• What a strange finish in Hilton Head. Before I get to the recap, I have to say, I think Furyk is my least favorite golfer to watch. The fact that he gets ready to putt, stands over the ball for a few seconds and then backs off and gets ready again every time drives me insane. I want to like Jim, because he seems like a nice guy but watching him drives me crazy. If I just knew Jim socially and he played like that I would refuse to play with him. Anyway, for those of you who didn’t see the finish at Harbor Town, it was the Slugger White show. Slugger White is the head rules official on the PGA tour. After having about 15 people lead or share the lead during the weekend the finish came down a playoff between Brian Davis and Jim Furyk. Slugger got the playoff started and both guys drove it into the fairway. Both players drove it in the fairway and had almost the exact same distance. Slugger decided that Davis was away. For some unknown reason Davis decided to hit a 6 iron from 163. Keep in mind that they had played this hole 10 minutes before and he had almost made his second shot from about 175 with a 6 iron. How did he think this was the right club? As soon as I heard what club it was I knew the tournament was over. There was a 3 second gap between when we heard the club and David hitting the shot. Faldo was able to get off a huge groan because this was clearly not the time to baby in a six-iron. Davis predictably pulled his second shot and it bounced twice in the rocks and then bounced onto the beach about 5 feet from the rocks. For those of you who don’t know or didn’t see it, Harbor Town is built on the water, but there a little beach between the rocks and the water. So Davis was basically in the sandtrap, except there were a bunch of reeds around his ball. Meanwhile Furyk hit his second shot on the back fringe and had about a 40 foot putt. Once again Slugger had to come out to determine who was further away. It was determined Furyk was a little further away so he putted first and hit it about 5 feet past the hole. Then it came to Davis on the beach. Davis had a little root of a reed right behind his ball so he considered taking a drop. Had he chosen to drop he probably could have dropped it right next to the green and had about a 20 foot chip for par, probably would need to make it to tie. After a lot of deliberation with his caddie and Slugger about the possible drop Davis chose to hit it out of the sand. He blasted it out like a bunker shot and was about 30 feet past the hole. At this point it was looking bleak for Davis, since he was putting for par about 30 feet further away. However, Davis called a penalty on himself before he even got off the beach. On the take away he felt he had hit a reed that was near his ball and moved it a little. After a little discussion with Slugger they decided to check the CBS feed and David did graze this reed. The result was he got a two stroke penalty and Jim summed it up that this tournament is over. Davis oddly did putt his first putt then conceded and shook Furyks hand. Furyk still had to putt because of PGA tour rules and did make his putt. So the most boring man on tour (with all due respect to Steve Stricker) win in an interesting manner.
• For some reason Gary McCord was going wild about Woody Austin’s technique for gripping his putter. At one point they just showed form for two minutes getting ready to putt and then they showed it again later and Gary almost had an orgasm. He puts his hands on very slowly but outside of that it was pretty much the same as everyone else. Until Davis’ penalty it was the weirdest part of the day.
• I read this morning on golf.com that Sergio changed his grip from interlock to overlap. If this is true he has gone completely insane. Sergio might have been the best ball striker on tour a few years ago and now he is changing his grip? Work on your putting Sergio.
• If you haven’t listened to Jim Nantz on the B.S. Report with Bill Simmons do it. Jim discusses the 1986 Masters, the 1992 Masters, his relationship with Freddie Couples and a few other topics both golf and otherwise. This was the greatest podcast of all time. It can be found at espn.com or on iTunes.
• I also heard on a podcast that IMG hired Earl Woods when Tiger was 13 as a youth golf scout and he was supposed to bring in only one golfer. Another Tiger scandal on our hands? Was he an amateur at Sawgrass, is the NCAA title legit? I had never heard this, but raises some questions. Thankfully Earl is still around making commercials so he can answer them for us.
• My dreams of the Yang slam may have ended at Augusta, but The Rooster is still playing good. He won the Volvo China Open this weekend. It wasn’t the greatest field of all time but you played solid all weekend. Y.E. has a nice short compact swing and is a good putter. Yang is now up to #20 in the world rankings and is on the rise.
• We should have some more action this week.
Amazing how all these Tiger scandals just keep coming out of the woodwork. Was everyone just sitting on these stories the last ten years or did people start digging into all this now??
ReplyDeleteEarl Woods could have probably argued that he was advising Tiger as his father and not his agent, but that is an interesting question. Maybe Stanford will have to pull a Memphis and take down the banner someday.