Running 2024 golf thread

I bow in your general direction.

 

A Basil Hayden sounds good right about now.

 

Quad Cities had been the “stop before the jump” spot for many years.
(Stop before the jump across the pond for The Open.)
Zach Johnson always said this is his 5th major.
You know you’re going to have to go low here. Nothing tricky here. Big/soft fairways. Fire at pins.

 

There was an inch of rain Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, almost no wind, course soft as a Twinkie and lift, clean and cheat because more rain was expected (and never came). So Springer, a great story, with a 59, a Finn with a 61, Eric Cole with a 62, a gaggle of 63s, a 68.075 scoring average on a par 71 playing to 7,171 yards. Record number of birdies for a Deere round (which benefits their charity program). More of the same expected tomorrow.

 

I've save at least five shots if I had gallery ropes, TV towers, scoreboards, grandstands within 10 feet of the putting surface and other line-of-sight immovable objects on my course every week. I understand the reasoning why the rule is there. But dammit, YOU hit it there. You figure out how to recover like the rest of us weekend hackers.

 

I covered the first 84 Lumber Classic at Nemacolin, where Joe Hardy had been working with Pete Dye for months trying to toughen up the golf course. Then Pittsburgh got hit with a tropical storm that dumped a ton of rain on the course and the pros were given lift, clean and place. Winner ended up at -23.

Afterwords, Rocco Mediate told us, "We're the best players in the world. If you give us ball in hand, we are going to destroy any golf course."

 

Lift, clean and throw it into the fairway. I ain’t playing for rent money here.

 

So the only way to get people to ever care about the Champions Tour was for a LIV guy to win a Champions major?