Golf: 148th Open Championship

[Pavel Buchnevich]

This tweet was from Wednesday.

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

Koepka's a great villain.



Gary Player is hilarious.

 

[CHfan1]

Koepka's a great villain.

If Koepka keeps calling out slow players like this, I’m going to be a big fan. Holmes needs to be penalized until he learns; he is excruciatingly slow.

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

How do his peers look at this? Koepka has proven that he'll call you out to the media for slow play. Has he accomplished enough that no one's going to say anything to him for being a loud voice? I can't imagine this would go over well in the locker room if #136 in the world is making these comments to the media.

“It was slow, but it wasn't that bad for his usual pace. I thought it was relatively quick for what he usually does,” Koepka said.
“That's what I don't understand when it's your turn to hit, your glove is not on, then you start thinking about it, that's where the problem lies,” Koepka said. “It's not that he takes that long. He doesn't do anything until his turn. That's the frustrating part. But he's not the only one that does it out here.”

2019 British Open: Brooks Koepka frustrated at J.B. Holmes' slow play at The Open

 

[MrFunnyWobbl]

How do his peers look at this? Koepka has proven that he'll call you out to the media for slow play. Has he accomplished enough that no one's going to say anything to him for being a loud voice? I can't imagine this would go over well in the locker room if #136 in the world is making these comments to the media.



2019 British Open: Brooks Koepka frustrated at J.B. Holmes' slow play at The Open

I love it from Koepka. Speak up now that you're the big cheese. Call out slow play.

 

[daver]

It's long been thought that we've avoided these winners for so many years because of how strong the fields have become that the best have made sure it wouldn't happen in the four biggest events, but now we've seen two in a row where it has. I know some disagree, but I think this is distinctly bad for golf when these types win.

In what sense?

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

In what sense?

Two reasons, they get less attention from neutrals and they don’t add as much to golfing history.

Like it or not, golf is not big enough that a boost in ratings or discussion compared to other sports isn’t notable when it happens. Getting more people to tune in and hopefully stay with the sport is something golf is always targeting. This always happens when the best win. It never happens when Lowry’s and Woodland’s win, unless they beat a big name. The big names will always drive this.

No ones going to remember when the Lowry’s or Woodland’s win majors, unless it was a great tournament anyway that didn’t need a good winner to be remembered by fans. There are plenty of boring majors won by the best golfers, but they’ll still be remembered because of the historic figures who won them.

And you also need your best players to be winning the biggest events. All the best eras in every sport have seen top level athletes or teams performing the best as opposed to extreme parity. If you have too many of these, you end up with a diluted top tier where the best players don’t even accumulate great stats, and it’s hard to argue for their place among the all time greats. Golf is far from that point and it was actually trending away from this for a number of years. It was thought by many that it could be the opposite where the top tier has added extreme depth to prevent this from happening, but two starts a trend. We’ll see what happens next year. I doubt it continues.

 

[Dr John Carlson]

It's a harsh reality, but I'd agree. It's not even a binary Tiger thing where either Tiger is doing well and golf is great, or Tiger isn't doing well and golf is bad. The 2010-2011 years where Tiger was bad were so much worse than the 2014-2017 years where Tiger was bad, even though 2010-2011 had some great majors in terms of drama (2010 PGA, 2011 PGA, 2011 Masters come to mind first). The difference is that the former was led by players like Lee Westwood and Luke Donald, while the latter was led by Rory and Spieth.

Nobody apart from diehard golf fans really cared about Westwood or Donald, and while people do like to say how golf is either Tiger or nothing, Rory and Spieth at least generate some level of interest from non-diehard fans. Koepka is now in that category too because of how quickly he's piled up majors.

 

[Maestro84]

Since predictions are fun, what is everyone's guess for the final major count for these following players:

Tiger Woods: currently has 15; 43 years old
Rory McIlroy: currently has 4; 30 years old
Jordan Spieth: currently has 3; 25 years old
Brooks Koepka: currently has 4; 29 years old
Dustin Johnson: currently has 1; 35 years old
Jason Day: currently has 1; 31 years old
Justin Thomas: currently has 1; 26 years old

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

Since predictions are fun, what is everyone's guess for the final major count for these following players:

Tiger Woods: currently has 15; 43 years old
Rory McIlroy: currently has 4; 30 years old
Jordan Spieth: currently has 3; 25 years old
Brooks Koepka: currently has 4; 29 years old
Dustin Johnson: currently has 1; 35 years old
Jason Day: currently has 1; 31 years old
Justin Thomas: currently has 1; 26 years old

These are probably all going to be wrong.

1. I’m finding it hard he’ll get to 18. The talent is still there, but the health isn’t. Maybe 1 more, but I’m going to say 0, unfortunately. I wouldn’t be shocked if we see a retirement coming up in the next few years. I’ve long been a fan, but I find this year less promising for his ability to reach 18 than 2018.

2. He had a few year lull, but now he’s back to being elite. I find this year and the last few to be a blip. Is he going to dominate everyone else? No, but I find it hard to believe he doesn’t get close to double digits. I’ll say 10.

3. Let’s see him win again before we discuss the range. The potential is clearly in the double digits, but when you don’t win for two years, the downside is clearly 0 more.

4. I’ll say he ends at 7. I think the major performance is unsustainably good and the regular event performance is unsustainably bad. I’ll say both correct itself.

5. I’ll say he gets two more and ends at 3. He’s one of the best in the world, but the record in majors doesn’t lie at this point.

6. I’ll say 1 more. There’s the potential for another 1-3, but I don’t view him as one of the elite golfers. He had a great stretch, but he’s never been a good enough ball striker to maintain a place at the top of the game.

7. I can’t figure out his year. He’s not won, but I don’t think he’s been that bad. He got injured, and that slowed him down some. I think the upside is very high here. I’ll say 8-10 total, but I’m probably higher on his game than most. He does still only have 1 at age 26.

 

[Dr John Carlson]

Since predictions are fun, what is everyone's guess for the final major count for these following players:

Tiger Woods: currently has 15; 43 years old
Rory McIlroy: currently has 4; 30 years old
Jordan Spieth: currently has 3; 25 years old
Brooks Koepka: currently has 4; 29 years old
Dustin Johnson: currently has 1; 35 years old
Jason Day: currently has 1; 31 years old
Justin Thomas: currently has 1; 26 years old

Tiger - 15
Rory - 5
Spieth - 7
Koepka - 8
DJ - 2
Day - 2
JT - 3

Aiming low on a lot of them.

 

[Dr John Carlson]

Also, an interesting article on golfchannel.com today. Ranking the top-20 major performers of the decade.

I personally think the list is kind of garbage. They used some points system to judge everyone, but I think it's pretty offensive to have Rickie ranked ahead of Louis, who has a win and two playoff losses + two other runner ups.. Whatever system they use to do that should be scrapped. But in general I prefer players who are less consistent but can be big win-threats over players who are consistent but don't really threaten to win much.

 

[Maestro84]

These are probably all going to be wrong.

1. I’m finding it hard he’ll get to 18. The talent is still there, but the health isn’t. Maybe 1 more, but I’m going to say 0, unfortunately. I wouldn’t be shocked if we see a retirement coming up in the next few years. I’ve long been a fan, but I find this year less promising for his ability to reach 18 than 2018.

2. He had a few year lull, but now he’s back to being elite. I find this year and the last few to be a blip. Is he going to dominate everyone else? No, but I find it hard to believe he doesn’t get close to double digits. I’ll say 10.

3. Let’s see him win again before we discuss the range. The potential is clearly in the double digits, but when you don’t win for two years, the downside is clearly 0 more.

4. I’ll say he ends at 7. I think the major performance is unsustainably good and the regular event performance is unsustainably bad. I’ll say both correct itself.

5. I’ll say he gets two more and ends at 3. He’s one of the best in the world, but the record in majors doesn’t lie at this point.

6. I’ll say 1 more. There’s the potential for another 1-3, but I don’t view him as one of the elite golfers. He had a great stretch, but he’s never been a good enough ball striker to maintain a place at the top of the game.

7. I can’t figure out his year. He’s not won, but I don’t think he’s been that bad. He got injured, and that slowed him down some. I think the upside is very high here. I’ll say 8-10 total, but I’m probably higher on his game than most. He does still only have 1 at age 26.

Yea that's fair.

1. I actually think Tiger's still got a good chunk of time left to compete as long as his body co-operates and he stops taking so much time off which causes rust.

2. I'm not exaggerating when I say Rory has the chance to end his career as the 3rd greatest player ever behind Tiger/Jack because his game screams elite domination but his mind (especially at the recent majors) has lacked a bit. He's entering his 30's so if his mental fortitude can improve as he gets older, expect a lot of winning from Rors in the 2020s.

3. I feel like ppl are giving up on Speith too quickly. Any time someone wins 3 majors before 25 they're clearly very talented. I have no idea how many he'll end up winning but I just can't envision someone winning as much as he did in his early 20's and never win anything again....

4. Eventually he'll slow down from his crazy pace at majors but I expect him to at least double his current major count by the end of his career barring injuries.

5. DJ simply can't get it done at majors. I think he'll end up with 2-3 majors since he's way too talented to not win at least 1 more but I can't imagine him going on some huge tear where he pick off a bunch of slams.

6. I'm not sure if JDay will ever win another major tbh. He hit his peak around 2015-16 and he just hasn't been all that close to being elite ever since.

7. JT's still only 26 so he's got the potential to finish with a lot of wins in general and not just at the majors. Conservatively, I'll say he'll win around 5 but his ceiling is much higher than that imo.

 

[GKJ]

For Tiger it's finding the right balance. If he plays too much, then he's going to get hurt again. Missing the cut at Portrush feels like a missed opportunity because in all likelihood, he's going to have to win 2 Open Championships (with one being at St. Andrew's) to even have a shot at 19. The PGA being in May now works against him, imo.