What would meet with universal agreement is the opinion that flight delays are insufferable and instant mood-changers. No one likes them. When you factor in the change of gate, even if it’s going from D25 to D24 to D21, the experience of waiting and waiting and moving and moving is exponentially gnawing.
Root canals would be a better option.
Unless, that is, you start talking golf with a complete stranger. Then the interior switch is turned from painful to joyous in a heartbeat and even the incessant announcements looking for that last passenger to board a flight to Grand Forks don’t disturb you.
Haphazardly is the way in which the best golf discussions begin with strangers. It might be a glance at a shirt logo that prompts conversation – “That’s a cool course” or “Where’s that?” or “A friend of mine has a friend who is a member there” – but when golf talk starts rolling my antennas go up. Bring it on. Inside, floodgates are opened instantly, so patience flows freely and warmly and the connecting points are plentiful.
Told that the trip to the Dallas area was to report on the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at the home offices of the PGA of America in Frisco, a light went off. That he knew of this still-young Fields Ranch East golf course that hosted the championship meant one thing: We were now entering “golf-talk” mode and what ensued was the shortest and least painful 35-minute flight delay my years of travel have ever met.
To get into stuff like “compressing a golf ball” and “club speed” on those deft chip shots to make balls “check” – a skill that PGA Tour players have on command but not as much the LPGA competitors or the huge majority of amateurs – is to acknowledge you’ve found a soulmate.
Some of our discussion involved this first-ever visit by the women to play Fields Ranch East and the thoughts and comments that connected us were apparent. Indeed, “golf-talk” is real and it is widely embraced.
Asked how the championship was, what he heard were an array of viewpoints and personal preferences – that it was what a major championship should, meaning only three players broke par for the week, and how sweet it was to watch pro golf competition where scores between 69 and 74 kept you in the hunt, where 68 was utterly brilliant and where 76 meant you didn’t lose a ton of ground.
He offered that it probably caused "moans and groans," further proof that we spoke the same language. He speculated that players complained about “golf course design” and “course set-up” and when he heard an emphatic, "yes," there were laughs back and forth.
Sharing a quote that was provided to me years ago by Brad Faxon – “The players who play well usually don’t complain about that stuff” – the gentleman laughed some more. (Well into the flight home there arose a tinge of regret when it occurred to me that another memorable quote was overlooked. “These golfers would bitch about ice cream,” said Ed Dougherty one day, after being told that competitors found issues with a Donald Ross gem, Salem CC, in advance of the 2001 U.S. Senior Open.)
Back to the flight-delay conversation. Expressing personal choices for when he plays golf – putting everything out; keeping your commitment to play without using heat or rain or wind as an excuse to beg out; rounds with his son were the most rewarding – the gentleman asked rhetorically, “Didn’t players complain like this at Oakmont just a few weeks ago?”
Bingo.
Given some research time on the flight, numbers were examined and crazy how similar was the golf at the U.S. Open at Oakmont, which ended June 15 and the KPMG Women’s PGA at Fields Ranch East, which got underway June 19. Some samples:
At Oakmont, only one player broke par for 72 holes, J.J. Spaun, who finished at 1-under. Three players broke par at the KPMG with Minjee Lee triumphing at 4-under.
In all, 36 sub-par rounds were posted at Oakmont, 43 were recorded at the KPMG.
The average golfer at Oakmont posted a round of 4.180 over par. At Fields Ranch East, the average woman was 3.596 over par per round.
The winning score at Oakmont was 279; at the KPMG, it was 284.
The cut numbers? It was 7-over at Oakmont, 7-over at the KPMG.
At the end of 72 holes, if you shot 4-over you were top 10 at Oakmont. A score of 4-over earned you a top 10 at Fields Ranch East, also.
By the time these numbers were entered into a notebook, we had gone our separate ways. But everything about our 30-minute chat told me that the fellow golfer would have understood that the numbers proved that both the U.S. Open and the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship had delivered major tests.
On hugely different golf courses, of course, but that’s another story for another day.
The biggest takeaway from the KPMG is that one of the most awe-inspiring ball-striking performances of the year had gotten overshadowed by endless complaints about “golf course design” and “course set-up” that led to high scores and rounds in the neighborhood of six hours.
(As an aside, many rounds at Oakmont tickled six hours and at the AIG Women’s Open last summer rounds routinely went for six hours at The Old Course. In other words, old news.)
So it was pleasing to know that during our chat, cheers had been offered for the delightful Minjee Lee and what she did to win a third major. The gentleman had applauded the fact that Lee had beaten the field average by 6.577 strokes in Round 1, by 4.013 strokes in Round 2, and by a whopping 7.065 strokes in Round 3.
Ah, yes, he knew his golf, my new friend did; from logos on shirts to what made golf special to knowing that the headline story of the KPMG Women’s PGA was the way Minjee Lee had ball-struck and scored brilliantly in a major championship that provided a major challenge. My goodness, there were persistent 25-30 m.p.h. winds and never did she yield.
We agreed that players would get over it; that things would return to a sense of normalcy with the majors in the rear-view mirror. Sure enough, birdies and softer touches are upon us. The Travelers and the Rocket Classic were, as expected, birdie-fests. Case in point, in Sunday’s fourth round of the Rocket Classic alone there were 68 (out of 86 golfers) sub-par rounds whereas there were only 36 for the entire championship at Oakmont.
As for the women, they are headed to the Evian Championship in France, a major championship without a major challenge. Last year, 19-under won and a ho-hum course allowed 50 competitors to finish under par. It was 14-under in ’23, 17-under in ’22, and 18-under the year before that.
As for that passenger being sought for the flight to Grand Forks, sadly, we lost track. The conversation was so comfortable we never did hear whether he had made the flight or not.
