I try to do a mailbag each of the “offseason” months, but I missed December due to an extended trip to the motherland. But let’s roll…
@NoLayingUp how was africa?
— Zack (@zkupper_bsg) January 4, 2017
Phenomenal! (Some pictures here if interested). Great sightseeing, animal spotting, partying, and vibes. Incredible life experience, and highly recommended to anyone that has the chance to go. It was a rejuvenation for my soul, and a much needed break from dreary European winter.
The Midnight Troubadour
Tough and timeless, this polo is built for the long ride. Featuring a crisp, non-collapsing collar and a rugged, stretchy fabric, it's the perfect shirt for any cowboy's wardrobe.
To tie it back to golf, I met a recently retired 20-something South African pro at a bar in Cape Town. We had a fascinating conversation about the ups and downs of trying to make it as a professional golfer, and I’m trying to get him on the podcast to tell his story. I think it will be a refreshing change to go from some of the top players of the game, to the perspective of a guy who tried his hardest, but just ultimately failed. Hoping to get this arranged this month.
Most importantly, stepping away from golf for a few weeks has really gotten me amped for this season. Let’s get hyped for this next question!
@NoLayingUp 2016 was a big year for golf… Ryder Cup, great majors, Olympics… is 2017 going to feel boring?
— Jason Barefoot (@barefoot_jason) January 4, 2017
Alright Jason not the enthusiasm I was looking for to start the year but we’re just gonna shake that off and roll with it. For God’s sake, it’s a Presidents Cup year!!!
2016 was phenomenal in a lot of ways, in particular the two middle majors and the Ryder Cup. But, perhaps this is just me, the “regular season” events caught my eye less and less as the year went on. The Olympics were boring (sorry, but that’s just a fact). And were there really that many memorable moments from regular events in 2016? Sure, it finished with a bang with Rory, DJ, and Reed sweeping the playoff events, but just look at the names at this week’s Tournament of Champions and ask yourself if 2016 was really that epic. I’m not saying this to dump on what was a really, really fun year, but I think the 2017 season is going to do a much better job of keeping our attention throughout the calendar, rather than just the big events. It also helps that we don’t have an insane 100-ish day stretch where we have three majors, the Olympics, and the FedExCup. For as much as people around the world complained about how terrible 2016 was, let’s give 2017 a chance to breathe before we bury it!
A few things I’m pumped about:
- A Rory that looks poised to return to number one.
- A healthy(?) Tiger playing a somewhat regular slate of events.
- A Jordan Spieth that isn’t dealing with the pressure and unrealistic expectations of a record setting season.
- A reinvented DJ that finally seems ready to start fracking into that bottomless well of potential.
- Brooks Koepka making the leap to a major champion.
- Justin Thomas becoming a top-10 player in the world.
- Patrick Reed just continuing to be Patrick Reed.
- A slew of young, exciting players like Brandon Hagy, Trey Mullinax, Ollie Schneiderjans, etc.
And that’s really just scratching the surface on what gets me jacked for this year. I’m as excited for a non-Ryder Cup year as I can be.
I think we’re going on year three of me writing this exact thing, but I really do think we’re going to see The Leap from Koepka this year. The guy I saw at the Ryder Cup (wrote about it for SB Nation here) and at Vegas a few months has zero flaws in his game, zero fear, and flat out does not lay up. For as far and as pure as he strikes it, he rolls it even better. 2016 was a transition year with equipment, and although he didn’t win, it’s hard to not call it the best year of his young career. I know I’ve hyped him relentlessly, and I know it’s hard to admit, but you can’t argue with what he’s given us so far. I’m taking him to win the Open this year.
@NoLayingUp How much did you underestimate the reaction to your equipment reporting.
— Jim Anderson (@JamesTAnderson) January 4, 2017
I was a few cocktails deep, still on a huge high coming off the huge U.S. Ryder Cup win, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean en route to Amsterdam from Minnesota when I tweeted this (and subsequently, this). I had a really good source on it, and hadn’t seen it reported anywhere else, and thought our followers would like to hear that information. What I did not expect to happen was a 20+ page thread on Golf WRX, twitter scorn, and people to run with it saying that I was “reporting” this. I worded it as carefully as I could while throwing back Jack Daniels trying to knock myself out on this red eye. As someone who has never really had a foot in the equipment game, I didn’t realize how seriously people took this stuff, and didn’t realize how big this Tiger news was.
“He’ll never use an adjustable driver!”
“Pigs will fly before he uses a TaylorMade driver!”
“Your family hates you Soly!”
Ok that last one may have been made up. Tiger of course ended up withdrawing from the Safeway, and showed up a charity event with all Nike clubs still in the bag. The scorn increased ten-fold for me, and I swore off the equipment game forever. If you looked at the below chart, I was definitely on top of Mount Stupid, and I wanted to come down from that mountain.
Then he turns up at the Hero World Challenge with a TaylorMade driver, a Bridgestone ball, and a Scotty putter. No Mizuno irons, but it turns out I was onto something, eh? The fact that the Tiger news ended up being almost entirely true gave me the confidence to come out of witness protection. But it also taught me to be especially careful what I say, as I was the least confident in the Mizuno irons part of it, and I should have made that more clear.
The subsequent reports have been easy, as it helps a ton when I’m able to get information directly from the source, which alleviates any anxiety about a minute detail changing, or getting any part of a report wrong.
The hard part is, most of the stuff that’s out there really is just rumors. And when there is some real, legitimate news, the equipment companies themselves want to be the ones announcing it. That’s what made the Rory story so unique, in that there was no endorsement deal, so there’s no announcement from Callaway or Titleist. Why Rory gave that news to me is still a bit of mystery, but it was awesome that he did.
So don’t expect a ton of breaking news from us in this arena, but we’ll continue to share what we hear through the grapevine, as long as it’s credible.
@NoLayingUp does JDay run the risk of becoming golf's villain with the new slow play comments? Was already pretty annoying to watch in 15-16
— Nick Baldus (@BmoneyBaldus) January 4, 2017
I’m not sure if it makes him “golf’s villain,” but it sure felt like the tide turned on Day in 2016. This is typically something I’m pretty strongly against, as I feel like in the golf world (and the sports world in general), we love a guy on his way up to the top, and once he’s there, we start to pick him apart until the narrative completely changes. It happened some with Spieth in 2016 as well. We get overexposed to them, and what might have seemed like a minor idiosyncrasy a few years ago flat out annoys us when we see it every week.
I want to like Day. Part of me still does. Everything I’ve heard about him is that he’s a great guy. I met his wife at the Memorial last year, and she cou