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Sex and Drugs and Baltusrol

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    Sex and Drugs and Baltusrol

    Okay, maybe not so much of the first two. Tiger's not even playing, for a start, and as for drugs, well Rory McIlroy's comments about testing in the sport - to meet Olympic standards - have not proved popular in the locker room, by all accounts. Especially coming from a player who's not even going to Rio.

    Still, talking of players who had to, er, take time out when people were making sniffy jokes, Dustin Johnson, the US Open champion, will be favourite this week, at a USPGA that has been moved forward three weeks so as to make room for the Olympics none of them are going to. Hits the ball a country mile, has got over his major short game demons, just looks impossible to ignore. Baltusrol isn't the longest of courses - it's a par 70 - and I reckon someone will finally become the first player to shoot a 62 round it this year in a major (there have been four or five previous 63s here).

    If not Johnson, then Phil Mickelson - who won the last major played here, in 2005 - is clearly in the right frame of mind to go again, after his exemplary Open Championship. So too, I suppose, is Henrik Stenson - poised to do the 'one after the other' double that Price, and Woods, and Harrington, have done before - but I'm not looking to Stenson.

    Patrick Reed, and JB Holmes, could both be there or there abouts. So too defending champion Jason Day, and Brandt Snedeker. But I'm still holding out hope for my eternal flame Sergio Garcia. Finally, finally, maybe ...

    #2
    Sex and Drugs and Baltusrol

    Baltusrol sounds like exactly the kind of drug you'd take to get over your short-game demons.

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      #3
      Sex and Drugs and Baltusrol

      It also sounds like a frozen, pre-made, pastry.

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        #4
        Sex and Drugs and Baltusrol

        The guy who founded it was a pip.

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          #5
          Sex and Drugs and Baltusrol

          Even if golf were not an Olympic sport, wouldn't they have moved the US PGA to avoid the loss of TV revenue due to the clash?

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            #6
            Sex and Drugs and Baltusrol

            It's on a different network from the Olympics in the US, so no.

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              #7
              Sex and Drugs and Baltusrol

              It's opened up a welcome debate (seeing as golf and the PGA Tour will face this again in four years) as to just what purpose the PGA championship serves, and how it would be best placed to serve that purpose in the future.

              It never really was viewed as a "major" championship until the mid-1960s, when the competing concept of the tennis "Grand Slam" (that Rod Laver had just achieved) made people in the game - principally Arnold Palmer and his manager Mark McCormark - think "what would constitute a golfing equivalent of that?". Palmer first suggested winning the Masters, USGA Open, Open Championship and the USPGA, and it kind of stuck from there. Ironically, the PGA was the one "major" Palmer would never win.

              While no-one disputes the status of the other three (they always were golf's big three prizes to win in a year, especailly after Ben Hogan won them all in 1953) the PGA has always been an odd bedfellow as a major. As recently as 1988, Sandy Lyle (that year's Masters Champion) didn't even bother to enter it. It always held a lot of prestige as a championship in the USA, of course, and lots of the top American players over history (excepting Palmer, and Tom Watson) have won it, but its status among the modern pros is a bit self-perpetuating: it's declared to be a major, it invites a stellar field (the top 100 all get in), and so it "is" a major.

              Trouble is, the TPC (traditionally played in March, now May, at Sawgrass) kind of does the same thing, and if anything has a more memorable and worthy history and list of champions, but no-one calls it a major.

              If Arnold Palmer had had the foresight, in the early 1960s, to declare that the Australian Open was the fourth "major", I think world golf would have been far, far, better off, especially if over time they'd have taken the concept to the idea of having a "floating" fourth major that maybe could alternate - in hosting terms - between the southern hemisphere countries, and Japan/Korea, each October.

              Which, actually, is a tournament the USPGA could become. Why keep playing it in Kentucky and Illinois? Take it around the globe, as the USPGA's flagship event. Invite the world's top 100 as now, they'll go wherever you take it; invite some local pros from wherever you land (as they do now with whatever teaching pros have qualified for this week in the States). Make it a major with its own reason to exist.

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                #8
                Sex and Drugs and Baltusrol

                That would be an excellent idea, but not one the US PGA would ever consider.

                Not big on things foreign, the US PGA

                It had more of a raison d'etre when it was match play, but there doesn't seem to be any real interest in changing it back.

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                  #9
                  Sex and Drugs and Baltusrol

                  Playing overseas was something that was discussed a couple of years ago, with Portrush being suggested as a possible host. However it appears that the feedback from the majority of the membership was generally negative.

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                    #10
                    Sex and Drugs and Baltusrol

                    ursus arctos wrote: It's on a different network from the Olympics in the US, so no.
                    But I am wondering whether the Olympics on NBC damages the advertising revenue available to other networks that month, thereby necessitating a need to shift the golf to a less competitive period between the networks.

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                      #11
                      Sex and Drugs and Baltusrol

                      Really don't think it works that way, and that networks are happy to have counter programming.

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                        #12
                        Sex and Drugs and Baltusrol

                        It'll be over by Christmas.

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                          #13
                          Sex and Drugs and Baltusrol

                          This July PGA isn't sitting well with me at all. This event tends to fall on the same weekend as the beginning of the Premier League season. The final major signalling the end of summer, and the first of the football fixtures signalling the beginning of autumn.

                          The last PGA to be played at Baltusrol, in 2005, is probably the only PGA of the last 25 years of which I have no recollection. I was at a friends wedding on the Friday, at Dublin v Tyrone in the All-Ireland Quarter-Final on the Saturday, and nursing the two drinking sessions that preceded on the Sunday. I do recall Lee Janzen winning the US Open there back in 1993 though.

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                            #14
                            Sex and Drugs and Baltusrol

                            Anyway, it's hotting up now. Jimmy Walker looked like he was being swallowed up by momentum of those who had recently won majors, such as Day & Stenson. But a brilliant chip-in from the bunker, followed by a long birdie putt has kept him out front.

                            If Stenson wins, he manages to win a second major in his first one after his maiden. I wonder has that been done before?

                            Harrington, of course, won the British Open & USPGA double in 2008, but had broken his major duck at Carnoustie the year before.

                            Edit: We only have to go back to last year, when Jordan Speith won his maiden major at Augusta, and followed it up with a win at the US Open.

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                              #15
                              Sex and Drugs and Baltusrol

                              Jimmy Walker. Wouldn't have predicted him. Wasn't even sure he was in the field.

                              Before Spieth, I think the last player to follow up a maiden win in a major with a win in the very next one might have been Craig Wood, all the way back in 1941. Seve Ballesteros deserves a mention - he followed up the 1979 Open by winning the next major he was invited to, the 1980 Masters, but he wasn't at the 1979 PGA, as in those days they only invited USPGA Tour members.

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