Luck plays such a central part in golf – the capricious, unpredictable bounce on uncertain terrain comes on every shot off the green – that it beggars belief the current trend in the game is to eradicate it.
For example, there’s a definite drive in the game towards more closed field events, where Joe Journeyman can’t get in to have an inconveniently hot week.
Both the two proposed “team” formats doing the rounds have this, which is why they are so appealing to ageing players whose careers are on the slide.
We have a closed field event this week, but it’s quite different. The Dell Technologies WGC World Matchplay has to have just 64 players, or we’d literally be there all week. So they’re picked off the world rankings, which is fair enough.
A format stripped of its natural tension
Jon Rahm 🌍1️⃣, WEEK 4️⃣2️⃣ pic.twitter.com/jHPCDip0Uo
— Daniel Rius (@DanielRiusGolf) March 15, 2022
Matchplay is the purest form of golf, but for today’s taste there’s simply too much luck involved. So we have these first three days this week at Austin Country Club where a form of matchplay is played. But not in sudden death, which strips the format of all its natural tension, and much of the fun.
If it was sudden death, of course, top seed Jon Rahm could be in danger of going out to 64th seed Maverick McNealy. Rahm, of course was so burned out at the end of last year meaning he couldn’t defend his DP World Championship title. Perhaps a long weekend off at this time would be no bad thing.
But losing the top names early in the week is bad for business. Not that it actually happens all that often. We’ve had a few odd winners of the Matchplay before but it’s uncanny how the best players are actually quite good at this format. Almost exactly as they are with card and pencil golf.
The Ryder Cup biennially proves that matchplay golf is as entertaining a format as there is in the sport.
It’s never pointed out often enough that, in all the recent talk of obscene amounts of money potentially coming into golf, the sport’s best and most publicly engaging event is played for almost nothing in pecuniary terms.
Yes, the event makes untold millions for the European Tour and the PGA of America, so I’m being a little disingenuous here. But the actual playing for it is done for nothing much but prestige, legacy and pride (and a few sponsors’ bonuses).
And yet outside winning a major, what does your top-order American or European player want to do most in the game?
Ramp up the sportsbooks
But I digress. I think the tours are missing a trick with the Matchplay, and not just because of that least exciting of all two-word phrases, “round robin”.
The US has opened up to sports betting in such a big way in the last few years. This is the perfect event for loading up on it. The man-to-man aspect is far more exciting and sporting a bet than anything the usual 72-hole format can come up with.
If it were proper matchplay – you lose, you go home – then the excitement would be even greater. The form book would actually count for something.
This is the only week in the year we do this. Let’s make it as special as it deserves.
Bifurcation by local rule
We have released updated areas of interest and research topics on hitting distance in golf.
Read more 👉 https://t.co/4Awh6DXPZR pic.twitter.com/lq4kZZpaJy
— The R&A (@RandA) March 16, 2022
The R&A and USGA moved ever closer – inexorably so, but at the pace of a container ship doing a U-turn in the Suez Canal – towards distance control last week.
It’s been clear for some time that their preferred way of doing this has been by local rule. Rather than declare the bifurcation we all know is inevitable, allowing tournament organisers to decide what they permit or don’t permit is relatively straightforward and easy.
It also helps that the R&A and USGA are pretty significant tournament organisers themselves, and their championships will surely be conducted according to these local rules. That means two of the four most annual significant events in the sport will be distance-controlled.
It think we can also guess that one more annually significant event is wholly on board. Augusta National must have been fully briefed on this strategy and given it their blessing.
So The Open, the US Open and The Masters will all have some form of distance control, you can surmise. The tours, after some humming and hawing, seem likely to follow suit.
The rest of the elite game will fall into place. Meanwhile, us happy hackers can all continue whale away with our dodgy gear bought after watching dubious YouTube demonstrations.
And by default, golf will be bifurcated. As it is in practice anyway.
If you host it, they will come
#PKSPOTY YOUNG SPORTS PERSONALITY OF THE YEAR
Congratulations to Connor Graham! (Golf)
Award presented by: Alison Wilson pic.twitter.com/1U9UztNrUG
— Live Active Sport (@lal_sport) March 4, 2022
The Scottish Boys’ Open – what used to be called the Scottish Open Amateur Boys Strokeplay Championship – has had to turn away 50 entrants. It’s been massively oversubscribed with a record low ballot of 1.0.
There’s some disquiet in some places about this but I can’t see why. The Boys’ Open is at Murcar Links in two weeks. It’s the first SGU event unencumbered since Covid-19 started to wain (touches wood). Of course it was going to get a massive entry.
It’s always been, and is at last enshrined in the name, Open. That means an international field. The Matchplay version (which you’ll not be surprised is my preference), now played in July, is restricted to Scots. That’s also how it’s always been, and just as it should be.
We have an incredibly exciting array of young players coming up through the ranks right now, led by Blairgowrie’s astonishingly prolific Connor Graham and the California-based Niall Shiels Donegan. Scotland’s not going to be under-represented at Murcar.
When the boys’ matchplay was played in April, it had almost pilgrimage status for true Scottish golf enthusiasts. I look forward to the Boys’ Open attaining the same status as we go forward.