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When the Golf Channel emerged as a major player in televising golf tournaments, there was an immediate jump in the number of job opportunities for golf announcers.
New voices, new outlooks, new personalities, for the most part it’s been all good.
But as in any other business, more doesn’t mean better. The cream rises to the top and separates itself from the rest.
And the 10 gentlemen on the following list are one man’s opinion of who that cream actually is.
It’s a very subjective thing, obviously, but to me these are pretty clear-cut choices.
Pictures: Ranking the 10 Best Announcers in Golf | Bleacher Report
New voices, new outlooks, new personalities, for the most part it’s been all good.
But as in any other business, more doesn’t mean better. The cream rises to the top and separates itself from the rest.
And the 10 gentlemen on the following list are one man’s opinion of who that cream actually is.
It’s a very subjective thing, obviously, but to me these are pretty clear-cut choices.
Pictures: Ranking the 10 Best Announcers in Golf | Bleacher Report
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We are to the point that, even in the world of golf, nothing should surprise us anymore. But things still do.
Whether it’s the technological advances, the distances players are hitting the ball or just some of the wacky things they do, they sometimes just don't make sense.
Here are five things that happened recently that, at the very least, will turn your head.
Pictures: 5 Head-Turning Moments in Recent Golf News | Bleacher Report
Whether it’s the technological advances, the distances players are hitting the ball or just some of the wacky things they do, they sometimes just don't make sense.
Here are five things that happened recently that, at the very least, will turn your head.
Pictures: 5 Head-Turning Moments in Recent Golf News | Bleacher Report
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Nearly a month after forced spending cuts prompted some Republicans to call on President Barack Obama to cease his weekend golf outings, the commander-in-chief returned to the links for a springtime round Saturday.
It’s the first time Obama has returned to the golf course since the spending cuts took effect March 1, though on previous weekend days he’s attended basketball games with his daughter. He also spent one Saturday in March returning from his trip to the Middle East.
In February he played a round of golf with Tiger Woods in Florida, but hasn't been golfing at Andrews since December.
The president golfed at Joint Base Andrews on Saturday with Marty Nesbit, a longtime friend; and Marvin Nicholson and Michael Brush, White House staffers.
Some Republicans cried foul over the expense of Obama's golf games in a time of government austerity, chafing particularly at the symbolism of the White House canceling tours, arguing the money spent on Secret Service protection for a presidential golf outing would be better spent on keeping the White House open to the public.
"The president will use up more Secret Service time guarding him while he golfs than it would take to keep the White House tours open all year," Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, said earlier this month on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer."
Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, submitted legislation which would make it illegal for Obama to use federal funds for commuting to and from golf outings until the White House resumes tours. Reopening the White House for tours would only cost "one or two golf trips less" for Obama, he argued.
Obama back on golf course after spending outcry from GOP – CNN Political Ticker - CNN-com Blogs
It’s the first time Obama has returned to the golf course since the spending cuts took effect March 1, though on previous weekend days he’s attended basketball games with his daughter. He also spent one Saturday in March returning from his trip to the Middle East.
In February he played a round of golf with Tiger Woods in Florida, but hasn't been golfing at Andrews since December.
The president golfed at Joint Base Andrews on Saturday with Marty Nesbit, a longtime friend; and Marvin Nicholson and Michael Brush, White House staffers.
Some Republicans cried foul over the expense of Obama's golf games in a time of government austerity, chafing particularly at the symbolism of the White House canceling tours, arguing the money spent on Secret Service protection for a presidential golf outing would be better spent on keeping the White House open to the public.
"The president will use up more Secret Service time guarding him while he golfs than it would take to keep the White House tours open all year," Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, said earlier this month on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer."
Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, submitted legislation which would make it illegal for Obama to use federal funds for commuting to and from golf outings until the White House resumes tours. Reopening the White House for tours would only cost "one or two golf trips less" for Obama, he argued.
Obama back on golf course after spending outcry from GOP – CNN Political Ticker - CNN-com Blogs
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Thai teenager Ariya Jutanugarn captured her first professional title on Sunday when she claimed a three-shot win at the Lalla Meryem Cup on the Ladies European Tour.
The 17-year-old from Bangkok came from a stroke behind overnight leader Charley Hull to earn victory with rounds of 69, 67, 67 and 67 for a 14 under par total at the par-71 Golf de l'Ocean.
"I played very good today on the front nine and on the second nine, the par 5, it got really exciting because there was only one shot lead," said Ariya.
"Yesterday my putting was not very good but the front nine made me confident with my putting. The 15th hole, I was really scared with my driver because in the practice round I didn't hit my driver well, so when I hit to the left, I thought, a bogey is fine, but I had seven."
The 17-year-old from Bangkok came from a stroke behind overnight leader Charley Hull to earn victory with rounds of 69, 67, 67 and 67 for a 14 under par total at the par-71 Golf de l'Ocean.
"I played very good today on the front nine and on the second nine, the par 5, it got really exciting because there was only one shot lead," said Ariya.
"Yesterday my putting was not very good but the front nine made me confident with my putting. The 15th hole, I was really scared with my driver because in the practice round I didn't hit my driver well, so when I hit to the left, I thought, a bogey is fine, but I had seven."
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There’s Pebble Beach and Augusta. The Old Course at Saint Andrews and Muirfield.
But one of the unsung heroes throughout the history of championship golf is right here in southeastern Pennsylvania: the little gem called Merion East.
The three greatest golfers, arguably, ever to play the game all are indelibly linked to the course in Ardmore.
We wouldn’t have the sports term “Grand Slam” if Bobby Jones hadn’t won the 1930 U.S. Amateur championship at Merion, which gave him simultaneous titles at the U.S. Amateur, U.S Open, British Open and British Amateur. Ben Hogan hit one of the game's most iconic shots at Merion in the final round of the 1954 U.S. Open: the now-mystical one-iron from more than 200 yards away at No. 18 that found the green. And Jack Nicklaus, golf’s greatest champion, once said of Merion: "Acre for acre, it may be the best test of golf in the world." Merion East has also played host to the most USGA championships — 19, including the 2013 U.S. Open — than any other American course.
"I think the Open here is going to be terrific for Philadelphia and the world of golf coming back to a traditional golf course one that’s had an open in '34, '50, '71, '81 is pretty neat," Merion Golf Club past president and U.S. Open Committee chairman Richard "Rick" Ill said in an interview last week. "We’ve had a lot of historic things happen, which is great."
Golf's icons made history at Merion
But one of the unsung heroes throughout the history of championship golf is right here in southeastern Pennsylvania: the little gem called Merion East.
The three greatest golfers, arguably, ever to play the game all are indelibly linked to the course in Ardmore.
We wouldn’t have the sports term “Grand Slam” if Bobby Jones hadn’t won the 1930 U.S. Amateur championship at Merion, which gave him simultaneous titles at the U.S. Amateur, U.S Open, British Open and British Amateur. Ben Hogan hit one of the game's most iconic shots at Merion in the final round of the 1954 U.S. Open: the now-mystical one-iron from more than 200 yards away at No. 18 that found the green. And Jack Nicklaus, golf’s greatest champion, once said of Merion: "Acre for acre, it may be the best test of golf in the world." Merion East has also played host to the most USGA championships — 19, including the 2013 U.S. Open — than any other American course.
"I think the Open here is going to be terrific for Philadelphia and the world of golf coming back to a traditional golf course one that’s had an open in '34, '50, '71, '81 is pretty neat," Merion Golf Club past president and U.S. Open Committee chairman Richard "Rick" Ill said in an interview last week. "We’ve had a lot of historic things happen, which is great."
Golf's icons made history at Merion
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For the most part, this spring has felt more like winter so far.
The National Weather Service records show that March was the coldest we've seen since 1969 in Knoxville. If you add in all the rain, it's been affecting sales for businesses that rely on the outdoors -- including golf courses.
"This year has been tough. It's a huge contrast from last year," said Dionte Jackson of Williams Creek Golf Course. March 2012 was the warmest March on record.
Tuesday, as the sun peeked out, the parking lot filled up.
"That's what we like to see. We like to see people on the golf course, folks in the parking lot and people having a good time," he said.
But it's been a rare sight so far this year.
Jackson said they've lost 50% of their revenue for March compared to last year.
It's the same story across town at Three Ridges Golf Course. They also say they're down by half for March and February and that translates to a $30,000 loss.
Avid golfer Carl Oaks tries to play twice a week at Three Ridges, but it was more like twice a month in March.
"The weather's been really detrimental. A lot of precipitation, a lot of rain," said Oaks, "It makes it tougher when you're trying to hit the ball and mud is splattering everywhere."
There is a silver lining. Both courses say once the sun comes out for good, they expect a boom because people are ready to spend some time outside.
Cold weather cuts some golf course revenues in half | wbir-com
The National Weather Service records show that March was the coldest we've seen since 1969 in Knoxville. If you add in all the rain, it's been affecting sales for businesses that rely on the outdoors -- including golf courses.
"This year has been tough. It's a huge contrast from last year," said Dionte Jackson of Williams Creek Golf Course. March 2012 was the warmest March on record.
Tuesday, as the sun peeked out, the parking lot filled up.
"That's what we like to see. We like to see people on the golf course, folks in the parking lot and people having a good time," he said.
But it's been a rare sight so far this year.
Jackson said they've lost 50% of their revenue for March compared to last year.
It's the same story across town at Three Ridges Golf Course. They also say they're down by half for March and February and that translates to a $30,000 loss.
Avid golfer Carl Oaks tries to play twice a week at Three Ridges, but it was more like twice a month in March.
"The weather's been really detrimental. A lot of precipitation, a lot of rain," said Oaks, "It makes it tougher when you're trying to hit the ball and mud is splattering everywhere."
There is a silver lining. Both courses say once the sun comes out for good, they expect a boom because people are ready to spend some time outside.
Cold weather cuts some golf course revenues in half | wbir-com
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Here are the simple facts about Tiger Woods at major championships; the guy has 14 major wins, second most all-time, and four behind Jack Nicklaus' incredible total of 18. He has won four straight majors, and two in one season four times. But since 2008 Tiger has won exactly zero majors, coming the closest at the '09 PGA Championship but finishing in the top-10 only once a season ago at the big four.
But that was then, and this is a different Tiger Woods, a man with three PGA Tour wins already in 2013 and six wins in the last year on tour (not to mention world No. 1 again). They might not have been majors, but Woods has learned how to win again and thinks that he can't just break Nicklaus' record of 18 major wins, but shatter it. In the latest Sports Illustrated issue with Woods on the cover, Michael Rosenberg caught up with some of the people closest to Tiger (Woods declined an interview with the magazine) and the most telling quote came from his old Stanford teammate and current Golf Channel analyst Notah Begay III.
"He is focused on 20," Begay said. "That may be a little hard to believe, considering what's transpired in the last three years, but that's where his focus is. He thinks he is capable of winning 20 majors."
It's an interesting concept to think that Woods thinks he can win six more majors at the age of 37, but remember, this is a guy that used to pin Nicklaus' major record to his wall as a kid, so he obviously isn't scared to shoot for the stars.
The big question is where do they come from? Tiger can definitely win at Augusta National, but he hasn't since 2005 and would definitely need to put together a solid putting round there over the next few seasons to give himself a chance. Merion, the site of this year's U.S. Open, looks like a lay-up for Tiger if, again, he is putting well and then he has St. Andrews in 2015 and 2020 (most likely) which always looks good for a man that dominated that course the first two times he played it in majors (he struggled in 2010 at the Old Course during the height of his swing problems).
That's four there, but really, how can we predict this stuff? When Woods won that U.S. Open at Torrey Pines on one leg it looked like he might win 30 majors before it was all said and done, but as the old saying goes, you've gotta believe, and at least for Tiger that has never been a problem.
Next week will be a huge tell in his quest to get to 20. If he snags his fifth green jacket at Augusta National this season, the flood gates could open and things could get very interested for Tiger and that Nicklaus record that seemed all but safe a season ago.
Y! SPORTS
But that was then, and this is a different Tiger Woods, a man with three PGA Tour wins already in 2013 and six wins in the last year on tour (not to mention world No. 1 again). They might not have been majors, but Woods has learned how to win again and thinks that he can't just break Nicklaus' record of 18 major wins, but shatter it. In the latest Sports Illustrated issue with Woods on the cover, Michael Rosenberg caught up with some of the people closest to Tiger (Woods declined an interview with the magazine) and the most telling quote came from his old Stanford teammate and current Golf Channel analyst Notah Begay III.
"He is focused on 20," Begay said. "That may be a little hard to believe, considering what's transpired in the last three years, but that's where his focus is. He thinks he is capable of winning 20 majors."
It's an interesting concept to think that Woods thinks he can win six more majors at the age of 37, but remember, this is a guy that used to pin Nicklaus' major record to his wall as a kid, so he obviously isn't scared to shoot for the stars.
The big question is where do they come from? Tiger can definitely win at Augusta National, but he hasn't since 2005 and would definitely need to put together a solid putting round there over the next few seasons to give himself a chance. Merion, the site of this year's U.S. Open, looks like a lay-up for Tiger if, again, he is putting well and then he has St. Andrews in 2015 and 2020 (most likely) which always looks good for a man that dominated that course the first two times he played it in majors (he struggled in 2010 at the Old Course during the height of his swing problems).
That's four there, but really, how can we predict this stuff? When Woods won that U.S. Open at Torrey Pines on one leg it looked like he might win 30 majors before it was all said and done, but as the old saying goes, you've gotta believe, and at least for Tiger that has never been a problem.
Next week will be a huge tell in his quest to get to 20. If he snags his fifth green jacket at Augusta National this season, the flood gates could open and things could get very interested for Tiger and that Nicklaus record that seemed all but safe a season ago.
Y! SPORTS
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World No 1 amateur Lydia Ko was happy enough with her solid start to her third major, the Kraft Nabisco Championship on the LPGA Tour in California, that could have been so much better but for a cold putter.
The 15-year-old from the Gulf Harbour Country Club shot an even-par 72 alongside golfing superstar Michelle Wie at the Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage today (Fri) to be in a share of 25th place after round one.
Ko is four shots back from the leading trio of South Korean Na Yeon Choi, Norway's Suzann Pettersen and England's Jodi Ewart Shadoff, who opened with rounds of four-under par 68 in the fine conditions.
Ko agreed that her even par score was as the worst score she could have had today considering the number of birdie opportunities she set up with her precise iron play.
``Yeah, especially the front nine, which was my back nine, a few [putts] slipped by, and I said, `oh, man, not again','' said the youngest winner in pro golf history.
``I think it was a pretty solid start. My putts didn't fall, but I felt like I rolled it really well.
I'm happy even though.''
The New Zealand Women's Open Champion, who began on the 10th tee, got off to a fast start with a birdie on her opening hole, but then gave it back with a bogey on the 11th.
``Yeah birdie on the first hole, that's always good, but then I don't play as good when I have a birdie on the first hole. But then I'll take it anyway.''
She repeated the birdie-bogey combination on the 14th and 15th before making a fine birdie on the 17th to make the turn in one under par and within touch of the leaders who at that stage were three under par.
Ko played steady golf on her back nine with a number of birdie chances until the par four seventh hole where she dropped a shot and had to settle for an even par 72 to be outside the top 20.
She enjoyed playing alongside Wie, who also carded an even-par 72 in round one, and is getting used to mixing with the glamour girls of the LPGA Tour.
``It was fun. She's my idol, so I was very excited. But I was less nervous today because I played with her at the Australian Open.''
The New Zealand rep, who has climbed to World No 25 on the Official World Rankings, has never missed a cut in the 14 professional events she has played since making her debut in a pro event at the New Zealand Women's Open in 2010.
She has won three titles, finished runner-up twice and third once in world-class fields to earn an amateur record that is one of the best ever seen in the game.
This week in California she is trying to become the youngest major winner.
Golf: Ko makes solid start in California - Sport - NZ Herald News
The 15-year-old from the Gulf Harbour Country Club shot an even-par 72 alongside golfing superstar Michelle Wie at the Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage today (Fri) to be in a share of 25th place after round one.
Ko is four shots back from the leading trio of South Korean Na Yeon Choi, Norway's Suzann Pettersen and England's Jodi Ewart Shadoff, who opened with rounds of four-under par 68 in the fine conditions.
Ko agreed that her even par score was as the worst score she could have had today considering the number of birdie opportunities she set up with her precise iron play.
``Yeah, especially the front nine, which was my back nine, a few [putts] slipped by, and I said, `oh, man, not again','' said the youngest winner in pro golf history.
``I think it was a pretty solid start. My putts didn't fall, but I felt like I rolled it really well.
I'm happy even though.''
The New Zealand Women's Open Champion, who began on the 10th tee, got off to a fast start with a birdie on her opening hole, but then gave it back with a bogey on the 11th.
``Yeah birdie on the first hole, that's always good, but then I don't play as good when I have a birdie on the first hole. But then I'll take it anyway.''
She repeated the birdie-bogey combination on the 14th and 15th before making a fine birdie on the 17th to make the turn in one under par and within touch of the leaders who at that stage were three under par.
Ko played steady golf on her back nine with a number of birdie chances until the par four seventh hole where she dropped a shot and had to settle for an even par 72 to be outside the top 20.
She enjoyed playing alongside Wie, who also carded an even-par 72 in round one, and is getting used to mixing with the glamour girls of the LPGA Tour.
``It was fun. She's my idol, so I was very excited. But I was less nervous today because I played with her at the Australian Open.''
The New Zealand rep, who has climbed to World No 25 on the Official World Rankings, has never missed a cut in the 14 professional events she has played since making her debut in a pro event at the New Zealand Women's Open in 2010.
She has won three titles, finished runner-up twice and third once in world-class fields to earn an amateur record that is one of the best ever seen in the game.
This week in California she is trying to become the youngest major winner.
Golf: Ko makes solid start in California - Sport - NZ Herald News
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New Zealand professional Danny Lee has reverted back to how he putted as an amateur and it has propelled him into the outright lead of the inaugural Brazil Classic on the web-com tour.
The former US Amateur champion carded a second consecutive six under par 65 at the Sao Paulo Golf Club overnight to take sole possession of the lead in Brazil before play was suspended.
Lee was two shots ahead of Swedish golfer Richard Johnson, who was four under for the day and 10 under for the tournament after playing 11 holes in his second round.
Lee believed his turnaround in form was due to returning to a simple putting tip he used as one of New Zealand's leading amateurs.
"I've started using the line on my ball again. It's really helped me with my alignment,'' the 22-year-old told the web-com tour website.
"I was using it as an amateur and I'm not sure why I stopped. I used to just put the ball down and try to make a perfect stroke. Now, I don't worry about the line. All I've got to do is think about the distance.''
It has worked so far with Lee making eight birdies and two bogeys in his second round to be in a great position to win his first title since claiming the WNB Classic in Texas in 2011.
Lee has made a solid start to the 2013 season. He has made three out of four cuts and his best result came when he finished tied sixth at the Chile Classic in March. He also finished in a share of 13th place at the season opening Sony Open in Hawaii on the PGA Tour.
The former European Tour winner is back on the web-com tour after failing to keep his card on the PGA Tour in 2012. He missed out in qualifying school by only one shot.
Lee, who is currently 26th on the web-com tour money list, needs to finish inside the top 25 players to return to the PGA Tour in 2014.
Fellow Kiwi Tim Wilkinson is also right in the hunt in Brazil. The left hander from the Manawatu, who opened with a four under par 67, is three under through 10 holes to be on seven under par and in a share of third place.
The former PGA Tour professional, who is 16th on the web-com tour money list, is only five shots back from Lee.
Hamilton professional Steve Alker is in a share of 13th place after rounds of 67 and 70 to be five under par.
But the main interest is on the leader Lee to see if he can continue his form at the top of the leaderboard and claim his first title in almost two years.
Golf: Lee on top in Brazil - Sport - NZ Herald News
The former US Amateur champion carded a second consecutive six under par 65 at the Sao Paulo Golf Club overnight to take sole possession of the lead in Brazil before play was suspended.
Lee was two shots ahead of Swedish golfer Richard Johnson, who was four under for the day and 10 under for the tournament after playing 11 holes in his second round.
Lee believed his turnaround in form was due to returning to a simple putting tip he used as one of New Zealand's leading amateurs.
"I've started using the line on my ball again. It's really helped me with my alignment,'' the 22-year-old told the web-com tour website.
"I was using it as an amateur and I'm not sure why I stopped. I used to just put the ball down and try to make a perfect stroke. Now, I don't worry about the line. All I've got to do is think about the distance.''
It has worked so far with Lee making eight birdies and two bogeys in his second round to be in a great position to win his first title since claiming the WNB Classic in Texas in 2011.
Lee has made a solid start to the 2013 season. He has made three out of four cuts and his best result came when he finished tied sixth at the Chile Classic in March. He also finished in a share of 13th place at the season opening Sony Open in Hawaii on the PGA Tour.
The former European Tour winner is back on the web-com tour after failing to keep his card on the PGA Tour in 2012. He missed out in qualifying school by only one shot.
Lee, who is currently 26th on the web-com tour money list, needs to finish inside the top 25 players to return to the PGA Tour in 2014.
Fellow Kiwi Tim Wilkinson is also right in the hunt in Brazil. The left hander from the Manawatu, who opened with a four under par 67, is three under through 10 holes to be on seven under par and in a share of third place.
The former PGA Tour professional, who is 16th on the web-com tour money list, is only five shots back from Lee.
Hamilton professional Steve Alker is in a share of 13th place after rounds of 67 and 70 to be five under par.
But the main interest is on the leader Lee to see if he can continue his form at the top of the leaderboard and claim his first title in almost two years.
Golf: Lee on top in Brazil - Sport - NZ Herald News
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President Obama went out for a round of golf Saturday afternoon, his second weekend in a row to hit the links at a course at Joint Base Andrews.
The president golfed with White House aides Marvin Nicholson, Joe Paulsen, and Michael Brush.
Last Saturday, the president played golf at the same course with Nicholson, Brush, and friend and Chicago businessman Marty Nesbitt. The outing marked his first time on the golf course since the sequester cuts went into place on March 1. The president also took in the Syracuse-Marquette NCAA tournament basketball game at the Verizon Center, where he spent time talking with Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III last weekend.
President Obama Plays Golf for Second Weekend in a Row - ABC News
The president golfed with White House aides Marvin Nicholson, Joe Paulsen, and Michael Brush.
Last Saturday, the president played golf at the same course with Nicholson, Brush, and friend and Chicago businessman Marty Nesbitt. The outing marked his first time on the golf course since the sequester cuts went into place on March 1. The president also took in the Syracuse-Marquette NCAA tournament basketball game at the Verizon Center, where he spent time talking with Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III last weekend.
President Obama Plays Golf for Second Weekend in a Row - ABC News
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When the career of golf's top player and biggest star was in free fall in 2010, the brain trust of professional golf in the U.S. gathered in their Florida headquarters to contemplate life after Tiger Woods.
Huddling with consultants from their Austin, Texas, advertising firm, senior executives at the PGA Tour tried to figure out how to persuade fans, sponsors and television networks to stay invested in a sport whose biggest draw had been disgraced. The golf world looked like it was about to go through a difficult generational transition.
"Every 10 to 15 years you have a passing of the baton from one face to the other," says Ty Votaw, the tour's executive vice president. "We were about at that 15-year mark with Tiger." There was one problem, though—there wasn't any obvious candidate ready to grab the torch from Mr. Woods, and the consensus among sports-industry executives was that professional golf was headed for trouble.
Defying predictions, the post-Tiger collapse never happened, thanks to the rise of a flashy new crop of players. By nearly every measure, professional golf became richer, more competitive and more stable while Mr. Woods was dealing with the sex scandal and injuries that sent his career careening off course. Now there is an added boost: Mr. Woods, who will tee off on Thursday at the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club where he became a megastar in 1997, recaptured the No. 1 ranking last month. He did it with a win at the Arnold Palmer Invitational in Orlando, just a few miles from the site of the car accident on Thanksgiving weekend in 2009 that began the unraveling of his personal life.
Tour revenues rose to a record $1.11 billion last year, compared with $1.02 billion in 2010. The tour's new nine-year television contract with NBC and CBS, signed in 2011 when Mr. Woods was tumbling down the rankings, will pay an average of about $800 million annually, a 33% increase over the previous deal, according to one person with knowledge of the deal.
The PGA Tour now has title sponsors for all 42 of its tournaments, each of them paying $6 million to $12 million, depending on the event. Last year, FedEx Corp. extended its deal through 2017 to provide at least $35 million a year in prize money, and tens of millions more in advertising, for the season-ending FedEx Cup championship.
Television ratings still spike when Mr. Woods is on the leaderboard in a final round, especially at a one of golf's four majors championships. But CBS, the tour's lead broadcaster, says more people are tuning in to final-round coverage even when Mr. Woods isn't in the field. "We're happy that he's back and that he's playing well, but we've always felt he spikes off a very strong base, and we think what we've done the past couple of years shows that," says the PGA Tour's Mr. Votaw.
At the Masters, Mr. Woods will resume his pursuit of Jack Nicklaus's record of 18 major championships. He has been stuck at 14 since 2008, when he began struggling with injuries. He lost the No. 1 ranking, which he had held for all but a few months since 1997, in 2010, eventually falling to 58th.
As he faded, the spotlight shifted to players who were teenagers or younger when Mr. Woods came of age. Those players don't look, act or dress like the golfer of yore, preferring flashy, bright colors and slim-tailored cuts to pleated plaids. More important, they have proven gifted, making the sport as deep and competitive as it has been since Mr. Woods's emergence.
"As he's gotten older the talent has gotten better," says Bubba Watson, the defending Masters champion, whose star rose just as Mr. Woods's dimmed.
The emergence of players such as 34-year-old Mr. Watson, Northern Ireland's 23-year-old Rory McIlroy, and Rickie Fowler, a 24-year-old American who grew up racing dirt bikes, came at a perfect time for the sport. They were golfers in the Tiger Woods mold—supremely talented and fit athletes who happened to play golf. Dustin Johnson, for instance, can dunk a basketball. Still, tour executives felt they needed a strategy. By the fall of 2010, the PGA Tour was starting negotiations on a new television deal, which provides the bulk of its revenues. Some of the tour's tournaments needed new deals for title sponsors. Millions of fans who associated golf with Mr. Woods and his aging rival, Phil Mickelson, couldn't pick budding stars like Messrs. Johnson and Fowler out of a lineup.
In the fall of 2010, PGA executives gathered in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., with a team from the Austin advertising firm GSD&M to concoct a way to sell the sport in a post-Tiger world.
One idea was to focus on the different type of fan that each of the emerging players attracted. Mr. Watson, for instance, a self-taught free spirit from the Florida panhandle, is a favorite with the beer-and-wings crowd.
Mr. Votaw says that approach didn't feel sustainable over time, and didn't reflect the emerging competitive tension between the new stars and tour veterans. Professional golf, he argues, was in one of those critical periods "where the young people come in and begin to overtake the stars that preceded them."
The resulting ad campaign, called "Vs.," would highlight younger players such as Messrs. Fowler, Watson and Johnson taking on the establishment and trying to break into the sport's elite.
Fortuitously, as the PGA Tour rolled out the commercials, those players began winning. Mr. Watson captured two tournaments in 2011, then won the Masters last year with a miraculous shot out of the woods on the final playoff hole. Keegan Bradley, 26 years old, won the PGA Championship as a rookie in 2011. Golf had found a new story to tell, and with the economy recovering, sponsors and television partners were ready to listen.
"We all got spoiled for more than a decade with Tiger's performances," says Sean McManus, the chairman of CBS Sports. "But we looked at the incredible strength of the young players and thought there was a gre
Huddling with consultants from their Austin, Texas, advertising firm, senior executives at the PGA Tour tried to figure out how to persuade fans, sponsors and television networks to stay invested in a sport whose biggest draw had been disgraced. The golf world looked like it was about to go through a difficult generational transition.
"Every 10 to 15 years you have a passing of the baton from one face to the other," says Ty Votaw, the tour's executive vice president. "We were about at that 15-year mark with Tiger." There was one problem, though—there wasn't any obvious candidate ready to grab the torch from Mr. Woods, and the consensus among sports-industry executives was that professional golf was headed for trouble.
Defying predictions, the post-Tiger collapse never happened, thanks to the rise of a flashy new crop of players. By nearly every measure, professional golf became richer, more competitive and more stable while Mr. Woods was dealing with the sex scandal and injuries that sent his career careening off course. Now there is an added boost: Mr. Woods, who will tee off on Thursday at the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club where he became a megastar in 1997, recaptured the No. 1 ranking last month. He did it with a win at the Arnold Palmer Invitational in Orlando, just a few miles from the site of the car accident on Thanksgiving weekend in 2009 that began the unraveling of his personal life.
Tour revenues rose to a record $1.11 billion last year, compared with $1.02 billion in 2010. The tour's new nine-year television contract with NBC and CBS, signed in 2011 when Mr. Woods was tumbling down the rankings, will pay an average of about $800 million annually, a 33% increase over the previous deal, according to one person with knowledge of the deal.
The PGA Tour now has title sponsors for all 42 of its tournaments, each of them paying $6 million to $12 million, depending on the event. Last year, FedEx Corp. extended its deal through 2017 to provide at least $35 million a year in prize money, and tens of millions more in advertising, for the season-ending FedEx Cup championship.
Television ratings still spike when Mr. Woods is on the leaderboard in a final round, especially at a one of golf's four majors championships. But CBS, the tour's lead broadcaster, says more people are tuning in to final-round coverage even when Mr. Woods isn't in the field. "We're happy that he's back and that he's playing well, but we've always felt he spikes off a very strong base, and we think what we've done the past couple of years shows that," says the PGA Tour's Mr. Votaw.
At the Masters, Mr. Woods will resume his pursuit of Jack Nicklaus's record of 18 major championships. He has been stuck at 14 since 2008, when he began struggling with injuries. He lost the No. 1 ranking, which he had held for all but a few months since 1997, in 2010, eventually falling to 58th.
As he faded, the spotlight shifted to players who were teenagers or younger when Mr. Woods came of age. Those players don't look, act or dress like the golfer of yore, preferring flashy, bright colors and slim-tailored cuts to pleated plaids. More important, they have proven gifted, making the sport as deep and competitive as it has been since Mr. Woods's emergence.
"As he's gotten older the talent has gotten better," says Bubba Watson, the defending Masters champion, whose star rose just as Mr. Woods's dimmed.
The emergence of players such as 34-year-old Mr. Watson, Northern Ireland's 23-year-old Rory McIlroy, and Rickie Fowler, a 24-year-old American who grew up racing dirt bikes, came at a perfect time for the sport. They were golfers in the Tiger Woods mold—supremely talented and fit athletes who happened to play golf. Dustin Johnson, for instance, can dunk a basketball. Still, tour executives felt they needed a strategy. By the fall of 2010, the PGA Tour was starting negotiations on a new television deal, which provides the bulk of its revenues. Some of the tour's tournaments needed new deals for title sponsors. Millions of fans who associated golf with Mr. Woods and his aging rival, Phil Mickelson, couldn't pick budding stars like Messrs. Johnson and Fowler out of a lineup.
In the fall of 2010, PGA executives gathered in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., with a team from the Austin advertising firm GSD&M to concoct a way to sell the sport in a post-Tiger world.
One idea was to focus on the different type of fan that each of the emerging players attracted. Mr. Watson, for instance, a self-taught free spirit from the Florida panhandle, is a favorite with the beer-and-wings crowd.
Mr. Votaw says that approach didn't feel sustainable over time, and didn't reflect the emerging competitive tension between the new stars and tour veterans. Professional golf, he argues, was in one of those critical periods "where the young people come in and begin to overtake the stars that preceded them."
The resulting ad campaign, called "Vs.," would highlight younger players such as Messrs. Fowler, Watson and Johnson taking on the establishment and trying to break into the sport's elite.
Fortuitously, as the PGA Tour rolled out the commercials, those players began winning. Mr. Watson captured two tournaments in 2011, then won the Masters last year with a miraculous shot out of the woods on the final playoff hole. Keegan Bradley, 26 years old, won the PGA Championship as a rookie in 2011. Golf had found a new story to tell, and with the economy recovering, sponsors and television partners were ready to listen.
"We all got spoiled for more than a decade with Tiger's performances," says Sean McManus, the chairman of CBS Sports. "But we looked at the incredible strength of the young players and thought there was a gre
Join:
2006/12/07
Messages:
29893
Steve Stricker could certainly do with a bit of Masters payback after giving his good friend Tiger Woods a valuable putting lesson during last month's WGC-Cadillac Championship in Miami.
Helped by Stricker's advice, Woods went on to triumph by two shots over his fellow American at Doral, then won the Arnold Palmer Invitational on his next start to cement his status as a hot favourite for this week's Masters at Augusta National.
While Woods returns with plenty of swagger to a venue where he is a four-times champion, Stricker remains bemused by his own relatively mediocre record in the year's opening major, despite his reputation as one of the best putters in the game.
"For the most part I've struggled here," Stricker told reporters on Monday ahead of Thursday's opening round. "I'm starting to feel a little bit more comfortable going around here but there are still a few things I haven't figured out.
"I've gotten in my way mentally here I think more times than not ... just not committing to shots, not committing to lines, feeling a little overwhelmed about this place at times."
Stricker's honey-smooth putting stroke is widely envied by his peers and he seems perfectly equipped to cope with the lightning-fast, heavily contoured greens at Augusta National.
In 12 previous Masters appearances, however, he has missed the cut five times while recording just two top-10s with a best finish of joint sixth in 2009.
"It's a challenging spot and it's a challenging course," said the 46-year-old Stricker, who played 14 holes in practice with Woods on Sunday. "You've got to suck it up on a lot of shots and hit quality shots, and I haven't done that at times."
INCREASINGLY LUSH
Stricker, whose best major finishes include three top-sixes at the U.S. Open and a runner-up spot at the 1998 PGA Championship, feels he has suffered at the Masters in recent years because of fairways which have become increasingly lush.
"You need to spin the ball here, and I'm not a spinner of the ball," the American world number eight said. "I bring it in with some height, but I don't put a lot of spin on it, and I think that's a negative for me here.
"And I'm coming in with usually a club or two more than some of these big hitters. But you know, shorter hitters have proven to have done well here over the years here, too ... Weirsy (Mike Weir) winning and Zach Johnson winning.
"I hit it just about the same distance as them. They have proven that you don't need to bomb it to win here."
Asked whether Woods had given him any Masters advice during their practice round on Sunday, Stricker replied with a smile: "Ah, no. We were talking about pitching and chip shots and a little wedge play.
"We were talking about that a lot. I was asking him what he does and what he tries to do, his action on the way back and on the way through. It's mutual. We try to help out one another every once in awhile.
"It's just when things pop up. I'm not afraid to ask him. He's the best player in the world. He's ranked number one now again, and it's fun to bounce some ideas off him here and there."
It has been eight years since Woods won his fourth green jacket at the Masters, his private life having imploded at the end of 2009 as a string of extra-marital affairs was exposed, but Stricker fully expects Woods to be in the thick of the title hunt on Sunday.
"He's hitting it nicely," Stricker said of Woods who has triumphed three times in his last five PGA Tour starts. "Looks like he's got a ton of confidence in that putter, too, which you need to go around here.
"It looks like he's comfortable in his game and what he's doing. I expect him to be in the mix come Sunday for sure."
Golf-Stricker waits on Masters advice from Tiger
Helped by Stricker's advice, Woods went on to triumph by two shots over his fellow American at Doral, then won the Arnold Palmer Invitational on his next start to cement his status as a hot favourite for this week's Masters at Augusta National.
While Woods returns with plenty of swagger to a venue where he is a four-times champion, Stricker remains bemused by his own relatively mediocre record in the year's opening major, despite his reputation as one of the best putters in the game.
"For the most part I've struggled here," Stricker told reporters on Monday ahead of Thursday's opening round. "I'm starting to feel a little bit more comfortable going around here but there are still a few things I haven't figured out.
"I've gotten in my way mentally here I think more times than not ... just not committing to shots, not committing to lines, feeling a little overwhelmed about this place at times."
Stricker's honey-smooth putting stroke is widely envied by his peers and he seems perfectly equipped to cope with the lightning-fast, heavily contoured greens at Augusta National.
In 12 previous Masters appearances, however, he has missed the cut five times while recording just two top-10s with a best finish of joint sixth in 2009.
"It's a challenging spot and it's a challenging course," said the 46-year-old Stricker, who played 14 holes in practice with Woods on Sunday. "You've got to suck it up on a lot of shots and hit quality shots, and I haven't done that at times."
INCREASINGLY LUSH
Stricker, whose best major finishes include three top-sixes at the U.S. Open and a runner-up spot at the 1998 PGA Championship, feels he has suffered at the Masters in recent years because of fairways which have become increasingly lush.
"You need to spin the ball here, and I'm not a spinner of the ball," the American world number eight said. "I bring it in with some height, but I don't put a lot of spin on it, and I think that's a negative for me here.
"And I'm coming in with usually a club or two more than some of these big hitters. But you know, shorter hitters have proven to have done well here over the years here, too ... Weirsy (Mike Weir) winning and Zach Johnson winning.
"I hit it just about the same distance as them. They have proven that you don't need to bomb it to win here."
Asked whether Woods had given him any Masters advice during their practice round on Sunday, Stricker replied with a smile: "Ah, no. We were talking about pitching and chip shots and a little wedge play.
"We were talking about that a lot. I was asking him what he does and what he tries to do, his action on the way back and on the way through. It's mutual. We try to help out one another every once in awhile.
"It's just when things pop up. I'm not afraid to ask him. He's the best player in the world. He's ranked number one now again, and it's fun to bounce some ideas off him here and there."
It has been eight years since Woods won his fourth green jacket at the Masters, his private life having imploded at the end of 2009 as a string of extra-marital affairs was exposed, but Stricker fully expects Woods to be in the thick of the title hunt on Sunday.
"He's hitting it nicely," Stricker said of Woods who has triumphed three times in his last five PGA Tour starts. "Looks like he's got a ton of confidence in that putter, too, which you need to go around here.
"It looks like he's comfortable in his game and what he's doing. I expect him to be in the mix come Sunday for sure."
Golf-Stricker waits on Masters advice from Tiger
Join:
2006/12/07
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Manne wrote:
When the career of golf's top player and biggest star was in free fall in 2010, the brain trust of professional golf in the U.S. gathered in their Florida headquarters to contemplate life after Tiger Woods.
Huddling with consultants from their Austin, Texas, advertising firm, senior executives at the PGA Tour tried to figure out how to persuade fans, sponsors and television networks to stay invested in a sport whose biggest draw had been disgraced. The golf world looked like it was about to go through a difficult generational transition.
"Every 10 to 15 years you have a passing of the baton from one face to the other," says Ty Votaw, the tour's executive vice president. "We were about at that 15-year mark with Tiger." There was one problem, though—there wasn't any obvious candidate ready to grab the torch from Mr. Woods, and the consensus among sports-industry executives was that professional golf was headed for trouble.
Defying predictions, the post-Tiger collapse never happened, thanks to the rise of a flashy new crop of players. By nearly every measure, professional golf became richer, more competitive and more stable while Mr. Woods was dealing with the sex scandal and injuries that sent his career careening off course. Now there is an added boost: Mr. Woods, who will tee off on Thursday at the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club where he became a megastar in 1997, recaptured the No. 1 ranking last month. He did it with a win at the Arnold Palmer Invitational in Orlando, just a few miles from the site of the car accident on Thanksgiving weekend in 2009 that began the unraveling of his personal life.
Tour revenues rose to a record $1.11 billion last year, compared with $1.02 billion in 2010. The tour's new nine-year television contract with NBC and CBS, signed in 2011 when Mr. Woods was tumbling down the rankings, will pay an average of about $800 million annually, a 33% increase over the previous deal, according to one person with knowledge of the deal.
The PGA Tour now has title sponsors for all 42 of its tournaments, each of them paying $6 million to $12 million, depending on the event. Last year, FedEx Corp. extended its deal through 2017 to provide at least $35 million a year in prize money, and tens of millions more in advertising, for the season-ending FedEx Cup championship.
Television ratings still spike when Mr. Woods is on the leaderboard in a final round, especially at a one of golf's four majors championships. But CBS, the tour's lead broadcaster, says more people are tuning in to final-round coverage even when Mr. Woods isn't in the field. "We're happy that he's back and that he's playing well, but we've always felt he spikes off a very strong base, and we think what we've done the past couple of years shows that," says the PGA Tour's Mr. Votaw.
At the Masters, Mr. Woods will resume his pursuit of Jack Nicklaus's record of 18 major championships. He has been stuck at 14 since 2008, when he began struggling with injuries. He lost the No. 1 ranking, which he had held for all but a few months since 1997, in 2010, eventually falling to 58th.
As he faded, the spotlight shifted to players who were teenagers or younger when Mr. Woods came of age. Those players don't look, act or dress like the golfer of yore, preferring flashy, bright colors and slim-tailored cuts to pleated plaids. More important, they have proven gifted, making the sport as deep and competitive as it has been since Mr. Woods's emergence.
"As he's gotten older the talent has gotten better," says Bubba Watson, the defending Masters champion, whose star rose just as Mr. Woods's dimmed.
The emergence of players such as 34-year-old Mr. Watson, Northern Ireland's 23-year-old Rory McIlroy, and Rickie Fowler, a 24-year-old American who grew up racing dirt bikes, came at a perfect time for the sport. They were golfers in the Tiger Woods mold—supremely talented and fit athletes who happened to play golf. Dustin Johnson, for instance, can dunk a basketball. Still, tour executives felt they needed a strategy. By the fall of 2010, the PGA Tour was starting negotiations on a new television deal, which provides the bulk of its revenues. Some of the tour's tournaments needed new deals for title sponsors. Millions of fans who associated golf with Mr. Woods and his aging rival, Phil Mickelson, couldn't pick budding stars like Messrs. Johnson and Fowler out of a lineup.
In the fall of 2010, PGA executives gathered in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., with a team from the Austin advertising firm GSD&M to concoct a way to sell the sport in a post-Tiger world.
One idea was to focus on the different type of fan that each of the emerging players attracted. Mr. Watson, for instance, a self-taught free spirit from the Florida panhandle, is a favorite with the beer-and-wings crowd.
Mr. Votaw says that approach didn't feel sustainable over time, and didn't reflect the emerging competitive tension between the new stars and tour veterans. Professional golf, he argues, was in one of those critical periods "where the young people come in and begin to overtake the stars that preceded them."
The resulting ad campaign, called "Vs.," would highlight younger players such as Messrs. Fowler, Watson and Johnson taking on the establishment and trying to break into the sport's elite.
Fortuitously, as the PGA Tour rolled out the commercials, those players began winning. Mr. Watson captured two tournaments in 2011, then won the Masters last year with a miraculous shot out of the woods on the final playoff hole. Keegan Bradley, 26 years old, won the PGA Championship as a rookie in 2011. Golf had found a new story to tell, and with the economy recovering, sponsors and television partners were ready to listen.
"We all got spoiled for more than a decade with Tiger's performances," says Sean McManus, the chairman of CBS Sports. "But we looked at the incredible strength of the young players and thought there was a gre
So what.......
Join:
2008/12/18
Messages:
846
A strip of second-hand artificial turf, timber offcuts and empty baked-bean tins are being transformed into Christchurch's first central-city-wide mini-golf course.
Gap Filler's Gap Golf project - a nine-hole course dotted around vacant central-city sites - is expected to open this month after being delayed last year by the construction of the Summer Pallet Pavilion.
The idea grew from a par-two hole built next to the Gap Filler office in Sydenham.
Turf donated by the Sydenham Hockey Club and other donated and recycled materials, including clubs and balls, allowed the project to expand.
Holes in Tuam, Manchester, Kilmore and Colombo streets are being developed by volunteers. Land was secured by charitable trust Life in Vacant Spaces.
Each hole includes an image of the building that was once on the site.
Gap Filler project co-ordinator Richard Sewell hoped the mini-golf course would entice children back into the central city more than other projects had.
The project will open on April 20 with the Central City Mini-Golf Challenge. It will run from 10am to 2pm, and players are encouraged to travel the course by foot or cycle.
Gap Filler Puts Mini-golf In Central Christchurch | Stuff.co.nz
Gap Filler's Gap Golf project - a nine-hole course dotted around vacant central-city sites - is expected to open this month after being delayed last year by the construction of the Summer Pallet Pavilion.
The idea grew from a par-two hole built next to the Gap Filler office in Sydenham.
Turf donated by the Sydenham Hockey Club and other donated and recycled materials, including clubs and balls, allowed the project to expand.
Holes in Tuam, Manchester, Kilmore and Colombo streets are being developed by volunteers. Land was secured by charitable trust Life in Vacant Spaces.
Each hole includes an image of the building that was once on the site.
Gap Filler project co-ordinator Richard Sewell hoped the mini-golf course would entice children back into the central city more than other projects had.
The project will open on April 20 with the Central City Mini-Golf Challenge. It will run from 10am to 2pm, and players are encouraged to travel the course by foot or cycle.
Gap Filler Puts Mini-golf In Central Christchurch | Stuff.co.nz
Join:
2006/12/07
Messages:
29893
The back 9 on Sunday at the Masters is usually one of the most exciting stretches in sports.
One of the many reasons for that is because of two reachable par 5s, Nos. 13 and 15, that can swing momentum to or away from any player in contention.
Zach Johnson famously won the Masters in 2007 by laying up on those par 5s and accepting easy approach shots to make birdies instead of eagles.
Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods have employed different, more aggressive strategies on their way to their combined seven green jackets, mostly opting to go for the green in two for hopefully an eagle opportunity or at worst an easy birdie. Par 5s in general are my favorite holes on any golf course because in my mind they are automatically a birdie hole.
Any player who’s playing from the correct set of tee markers should have an opportunity to reach some par 5s in two shots, or at the very least, lay up to have an easy approach with a wedge. The strategy you employ on par 5s will likely need to vary based on several issues.
Here are a few guidelines to make sure you make the right choice the next time you’re not sure what to do:
• Assess risk versus reward. Whether your risk is losing a tournament or simply losing a golf ball, you’ll want to weigh your options. However, one rule always applies; only attempt a shot you are comfortable hitting. If hitting 3-wood from the fairway never works out for you, the second shot on a par 5 may not be the best time to try it. Instead, choose your favorite club and lay up.
• Pay extra attention to your layup shot. Laying up means you are hopefully able to position yourself to make an easy third shot to the green. Avoid hazards and know ahead of time what distances you are comfortable hitting from so you can carefully select a layup club to get the ball to the correct distance.
• Birdie is always a good score on any hole no matter who you are. The idea on a par 5 is to maximize your chance for birdie. Play to your strengths to do just that. If you have a great short game, then you can be more aggressive on your second shot, knowing that if you miss the green you have an excellent chance to get up and down for birdie. If you’re more comfortable approaching the green from 100 yards, then you are better served laying up to your comfortable distance.
Tips For Playing Par 5s | Golf Channel
One of the many reasons for that is because of two reachable par 5s, Nos. 13 and 15, that can swing momentum to or away from any player in contention.
Zach Johnson famously won the Masters in 2007 by laying up on those par 5s and accepting easy approach shots to make birdies instead of eagles.
Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods have employed different, more aggressive strategies on their way to their combined seven green jackets, mostly opting to go for the green in two for hopefully an eagle opportunity or at worst an easy birdie. Par 5s in general are my favorite holes on any golf course because in my mind they are automatically a birdie hole.
Any player who’s playing from the correct set of tee markers should have an opportunity to reach some par 5s in two shots, or at the very least, lay up to have an easy approach with a wedge. The strategy you employ on par 5s will likely need to vary based on several issues.
Here are a few guidelines to make sure you make the right choice the next time you’re not sure what to do:
• Assess risk versus reward. Whether your risk is losing a tournament or simply losing a golf ball, you’ll want to weigh your options. However, one rule always applies; only attempt a shot you are comfortable hitting. If hitting 3-wood from the fairway never works out for you, the second shot on a par 5 may not be the best time to try it. Instead, choose your favorite club and lay up.
• Pay extra attention to your layup shot. Laying up means you are hopefully able to position yourself to make an easy third shot to the green. Avoid hazards and know ahead of time what distances you are comfortable hitting from so you can carefully select a layup club to get the ball to the correct distance.
• Birdie is always a good score on any hole no matter who you are. The idea on a par 5 is to maximize your chance for birdie. Play to your strengths to do just that. If you have a great short game, then you can be more aggressive on your second shot, knowing that if you miss the green you have an excellent chance to get up and down for birdie. If you’re more comfortable approaching the green from 100 yards, then you are better served laying up to your comfortable distance.
Tips For Playing Par 5s | Golf Channel
Join:
2006/12/07
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29893
Tiger Woods dominates golf again. For a long while, there was a real question whether that would happen. He did go more than two years without winning a PGA Tour tournament. He struggled with injuries and swing changes. He snap-hooked drives into the wilderness. A few more putts lipped out. He seemed to drift mentally – he stopped thriving on Sundays.
Now, though, he looks reborn. He is back to hitting his driver so well he spins the club and does not even need to watch the ball land. He stalks putts like the Tiger of old. He’s putting away golf tournaments on Sundays. Yes, he looks reborn.
And, again, we can ask the question: Can Tiger Woods win five more major championships and pass Jack Nicklaus as the greatest golfer who ever lived?
Why it matters: There is a compelling argument to be made that Tiger Woods does not have anything left to do, that he is already the greatest golfer who ever lived.
Look: Woods already has won 77 PGA Tour events, four more than Nicklaus and just five behind the all-time record held by Sam Snead (and as many as Snead won as an individual). He will break Snead’s record. He has already won more than $100 million in prize money. Nicklaus, in case you are wondering, won $5.7 million in his career.
Now, some business people have done studies comparing Nicklaus and Woods prize money based on inflation and the much smaller purses of Nicklaus’ time and calculate that Nicklaus actually won as much or even more money than Woods. But Woods’ amazing prize money number is telling for two reasons.
1. Woods’ $100 million is $35 million more than any other golfer.
2. Woods’ popularity almost singlehandedly transformed golf and drove those purses through the stratosphere. In other words, he didn’t just win more money. He CREATED more money.
Woods has what almost everyone would concede is the greatest peak in golf history – four consecutive major championship victories (the Tiger Slam), seven major championships out of 11, the most dominant performances ever at the U.S. Open, Masters and British Open and so on. Then there is the argument that Woods plays in a time when the fields are much deeper than ever before, when the new technology in golf shrinks the gap between the good and the great.
So, yes, you could argue that Woods – even though he has 14 major championships to Nicklaus’ 18 – is the best ever.
But I don’t think that argument is viable, and here’s why: Tiger Woods personally set the guidelines. When he was a kid, he had a poster on his wall of Jack Nicklaus and those 18 major championships. That was the grail. Woods can win 100 PGA Tour events and win $500 million and dominate the game for another decade, but unless he gets to 19 majors, the journey is incomplete.
And nobody understands this more clearly than Tiger Woods himself.
Why Woods will break Jack’s record: There has never been a player quite like him.
Tiger Woods’ story is so familiar, it is just a part of the sports landscape. Golfing prodigy. Brilliant amateur. Historic dominance at Augusta. The Tiger Slam. The U.S. Open on one leg. Long putts that always drop. Magical shots from behind trees. The fist pump, the scowl, the rage, the red shirt on Sunday.
It is all so familiar that it no longer feels miraculous. But Tiger Woods, for much of his career, has been miraculous. Golf was not made to be tamed. Nicklaus finished second at 19 major championships. Ben Hogan, after his magical 1953, never won another major. Tom Watson started missed the come-backers, Nick Faldo stopped being a metronome, Greg Norman never could quite harness all that talent, Phil Mickelson has alternated brilliance and breakdowns his entire amazing career.
But Tiger Woods, for the longest time, seemed able to tilt the game to his will. He could always hit the ball farther, hit the approaches higher, chip and blast with more feel, read the greens better. But there have been other golfers with something close to his talent. What pushed him beyond, it seems, was a sixth sense, this ability to make the long putt or the wonder shot precisely when he needed it.
You will remember his famous chip at No. 16 at Augusta, when he aimed for a sliver of sunlight that was glowing on a hill, then watched the ball roll back down that hill and back down and back down until it stopped at the hole, posed for photographs, and then plopped in. Hitting it close might have been good enough to win the tournament. But with Tiger Woods, good enough was never good enough. It had to fall in the hole.
With that sort of wizardry … well, of course he will break Jack’s record.
Read More: Will Tiger Woods Break Jack Nicklaus' Majors Record? | Golf Channel
Now, though, he looks reborn. He is back to hitting his driver so well he spins the club and does not even need to watch the ball land. He stalks putts like the Tiger of old. He’s putting away golf tournaments on Sundays. Yes, he looks reborn.
And, again, we can ask the question: Can Tiger Woods win five more major championships and pass Jack Nicklaus as the greatest golfer who ever lived?
Why it matters: There is a compelling argument to be made that Tiger Woods does not have anything left to do, that he is already the greatest golfer who ever lived.
Look: Woods already has won 77 PGA Tour events, four more than Nicklaus and just five behind the all-time record held by Sam Snead (and as many as Snead won as an individual). He will break Snead’s record. He has already won more than $100 million in prize money. Nicklaus, in case you are wondering, won $5.7 million in his career.
Now, some business people have done studies comparing Nicklaus and Woods prize money based on inflation and the much smaller purses of Nicklaus’ time and calculate that Nicklaus actually won as much or even more money than Woods. But Woods’ amazing prize money number is telling for two reasons.
1. Woods’ $100 million is $35 million more than any other golfer.
2. Woods’ popularity almost singlehandedly transformed golf and drove those purses through the stratosphere. In other words, he didn’t just win more money. He CREATED more money.
Woods has what almost everyone would concede is the greatest peak in golf history – four consecutive major championship victories (the Tiger Slam), seven major championships out of 11, the most dominant performances ever at the U.S. Open, Masters and British Open and so on. Then there is the argument that Woods plays in a time when the fields are much deeper than ever before, when the new technology in golf shrinks the gap between the good and the great.
So, yes, you could argue that Woods – even though he has 14 major championships to Nicklaus’ 18 – is the best ever.
But I don’t think that argument is viable, and here’s why: Tiger Woods personally set the guidelines. When he was a kid, he had a poster on his wall of Jack Nicklaus and those 18 major championships. That was the grail. Woods can win 100 PGA Tour events and win $500 million and dominate the game for another decade, but unless he gets to 19 majors, the journey is incomplete.
And nobody understands this more clearly than Tiger Woods himself.
Why Woods will break Jack’s record: There has never been a player quite like him.
Tiger Woods’ story is so familiar, it is just a part of the sports landscape. Golfing prodigy. Brilliant amateur. Historic dominance at Augusta. The Tiger Slam. The U.S. Open on one leg. Long putts that always drop. Magical shots from behind trees. The fist pump, the scowl, the rage, the red shirt on Sunday.
It is all so familiar that it no longer feels miraculous. But Tiger Woods, for much of his career, has been miraculous. Golf was not made to be tamed. Nicklaus finished second at 19 major championships. Ben Hogan, after his magical 1953, never won another major. Tom Watson started missed the come-backers, Nick Faldo stopped being a metronome, Greg Norman never could quite harness all that talent, Phil Mickelson has alternated brilliance and breakdowns his entire amazing career.
But Tiger Woods, for the longest time, seemed able to tilt the game to his will. He could always hit the ball farther, hit the approaches higher, chip and blast with more feel, read the greens better. But there have been other golfers with something close to his talent. What pushed him beyond, it seems, was a sixth sense, this ability to make the long putt or the wonder shot precisely when he needed it.
You will remember his famous chip at No. 16 at Augusta, when he aimed for a sliver of sunlight that was glowing on a hill, then watched the ball roll back down that hill and back down and back down until it stopped at the hole, posed for photographs, and then plopped in. Hitting it close might have been good enough to win the tournament. But with Tiger Woods, good enough was never good enough. It had to fall in the hole.
With that sort of wizardry … well, of course he will break Jack’s record.
Read More: Will Tiger Woods Break Jack Nicklaus' Majors Record? | Golf Channel
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2006/12/07
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29893
Old Masters champions don't retire, they head to the senior tour. And once a year they get to return to the hallowed grounds of Augusta National to relive their glory years. And some of them can still knock it around this fabled track.
Fred Couples is 53. He should have hung up the "Gone fishin'" sign long ago, but that's hard to do when you can still hit it the way Couples does. So every April at Augusta, Freddie, the 1992 champion, walks the prestine fairways, waves to his adoring fans and feels he is a superstar again. And here he is at five under par after 36 holes and one shot off Jason Day's lead at the 77th Masters. Surprised? Don't be. He was leading on Friday night last year before finishing 12th.
Ah, Freddie. He is as much a part of Masters tradition as pimento cheese sandwiches and the holy trinity of ceremonial starters Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player. While the Big Three coax one drive off the first tee then head for the clubhouse in search of a sofa, Couples, like Bernhard Langer, goes on believing he can turn back time. He's kidding himself - and us - of course.
He lollops along in what looks like slippers with that loosey-goosey stride of his as if he is heading for the beach back home in California. The reality is that he wouldn't be walking at all if it weren't for regular pain-killing injections in his ailing back that, apparently, are so strong they are like epidurals.
But the pain of not being here is worse. This is Couples' 29th Masters dating back to his first appearance in 1983, and Boom Boom can still give the ball a mighty belt. His swing remains a thing of beauty. He has racked up 11 top 10s alongside that lone victory, and he has missed the cut just twice. He can't win, though, right?
"Am I good enough to play four good rounds in a row on a course like this?" Couples asked out loud. "It didn't happen last year. I was four over pretty fast on Saturday, which was a real bummer." Couples admitted when he gets to a certain age and can no longer drive the ball as far, "it's going to be impossible for me to play well, physically impossible. If I can drive it close to these long hitters - if they're hitting 9-irons and I'm hitting 8-irons - then I'm still right there. But when this course becomes middle to long irons to every hole, you can forget it."
So what would Couples do in the unlikely event that he actually wins his second green jacket 21 years after his first? "I'm going to quit. I swear to God. I'm going to retire. It's probably not ever going to happen."
Couples has senior company on the leaderboard. Some of them should think about quitting, too. Langer (champion in 1985 and 1993) is 55 years old and two-under par, while Sandy Lyle (1988 champion) is also 55 and one-over par. What they all lack in power and youth, they make up for in guile and years of accumulated Augusta knowledge.
Lyle tied for 20th in 2009, but he hasn't made a cut since and has only made it to the weekend six times since 1995. Credit to him for this week, but he knows the end is nigh.
"If I'm shooting 78 and 80, I'll probably re-think what's going on," he said. "At the moment I'm feeling good. My body's still in - I don't have any knee or back operations. I'm going to keep going. I mean, four, five six years maximum. It's hard on the old body to get around this course."
Langer hasn't made a cut since 2005, when he tied for 20th. The year before, he tied for fourth and has 12 top 25s in 29 starts. The difference between Lyle and Langer, however, is that the German still believes he can win. Old age can do that to even the greatest of champions. Delusions of grandeur?
"I have a different attitude this year," he said. "I'm trying to win, not just trying to scrape in and make the cut."
Good for him, but it was not clear whether he had taken his medication.
"I don't think there's a whole lot of players that make the cut at age 55," he said. "So that's an achievement by itself."
But he doesn't truly believe a player in his fifties can actually win, does he?
"It's possible," he said. "For me to win, everything has to go my way. I always thought Freddie (could win) because he hits it a good 30 yards past me." Of course, some other former champions provide a counterweight to Langer's optimism - Tom Watson, Craig Stadler, Ian Woosnam and Ben Crenshaw. Woosnam, the 1991 champion, shot 80 and 78 has made one cut since 2001. This was the 55-year-old's first tournament of the year. He's more Wheezy than Woosie these days. The same for Stadler, who signed for a pair of 79s. He is 59 and was the Walrus when he won way back in 1982. Time to be pushed back into the ocean?
Watson is 63. His 79 and 78 tell you that his winning years of 1977 and 1981 are a long time ago. Watson was second after the first round three years ago and finished 18th, but that was his first weekend appearance since 2002. Crenshaw was at the bottom of the pile, limping home with an 80 and 84. The 1984 and 1995 champion is 61 but looks older; his tanned face wrinkled like an old leather briefcase. The only cuts these guys are going to be seeing any time soon are the prime cut variety.
Couples, Langer or Lyle won't win, of course, despite what they'd have us, and themselves, believe. And it matters not that the others can barely make it up the hill to the clubhouse. What makes the Masters unique is that the tournament is just as much about celebrating golf's past champions as it is anointing new ones.
Masters 2013 Fred Couples, Bernhard Langer try to win green jacket - GOLF-com
Fred Couples is 53. He should have hung up the "Gone fishin'" sign long ago, but that's hard to do when you can still hit it the way Couples does. So every April at Augusta, Freddie, the 1992 champion, walks the prestine fairways, waves to his adoring fans and feels he is a superstar again. And here he is at five under par after 36 holes and one shot off Jason Day's lead at the 77th Masters. Surprised? Don't be. He was leading on Friday night last year before finishing 12th.
Ah, Freddie. He is as much a part of Masters tradition as pimento cheese sandwiches and the holy trinity of ceremonial starters Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player. While the Big Three coax one drive off the first tee then head for the clubhouse in search of a sofa, Couples, like Bernhard Langer, goes on believing he can turn back time. He's kidding himself - and us - of course.
He lollops along in what looks like slippers with that loosey-goosey stride of his as if he is heading for the beach back home in California. The reality is that he wouldn't be walking at all if it weren't for regular pain-killing injections in his ailing back that, apparently, are so strong they are like epidurals.
But the pain of not being here is worse. This is Couples' 29th Masters dating back to his first appearance in 1983, and Boom Boom can still give the ball a mighty belt. His swing remains a thing of beauty. He has racked up 11 top 10s alongside that lone victory, and he has missed the cut just twice. He can't win, though, right?
"Am I good enough to play four good rounds in a row on a course like this?" Couples asked out loud. "It didn't happen last year. I was four over pretty fast on Saturday, which was a real bummer." Couples admitted when he gets to a certain age and can no longer drive the ball as far, "it's going to be impossible for me to play well, physically impossible. If I can drive it close to these long hitters - if they're hitting 9-irons and I'm hitting 8-irons - then I'm still right there. But when this course becomes middle to long irons to every hole, you can forget it."
So what would Couples do in the unlikely event that he actually wins his second green jacket 21 years after his first? "I'm going to quit. I swear to God. I'm going to retire. It's probably not ever going to happen."
Couples has senior company on the leaderboard. Some of them should think about quitting, too. Langer (champion in 1985 and 1993) is 55 years old and two-under par, while Sandy Lyle (1988 champion) is also 55 and one-over par. What they all lack in power and youth, they make up for in guile and years of accumulated Augusta knowledge.
Lyle tied for 20th in 2009, but he hasn't made a cut since and has only made it to the weekend six times since 1995. Credit to him for this week, but he knows the end is nigh.
"If I'm shooting 78 and 80, I'll probably re-think what's going on," he said. "At the moment I'm feeling good. My body's still in - I don't have any knee or back operations. I'm going to keep going. I mean, four, five six years maximum. It's hard on the old body to get around this course."
Langer hasn't made a cut since 2005, when he tied for 20th. The year before, he tied for fourth and has 12 top 25s in 29 starts. The difference between Lyle and Langer, however, is that the German still believes he can win. Old age can do that to even the greatest of champions. Delusions of grandeur?
"I have a different attitude this year," he said. "I'm trying to win, not just trying to scrape in and make the cut."
Good for him, but it was not clear whether he had taken his medication.
"I don't think there's a whole lot of players that make the cut at age 55," he said. "So that's an achievement by itself."
But he doesn't truly believe a player in his fifties can actually win, does he?
"It's possible," he said. "For me to win, everything has to go my way. I always thought Freddie (could win) because he hits it a good 30 yards past me." Of course, some other former champions provide a counterweight to Langer's optimism - Tom Watson, Craig Stadler, Ian Woosnam and Ben Crenshaw. Woosnam, the 1991 champion, shot 80 and 78 has made one cut since 2001. This was the 55-year-old's first tournament of the year. He's more Wheezy than Woosie these days. The same for Stadler, who signed for a pair of 79s. He is 59 and was the Walrus when he won way back in 1982. Time to be pushed back into the ocean?
Watson is 63. His 79 and 78 tell you that his winning years of 1977 and 1981 are a long time ago. Watson was second after the first round three years ago and finished 18th, but that was his first weekend appearance since 2002. Crenshaw was at the bottom of the pile, limping home with an 80 and 84. The 1984 and 1995 champion is 61 but looks older; his tanned face wrinkled like an old leather briefcase. The only cuts these guys are going to be seeing any time soon are the prime cut variety.
Couples, Langer or Lyle won't win, of course, despite what they'd have us, and themselves, believe. And it matters not that the others can barely make it up the hill to the clubhouse. What makes the Masters unique is that the tournament is just as much about celebrating golf's past champions as it is anointing new ones.
Masters 2013 Fred Couples, Bernhard Langer try to win green jacket - GOLF-com
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Manne wrote:
Tiger Woods dominates golf again. For a long while, there was a real question whether that would happen. He did go more than two years without winning a PGA Tour tournament. He struggled with injuries and swing changes. He snap-hooked drives into the wilderness. A few more putts lipped out. He seemed to drift mentally – he stopped thriving on Sundays.
Now, though, he looks reborn. He is back to hitting his driver so well he spins the club and does not even need to watch the ball land. He stalks putts like the Tiger of old. He’s putting away golf tournaments on Sundays. Yes, he looks reborn.
And, again, we can ask the question: Can Tiger Woods win five more major championships and pass Jack Nicklaus as the greatest golfer who ever lived?
Why it matters: There is a compelling argument to be made that Tiger Woods does not have anything left to do, that he is already the greatest golfer who ever lived.
Look: Woods already has won 77 PGA Tour events, four more than Nicklaus and just five behind the all-time record held by Sam Snead (and as many as Snead won as an individual). He will break Snead’s record. He has already won more than $100 million in prize money. Nicklaus, in case you are wondering, won $5.7 million in his career.
Now, some business people have done studies comparing Nicklaus and Woods prize money based on inflation and the much smaller purses of Nicklaus’ time and calculate that Nicklaus actually won as much or even more money than Woods. But Woods’ amazing prize money number is telling for two reasons.
1. Woods’ $100 million is $35 million more than any other golfer.
2. Woods’ popularity almost singlehandedly transformed golf and drove those purses through the stratosphere. In other words, he didn’t just win more money. He CREATED more money.
Woods has what almost everyone would concede is the greatest peak in golf history – four consecutive major championship victories (the Tiger Slam), seven major championships out of 11, the most dominant performances ever at the U.S. Open, Masters and British Open and so on. Then there is the argument that Woods plays in a time when the fields are much deeper than ever before, when the new technology in golf shrinks the gap between the good and the great.
So, yes, you could argue that Woods – even though he has 14 major championships to Nicklaus’ 18 – is the best ever.
But I don’t think that argument is viable, and here’s why: Tiger Woods personally set the guidelines. When he was a kid, he had a poster on his wall of Jack Nicklaus and those 18 major championships. That was the grail. Woods can win 100 PGA Tour events and win $500 million and dominate the game for another decade, but unless he gets to 19 majors, the journey is incomplete.
And nobody understands this more clearly than Tiger Woods himself.
Why Woods will break Jack’s record: There has never been a player quite like him.
Tiger Woods’ story is so familiar, it is just a part of the sports landscape. Golfing prodigy. Brilliant amateur. Historic dominance at Augusta. The Tiger Slam. The U.S. Open on one leg. Long putts that always drop. Magical shots from behind trees. The fist pump, the scowl, the rage, the red shirt on Sunday.
It is all so familiar that it no longer feels miraculous. But Tiger Woods, for much of his career, has been miraculous. Golf was not made to be tamed. Nicklaus finished second at 19 major championships. Ben Hogan, after his magical 1953, never won another major. Tom Watson started missed the come-backers, Nick Faldo stopped being a metronome, Greg Norman never could quite harness all that talent, Phil Mickelson has alternated brilliance and breakdowns his entire amazing career.
But Tiger Woods, for the longest time, seemed able to tilt the game to his will. He could always hit the ball farther, hit the approaches higher, chip and blast with more feel, read the greens better. But there have been other golfers with something close to his talent. What pushed him beyond, it seems, was a sixth sense, this ability to make the long putt or the wonder shot precisely when he needed it.
You will remember his famous chip at No. 16 at Augusta, when he aimed for a sliver of sunlight that was glowing on a hill, then watched the ball roll back down that hill and back down and back down until it stopped at the hole, posed for photographs, and then plopped in. Hitting it close might have been good enough to win the tournament. But with Tiger Woods, good enough was never good enough. It had to fall in the hole.
With that sort of wizardry … well, of course he will break Jack’s record.
Read More: Will Tiger Woods Break Jack Nicklaus' Majors Record? | Golf Channel
Of course he will do that.....
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2006/12/11
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Adam Scott is a gene pool lottery winner, could do an instructional video on cool and lives in Switzerland for tax reasons. Plus, he's one of the 10 nicest guys you'll ever meet.
Everybody -- women, corporations, his native Australia -- loves him. And now, at long last, so does a major.
The Masters fell for Scott in a big way Sunday. It played hard to get for a while, but then let the Aussie sweep it off its feet after 72 holes of regulation and then two playoff holes. Then again, it has been playing hard to get for the Aussies since the beginning of this tournament in 1934.
That noise you heard early Sunday evening was the sound of the Masters patrons after Scott sank a 12-foot birdie putt in the growing darkness of Augusta National to beat Angel Cabrera for the green jacket.
That noise you heard immediately after that was the entire country of Australia popping the tops off bottles of Victoria Bitter. It was Monday morning there when Scott's winning playoff putt fell into the cup on the 10th hole. Hangovers to follow.
"It's amazing that it's my destiny to be the first Aussie to win," said Scott, who wore a smile and a stunned look on his face, as if he still couldn't believe this was real. "Just incredible."
Scott became a national hero by doing what great Aussie players such as the tormented Greg Norman couldn't do: win a Masters. Norman finished second here three different times and lost in ways that were beyond cruel.
In 1986, Norman was on the wrong end of the Jack Nicklaus Time Machine Tour. In 1987, he watched as Augusta native Larry Mize canned a 140-foot playoff chip from off the 11th green. In 1996, he began Sunday's round in the final pairing and six strokes ahead of playing partner Nick Faldo & and lost to Faldo by five.
Scott is/was Norman. Sort of. Norman was young, 10 kinds of handsome and had a golf game that caused Aussie boys to pester their mums and dads for lessons. But for all his gifts and wealth, golf kept short-sheeting him.
Same thing with Scott. For years the experts had predicted multiple major victories for him. He had everything: the demeanor, the swing, the Swiss chalet.
And the Norman-like heartbreak.
Scott was making a beeline toward Butler Cabin and the green jacket ceremony in 2011 when Charl Schwartzel decided to make four consecutive birdies on the final four holes. Scott finished T-2. And then the 2012 Open Championship channeled its inner Norman and stuck it to Scott. Leading by four shots with four holes remaining in the tournament, Scott bogeyed each one and lost to Ernie Els by a stroke.
Fellow Aussie Geoff Ogilvy tweeted after the carnage: "I am happy for Ernie, but I feel sick right now."
Scott handled that loss with the same elegance and class that he handled Sunday's win at Augusta. Maybe that's why it seemed that the galleries were pulling perhaps just a tiny bit harder for Scott than Cabrera. Nothing against the 43-year-old Argentinian, but he already had a green jacket (2009), as well as a U.S. Open (2007).
Winning a Masters isn't supposed to be easy. Cabrera certainly didn't make it that way for Scott. The former Presidents Cup teammates hit shots down the stretch that deserved their own commemorative oil paintings.
Cabrera doesn't speak much English, but he didn't have to after Scott hit his second shot to 12 feet on the second playoff hole. He turned toward Scott as they walked up the fairway and gave him a thumbs up.
Not long after defending champion Bubba Watson had slipped the green jacket on Scott, Cabrera told reporters through an interpreter, "That's how golf is."
Weird. Last July at Royal Lytham, after Scott had been kneecapped by the game again, he had said, "That's why they call it golf."
Scott hugged his father, Phil, after the victory. He basked in the cheers. He shared moments with his caddie Steve Williams, who helped him read the birdie putt that won him the Masters. "I could hardly see the green in the darkness," Scott said.
So he called Williams, who had caddied for Tiger Woods in 13 of his majors victories (three of them here), over for a second opinion.
"Do you think it's more than a cup?" Scott asked.
"It's at least two cups," Williams said. "It's going to break more than you think."
"I'm good with that," Scott said. And then he was good with the putt.
There were the inevitable questions about Scott's use of the broomstick putter. This is the fourth major out of the past six won by someone using a long putter. It is the first in the history of the Masters.
But that's an issue for another day. This was Scott's day, not to be shared with an equipment question.
And it was Norman's day too. A gracious Scott made sure of that.
"Most of us would feel that he could have slipped a green jacket on for sure," Scott said of his close friend and mentor. "And I said part of this is for him because he's given me so much time and inspiration and belief."
Norman issued a statement on his website. Check that, it was more a verbal bear hug than anything else.
"Adam is a great player and I'm confident this victory will catapult him to win more majors," Norman said. "It will not surprise me if he wins more championships than any other Australian golfer in history."
Scott, the man who has the looks, the Swiss bank account and the conga line of high-profile dates, now has something much more modest -- a green sportcoat. It was worth the wait and the heartache.
"Everything fell my way in the end, I guess," he said. "And you just never know."
Now he does.
Adam Scott feeling the majors love after Masters playoff victory -- Golf - ESPN
Everybody -- women, corporations, his native Australia -- loves him. And now, at long last, so does a major.
The Masters fell for Scott in a big way Sunday. It played hard to get for a while, but then let the Aussie sweep it off its feet after 72 holes of regulation and then two playoff holes. Then again, it has been playing hard to get for the Aussies since the beginning of this tournament in 1934.
That noise you heard early Sunday evening was the sound of the Masters patrons after Scott sank a 12-foot birdie putt in the growing darkness of Augusta National to beat Angel Cabrera for the green jacket.
That noise you heard immediately after that was the entire country of Australia popping the tops off bottles of Victoria Bitter. It was Monday morning there when Scott's winning playoff putt fell into the cup on the 10th hole. Hangovers to follow.
"It's amazing that it's my destiny to be the first Aussie to win," said Scott, who wore a smile and a stunned look on his face, as if he still couldn't believe this was real. "Just incredible."
Scott became a national hero by doing what great Aussie players such as the tormented Greg Norman couldn't do: win a Masters. Norman finished second here three different times and lost in ways that were beyond cruel.
In 1986, Norman was on the wrong end of the Jack Nicklaus Time Machine Tour. In 1987, he watched as Augusta native Larry Mize canned a 140-foot playoff chip from off the 11th green. In 1996, he began Sunday's round in the final pairing and six strokes ahead of playing partner Nick Faldo & and lost to Faldo by five.
Scott is/was Norman. Sort of. Norman was young, 10 kinds of handsome and had a golf game that caused Aussie boys to pester their mums and dads for lessons. But for all his gifts and wealth, golf kept short-sheeting him.
Same thing with Scott. For years the experts had predicted multiple major victories for him. He had everything: the demeanor, the swing, the Swiss chalet.
And the Norman-like heartbreak.
Scott was making a beeline toward Butler Cabin and the green jacket ceremony in 2011 when Charl Schwartzel decided to make four consecutive birdies on the final four holes. Scott finished T-2. And then the 2012 Open Championship channeled its inner Norman and stuck it to Scott. Leading by four shots with four holes remaining in the tournament, Scott bogeyed each one and lost to Ernie Els by a stroke.
Fellow Aussie Geoff Ogilvy tweeted after the carnage: "I am happy for Ernie, but I feel sick right now."
Scott handled that loss with the same elegance and class that he handled Sunday's win at Augusta. Maybe that's why it seemed that the galleries were pulling perhaps just a tiny bit harder for Scott than Cabrera. Nothing against the 43-year-old Argentinian, but he already had a green jacket (2009), as well as a U.S. Open (2007).
Winning a Masters isn't supposed to be easy. Cabrera certainly didn't make it that way for Scott. The former Presidents Cup teammates hit shots down the stretch that deserved their own commemorative oil paintings.
Cabrera doesn't speak much English, but he didn't have to after Scott hit his second shot to 12 feet on the second playoff hole. He turned toward Scott as they walked up the fairway and gave him a thumbs up.
Not long after defending champion Bubba Watson had slipped the green jacket on Scott, Cabrera told reporters through an interpreter, "That's how golf is."
Weird. Last July at Royal Lytham, after Scott had been kneecapped by the game again, he had said, "That's why they call it golf."
Scott hugged his father, Phil, after the victory. He basked in the cheers. He shared moments with his caddie Steve Williams, who helped him read the birdie putt that won him the Masters. "I could hardly see the green in the darkness," Scott said.
So he called Williams, who had caddied for Tiger Woods in 13 of his majors victories (three of them here), over for a second opinion.
"Do you think it's more than a cup?" Scott asked.
"It's at least two cups," Williams said. "It's going to break more than you think."
"I'm good with that," Scott said. And then he was good with the putt.
There were the inevitable questions about Scott's use of the broomstick putter. This is the fourth major out of the past six won by someone using a long putter. It is the first in the history of the Masters.
But that's an issue for another day. This was Scott's day, not to be shared with an equipment question.
And it was Norman's day too. A gracious Scott made sure of that.
"Most of us would feel that he could have slipped a green jacket on for sure," Scott said of his close friend and mentor. "And I said part of this is for him because he's given me so much time and inspiration and belief."
Norman issued a statement on his website. Check that, it was more a verbal bear hug than anything else.
"Adam is a great player and I'm confident this victory will catapult him to win more majors," Norman said. "It will not surprise me if he wins more championships than any other Australian golfer in history."
Scott, the man who has the looks, the Swiss bank account and the conga line of high-profile dates, now has something much more modest -- a green sportcoat. It was worth the wait and the heartache.
"Everything fell my way in the end, I guess," he said. "And you just never know."
Now he does.
Adam Scott feeling the majors love after Masters playoff victory -- Golf - ESPN
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2006/12/07
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The club turns a century old on July 1, 2014, and Kelley, the new president of the board of directors, wants the time leading up to that important milestone, a time to remember.
"We’re still brainstorming up some ideas," said Kelley. "Our main goal though, is to reconnect the club with the community."
Plans to help accomplish this task will include an open house the first weekend in May, where newcomers or those who haven’t hit the greens in a while, can setup their tee-time and play for free.
Kelley said that the club is putting together their annual calendar, which contains plans for some exciting late-summer events.
Early planning is a good idea thinks Kelley, since both he and members of the club are striving to get more folks on the fairway.
"We [the board of directors] argued about pricing this year," said Kelley. "The course is our greatest asset, with its strong layout and ideal conditions. It enables us to remain competitive with other local courses. But we feel the course is underutilized, and it’s because people are not aware of exactly what we have to offer, or maybe have some misconceptions about the club. To change that, we’re throwing open the gates." Brattleboro Country Club is member-owned and operated, and is designed to give an enhanced golf experience through membership, said Kelley. Membership is $995 for the 2013 season, and the club also advertises 3 and 4-day passes.
With the snow almost melted, the course is scheduled to open Friday, April 12.
About a week before that, on Saturday, April 6, a volunteer course clean-up will take place. "It will be a busy couple weeks," noted Kelley.
Before becoming head of the board, Kelley was in charge of marketing. Over the course of the club’s restructuring, management has grown closer together, he said.
The other component of the club’s outreach program will attempt to inspire the area’s junior golfers by employing pro Jack Nicklaus’s SNAG instruction and equipment, to bring entry-level golf to young children who want an educational introduction to the sport.
"It feeds into the notion that we are trying to open the course up to everyone," said Kelley. "We feel we have always been
a family-friendly community asset. Some people just forgot."
A century of golf in the making - Brattleboro Reformer