Friday, April 28, 2006

Lucas Glover

Golfer of the Week at Zurich. I sung his praises earlier in the year; time to cash in your chips. Fired -6 in the AM wind yesterday, hopefully he can produce a decent round this afternoon.

Crappy TV reached its zenith last night in the last five minutes of 'Date My Mom'. Some guy passed on two models, and got stuck with a heifer. Best five minutes of TV ever.

Off to Foxfield tonight, which will be the 10th installment (of the last 11 years). Many good stories to abound next week, hoping for good weather tomorrow!

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Gilbertology

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/basketball/nba/golden_state_warriors/14363020.htm

Does he lose $1500 at halftime, become enraged, put $2500 on the Wizzzz to cover, and play like a man possessed in the 2nd half, taking 28 shots?

Brandt Jobe

My chosen golfer for the Shell Houston Open is Brandt Jobe, and I've spent the past 24 hours trying to discern my thought pattern in January when I picked Mr. Jobe. I cannot remember if I was impressed with his T69 in 2005, or the fact that he always plays the Shell because he is extremely fond of the five-cheese burrito at the Mexican restaurant down the road from Redstone. It is a bad sign that in a pool with 60+ participants, I am the only person who picked Brandt Jobe. So when your watching today/tomorrow, please root for Mr. Jobe, he/I need all the help we can get.

Monday, April 17, 2006

Verizon Heritage

Congrats to Aaron Baddeley for winning the Verizon Heritage Open at Harbour Towne. From what I understand, from my Australian friends, he is regarded as a bastard in his homeland, for choosing to play abroad instead of building his game on the Australasian Tour, and is chided for not returning to play in native events (Adam Scott, by contrast, is adored). Sucks for him, but he grew up in a family dedicated to travel (father was a Formula One crew chief) and I can't fault him for doing what he considers to be in his best interest.

As happy I am with his win, I am just as contented that Furyk lost. Baddeley chose to sack up on 16 and his a 223 yard 6-iron that skirted trouble and set up a two-putt birdie for a one stroke lead. Furyk, chose to play to the relative inexperience of Baddeley, and lay up (9 iron) for an approach attempt at birdie. Essentially, Furyk decided to play a passive role and wait for Baddeley to screw up, rather than try to win the tournament on his own merit. Glad he failed. Of course, if he had made one putt in the final four holes (none longer than 15 feet), I'd be whistling a slightly less-harsh tune.

Is there anyone slower on the greens than Furyk? His method of standing over a putt, before backing away repeatedly, is insanely annoying. He may still be backing off his birdie putt on 18. He backed off at least five times. In 2000-2002 when Sergio was practicing the repeated waggle he was criticized harshly, but Furyk gets a free pass because he is a "former HS QB and an intense competitor". He's also a Srixon sellout with a terrible pre-putt routine, which I believe to be worse than Sergio's since-corrected malfeasance.

Friday, April 14, 2006

Masters Draft Results

Unfortunately, I was unable to repeat for the 3rd straight year. I was forced to put the Green 'Cousin Eddie' Dickie on G Nelson. We've passed the title back and forth, Tiger/Phil style, for a number of years. His winning team consisted of:

Tiger Woods
Luke Donald
Davis Love III
Chris Dimarco
Steven Ames
John Daly
Tim Clark
Brandt Jobe


Which was greatly aided by the Tim Clark value pick in Round 6. We had a tight grouping who finished 1-4 (within 6-10 spots of eachother, scoring determined by low cumulative order of finish for your top 3) and I'm too lazy to figure the final finish. Vijay dropping for T3 to 8 with the short yank on 16 killed my chnaces.

While our pool had a strong 1-4, Leland was not in the hunt, as his picks were extremely poor:

David Toms
Geoff Ogilvy
Darrren Clarke
Stuart Appleby
Lucas Glover
KJ Choi
Bernard Langer
Vaughn Taylor


I am looking forward to the new RHCP album. Have they released anything since Californication, which was the album of the summer of '99, i.e. before my fourth year in college?

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

2006 Masters Draft

On Monday night we held our 2006 Masters Draft. Being the two time defending champion afforded me no breaks, as I was left to pick 7th out of 8. My team is as follows:

Vijay Singh
Sergio Garcia
Mike Weir
Robert Allenby
Stewart Cink
Justin Leonard
Tim Herron
Mark O'Meara

Sadly, there is no one on my team I can root for, and I don't see any of my team members having the "out of the blue" potential that resulted in my wins the prior two years (DiMarco - pick 17 in 2005, KJ Choi - pick 39 in 2004, plumb-bobbing for eagle from 210 out on the 11th on Suday).

In picking my team, a lot of the guys who I was interested in, even as a reach, were taken ahead of my reach picks (David Howell - 17, Lucas Glover - 21), resulting in picks being more reactionary than finely crafted. My team doesn't even have a decent player-coach to rally the troops on Sunday for a spirited charge. Raymond Floyd would have been the perfect player-coach to motivate the guys.