Weekend Wrap

Thanks for bearing with me as I took the weekend off.... Besides celebrating the delayed arrival of Spring and the ceremonial unveiling of your humble blogger's pasty white legs, it was also a celebration of the birthday of Employee No. 2.

In Which We Bid Adieu To Our Favorite Tragic Shakespearean Figure -  I've long considered my "Alas, Poor Furyk" riff to be one of my better bon mots (I know, the soft bigotry of low expectations), so it was with trepidation that I listened as Bruce Berman passed on the play-by-play from Harbor Town over lunch yesterday.  Don't be fooled by that which you may have seen on the telly at 6:00, tee times had been moved up due to incoming weather and the broadcast was tape-delayed...

I tried to explain that my weekly wrap would be far more fun if Poor Furyk shot 63 and then was caught by a relative unknown making birdie and prevailing in a playoff... but no one cares about the lonely lives of bloggers.  But upon further review, I find that the source material provides sustenance even in these troubled times:

Alas no more...

Alas, poor Yorick Furyk! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellentfancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?

Exactly...where be my gibes now?  My gambols, for God's sake....My admittedly infrequent flashes of merriment... that Shakespeare gets it, what's he done lately?

 OK, I'm coming to grips with it...So, about that Furyk guy:

Understandably, the victory dance seems rusty...

Jim Furyk never asked for our sympathy. He never whined, never bellyached, never cried about conditions or karma over the past 4 1/2 years.   

He never made excuses, either. Not after any of his seven runner-up finishes since that last win, when he clinched the 2010 Tour Championship in the rain, cap skewed backward. Not after 31 top-10 finishes in 99 starts during that time or a lamentable 2-7-1 Ryder Cup record.

Skratch TV, the next failed golf channel, tweeted this amusing analysis of our hero's celebration:

Well, it was more than four years coming, so we'll cut him some slack at releasing the frustration before the ball was actually in the hole...

If you happened to be watching the coverage in Savannah, GA, Deadspin informs us that you would have missed the winning putt:

Savannah golf fans watching the final, tournament-winning putt of the Heritage Classic at Hilton Head on local CBS affiliate WTOC never saw Jim Furyk’s birdie in sudden death, nor his energetic celebration. That’s because a weatherman broke in at the very moment of tension to report that there were no tornado watches, advisories, or warnings for the Savannah region.

Here's what it looked like to those folks:

Neither Deadspin nor our Shack have picked up up on the delightfully postmodern aspect of this incident, as that put had actually happened some four hours earlier... Not only would a crawl have been utterly sufficient to convey the news, but they should have known that he made the putt and could have safely interrupted a mere fifteen seconds later...that is, if they knew anyone in the news business.

The Tour Confidential gang took on the Furyk legacy, words that fit together awkwardly, and Shack liked this response:

Michael Bamberger: As the last of the independents, although Spieth does things his own way, too. Jim has used intelligence as much as anything to survive all these years. He'll likely finish in the Hall of Fame, and, like DL3 before him, he'll likely captain multiple RC teams. He's not going anywhere. He's a lifer.

True that, as there are fewer and fewer homemade swings on Tour.  Though with Tommy Gainey and Nicholas Thompson ( Lexi's brother, who looks more like he's wielding an axe on a tree with whom he has a personal grudge) they're still around.

And just to show that my issues with Travelin' Joe aren't personal, I'll agree with all of this:

Joe Passov: First, we will remember that bizarre swing, memorably described by David Feherty as resembling an octopus falling out of a tree. We'll also recall his thoughtful, unvarnished answers to our questions, even when he wasn't happy about the questions. As a player, he's a low-rung Hall-of-Famer, in the mold of Tom Kite/Fred Couples/Davis Love III/Lanny Wadkins.

He's not my idea of an HofFer, but there's little doubt that based that, based upon where they've drawn the line with recent inductees, he gets in.  I'd argue for higher standards, but that horse is well out of the paddock...

Girls Gone Wild - If a player holes out in a forest does it make any noise?  That mangled rhetorical question relates to the wild and wacky finish of the ladies' event on Oahu that I fear no one watched....Here's the Golfweek game account:

Chalk up another LPGA title for Sei Young Kim. The 22-year-old from South Korea

held off World No. 3 Inbee Park in a playoff on Saturday, and did so with drama. 

Kim holed out from 154 yards for eagle to win the LPGA Tour’s Lotte Championship on the first extra hole at Ko Olina Golf Club on Oahu, Hawaii. She had closed with a 1-over 73 in wind gusting to 30 mph at Ko Olina to match Park at 11-under 277. Park finished with a 71. 

"This is probably the second most memorable shot for me," Kim said through a translator. "In 2013, I won a tournament, which had the biggest prize money on KLPGA. I won that tournament by making a hole-in-one on 17, so that was probably my most memorable shot. Sorry."

 Now it had to be a dramatic finish, because it wasn't until the fourth graph that they let us know this:

After driving into the water in regulation on the par-4 18th, Kim forced the playoff with an 18-foot chip-in for par.

She hit 3-wood off the tee to lay back of the water, and the ball simply rolled forever...quite the bad break.  Enjoy the highlights below...my favorite part is the confusion for staring directly into the setting sun.  They hear the crowd but no one really knows that it's gone in:

Kudos to the LPGa for taking my suggestion and finishing on a Saturday, in prime time no less.  Though I'd recommend a slightly earlier start for the benefit of East Coast viewers...

I've got a ton more to go through with you, but let's get this posted and I'll hopefully carve out some time this afternoon.