World Golf Views

…although I will say that we probably haven’t heard the last of Nationwide tour winner Kim Felton. Last year in Australia, he won three consecutive Von Nida tour events, qualified for the British Open and, IIRC, made the cut.

The new PGA Tour site looks nice. They’ve improved their live scoring feature, in which you can follow a player shot by shot (”Hit 2nd shot 220 yards into the left-hand rough”) enough to really make Tourcast unneccessary, unless you like the graphics. As the big advocate of golf on a world scale as you know I am, I must also point out that they’ve made another improvement. Rather than merely listing the player’s country on the live scoring, as they do on the Euro Tour’s site, the new PGA tour actually gives them little flags.

Not that there aren’t glitches with the flags. They think Daniel Chopra is British, they apparently don’t have a flag for Northern Ireland, so they just gave Graeme McDowell a really BIG British flag, and they don’t have flags for a number of players, including unknown, where’s-HE-from guys like Tom Kite.
And they have the same icons for shot-by-shot live scoring for the Nationwide Tour, but they don’t seem to be functioning/available as I write this. They think everyone’s on the tee.

USGA (United States Open): Michael Campbell (NZL)
European Tour (Aa St Omer Open):Joakim Backstrom (SWE)
Nationwide Tour (Knoxville Open): Kim Felton (AUS)
Japan Golf Tour (Mandom Lucido Yomiuri Open): Satoru Hirota (JPN)

Recaps later (but soon)….

Is anyone watching the U.S. Open not rooting for this guy to win? Anybody? Anybody?
Is anyone watching the U.S. Open think he has a snowball’s chance in hell tomorrow? Anybody? Anybody?

…the the first round leaders of the 2005 US Open were Olin Browne and Rocco Mediate. Olin Browne isn’t even a full-fledged member of the PGA Tour anymore, barely missing the top 125 last year. Mediate only is because he’s a lifetime top 50 earner (who would’ve thunk it)? I don’t expect either to be in contention on Sunday, but is Browne hot, or what? Following up a 59 with the first round lead at the major he shot the 59 to qualify for?

Man, am I excited about this. They’re bringing together all the tournament winners from the European PGA, Asian PGA, Australasian PGA, and Southern Africa PGA, the top 50 in the world, and a select handful of others to compete in the richest event in Asia (it will count towards all of those tours, this is no silly-season) event), and none other than Tiger Woods has committed to it, which means we’re gonna get about 5 hours of coverage a day on the Golf Channel (I hope) and much wanted exposure for the hacks of the minor world tours and a chance to beat the very best (something I talked about at length here. Should be great.

US PGA TOUR (Booz Allen Classic): Sergio Garcia (ESP)
EUROPEAN TOUR (Dutch Open): Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano (ESP)
NATIONWIDE TOUR (LaSalle Bank Open): Chris Couch (USA)

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Too bad for Garcia that his win was overshadowed by the Ben Crane/Rory Sabbatini fiasco. Impressive victory considering his recent history of round four meltdowns. When they interviewed Garcia on ABC, he revealed himself to wearing gag teeth. When you saw that, were you sort of amuses, or rankling that he wasn’t taking golf/the interview seriously enough? If you answered the latter, I don’t want to be friends with you.

Also, you know that Booz Allen Hamilton commercial they ran constantly, with the boy outwitting the dog to get the frisbee? They didn’t even bother to make the scene to scale. The house was just as close to the dog the frisbee, so the boy wouldn’t've had room to circle around the dog unless he also circled around the house. Why didn’t they shoot the commercial somewhere else, then? Or build a set where that oversight wasn’t so obvious? Yes, I know it’s just a commercial and yes, I do need to chill.

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Big week for Spain, as Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano won in Holland. I fell asleep watching this one on Tivo.

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Chris Couch earned the dubious distinction of becoming the Nationwide Tour’s all-time leading money winner by winning the tour’s richest event, the LaSalle Bank Open. You win this and you are pretty much assured a card the next year on the PGA tour, and for Couch it was his second win, so he’s just one victory shy of a battlefield promotion.

Usually, I am cheering for the up-and-comers on the brink of a battlefied promotion, but Couch? I don’t know. He needs to get his head together and get over whatever it is that allows him to play so well on the Nationwide Tour and so miserably on the PGA Tour. Last year on the PGA Tour, he was one of the worst (well, had the worst results of almost any) players: 4 cuts made in 24 events. Only David Gossett played in as many events or more and earned less.

Just wanted to be (one of) the first to weigh in on something that will be written about in every golf blog, column, magazine, and hotly debated in every active golf forum on the ‘net, even in the shadow of the US Open.

At the Booz Allen Classic today, on the 17th hole, Rory Sabbatini, a very fast player, got tired of waiting for his playing partner Ben Crane, a very slow player, to hit his second short on 17 and simply walked up to the green ahead of him, shot out of turn, and then left for the 18th green before Crane putted out.

The ABC broadcast booth (including former playes Ian Baker-Finch, Nick Faldo and Paul Azinger) were aghast and all reported they had never seen a player leave his playing partner like that, ever, nor had anyone seen a player boo’d by the gallery, as Sabbatini was, ever.

In the space of about five minutes, Sabbatini did four things to establish himself as a world-class jackass. 1. Leaving his playing partner. 2. Playing out of turn. 3. Leaving the green without watching his partner play out, which he is obligated to do. 4. Brusquely shaking hands (if you can call it a handshake, it lasted less than a second), and then walking to the scoring tent spittin’ invective.

I think it was Faldo who said something interesting, and true. “People across the country who are sick of being stuck with or behind slow players are going to applaud Sabbatini’s actions.” In other words, he reacted the way fast players around the world simply daydream about reacting.

But anyone who sees Sabbatini as some sort of fast-play Champion of the People is totally missing the point. This is the PGA tour. It ain’t your local muni. They’re sent off in twosomes, not foursomes. They are afforded the privilege to play slower in a way that Jimbo Slowplay, 26 handicapper, shouldn’t.

Postscript: Judy Rankin just interviewed Ben Crane and to say he took the high road is understating it. He handled the interview with such ego-less grace (saying it was his fault, he totally understands Rory’s reaction, he’s working on speeding up play, refusing to criticize Sabbatini in the slightest) that he just became one of my favorite players.

Could the Booz Allen be any better? As I write this, Tom Kite at age 55 is leading. 29 guys are within 5 shots of the lead and 16 players are within two. ANYONE can win this. Just as I like it. But I’m rooting for Tom.

When I started keeping the blog, I came across either a blog or just a standard website that focused on fantasy golf, making predictions and so forth. It wasn’t a part of the big golf magazines like golf digest, or a part of the PGA tour (in other words, it wasn’t TFI). It was obscure. Anybody know what I’m talking about and can help? Anybody? Bueller? Bueller?

US PGA (The Memorial): Bart Bryant
European PGA (Celtic Manor Wales Open): Miguel Angel Jimenez
Nationwide Tour (Chattanooga Classic): Jason Schultz
Japan Golf Tour (JCB Classic Sendai): S.K. Ho

Once again, most of the big names show up for a PGA tournament and a guy who has to qualify for majors wins it: It was Ted Purdy at the Byron Nelson and Bart Bryant here. Good for him. I was rooting for Couples, for fantasy golf reasons.

For awhile, Richard Green of Australia led. Not being a frequent player on the PGA Tour, CBS did their usual job of giving us little introductory nuggets about him, and then Peter Oosterhuis said something stupid: “He’s ranked 53rd in the world…higher than you would think.”

I have no problem with it if you don’t give a rat’s ass about any golf tours other than the U.S. PGA, but don’t act all surprised when someone who’s not a full member of it has a decent OWGR ranking. Green won the Australian PGA this year against a strong field (curiously unmentioned in the telecast). He has two top threes on the European Tour this year. Last year, he was runner up on the ET three times, netting him 17th place on the Order of Merit. So yeah, 53rd is about right. It’s only “higher than you would think” if you think that you’re lack of knowledge/homework on the US tour means there’s no knowledge to be had or homework to be done. Oosterhuis in an Englishman, so he particularly has no excuse for that sloppy attitude about non-US golf.

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As the Brits pronounce it, the ET event this week was won by Meegle Angle JiMENeth. I betcha if he said his name aloud for us, it would sound more like the American pronounciation of MiGHEL AnHEL JIMinez. At least the first and middle name. Just a hunch. I’m also annoyed at the way that they pronounce Nick Dougherty’s last name the exact same way they pronounce “dirty.”

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Jason Schultz had to bully through six playoff holes, but he outlasted Joe Daley to win on the Nationwide Tour. Former PGA winner Willie Wood finished one shot out of the playoff. Scoring was low, as the the four playoff participants were all 22-under.

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Another win by a Korean on the Japan Circuit, this time S.K. Ho. He won wire-to-wire, and the victory places him atop the Japan Golf Tour money list. Sayonara.