Phoenix Phollow-Up

A few very minor nits from the weekend's Phoenix Phollies:

• Neil Sagebiel, The Armchair Golfer, gives Kevin Stadler the nom de golf of Smallrus in his most recent post, playing off Dad's well-worn nickname.  At the risk of being overly analytical over a minor bon mot, it doesn't really work, does it?

Walrus, Smallrus, Schmalrus...you decide.

Anyone got a word for young or child that rhymes with "wal" to send to Neil?

• Per this CBS report, they set an attendance record at Phoenix:

189,722 fans attended the show on Saturday to watch Bubba Watson take a two-stroke lead heading to the final round.  The old record was 179,022 and was set on Saturday of last year's Phoenix Open.

That's a lot of people for our niche sport, and it apparently represents +/- 4.5% of the Phoenix area population, which seems unlikely.  Per John Strege in this piece at GD's Local Knowledge blog,they actually count the cars in the parking lot and multiply times 3.2.  I don't know why they can't simply count heads through the turnstiles or tickets sold, but even if inflated there's a mess o' people there for all four days. 

• One last phrivolous item from Phoenix, specifically the early round coverage on Golf Channel.  At certain points they were putting the logos of the colleges attended by players in their coverage window, with all the usual suspects accounted for.  But Robert Garrigus had quite the strange logo next to his name, as he attended Scottsdale Community College, home of the Fightin' Artichokes.  

See hon, that's why I don't eat artichokes.  They apparently fight back.

That's a pretty uninspiring team nickname.  I remember traveling to Yuma, AZ on business many years ago and being amused to find that their high school teams' nickname was the Criminals, named after the huge state prison that dominates the local highway.  I wanted to stop in for a t-shirt, but it never happened.  Perhaps I should look into some Fightin' Artichokes swag?