World Golf Views

…who seems to have a number of good blogworthy ideas, I also wanted to post my 5 favorite non-majors.

My list will be different from his because I will include not just PGA tour events, but any events from the International Federation of PGA Tours, and the Nationwide Tour. Also, he didn’t include WGC events, but I will. (The Sand Trap’s Cody Thrasher’s reasoning for their disqualification is because there’s always another PGA tour even going on at the same time. So?)

1. The Johnnie Walker Classic.

On my other site, I actually wrote an entire article about my love for the Johnny Walker Classic. Basically, I’m a big fan of co-sanctioned events because they pave way for upstarts and Cinderellas to climb up the latter and earn a quick ticket to a better tour (usually the European Tour….see Arjun Atwal, Thongchai Jaidee, etc). I love an underdog, so I love these events. And the Johnny Walker Classic is the ultimate of such tournaments that it’s actually TRI-sanctioned (European Tour, Australasian Tour, Asian Tour), and the prize money is sufficient the biggies of the game (most non-Americans in the OWGR top ten participate, and Tiger Woods made this tourney a regular stop until a couple of years ago). It’s the only tournament where guys ranked in the high hundreds, or even thousands, of the OWGR can compete against guys like Els, Goosen, and Scott (who won this year) without having to go through a qualifying process (like the major Opens, and Monday qualifying for other events.

2. NEC World Series of Golf.

But I’m biased, it’s my hometown event. Proud Akronite here.

3. Tournament Players Championship.

It’s the only minor-major that players truly seem to regard as a major, including the WGC events.

4. The LaSalle Bank Open.

The highest paying Nationwide Tour event. The winner is pretty much guaranteed entree to the PGA Tour the next year, which makes it great drama. In case you can’t tell, I find a lot more intrique and enjoyment watching the Davids duke it out rather than the Goliaths. Call me crazy.

5. The Accenture World Match-Play Championship.

Just because I love the March-Madness-type seeding.

I noted yesterday that Desvonde Botes won the Southern Africa Tour event, but not without controversy.

In short, one of his playing partners, Michiel Bothma, accused him of placing his ball well in front of his marker on the opening few holes. Bothma reportedly took his allegation of cheating to Botes while Botes was putting on the fifth hole, and (says Botes) the allegation, and particuarly the timing of it, shook him up sufficiently to contribute to Botes bogeying the hole as well as the following hole.

“There is no way it happened and I don’t know what he saw,” he said. “On the first hole (the hole Bothma claimed to first notice the incident) I didn’t even mark my ball because I was left with a tap-in putt.

Then he brought it up while I was putting on the fifth, which you just don’t do, and I bogeyed the hole. It really bothered me, but I just tried to block it out of my mind.”

I agree. Bothma sounds like a malcontent, especially if you factor in that he once sued the Sunshine Tour to let him play in an event he was ejected from for not participating in the Pro-Am and that the third member of the group, Jean Hugo, denied seeing Botes doing anything wrong.

Maybe Botes should call Monty. He can empathize.

US PGA Tour (St. Jude Classic): Justin Leonard (USA)
European Tour (BMW European PGA Championship): Angel Cabrera (ARG)
Asian Tour (Maekyung Open): S.H. Choi (KOR)
Japan Golf Tour (Mitusbishi Diamond Cup): I.J. Chang (KOR)
Sunshine Tour (Vodacom Origins of Golf): Desvonde Botes (RSA)

Quite a busy week on the world golf circuit.

Leonard very nearly became the first person to blow an 8-shot (or better) lead going into the final round since they began tracking such things in 1970, but he managed to hang on by a stroke against the hard-charging David Toms.

On the U.S. telecast, Lanny Wadkins really let Leonard have it, lambasting him for playing so conservatively. Most of the punditry I’ve read about it has agreed with Wadkins, that Leonard was employing a prevent defense, if you will.

But this kind of hindsight is always 20/20, and if Leonard is going to play aggressively with an 8-stroke lead, then he risks a faster, more spectacular, Van de Veldian collapse of triple bogeys and such. Then, of course, we’d be hearing about how crazy it was for him to play so recklessly with such a big lead. Leonard played for pars, which he got on 15 holes, and after all, he did win.

***

Angel Cabrera looked good in winning the European PGA Tour, staring down Paul McGinley in the end. I loved how the course (The Wentworth Club) ends with two par fives. If the leaderboard was more crowded than it was, that sort of setup would’ve made the race to the finish bizarre and chaotic…that’s a good thing. It was really great to see Renton Laidlaw back in the saddle calling the shots, too.

***

Eduardo Romero. Craig Stadler. Jay Haas. The guys who are pushing fifty and still beating back the young guns continues to grow, and it now includes 50-year-old Sang-Ho Choi of Korea, who won this week’s Asian Tour event at age 50. He’s so obscure a player that I couldn’t find much of a bio page for him for the link above. He did have one advantage, though: He’s the club pro at the course the tournament was played.

***

It was a good week for Korean golfers. Besides Choi, Ik-Je Chang won the Japan’s Tour Mitsubishi Diamond Cup, going wire-to-wire. Last year, he was the Order of Merit winner on the South Korean golf circuit, and we probably haven’t heard the last from him.

***

Finally, in South Africa, Desvonde Botes also won wire-to-wire and took the lead on the Sunshine tour order of merit. He also has the distinction of having perhaps the greatest name in golf.

So, the maiden post.

My name’s Kevin Beane, I’m 29 years old, and I’m a sports writer (link in profile, and I also have a day job).

While I write about a number of topics at SportsCentral, I am increasingly interested in golf more than other sports. In particular, I follow the PGA Tour and European PGA Tour to near-obsessive levels. I stay abreast of other non-senior men’s tours (the Nationwide Tour, Asian Tour, Australasian Tour, Sunshine Tour and Japan Tour) with only slightly less fervency.

So, I thought I would give myself a forum to write exclusively about these things. What you will NOT read in this blog includes, but is not limited to: Equipment reviews or talk, talk of course design or atchitecture, or instruction tips. Basically, I’m just going to be pontificating about the golf I watched and/or read about over the weekend, and about the news surrounding those tours. I suppose I will write a little about my own golf game, but not much. As a player, I’m basically pretty new to the game, shoot in the 120’s on easy courses, and haven’t really found my game yet.

First non-introductory post to come very soon (famous last words)…