PGA Golf Talk

     Argentina’s own Angel Cabrera earned his first spot on the most difficult tournament in the world to qualify for. The tournament is known as the PGA Grand Slam of Golf and for the first time will held this year at Bermuda’s Port Royal Golf Club, Oct 20-21. Angel defeated Kenny Perry in a playoff match at this year Masters in Augusta Georgia. The PGA Grand Slam will air on TNT and will be broadcasted in primetime to more then 89 million U.S. homes and an international audience of more than a 100 countries. The tournament is comprised of four major championship winners and gives the best players in the world the opportunity to earn a spot in most exclusive foursome in golf. 

Charlie Wi of South Korea is leading the Zurich Classic in Louisiana at this hour, after the first round. It’s been an exciting time for him, because he’s pleased to have gotten off to such a good start. The course hasn’t been used all that often for the golf classic, because it opened in 2005 and then was promptly flooded by the hurricane. But now it seems to be fine now. We’re not sure whether Wi can hold onto his lead, but he certainly has a confidence and numerical advantage at this point. We’ll see what he’s up for and where he’s at after the weekend. Note, most of the other big names in the game aren’t playing in this particular competition, preferring instead to rest up and practice for some other tournaments.

At the Harbour Town Golf Link, the Verizon Heritage competition was played in Hilton Head, SC. It isn’t one of the tournaments that’s considered one of the most exciting. It’s not even particularly anticipated by the media. But in the golf world, it is an impressive showing by some of the up-and-coming players. This weekend, Brian Gay won the competition, breaking a 13 year scoring record, shooting 20 under 264. This year, it was a surprisingly exciting time, although it was fairly clear that Gay would win ultimately. The big show that’s coming up will be the Players Championship, which is coming up very soon. You can expect that some of the same players from the Verizon Heritage will be there.

        Tiger Woods is planning on turning his frustrations into fire for the U.S. Open after placing sixth in the Masters. Tiger only needed a 63 to tie the first place leader in Sundays Masters final, but ended up getting a 68 which put him sixth place. Tiger felt that his swing was off and that at times he was swinging too hard. Both Tiger and his coach have been working hard at his game, since Tiger doctors allowed him to start practicing again after his knee surgery. Tiger started off the Masters hitting well but fell apart at the end. Even at the Arnold Palmer Invitational which was presented by MasterCard, Tiger just played “alright” but ended up winning that tournament. Anthony Kim looks to repeat his 2008 win and Wachovia Golf Classic tickets for this event are going fast.

The whole excitement of this year’s Masters Tournament was right in our faces! Tiger was back, but there were these other players that were right there ready to take him on. But None of them won and Angel Cabrera, a dark-horse golfer, was able to take the win. The last day was a big battle between Cabrera, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods. Another golfer, Kenny Perry, had the tournament well in hand, but missed one of the main putts and ended up missing out on the green jacket. Woods didn’t play his best, but put up a good fight and Mickelson was as consistent as ever. So Angel Cabrera was able to be the last guy on his feet at the end. Congratulations to him!

England’s Paul Casey won his playoff round to win The Huston Open on Sunday. Casey didn’t make the win easy for him self since the only thing he really had to do was par the 18^th but instead made a bogey for a 72. This meant Casey had a playoff with JB Holmes who had came from three behind to tie Casey and send the round into a playoff match. With the win over Holmes, Casey became only the sixth Englishmen to win a PGA tour win other then Nick Faldo who had won nine titles and was the first European to win the tournament in eighty-seven years. Casey only decided to play in the Houston Tournament five weeks prior to it and was his close friends who convinced him to play in it. 

Paul Casey, a British golfer, won his first title in the PGA tour in Houston this weekend. He has won 9 times in Europe, but this is his first win for the PGA tour. This is a good way for him to move forward into the Masters, coming up later this month. He was quite pleased with his win. Casey said that it felt a lot like his first win overseas and he was happy to finally break through on the American side of things. JB Holmes, the American who was favored to win, hit into the water and ended up with a double bogey at the end. This does set up a good Masters battle, with all the best players as well as a bunch of dark-horse golfers that are going to be great challengers.

There are several different tournaments in progress right now and it’s a little bit hard to take care of all of them at this point. The season has really begun and you can see on the ESPN site that there are many different golf tournaments at the moment. They have tournaments in Georgia, Houston and the Kraft Nabisco tournament in California. These are all worthy of attention and there are lots of different pro players playing at each one. The big show of the Arnold Palmer Invitational is past, but it was amazing. Tiger Woods did his win and it was one of the biggest events of the year. You can take a look at what’s going on for yourselves.