Concession vs. gimmes...
The most scrutinized smile in golf...
One small step on the first tee at Augusta National, one giant leap for womankind...
All square vs. tied...
So, let’s get this rant going with Sergio Garcia, who knows a thing or two about rants.
There are no gimmes in match play, just concessions.
Sergio Garcia’s mindless rake in his short miss at the seventh hole in the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play quarterfinals last weekend ignited a firestorm, leaving reasonable people to wonder how the fear of social-media backlash might have complicated Matt Kuchar’s response.
Every athlete’s misstep nowadays comes with a million jurors firing off verdicts like daggers.
This should have been simple. Kuchar didn’t concede the putt. Garcia made double bogey. Kuchar won the hole and we move on. Or we at least should have.
Somewhere, Suzann Pettersen is shaking her head. She knows better than anyone that concessions aren’t so simple.
Hey, maybe Kuchar remembered how complicated that 2015 Solheim Cup got after American Alison Lee said she thought she heard the Euros concede a putt that Pettersen insisted was never conceded. Lee completely changed the conversation, rallying support that left Pettersen overwhelmed by the backlash. Pettersen said she later cried under the weight of a social-media mob’s anger.
Or maybe Kuchar remembered the vitriol Erica Shepherd faced after she held defeated Elizabeth Moon in a U.S. Girls’ Junior semifinal match two years ago, after a decisive short miss that Shepherd never conceded.
The rest of us remember, and some of us wonder if that factored into Kuchar wanting a rules official to have final say, to ultimately relieve him of any backlash Twitter minions might thrust upon him.
The man, after all, may still be smarting over the backlash he got for shorting his local caddie after winning at Mayakoba last fall.
Rules official Robby Ware was a potential buffer, maybe more between Kuchar and another social media mob with torches and pitchforks than between Kuchar and Garcia.
“I kind of just stuck with what the rules official said the rule was,” Kuchar said
That was after Garcia basically called Kuchar out, saying if Kuchar felt that bad about winning the hole, he could concede a hole, to even things out.
While Kuchar’s response to Garcia’s mistake complicated matters, it didn’t absolve Garcia.
Yes, Garcia said at match’s end that he was at fault, but he sure looked as if he blamed Kuchar for not retroactively conceding the putt. There was a tense exchange on the course.
“I screwed it up, it’s as simple as that,” Garcia said.
That’s what Garcia said in one breath, but then in another, as a postscript, he seemed to blame media for another fire he started.
“You guys never want to talk to me, only on days like this,” he said.
This is vintage Sergio, the unsympathetic victim of his own devices.
That’s not to say Kuchar was a sympathetic protagonist.
Kuchar apologizing to Garcia for the way he won the hole sounded disingenuous to more than Garcia.
Former European Ryder Cup captain Paul McGinley was among them, as reported by the Telegraph.
“It gives an insight into Matt Kuchar,” McGinley, the Sky Sports analyst, said. “You see the smiley, nice Matt Kuchar. You’ve seen the incident with the caddie. There’s a hardness about him. Don’t be fooled by him. I think we saw another illustration of it there. There’s a hardness, a toughness about Matt Kuchar that he puts a big facade up around.”
Ouch.
Lee Westwood didn’t see much he liked in how the non-concession played out.
“I don’t think anyone came out of that well,” he said.
If the ISPS Handa Vic Open was a mustard seed of possibility for women’s golf, the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur is a Redwood seed.
Even for those LPGA pros smarting because the event wasn’t made for them, that’s the hope.
The Vic Open was co-sanctioned for the first time by the LPGA back in February. While it may be the smallest purse on the women’s tour ($1.1 million), it’s the biggest idea in the women’s game. Men and women played the same course at the same time for the same amount of prize money.
That’s what women want to get every week.
The Augusta National Women’s Amateur doesn’t offer any purse at all, but it may prove to be the best seed money ever put into the women’s game.
“I just hope corporations start recognizing the value of investing in the women’s game, the way Augusta National does,” two-time major champion Cristie Kerr said when the new event was announced. “There are so many corporate sponsors in the men’s game who don’t invest a single dollar in the women’s game. Obviously, that’s their prerogative, but we have a lot of value as a tour.”
Augusta National’s collection of power brokers, CEOs and leaders are now invested in growing the women’s game.
They’re taking special interest in watching young female amateurs emerge, and it’s only natural to hope they’ll become emotionally invested in where these young players go.
And a lot of these young players will go on to the LPGA.
There’s a lot of good work poured into the modernized new Rules of Golf, despite all the trouble PGA Tour pros have had adjusting to some of the changes. But there are certain traditions that are just so unique and natural to golf they shouldn’t be abandoned.
Like calling matches all square, instead of tied.
Like halving a hole, instead of tying.
The WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play Championship gave us a lot of ties, to the chagrin of many of us. All square would have been so much easier on the ears.
Somewhere on the great courses in the cosmos, you know Bobby Jones and Ben Hogan aren’t calling their matches tied.
And they aren’t dropping from knee height, either.