PGA Golf Talk

Robert Allenby, the talented Australian golfer, has apologized to American Anthony Kim over comments he made following a close loss to the American this week in the President’s Cup. Allenby told reporters that maybe golfers would benefit by taking the “Kim theory” in their golf playing, which involves staying out late and coming home very tipsy and very late. Then you come out and shoot a 6-under. Kim took umbrage at the comment, because he says he didn’t stay out late like that and he also won 3 out of 4 competitions last week. So his nice week was ruined by a competitor coming out and saying uncharitable things. This attack on his character was also protested by the American team and Allenby came out to apologize for the comments, syaing that they were out of context and that Kim is a player of the highest caliber.

This is a year where the PGA world gets a little dose of reality. The reality is that Tiger Woods is ridiculously good and doesn’t panic down the stretch. This is a real pitfall for golfers and we’ve seen it happen frequently that a person will be way ahead and playing just right and then fall off at the end. But then you see a player like Tiger and he can be way behind but consistently comes back to dominance without any difficulty at all. This weekend, he putted the US players into another President’s Cup win, which puts them up in the standings and keeps their streak of wins in the tournament up. Nicely done, Tiger. You really have the right kind of followthrough!

Michael Jordan just got in trouble at Harding Park in San Francisco. He was photographed with a cigar in his mouth on the golf course and the picture was published in the newspaper. As a result, people figured he was smoking it too. But NBA Hall of Fame or not, the city officials released a statement reminding him that there is a smoking ban in public places, and the park is a public place. This is to say that he technically broke the law. But he wont be punished. It gives the ban some good publicity. Either way, he wont be allowed to continue playing in the upcoming tournaments there if he planned to keep smoking on the course. He is known as an avid golfer, though he’s not pro by any stretch. But he’s competitive about it, that’s for sure!

Matt Kuchar got back into the PGA Tour action at the Turning Stone Resort Championship. But it took them 6 holes in the playoff round for him to beat Vaughn Taylor for the win. So many people have a chance to win each of these battles and this is the one that it’s going to have. We’re hoping that it will be good to see Kuchar moving up in the rankings and competing against the best. It does get a little boring watching the Tiger Show every week, even though he’s a nice and interesting guy. We’d much rather get the chance to see a few extra players giving him a real challenge during the next few years.

When you think of athletes, you generally think of their chosen profession. But at second glance, many of them play golf, like major executives do. It’s very interesting, and now there’s a story about one of them. Jerry Rice was one of the top receivers in the NFL and it’s going to be interesting to see what he does in the next few years. He has announced that he will be at the Stonebrae Classic, during the Nationwide Classic. This isn’t the top PGA level, but it is close to the level of the top players. It’s like Triple-A for the PGA. It’s not clear how good he is at golfing, but it seems like it’s pretty likely that he will win some tournaments. Good job Jerry Rice!

One man who isn’t down on money is Tiger Woods. He earned $10.5 million during the course of the PGA Tour this season. It’s been interesting to see how this works, because he hasn’t won all that much in terms of first places. But he’s come darn close a bunch of times and sitting near the top of the leaderboard in other situations. It will be very interesting to see what this guy is going to be doing with the money. Also, it’s still going to be interesting to see how far he makes it in the next few years, because he has struggled mightily at times this season, mainly after the time that he was out of the lineup back last year during his injury.

The PGA world is probably going to lose a bunch of sponsors next season. With the economy still in trouble, it will be very interesting to see how many sponsors are able to keep up their previous levels. It’s unfortunate that sports often suffers when things drop like that. They have already lost some big sponsors this year and it looks to be continuing. Buick is another of those sponsors that is out this year. The auto industry has been in the tank for quite awhile and they probably aren’t coming back for a long time. It’s smart that the PGA is thinking about this now, because they might be able to attract some other sponsorships in time for next year, possibly even more smaller companies rather than the big sponsorships of previous years. We’ll be watching to see what happens there.

The PGA Tour Championship is always a tough competition. But this year, we’re going to have to wait a little bit longer, because the area around the East Lake Golf Club  has had so much water that it’s not safe at the moment for the players and spectators to go around the series of holes yet. It’ll be a couple of days, we think, until it will be time for the people to get back into the swing of things, no pun intended. Meanwhile, we will be waiting for the players to get back out onto the field. When they start working out, we will know that they are about to start the game again. Only a few have even showed up in the last couple days but it will be interesting to see them back in action soon.

It’s getting complicated in the PGA world. Once again, the PGA has changed the rules by which their championships are announced, with the FedEx Cup perhaps not being awarded until later and it doesn’t really seem to line up with anything besides itself. But the long and short of it is that the PGA Tour is taking a week off in order to get their players into gear for the all-important Tour Championship in Atlanta this week. It’s exactly what you might expect at a time when the drama is at its highest in the Tour. A break. But then again, the Super Bowl is preceded by a two week break, which serves to heighten the drama, with stories about football for all two weeks, retrospectives, predictions and all that. If only the PGA can make itself a real media event, it might work really well!

I feel a little bit bad writing about Tiger Woods again, but I figured that since everyone else is writing about it too, we might as well have some info. He won over the weekend, at the BMW by 8 strokes. This led the ESPN guy to speculate about Tiger Woods nowadays. One of his points is that Tiger doesn’t win the same way he used to. Back in the late 90s and around the turn of the century, he would win by a lot of strokes and take out his opponents. But now he plays much more conservatively. He gets the lead and loses it more easily. I think the biggest thing is that he will hang near the lead most of the time and then catch up and eke it out. He has had trouble with his putting lately too, which has made for some tense moments, hasn’t it? But he’s doing great even after his “walking on broken legs” thing over a year ago.