Category: PGA

Wyndham Introduction

What you don’t see on TV – behind the scenes at a PGA Tour event.

Wyndham ChampionshipHello world. No, that’s not quite right, I think I’ve heard that somewhere before in the world of golf, but I will quickly move on. I want to thank Erik for taking a chance on letting me try my hand at golf reporting for The Sand Trap. This is really my first time writing about golf and I hope to dig up some interesting stories while I am at the finest PGA Tour stop in the Piedmont Triad area (read Greensboro)!

I am an unabashed golf nut. I first held a club at the age of 23 and somehow I was hooked. I bought some clubs at a Wal-Mart somewhere in Pennsylvania and beat balls around courses in PA from State College to Danville to Erie. I took many (mostly forgettable) lessons and never seemed to get any better than a weekend hacker-duffer. Finally, I ran into the Stack and Tilt crew and things have become so much better for me over the past 1.5 years. I can actually hit the ball. Sometimes with a push-draw! That makes me very happy.

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2010 PGA Championship Final Round Chat

We’re having a chat for the final round of the PGA. Sign up and show up at 1pm eastern time (or any time thereafter). Can Nick Watney hold off the challengers?

2010 U.S. Open Final Round Live Chat

Sign up now or join us later for a live chat starting at 3pm eastern time when final-round coverage of the 2010 U.S. Open from Pebble Beach begins.

2010 Masters Final Round Live Chat

Join us at 2pm eastern time when CBS coverage starts for a live blog.

We’re going to try a live “chat” this time around rather than a live blog as we’ve done in the past. We’ll have a few invited guests (primarily from the forum) who will join us, and you can pop in from time to time to add your commentary to the live feed.

The event kicks off with coverage at 2pm eastern time, so check back a bit before then.

Also, anyone who (in their first comment, prior to 2pm eastern time) predicts the winner and the final score will win a free license to Scorecard, an awesome statistics app that helps you analyze and improve your golf game. Post the final score (relative to par) and the winner’s name. Your first entry’s all that counts, and if you post multiple times, you’re DQed.

Pros on the Range

Pros use alignment sticks on the range more than half the time. Chops don’t. Go figger.

Head to any range in the country and you’ll see one thing. Well, okay, you’ll see a lot of things, like 90% of people hitting off their right foot, slicing, and firing balls one after the other as if they go bad when exposed to sunlight.

But the thing I’m talking about is actually something you won’t see: alignment sticks. Station after station, golfer after golfer, and not a single alignment stick to be found.

Walk around the range at a PGA Tour event and you can’t get away from the darn things.

Everyone wants to be like a PGA Tour pro, but very few people practice like one. Here are a couple of photos from The Memorial and the Bridgestone Invitational showing pros – and their training aids – on the range.

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2009 PGA Championship Final Round Live Blog

Will Tiger hold on to win his fifth and fifteenth PGA and Major? Or will this be the first time in 15 tries he doesn’t take it with a final-round lead?

2009 PGA ChampionshipWe’re live blogging the final round of the 2009 PGA Championship at Hazeltine National Golf Club. Tiger Woods is poised to win a record-typing fifth PGA Championship (and his third consecutive) and his fifteenth major – each of which he’s previously won with the third-round lead as he has this year.

Will major winners Padraig Harrington (two back at -6) or Lucas Glover (four back at -4) win the title, or will Y.E. Yang or Henrik Stenson capture their first? Could someone from -3 or further possibly go low enough to win, or is this a five-horse race? Let’s put it this way: if Tiger shoots 70, Paddy and Y.E. have to shoot 67 to win, and G. Lover and Stenson have shoot 65. 67 is the lowest round of the week – and it’s only been shot by two people. They’re both playing in the final group.

Pos   Player                Tot     R1    R2    R3
---   ------------------    ---     --    --    --
1     Tiger Woods           -8      67    70    71
T2    Padraig Harrington    -6      68    73    69
T2    Y.E. Yang             -6      73    70    67
T4    Lucas Glover          -4      71    70    71
T4    Henrik Stenson        -4      73    71    68
T6    Ernie Els             -3      75    68    70
T6    Soren Kjeldsen        -3      70    73    70
T8    Ross Fisher           -2      73    68    73
T8    Brendan Jones         -2      71    70    73
T8    Martin Kaymer         -2      73    70    71
T8    John Rollins          -2      73    73    68
T8    Alvaro Quiros         -2      69    76    69

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2009 British Open Final Round Live Blog

1977 gave us the Duel in the Sun. Will 2009 give us the Return of the Sunspotted? Not quite as catchy, that.

Open ChampionshipSaturday, July 18 was both a good and a bad day for the “old” among us. The world’s oldest man died (113-year-old Henry Allingham), sure, but Tom Watson provided the good by not only maintaining his lead in the 138th Open Championship, but by increasing it by dropping the tie at the top.

Watson is one of the few guys atop the Open Championship leaderboard with experience. The others, of course, are Retief Goosen and Jim Furyk, T4 and T6 respectively. And Goosen has that weird history thing working for him, too: fellow countryman Ernie Els won the U.S. Open in 1994 and 1997 and the British Open in 2002. Retief has won the U.S. Open seven years after each of Ernie’s wins – in 2001 and 2004 – and 2009 is seven years after Ernie’s victory at Muirfield.

The leaderboard to start the day:

1    Watson     -4
T2   Goggin     -3
     Fisher     -3
T4   Westwood   -2
     Goosen     -2
T6   Furyk      -1
     Cink       -1
T8   Molder      E
     Jaidee      E

Join us as we live blog the final round of the 2009 Open Championship (starting at 8:00am eastern).

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2009 U.S. Open Final Round Live Blog

Lucas Glover and Ricky Barnes kick the day off at -7, but can either hold off a host of others, including Phil and Tiger?

Bethpage Black 2009 U.S. OpenAnd so it is that we find ourselves with yet another thrilling Monday finish in the U.S. Open. Last year the force of nature known as Tiger Woods pushed play to Monday with a 12 foot putt nobody will forget. This year, the force of nature responsible for Monday’s play is Mother Nature and the torrential rains that have soaked Bethpage Black, resulting in low scores and more than the occasional delay.

The leaderboard at the start of today’s play looks like this:

Pos   Player        Total     Thru
---   ------        -----     ----
T1    Glover         -7         1
T1    Barnes         -7         1
T3    Mickelson      -2         2
T3    Mahan          -2         2
T3    Duval          -2         2
T3    Fisher         -2         1
 7    Weir           -1         3
T8    Woods           E         7

Can Tiger Woods post a score of -4 or so? He’d need to go -4 on his last 11 holes. He’d be there now were it not for his double-bogey-par-bogey finish to his first round. Will Phil Mickelson’s aggressive play nab him his first U.S. Open? Thus far his many birdies have been offset by bogeys and doubles. What about David Duval? Unless he shoots a final-round 85, you’ve got to consider this his coming back party regardless of where he finishes.

And finally, will either the untested Lucas Glover or Ricky Barnes manage to hold on? Stay with us as we live blog the final round of the 2009 U.S. Open from Bethpage Black.

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2009 Masters In Photos

It might have been a bit cold and windy, but it was still a great first time at the Masters.

I had a chance to go to the Tuesday practice round of the Masters this year. It was a bit cold, so not all the players were out there on the course, but the usual suspects made an appearance even if it was just at the range or the putting green.

Scoreboard
This is the first thing that greets you when you step on the course. Not a bad sight.

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