Open de Espana

It looks like Charl Schwartzel won this tournament with a final score of -16.

Some results of Spanish Players:

Carlos Rodiles -14
Carlos Del Moral -7
Manuel Quiros -6
Carlos Balmaseda -4
Gonzalo Fernandez Castano -3
Alvaro Salto -2
Ignacio Garrido -1
Miguel Angel Jimenez -1
Alvaro Velasco +3

#1 Finishes T2

#1 Lorena Ochoa finished tied for second with Julieta Granada at the Corona Championship. Silvia Cavalleri won the tournament. Pretty respectable for Ochoa.

Verplank Wins The EDS Byron Nelson Championship

Scott Verplank shot a 66 to finish one shot ahead of Luke Donald to win the EDS Byron Nelson Championship. This is a special win for Verplank who shared a 20 plus year friendship with Byron Nelson. Watching the final round today I could tell it was Verplank's day as he hit several great shots. Personally, I think this win is also an 'in your face' kind of statement to a certain former Ryder Cup captain who sat Verplank out when he was playing well last fall at the K Club.

Team Nationwide

I got an email about Team Nationwide, "a select group of graduates from the 2006 Nationwide Tour currently competing on the PGA TOUR." It looks like they've created a website to focus on the Nationwide Tour and the PGA tour players that graduated from the Nationwide Tour last year. If you want to check it out, click here.

EDS Byron Nelson Championship

It looks like the final round will be pretty exciting. Luke Donald has a one shot lead over Scott Verplank and qualifier Michael Allen is just two behind. Ian Poulter is 4 back and while I like Luke Donald, it would be something to see Ian Poulter post a low number in the final round.

Possibly the Best Golf Story This Week

Found on This Website

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (AP) - A mother teed off by drunken golfers urinating near her house by the 18th hole resorted to videotaping the men after no action was taken on her complaints. Video of some men relieving themselves behind trees at the city-owned course was played on local and national television news.

"Many times I would say, 'You're on camera,' and they'd keep right on going. They'd yell and scream obscenities at me," Delisa Schubert said.

Schubert, her husband and daughters ages 11 and 15 live next to the Tennessee Centennial Golf Course in Oak Ridge, 20 miles west of Knoxville. She said they family moved there so the girls could improve their golf game.

Schubert has reported the problem to police, city officials, the local district attorney and the golf course manager. They suggested she record the offenders, and in a year she says she has captured more than 40 golfers in the act.

Signs banning public urination are posted on the golf course, and the city is talking to the course operator about the issue, said Josh Collins, director of the city's recreation and parks department. There are restrooms nearby at the 16th hole and the clubhouse.

Schubert says the underlying problem is too much beer and no restraint.

"When you have no inhibition, you're just going to go anywhere," she said.

"On the face of this, it's funny. But when you think about it, it's extremely dangerous. They're going to get in their car and drive off drunk."

Another First Time Winner!

Nick Watney won the Zurich Classic today, finishing with all four rounds in the 60s.

I like it when a first timer wins.

It's Your Lucky Day.....

If your name happens to be Raphael (any spelling). Today Raphael Jacquelin won in Asia and also Rafael Nadal won a tennis tournament in Monte Carlo. If your name is Raphael you should buy a lottery ticket. I'd say your odds are pretty good today.

BMW Asian Open

Raphael Jacquelin is leading the tournament in China so far. I haven't watched any of this because tennis has been on at the same time, but it isn't surprising to see Jacquelin at the top of the leader board. He's been playing well lately. It seems like I keep seeing his name every week.

Third Round, Zurich Classic

I watched a little bit of this today. I had a major headache and ended up eating some chocolate and taking some tylenol and going to bed. What I saw of it was a bunch of people at the top of the leader board with no clear front runner. Should be a good final round tomorrow. It looks like low rounds are possible on this course so we could see someone coming from the pack to win. Mark Calcavecchia and Kyle Reifers didn't make a move today, so they might have a good chance tomorrow. The leader, Nick Watney, shot a -4 round today and Ken Duke and Scott Gutschewski also had low rounds. It might be tough for them to go low again tomorrow.

Off Topic

In case anyone is interested - I've created a new blog about Chihuahuas. I have searched google repeatedly and haven't really found a lot of chihuahua blogs out there. So, I thought I would start one. Feel free to check it out: Gaga For Chihuahuas.

Round 2 Zurich Classic

Mark Calcavecchia is leading after two rounds. I didn't watch much of this today. I was home by about 4pm eastern and could have watched all 2 hours left, but it was so sunny and nice outside that I went out with the dogs for a while. Some players today: Lucas Glover, Nick Watney and Kyle Reifers are still there near the top. Boo Weekley, Paul Azinger and Arjun Atwal will probably miss the cut. The cut hasn't been made yet as of this posting so I can't comment on those closer to the cutline. Kevin Na and Jose Coceres have withdrawn according to the pga tour website leaderboard.

The Zurich Classic

Some First Round Scores:
Kyle Reifers -8 - Leader
Mark Calcavecchia -6
Tim Petrovic -5
Carlos Franco -4
Lee Janzen -3
George McNeill -3
Peter Lonard -1
Steve Stricker -1
Jose Coceres E
Matt Kuchar E
Arjun Atwal E
Jaco Van Zyl +3


Kelly Tighlman needs to get some caffeine. At least Lanny Wadkins injected some personality into his voice, even if some of us didn't like the personality he chose. But Kelly's monotone "I'm trying to be a serious anchor because I've bought into the first woman anchor in history crap" voice almost put me to sleep yesterday.

Screwed By Blogger

Monday night everything was fine. I could post on my blogs and life was good. Tuesday after work, I discovered that the not so fine folks at Blogger had migrated all my blogs to what they call ‘new blogger’, supposedly a better form of blogger that offers new features. Well, I tried to log into blogger using my blogger username and password - nothing. Tried logging into new blogger with my google account name and password - again nothing. I was redirected to the blogger help site. What kind of help did I get? Canned how to articles that did nothing but lead me around in circles. Then I clicked on every option available to try to contact an actual employee of blogger, but it took me over an hour to find a form to complete to submit to them. And it wasn’t a ‘report a problem’ form. I went to the google help group and found that many, many others were suffering from the same problem I had. Did google employees help us? One employee posted the same canned answer that we found at blogger help. And he said ‘if this doesn’t work then contact us directly at (insert website). This kind of thing may be best solved on an individual basis.” Well, when you click on that website link, it takes you back to the page where I clicked everything I could to try to find a ‘help me’ form to fill out. After all this, I posted my own comment on the google help group website detailing every step I had taken. I wrote everything down and did it three or four times so I know what I tried and what I didn’t. To date no google tech support person has responded to anyone on that forum that has the same problem I did. Finally, some other blogger supplied the answer and it involved tinkering with the address of a link that blogger supplies us when we ask to retrieve our passwords. Basically, that link that we got when we asked to retrieve our passwords was reading our usernames as Case Sensitive, but when Blogger tried to find our accounts, it was not reading our usernames as Case Sensitive so it wouldn’t recognize us. That is a programming problem that blogger and google tech support are just too lazy to fix. So, instead, they let their customers flounder in frustration.

Bottom line: Blogger/Google Tech support is not serving the customers. They would rather spend their time making money in corporate mergers and stock options, lying to investors by saying that Google is a good company that provides valuable goods and services to the public when in actuality they ignore the customers and do not service their products to the satisfaction of the end users. Or, they are goofing off in a lax workplace in which productivity is not emphasized, but playing with toys is. Word to investors - if the tech support won’t help the people the company serves, then the company doesn’t care about you either. Sell your stock and invest your money in money market accounts or IRAs or Certificates of Deposit. You’d be better off.

Now They Can Stop Talking About His Missed Putt

Boo Weekley wins the Verizon Heritage tournament! He had two chip-ins in the last three holes to pull out the victory over Ernie Els.

Lincicome Wins

Brittany Lincicome stayed patient and ended up winning the Ginn Open while Lorena Ochoa and Laura Davies couldn't hang in there at the last. I really wanted to see Lorena win and take over the number 1 ranking, but I'm a fan of Brittany Lincicome and I'm happy to see her win.

Verizon Heritage - Play Suspended

The final round is suspended and will pick back up tomorrow on the golf channel at 10:30 am eastern. CBS did manage to get a few interviews in today but they spent a good majority of the time showing last year's final round. Not that I didn't appreciate seeing the nice sunny weather and all, but did they have to bring Lanny Wadkins back into it?

Hey, There's Golf on TV

Yes, I actually got to watch the third round of the Verizon Heritage today. Kevin Na is really making the most of the week. He has to, I think he's only got some kind of limited status on tour thanks to an injury he had last year. And lucky for us, we got serenaded by Ian Baker-Finch and Gary McCord as they celebrated Na's last name. Jerry Kelly is in the lead and Ernie is tied with Kevin Na in second place. Boo Weekley and Zach Johnson are right there on the first page of the leader board.

And I think anytime anyone makes a hole in one in a pro tournament, they should win something. I guess Kelly didn't win anything for his hole in one today since no one ever said anything.

Ineffective Email

I got a spam email from someone who wanted me to send them $20.00 to promote my blog. Well, in the email, they called my blog "Evan Par Round". Something tells me they wouldn't do a good job promoting the blog if they can't even spell it right.

An Interesting Insight

I'm watching the Tennis Channel and an interview with Mary Jo Fernandez. She said that the transition from Juniors to the Pros was tough because as a Junior she was used to winning a lot of tournaments, but when she turned pro she didn't win for 4 years and that shook her confidence.

An interesting point of view and one that could be considered when thinking about Michelle Wie's decision to turn pro.

Out of Luck

You all are out of luck if you're tuning in to read some insightful comments about the Verizon Heritage this week. So far, I haven't paid much attention at all to it. I stopped at Rite Aid yesterday and loaded more money on my prepaid credit card and tonight I went to see my puppies after work. The puppies are getting more adorable all the time. They are showing more brown around their noses, eyes and paws. I have the whole visit detailed on my Window Dressing blog if you want to read it - the link is over in the sidebar.

For insight into the Verizon Heritage tournament, I suggest you visit The Armchair Golfer's website.

Checking Out the European Tour

Seve Ballesteros turned 50 years old on Monday. Click here to read what the European Tour had to say about him.

The Volvo China Open is taking place this week. Here are a few of the competitors:
Anton Haig, Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano, Marcel Siem, Andres Romero, Carl Suneson, Simon Dyson, Stephen Dodd, and a bunch of other players.

Verizon Heritage

Checked the list of everyone in the field. Here are a few names to watch:
Jeev Milkha Singh, Richie Ramsay, Vaughn Taylor, Brad Faxon, Rocco Mediate, Matt Kuchar, Zack Johnson and Loren Roberts.

Zach Johnson is the 2007 Masters Champion

I watched the leaderboard on the web and saw that Tiger was two shots back going to 18 so I decided to turn the tv over to CBS and watch the rest of it. It's great to see Zach Johnson win. I loved watching him hug his family when he came off the course.

Like a Steinbeck Novel

The third round of the Masters for me was like trying to read a Steinbeck novel. Very boring and very long and you can only think 'gee they need to end this, I have a load of laundry to put in the washer."

I don't think every tournament should be all about birdies and have scores like 20 under par or anything, but if no one does well, then I think something needs to be changed. In this case, I think it might be sucky players rather than a tricked up course causing the damage.

I probably won't watch the final round tomorrow. It's too depressing. I'll just check in on the leaderboard online every so often.

A Selfish Post about Me

I went to see some chihuahua puppies this morning and have placed a deposit on two adorable little females. They are barely two weeks old so in about 5 weeks I'll be able to bring them home. They won't replace Phoebe and it will still hurt to think about her, but I will be busy learning about my new puppies and their personalities and they will soon take up a special place in my heart right next to Steffi's, Fritz's and Phoebe's places. One of the puppies is short haired and white with black spots and the other puppy is long haired white with black spots.

I wanted to bring all the little puppies home. Especially the little 2 1/2 pound chihuahua female, but I was afraid that little one would get hurt accidentally by Fritz, my rambunctious dog who jumps up and down when he wants to go out and doesn't look where he's landing. He's landed on Steffi a couple of times.

Rest assured, when I get them and bring them home, there will be plenty of posts and pictures of them on this blog and every other blog I've got. So, you'll get to learn a lot more about them in the months to come.

Masters, Second Round Thoughts

Some Scores:
Brett Wetterich and Tim Clark -2
Vaugn Taylor -1
Jerry Kelly and Justin Rose E
David Howell, Padraig Harrington, Bradley Dredge +1
Jeev Milkha Singh, Paul Casey, Craig Stadler +3
Henrick Stenson +4
Jose Maria Olazabal +5
Ben Crenshaw +6
Miguel Angel Jimenez, Fred Couples and Brett Quigley +8

Missed Cut:
Ernie Els, Sergio Garcia and others.

Thoughts:

Vaughn Taylor is right in there as is Justin Rose. I kept watching Justin this evening and kept telling the tv "you can't win the tournament today". I think it's important on a course as seemingly as challenging as this to be patient. And Justin seemed very patient today.

Craig Stadler - How well is he doing so far? Sheesh. I guess the Old Guard at the Masters will want to make more course changes after seeing these Champions Tour guys doing so well.

Paul Casey and Padraig Harrington had the low rounds of the day with a pair of 68s. I guess they will shoot 80s tomorrow now.

It would be nice to see Jose Maria and even Miguel Angel Jimenez tomorrow on the coverage. A limited field event and they still can't show all the players. That's absurd. If the Masters is so freakin' special, then all the players there are special and should get some TV time. I at least got to see Jose whenever he happened to be in Justin's camera angle today. And I got to see him play the last part of the 18th hole. He's only a 2 time Masters Champion. Ryder Cup legend.

And Finally, and I do mean FINALLY, the leaderboard that you go to on PGATOUR.COM finally has Johan Edfors' name spelled correctly. Now that he's missed the cut and his week is over. A little to late to show some respect I think.

Help Needed From Fellow Bloggers

Please help me figure this out. I don't remember much from last year's Masters.

Does this year have:

A. A much tougher course than last year and if so how is it tougher?

B. Players more poorly prepared than last year?

C. A more overly critical announce team (without Lanny Wadkins, that would be an achievement) that is just telling people that everyone sucks?

As someone who is only watching the USA coverage and not the golf channel analysis, I am getting the impression that the course is really, really tough and the players are really, really bad.

Please, give me a little insight.

So Not Fair

In order for Fred Couples to make the cut at the Masters, I have to now root against Justin Rose! That's not right. Forgive me, Justin. But Fred's got to make the cut and keep his streak alive.

The Masters, Round One

Some Scores:

Justin Rose and Brett Wetterich -3 Leaders
Vaughn Taylor -1
Henrik Stenson E
Jeev Milkha Singh E
Jose Maria Olazabal +2
Brett Quigley +4
Steve Stricker +4
Sergio Garcia +4
Paul Casey +7
Seve Ballesteros +14
Miguel Angel Jimenez +7
Johan Edfors +6

Comments:
Really great to see Justin Rose leading along with Brett Wetterich. A special thank you to Vaughn Taylor and Henrik Stenson for not playing into the Miranda Jinx. I picked Stenson to win in an email sent to the waggleroom folks. I also said Paul Casey would come in second. The jinx seems intact for him. I've had a special inkling about Jeev Milkha Singh ever since his great showing at the Volvo Masters last year. I think he could be a spoiler again.

And finally........ The Masters Leaderboard on the web has Johan Edfors' name mispelled. I sent an email to the webmaster asking that it be fixed, but was ignored. So, in a special nod to Johan, I will repeatedly spell his name correctly here, just in case the tech geek who screwed it up on the leaderboard website is reading: Johan, Johan, Johan, Johan, Johan, Johan.

Congratulations to the Quigleys

Brett and Amy Quigley welcomed a daughter into the world earlier today. Brett is returning to Augusta for the tournament. The name they chose: Lillian Sage Augusta Quigley.

Click here for the brief news article.

Here's a better news article

A Short News Article

I found a short news article about Jose Maria Olazabal and the Masters.

Time to Take a Look at the Masters

Well, I've avoided Masters Week as long as possible I think. I've turned the golf channel on for the first time this week and the Masters Edition of Playing Lessons From the Pros is on.

So, let's see what's going on and what I'm thinking:

I googled golf and masters at google news and I kept seeing headlines about Howell and at home at Augusta - You can tell where my mind is at - I kept thinking "Does David Howell have a house in Georgia?" LOL. Forgot all about Charles Howell III.

And then there's the news story about the person hired by CBS to help cover the Masters who ended up allegedly participating in a bank robbery. I can hear some old traditionalist out there somewhere saying "well, if they'll hire Gary McCord, they'll hire anybody." There's hope for me wanting a job with them someday.

Here's a nice story about Jeev Milkha Singh and his first trip to the Masters.

As for predictions, I have no idea who will win. I don't think it will be Phil Mickelson because he's been too quiet lately and not playing a lot. I don't think it will be Adam Scott because he won last week and I don't like to pick the guy who won last week to win this week in any tournament. And I'm very, very worried about Jose Maria Olazabal. He hasn't played well all year. I really hope he finds something special this week and has a good run.

Finally, I hope the winner of the Masters this year will be someone other than Phil or Tiger. If they are the only ones to win the thing, then it somehow loses some of its prestige because no one else feels like they have a chance to win. And if they don't think they have a chance, then the fans will follow suit and it will be a very boring tournament. With all the pomp and circumstance surrounding the tournament, I think we are all deserving of a good cinderella story this week. Maybe it will be Brett Quigley :) Now that would be the feel good story of the year.

Great News for Brett Quigley

Brett Quigley had to leave his Tuesday practice round at Augusta and fly home to Florida as his wife went into labor. He hopes to be back in time for his tee time on Thursday. Wonder if the Masters people will give him some green cloth diapers for the baby?

Here's a link to the Brett Quigley news.

Today's Word: Inexcusable

Johnny Miller used the word inexcusable repeatedly during today's coverage of the final round of the Houston Open. So, I will use the word as well.

It was completely and utterly inexcusable for Dottie Pepper to forcibly prevent Adam Scott from leaving the 18th green by smacking him in the chest with the microphone. She spent how many years on the LPGA tour and she doesn't know when a tournament is still going on? Obviously, Adam wanted to clear the green because Bubba Watson's group was coming up the 18th. It's not as if Adam is a rookie and doesn't know he's supposed to speak to one of the tv people after he wins a tournament. It was unprofessional of her to act in that manner and I hope someone at NBC disciplines her for that.

Big Excitement on the European Tour

Spaniard, amateur, and Oklahoma State attendee Pablo Martin-Benavides has won the Estoril Portuguese Open. The first time an amateur has won on the European Tour since its inception.