By Joel Beall
ORLANDO — Listen to the bell, all heinous sandbaggers. It tolls for thee.

Like communism, golf’s handicap system is rooted in good intentions, but is an infrastructure that is easily falsified and exploited. What was supposed to create a level playing field for sticks and hacks often tips the scales in the latter’s direction, with better players penalised for, uh, being good. If this sounds dramatic, well, clearly you’ve never been on the business end of a 12-handicap “magically” shooting 75.

Yet those days of gaming the system are coming to an end, thanks to Cap Patrol.

Developed by George Thurner of Covington, Ky., Cap Patrol is a computer operation that polices the scores of a golf club’s membership, monitoring those who aren’t keeping the sport’s gentleman’s ethos at heart.

“I’ve held every position at my club [Hyde Park Country Club], and have heard every handicap-related nightmare you can imagine,” Thurner said Wednesday at the PGA Merchandise Show. “They all end in the same way, which is an aggrieved party demanding justice. But there was no clear-cut way to determine if someone was sandbagging.

“And that’s not counting the effect it had on [a club’s] morale. No one wants to deal with the fallout of having someone cheating a tournament or his fellow members. That’s why I went to work.”

Thurner is a sports statistician by trade, previously creating “Statzhub” to provide statistics, game stories, photos and videos for any high school competition. Playing around with algorithms and past GHIN data, Thurner—with consultation from the USGA—was able to identify five key areas that sandbaggers use to manipulate their handicap. (At the moment, those areas are proprietary, and private.)

The result: A program that generates a report allowing clubs to easily follow every player to determine if their handicap reflects their true performance and potential. Using past scores and a course’s rating and slope, the report features odds and probability to determine if the score in question should be flagged.

For example, if a 10-handicap turns in a 74, the system says this is a round that should happen once every 42 years. Which, hey, happens … but the odds of it coinciding at the member-guest raise an eyebrow.

“If you are going to accuse someone of cheating, you need the evidence to support the claim,” Thurner said. “This system puts a numerical value to the question of a player’s handicap looking fishy.”

The equation then provides a club the data and recommendation to support any adjustment a committee or pro deems necessary. And the system has been refined to account for the new World Handicap System that went into effect in the United States on Jan. 1.

But Cap Patrol does more than just monitor inputted scores. It pairs with a club’s tee sheet to confirm scores from each round are submitted. That way, golfers—those on the sandbagging and vanity end—aren’t withholding a score that could unfavourably alter their handicap.

However, as anyone who’s been a member of a club or public league knows, politics can be very much at play in such matters. To ensure fairness—and frankly, civility—a person’s name is hidden from the report. Cap Patrol assigns each player/member a number, with the coinciding list known only by the club pro. That way if someone is flagged, their identity is hidden to all but one before a ruling is made.

“It minimises confrontations, both on the tee and in the board rooms,” Thurner said.

Released 90 days ago, Cap Patrol has already signed up 150 properties, including Oakmont, for its program. Although the algorithm is sold only to clubs/courses, there is an application for players to monitor the system’s data. The app gives analytics like “Hot Index” and “Clutch performance,” while tracking all your personal rounds and progression. It also gives light to how others are playing, and recommends how games in your foursome should be set up with each player’s true handicap.

Thurner understands the apprehension that comes with an outside force playing judge in these sensitive matters. Yet his hope is the idea of an honest playing environment brings back those that have been jaded by past sandbagging incidents, and provides a solution for a problem that’s plagued golf for far too long.

And more important, serves as a warning to those bastard sandbaggers.

“Their day of reckoning is here,” Thurner says.

The post The program that eliminates cheating and sandbagging at your golf course for good appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By John Feinstein
Mike Davis, the CEO of the United States Golf Association, has heard all the rumours, reports and speculation about the changes that are coming to the U.S. Open specifically in the selection of venues.

“Some of them are simply untrue,” Davis says. “Some, I understand where they came from, even if they’re inaccurate. And some might happen down the road, but probably not while I’m still on the job.”

After the success of this year’s Open at Pebble Beach, the rumours began:

• The USGA was thinking of establishing a regular rotation of courses, much like the rota that the R&A has used for years to pick Open Championship sites.
• The USGA was thinking of going into business with a handful of clubs, even establishing an LLC with some of those clubs.
• The USGA was done looking for new golf courses for future Opens.

As with most rumours, there is a degree of truth in some, if not all, of what was being said.

According to Davis, there will be no rota, but, as the schedule from now through 2027 makes clear, there are a handful of courses the USGA will return to on a frequent basis.

“It’s pretty clear that we love Pebble Beach, Pinehurst, Oakmont and Shinnecock,” Davis says. “Those four meet all our criteria: They’re great tests of golf, they set up logistically either very well or well enough, and—being honest—we’re going to make money when we go there. We’re a nonprofit, but the U.S. Open financially supports everything else we do—all our other championships and all the golf programs we sponsor—among other things.”

Photo by Dom Furore
An aerial view of Shinnecock Hills Golf Club.

Davis concedes that the logistics at Shinnecock Hills—notably the traffic that plagued the 2018 event—aren’t perfect. “But the golf course is such a wonderful test, we think it’s worth that inconvenience,” he says. “We know it’s very tough getting there and leaving there, but once you’re there, it’s spectacular.”

The Open is scheduled to go back to Pinehurst in 2024, Oakmont in 2025, Shinnecock in 2026 and Pebble Beach in 2027. That means it will be 10 years between visits to Pinehurst, nine years since the 2016 Open at Oakmont, and an eight-year gap for Shinnecock and Pebble.

Davis thinks Winged Foot has the potential to join the core four, depending on how the Open fares there next year.

“Again, it’s not just the golf course,” he says. “We haven’t been at Winged Foot since 2006. A lot has changed around there since then. If all goes well with traffic, with the neighbourhood, with how the club likes having us there, with how we like being there again, Winged Foot could move into that category.”

But a rota of, say, five courses? No.

“I remember when I first got to the USGA [in 1990], we had constant discussion about things like, ‘How often do we go to Pebble Beach? What about Oakmont?’ We still talk about things like that. At private clubs, there’s always the question, ‘How often do they want us?’

“I also remember P.J. Boatwright [former USGA executive director of rules and competitions] saying back then we couldn’t possibly go to Pinehurst because there was no way to keep the grasses alive in the June heat down there. Now, with all the advances that have been made in grass technology, that’s not a problem for us anymore. We’ve even been able to hold the Amateur there in August.

“There are also some courses where we regularly took the Open in the past where we don’t go anymore. That doesn’t mean we won’t ever go there again, but, in recent years, we’ve gone in different directions.”

Dom Furore
The church pew bunker between the third and fourth holes at Oakmont Country Club.

Much of that different direction came from David Fay, Davis’ predecessor. It was Fay who championed the notion of taking the Open to Bethpage Black, clearing the way to go to other truly public golf courses: Torrey Pines, Chambers Bay and Erin Hills. Torrey Pines worked in 2008 (and will host the Open again in 2021); Chambers Bay and Erin Hills, not so much.

“I think we made a mistake going to two new venues that were also relatively new golf courses in three years,” Davis says of Chambers Bay (2015) and Erin Hills (2017). “The first time you go to a venue, there are almost certainly going to be issues. When the golf courses are almost new, that can add to the problems.”

Bethpage Black—which was not a new golf course—was a big success in 2002, so much so that the USGA returned seven years later. That Open didn’t go as well, drowned by constant rain. But that’s not why the USGA hasn’t returned.

“We wanted to go back,” Davis says, “but the state of New York had basically said it was going to cut funding to maintain the golf course without a hard-and-fast commitment to go back again very soon. We just didn’t feel we could make that kind of commitment. When we hesitated, they went to the [PGA] tour and the PGA [of America], both of whom were willing to commit right away,” for FedEx Cup events, the PGA Championship and the Ryder Cup.

As for the rumours of going into business with perhaps four or five courses? “Let me be honest: We don’t have to go into business with anyone,” Davis says. “We want to play the Open on the best possible golf courses, but there are very few places that might turn us away. We will always have options.”

Photo by Dom Furore
The 17th hole at Pebble Beach Golf Links.

There have been difficult negotiations in the past. After the 2004 debacle with final-day course conditions at Shinnecock, club members were so upset that they wouldn’t even discuss hosting another Open for several years. When Mike Butz, who was Fay’s No. 2 man at the time (and had the same role with Davis) finally began to negotiate with the club, its opening gambit was: Give us a share of your television revenue, and we can talk. That shut down negotiations for another few years until the deal for 2018 was worked out. The club did not get any TV revenue.

Fay also walked away from The Country Club in Chestnut Hill, Mass., while trying to make a deal for 2013—the 100th anniversary of Francis Ouimet’s historic Open victory there. In the end, the USGA went to another historic club—Merion—that year.

The relationship with The Country Club also has been repaired, and the club will host the Open in 2022—34 years after Curtis Strange beat Nick Faldo in a playoff, the last time it hosted an Open.

As for the rumours about setting up an LLC, Davis said there was a bit of truth in that. “There have been times in the past when we thought we needed a nearby piece of land for something logistical, and we’ve talked to clubs about perhaps buying the land together,” he said. “That probably would have involved setting up an LLC. But it’s never actually happened.”

Here’s what is probably a certainty: As long as Davis, who is 54, is in charge, the Open will go to the core four every seven to 10 years, and Winged Foot could make it a core five. Other golf courses will be considered—just less often. Los Angeles Country Club will be a new venue in 2023. Merion is likely to get the Open in 2030, the 100th anniversary of Bob Jones’ U.S. Amateur win there to conclude the Grand Slam.

Dom Furore
The 7th hole at Pinehurt No. 2.

Davis recently made a trip to Erin Hills, because giving the course another try isn’t out of the question. The same is true for Chambers Bay. If the chance to return to Bethpage Black comes up, that, too, might be a possibility.

“Ten or 15 years down the road, when there’s new leadership, the approach might be completely different,” Davis says. “Again, go back 25 or 30 years and look at all the courses that we went to that we don’t go to anymore. What we do is always evolving. But I don’t ever see a day when we limit ourselves to a handful of courses on a permanent basis, no matter how much we love them. I think that would be a mistake.”

Lee Janzen, a two-time U.S. Open champion, sat in the locker room at Shinnecock in 1995 after seeing the golf course for the first time and said this: “The USGA ought to go to Pebble Beach one year and here the next year. Period.”

It wasn’t a bad thought then—or now. But it isn’t going to happen.

• • •

FUTURE U.S. OPEN SITES
2020: Winged Foot G.C. (West), Mamaroneck, N.Y.
2021: Torrey Pines G. Cse. (South), La Jolla, Calif.
2022: The Country Club, Chestnut Hill, Mass.
2023: L.A.C.C. (North)
2024: Pinehurst (N.C.) Resort & C.C. (No. 2)
2025: Oakmont (Pa.) C.C.
2026: Shinnecock Hills G.C., Southampton, N.Y.
2027: Pebble Beach G. Links

The post The future of U.S. Open venues appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Christopher Powers
Following a T-55 finish in the 2017 U.S. Open at Erin Hills, Ernie Els knew that he may have just competed for the final time in the event. Despite winning two U.S. Opens, one in 1994 at Oakmont and another in 1997 at Congressional, the Big Easy was still out of luck, because the USGA does not give out lifetime exemptions to those who pass golf’s toughest test. Winners get exemptions into the next 10 Opens, though Els played in the next 20 thanks to qualifying in a number of different categories during that span.

But he finally ran out of exemptions in 2017, the final year of his five-year exemption he earned via his 2012 Open Championship win at Royal Lytham & St Annes. Erin Hills was his 24th U.S. Open appearance, cutting him one short of 25, though he was able to reach that milestone when the USGA awarded him with a special exemption last year at Shinnecock Hills. Els missed the cut, shooting rounds of 78 and 79.

Fortunately for Els, he’ll get another crack this year, as the USGA announced on Thursday that they’d award Els with another special exemption for the 119th U.S. Open at Pebble Beach this June. It will mark Els’ 27th consecutive appearance in the event, which has included his two victories, eight top 10s and five finishes inside the top five, the most recent coming in 2013 at Merion.

One of those top five finishes also came the last time the U.S. Open was held at Pebble Beach in 2010 when Els finished in solo third. Entering the final round he trailed Dustin Johnson by six shots, and when Johnson began to falter on Sunday Els was suddenly back in the mix. Through 13 holes on Sunday, he was at even par for the week, which would have been good enough to get into a playoff with eventual winner Graeme McDowell, but bogeys at the 14th and 17th holes ended his chances at a third U.S. Open triumph.

Els, who will captain the International team at this year’s Presidents Cup, has shown flashes of his former self in 2019. He’s made eight of 10 cuts on the PGA Tour for the season, with a high finish of T-20 coming at the Honda Classic. Over on the European Tour, Els has a pair of top 15 finishes in just three starts in 2019, including a T-7 at the Maybank Championship.

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PGA Tour pro Zac Blair, with the help of his buddy Andy Johnson at Fried Egg Golf, a website that covers golf-course design and contributes intelligent debate to other topics in golf, polled their social-media followers to determine the best logo in golf. The winner? Merion Golf Club.

Your 2018 #LogoMadness Champion is …. the iconic wicker basket & scotch broom from Merion Golf Club! They took down Winged Foot Golf Club in the championship match. pic.twitter.com/CDnLzUiGvN

— Zac Blair (@z_blair) March 2, 2018

Most serious golfers know Merion’s iconic wicker-basket flagsticks, showcased in its logo, serve as pins at the East Course, whose rich history most famously includes Bobby Jones clinching the Grand Slam on its 11th hole at the 1930 U.S. Amateur. And they’ve done so since 1915, when designer William Flynn, who helped Philadelphia’s Hugh Wilson lay out the 126-acre design on the Main Line of Philadelphia, patented them. The USGA swapped out the wicker baskets for conventional flagsticks in 1950, but has known better not to mess with Merion’s trademark since.

It was probably not an upset for Merion to win this inaugural “Logo Madness,” as Blair dubbed it, as Merion has been known for its logo for almost 100 years. But Merion beat some of golf’s other legendary seals—eventually taking down another Northeast powerhouse, Winged Foot Golf Club, and its ultra clever but classy logo in the finals.

Winged Foot also has a rich championship history that links the legends of the game to its club. And its logo is equally as synonymous with the club as Merion’s is, although the club’s winged-foot emblem is an adaptation from the New York Athletic Club.

The Final Four included two other classics: Alister MacKenzie’s Pasatiempo Golf Club in Santa Cruz, Calif., a public-access facility, and Sleepy Hollow Golf Club in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., designed by C.B. MacDonald and Seth Raynor in 1914, then worked on by A.W. Tillinghast, which edged out another tremendous seal—the whale of Maidstone.

In @the_fried_egg #LogoMadness 3rd place match we have Sleepy Hollow vs. Pasatiempo pic.twitter.com/YVpbE6392v

— Zac Blair (@z_blair) March 1, 2018

Here’s Maidstone’s logo … how great is that? Deserving of its No. 1 seed in this bracket, but getting taken down by another history-laden New York layout in Sleepy Hollow and the headless horseman.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bfi3vUrh9J0/?utm_source=ig_embed

Some other fantastic logos that might not have gotten their due in this contest: McArthur Golf Club’s milkjug logo, Chicago Golf Club’s famous Far & Sure logo and Olympic Club’s winged logo.

Some of our favourites:

Boston Golf Club, with an ode to its city’s history, got the boot after the round of 32—after its unfortunate match-up against Olympic Club’s also awesome logo.

Olympic Club, with an obvious connection to its athletic-club history.

Chicago Golf Club also suffered a tough fate—losing to The Golf Club in Ohio’s logo in the first round. We think it’s one of the most recognizable and historic emblems in golf.

Los Angeles Country Club’s logo is pretty unique within golf. But its spot in the bracket meant an early exit after a defeat by Sleepy Hollow in the second round.

The aforementioned McArthur Golf Club in Hobe Sound, Fla.

And how about Castle Pines—the 100 Greatest club in Colorado didn’t even make this 64-logo field! Those birds belonged in the field, for sure.

The post Does Merion Golf Club have the best logo in golf? This poll declares it the winner appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Dave Kindred

Justin Thomas “smoked” that 3-wood and he “nuked” it, as he also said, and he called it “pretty sweet,” and it was 293 yards to the front of the 18th, 310 to the hole cut in a treacherous spot, and by the time the little guy’s body came unwound from his wicked lash at the ball, he saw the thing in flight and he knew he’d done it, and he said to his caddie, Jimmy Johnson, “Oh, gosh, Jimmy,” and he spoke as well to the ball disappearing in the distance, “Be good.” Here the caddie asked a silly question, “Did you hit it?”

Did he hit it?

Hey, dude. He crushed pured smoked busted nuked nailed and launched it.

A butterfly alighting on a flower, the ball touched down a couple steps short of the flagstick and rolled to a stop eight feet and an inch behind the hole, leaving Thomas a putt that if it weren’t dead-straight, it was only a tiny bit downhill, moving only a tiny bit left to right. Easy putt. Most times.

Except, walking to the green, Thomas knew what awaited.

To his caddie he said, “Let’s try to become part of history here.”

“Yeah,” Johnson said, “let’s do it.”

Make the putt, it’s an eagle on the 667-yard 18th. Make it, he goes nine under par for the round. In the previous 116 U.S. Opens, no one had ever gone so low. Make the putt, it’s for 63, matching four other 63s including Johnny Miller’s eight under round that won the 1973 Open at Oakmont.

Then he had to wait. His playing partner was away. Then he waited more. He sat on his golf bag. He held his arms straight out and shook them because, he said later, he was hungry and he’d been shaky and it was time to make some history, and he didn’t want to get all quivery over a putt he could kick in if, say, he was on vacation in the Bahamas hanging out with his bros Jordan Spieth and Smylie Kaufman and Rickie Fowler, Fowler famous there for his T-shirt reading, “Hope Your Day Is As Nice As Your Butt.”

Time to putt, Thomas barely breathed on the thing and it rolled into history.

He’d made nine birdies and the eagle. He was 11 under for three rounds and, at the moment, the tournament leader by two shots.

“Fun,” he said.

“An awesome day,” he said.

It hadn’t sunk in, the significance of all this history stuff. He said, “But I’m just so excited to give myself a great chance to win this golf tournament.”

By day’s end, Thomas, a four-time winner on the PGA Tour, was a shot behind the leader, Brian Harman, one of a dozen players that blitzed Erin Hills with rounds in the 60s on a shootout kind of day following overnight rain that left the course soft with only its 7,818 yards as its defense – and even Thomas, the smallest of bombers at 5-foot-10 and 145 pounds, said, “You can’t make courses more difficult today by making them longer. They have to have firm greens, narrow fairways and thick rough.”

Harman is a 5-foot-7, 150-pound left-hander who has won twice on tour. At age 30, he is the oldest of the five players within two shots of the lead. Thomas is 24, Brooks Koepka 27, Tommy Fleetwood 26, and Fowler 28—causing Fowler to say, “It’s going to be a really cool day for someone tomorrow. I’m looking forward to my shot at it.” He saw a leader board he liked: “A lot of young guys, lot of great players—someone has a very good chance of ending up with their first major tomorrow.” (That is a near-certainty. Of the first 25 players only Louis Oosthuizen, eight shots behind, is a major champion.)

Though Harman’s 67 and 68s by Koepka, Fleetwood, Fowler and Si Woo Kim were extraordinary efforts on an Open Saturday, it was Thomas’s 63 that electrified the Erin Hills galleries. “I was blown away by the support that I got today,” Thomas said. “It was really cool, to be honest.”

He earned it the hard way. A 6-iron off a sidehill lie above his feet at the third, 204 yards off a wind from the left, saved a par. It did another thing, too, perhaps more important. “Something about that shot kind of calmed me, and it made me very comfortable.” Then, at the fifth, his ball sitting in the first cut off a steeply pitched green, he invented a birdie putt that only the most creative of magicians might have imagined. He putted away from the cup, on a line parallel to the hole, moving the ball two feet and allowing gravity to turn it 90 degrees right, down the incline, into the cup.

If Thomas thought he had an awesome day, he was not alone in the thinking.

A Charlie Riedel

His Bahamas bro, Fowler, playing two hours behind Thomas, said, “I saw J.T. going 5 under, 6, 7, 9, 11.” Still, he hadn’t expected a 63, for who expects such a thing? “But that was cool to see. Definitely inspiring to see him get off to a good start and motivating to want to get myself to go out and play well.”

Once upon a Hogan-Snead-Nelson time, pros shared car rides bouncing around America. The encyclopedia of golf, a.k.a. Dan Jenkins, remembers the pro Johnny Bulla, a pilot, flying six or seven players to the next stop. “They said, ‘If that plane goes down, they’ll have to close down the tour,’ ” Jenkins said. Now, it turns out, the Bahamas bros not only do vacations, they room together—sort of.

Here Fowler and Thomas are sharing a rental house, Thomas upstairs, Fowler in what he called the basement area.

And how might they celebrate tonight?

Fowler smiled brightly. “We’ll have a good time,” he said. “I think we’ll be able to sit back, relax.”

The post Justin Thomas takes a swing at history, and he nails it appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

As Justin Thomas broke Johnny Miller’s record for low score in relation to par at the U.S. Open, people far and wide made cracks about the NBC announcer not enjoying the moment. Turns out, they weren’t too far from the truth.

Thomas shot a third-round 63 at Erin Hills — punctuated by an eagle on No. 18 — to match Miller’s famed final round score from the 1973 U.S. Open. But his nine-under-par total was one better than Johnny’s eight under at Oakmont.

Yet Miller seemed to pour some cold water on JT’s record-breaking round when Golf Channel’s Ryan Lavner spoke to him on Saturday evening:

“Taking nothing away from nine-under par — nine under is incredible with U.S. Open pressure,” Miller said. “But it isn’t a U.S. Open course that I’m familiar with the way it was set up.” Hmm. . .

Of course, Miller has a point. Erin Hills, which is hosting its first major championship, has yielded unusually low scores for a U.S. Open. In addition to Thomas’ 63, there have already been four other rounds of 65, and more players broke par on Saturday than during any previous third round at the tournament. But. . . he still comes across as slightly bitter.

Although, Miller’s mixed reaction (he did give Thomas credit for going that low under U.S. Open pressure) shouldn’t come as a surprise. NBC booth partner Dan Hicks said during a recent Golf Digest podcast that Miller wasn’t too thrilled about Henrik Stenson shooting 63 in the final round of last year’s Open Championship. Not that we blame him. And he’s certainly not the first athlete to root against young whippersnappers coming after their predecessors’ records.

On the bright side for Johnny, he didn’t have to sit in the booth and analyze Thomas’ round on live TV. And we’re pretty sure this is the first time he’s ever trended on Twitter.

Silver linings, right?

The post Johnny Miller pours cold water on Justin Thomas breaking his record appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Ryan Herrington

In the wake of the Sunday U.S. Open rules controversy at Oakmont a year ago, USGA officials have put in place a handful of changes for Erin Hills that they believe will speed up and make more efficient the process of addressing rules issues during the championship.

Notably, the USGA is abandoning the practice of having walking rules officials with each group. Instead, each hole will have a group of stationary rules officials in position to address issues that arise during the competition. The new setup will allow officials to be strategically placed on each hole in various areas to better assist with rulings and pace of play.

“The biggest issue was to be transparent and quick in making a decision and communicating it to a player that might be impacted and to the whole field,” said USGA president Diana Murphy. “That was definitely something we regretted [with our] handling last year.”

Murphy said that, as is the case every year, the association reviewed what took place at Oakmont with a critical eye, knowing there were improvements to be made.

“Each year we have lessons learned, and we go into a review of what can we do better,” Murphy said. “There’s no question we put in a lot of different changes for this championship specially around are rules and our decisiveness in communicating rules decisions. So we feel we’re in a very good spot.”

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