are always right, and everyone else is always wrong, no matter how mild and qualified a thing they might say. What a frigging jerk. I lurk here mostly, and only drop in to say something very occasionally. You are like this consistently, 100% of the time, no exceptions, a smarmy know-it-all horse’s rear end.

My point was that they were obviously simpatico, enjoyed playing together, and that surely contributed something to their good results. No more than that.

This makes all kinds of sense. Look at an exception on the US side: Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth are a renowned Ryder and Presidents Cup pairing, and they DO socialize together, are the best of friends in fact.

Now that we’re hearing that Jim Furyk has been tapped for a second captaincy, I have a genuine question that I don’t have an answer to. Why has my avatar David Toms never gotten a captaincy of anything? Has he ever even been a vice-captain? He’s a major winner with ten other Top Tens in majors. Senior major winner, too. Played on three Ryder Cup teams and four Presidents Cup teams. Is there bad blood here or something? 🤔

And there’s the thing. I can’t root AGAINST Scheffler, he’s a nice guy and supernaturally talented. Completely in possession of himself, unlike Spieth, who always has this psychological thing going on, and takes us all along for another ride on “The Jordan Spieth Experience”. But I can’t root FOR Scottie, either, especially when he laps the field. There is a robotic quality to his winning. There’s little EDGE. Tiger always had edge, he always (and to this day) forced you to take a stand. Scottie Scheffler doesn’t demand a damn thing of you - not to be liked, not to be hated, nada. He goes out there and wins and picks up his hefty paycheck and it’s satisfying for his family. Beyond that I just don’t know.

An analogous situation is Mike Trout in baseball. Trout is an epochal talent, but he is simply not that famous outside the game of baseball, and he has never captured the imagination of the general public; they don’t have his contours clear in their collective mind. Somehow he lacks vividness, depth of impression. Comparing Trout to Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays is exactly like comparing Scottie to Tiger or Phil.

Proposition: Scottie Scheffler is just what golf never needed, a superstar and dominant player who has zero personality and is an utterly boring frat boy type. Brooks Koepka is a SMUG frat boy type, but at least you can hate him for that. Scottie is a glass of milk. Wholesome, but not much to get fired up about. Thank goodness for the arrest, at least that was a little exciting. I don’t think Scottie gains many fans for the game of golf, because he doesn’t INSPIRE passion any more than he seems to FEEL it. I am sure that he actually does have an intense inner competitive fire, he obviously wouldn’t win so much without one, but it simply doesn’t project outwards. He needs to start messing up before we can like him. Jordan and Rory and Justin and Keegan and others inspire passion in part because they make you suffer, they put you through the wringer. Bryson and Rahm have zip, they give great interviews. Koepka and Reed and Sergio are fun to trash and complain about. Admittedly Dustin Johnson is a little boring, but even he seems fun next to Scheffler. Scottie makes every single other male professional golfer look like Personality Plus. I suppose that is a benefit of a kind. I am not saying this is all the Final Truth; it is a Proposition.

Ultimately, despite the Internationals’ one good day on Friday, that was pretty ho-hum, the worst blow-out ever on their home turf, the worst overall since 2017, and the second worst after 2000. The only times the Internationals ever won (1998) or tied (2003) were in the Southern Hemisphere (Australia and South Africa). So I go back to my question: Is this a waste of time? I’m going to vote “Yes.” It is embarrassing and pointless for a sport to have to promote an event that is consistently like pitting a good college football team against an NFL champion. Put this thing out of its misery.

I’ll try to phrase this very carefully. Is there a case to be made that the Presidents Cup is a waste of everyone’s time?

May I just say that these are insightful and extremely pertinent observations. I think it is fair to be skeptical of almost anything involving a celebrity. Or that is posted on YouTube - for example, many of the “heart-warming” animal rescue videos are obviously staged. We are supposed to believe that people just happened to be ready to shoot professional quality video when they spotted that puppy? Ridiculous. And AI is only going to make all of this much, much worse. A lot of the post-Open praise for Bryson seems to be along the lines of, not so much what a great guy he is, but what a savvy user of media tools and what an efficient self-brander he has become. I suppose this makes sense because a lot of people have goals in that direction and might look at him as a model.

Justin Thomas got his Ryder Cup dream. It could become his nightmare The U.S. Ryder Cup team is set, and the player who will be feeling the most pressure in Rome is crystal clear. —Thomas…is longtime friends with Johnson, who clearly placed an emphasis on familiarity in his captain’s pick selections…the risk…comes along with this decision, the stakes of which are clear as day. It is a gamble — the gamble — that will come to decide [Johnson’s] captaincy. In picking his pal, Johnson has raised the attention significantly on the construction of a U.S. roster hoping to glean the first American victory on European soil in three decades. Should the Americans find success in Rome, Johnson will be a genius and Thomas’ last six months will be vanquished. Should they find failure, Johnson will be vilified and Thomas demonized. That much was clear from even a cursory glance around the golf world in the aftermath of Tuesday’s announcement,…where fans…criticized Johnson’s decision as spurning the team’s “best” construction in favor of upholding an American “boys’ club.” …There were other players on the brink of a roster spot who hadn’t carded an 80 in months, and it was fair to wonder Tuesday why those players will spend September at home while Thomas packs for Italy. ……Johnson did not leave JT at home. But that will not quiet the conversation about whether he should have in the weeks leading up to Rome, and it certainly will not quiet the conversation if Thomas finds himself struggling again when balls are in the air at Marco Simone. …There will be no shortage of pressure coming Thomas’ way now. He enters Rome as the team’s most scrutinized player by a significant margin. There will be nowhere to hide if the week doesn’t go according to plan, and this time the burden of blame will be much heavier. This is stress like Thomas (and Johnson) have never faced before — the self-inflicted kind.— (Ah yes, my takes were “absurd”. 🙂)

Have it your way, and have a nice day! 🙄

I am hardly the only person to suggest that JT should have recused himself. So yes, I honestly think that. Sue me. And yes, I think there is a dimension of cluelessness to Zach’s decision. He is already being criticized up and down here. It is distracting. Net result, his and JT’s stock is down; Keegan’s, especially, is up. I stand by everything I said.

One more wrinkle: I would bet that both Keegan and Lucas Glover are now firmly on the shortlist of potential future Ryder Cup captains.

Agreed. I think that Bradley and Cam Young both have legitimate beefs. The mature thing for JT to have done would have been to quietly remove himself from consideration, thus sparing all of us the now-to-be endless discussions about whether his pick is appropriate or not. But of course, expecting entitled professional athletes to be mature individuals is a stretch. I’m kind of disappointed in Zach here. If he had passed on JT, almost no one would have argued. But now he has fueled a distracting controversy. I question his judgement re the bigger picture. He is open to the charge of deciding based on a personal appeal from a friend. Very much not a good look, as you say. I am continually baffled by how clueless people in the public eye can be. 🤔 Think of the PR points JT would have scored if he had just come out and said, “Look, this is not my year. I’ll have better years.” Whereas now, if he performs poorly, he and Zach will never hear the end of it. They have left themselves wide open to that.