Kevin Kisner has suggested that Team White should have had the opportunity to call him in to take one shot for The Duke during the semi-final of The Internet Invitational.
There has been plenty of debate surrounding The Duke’s participation in the event after he managed to make it through to the penultimate round at Big Cedar Lodge.
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While he is undoubtedly entertaining, there was a significant gulf between himself and the remaining 11 players in the semi-final. That was certainly a problem for both Ryan Ruffels and Marissa Wenzler, with a nine-hole alternate shot format used to decide who would reach the final.
Ruffels did attempt to get the teams moved around. However, he was somewhat penalised for being the best player left in the competition, with Wenzler arguably the top performer from the second tier, too.
Unfortunately, the team finished three shots adrift of making the finals. And speaking on the Fore Play Podcast, Kevin Kisner noted that he has since come up with an idea that would have potentially helped to level the playing field.
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“I woke up this morning, and I don’t know if I had a dream or epiphany, but I went back to Ruffels and Marissa basically trying to ditch The Duke, and everybody understood The Duke was way worse than the other 12 there. I wish Dave and I had a conversation like, hey, alright, you get one Kisner shot too, since you’re stuck with The Duke, what the crowd would have done there. And how they would used it would have added major drama,” he said.
“They were basically at a two-shot disadvantage from the get-go, because The Duke can’t get off the tee. He just can’t fly it far enough to play there, so those three drives are just impossible.”
It was no surprise that the team did finish last in the semi-final. The Duke missed a couple reasonably short putts along the way.
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However, Kisner pushed back on the idea that they had absolutely no chance of reaching the final due to The Duke being on their team.
“I don’t think so, dude. They didn’t play their best either. The hole I go to is the second hole in the semi-finals, Marissa hit a bad iron shot off the tee. It was only like a seven iron for her. She hit it short right of the green. Duke hit a terrible chip, but we all expect that. Then Ruffels is over the green, barely gets it on the green. If you’re the best player out there, you’ve got to chip that ball to five feet. Marissa leaves a 20-footer seven feet short and leaves The Duke with that seven-footer,” he said.
“That whole threesome, if I was Ruffels, I would have been like, ‘whatever we have to do to set The Duke up for success, is what we’ve got to try to do’. We’d have given him the easiest tee shots, which they did on three. You can’t hide him on every hole. But even in situations like Ruff, ‘hey, I’ve got to get this ball up there where she’s putting uphill, has a decent look at bogey. We cannot make a triple bogey on the par three based on The Duke’.
“The par five, seven, Marissa didn’t hit the green from just short of the green. And then eight, she hooked the ball in the left rough and nobody went over there and told The Duke to just chip it out sideways into the fairway. Now, they’re left behind the eight ball in a bunker. Ruffels is trying to hit an iron shot, a hero shot.
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“I just didn’t think they got in the game, and played around The Duke enough.”
With Team Red only finishing three shots ahead, Kisner is surely right to point out that simply having The Duke was not decisive for their hopes of making the final.
Having said that, it is hard to imagine that they would have stood any chance in the final against Team Blue over 18 holes. They barely missed a shot on their way to a 5&3 victory.
It is definitely an interesting idea to allow Kisner to come to the rescue of those who are nowhere near as good. Every pairing was allowed to ask Kisner to take a shot for their team during the second day’s play.
So perhaps it should be no surprise if it is a more prominent feature in 2027.
