The first reaction is pure exasperation that we’re even having this conversation.
I trust no-one has yet forgotten that Jordan Spieth won the first two majors of this year, came closer than anyone in history to the calendar Grand Slam after finishing a shot back in the Open and 2nd in the PGA, and won two other tournaments into the bargain.
Four rounds over par, two missed cuts in the end of season moneygrab that is the FedEx Cup and it’s a case of “Thanks for nearly setting an unapproachable standard in golf history, Jordan, but what have you done for us lately?”
I’m instructed by twitter and various US websites that there’s now “a debate” on whether Spieth, with all that historically epochal stuff, can now possibly resist the claims of PGA champion Jason Day to be the PGA Tour’s Player of the Year.
I mean, really? Is this even a serious discussion? Or is it just the nattering classes of golf dreaming up something different to talk about?
Let no-one doubt my admiration for the likeable Day – excepting his pace of play, which is just about a disgrace – and what he’s done in the latter part of this season.
He demolished his demons and won at Whistling Straits, with Spieth at his shoulder. Earlier this year he won at Torrey Pines and the Canadian Open, decent events with top fields.
He then won the Barclays, the only full-field event of the so-called “play-offs”. All great stuff, and in just about any other year, a dead cert for PoY honours.
But even if he had won the Deutsche Bank this weekend, the BMW next week and the Tour Championship and $10 million in the FedEx finale, he still wouldn’t be Player of the Year in 2015 anyone’s mind, except maybe the PR department of the PGA Tour, who are plainly desperate to drum up failing interest in their end-of-season dollar scramble.
(Next week, the NFL starts, and America cares about nothing else for five months. The “play-offs” are already finished in the US public’s eyes.)
But back to Jordan. The ever-complex logarithms of the World Rankings meant he was No 1 for just two weeks, Rory McIlroy regaining the title without even playing. The absurdity of that is clear, but it’s happened many times.
He missed two cuts. Well, of course he did. He’s 22 and has been under a kind of unimaginable mental pressure. In a way it’s almost a relief to see some human frailty.
Take a holiday, Jordan. You’re the stick-on Player of the Year. You don’t even need hit another ball.
***
I waxed emotionally about how much I like the Walker Cup a couple of weeks ago in T2G, trying to convince myself that it’s going to be competitive this week at Royal Lytham and St Annes.
As usual, the US team is stacked with world ranked players, six out of the top 10 in fact. GB&I has just the one in their Mr Reliable, Ashley Chesters.
One of the US players NOT ranked in the top 10 is Jordan Niebrugge, who tied for 6th at the Open. They also have Bryson DeChambeau, who won the US Amateur/NCAA Championship double, and Maverick McNealy, the World No 2.
But despite all this quality, the US haven’t picked the best team available again. This is because the USGA has the policy of capping Mid-Amateur players like Mike McCoy and Scott Harvey, neither of whom trouble the World’s top 100.
GB&I have been guilty of political and parochial choices before as well, but not this year. I would have made a case for Wales’ David Boote to play, but it’s hard to argue that these are the ten best players who are available to skipper Nigel Edwards.
Nigel is a Walker Cup man to the tips of his spikes. Anyone who was at Ganton in 2003 and saw him carry a GB&I team that looked thoroughly outgunned over the finish line knows about his fighting qualities.
He’ll have the course set up to benefit his team. Hopefully, the wind blows like a Lytham Trophy in May. It’s 10 vs 10, and it should be a cracking week.
***
Keith Pelley, as we might have expected, is a much more visible chief executive of the European Tour than George O’Grady was.
That’s not to denigrate George, who was a steady hand on the tiller and history will judge him very favourably as someone who piloted the Tour through treacherous financial waters.
But the colourful Canadian has wasted no time in stamping his mark on the Tour, first by being totally upfront about the merger talks with the Asian Tour. It’s the kind of thing George would have done diplomatically and quietly, but Pelley wants everyone to know, and why not?
Secondly he cut through the awkward situation that meant the Tour’s biggest draw, Rory McIlroy, would be ineligible to play in the Tour’s Final Series by giving him a free pass.
Rory wasn’t going to make his minimum requirement of tournaments to qualify unless he played every remaining one. That’s plainly unrealistic, given he’s coming off ankle surgery.
The medical references quoted in the tour’s declaration of Rory’s dispensation don’t survive even a cynic’s brief study, but it doesn’t matter anyway.
The season finale without their biggest star is just a non-starter for the Tour. Favourable treatment? Yes, it is, but Pelley’s called it absolutely right.