Around the wider world of golf: Eun-Hee Ji ended an eight-year drought with a runaway win at the Swinging Skirts LPGA Taiwan Championship; Sergio Garcia got his third win of 2017 at the ET's Andalucia Valderrama Masters; Bernhard Langer won yet again on the Champions Tour at the Dominion Energy Charity Classic; Charlie Saxon won the Lexus Peru Open on the PGA TOUR Latinoamérica; Gaganjeet Bhullar won the Macao Open on the Asian Tour; and Ryuko Tokimatsu won the Bridgestone Open on the Japan Golf Tour.
This is getting a bit ridiculous, if you ask me. I'm sure the rest of the field -- any field he's in, take your choice -- will tell you the same thing. And I doubt they'll be quite so calm about it.
If you ask Justin Thomas, he just says he's tired and needs some rest. I suspect that's just a ploy to avoid laughing like a mad scientist over his latest victory.
But the madness is understandable. As much as we talk about JT's prowess -- how far he hits his driver, how dialed in his wedges are, how good his short game is -- the fact is that he didn't have his best stuff this week. Not by a long shot. His rounds were a bit erratic, with as many double bogeys as eagles during the week.
Again, the fact is simply that Justin Thomas doesn't need his best stuff to win. All he needs to do is show up with what he has and not take himself out of the game with poor thinking -- and his caddie does a very good job helping him do just that. Usually, you don't win because you're better than everybody else -- you win simply because you don't give up and eventually everybody else stumbles. (Ask Bernhard Langer about that. He knows.) And while JT won't win every time, that's enough to win a lot.
Just like he did Sunday. He goes off for a rest while the field tries to figure out what happened yet again.
So while the rest of the field seeks counseling for the trauma JT is inflicting on them, I'll just leave this Limerick Summary on JT's bedside table where he'll find it when he gets up. Creating a monster takes a lot out of a fellow...
Though tired from a year crushing dreams,The photo came from this page at bbc.com.
Justin Thomas is not through, it seems.
Forget mere submission;
JT’s got a vision
Where anguished fields thrill him with screams!
The Bridgestone Open was reduced to 36 holes because of the approach of Typhoon Lan to Japan this past weekend. The JLPGA's Nobuta Group Masters GC Ladies was reduced to 54 holes for the same reason and was won by Momoko Ueda.
ReplyDeleteThe outermost fringe of Lan also affected the KLPGA's 4th of 5 majors this season, the KB Financial Group Star Championship, but that wasn't the only storm impacting this tournament at Blackstone in Icheon, once home to a men's European Tour event.
An oversight in the course setup on Thursday saw the fringe around some of the greens mown almost to the same level as the putting surface, leaving an indistinct boundary between the two. This led to some players erroneously marking and picking up their balls from the fringe when they thought they were on the green. Initially two players, including Hye Jin Choi, were each assessed two stroke penalties for the mistake, but when tour officials found out that four other players unknowingly made the same mistake they rescinded the punishments. This led to a many of the players howling in protest, and two groups formed late that evening: one group threatened to withdraw if the penalties weren't applied and another group issued the same ultimatum if the penalties were imposed.
On Friday morning the tour officials made the decision to scrap all of Thursday's scores and start from scratch, reducing the event to 54 holes in the process. The tour's senior rules official also announced his resignation. With all that dithering the restart didn't occur until 10:40am, meaning that the first round would spill over into Saturday. To get the event in by sundown on Sunday the 2nd and 3rd rounds were sent out in shotgun starts.
The 2nd round concluded Sunday morning minus 11 tour members who weren't going to make the cut and thus chose to withdraw rather than go out and complete a handful of holes. Sponsor invite Suzann Pettersen, on the other hand, did play the final hole of her 2nd round Sunday morning even though she was going to miss the cut.
Once they made the cut the third and final round commenced and by this point the winds from the fringe of Typhoon Lan made scoring difficult. Just two players managed to avoid shooting above par: Inbee Park (72 to finish at E and solo 4th) and Hee Won Jung (71 and a tie for 5th at +1 with last week's KEB/HanaBank winner Jin Young Ko). The 36 hole leader Hae Rym Kim fired a 79 yet managed to hang on for the win at -4, two ahead of Ji Young Park and three over Hyo Joo Yoo.
I heard about the greens-marking mess at the KB. As more tournaments cut the fringes close to create more shot options, I can see that happening again.
DeleteThanks for the tournament updates, IC. I appreciate it!