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by Jeff Skinner

U.S. Open Countdown: 23 days

As the U.S. Open at Merion grows closer you may want to bone up on your U.S. Open history or just relive some of the greatest moments in golf.  Here are three books that should be able to get you through to the Open.

Who know more about the U.S. Open than the folks at the USGA?  No one I suspect and the first book is from three of the USGA’s own.  Rand Jerris, Michael Trostel and Robert Williams, all experts in golf history, have given us “Great Moments of the US. Open” as the USGA celebrates the 100^th anniversary of Francis Ouimet’s Open victory.  As one would expect it is jammed with amazing photos and full of detailed accounts of all things U.S. Open.

If you ever wondered what it takes to put on an Open, John Feinstein gives us every little detail in “Open: Inside the Ropes at Bethpage Black.”  Feinstein offers plenty of back-story from the 2002 Open at The Black where the USGA brought the Open to the first truly public course.  The Open itself turned out pretty good and Feinstein doesn’t miss any of the stories.

If you don’t want to commit to a full book get your hands on a copy of “One Week In: June the U.S. Open.”  It’s a compilation of writings from some of the best sportswriters in the history of the game.  Herbert Warren Wind, Grantland Rice, Dan Jenkins and Dave Anderson are but a few of the legends that are featured.  You can choose to read just a few pieces to satisfy your Open fix but be careful, you may not be able to put it down.

by Jeff Skinner

1.  With Tiger Woods absent from the HP Byron Nelson Championship millions of golf fans missed the chance to see a great comeback from one of the new faces on the PGA Tour.  Sang-Moon Bae had a four stroke lead on Keegan Bradley but let it slip away.  But he battled back for a two stroke victory and his first PGA Tour win.

2.  Bradley is still hard to watch with his constant stutter-stepping to the ball before he finally hits his shot.

3.  Graeme McDowell probably celebrated his win at the Volvo Match Play Championship with a pint or two and he may not mind the streak he is on.  It’s been feast or famine for GMac with alternating missed cuts and wins in his last four events.

4.  Cheers to Jennifer Johnson for her win at the Mobile Bay LPGA Classic.  It’s the third year LPGA pro’s first career win.

5.  The USGA has scheduled an announcement for Tuesday morning at 8:00am to announce its decision on the proposed anchoring ban.  I say ban the damn thing so we can put all this mess behind us.  As Arnie says, “swing your swing.”  There’s no “anchor” in a golf swing.

6.  Speaking of the USGA, here’s a link to the Golf Magazine Interview with Executive Director Mike Davis.  It covers a lot of topics and proves once again that Davis is a proactive, free thinker in a world where there aren’t many like that.

7.  Nicolas Colsaerts is the latest hit on the internet with his “shot into the loo” at the Volvo Match Play.  I was so hoping he would take the shot from the toilet.

8.  Props to Peter Uihlein for his first professional win at the Euro Tour’s Madeira Islands Open.  He earned a European Tour exemption through the 2014 season.  Uihlein opted for Europe over the U.S. and the Web.com Tour and with his dad the head of Acushnet (Titleist & FootJoy) he certainly could have been awarded some sponsor’s exemptions.  Good job by the kid.

9.  Very nice tributes to Ken Venturi over the weekend by CBS.  Venturi will be missed and I bet there were plenty of tears from those CBS staffers.

10.  I found the perfect way to make those golf telecasts a bit more exciting. With my two TV’s sided by side, I turn the volume up on the hockey game and mute the golf.  It almost made Keegan’s stutter steps bearable.

by Jeff Skinner

It’s been an up and down season for Graeme McDowell and he notched another “up” with his win today at the Volvo Match Play championship in Bulgaria.  He’s missed three cuts this year on the PGA Tour but also has four top tens including his win at The RBC Heritage.

This European Tour win at the Match Play is his latest win in a streak of ups and downs.  His last four events started with a missed cut at The Masters, a win at the Heritage, a missed cut at The Players and this win in Bulgaria.

GMac came from two down early against his championship opponent, Thongchai Jaidee.  McDowell battled back to all-square at the twelfth hole and back to back wins at fourteen and fifteen gave him the cushion he needed and he closed out Jaidee on the seventeenth 2 & 1.

This victory is his eighth on the European Tour and moves him to the top spot in the Race to Dubai money list and up one spot to seventh in the Official World Golf Rankings.

 Click here for GMac’s championship interview.

by Jeff Skinner

Golf lost one of its true gentlemen on Friday as recent Hall of Fame inductee and 1964 U.S. Open Champion, Ken Venturi passed away.  Venturi’s career was cut short by Carpel Tunnel syndrome but certainly was worthy of entry into the Hall.  In just ten years on tour he won 14 PGA Tour events.

He had a great amateur career and played in what may be the one of the greatest match play events ever when he and fellow amateur Harvie Ward took on the best professionals in the game, Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson.

“The Match” as it was called in Mark Frost’s book of the same name, marked a changing of the guard in golf.  In Venturi’s own words, “The Match was a dream I never thought would come true.  If I hadn’t been there I wouldn’t believe it myself…  No one will ever see an event like this again. Fiction can’t touch it.”

An entire generation of golfers only knew Venturi as the voice of golf on CBS Sports but he was much more as he mentored many of the best golfers of the day.

Click here for his obituary in his hometown San Francisco Chronicle.  And here for the New York Times.

by Jeff Skinner

It seems that the past weeks of golf have been dominated by more feuds and fights than actual golf tournaments.

The PGA of America is taking shots at the Royal & Ancient.  The PGA Tour balks at the USGA’s proposed anchoring ban.  Vijay Singh gets suspended for deer antler spray, then gets reprieved and then sues the PGA Tour.

As crazy as all that appears they were only the undercard for this past week’s Tiger Woods vs Sergio Garcia main event.  Who would have thought that Vijay’s lawsuit against the Tour would be forgotten in the drama between Woods and Garcia.

Feuds aren’t rare in golf but having them play out in public with players shooting barbs at one another through the media doesn’t happen often or at least to the extent we saw this past week.

Golf.com explores the “Best Feuds in Golf” in a photo spread that captures everyone from Jack and Arnie to Judge Smails and Al Czervik and of course Tiger and just about anyone.

Spend a few minutes perusing the combatants.  You may be as surprised as I was when I saw that the Jones boys, Robert Trent Jr. and Rees have been going at it for years.  And shockingly Phil Mickelson appears most often in their list of 22 of the best feuds in golf as they list five separate Phil Feuds..

How can the lovable, smiling, fan favorite Mickelson tally so many battles…here’s the tale of the tape for Phil.

1. Phil vs Tiger, of course.

2. Phil vs Steve Williams, remember the “prick” remark.

3. Phil vs Vijay, spike marks at The Masters.

4. Scott McCarron vs Phil, McCarron said Phil would be cheating if he played the “grandfathered in” Ping Eye 2’s.  Phil was just stirring the pot as he like to do.

5.  Phil vs Nike Golf, Phil said it was amazing that Tiger is as good as he was because he was using “inferior equipment.”

Moving on to the most recent of feuds, Tiger vs Sergio, Ron Sirak has the final word on what transpired on Saturday at the second hole.  Sirak was following the two of them and was there when Sergio hit and Tiger’s crowd roared.

It’s a must read and he calls out Sergio for his futile attempts to get back at Tiger,” When play resumed after the weather delay, Sergio tried to play mind games with Tiger, but in that arena of competition, Garcia is giving up several shots a side.

On No. 7, with Sergio on the green after the weather delay, Tiger hit his approach shot and with Tiger still about 100 yards from the green, Sergio froze him by putting, possibly out of turn, which is not a rules violation in stroke play but an arrogant breach of etiquette.

On the next hole, as Woods putted for birdie, Garcia stood directly across from him, leaning on his putter with legs crossed at the ankles, not in an inappropriate position but in an annoying one. Seve Ballesteros would have loved it.”

As we all saw, Tiger wouldn’t have any of it and Sergio collapsed.

Sirak sums it up this way, “Here is my conclusion: There may have been bad communication between Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia — and the marshals — concerning whose turn it was to hit on No. 2 at TPC Sawgrass. But there was no bad behavior, especially on the part of Tiger.

And my bottom line on the incident is this: Championship golf tests not only your physical skill and mental ability to make decisions under pressure, it also examines your character, specifically how well you cope when life deals you a bad hand.

Sergio got a bad break. It happens. Move on. He didn’t.

When it comes to mental toughness, Woods has Ben Hogan and Jack Nicklaus as his only peers. Garcia has Jean Van de Velde. That’s why the major championship scorecard between Woods and Garcia reads 14-0, advantage Tiger.”

Sirak has plenty more to say but that’s the bottom line. Try as he may Sergio will never compare to Woods in the mental toughness category and Woods knows it.

by Jeff Skinner

The LPGA has announced that another tournament will be added to the 2014 schedule with a return to Alabama at the Alabama LPGA Classic.  That will once again give the LPGA two tournaments in the Heart of Dixie.

That’s good news for the hard working commissioner of the LPGA, Mike Whan and even better news for Stacy Lewis as she won both Alabama tournaments in 2012 on her way to the LPGA Player of the Year.

This week the ladies tee it up at The Mobile Bay LPGA Classic and start a string of four consecutive events culminating with their second major at the Wegman’s LPGA Championship in June.

One of the former fixtures on The Golf Channel and NBC’s Golf coverage won’t be there.  Dottie Pepper has moved on to other things when she opted not to renew her contracts for golf coverage with the networks.

She has accepted a voluntary position with the PGA of America and spends most of her days at home in Saratoga Springs, New York.  She wanted a break from the 35 weeks a year of travel and a chance to make a difference in the game she loves so much.

Executive Director of Golf World Magazine, Ron Sirak profiles Pepper in this weeks’ Golf World.  “Why did I walk away from TV to take a non-paying position on the board of the PGA of America?” she asks with a laugh that punctuates many of her sentences. “The problem was merely the number of weeks I was being asked to work. I couldn’t do what I wanted to do for the game long-term being in a suitcase for 32 weeks a year. I can’t do that. I don’t want to do that. I don’t need to do that. I loved what I did. I miss the guys terribly that I worked with. But that offers no life other than calling golf shots. That’s not really how I’m wired.”

Pepper had simply had enough of life on the road and wanted to re-plant her passion and give it a new focus.”

Pepper was quite an athlete and was a good skier during those winter months when she grew up in Saratoga.  But it was golf where she made her name with 14 LPGA wins including two majors.

But it was her remarks about the U.S. Solheim Cup Team that cast a huge shadow on her after her retirement.  “At Halmstad, Sweden, in 2007, thinking Golf Channel had gone to commercial, she referred to Laura Diaz, whom she has known since junior golf, and Sherri Steinhauer as “choking freaking dogs.” Pepper apologized, but the damage was done.”

That remark cost her a chance at a Solheim Cup captaincy and the wound has just been recently closed when good friend and Solheim Cup Captain Meg Mallon named Pepper as an assistant captain.

Now, Pepper has forsaken the microphone for the telephone as she spends her days on conference calls working to grow the game that gave her so much. It’s a new Dottie, a more contented, more mellow Dottie.  And she has never been happier

Update: Dottie has signed on to join ESPN’s Golf coverage.  The shorter schedule of premier events fits her new lifestyle perfectly.

U.S. Open Countdown: 29 days