Columbus Nights and Other Loose Ends

We're still two weeks out from the big one, so what else is going on?

Tigers Rule - Not that Tiger, alas, who two holes into his first round at the memorial looks more like Phoenix-Tiger than Augusta-Tiger.

I'm unclear on what went wrong, but I turned on my DVR's coverage of the LSU-USC final match to see, two minutes into the tape, the trophy handed to the LSU coach.  Hey, how about a spoiler alert, guys?  Did they move up the tee times or something?   I've no clue, but you're pissing off your core audience, and that can't be good for business.

It was an improbable win, as Ryan Herrington captures in his Loop item:

2. The Tigers barely qualified for the NCAA Championship in the first place.

Entering the final round of the NCAA Regional at Connecticut's Yale G.C., LSU sat in 10th place, 11 strokes out of the fifth and final spot the team needed to be in to reach NCAAs. But the Tigers mounted a furious rally, closing with a 12-under 268 (Taylor and Pierce shooting 65s) to move into fifth and advance to nationals for the fifth time in six seasons.

It's their fifth national title, but first since 1955...I was happy to see Georgia lose in the semis, as their shirts were too ugly for words...same goes for USC's with uniform numbers in the final, so all's well...except for the black socks:

Memorial Days - It's Memorial week, which typically means Monsoons in Columbus and preparation for U.S. Open conditions.  With this year's Open more British than U.S., the guys will just be playing golf and we'll hope that the former is similarly moot.

Steve DiMeglio had this piece on that other Tiger:

"I feel very good, very good about the changes we've made," Woods said. "And we've just implemented a couple new things. But it's still evolving, but it's getting better." 

Woods, a five-time winner here, has played just twice since taking a nine-week break to work on his game after his missed the cut in the Waste Management Phoenix Openand withdrawing after 11 holes in the first round of the Farmers Insurance Open the following week. He tied for 17th at the Masters and then finished in a tie for 69th at The Players Championship.

PGATour.com has streaming coverage of the Woods-Day-Reed group, and nothing good is happening for our Tiger.  OK, it's only 3+ holes, but it's all the usual suspects, meaning all fourteen of them.

Shack had this video preview:

Jack had some interesting comments in pre-tourney interviews.  First, was this response to the Mike Davis kerfuffle about practice rounds:

“I always liked to go into Augusta, go in and play 72 holes, and I liked to shoot a score,” Nicklaus said. “I would go in the week before and I wasn't just hitting balls around, hitting a few extra shots, sure, I kept my first ball, and I always liked to keep a score, and say can I shoot 276, 275 on this golf course under the conditions it's in.”

And this about his 'tude:

"I think that if you feel you're overachieving, or getting more out of what you should get, 

then you stop working," Nicklaus said. "I always feel like I'm never getting what I should be getting out of what I'm doing. So you've got to work harder to make sure you do that. I always wanted to climb a mountain. I always wanted to get better. ... So I just tried not to believe anything about what I would read or what I would hear or what I even thought.

"I still don't think I achieved what I could have achieved in my career."

Well, we saw what a wee chip on the shoulder could do for Rickie at the Players... 

Wistful Watson - Tom Watson will bid adieu to the Open Championship this year, and endings are always tinged with sadness:

“I was here on Monday and I walked by the Swilcan Bridge and I felt a little melancholy, a little sad. But the more I look at it, I’ve had such a wonderful run at the Open Championship that there are too many good memories to be so sad, even though it is over. It is like a death, the finality of that. It’s over, but let the void of that death be filled by those memories and that helps soothe the disappointment of the melancholy.”

True that, though he did experience his most bitter Open loss to Seve at the Old Course... Of course, this is something of a mulligan, as Tom explains:

Nearly five years ago, he stopped before crossing it in the fading light and planted a kiss

on the small stone structure. “I did that because I thought it was going to be my last Open Championship at St Andrews, I sure did,” recalled the American.

It would have been if the R&A hadn’t pulled off a masterstroke by extending the five-year exemption Watson secured for finishing second in 2009 at Turnberry by 12 months. The decision means he will get the chance to bid farewell to the game’s oldest major where he should, even though none of his five victories in the event was achieved at the “Home of Golf”.

In a separate interview, Tom deals with some of the Ryder Cup fallout:

"It was disappointing, but we got beat by the better team. Our team played its heart out, and, after getting off to a great start on the Sunday, if they had continued along that path we could have been right there at the end. 

"But the European team responded in the singles matches and when your team is 56 shots higher, you don't expect to win. The European team played better than we did.

"The bottom line is that I made the decisions based on the best information at the time and I had the support of my vice captains. We made collective decisions on who was going to play with whom."

No arguments there, as the Euros were the better team... but kind of funny that this is the regret he articulates:

"Jimmy Walker played brilliant golf for us. My only regret as far as the pairings are concerned was that Jimmy got tired out on the Saturday afternoon. 

"He went 18 holes every round. I played him 36 the first day and 36 the second and that was a mistake on my part. 

"That fourth match on the Saturday afternoon, I didn't know his physical condition. Then that third hole I saw him hit a shot and thought. 'Oh my God', I think he has lost his legs.

He has to regret sending Phil and Keegan out in foursomes that first afternoon, but perhaps better not to go there...He does note that Phil's comments probably sould have been made in private, to which I can only say, probably?

I Think You Misspelled "Really Sucks" - In recent weeks we've learned that Natalie Gulbis is also out of her depth holding a microphone, but see what you think of this headline:

Natalie Gulbis sets course record in U.S. Open qualifier, reminds everyone she's still really good at golf

I guess it goes to your meaning of really good...

Despite still being one of the LPGA Tour's biggest stars, Natalie Gulbis hasn't had the best 2015 season. Not that 2014 was much better.

In fact, Gulbis hasn't had a top 10 since the 2013 Women's British Open. And her lone LPGA victory remains the 2007 Evian Masters. But compared to 99.99 percent of the population, Gulbis is still really, really good at golf.

Or 2013...or 2012....Shall I go on.  

Despite a couple mistakes on her card (A blue marker? Really?) and despite her recent slump, the 32-year-old Californian proved she's still a serious golfer. See you at the Open, Natalie.

Sean Zak also covered the story, and I'll share his lead 'graph:

It was nearly two decades ago when Natalie Gulbis burst onto the women’s golf scene as a 14-year-old amateur. Now at 32, Gulbis is ranked 278th in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings and has been forced to qualify for the U.S. Women’s Open the hard way, via sectional qualifying.

OK, so she's played so badly for a period of years that she's barely inside the top 300 in the world, on the other hand she had one good day....which data point do we think the more relevant?