Month: February 2024

C’est Pavon

Screenshot of telecast.

Matthieu Pavon came from behind to win the 2024 Farmers Insurance Open (FIO) on January 27 and become the first Frenchman since World War II to win on the PGA Tour.

As the photo above shows, Pavon was three strokes behind when he teed off at the 3rd hole (where I was once again hole captain). After hitting an incredible shot to the 18th green from the deep rough, he sank an eight-foot putt for a birdie, a three-under-par round of 69, and a one-stroke win over Denmark’s Nicolai Hojgaard. It was his only birdie on the the back nine.

Pavon and Hojgaard are not what you would call “household names” in golf. They were among several golfers new to the tournament this year, replacing several more well-known golfers who didn’t play the tournament this year.

(I’m going to throw in some photos, not so much related to the text, but to offer some visuals.)

View of #3 South in the distance from the north.

I found it particularly striking that, during the final two rounds, the leading three groups of nine players contained only three American golfers and the final group was all Europeans.

Professional golf, as are several other sports, is changing dramatically and the Farmers this year reflected that change. The changes, I fear, may significantly lessen the tournament’s attractiveness to players and fans and perhaps even threaten its future.

The tournament was first dealt a blow in 2022 when it had to shift from the Thursday-Sunday schedule that every other PGA tournament followed to a Wednesday-Saturday schedule. The reason? Oddly, perhaps, the National Football League.

Screenshot from TV. #3 South is at the top, with the location of the green marked by a red line.

Before 2022, the Farmers was played on a fortuitous weekend for attention and television viewership. It was played on the weekend between the NFL conference championships and the Super Bowl with no football competition. (Don’t know if true, but I had been told when I started volunteering that the Farmers was the most-watched PGA tournament outside of the majors.)

Then the NFL added a 17th regular season game, pushing the conference championships to the weekend normally open to the FIO. CBS televised the Farmers, but also one of the Sunday NFL games. The Farmers had to lose its Sunday final round.

This was my 12th year as a volunteer and I made the list (bottom right).

Then, this year, with competition from the LIV golf tour that attracted several major PGA players, the PGA agreed to designate several tournaments as “signature” events, with much larger purses and no cuts after the first two rounds. Fewer players qualified for such tournaments and they were the top-rated players.

Thought this child-carrier was clever. Especially liked the kid’s legs on dad’s shoulders.

This year, the Farmers had only 20 of the top 50 players in world rankings and only three of the top 10 — Xander Schauffle (who’s a local), Patrick Cantlay, and Max Homa. It wasn’t a “bad field.” It included nine winners of majors.

The total purse available at this year’s Farmers was $9 million, with Pavon receiving $1.62 million for winning. The AT&T  Pebble Beach Pro-Am, which took place the following week, had a total purse of $20 million, with the winner walking away with $3.6 million.

Also, Farmers Insurance has announced they will end their sponsorship of the tournament in 2026. The tournament has been organized by the Century Club of San Diego, a charitable organization formed in 1961 to broaden the appeal of the annual golf tournament that provides monies for local charities. Since the late ’60s, when it was known as the Andy Williams San Diego Open, it has also been sponsored by Isuzo Motors, Shearson Lehman Brothers, and, for 16 years, by Buick.

Only time I was on TV. I’m at left near the green in red oval. 🙂

I enjoyed working with my crew of marshals, most of them returning from previous years. And it was fun to work with a couple of new folks. We took a group shot of most of the crew, as well as a couple of folks from Competition Support assigned to our hole.

Great group. Big sky.

 

As usual, the tournament was my most concentrated period of exercise. I was there five days (the pro-am was Tuesday) and walked a total of 45,639 steps (about 20 miles), climbing 53 “flights.” The number of steps was estimated to be about the same as 11.8 crossings of the Golden Gate Bridge and 8.1 laps around the Daytona International Speedway. Slept well.

Back country – desert style

On the “road” to Vista del Malpais.

During the afternoon of January 20, I joined a band of fellow board and staff members of the Anza-Borrego Foundation, as well as a few of their kids, on a visit to two popular sites in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. The first was Vista del Malpais and the other was Coyote Canyon, to check out where the “road” had been washed out there by water brought by recent rains.

We needed four-wheel off-road vehicles and Paulette Donnellon and Sergey Kushch provided two of the better ones. Paulette had her Jeep Wrangler Rubicon and Sergey had the redesigned Ford Bronco and the appropriately named “Badlands” model. Here they are pre-excursion.

Bronco on the left and Jeep.

Also in the group were board member Stephanie DiPalma and her husband, Tom, in their Jeep Wrangler Sport, and ABF executive director Bri Fordem and board member Maris Brancheau.

The Vista del Malpais is, as the words themselves convey, where you have a “view of the bad country,” or as commonly used in the West, the badlands. To get there, you have to go through some “not-so-great” lands, in terms of easy travel, anyway. That’s Sergey’s and my view from the Bronco at the top of this post.

We did finally get to the view point and it was definitely worth the trip.

We also saw a few desert lilies, a potential harbringer of what might be widespread flowering of the desert in the spring.

The Coyote Canyon area of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is about 75,000 acres in size, about a sixth of the Park. It is a deep cut between mountain ranges extending about 10 miles northwest of Borrego Springs. A section of the San Jacinto Fault runs right through the area and it is considered an active seismic zone.

Coyote Canyon is closed to the public June 1-September 30 each year to allow Peninsular Bighorn Sheep access to the creek that runs through the canyon.

When we went, access was closed at the “Third Crossing,” so named because it was the third occasion on the trail where the Coyote Creek could flow over it during the wet season. And it was flowing.

Just off to the side of the “road” and creek was possible evidence of prior and historic seismic activity — a dramatic collection of huge boulders. An adult human would be less than half the height of most of these.

That evening in Borrego Springs, we joined other ABF board and staff members, along with friends and family, at a “Sip & Savor Soirée” wine-tasting event at the Borrego Springs home of Jimmy and Judy Smith. Refined conclusion to a rugged (in a good way) day.