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The fifth major about to begin
The team from Isleworth (including Tiger Woods) is on the Lake Nona premises for their annual inter-club competition known as the Tavistock Cup. Josh Robbin of the Orlando Sentinel will be live-blogging it, for those who are interested. The Golf Channel will begin live coverage at 11 a.m. (EDT) today and noon tomorrow. -- John Strege...
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What's wrong with Phil?
The question was ubiquitous (see here and here, among countless other places) in the wake of Phil Mickelson's miserable start to the year: What's wrong with Phil? There was this headline, too: "Has Phil lost it?" The answers are and always were: Nothing and no. Shouldn't we have learned this by now? He runs spectacularly hot and cold and always...
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Tiger, going forward
Sally Jenkins' column in the Washington Post on Monday makes the case that as interesting as Woods' career has been to this point, it has also been fairly predictable, at least as far golf prognostication goes. Jenkins argues that from here on out his career holds more intrigue than it ever has. Woods' genius includes both his ability to figure...
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Even he couldn't have seen this coming
It won't get much attention played opposite the WGC-CA Championship, but Michael Bradley's victory in the Puerto Rico Open surely qualifies as remarkable. It was Bradley's first start of 2009. The number of PGA Tour starts he's had in the previous four years collectively add to one full season, 32. Yet he outplayed 21-year-old Jason Day on Sunday and emerged...
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Europeans 'bunkered by U.S. greed'
My colleague and friend John Huggan has an interesting column in Scotland on Sunday, headlined "Bunkered by US Greed," in which he makes the compelling argument (after lamenting U.S. whining about lack of American representation in WGC events) that had European golfers had better access to the three major championships played in the U.S., they'd have a better record. "Where...
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So that's why they putt so well
From Robert D. Grober, a physics professor at Yale: "It is shown that the putting stroke of world class golfers can be described as the motion of a pendulum driven at twice its natural resonance frequency. This model minimizes error in the speed of the putter head due to random errors in the magnitude of the applied forces, providing rational...
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Has Woods identified his own heir apparent?
Tiger Woods has been witness to a parade of would-be challengers, none of whom actually challenged, and none of whom he endorsed as an heir to his throne. Until now. He was asked when Rory McIlroy, 19, could one day be ranked No. 1 in the world. "There's no doubt," he said after third-round play at the WGC-CA Championship Saturday....
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The forgotten youth
It was not long ago that Jason Day of Australia was among the more heralded young players in the world, a star in training, who at 19 had become the youngest player ever to win a PGA Tour-sanctioned event (the Nationwide Tour's Legend Financial Group Classic). But he's ceded his place in golf's youth movement to Rory McIlroy, Danny Lee,...
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A St. Andrews snub
Sir Fred Goodwin, former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, was denied membership in the St. Andrews Golf club. Speculation as to why centers on RBS' collapse last year with Goodwin at the helm. Goodwin, the Daily Mail reports, "has been vilified for presiding over its spectacular downfall yet still accepting a £700,000-a-year pension." Apparently, those still at...
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Party hole sans party
An attempt by organizers of the New Zealand Open to replicate the FBR Open's party hole apparently has failed, when the most people there at one time topped out at about 250 people during the second round, some of them even asking for quiet from a bar near the designated hole, No. 15 at the Hills. "While it would be...
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