cAN WE GEt BAck to GoLF?

So I was starting to write about the upcoming U.S. Open, Los Angeles Country Club and the wonders of barranca when, well, some news broke.

Remember that whole dispute between the PGA Tour and the Saudi-backed LIV golf? All the controversy, the uproar, the self-righteous commentaries, potshots, a golf world at odds with one another?

Done. All of it. In agreeing to merge, the once-competing entities dropped all their litigation against one another and united, stunning everyone who had followed this saga, whichever side they were on.

To many, it was welcome, but to many others it felt like capitulation, the almighty dollar running over whatever morals and principles remained in sports.

Of course, it isn’t that simple, and never is, but if it brings us back to where the focus in golf should be – on the players, and what they do on the course – then it can only prove healthy in the long term.

And for four blissful days, it will all focus on a club in the shadow of downtown L.A. that, for decades, preferred its anonymity, highly ranked but never used for big tournaments. Then again, when you’re adjacent to the Playboy mansion (really), maybe not being well-known is an asset.

But after an acclaimed Gil Hanse redesign that brought LACC back to the original George Thomas blueprint of the 1920s, it welcomed the Walker Cup a few years ago and, now, an even bigger event.

Back to the barranca. Most of LACC’s North Course runs through a canyon, so a majority of the fairways are bordered by that aforementioned natural habitat of a dried-out riverbed that can fill up whenever it rains.

DEATH NOTICES

Kathleen DeLitta, 79, of Liverpool, passed away June 3, 2023. Maurer Funeral Home Moyers Corners, Baldwinsville, has arrangements.

Hilde J. Iemma 83, of Liverpool, passed away June 3, 2023. Maurer Funeral Home Inc., Liverpool, has arrangements.

Daniel P. Bellucci, 73, of Syracuse, passed away June 4, 2023. Fergerson Funeral Home, North Syracuse, has arrangements.

Random Thoughts

Phil blackwell

Just as the sandy waste areas dot all the fairways at Pinehurst No. 2, the barranca is a far more interesting substitute for typical U.S. Open rough. Hit into it, you might get a great lie. You might have no lie. But either forces a player to get creative in terms of shotmaking and scrambling.

Adding to the fun and intrigue is the sheer contrast in the length of some of the holes. There’s five par-3s at LACC, and only one, the 9th, is of average length.

Three of them, the 4th, 7th and 11th, all go north of 250 yards (though downhill), but another, the 15th, can play as little as 80 yards to a postage-stamp target. So in a single round you could go from driver to gap wedge on just the short holes, all of them difficult in their own way.

There’s also a tiny par-4, the 6th, with an option to drive the green, but you can’t see that green from the tee and if you miss it long or right, oh boy. Even laying up to the left leaves a tough wedge. Like the 10th at nearby Riviera (which Thomas also designed), it’s an absolute gem where you could make 2 or 6.

Though there are just three par-5s, they have variety, too. The 1st and 8th holes are reachable for the whole field with good drives, but at 14 it’s well past 600 yards and to make a birdie requires (gulp!) three good shots.

And a majority of the par-4s, well, you’ll be glad with four every time. Holes 2, 4 and 13 fall into this category, and so do the last three, all of them at least 480 yards and the last one into the prevailing wind. Anyone who closes with three 4s close to the lead on Sunday has a great chance to win.

Golf has a whole lot to sort our right now, and to a good chunk of its fans professional peace is inherently amoral because of the parties involved and the hundreds of millions at stake. They have a right to feel that way, given the rhetoric that was used to criticize those who jumped tours and the way those who stayed were left out of the ultimate merger. Thus, it’s even more refreshing to have this tournament at this time on this course. LACC has a chance to give us a tournament that, like other West Coast-based U.S. Opens of recent vintage (Pebble Beach, Torrey Pines, Chambers Bay), is rollicking and wild and features a dramatic conclusion.

Joseph W. Mulrooney, 92, of North Syracuse, passed away June 4, 2023. Fergerson Funeral Home, North Syracuse, has arrangements.

Ralph De Girolamo, Jr., 86, formerly of Clay, passed away May 28, 2023. Fergerson Funeral Home, North Syracuse, has arrangements.

Elizabeth J. Biel, 63, of Mexico and Cicero, passed away June 8, 2023. Fergerson Funeral Home, North Syracuse, has arrangements.

Phil Blackwell is sports editor at Eagle News. He can be reached at pblackwell@ eaglenewsonline.com.

Nantz and Boeheim… It was magic.

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of interviewing

Jim Nantz on my radio show. Yes…the same Jim Nantz all of us have been watching on CBS TV for over 40 years. The interview “happened” because Ron Mack, Le Moyne College Sports Hall of Fame inductee and 60 year member at Oak Hill in Rochester, NY, invited me to the induction ceremony for Jim into their “Hill of Fame” on Wednesday of PGA Championship week. It was a very special day for me and certainly for the other 100 or so invited guests for the private ceremony.

I had heard about the “Hill of Fame” and the metal plates, with the names of the inductees, that were permanently attached to the trees surrounding the 13th green but I was not aware of who and why they were selected. Well, I found out “who”. You might know some of the names; Walter Hagen, Ben Hogan, Robert Trent Jones, Mildred “Babe” Zaharias, Bob Hope, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Curtis Strange, Kathie Whitworth, Donald Ross, Nancy Lopez, Bryon Nelson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Tom Watson, Lee Trevino, and now…..JAMES W. NANTZ lll. Not bad company, I would say. I also found out why… “We look on the Hill of Fame as an institution where men and women may be honored for their fine qualities of heart and mind and their personal contributions to some phase of human welfare and uplift”.

-Martin T. Cullen

In attendance at the ceremony were Coach Jim Boeheim and his wife Juli along with Josh Allen from the Buffalo Bills.

Jim spoke about them, in glowing terms, for several minutes while thanking them for their special friendship and support after his mother passed away last year as well as for their financial support to the Nantz National Alzheimer Center in Houston, Texas, in memory of his late father.

It is one of the Top “5” facilities of its kind in the world. I met Jim after his acceptance speech and mentioned, “I had the longest running golf show on the radio in the US”. He said, “I would like to be on your show sometime”.

Fast forward…Saturday, June 3, 2023 at at 3AM. I wake up and can’t go to sleep thinking about what could possibly go wrong that would prevent the WSYR audience from listening to Jim Nantz. Also, I want to have a great show because I just finalized an agreement with Joe Convertino Jr., President of CH Insurance, to become the “title sponsor” for my radio show.

Joe was going to be my co-host, in studio. Well, as Yogi Berra used to say, “It ain’t over till its over”, and Paul Harvey used to say, “And now, The Rest of the Story”….

At 7:32AM, my producer, Scott Stabert, calls the hotel where Mr. Nantz is supposed to be staying during the week of the Memorial Tournament(Jack Nicklaus). The hotel informs Scott that Mr. Nantz is not a guest at their hotel and suggests calling their downtown location. Scott tries downtown and fails again to reach Mr. Nantz. After several minutes go by, Scott convinces the hotel management that a Mr. Jim Nantz is a guest at their hotel. The problem… the hotel misspelled his name. Finally, Joe and I have the opportunity to talk with Jim but only for about “5” minutes. Just before our last commercial break, I ask Jim if he could stay over and join us after the break for the last segment of the show. He agrees.

Coming out of the break, I inform Mr. Nance there is a caller, “Charlie” from Syracuse, on the line who has a question for him. Just as “Charlie” begins to speak, we loose the phone connection with Jim Nantz…naturally.

Then, as we are speaking with the caller, we also loose the connection with him….naturally. By the way, the caller is not “Charlie” from Syracuse. It was Coach Jim Boeheim, from Syracuse University. I called Coach Boeheim to inform him his good friend, Jim Nantz, was going to be a guest on my show and would he agree to be “Charlie” from Syracuse before being recognized.

When Jim Nantz and Coach Boeheim finally started to talk to each other, it was “Show Time” on Tee Time With The Pronoun. Their conversation reminded me of two long time dear friends, retiring this year, talking about the special memories of their experiences during their Hall of Fame careers. IT WAS MAGIC!

You can listen to the entire interview with Jim Nantz and Jim Boeheim by going to… YouTube and Facebook by searching for Tee Time With The Pronoun