[Colin Macqueen]

When will it all end?

Colin

[Colin Macqueen]

Sooner than I expected.  What a putt!

[Bruce Hardie]

Not sure what they were thinking in their setup of 4 (6 west), but otherwise a good event.

Miss Lincicombe will be seeing that putt come back at her in her nightmares for a while I think.

[Chris Kane]

What was wrong with the setup on 6W? It looked the same as Friday at the Presidents Cup to me.

[Bruce Hardie]

Maybe it was the way they played it but I think I only saw 2 girls not run through the fairway into the left rough in 2 days of sporadic watching. I think the tee was a long way forward.

[Chris Kane]

True. From the tournament website it appears they played from 337m, which is 54m in front of the back tee. I can't understand why they would do that - that means that the carry over the furthest right part of the fairway bunker is around 180m, and over the middle is 170m, making it irrelevant for most of the field.

Can someone who was out there describe the conditions over the four days? For -3 to make a playoff suggests that the conditions were very difficult, or the best women in the world just aren't very good!   

[Matthew Mollica]

I was there for a short time on Saturday.
The greens didn't have that 'almost purple' tinge to them as they did for the Prez Cup.

The green were firm and reasonably quick in light of all the rain Melbourne had in the last week.
I saw girls fail to hit irons with the sufficient precision so as to have uncomplicated birdie putts.
I also saw a few fall for "three card tricks" and take bogey with poor decisions on approach.

The approaches to 4E (#16 for this tournament) saw several including Korda ad Tseg go at the pin,
when there was no need. Ground contours allow a safely played shot to feed to that pin, with the benefit
of removing the dangerous left side traps from the equation.
Tseng, Korda and several others toog bogey from there today.

Looking at the scores, most seemed to have a blow-up during one of the rounds too.

MM

[Mike_Clayton]

Chris.

It was quite easy the first day - especially in the morning but the second and third days especially the wind blew decently.
I watched Jessica Korda play the last three rounds and to give you and idea of the wind and how far she hits, off the back tee at 12 west she hit driver 8 iron into the par 5 on Friday and Saturday. She is really long but it takes some wind to do that.

The course was 6000m but on quite a few holes she was forced to hit 4 irons off the tees because they were so far forward that she was jammed into the narrow necks of so many holes if she took a driver.
For example she hit 4 iron off both 11 and 18 west because she just runs out of room. Also at 6 west and 2 east she was clubbing right down off the tee.
The course could have been 200m longer and she would have had the same clubs for the second shots.

[JMEvensky]

RM could host a 3-man scramble and it would be worth watching.

Mike Clayton,since I see you're posting,I've looked/read through the RM history twice now.Spectacular.

[Mike_Clayton]

JME,

Glad you think it's ok. You are right about the course. Watching any good players try and work it out is at a level of sophistication so far above the average - especially, I assume, on the Women's tour. Mind you I watched some TV highlights from the Senior Tour yesterday and it looked like every iron stopped pretty much where it landed.

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

That was special today. What a gift of two event seen from there in the same year.

[Mac Plumart]

Great course.  Great golf.  Great entertainment.  That was cool.

[Chris Kane]

Was it great golf, or a gagfest played on a great course where the first player to stop choking won?  Very exciting finish though.

I'm not suggesting that the course was easy over four days, but a winning score of -3 with a strong field must be pretty rare in women's golf. What is it about Royal Melbourne which explains this? I have my own theory but I'd be interested to hear the views of others.

[Mike_Clayton]

Chris,

There has been a lot of choking at Royal Melbourne over the years.
I think it is because the course demands so much precision.
On Thursday,Friday and Saturday things may work out - but when it gets tight it is hard to get the ball close to the hole and many times reasonable shots run far from the hole. Then, the putting is difficult and there is some inevitability to the four- to eight footers for par.
Those putts are difficult on Sundays - and it is an especially difficult course to lead on and carry that burden.
The finish showed that yesterday. As soon as Korda was relieved of that tension she thrived and as soon as it passed to the Koreans they conspicuously failed to handle it. I though Korda bore the brunt of that burden for most of the weekend and deserved to come out on top because of that - and because she played the 71st and 72nd holes so well.

It wasn't great golf perhaps but it was interesting golf (Ogilvy's point in that column a couple of weeks ago re playing better courses) and I certainly saw my share of really good shots.

[Bruce Hardie]

Also, without ad breaks in the ABC coverage they showed a lot of interviews with the players and there actually is quite a lot of personality there, even from the Korean girls.

I also want to find out more about Stephanie Brantz.

[Colin Macqueen]

Mike,
I agree with respect to Korda. A heavy weight on her wee shoulders for most of 2 rounds. Her playing of the last 2 holes was exceptional given the pressure. and she had to wait a long time before hitting her last shot into eighteen at the close of the 4th. round.  No doubt, earlier in the week, her practice-round caddy provided invaluable information!

Cheers Colin

[Mike_Clayton]

Colin,

I did impress on her the absolute stupidity of ever going for the left pin on the 6th West (the 4th)
She carefully played 20 feet right from 100 yards away both days it was there including on Sunday. Yani Tseng failed to respect that pin and took herself out when it was hers to win really.
She did have a tremendous caddy who she really jelled with and who guided her around. But, you still have to hit the shots.

[Chris Kane]

Mike,

All true - those shots are obviously more difficult on Sunday than on Thursday or Friday - and some choking is to be expected. But it doesn't explain why a field which included 6 of the top 10 players in the world could only manage a winning score of 289 (-3). It may have been relatively difficult on a couple of the days, but there wasn't a Friday at the Presidents Cup!

By comparison, the winning scores at the Heineken Classic from 2002-05 were 271, 273, 268 and 274. It is a GREAT course for a professional tournament (because its possible to score very well, but the margins for error are small), but difficult it is not.

(By the way, in searching for the Heineken scores I ended up on Wikipedia - which has links to the pages of former winners. Have you seen your page recently?  )

[Mike_Clayton]

Chris,

I suspect the greens are a little more difficult that they were when the men were shooting those scores.
Perhaps one reason is that the LPGA play so few courses that test players the way RM does. The greens are hard and they are fast by the standards of most but not Claude Crockford.
in 1974 when the par was 71 Bob Shearer shot 285 and won by 7. My memory is not of bad weather but rather really hard and fast green and most playing with small surlyn balls - back in the days of bifurcation!

It is true that modern equipment has made the course much easier and long gone are the days of drives and long irons into 18.

[Chris Kane]

Thanks for that Mike.

My theory is that the women struggled around RM because it demands a level of short game and putting skill they don't have. Unless the golfer is hitting their iron shots unbelievably well, they will encounter several extremely difficult putts, chips and bunker shots during a round of golf. Its a test for the men as well, but they aren't beaten up quite as badly.

My view is that the biggest difference (in how it impacts score) between elite men and women is in pitching, chipping, bunker play and putting - despite the popular idea that distance is the major difference. The corollary to this is that the first women to have a truly world-class game from inside 100 will win twenty majors, provided the rest of their game is solid.

[Kevin Pallier]

Chris

I agree with your synopsis re: short game - particularly with the relative lack of spin control. Coupled with this were obvious course managment issues where I saw many that tried to go straight at flags when most learned RM observers know which ones to leave well alone.

[Matthew Mollica]

I think you're onto something Chris.

There were several chips and putts on the Sunday which should have been much better than they turned out.
Maybe it is tension? Maybe it's the inability of the girls to hit the shots which were required.
So Yeon Ryu made a mess of the up and down attempt at 17, and the less said about the putting on the 72nd hole the better!

MM

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