Tees2Greens on Golf

November 2008 - Posts

• When The Wind Blows Your Turkey Away

  I hated the wind last year when I wrote most of this article.  It’s thanksgiving weekend 2008 and I still hate it. I hate the cold wind worse than the warm wind, but from my perspective playing golf in a twenty mile an hour wind, hot or cold, is harder than Chinese arithmetic. Standing on the tee box with a twenty-mile an hour wind blowing in your face is difficult for Tiger Woods, so you can imagine how disheartening it is for someone like me. It’s embarrassing to hit the ball up in the air and have to call for a fair catch. Tee it low they say. Well, if I teed it any lower I’d have to dig a hole, which I have done from time to time. A cross wind is no bargain either. Somehow the wind is always blowing opposite to the dogleg. Make hay on the down wind holes you say, but did you ever notice how few downwind holes there are when you really need them? I once played a round when a front came through just as we made the turn, making every hole into the wind. By the end of the round I was ready to take up ultimate cage fighting. Putting in the wind is not a lot of fun either. Let’s just say, when your putting stroke has as many moving parts as mine, and the wind starts blowing me around, I couldn’t roll a softball into the Grand Canyon. How do you keep a putt low anyway? You would think a guy from Texas would learn how to play in the wind, but I haven’t. It whistles by my ears and into my head. Even on those bonus downwind holes I try so hard that I over swing and screw up even that opportunity. I also hate the way my legs and other things look in the wind; you know how your pants cling to you in funny ways. And what about my hair? You can see from my picture that I’m not a slick down sort of guy, but that doesn’t help. Keep it causal I always say, but when the wind is blowing so hard that your eyebrows are standing at attention, there is no way the hair on your head survives even with a hat. Hat hair is bad; swirling, grease-ball, bed-head hair is even worst. Imagine what it does to a comb-over? When it’s cold the wind also makes my nose run and when it’s hot the wind blows hay fever from hell up my nose, so there is no way to win. And although I have no scientific proof I can quote, I swear playing in the wind makes me more tired. Perhaps it is leaning against the wind, or hunching up my shoulders when the wind is cold; whatever the case may be, at the end of a windblown round I feel like someone beat me up. Why don’t you quit, or at the very least stop playing in the wind, I hear you saying, and frankly I have considered such drastic measures, but that was before the great day. On that great day the wind was blowing a steady twenty-five miles an hour gusting to thirty-five when I caught my last drive of the day on the screws. With three witnesses I stepped it off at 335 yards. Then with a mere 190 yards to the green I hit my trusty hybrid to within three feet of the hole and one putted for a natural eagle on the par five eighteenth. Needless to say there was a bet and a press, which I won going away. Since that day I have lost more bets than I have won. I have had more bogeys than pars, no birdies and nothing close to an eagle. But I know there is another one out there, isn’t there? So, I’m off to face the November wind hunting for another eagle… and if that doesn’t work I know where to find a turkey. Posted Nov 26 2008, 09:47 AM by Sam 'Bogey' Johnson with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Sam Johnson, Thanksgiving, Texas

• 2008 is One of Golf’s Most Exciting Years…With and Without Tiger

  As we stock up on the chip and dip and prepare for golf’s silly season on television, I was trying to decide what my favorite moment of the 2008 season was. Sergio Garcia victory at the Players Championship seemed to be the breakthrough win he needed to finally be recognized as an elite player.  Can a major championship be far behind?  It was also fun, terrible and then fun again to watch Paul Goydos. He’s got style. Trevor Immelman’s Masters victory was also stylish. The good-looking South African held it together around Amen Corner and stretched his lead to as many as six shots on the back nine. A two-putt par on the final hole gave him a 3-over 75, matching the highest final round by a Masters champion. Even so, it was good enough for a three-shot victory over Tiger Woods, whose hopes for a calendar Grand Slam ended with a thud. Still Tiger Woods was one of the great stories in 2008. By January he had already won the Buick Invitational and pocketed $936,000.  Then came a record-breaking victory in the Accenture Match Play Championship where he captured his 15th World Golf Championships and held all three world titles for the first time, but he was just getting started. After passing Arnold Palmer’s 62 tournament wins in January, Tiger won Arnold’s own Invitational tournament in March.  And, although he didn’t intend to rub it in, it worked out that way when he sank a 24-foot putt on the 72nd hole for his 64th Tour victory, then it was on to the U. S. Open. Coming off of arthroscopic knee surgery a few weeks earlier, Tiger’s limp was evident on Thursday and became progressively worse as the week went on.  But he continued the fight.  Then, only a few miles south of Hollywood, Tiger decided to rewrite the script and birdie the 72nd hole to tie Rocco Mediate in regulation. I’m not sure if Tiger knew it, but I did; Tiger had already won. And, although they would play 19 more holes the next day and Rocco would put up the fight of his life, destiny and Hollywood would have it no other way. Tiger won the U.S. Open in a 19-hole playoff for his 14th career major and maybe the most thrilling of them all. In 2008, Tiger played in only six tournaments. For the year he had four wins, one second, and six top tens and finished second on the money list. Any questions?   Playing as good as anyone in the world, Padraig Harrington successfully defended his title at Royal Birkdale with a four-shot cushion, but he was just getting started. Without Tiger, Harrington became the game's best players at the PGA Championship. Looking a bit like the 2007 British Open, Sergo Garcia had a change to grab his first Major until his approach at the 16th hole found water instead of land, and suddenly Padraig Harrington had won three out of the last six majors.  Once again, without Tiger the FedEx Cup seemed wide open, but in the end it was all over after Vijay Singh won the first two events. With Vijay coasting home another one of the young guns grabbed the spotlight when Camilo Villegas won the next two events. But alas Vijay’s lead was too much to overcome. Then as if to say you ain’t seen nothing yet, Captain Paul Azinger engineered a change in the selection process that weighted the points in favor of the current year and allowed him four wild card picks rather than two. He even divided the team into four distinct "pods" based on temperament for practice rounds and pairings.  The result was a super-cool 16 to 11 U.S. victory that left the Americans standing on the balcony with gigantic champagne bottles. In 2008 there were 13 different players in their 20s who won on the PGA Tour, including Anthony Kim, Camilo Villegas and Trevor Immelman.  And, by the end of the year few if any questioned how this or that might have been different if Tiger had played. But as Scarlett O’Hara said in Gone With The Wind, “Tomorrow is another day,” and so is 2009.   Posted Nov 20 2008, 07:46 AM by Sam 'Bogey' Johnson with no comments Filed under: Sam Johnson, Tiger Woods, Sergio Garcia, Padraig Harrington, Anthony Kim, Paul Goydos, Trevor Immelman, Vijay Singh, Camilio Villegas

• Don’t Judge While the Wheel is Still Spinning

  We all get judged. How much did you sell today? However, people who make their living playing golf are judged differently. The course as the adjudicator is both fair and brutal and at the end of the week you are either rewarded or ridiculed, all you can hope for is an even playing field. But there are no guarantees. Luck is the wildcard. A bit of wind, or a bad bounce can turn the perfect shot into a catastrophe. There are no do-overs and no apologies. If you’re lucky, you get to play the great game long enough that the bad bounces even out, but some tragedies never even out, or do they? For those of you too young to remember, it was at the 1968 Masters and Roberto De Vicenzo played one of the best final rounds of his life. He shot 31 on the front nine at Augusta and finished with a 65. It was his 45th birthday and it should have been, could have been the eve of his greatest victory. With his hard earned finishing round of 65 he should have faced Bob Goalby in a playoff the following day for the Masters championship, but it was not to be. Instead, his playing partner Tommy Aaron wrote down an incorrect hole score on De Vicenzo's scorecard, giving him a 4 on No. 17 when he had in fact made a 3. Roberto failed to catch the mistake and signed the scorecard. The higher score stood, dropping him from the playoff. "What a stupid I am!" De Vicenzo famously remarked. What happened to Roberto was heartbreaking to be sure, but as if to confirm that life and golf goes on, three weeks later, he won the last of his PGA Tour titles at the Houston Open. De Vicenzo ended his career with only one major, the 1967 British Open, though he finished fifth or better nine times in the Open Championship. However, lest you think 5 PGA Tour wins and one major sound like a so-so resume, think again: the nomadic Argentinian won, by the World Golf Hall of Fame's count, more than 230 tournaments around the world. He won national opens in 16 countries. He represented Argentina in the World Cup 17 times, and won the Argentina Open nine times, the last at age 62. De Vicenzo was on the winning team at the 1979 Legends of Golf, the tournament that led to the creation of the Senior Tour. He posted three more wins on the Senior Tour, including the inaugural U.S. Senior Open in 1980. DeVicenzo was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1989, and officially retired on November 12, 2006 at age 83. That’s right, 83. So, is the lesson of Roberto DeVicenzo to always double-check your scorecard? Sure, but the more important lesson lies in how Roberto conducted his life after 1968. As if to confirm the wisdom of Rudyard Kipling, Roberto met triumph and disaster and treated those two imposters just the same. And, with the 1968 Masters in his rearview mirror he went on to win more than 100 tournaments around the world. I think Roberto DeVicenzo believes that he is a very lucky man. However, that doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t enjoy smacking Tommy Aaron in the mouth just once. Posted Nov 12 2008, 09:21 AM by Sam 'Bogey' Johnson with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Sam Johnson, Tommy Aaron, Roberto De Vicenzo

• The King is Dead. Long Live the King; Is the European Tour Becoming the Tour of Choice?

  It all started 20 years ago when Greg Norman decided that the PGA Tour was not the center of the universe, and now that same idea is sending Tim Finchem back to the medicine cabinet for another roll of Tums.  Who cares if it makes perfect sense for the tour to go international? The PGA Tour, like my kid, is not into sharing, especially when it comes to their stars and the money they generate. What I’m talking about is the rights to big-time golf, which the PGA Tour believes they own, more than the Euros, more than the Asians, more than anybody.  As I said, Greg Norman stirred everything up years ago with talk of a world tour, which was cut short (some say bought off) by the creation of the World Golf Championships series. But that was then and this is now.  And, as powerful as Tim Finchem believes he and the PGA Tour is, it is no match for Dubai, Singapore, Berlin, South Africa and a half dozen other places around the world that will pay to see the big boys play. This time around, it’s the “Race to Dubai” that’s causing all the trouble. It’s the Euro Tour’s version of the FedEx Cup that has caused the likes of Sergio Garcia and Geoff Ogilvy to commit to playing 12 times next year on the European Tour for a chance at the $10,000,000 paid out in Dubai, plus the additional $10,000,000 bonus money. And, unless someone figures out how to add twelve weeks to the calendar, that’s at least six fewer weeks they’ll play on the PGA Tour. So what, you say.  It’s only a couple of guys. Well, there’s more, lead by Anthony Kim, perhaps the PGA Tour’s brightest new star, there are a half-dozen other PGA Tour players who have decided to take up joint membership in Europe for the 2009 season. The likeable Kim, whose two PGA Tour victories skyrocketed him to No. 8 in the world ranking, laid out $3,280 in hard cash and a pledge to play in 12 events to make him eligible for the season-ending $10 million “Race to Dubai” for the top 60 players and the additional $10 million bonus pool. And, because time is a wasting, he is scheduled to play the HSBC Champions in Shanghai this week. And, AK won’t be alone. “Spiderman” Camilo Villegas, who won the final two playoff events in the FedEx Cup on the PGA Tour, has also paid his $3,280, in Euros I suspect. And, like sharks smelling blood in the water, golfers can smell the money, so look for Phil Mickelson to join the European Tour, as well. You should also expect the big name U. S. stars to start grabbing a sizable percentage of the appearance money, which is banned on the PGA Tour. Let’s see, I get a million bucks for just showing up in Shanghai, but I have to win to get a million bucks in the U. S.  Oh my, what should I do? Are the Euros becoming a real threat to the PGA Tour?  Sergio Garcia thinks so. “Anytime you get players the caliber of Camilo and Anthony to the tour, it’s great. It’s an asset, it’s good for golf, it’s good for the European Tour.” Sergio went on to say that he expects several other PGA Tour players to take advantage of the opportunity the European Tour has to offer. “Some of the tournaments we play in the Middle East … are bigger than the ones they play in the U.S. You get good players there, so world rankings points increase,” Garcia said. “At the end of the day, that’s what the big players do it for.” The bottom line is that Anthony Kim has become one of golf’s brightest young stars, and Villegas is just as hot. If Mickelson drinks the Kool Aid, the European Tour will have nine of the top 10 players in the world. The only exception is Tiger Woods, the No. 1 player in golf, who said his schedule won’t permit him to play in the minimum 12 events required to be a member of the European Tour. However, he might be willing to accept a little of that appearance money now and then.   Posted Nov 06 2008, 08:50 AM by Sam 'Bogey' Johnson with no comments Filed under: Sam Johnson, Sergio Garcia, FedEx Cup, Phil Mickelson, Greg Norman, Anthony Kim, Camilio Villegas, Race to Dubai, European Tour, HSBC Champions, Tiger, Jeff Ogilvy