Sportsfrog.com

I got a proposal for you. I know you’ve been thinking about sending out JB Holmes and Kenny Perry first thing Friday to get the Kentucky crowd rocking. And if yesterday’s practice round was any indication, that would certainly get the job done. However, you set up this week’s matches to have the foursomes (alternate-shot) first instead of the traditional four-ball matches being played first. Perry and Holmes don’t make a great alternate shot team. In fact, and it pains me to say this, but Holmes isn’t a great alternate shot for anyone except Tiger Woods, whom,you may have noticed, is not here.

Yes, Holmes is prodigiously long off the tee. That unfortuntately means that he will miss his fair share of fairways. No one is better equipped than Tiger to hit those greens from the rough – which at Valhalla doesn’t look too bad unless you are fifteen or twenty yards from the fairway’s edge. While Kenny Perry can also hit a lot of greens, he is a much straighter driver of the ball than Holmes and is not as acclimated to hitting those greens from the rough.

So, as a bit of advice that you can choose to ignore if you like, though I can’t imagine why, I wouldn’t send them out in the first foursomes match together. I’d send them both out in the first series of matches, but not as a team. Pair Perry with a Hunter Mahan – very similar players – or Phil Mickelson. Then stick Holmes with Steve Stricker, and though Stricker may still be hitting from the rough, who will at least have shorter shots than he is accustomed to out of the rough. The biggest benefit of that pairing however is that Stricker will be putting after approach shots from Holmes with shorter irons than Stricker would have from the same distance, and also that Stricker (after hitting approach shots from closer than he is used to) can assist Holmes on reads about the course when Holmes will be putting. For those not in the know, Steve Stricker is widely considered one of the top putters on tour and is often mentioned with Brad Faxon as one of the best pure putters of the past few decades.

A last benefit is that there are two groupings about the course to rile the fans up.

Now, for the four-ball matches, I’d absolutely send them out together in the first group in the afternoon. I just don’t see them as great Alt-shot partners.