Fantasy Golf Picks 2015 : Farmers Insurance Open

We're a little tardy publishing our 2015 Fantasy Golf picks, but better late than never, right? The 2015 Farmers Insurance Open tees off this week and The Big Cat's opening odds are listed at 50-to-1. Yep, you read that correctly; Tiger Woods is damn-near a longshot to win at Torrey Pines, where he has won eight times prior to this year. But how can you blame the sleazy mafia bosses that set the odds in Vegas? Tiger turned the Waste Management Phoenix Open into a twilight hit-and-giggle last week, missing the cut in monumental fashion. The man can't even hit a chip shot to save his tooth, let alone put himself into contention.

So who do we like for this week's tournament. Take a look:

Don't let the fact that you can't recognize many of those names fool you. Brooks Koepka won last week and is apparently the Great White Hype among my fellow swarmy Twitter goofballs.

My favorite part about Koepka winning the Waste Management is that he's also going to win the Farmers this week. pic.twitter.com/5IGgmU8Rs7

— No Laying Up (@NoLayingUp) February 2, 2015

See? It's like this guy walks on water, which wouldn't be surprising to me in the least. His name is "Brooks" after all.

Hideki Matsuyama might be the biggest sleeper of 2015, and by judging by his recent play (two top-3's in three events) my after-the-fact predictability talents are as honed as ever. His shot during last week's tournament is already a contender for Shot of the Year, supported mainly by a fictitious email I received from Mama Matsuyama.

Truth be told, expect big things from Keegan Bradley this week. The die-hard New England Patriots fan is sure to be riding the coattails of his team's success in Super Bowl XLIX, because fantasy sports are weird and that's just how it works. I'm predicting a Top-5 finish for that googly-headed monster.

Pro Golfers Team Up for New Craft Beer Line

What do Keegan Bradley, Graeme McDowell and Fredrik Jacobson have in common? They're all brand new craft beer brewers, of course!

According to a report on USA Today, the three PGA Tour stars have teamed up with the Florida-based brewer The Brew Pub to create GolfBeer Brewing, a company that will feature a new beer inspired by each player.

The three beers will include Keegan Bradley's New England Style Lager, G-Mac's Celtic Style Pale Ale, and Freddie Jacobson's Scandinavian Style Blond Ale. Each will have an alcohol by volume between 4.5 and 5 percent, making them very drinkable for a wide range of beer lovers.

"We feel like the golf market is a huge beer market and especially young golfers are the next big craft beer market," McDowell told USA Today. "We think if we can make a refreshing, approachable craft beer that is synonymous with PGA Tour players like ourselves that golfers can relate to, we certainly feel there is potential for the market to become so much more educated about craft beer."

GolfBeer Brewing is will be first offered at Florida country clubs and restaurants beginning in late October. Distribution to grocery stores and ultimately liquor stores could happen as soon as December 2014.

Reddit: Twitchy Keegan Bradley Cat?

Reddit is a wonderful place with a great golf following in its golf subforum ("subreddit"). Thanks to Redditor Prowling_Penguin, this Sunday morning started off with a pretty good laugh. Everyone who follows golf knows about PGA Tour star Keegan Bradley's nervous tics and twitches during a round. It's like he is revving up for every shot, or stuck in some internal version of Groundhog Day prior to addressing the golf ball. Once bothered by these seemingly involuntary "antics," Keegan's fellow competitors have seemed to accept his behavior for what it is.

Then there is this GIF that perfectly captures Keegan's likeness. You know, figuratively.

Thank you, Reddit.

The Long Putter: To Ban or Not To Ban?

(Note: The following post was originally publshed by the author for WaggleRoom.com) Stroke: A "stroke" is the forward movement of the club made with the intention of striking at and moving the ball, but if a player checks his downswing voluntarily before the clubhead reaches the ball he has not made a stroke.

Putt:

•1.       hit golf ball with tapping stroke: to hit a golf ball with a gentle tapping stroke along the ground on a green, aiming for the hole

•2.       tapping golf stroke: a gentle tapping stroke that rolls a golf ball along the ground on a green, aiming for the hole

The above definitions are from the Rules of Golf and the Encarta World Dictionary (respectively) and define what the "powers that be" deem as a golf stroke and putt. However, thanks to Adam Scott and Keegan Bradley over the past two weeks, you can already hear the murmurs coming from around the bend: exactly how "legal" is the use of a long or belly putter in professional golf? 

According to a recent article byRandy Phillips of the Postmedia News, these long putters are an "aberration" and should be removed from the game as soon as possible. For the record, I also have never heard of Randy Phillips.

The United States Golf Association and R&A - gatekeepers of how the grand old game is played - missed the boat when they had the chance to ban the use of belly putters and long putters years ago.

Unfortunately, now with the winners of two big tournaments over the last two weeks on the PGA Tour using them, any attempt to ban those putters from competition might be a case of trying to shut the barn door after the horses have bolted.

The biggest issue that naysayers to the long putter have regarding their use is the anchoring technique that players will use while putting. In the case of a belly putter, a player can anchor the putt-end of the club into his stomach (hence the name, of course) and make a pendulum-like swing without the worry of a player breaking his wrists. For a longer putter - such as what Adam Scott used at the WGC Bridgestone Invitational two weeks ago - a player holds the club with a split-handed grip to create the same pendulum motion. In both examples, the player's wrists remain steady and a smooth putting stroke is the result.

This lack of "wrist breaking" seems to be the major issue that has everyone up in a tizzy. According to an interview for the Toronto Star, putting-guru Dave Pelz suggests that "the feel and the ability to determine the stroke needed to putt the ball the right distance are helped." Furthermore, Pelz argues that the longer putters prevent the player's forearms from rolling-over, thus eliminating the possibility that a putt can be pushed or pulled off-line during impact.

While I am certainly nowhere near a professional-grade golfer, I decided to put this argument to rest - at least for myself - by conducting a small experiment at my local golf course. The method was simple: I would hit ten putts of roughly 10 feet with my conventional putter, then hit ten similar putts with a belly-putter borrowed from the pro shop. To disclose, I have never played a full golf round with a long putter of any kind and have only had limited experience using one in a golf store previously.

My results were somewhat surprising to me, especially since I went into the experiment expecting little to no difference between the two clubs. However, after making only 6 putts from 10 feet with my conventional putter (35-inches in length), I made 8 putts from the same distance using the belly-putter. In other words, my putting accuracy for this experiment improved from 60% to 80% in a matter of minutes.

Now, I fully understand this was not a fool-proof experiment by any means. Any number of external variables could have altered or affected the results of the experiment, but for the most part the conditions remained the same in both trials. Furthermore, I also knew which way the putt was going to break after attempting it one time, so a more accurate test would be to play a full round with the long putter instead of using it on a practice green. Regardless, I did feel a slight difference in the two clubs and can certainly understand where Mr. Pelz is coming from. The conventional putting stroke offers a larger margin for error; there is no doubt about that.

However, two factors remained to hold true or both clubs: I had to know how hard to hit the putt and I needed to start the putt on my intended line appropriately.

Should the USGA and R&A ban the use of longer putters during competition? Personally, I don't see the purpose of doing so. As far as what the aforementioned definitions suggest, a "stroke" is still being made on the golf ball.  More importantly, a player still has to read the green, account for the surrounding elements such as wind and grass type, determine the appropriate speed of the putt, and make a confident stroke while in the midst of thousands of spectators at a professional tour event with millions of dollars on the line.

Those latter details, in my opinion, separate the professionals from the amateurs.

The Wonderful Absence of Dominance

  The 2011 PGA TOUR major championship season concluded Sunday as Keegan Bradley became the 93^rd PGA Champion after defeating another would-be first-time winner Jason Dufner in a three-hole playoff. A few weeks prior, 42 year-old Darren Clarke hoisted the claret jug for his first major in the Open Championship. Before that, Rory McIlory won his first major in record-breaking fashion at the US Open. Finally, Charl Schwartzel donned his first green jacket at The Masters in what many believe to be the most exciting major finish in years.

Four majors. Four first-time winners. Does it get any better than that?

While it is certainly too early to suggest that the 2011 PGA TOUR season is any indication of major victors in the future, we can all certainly agree that the “youth movement” is in full swing, if you pardon the pun. We can also agree that seeing new faces in the winner’s circle is great for the game in many ways. However, for the casual fan who watches golf on television to see names like Mickelson, Woods and other “household names”, this past season may be slightly confusing.

Dominance in sports is something that fans appreciate and gravitate to on an annual basis. If you are a baseball fan in the Bronx, for example, the sheer dominance of the New York Yankees is something that is as familiar to you as the Statue of Liberty. Manchester United football fans expect their team to win convincingly every time they step onto the field. American football fans in Boston witnessed their New England Patriots win multiple Super Bowls under a blanket of high expectations. I expected the very same from my Chicago Bulls during the 1990s. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal seem to take turns on who will dominate one year to the next on the tennis court. The LPGA’s Yani Tseng is the newest “Queen of Golf”, dominating her sport just as names like Ochoa and Sorenstam did before her. The list goes on and on.

Sports fans are drawn to these types of teams and individual athletes because of their seemingly superhuman abilities to achieve the pinnacle of their sport on an annual basis. The world enjoys celebrity; people yearn for a team or a player to cheer for and for others to jeer. From a storyline perspective, everyone loves a good guy and a bad guy. In the arena of professional golf, it seemed that for every fan who rooted for Tiger, there were five others who rooted for Phil. It just makes sense; fans need their heroes and their enemies.

Now, however, it seems that a new mindset is slowly making its way into professional golf. While Tseng maintains her grasp on in the LPGA, the PGA TOUR is becoming more fragmented. Individual player dominance seems to be on the way out while two interesting storylines are fighting for attention in its place.

On one hand, we have witnessed a “rebirth” of amazing golf talent as the game’s youth continues to show the world that the game is stronger than ever. In the other corner, of course, are the seasoned veterans who have amicably answered the call for battle. This contest has no other boundaries in the sand other than age; however it is a match-up that anyone can relate to regardless of your degree of golf fandom.

Perhaps an even more interesting storyline – at least in my opinion – is the continued contest between American and International golf. No longer is this brilliant match-up reserved for the likes of the Ryder Cup, President’s Cup or similar events. Golf fans can turn on their television sets every weekend to any tournament and see a constant struggle among the greatest golfers in the world from around the globe. I continue to find the notion that a “European Invasion” has taken over the ranks in professional golf. Sorry to break it to you, fellow Americans: international players are not taking over the game; they are taking the game back.

While professional sport will always have its favorites, its underdogs and its villains, the PGA TOUR is in the middle of a generation where dominance is no longer an individual possibility. The game has reached a point where the term “Any Given Sunday” better applies to the TOUR than the National Football League, and rightfully so. The only “sure-bet” in this game is the notion that such a wager doesn’t exist.

And frankly, this is exactly how golf should be.