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Cut Line: Want to grow the game? Just add Augusta National

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In a pre-Masters edition we examine growing the game from the top down, Jordan Spieth’s growing confidence and a growing concern that the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play is broken.

Made Cut

Growing the game. Each year the game’s power brokers spend a good amount of time and resources coming up with programs to help grow the game, and more often than not those initiatives fall short of expectations.

The exception to this rule is Sunday’s Drive, Chip & Putt Championship at Augusta National. The program has grown every year since it began thanks in large part to the ultimate enticement, a trip to Augusta National, and is arguably the best grow-the-game initiative in a generation.

This week’s Augusta National Women’s Amateur is proving to be another impressive step to expand golf’s reach.

Officials at Augusta National have a monopoly on a certain Georgia golf course, and it seems, good ideas.

Kisner kismet. Kevin Kisner left the WGC-Match Play shaken to his competitive core last year. After advancing to Sunday’s championship match against Bubba Watson, Kisner’s game abandoned him and he lost the final, 7 and 6.

“I felt like something was amiss if I came out and played the way I did. It didn’t feel like a quirk to me,” Kisner said last Sunday at Austin Country Club. “That was the hardest part to get over, is something wrong with my golf swing and my chipping and putting? And to work through that was the toughest mental side.”

Kisner made the most of his shot at redemption last Sunday with a 3-and-2 victory over Matt Kuchar in the championship bout. Players talk regularly about learning more from defeat than victory but in this case it’s the lesson in mental toughness that Kisner provided that is most impressive.


Tweet of the week:

Since last year’s U.S. loss at the Ryder Cup it’s become good fun for the Europeans to throw shade at the American side, but Westwood’s jab carried a little extra sting.

It’s difficult, if not impossible, in retrospect to imagine U.S. captain Jim Furyk picking Kisner for last year’s team over the likes of Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson.

“Was he going to leave Phil at home and take Kiz? Nobody is going to do that, right? Even though hindsight is 20/20, everybody should have taken Kiz,” Kisner joked on Sunday.

What’s not difficult is to imagine how things might have turned out differently in Paris if Furyk had taken a chance on Kiz.



Made Cut-Did Not Finish (MDF)

All about timing. Jordan Spieth is again under the microscope this week at the Valero Texas Open, where he opened with a 68 and was two shots off the early lead.

With next week’s Masters looming it could be impeccable timing for a player who hasn’t posted a top-10 finish on the PGA Tour this season and has dropped to 32nd in the Official World Golf Ranking.

It could also be another false start like his opening 64 at the Genesis Open or his first-round 66 at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. He finished 51st and 45th at Riviera and Pebble Beach, respectively.

One odds-maker has Spieth listed for the Masters ahead of the likes of Mickelson, Paul Casey and Matt Kuchar, who have all won on Tour this season.

Augusta National has always brought out the best in Spieth but as he works his way through this slump it’s probably best to let the results produce optimism, not vice versa.


Missed Cut

Why Mess with Texas? The answer was largely sponsorship driven when Shell pulled the plug after two-and-a-half decades with the Houston Open, in 2018. There was also scheduling forces at play as the PGA Tour transitioned to a condensed lineup this season, but the end result is a less inspiring run up to the Masters.

Officials with the Houston Open, which will move to the fall portion of the schedule beginning this year, had worked magic with the Golf Club of Houston, transforming the layout into the closest facsimile to Augusta National this side of Washington Road.

Run off areas around the greens were groomed to simulate the conditions at the Masters and green speeds were ramped up all in an attempt to persuade players bound for the year’s first major to add the event to their schedules.

TPC San Antonio, the venue for this week’s Valero Texas Open, is a fine course but will never be confused for Augusta National and this week’s field is evidence of that.

Last year’s Masters tune-up in Houston included five of the top 30 players in the world. Just three from the top 30 made the trip to San Antonio this week. Perhaps the scheduling change had to happen but that doesn’t mean you have to like it.

Match Play maneuvering. There was no shortage of ideas last week to fix what ails the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play.

Players, officials and the media talked of transitioning to some form of stroke-play qualifying like that used at the U.S. Amateur to set the stage for knockout match play. Dell Technologies even suggested a move to stroke play on the weekend, although that proposal didn’t seem to resonate with anyone.

“What would you call it?” Paul Casey asked.

What’s clear is that there is no magic bullet for an event that’s always struggled with a format that can quickly gut a field of star power. The alternative is to do nothing and continue to use the group-play format that was introduced in 2015, an option that transformed the most exciting Wednesday in golf into three watered-down and confusing days of round-robin play.

The easiest thing to ever do is nothing, but as the event has proven the last five years that’s simply not a great option.