With the (very little) power vested in golf writer Evin Priest, Australian Golf Digest’s man-on-the-ground hands out his best and worst awards from covering the 2017 US PGA Tour season. Buckle up for Australian golf media’s night of nights.
Tournament
Best
The Masters. Year after year, it continually throws up incredible stories that transcend golf. This year, newly crowned world No.1 Dustin Johnson slipped on staircase on tournament eve and suddenly the hottest player on the planet was forced to withdraw injured. The freak accident allowed Charley Hoffman to take the first-round lead over William McGirt on a no-frills leaderboard. But, as the tournament progressed, the cream rose to the top at Augusta National.
By the time Sunday rolled around, big guns Justin Rose and Sergio Garcia were locked in a back-nine duel for the ages that culminated in a nail-biting sudden-death playoff. By winning on the first extra hole, Garcia vanquished almost two decades of Major demons and the second-longest active winless streak at the four ‘big dances’ behind Lee Westwood. All this on the day Garcia’s fellow Spaniard and idol – the late, great Seve Ballesteros – would have celebrated his 60th birthday. It just doesn’t get any better than that.
Worst
The CareerBuilder Challenge in January. The US PGA Tour event in the Californian desert looked set for a grandstand finish when Adam Hadwin became the first Canadian to shoot 59 on the US PGA Tour (on a par-72 course, mind you), rocketing into the third-round lead. But unheralded American Hudson Swafford pipped him on a tedious Sunday that, understandably, would not have threatened the ratings of the NFL playoffs’ conference championships in the same broadcast timeslot.
Interview
Best
Geoff Ogilvy at the Northern Trust. The 40-year-old scraped into the first event of the FedEx Cup Playoffs by the skin of his teeth, courtesy of a strong finish at the previous week’s Wyndham Championship. Using a one-time career money list exemption to play on tour in 2017, Ogilvy, had he not finished inside the top-125 on the FedEx points list, would have been forced to play the circuit’s smaller events with conditional status in 2018, which makes it incredibly difficult to set a schedule conducive to elite golf.
The allocated time for the 2006 US Open winner’s Tuesday press conference at the Northern Trust was 30 minutes. But the Melbournian spoke for an hour, delivering line after line of literary gold. Once a three-time WGC winner during the height of Tiger Woods’ powers, Ogilvy articulated the struggles he’s had with his game – since last winning at the Barracuda Championship in 2014 – beautifully. “A decent metaphor would be I have been trying to eat soup with a fork; you could do it all day holding the fork perfectly, but you’re never going to be able to eat the soup. I’ve found my spoon.”
Worst
It was certainly not Hideki Matsuyama’s fault, rather a number of factors contributed to his winning press conference at the Waste Management Phoenix Open in February being arguably the most mundane (and very limited) interview in golf this year. Firstly, the Super Bowl had already kicked off during his playoff victory over Webb Simpson, so the nation’s attention was elsewhere. Secondly, the Japanese star uses an American translator for interviews in English, meaning the answers come back a little … clichéd, watered down and very hard to use. Just five questions were asked in the shortest winning press conference of the year.
This was the fifth:
Q. Talk about the playoff … Webb (Simpson) had opportunities, missed some close putts, but you hung in there and played great here on the last hole.
Hideki Matsuyama: Thank you.
Quote
Best
“The neighbours think I’m crazy but it’s a bit of a workout for me; it’s probably a 150, 200-pound mower I’m pushing. I’m not a gym rat, at all. I haven’t run in about 10 years. But I do try to stay somewhat healthy and in shape.” – Marc Leishman after his BMW Championship win in September. With the majority of modern golfers being finely tuned athletes with strict exercise and diet regimes, Leishman admits the closest he gets to a workout is mowing the backyard putting green at his home in Virginia. He won twice on the US PGA Tour during the 2017 season, bagged seven top-10s and, including his sixth placing on the final FedEx Cup standings, amassed $US6,666,391 in prizemoney.
Worst
“I dunno.” – A shoulder-shrugging Patrick Reed when asked when his next visit to Australia would be after his withdrawal from the World Super 6 Perth tournament.
Hotel
Best
Due to security concerns, the US PGA Tour urged media covering the World Golf Championships event in Mexico City to stay in one of the designated media hotels. This meant digging infinitely deeper into my budget than normal. But it was nice to take a break from the motels and stay at the JW Marriott. The hotel was excellent and the restaurants surrounding it offered the best, and cheapest, Mexican food I’ve ever had.
Worst
It’s a toss-up between the Greentree Inn & Suites in Phoenix, Arizona, and the Days Inn at West Palm Beach, Florida. The room at the Greentree in the Tempe area of Phoenix was actually quite nice and if that were my hotel every tournament, I’d be happy. But one morning I walked outside to buy some groceries and two blokes in the carpark in front of me literally started punching the daylights out of each other over a dispute about a bicycle. But these things happen, so it’s the Days Inn taking the cake. Driving from Miami Airport to Palm Beach, arriving at 1:30am, I discovered Priceline (a third-party booking site) had not sent through my reservation. I then had to pay $190 for one night at a depressing 2.5-star motel off the side of a highway with only an iHop (which is basically a pancake diner) within walking distance. Fun times.
Host city
Best
New York City. Technically, the 2017 Presidents Cup was in New Jersey. But seeing as it was on the banks of the Hudson River looking at the iconic Manhattan skyline and Statue of Liberty, we’ll say New York. The players and officials stayed in Manhattan, opting to be ferried across the river each day. When fans weren’t watching the world’s best players going head-to-head in a heated teams event, they were able to explore the sights and sounds of the Big Apple. The real head-scratcher? Why it wasn’t held in New York City sooner, given the biennial teams event is struggling to attract hype in the shadows of the higher-profile Ryder Cup. Although the Americans won 19-11 for their 10th Presidents Cup title, the event itself and host city were chart hits.
Worst
It feels wrong to insult anything remotely linked to the Masters, but Augusta, Georgia, is perhaps the most underwhelming host city in golf – especially given how prestigious and popular the tournament is. Outside the famous Washington Road strip, where bars and parties come alive for that one week of the year, it is not a place you’d visit outside of the year’s first Major.
Course
Best
Not all the plaudits should go to the Masters or the other three Majors, so I’m going to pick Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles as the best course on tour. The iconic layout is special to walk in person, particularly when you see the star attractions – the extremely elevated tee shot on the first hole; the driveable 10th (often described as the best short par-4 in tournament golf); the bunker in the middle of the par-3 sixth green; and the famous par-4 18th with the clubhouse standing sentinel behind the green. Architecturally, it’s arguably the strongest course on tour and the beautiful Californian eucalyptus trees make for a quaint setting in Pacific Palisades, not far from Santa Monica Beach.
Worst
Apologies for fence sitting, but there are no bad courses on tour. Rather, there are iconic or exciting tracks – and everything else. There are certainly courses that don’t push the needle in terms of design or are monotonous, but it’s easy for a course to be unexciting when compared to the majestic Augusta National, Royal Birkdale, Riviera, Pebble Beach, the gorgeous Kapalua or even Austin Country Club (which is a fantastic layout).
Media centre
Best
Augusta National, without a doubt. You know a media centre is a ‘home run’ when even the players (Adam Scott and Curtis Luck included) go out of their way to organise a personalised tour of the facility. The old media centre was loved, but the new “Press Building” Augusta unveiled in time for the 2017 Masters was something to behold. Picture a gargantuan, elegant, white southern American homestead that you could imagine a sitting US President using as a lodge. Upon entering the foyer, a grand staircase takes you up to the top level. Behind you are a cafeteria and a deck overlooking part of the course, and to your left is a restaurant whose interior has been cleverly designed to resemble the original Masters media centre – with an arched roof, period lighting from the 1930s and ’40s and historic photos of media covering past Masters. Inside, you’re waited on like a fine dining restaurant and have the luxury of an extensive buffet or a-la-carte menu. The pressroom itself is probably double the size of a large university lecture theatre. Hundreds of reporters from around the world look through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows at players on the other end of Augusta’s driving range, who are hitting balls directly at you. It is a 340-metre carry to hit the glass, I’m told.
Worst
For one of the most talked-about events on tour, the Phoenix Open media centre is very underwhelming – and cramped. The flash area (where reporters grab quick quotes) was incredibly small for the amount of media crammed into it, and the media centre itself resembled a garage. The tournament’s wild popularity for its party-style atmosphere has likely outgrown the infrastructure.
Strangest thing seen or heard
The most bizarre thing I saw this year was actually a tweet, from esteemed US golf writer Dan Jenkins. During the British Open at Royal Birkdale, 87-year-old Jenkins tweeted, “How can a course that has provided such winners as Palmer, Trevino, Miller and Watson also have given us Ian Baker-Finch?”
Jenkins, once hailed as America’s greatest sportswriter, was belittling Baker-Finch’s record-setting Open triumph at Birkdale in 1991, with the unwritten context being the fact Baker-Finch never won another tournament on the European or American tours as he suffered a severe decline in form, and confidence. But he did it with humility prior to embarking upon a very successful career as a broadcast golf commentator.
Why was this tweet bizarre? And downright silly? A golf writer with as many awards as Jenkins should know Baker-Finch’s decline takes nothing away from his triumph. Baker-Finch, who also held the final-round lead during the 1984 championship and contended at the 1990 Open, carded an eight-under par 272 for the lowest winning score in nine Opens contested at Birkdale (until Jordan Spieth triumphed this year at the Southport links course in England with a 12-under 268). Baker-Finch sat two-over par and tied for 28th after two rounds but shot 10-under on the weekend in ’91. He left champions such as Greg Norman, Seve Ballesteros and Bernhard Langer in his wake. I spoke to Baker-Finch for a separate interview the day after Jenkins’ cheap shot, and on the subject of Jenkins, Baker-Finch respectfully declined to comment on it.
As you’d expect from the nicest guy in the game, Baker-Finch took the high road.
Rudest/Most polite player
Most polite
Any Australian player. It could be my Australian bias, but I dare any journalist to find a crop of US Tour players more polite, accessible and generally insightful than our Aussie representatives. As the bigger names, Marc Leishman, Jason Day and Adam Scott certainly have extra demand from media and fans but they are always open and helpful, and they appreciate the role I have delivering on-the-ground golf news back to the Australian public. And that’s no different for the other Australians who aren’t ranked inside the world’s top-30. Guys such as Greg Chalmers, Cameron Smith, Aaron Baddeley, Geoff Ogilvy, Rod Pampling, Cameron Percy, Brett Drewitt, Ryan Ruffels, Curtis Luck … and many others. They are the benchmark for how to deal with media.
Rudest
Although there were some tough interviews after not-so-great rounds this year, generally every golfer I dealt with was forthcoming and polite. A definite bogey, however, goes to Bubba Watson at the Northern Trust in New York. Watson jumped from 113th to 72nd on the FedEx Cup standings after his share of 10th place, extending his season (and subsequent prizemoney) to the next playoff event at TPC Boston. But after his final round, the two-time Masters winner refused to speak with members of the media who were only looking to write a positive story about his gutsy finish.
Food
Best
Reporters at the BMW Championship are spoiled with media centre catering comprised of chefs making personalised omelettes, burgers and pizzas throughout the week, as well as a quality arrangement of delicious and healthy food. Oh, and beer available to media each afternoon of the tournament rounds. To top it off, when the penultimate event of the FedEx Cup Playoffs is held at Conway Farms (the event rotates), Chicago’s famous deep-dish pizza is on the menu. Take the recommendation given to me by PGA Tour journalist and Aussie expat Ben Everill – Lou Malnati’s is a must for an authentic deep-dish pizza experience if you’re ever in the Windy City.
Worst
WGC–Bridgestone Invitational. I was warned how uninspiring the food is at Firestone Country Club, host of the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. Almost every day, on repeat, lunch meant school-cafeteria hamburger patties, sugary yellow brioche buns and baked beans. Not a vegetable in sight. By the end of the week, I’d nearly turned vegan.
