Waiting out the biblical rains that are upon us, means I've got nothing but time on my hands. I'm imagining that you, Dear Reader, are in the same boat (pun intended), and have nothing better to read. So, let's dive in (I'm good with this pun thing, no?):
It's Called Saw-GRASS - We previously discussed the improved greens at Quail Hollow, this week's Tour venue. Alas, the news from the following week's venue, TPC Sawgrass, Home of the Fifth of Four Majors™, isn't as good. Rex Hoggard visited the site and filed this:
A little more than a week before the PGA Tour’s flagship event, at least five of the greens at the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass are less than championship ready.
Nos. 4, 9, 11, 12 and 14 were “negatively impacted by (a) misapplication of a product to help manage density and root development during the colder, winter period,” according to a memo that was posted on a Tour-players only website on March 27.
Must have been the fault of one of the 42 $500,000 per year VP's. Back to Rex:
Nearly two weeks of warm, dry conditions have helped the greens recover, but the putting surfaces at Nos. 4, 9, 11 and 12 continue to show damage and the grass plugs used to replace turf.
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| Hoggard's photo of the 12th green with grass plugs clearly evident. |
NBC Sports and Golf Channel analyst Notah Begay III suffered a heart attack last week in Dallas.
Begay, 41, has a family history of heart disease and was taken to Methodist Hospital where cardiologist Dr. Mark Jenkins inserted a stent to unblock his right coronary artery. Because the procedure was performed quickly, Begay is expected to make a full recovery. He plans to resume his NBC and Golf Channel duties within a few weeks.
He would have covered all four days at The Players Championship, but it seems that that might be a bit too soon to see him back.
The entire staff here at Unplayable Lies wishes him a speedy recovery.
Anthony Kim, MIA - The Tour's return to Quail Hollow gets John Hawkins thinking about Anthony Kim in the current Hawk's Nest:
SIX YEARS HAVE now passed since Anthony Kim roared to the center of the universe as
golf’s Next Big Thing. A five-stroke victory over a premium field at Quail Hollow in May 2008 was as loud as arrivals get, and when Kim won the AT&T National nine weeks later, you couldn’t help but think America’s best player might be a 23-year-old kid of Asian descent and immense ability.
Tiger Woods had just undergone knee surgery. Phil Mickelson hadn’t won a major title in 27 months, and besides, the game’s populace almost seemed desperate for a splash of fresh young blood. Kim made more big noise at the Ryder Cup that fall, partnering successfully with Mickelson before destroying Sergio Garcia in the first match of the Sunday singles.
This week’s gathering at Quail Hollow also marks another anniversary – Kim hasn’t played a hole on the PGA Tour in precisely two years. He withdrew from the 2012 Wells Fargo Championship after a first-round 74, announced he was taking five months off because of tendinitis in his left arm, and then tore his Achilles while working out in San Diego about six weeks later.
We haven’t seen him since.
Hawkins deals with the primary issue with AK, that he seems to have lived life a little too fully to hold up his end as a professional, i.e., he's John Daly with slightly more tasteful pants. Hawkins speaks with Kim's agent and there isn't much to report, though he strongly rebuts that Kim was ever suspended from the Tour (again with the opaque Tour disciplinary policy). But this close leaves little hope that AK will be back:
In search of something resembling context, I asked Jones if Kim was playing any golf, even recreationally.
“No.”Doesn’t sound like much of a comeback, if you ask me. “He’s not living under a bridge, he’s not living in a box,” Jones added. “I’m going to go see him [in Texas] in a few weeks, and at that point, I’ll get a better definition of where he stands.”
Sad, as I still vividly remember how he dusted Sergio in the first singles match on the course.
Dough For Ko - The International Olympic Committee is an international crime family masquerading as a sports organization. In addition to the fact that the format will make it dreadfully boring and the quality of the field will render it insignificant, golf will end up sullied from its contact with these clowns. That may sound strong, but think of the uncomfortable, no-win situation that Rory finds himself in, where either team he chooses to represent (Ireland or the U.K.) will offend half the population on his home island.
Now, here's another one for this category, as Lydia Ko has experienced incoming fire as John Strege explains at The Loop:
High Performance Sport New Zealand doles out government subsidies to elite athletes’ with
Olympic ambitions to help fund their Olympic pursuits. Last year, Ko, while still an amateur, reportedly received nearly $160,000 to support her golf pursuit, which included vast international travel.
Now, Ko is a professional and already is earning substantial sums of money, including $505,212 on the LPGA this year, and another $166,000 in two tournaments she played after turning professional late in 2013. Endorsement income no doubt has pushed her earnings beyond $1 million in six months.
New Zealand Golf, meanwhile, has applied to High Performance Sport NZ for another subsidy on behalf of Ko, one worth nearly $180,000, and it apparently has the organization’s blessing.
This is obviously ridiculous, but they shouldn't be subsidizing Olympic athletes in the first place, or at least not in sports where there's so much money available.
Stuff, a popular news website in New Zealand, has written that Ko is embarrassed by the entanglement, and a recent column by Tony Smith on the website carried the headline, “No need for more dough for Lydia Ko.”
I'm sure she is embarrassed, and her people should have turned off the spigot once she turned pro, but we'll see more of these stories in the next two years.
Athens Bad - And how are those Rio Olympic preparations coming along? Well, Australia's ABC News shockingly reports of trouble in paradise, per these comments from John Coates, Australia' International Olympic Committee Vice President:
"In Athens, we were dealing with one government and some city responsibilities. Here, there's three.
"There is little coordination between the federal, the state government and the city, which is responsible for a lot of the construction.
"And this is against a city that's got social issues that also have to be addressed, a country that's also trying to deal with the FIFA World Cup coming up in a few months.
"It's the worst that I've experienced."
By all means, the future of our sport will be helped by these people.
Clever As A... - I've been critical of the awarding of the USGA television contract to Fox Sports, a network that has never televised golf. One of the second order issues raised by both Joe Buck and your humble blogger was that the 2015 U.S. Open would be their first effort, what buck himself referred to as playing the Super Bowl as your first game. But worry no more, as Ron Sirak fills us in:
Fox Sports said Wednesday it will air this year's Franklin Templeton Shootout, a 25-year-old unofficial stop hosted by Norman in December at Tiburon G.C. in Naples, Fla.
Earlier this month, Fox said Norman would work as its lead analyst along side play-by-play man Joe Buck at four of the 15 USGA championships next year when the 12-year, $1.1 billion contract kicks in. Now it has one of the oldest and most prestigious Challenge Season events on its broadcast roster.
I'll wait until you've finished laughing at that last sentence... In other news, I'm the tallest member of my family, but that doesn't make me, you know, tall.
This actually makes sense, though Norman of course usually plays in the event. But this piece is basically a copy-and-paste of the Fox press release, and in no way is a major get for Fox.
LPGA Rising - Folks are picking up on the fact that the LPGA has finally had a few good weeks, and we still have Pinuhurst ahead of us. Alex Myers, in his weekly feature The Grind, has the LPGA on his buy list:
Speaking of young, promising winners, how about this run by the LPGA? First, Lexi Thompson wins the year's first major, then Michelle Wie ends a long winless drought and now Ko wins again. That's three wins in a row by three potential superstars who are a combined age of 60. No wonder LPGA commissioner Mike Whan looks so happy -- even when he's wearing a skirt.
That last sentence refers to this:
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| Forget the kilt, what's that around her neck? |
The guys at my afvorite acronym, SIG+D have also woken up to the LPGA roll, with a nice feature that can be found here. The cover is in the screen grab below:
In other LPGA news, we had some fun with Lexi Thompson's first pitch at a baseball game a few eeks ago, though I'll remind you that the best part was that Lexi herself had fun with it. A couple of the gals headed to Candlestick from Lake Merced last week, and had a new spin on the traditional first pitch:
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| Michelle Wie and Paula Creamer with the traditional first chips. |
As I've previously admitted, I have a soft spot for the LPGA and keep hoping that they'll get their act together. This feels much like the time before Carolyn Bivens almost destroyed their tour, when suddenly Wie, Creamer, Pressel and other young talent suddenly burst on the scene. It will be interesting to see how they grab defeat from the jaws of victory this time.
Don't Try This At Home, Folks - This was the highlight video from New Orleans, though it appeared for a bit that the Tour bigwigs didn't want us to see it. It's John Peterson helping out playing partner James Driscoll in a most unusual manner:
If it makes you feel any better, Peterson is from Louisiana so perhaps he knows how to handle such critters. But he failed to make the cut, proving once again the absence of a benevolent creator.
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