Guccifer 2.0 Google Search Result Weirdnesses

How is it possible that a few posts scattered here at Mostly Harmless and on some of my other blogs last night led to their being more easily findable on google than anything Studio Dongo has posted on Guccifer 2.0 over the last several weeks?  Anyone who understands google search algorithms better than me, please feel free to respond!

This Is about Guccifer 2.0, not Golf

Quick questions to my remaining readers:

• are you aware of the Guccifer 2.0 story?
• have you been trying to follow it?
• have you been able to find any good sources on it through google searches?

Just to be clear, I had not been aware of or following the story until one of my best friends started blogging about it in mid-June.  As he's been writing about his experiences going down that particular rabbit hole, I've started looking for other sources.  Not very hard, to be sure.  And I know that I've been on leave from blogging for awhile, but what ever happened to google's blog search?  Back in the bad old days, I was at least able to find a wide range of voices on almost any topic, no matter how obscure.  But when I search "Guccifer 2.0" on google, I get nothing interesting or new.  If I didn't know about posts like this, I would never be able to find them.

There's got to be more out there, right?  Are you there, google?  It's me, The Constructivist.

This will have been a test of the google search system.  This will have been only a test.

The World Is a Big Place Files: Lydia Ko Edition

So it seems Lydia Ko has split with Guy Wilson, her coach of 11 years.  Alarm bells are ringing for Geoff Shackelford, who's already shaping up a story of how IMG and David Leadbetter are about to ruin another young phenom.  But what if this is just about what Ko told New Zealand TV this is about?

With Wilson remaining in New Zealand and unable to join her throughout the 2014 LPGA Tour, the decision was a logical one for Ko.

"I'm going to be away from home and I'm not a player that likes to (not) have my coach out at tournaments, so it doesn't really work, him being here and him coming on the weeks that I'm not playing a tournament," Ko told ONE Sport at the Gulf Ha[r]bour Country Club today.

"That means I'd only see him like 10 times a year and to me that kind of situation didn't work out so that's why I thought it might be better to have a coach based somewhere in the States."

I mean, as Ji-Yai Shin's and Momoko Ueda's recent decisions to focus on the JLPGA make clear, the world is a big place.  Here's how Ko put it to TVNZ:  "Playing on the LPGA Tour it's going to be hard coming back home. Obviously it's so far to get from here to anywhere apart from Australia."  So unless Wilson is willing to uproot himself and move halfway around the world to keep coaching Ko, how can their partnership continue?  Wilson himself sounds a lot more resigned and accepting (or at least diplomatic) in the New Zealand, Australian, and Canadian media than in the U.S. media (although Golfweek has Wilson's complete statement).

Kris Shannon looks at the decision from both sides, calling the split "inevitable" but questioning the timing and possible repercussions on Ko's swing and game: 

Set to spend next season on the LPGA Tour, Ko will be based overseas for much of the year, but she already had a hectic travel schedule during her unprecedented amateur career. 

"I'm sad to hear it because they can do most of the coaching over the phone, with all the videos and different stuff," Lister said. "If [Wilson] was to see her once every three or four months, it would be plenty. She doesn't need somebody every day. 

"I'd be very reluctant to be changing anything with Lydia. She's done pretty damn well with what she's doing, and if it ain't broke don't go and fix it."

Ko herself is well aware of possible pitfalls but hopes to avoid them:

 "It's going to be a huge change. Swing-wise obviously not every coach has the same swing technique but even my parents and I said we don't want huge changes, just little changes, that if someone else saw my swing they wouldn't know that anything's changed. 

"Golf isn't really all about having the perfect swing, it's about getting out there and scoring well as well." 

She remains undaunted by stories about players falling on hard times after changing coaches and insists such speculation does not apply to her situation with Wilson. 

"Not really. I've heard those rumours and Tweets where people say lots of people have left their coaches after they've succeeded and stuff, but to me it's not like I left him because he was a bad coach. 

"It was because that situation, we knew there was going to be a problem. I know it's a change but fingers crossed that nothing bad happens."

The fact is, you never know how changes like these are going to turn out.  I'm reminded of how the size of the planet played a role in Ji-Yai Shin's slow-motion split with her long-time caddie Dean Herden back in 2011.

Bottom line is that it's Ko's career and her decision.  If she's convinced a long-distance relationship won't work for her, better to act on that conviction than draw out the transition.  It seems to me that all outsiders and onlookers can do is wish both Ko and Wilson the best.

[Update 1 (8:57 am):  Stevie Williams, a friend of Wilson's, strongly criticizes Ko's decision.]

[Update 2 (9:09 am):  I can only hope Lydia and her parents each have great Christmas presents for Wilson and that IMG is ponying up serious severance pay for him!]

[Update 3 (9:31 am):  Ladies on Tour notes that Ko's mother was talking about finding a U.S.-based coach at the CME Titleholders.]

[Update 4 (9:51 am):  Brent Kelley has a good overview.  But is nobody else seeing that Lydia mentions Sean Hogan by name in that TVNZ story?]

[Update 5 (11:16 am):  Randall Mell just tweeted:  "Just off phone w/ David Leadbetter, Lydia Ko will work w/ him & Sean Hogan of his staff. 'It's about guiding, not re-inventing the swing.'"]

[Update 6 (11:50 am):  Here's Emily Kay's Steve Williams-centered overview.]

[Update 7 (12:28 pm):  So much for this being a sudden decision.  There was even pre-decision blowback before Thanksgiving in the NZ media.]

[Update 8 (8:03 pm):  Randall Mell covers reaction from Kiwi Nation and statements from David Leadbetter.]

[Update 9 (8:07 pm):  And here's Stephanie Wei's recap.]

Fortunately, the Defrost

So we got over 8" of snow here in Hamburg in what feels like the 1st winter storm since 2010 not to suddenly weaken, veer off, or blow through too fast to do much damage.  And more may be coming.  Yada yada yada.  That's life in western NY.  Or at least life like it oughtta be this time of year.  That's not the weird thing.

The weird thing is that my Versa's defrost went haywire on my way to work this morning and it turned out to be serious enough that I had to get the car towed and will have to pay a boatload of money to get it fixed.  Bad luck, right?  Well, yeah, but at least I was lucky enough to semi-glide my way to a place to park the car until I could sort things out--lucky not to slide off the road or into the oncoming lane when I was navigating via peering out my driver's side window, that is.  But that's not the weirder thing.

The weirder thing is that my Versa's defrost went haywire about a mile before I hit the Thruway entrance on my way to work this morning, at a time that prevented me from renting a car to get down to Fredonia.  Snow day!  And a pretty good day for it, as there were so many accidents between Hamburg and Dunkirk on the Thruway that they shut down that section of it.

The odds were pretty decent that I might have been involved in one of those accidents.  And even better that I would have been stranded in Fredonia overnight--the same night Onechan and Imoto's cousin from Okinawa (whom I'll call Onichan) arrived (safely, if an hour late) for a month-long stay with us.

As it was, I got to experience the utter weirdness of having shovelled the snow out of my driveway into piles up to my chest in places and an hour later driving completely dry roads just 20 miles north on the way to the Buffalo airport.  In fact, there was barely any snow at the Wegmans at which we do most of our grocery shopping just 5 miles north of us.  Even the Erie County Fairgrounds about a mile north of us got a lot less snow than we did in the village.

That was the weirdest thing.  Too bad Onichan was too jet-lagged to really appreciate it.

Will the U.S. Women's Open Jinx Cost Inbee Park Player of the Year?

That the U.S. Women's Open jinx exists--and that it's many orders of magnitude worse than the Mostly Harmless jinx--is beyond question.  Just ask Hilary Lunke or Birdie Kim.  Even better, ask Eun-Hee Ji and Paula Creamer.  Ji won in 2009 for her 2nd LPGA career victory--and is still waiting for #3.  Creamer won it the very next year at Oakmont very soon after returning to action after surgery--and hasn't won since on the LPGA.  Even So Yeon Ryu and Na Yeon Choi, USWO winners in the next 2 years, went through little dry spells before returning to the winner's circle (although Choi's was probably the shortest on record!).  Heck, even Annika took 10 years to win her third USWO after winning it twice in a row in the mid-'90s.

Inbee Park understands the USWO jinx very well, having fallen victim to it very early in her LPGA career.  She made the USWO her 1st LPGA victory in 2008, went through a drought that lasted until the Evian in 2012, and most recently won it again for her 9th career win on the LPGA, her 3rd major and 3rd win in a row, and her 6th in 2013.  And she's been stuck on those numbers ever since.  It's not just that she's been a little bit off.  Nor has she been uniformly terrible.  She's been all over the place.  But her only good finishes since then have been a top 10 on the KLPGA, a top 3 in China, and a runner-up finish last Sunday again on the KLPGA.  In other words, only 1 of her 3 good finishes since winning the 2013 USWO have netted her any serious points in the LPGA's Player of the Year race.  That's a 1 for 8 top-10 rate since the USWO win, as opposed to an 8 for 13 rate up to it in 2013 (12.5% vs. 61.5%).  In short, those 4 top 10s that Inbee didn't get since the USWO could have virtually locked up the POY race for her (depending on how high she would have finished).

But that's in the past.  The issue now is how to break the USWO jinx.  Given that NYC beat the jinx by winning the CME Titleholders in the same year she won the USWO, my advice for Inbee is to shadow her for a couple of weeks and really pick her brain.  Either that, or hang out with Eun-Hee Ji and Paula Creamer a lot and hope her jinx is swallowed up by theirs.  The good news is, Inbee has overcome the jinx before, so maybe she's developed a resistance to it.  All I know is, she doesn't have 4 years to get out from under it.  More like less than 4 weeks!

The Golf Gods, They Are Jealous Gods

I'm telling you, it seems like every time The Constructivist Family is about to take one of our patented road trips/pilgrimages to the site of a major international skating competition lately, my body betrays me.  This past spring, an awful stomach bug had me doubled over in pain and dazed for most of the World Figure Skating Championships.  And now this morning, I tweaked my back at the gym so bad that I had to shamble/shuffle/limp/grimace my way through the last day of work before the start of our fall break, which The Full Metal Archivist, onechan, imoto and I will be enjoying in scenic Detroit while we occupy Skate America.

All I can say is, thank you very much, golf gods.  It's not enough that you torment me on the course and deploy the Mostly Harmless jinx against my favorite golfers--no, now you also have to go and punish me for following Daisuke Takahashi and Mao Asada and the rest of the skaters there for a few days!  I get it:  the way the Skate America schedule works out, I'll probably be able to watch only the final round of this week's LPGA/KLPGA tournament, and probably only part of it at that--and that's only if the hotel we switch to on Sunday has Golf Channel.  So I guess I deserve this lower back pain and stiffness by some sick, twisted logic--you know, the kind you golf gods specialize in.

But hear this, o ye golf gods:  we splurged for all-access tickets and, by gum, we shall use them!  We're cutting through Canada early tomorrow morning and plan to be in the Joe Louis Arena by noon!  It's not like I've broken my back like American skater Max Aaron did a few years ago....