The Caddy Guy Blog

With the breaking news that the 2019 USPGA Championship is moving to the earlier timeslot of May, this will be one of the last times where the final major occurs in August. This is in part to facilitate the 2020 Olympics in Japan, but I like the idea of having a mammoth tournament each summer month, with The Players initiating it in March. The fact that The Open is the climax of the major season is beautiful for me, as it is my favourite of the Majors and it can feel at times that the USPGA is the forgotten major.

This weeks starts with a little anecdote. With a lull in The Open precedings on Saturday evening, I asked one of the girls in the bar to switch to catch the end of a Gaelic Football knockout game (pretty much our playoffs) between Mayo and Cork. The club team were playing another club in a competition, so in effect I had the bar to myself, only staff were present. Mayo are the perennial bridesmaids in the competition, reaching final after final, all to no avail.

After the failure of last week, I owe you guys a solid preview of The Open here on the Monday Takeaway…

It’s a takeaway just to skim through some of the news stories from the last week…

It’s the post US Open edition of the greatest US Open prediction in the world…

Though the preview for the US Open will be forthcoming, one of the great aspects about this page is chartering the success of the Irish that compete at any level.

It’s a bank holiday in Ireland but the Monday Takeaway doesn’t rest on its laurels, not on US Open week anyway…

Monday’s Takeaway had been set to recap the on-course happenings of the first Rolex Series event at Wentworth, where Alex Noren came form nowhere to bag his first win of 2017, moving back into the worlds top ten...

The fifth major was played as thus, with Sawgrass and its multitude of changes yielding no quarter. That only the winner, Si Woo Kim, finished in double digits under par, was a testament to the grueling test of golf that was shown on the weekend.

Not much has happened in my absence (The Lexi Rule, the Christie Kerr debacle, Paul Dunne missing out on victory by the most slender of margins, the Zurich Classic in New Orleans amongst other things…) but with the change in time comes the best period of golf.

I’m going to take this opportunity to force some humble pie down my throat after the events of yesterday. Aside from my pre Masters picks (which I’ll get to later), I, like many others, were waiting for the cataclysmic chain of events that would send Sergio Garcia spiraling out of orbit.

It’s Masters Friday, so we better ramp up the coverage here. Time for a Friday takeaway lads and lassies (you all will be suitably stuffed by Monday!) It’s hard to beat an Augusta that shows its teeth. Persistent winds made a hard course a lot harder, and those close to the top had to use a fair chunk of their resolve, and more than a fair share of luck, to get anything out of an opening day like that. The better conditions appeared extremely late on.

It’s the week of the 2017 Masters, and the real golf season begins in earnest. The build up has focused on many aspects, from the return of Tiger, to the resurrection story of Speith, Dustin Johnson’s visceral form, Rory’s return from injury and whether we will have a repetition of the scenes we experienced on the back nine of the Sunday of last year.

The Irish didn’t have the greatest of weeks. Rory didn’t get out of his WGC group, starting off with a loss against the veteran Dane Soren Kjeldsen. He actually played well, shooting four under, but Soren was soaring to the occasion of tackling one of the worlds best.

It’s the first occasion that the Arnold Palmer Invitational does not have the great man himself, sadly. As such, it’s a pity that more of the higher echelon of the field didn’t pay more respect by entering. I do understand that the scheduling doesn’t help, especially in the lead up to the Masters.

In matters of competition, the Hero Indian Open was won by the alphabet, S.S.P. Chawrasia, on a tough DLF course. This Player design is tricked up to say the very least, with faux riveted bunkers that are coffin deep, and possesses some man made extreme undulation. One of the Par Threes even offers two greens, split by a bunker. Why that’s necessary is beyond me, but hey?

Off the bat, a huge congrats to Paul Dunne on his top ten finish in South Africa. It should go a good bit towards making sure he keeps his card and allows him leeway to go after a tournament or two. Admittedly, a few of the big guns weren’t there, but he did what he had to do, so kudos to him.

It comes post trip to the beautiful and extremely rugged North West coast. So much is made of fantastic tracks, like Lahinch, Waterville and our own Ballybunion, that many other areas are woefully neglected by the masses. I don’t just mean by foreign visitors.

Before the juiciness of the PGA is discussed, we must talk of the new format in Perth. It seems Keith Pelly knows that variety is the spice of life and could be the key to spicing up golf for the fraternity. After watching the event this morning, and after stuffing my face, Sky showed the Sporting Rivalries about the Ryder Cup. If that didn’t raise the hairs on the neck, I don’t know what will. Long story short, the combative format of taking on someone mano I mano is an inherent trait in all of us, made the more boisterous when tribal passion is at hand.

The Pebble Beach Pro-Am was more of a tester for the competitors that they would have expected. California weather has been a real mixture, especially in the north, so it was good to see tour pros put through what us mere mortals, especially on Irelands rugged coastline, are exposed to on the regular.

It’s been a rollercoaster of a sporting weekend. Full disclosure-I didn’t get to witness much of the playoff at Scottsdale, owing to a small game of football that started at the same time. Tom Brady has that effect on me though. I digress…

It’s pretty obvious where the discussion will gravitate to this week, so I better get the particulars out of the way first. A mixed bag of performances from our natives. In Qatar, G-Mac got off to a flyer.

Let’s start with the European Tour shall we? The action failed to live up to the theatrics of last week’s playoff victory by Rory, but still went down to the wire in Abu Dhabi, with Tommy Fleetwood emerging victorious for the first time in four years.

Earlier yesterday, there was fantastic drama in the High Veld. The South African Open served up an epic (excuse the pun Rory) finale, as Graham Storm continued his redemption story, beating Rory after three play off holes, four Hail Mary’s and some escapes that Houdini would marvel at.

So Justin Thomas is the winner from Hawaii. Admittedly it essentially ranks as an exhibition tourney, with fairways so wide that even yours truly could find them, but it ranks as a win, and with his prodigious talent, it could be used as a water shed moment for him. Anyone that witnesses his swing will know that it’s up there with the best on tour, but the issue is with the more nuanced aspects of the game. Can he hone the less bombastic aspects of his game to greater effect?

Welcome one and all to the first Takeaway of 2017. It has been laying semi dormant for some time now, but with the return of the Tournament of Champions, another season rolls around. Recently, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, taking over the reigns from outgoing Tim Finchem, has hinted that the PGA may pursue a much smaller window of operation. This is to avoid scheduling conflicts with the all-powerful NFL and college football.