The post Seminole Skins grades: From ‘A’ (DJ’s pace of play) to ‘F’ (Rickie’s wedge) appeared first on Golf.

The post Seminole Skins grades: From ‘A’ (DJ’s pace of play) to ‘F’ (Rickie’s wedge) appeared first on Golf.

Let me start by saying that we will be grading this week’s test on a curve due to extenuating circumstances. Live golf is back! It’s terrific! If that sounds like what the kids are calling a “participation trophy,” remember that this match raised many millions of dollars and provided a slight change in the monotony of your Sunday afternoon couch routine. What more could you ask for? (Wait — don’t answer that. We can tackle it together.)

Without further ado, a selection of grades for the afternoon’s activities at Seminole.

Dustin Johnson’s pace of play

Grade: A+. Dustin Johnson did not play his very best golf on Sunday, but he did appear to play his very fastest golf. Despite the languid manner with which he speaks, D.J. is among the world’s fastest walkers and he certainly wastes no time over the ball. Throw in a general apathy plus the comforts of a skins game format? Light speed.

Rickie Fowler’s putter

Grade: A. The guy made what, seven birdies? He was rolling the rock and carrying his partner around. He just didn’t quite carry him over the finish line. More on that later.

Carry bags

Grade: A. Carry bags rule. Pros carrying bags rules. Even though I’m sad we didn’t get any “I left my bag in the fairway, but topped my drive short of the forward tees” moments, this was still fun and relatable. Why do staff bags exist again?

Rory McIlroy’s wedge game

Grade: A. If he’d missed that last green, this may have been an F. But he sure didn’t! A skins game is all about picking your spots, after all…

Spit-shining golf clubs

Grade: A-. Overall, extremely fun, cool and relatable. Can’t give it a straight up “A,” though, because saliva is basically international enemy No. 1 at the moment.

Matthew Wolff’s charity driving

Grade: A-. Matthew Wolff won the long drive competitions on both Nos. 2 and 14 (Ahem — just like I promised he would in my prop bets column!) with a pair of scintillating smashes. They made the rest of his squirrelly tee shots look even worse by comparison.

News

Mike Tirico’s presidential interview

Grade: B+. I was impressed that Tirico brought up Rory McIlroy’s less-than-flattering comments about the president to the president. Couldn’t have been easy. Slight demerits for the way Tirico changed the real essence of those remarks and for just how strange that entire interview sequence was, but still — he did his job.

Mark Russell’s outfit

Grade: B+. Overheated? Maybe. Professional? No doubt. Rules Guy Mark Russell did an excellent job as Puller of the Pins and did so with his trademark shirt, tie and slacks. No Puma shorts for this guy!

Oklahoma State’s facial hair

Grade: B. I think I’m supposed to feel like Wolff and Rickie going Mustache Bros was either the Best Vibe Ever or Worst Look Ever, but I can’t quite summon that sort of passion. This seems to be Slick Rick’s go-to look now anyway, and Wolff? He looked nice. Bit of a Baker Mayfield vibe. Well done.

Seminole on TV

Grade: B. The hype was always going to be tough to live up to, and given the circumstances they did an excellent job of showcasing the golf course for the first time. Awesome drone footage and flyovers for between-shot action. Plus, the Donald Ross greens were on solid display. But tons of rain took any of the firm-and-fast fire out of the place and the impossibility of a fully operational camera setup meant we were still left wanting more.

Social distancing

Grade: B. It was easy to see players drawn in by the normal rhythm of golf — sidling up alongside a teammate to mutter something while another player was putting, for instance. That sort of muscle memory is tough to overcome. There was an early Steve Sands interview with Johnson where he got a little close, too. In general, though, players and crew seemed cognizant of keeping their distance, which sent a good message to those at home. McIlroy’s finishing air-five, while lame, was a good message, too. Someday we’ll be back to awkward missed high-fives, don’t worry.

Camerawork

Grade: B-. Look, I think we can definitely agree that everyone busted their butts to get us four of the world’s best golfers playing Seminole on TV. But we can also agree that some of the golf shots were difficult to see and many were difficult to track. We’re not pointing fingers, I promise! We appreciate you. But these were tricky circumstances to say the least.

This tiebreaker

Grade: B-. While the sight of players in golf carts cruising back toward No. 17 tee was hardly Ride of the Valkyries from Apocalypse Now, the closest-to-the-pin format was certainly better than the bizarre practice-green showdown between Tiger and Phil last year in Vegas. There was a clear winner, for one thing, without playing the hole multiple times. And we saw the No. 1 player in the world facing real pressure. That was a satisfying finish.

The witty banter

Grade: D. If the closest thing to a zinger felt like a FedEx-sponsored segment of Tour Trash Talk, probably wasn’t great. These guys seem slightly too aware that they’re performing, when all we’d really want is for them to be themselves.

Golf without fans

Grade: D. Golf without fans stinks by comparison. We don’t have to pretend otherwise! We can acknowledge its stinkiness even while we remain grateful for fan-free golf on TV.

The Bill Murray interview

Grade: D-. Bill Murray seems, objectively, like a great guy. But when it comes to his golf shtick — specifically an extended interview taking away from the live golf we’ve been thirsting for — it’s a rough combination. Look, we still love the guy. He’s just a bit overexposed is all.

Rickie Fowler’s last shot

Grade: F. It wasn’t quite a shank. But when you’re staring down a 120-yarder for the match, you’ve gotta do better than a thin block. Rickie Fowler carried his team all the way to extra time — but that was as far as he could go.

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The post The real winners of the Seminole skins game didn’t hit a single shot appeared first on Golf.

The post The real winners of the Seminole skins game didn’t hit a single shot appeared first on Golf.

Golf* is back. The play was spotty, the silence deafening on a fan-less course, the call-ins to the telecast downright distracting, but Sunday’s TaylorMade Driving Relief skins game gave us exactly what we all desperately needed: golf, featuring four telegenic Tour stars. Not that it really matters, but the heavyweight duo of Rory McIlroy-Dustin Johnson won $1.85 million to $1.15 for the upstart team of Rickie Fowler and Matt Wolff, with all of it going to charity in the ongoing battle against coronavirus. Including various bonuses and viewer donations, more than $5.5 million was raised for a host of good causes. The real winners were fans everywhere, who got to sink into their couches on a Sunday afternoon to watch golf, just as in the old days.

Fowler rode a hot putter to put on the best show, not surprising for a three-time Seminole Pro-Member champ and practice-round legend on Tour. Wolff, who at 21 has by far the thinnest resume of the players on display, looked nervy throughout but hit a couple of missiles to win the long-drive bonuses on two different holes. Johnson fought his putter and driver throughout, drowning three balls in water hazards and making only one birdie in the first 13 holes, on No. 3, though it was worth a trio of skins with the carryovers.

Still, he entertained with his lightning-fast pace of play and manifest awkwardness in having to carry his own bag. (Among the social distancing protocols in place was the banning of caddies.) McIlroy enjoyed the most course knowledge at the celebrated Donald Ross creation, because his father Gerry is a member at Seminole, but Rory’s game was clearly rusty and he missed out on various scoring chances. “It’s different when you’re not playing for your own money but playing for a cause, it starts to weigh you on a little bit,” McIlroy said.

When the last six skins were halved, the final $1.1 million was decided by playing a gimmicky closest-to-the hole contest on a manufactured 19th hole, but that’s okay. McIlroy hit a sweet little wedge shot from 120 yards through a stiff breeze to take the cake. In victory, all he could do was a few wireless high-5s and shout, “Thanks, guys!”

If the golf was a little uneven there were still many pleasures to be had, from McIlroy annihilating tee shots with ease to Fowler holing clutch putts and then pantomiming to the imaginary crowd. All of the players wore microphones. The trash-talking felt forced — witness Rory woofing about his FedEx Cup victories, of all things — but the subtle pleasures including forensic discussions after missed putts and low-key self-flagellation following mediocre shots. (Pros, they’re just like us!)

To fill dead time while the players strolled the fairways, NBC rang up everyone from Bill Murray to President Trump, but neither interview was well-received by Golf Twitter. Seminole created better buzz in its television debut, bewitching with devilish greens and sandy, scrubby waste bunkers. These are Ross hallmarks but the strategically-placed palm trees and ocean views made for televised golf porn.

In the end, this skins game will be remembered not for any one shot or bit of woofing but for what it represented: the first step on the long road back to normalcy. As Johnson said afterward, “It was very nice to part of something so cool.”

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The post Rory McIlroy reveals what makes Seminole Golf Club so different appeared first on Golf.

The post Rory McIlroy reveals what makes Seminole Golf Club so different appeared first on Golf.

Long before this weekend’s skins game was announced, Rory McIlroy had spent plenty of time at Seminole Golf Club. McIlroy’s Florida residence is just a short drive away, and his father, Gerry — whom Rory gives four shots a side, he said — is a member at the exclusive club.

This website has extensively chronicled what we know about Seminole over the course of the week leading up to Sunday’s Taylormade Driving Relief skins game. Seminole insider Michael Bamberger has written about what the course is like as a hang. Our Top 100 Courses panelists have detailed its best holes and how amateurs would fare. But what does McIlroy himself really think of the place? Luckily, he dished on the course earlier this week on the McKellar Golf Podcast (which you can and should listen to here!) and gave some insight into what makes Seminole different.

“It’s brilliant. It’s a pure golf club, I think that’s first and foremost, there’s no — obviously over here in the States, there’s a lot of country clubs and there’s a lot of stuff that goes on outside of the golf, y’know, pools and tennis courts and gyms and there’s a big social thing. Seminole is just a pure golf course. The president of the club, who I’ve gotten to know pretty well over the years, Jimmy Dunne — he always describes it as, ‘Seminole has probably the highest golfing aptitude of any golf club in the United States,’ which is a pretty good way to describe it.”

To hear McIlroy tell it, this isn’t a course where members will lounge about the pool, nor even the distance-restricted driving range. They’re eager to get out and play.

“But people roll up half an hour before their tee time, hit a few balls on the range — the range is 230 yards long, I definitely can’t hit driver on it, a few of the members can’t either — but you warm up and then you go out and play and it’s brilliant.”

That squares with McIlroy’s recent ethos that his time is better spent playing rather than merely practicing. It’s also primarily a walking course, a fitting site for Sunday’s skins game, where players will carry their own bags.

“Everyone walks, you can obviously carry your own bag if you want, there’s caddies. … Jimmy Dunne a few years ago took out all the benches just to speed up play, so people can’t sit down.”

According to McIlroy, the club wastes no time reminding you about pace of play.

“There’s a note on the first tee, it’s: ‘Play good, play fast. Play bad, play faster.’ That’s the motto. So they’re very proud of the fact that they can get around the golf course in a four-ball in just over three hours.”

McIlroy also revealed on the podcast that he’s been focusing more on the finer points of golf course architecture, which has allowed him to appreciate Seminole in a whole new light.

“So it’s a real golf club, and it’s brilliant, it’s a wonderful design, Donald Ross, some of the greatest green complexes in the world, it’s a very cliche thing to say in golf course architecture that it’s a second-shot course, but it really is. There’s plenty of room off the tee, but you really have to think about where you’re placing your ball with your approach shots.”

You can (and should!) listen to the entire podcast interview here.

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The post Tour Confidential: What will be the difference between the Skins Game and Match II? appeared first on Golf.

The post Tour Confidential: What will be the difference between the Skins Game and Match II? appeared first on Golf.

Both events include two teams and four players, but the star studded fields are not all that similar.

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The post Tour Confidential: Who’s more likely to win between McIlroy/Johnson and Fowler/Wolff? appeared first on Golf.

The post Tour Confidential: Who’s more likely to win between McIlroy/Johnson and Fowler/Wolff? appeared first on Golf.

Rory and DJ are the favorites but GOLF staffers think former Oklahoma State standouts Fowler and Wolff aren’t huge underdogs.

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The post At Home with Matt Wolff appeared first on Golf.

The post At Home with Matt Wolff appeared first on Golf.

The up and coming Tour star feels confident heading into the ‘TaylorMade Driving Relief’ competition but will leave the trash talking to his partner, Rickie Fowler.

The post At Home with Matt Wolff appeared first on Golf.

The post Tour Confidential: A closer look at Seminole Golf Club appeared first on Golf.

The post Tour Confidential: A closer look at Seminole Golf Club appeared first on Golf.

The “TaylorMade Driving Relief” event will take place at the exclusive Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach. Here’s what GOLF staffers know about the Donald Ross course.

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The post New Skins Match Announced appeared first on Golf.

The post New Skins Match Announced appeared first on Golf.

Rory McIlroy and Dustin Johnson will take on Rickie Fowler and Matthew Wolff in the team event called TaylorMade Driving Relief, which will be held at Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Fla.

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