You (Still) Just Have To Laugh, Monday-After-Memphis Edition
Baba's historic domination, Cam Smith WD's after a rough week in Memphis, plus other wild, crazy and giggle-worthy moments in these LIVely times.
A dog days Monday had The Quad staff a little down. For all of the splendor delivered by the major championships, those weeks are pretty serious affairs with little comic relief. Thankfully, as I told our company-wide Slack, we have the rest of golf to deliver giggles in so many fresh, fun ways.
As noted a few weeks ago in these seemingly grim, First World times, you just have to step back and laugh…
At the performance of U.S. Women’s Amateur champion Saki Baba. We’ll get the sublime out of the way before the ridiculous. Still learning the ins-and-outs of match play and dealing with back pain, Baba tied the third largest margin of victory in the U.S. Women’s Amateur en route to an 11 & 9 route of Monet Chun. It’s the largest final match win since Babe Zaharias in 1946. In 106 match play holes, Baba was 24-under-par and 9-under in the finale. Baba played 106 match-play holes, the second fewest since 1973, matching Morgan Pressel (2005) and three behind only Carolyn Hill (103) in 1979. From the sixth hole in her quarterfinal match on, Baba won 28 of the last 49 holes she played, losing only four in that span. Just wait until she gets the hang of match play.
At Cameron Smith. He’s withdrawn from the BMW Championship after a two-stroke penalty and awkward week in the first FedEx playoff event. Apparently it’s a recurrence of “on and off hip discomfort.” Smith told Golf Digest on Monday that he’s battled the issue all year, had MRI’s and it flares up on soft fairways. No mention can be found in any of his press conferences, so don’t bother going down that hole. If, as reported, the Open Champion jumps to LIV Golf, Memphis might mark the end of his PGA Tour career barring a resurfacing at East Lake where the fairways can be dangerously soft.
At the lack of official injury reports. As part of the push into gambling, the PGA Tour once floated injury disclosures. The idea was to let gamblers know if a player might be held back by something and to wager accordingly. Who knows what happened to them. Had such reports become a thing, we might have known about Cam Smith’s “on and off hip discomfort” and could confirm his gait was not disabled by soft fairways or—reportedly—his heftier wallet.
