Here’s a depressing fact: The 2013-14 PGA Tour season will resume in 22 days, barring, of course, another onslaught of hellacious winds, freak snowstorms, derechos and seemingly everything but locust attacks.
Seriously – 22 days. That’s barely enough time to roll out all of this end-of-the-year content, crank out season-preview stories, buy and return gifts, and then board a flight bound for Kapalua.
So it follows that this will be the final #AskLav mailbag of the year, because, really, we’re left with little choice. There aren’t many Thursdays remaining in 2013. But before diving into your mailbag questions, here are one scribe’s reflections on the year that was:
• That Tiger Woods won five times and still wasn’t the clear-cut choice for Player of the Year choice tells me two things: 1.) He continues to be judged by the absurdly high standards that he set; and 2.) The quality of golf this year, worldwide, was incredible.
• Never covered a tournament quite like the WGC-Match Play. That week I had the early shift, meaning I covered the tournament Tuesday-Friday while another writer (in this case, the inimitable Rex Hoggard) stayed for the weekend when the field was cut to eight players. That was the plan, anyway. Mother Nature clearly had other ideas, and soon about four inches fell on the otherwise forgettable Dove Mountain course. There were snowball fights, dudes sledding on pizza boxes and long lines for hot chocolate. The warmest jackets we packed were fleece pullovers, and I ended up covering only a round and a half before heading to the airport. Needless to say, the Match Play is not on my 2014 tournament wish list.
• The course I most wanted to play this year: National Golf Links of America. The host site for the Walker Cup matches is truly spectacular, and an ideal course for a match-play event. Let’s hope it’s not another 91 years before NGLA stages another high-profile tournament.
• Best Tour stop if you like food (which I do): Zurich Classic. Gained nine pounds this April after eating fried seafood platters, barbecued shrimp and succulent chargrilled oysters. And, yes, I’m drooling as I type this.
• What did we learn from the Tiger-Sergio spat this year at the Players? When provoked, TW always seeks and destroys.
• The top 5 in the world ranking as of this writing is Tiger, Scott, Big Stense, Rosey and Phil. At this time next year, I think it will look like this: Tiger, Scott, Rory, Big Stense, Jason Day.
• One of the great thrills of the year was catching up with Jim Furyk’s group to follow his bid for 59 in Chicago. For all of his meltdowns in the past few years, he showed a lot of stones by stuffing that gap-wedge shot to kick-in range.
• Yes, Merion was tricked out for this year’s U.S. Open. It was possible, maybe even likely, to snap a wrist while hitting out of that rough. The average player couldn’t get home with driver-driver on 18. But man, what an awesome collection of holes.
• Watching Rory McIlroy in San Antonio, I was convinced that he’d turn it around and win soon thereafter. His strut was back, but so, too, were the titanium-denting drives and rock-solid stroke. Yeah, that didn’t quite pan out – he didn’t win for another 34 weeks.
• For what it’s worth, I was behind the first green at Conway Farms, staring right at Tiger, when his ball apparently moved in the pine needles. This new video rule is a good one – there was no way that movement was discernible to the naked eye.
• Precisely half of my rounds played this year were during GolfChannel.com’s 11-day adventure in Scotland – 126 holes in five days. My best round of the year (73) was in a tournament the day before my wedding. My worst (85) was the first round after my nuptials. Coincidence?
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