Justin Rose decimates the field at Torrey while Patrick Reed nearly won again on the DP World Tour, a few days removed from announcing he’s not returning to LIV. Plus, what's with the LPGA fiasco at a frigid Tournament of Champions with the Orlando event shortened to 54 holes and Nelly Korda winning for the first time since 2024? Soly and TC recap the week, along with D.J., who joins for some firsthand perspective on the LPGA side of things. TC also takes us around the world of golf with a quick monitoring list, plus a LIV corner and a grab bag of miscellaneous topics.
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Was Nelly’s 64 in the Ken Duke 66 at Sawgrass realm?
I LOL’d so loud when Soly said “I wish I had more hands” when complaining about Torrey Pines.
Since 1115 isn’t up, I’ll just ask here -
@Soly any insight into how your interview with Craig Kessler came to be? Was that the entire interview or did things get cut?
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That was indeed the entire interview. We had been in touch with them about a podcast in March (still on for now), and Chad helped facilitate squeezing this into a really busy day. I went over the allotted time I had and they were very gracious with it.
My own reading: Craig has to eat shit and not throw his players under the bus who were in his ear about not playing. I still think he made the wrong call, and maybe multiple wrong calls, but (again my own words) I think there was a lesson learned here of needing to stand up against the players at a certain point.
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That’s an extremely short interview. Wish you got longer because there’s more questions that I have and I’m sure you do too.
I appreciated his answer on letting the celebs out and that they don’t have the same fallout from injury so it’s different. But I haven’t seen him answer why they sent LPGA players out to finish R3. I would have also liked to learn if they do any independent evaluation on safety of playing conditions or if they just take the players word on it.
If you have any background info on those points I’d love to hear.
I get it. It’d be nice if he could do it in a way that didn’t feel like he was blatantly lying to the fans. All he’s done in my opinion is signal that the LPGA is going to continue to be a joke of an organization that doesn’t even try to consider fans.
For his style of answering the questions, it really wasn’t that short of an interview. For Mike Whan, that length would not have worked.
It was clear to me early that he was going to keep his answers tight and not elaborate on much. I do feel like he indirectly answered the question on Round 3. They made the call to “call it,” meaning they were going to just play 54 holes, which he essentially admits was a mistake. And I think they’d contend that they didn’t send the remaining players out until they felt like it was safe. But at that point, it had already been called a 54 hole tournament.
As I understand it, nobody went back out onto the course until it had already been declared to be a 54 hole tournament.
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Sure. But he doesn’t answer why it was safe for those players to play those holes but was unsafe to play the rest of the tournament. That’s where I’m kind of losing my mind in looking for answers. If the safety risk is in the firmness of the turf from freezing, it’s one of those things where it either is safe or it isn’t safe. From my perspective, 3 holes earlier in the morning is equally as unsafe as 18 holes later in the day. And if that isn’t true, I think Craig needs to explain that and why it is.
I deal with a lot of safety processes in my day to day job. This is not something that would immediately strike me as something that can be just had waived by saying “3 holes is safe but more repetitions makes 18 holes entirely unsafe”. And I’m disappointed that I’m not able to find an LPGA answer to that. If they’re “calling it” then why didn’t they make it a 36 hole tournament rather than risk the safety of the players?
Again - either it is safe or it isn’t safe. If the LPGA is going to use safety as the only reason why they called it, then I feel like it is fair to ask what criteria made it safe for finishing 54, but not for finishing 72.
It just felt like a 5 minute interview that was designed to keep Kessler from having anyone actually have the chance to ask a real follow up question. When the time is restricted that tightly, I completely understand why an interview would end up being scripted questions without room for off the cuff follow ups. Maybe I’m off in my feeling on it, but that was the vibe I got.
I can say the same thing again if it helps?
- Have made the call to make the tournament 54 holes. This was the mistake, calling it too early. He didn’t call this out specifically (IMO he avoided saying this specifically on purpose), but this is where it went wrong. This is the bad call. And this is done once it’s done.
- Weather gets warmer and course is playable. OK, time to send out the remaining players to complete round 3 so we get 54 holes in. “Fuck, I wish I didn’t make this thing 54 holes” sentiment is really kicking in now that the course is clearly ok.
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