2012 British Open Championship Update

~~ through 3 rounds ~~

This is pretty much what it comes down to early tomorrow morning for the final round of the 2012 Open Championship at Royal Lytham & St. Annes:


Source

Click HERE, or on the leaderboard above to go to the full leaderboard..

No way was it as such going into the tournament, but my money's now on Adam Scott to wrap it up.. I know, I know.. Going out on a limb. He's just playing too well to do something as horrific as it would take to lose this thing. I expect several of the guys to go low and put some pressure on him. McDowell, Tiger, Zach, and even Bubba & Dustin should be able to put a scare into these guys by posting a -7 or -8 early. Of course if the wind blows (and we all know the wind can really blow over there), that's even more of an advantage for Adam Scott.

Should be interesting!!

2012 British Open Championship Update

~~ through round-1 ~~



Click the abbreviated leaderboard above to go to the official British Open site for the full leaderboard.

Source

Zach Johnson's Amazing Golf Shot

...in case you haven't seen it yet.

This is one of the most difficult shots in the game of golf - the fairway bunker shot.

Here's the reason it's so tough: Over time, most golfers become fairly capable of getting out of a green-side sand trap, in which you hit behind the ball with the face open, and slide under the ball, allowing the sand to "blast" the ball out. You never touch the ball. But the fairway bunker shot requires you to hit the ball as if it were a regular fairway shot, but you must make perfectly clean contact, taking no divot. You have to "pick it clean".

I always tell people to put the ball a little back in their stance, use one club longer than you might think, close the face a tiny bit, aim about 10 yards right of where you normally would, and swing at a steeper angle, so that you pick it clean, and then get out - without risking any type of divot. Hit this type of shot a little fat, and it's gonna go about 30 yards. Hit it a little thin, and if it doesn't re-bury itself, it might go 10 feet.

So this is already one of the toughest shots there is. Magnify it by the fact that this is during a tournament.. a PGA Tour event.. on Sunday.. in a sudden death playoff for the title:


Via / Source

The shot won him the tournament. Well done, Zach!

A Bubba Watson Fan Having a Difficult time being Subtle

Image screen-capped from official Masters video (masters.com)                     Click to enlarge!!

I saw this immediately after it happened, when they replayed the shot in very slow motion. I laughed instantly, and HAD to go back and find it for you guys. It's a ton better in the video, which you can see by going to Masters.com, and clicking on "leaderboard", then clicking on Ooosthuizen's "4" on hole #18 (the first playoff hole) inside the sudden-death playoff mini-scorecard. A 2½ minute video will play, showing Oosthuizen's 4 shots for that hole.

The 2012 Masters Leaderboard

(Through Friday completion)


Source

Click the image above to go see the complete leaderboard!   Or, here is the Masters homepage.

Go Freddie!!!

The Masters - An Infographic

Via / Source

Here's Your 2012 Masters Preview

Image Source

This is one of my favorite weeks of the year. Someone said "if there's a golf course in Heaven, it would look just like Augusta National", and I believe it.

Here are a few good articles to get you pumped up for the 2012 Masters, which begins today, Thursday, April 5:

• Hype vs. Reality -- By Mike McAllister, PGATOUR.COM Managing Editor

• Tiger Woods Focused on Five -- By Gene Wojciechowski | ESPN.com

• Solving the Mystery of Augusta's Greens -- By Thomas Bonk

• The Field - Pairings

• PGA Tour's Expert Picks

• Masters Dot Com for all your online coverage..

My two foursomes for ESPN's Best Ball Majors Challenge are: (1) Mickelson, Couples, Stricker, and Wagner --and-- (2) Woods, McIlroy, Clarke, and Yang.

NCAA Tournament

Image Source

Sorry for the lack of posts the last few days - It's NCAA Tournament time, and I've spent a bunch of my free time creating my brackets. I think I've done 10 of them the last 36 hours. And I plan to win.

As a consensus of all my brackets so far, I like Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Louisville/Missouri, and North Carolina for my final four. Florida State, Kansas, and Baylor, are gonna make it interestingly tough, though.

He's Back!

After going more than two years and 26 tournaments without a win, and after so much turmoil in his personal life and with his golf game, Tiger Woods stood over a 6-foot birdie putt Sunday to win the Chevron World Challenge and felt as though nothing had changed.

Finally, the outcome was familiar, too.

Woods poured in the putt to cap off a birdie-birdie finish at Sherwood, close with a 3-under 69 and beat former Masters champion Zach Johnson by one shot. The win ended a drought that lasted 749 days, and might have signaled a change that Woods is on his way back. (Source)



"Any different?'' Woods repeated when the question came about how it compares to his other victories -- which total 14 majors, 71 PGA Tour titles and 83 worldwide wins. "It feels great. … I know it's been a while, but also for some reason, it feels like it hasn't.

"When I was coming down the stretch there, I felt so comfortable. I felt comfortable in Oz [Australia]. I felt comfortable in Augusta. When I'm putting myself in those positions, it is comfortable.''

Woods was referring to his only other close calls this year: a tie for fourth at the Masters, where he was tied for the lead on the back nine on Sunday; and the Australian Open three weeks ago, where he held the second-round lead, coughed it up with a third-round 75, then rallied to finish third, two strokes out of a playoff. (Source)

Read the rest of both ESPN articles:
• Tiger Woods rallies to win Chevron
• Chevron win good start for Tiger Woods

Via

NCAA Tourney Field Cut In Half

Why didn't the NCAA tournament committee attach all four play-in games to all four #1 seeds? Instead two of them are two 12-seeds (winner plays a 5-seed), and two 11-seeds (winner plays a 6-seed).

So they apparently sort-of rank all 68 teams. Then they sort-of put them all into regions based upon location. This process is apparently allowed to alter a team's seed by 1 or 2 - just to get them in the right region of 4 regions. A great example is Texas probably should've been a 3-seed, if not a 2 even, but were given a 4-seed to alleviate a ton of traveling. WTF?

Okay okay. I can swallow that, I guess, but why is it necessary? I mean UTSA had to travel all the way to Dayton, Ohio to play Alabama State in their play-in game. Is that because if they win (which they did) they'd be right there to play none other than Ohio State basically at home? I laugh at this.

Virginia Commonwealth U. had to travel to Dayton to play (gulp) USC for their play-in game, in which the winner would go to Chicago to play Georgetown. That makes a ton of sense! Props to VCU though for proving all the "experts" wrong. They were one of two teams who Jay Bilas and others said should absolutely not even be dancing. Alabama Birmingham and Clemson also had to go all the way to Dayton to play for the right to play West Virginia back in Tampa. Ehh.. North Carolina Asheville & Arkansas Little Rock did the same for a chance to play Pittsburgh - in Washington D.C.

If it's gonna be a priority WHERE teams play, then make it as such. Otherwise, rank the teams, give the bottom 8 teams 4 games to play all four #1 seeds, and let's get on with it.

Oh.. and one last thing: I agree that the Big East is a great basketball conference. OK I agree. But 11 teams? That's ridiculous. You're rewarding teams who are in the bottom half of their conference - for (what?) playing teams in their own conference. Stupid. But hey I loved Marquette going in. But giving them an 11 seed to play a 6-seeded Xavier? Sorry - The Atlantic 10 might deserve 3 teams, but that conference isn't worthy of the respect to have its champion play such a low big east team, let alone a team who didn't win its conference tournament.

So many things wrong. But hey - at least Texas won. Onto Anaheim to play Arizona for the right to play Duke. Wait a minute - Duke should be going to Newark.

The 110th U.S. Open at Pebble Beach

Source


Hey, it's pretty simple. The golf course won. Guys had their chances early during the back-9. As soon as 54-hole leader Dustin Johnson tripled the 2nd hole, doubled the 3rd, and bogeyed the 4th, his score of 6-under for the tourney was suddenly EVEN. Guys like Tiger, Phil, and Ernie Els were all breathing down his neck, but he obviously felt some pressure that didn't exist during his last two back-to-back victories at the AT&T Pebble Beach tourneys the last two Februaries.

2010 US Open Champ, Graeme
McDowell with his father - Source

Graeme McDowell stayed solid, and the "big guns" only shot blanks for the most part. McDowell was able to win the tournament with a final-round 3-over par 74. How can this be?

Well like I said, the golf course won. I enjoyed the tournament, and the final round could've been better had some of these guys made a serious run. However, no one in the last half-dozen pairings shot anything lower than 71. Sure Matt Kuchar and Ben Curtis shot final-round 68's, but they were well behind beforehand.

After all was said and done, Phil and Ernie carded 73's, and Tiger shot 75, but apparently the viewers didn't like this. I don't really understand why, but I did happen to run across this poll at ESPN dot com. So I voted, and then took a screenshot of the results -- in preparation for this post.

Take a look at the poll:

















Click to enlarge..

My Final Four Picks