Author: George Promenschenkel

The Copperhead Course at Innisbrook is a tough course on a normal day. Throw in some gusty wins and the best golfers in the world struggle to make pars let alone birdies, especially as they navigate “The Snake Pit.”

Though it featured a B-list field, the difficult conditions bunched the leaderboard and made the Valspar a good watch (though we admit to frequent flipping away to the various conference championship games). There also seemed to be a lot of odd side stories this week, from Sabbatini’s sneeze to Daly’s 90. And that was just at one tournament. Elsewhere, plenty more was happening in the world of golf.

Take a quick break from filling out your brackets, and let’s hit the links.

Continue reading “Volume Three Hundred Seventy-Eight”

The WGC-Cadillac Championship had a bit of everything, a stellar field, a wicked wind, a bad back, and 318 golf balls in the drink. What a week!

After the craziness of the WGC last week, we could use a breather. Lucky for us, the PGA TOUR is heading to the Innisbrook Copperhead Course next week. Sandwiched between Doral and the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bayhill, means that the Valspar Championship gets a bit of a second tier treatment, with many of the big names taking the week off. The Senior Circuit is off to California for the Toshiba Classic and the Euros are playing in Morocco. The LPGA has the week off.

Let’s hit the links.

Continue reading “Volume Three Hundred Seventy-Seven”

And the winner is… the TV audience. If you missed the final round of the Honda Classic, you missed quite a bit of drama not usually seen in a March tournament not held at Doral or Bay Hill. There was a premature departure, one of the best three-wood shots under pressure that we’ve ever seen, and more than smidgen of major-caliber puckering. Still it wasn’t the Honda Classic that gave us the most compelling golf moment of the weekend. That occurred in Singapore while most of us slept. Do yourself a favor and watch the video of that moment in the first link.

Next week, we get our first look at Doral-by-the-Donald and the third WGC event of the year. If that’s not enough, you can round out your weekend golf watching with the Puerto Rico Open. But first, let’s hit the links.

Continue reading “Volume Three Hundred Seventy-Six”

The winter weather continues to make news around the U.S., while in Sochi at the Winter Olympics, it seems like spring has arrived. If you are in the north (as we are), you are probably wishing for spring to arrive where you are. Well, fear not, the calendar tell us that spring is right around the corner, just a month to go.

Are your brackets filled out for match play yet? Play kicks off at Dove Mountain on Wednesday with the round of 64. But before we make our picks, let’s hit the links.

Continue reading “Volume Three Hundred Seventy-Four”

Even in the wind and rain, Pebble Beach is still an astounding location. And the fact that you can play golf there, makes it that much better. Even watching a bunch of famous and not-so-famous hacks playing forgettable golf is tolerable because of that spectacular backdrop. We’re glad it’s not every week of the year, but we are glad that it is one week of the year.

In case you missed it, Jim Renner and his amateur partner John Harkey, Jr., took the pro-am competition at -31. Here’s the rest of the week in golf in HtL…

Continue reading “Volume Three Hundred Seventy-Three”

What a great weekend of sports! You had the 25th Dubai Desert Classic with Tiger and Rory in the field and the Waste Management Phoenix Open with the loudest hole in golf. And then there was that football game.

Next week we get plenty of eye-candy with the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. While it’s not exactly what I’d call a deep field (the player photos are oddly entertaining), it does have its marquee names: Mickelson, Snedeker, Day, and Furyk, to name a few. There will even be Daly and Duval sightings. What we don’t get is Bill Murray. The comedian reportedly will be on the set of a movie. Though it would be just like Murray to show up anyway.

But that’s next week, let’s hit the links for this week:

Continue reading “Volume Three Hundred Seventy-Two”

Well, once again the Mickelson-Woods match up we were promised, fizzled. As in, neither was still playing on Sunday—Mickelson because his back acted up and he withdrew and Tiger because he went nine-over during a seven-hole stretch and missed the secondary cut. [bonus link] Still, Torrey Pines did not disappoint. The top of the leaderboard was packed on Sunday, with the winner in doubt until the very end. The Euro Tour went to triple overtime to choose a winner. And the LPGA event came down to an up and down for birdie on the final hole. All and all, a pretty good week.

Coming up next week, hope you like desert golf, the PGA TOUR will be in Scottsdale for the Waste Management Phoenix Open, and the Euros will tee it up in U.A.E. at the Omega Dubai Desert Classic. Like the Champions Tour, the LPGA needs about a month to recover from their debut event so we’ll pick those two tours up later in February.

But we don’t have to wait to hit the links, so let’s do it.

Continue reading “Volume Three Hundred Seventy-One”

Oh that rulebook! Penalty strokes continue to be big stories on the tours, especially when they are assessed to big name players in big time contention. The Abu Dhabi Championship had more than its fair share of high profile penalties and near penalties.

In the U.S., the PGA TOUR arrived on the mainland, and a guy—who was ranked almost 600th in the world last year at this time—shot three 9-under rounds to outdistance the field at the Humana Challenge. Instead of his usual caddie (his wife Justine who is pregnant with the couple’s first child), he had his brother-in-law on the bag to fist bump repeatedly at the conclusion of the tournament.

This week is the PGA Merchandise show, the annual golf gearhead geekout in Orlando. Plus, we get to watch Tiger and Phil at Torrey Pines. Mickelson looked in good form at Abu Dhabi. Hopefully, Tiger comes out playing well, too, and we get a good head-to-head matchup. If not, there are another 140+ players to watch, and you’ll probably recognize most of their names. If all that fails, there’s still those hang gliders to watch. Let’s hit the links.

Continue reading “Volume Three Hundred Seventy”

Hawaiian golf is great for scenery and apparently for competitive juices if the Sony Open was any indication. With an hour of play left, no less than four players were in the hunt.

Next week, the senior circuit takes over on the islands while the PGA TOUR heads stateside for the Humana Challenge in La Quinta, Calif. It’s still another week before the LPGA starts the season in the Bahamas. Off the course, the PGA Merchandise show is just a little over a week away.

Can you smell it in the air? The 2014 golf season is just starting to bud. Now we need to come up with a plan to make sure that groundhog doesn’t see it’s shadow next month. Let’s hit the links.

Continue reading “Volume Three Hundred Sixty-Nine”