New Phil Commercials

I just saw some of the Crowne Plaza commercials with Phil Mickelson. I think the best one has to be the one with the look-a-likes. I think it's a very good career move for Mickelson to show this comedic side. Although, I thought the Winged Foot reference in the Phil meets his biggest fans commercial was a bit harsh. Mickelson must have agreed to it though or else I'm sure it wouldn't have gone to air.

Scott Wins in a Playoff

Adam Scott won another tournament in Texas today over Ryan Moore in an I forget how many hole playoff. I was hoping Moore would win since he is in my Ryder Cup list over in the side bar. But Scott's win was a good one too. I wish the announcers would forget the Greg Norman and Tiger Woods Swing mechanics trivia with regard to Adam Scott. That's getting very, very old. It would have been acceptable for Scott's first couple of years on tour, but he's been out there long enough to have things of his own they can talk about. Just another example of lazy announcers who don't want to do any research or come up with anything original. I mean, during the playoff they could have talked about Scott's matchplay record on the International Presidents Cup team, but did they? No. They did, however, bore everyone to tears with the constant references to the car that the winning player's caddie would win. And after all that hype, did they show the tournament people presenting the car to the caddie? No.

BMW Asian Open

Darren Clarke won the tournament today. I didn't get to watch much of this. Tennis has been on and I chose to watch Rafael Nadal instead.

EDS Byron Nelson Cla-Inv-Op-Whatever

Sergio shot a 65 today and had under 30 putts for the round. Good for him! I don't know how far back he is. I think I missed the ending of the third round. But hopefully, Sergio will have a top 10 finish this week.

A Couple of Emails

I got a couple of emails that I thought were worth commenting on.

1. Get Your Fairway Fix at the AT&T Classic - This email tells me about the weather forecast, the expected participants, the affordability of the event (tickets starting at $30.00 and free parking), some VIP lounge, and it's reportedly one of the most fan-friendly events, according to the email. The one thing the email didn't tell me was where this tournament is - Is this the one in Georgia? Too many AT&Ts and too many Such and Such Classics. Obviously, you can go to www.attclassic.com for more info.

2. A Chance to Play With Tiger - The sender of this email said she had just seen my post regarding the tennis tournament and thought I would be interested in this contest sponsored by Gillette. The winners and their fathers will have a chance to meet either Tiger Woods, Roger Federer or Thierry Henry and compete with them in their respective sports. You can go to WWW.gillettechampions.com to enter the contest. Now let's see, I would have to borrow a dad who watches sports, since mine doesn't, and I would have to act like I can play a sport. Probably tennis. Don't want to meet Tiger Woods and 90 minutes of soccer watching would put me to sleep. Wonder how Federer would feel if I asked him all about Rafael Nadal?

Oh Happy Day

There's a live tennis tournament on the Tennis Channel this week. That means I don't have to watch the BBC World news in the mornings. Yay! No depressing war talk. No depressing rising food prices talk. Just a bunch of red clay and the hypnotic sounds of two guys hitting a tennis ball back and forth. Hopefully this will last all week, but I have a feeling the closer we get to the finals, the less it will be on tv.

To be fair, I could have watched the highlights of Arjun Atwal's win earlier this year - they were on the Golf Channel this morning. But I saw it the first time around.

Sunday Wrap-Up

Lorena Ochoa has done something that no PGA Tour guy will ever do. She's won four weeks in a row. Why won't a man do that? Because after three weeks, they are just too tired (and if you're a top ranked player, too spoiled) and have to take a break.

As for the PGA Tour - Boo won. Presumably he's not adding up his own score. Hopefully he wasn't keeping track of Kim's score either.

Third Round's Over

Now, Rosaforte can say it will take some effort to catch Boo Weekley. Weekley has the lead going into the final round.

LPGA on CBS

Was this a planned event for CBS to broadcast or did they jump on the LPGA bandwagon after the media started comparing Lorena Ochoa to Tiger Woods? Whatever the reason, it's good for the LPGA to be on CBS.

As for Lorena, they had a statistic earlier that said her fairways hit percentage this week was something like 53% or 57%. My reaction to that: "Hey, she is like Tiger Woods."

I've been waiting for Bobby Clampett to say something inappropriate, like "check out the gams on that dame" or maybe a "choking dogs" reference but so far from what I've heard, he's been pretty politically correct in his reporting.

Same Old Golf Channel

I happened to hear some of the Pre-Game Show this morning. As I understand it, Lucas Glover had a one shot lead over Boo Weekley going into the third round. Rosaforte said that it was going to take a special effort to catch Boo Weekley. He can say that sitting in a studio in Florida. I wouldn't recommend saying that to Glover's face.

Speaking of the Ryder Cup

I mentioned it below and I have one more observation to make. I haven't seen on the internet news any great passion of the European players to concentrate on making the Ryder Cup team this year. Admittedly, I'm not watching much of the Golf Channel so it could be that they are giving all kinds of interviews on that network and I'm just missing them. But, I haven't seen much on the web about them and I have to wonder if maybe some of the top players that were on the team last time might not really want to be there this time because of Faldo. Sure, Olazabal wants to be there if he's playing well and I think I've heard Ian Poulter and Justin Rose talk about it. I just wonder if maybe some of the players from the 2006 team are secretly non-upset (can't bring myself to say happy) that their game isn't where it needs to be to be in prime position on the points lists.

Hey, Golf's On......

I haven't seen much of the golf this week. When I come home from work, I watch BBC America which has the You Are What You Eat show on and then the How Clean Is Your House show. By the time they go off, golf is off too. So, I've been checking out the European Tour and PGA Tour leaderboards. I saw some strange looking flag beside a player's name on the ET leaderboard but unfortunately when I clicked on the player's bio, they didn't have a bio so I still don't know where the guy comes from. I'll have to do more research later. As for the PGA Tour, Lucas Glover is leading after two rounds. Nick Dougherty is playing in America this week as is Niclas Fasth and Richard Sterne. Davis Love, Brett Quigley and Lee Janzen all made the cut. Paul Azinger missed the cut. Wonder if that's karma at work. He said some things about Faldo that didn't get reported in a positive light. Faldo laughed them off and said that he and Azinger were friends, which if Azinger did say those things as reported on purpose, he's probably really steaming mad that Faldo didn't take the bait. Who knows what was said and what wasn't. I have a feeling that the media is going to do its best to ruin this year's Ryder Cup because Azinger and Faldo are so accessible.

Lorena Ochoa is playing this week and is in contention. As usual. They were talking on the LPGA coverage about how Laura Davies needs two more points to be eligible for the Hall of Fame and that Lorena has already earned a spot there provided she plays on Tour for three more years. It makes you wonder how someone as famous as Laura Davies still needs to do more to qualify.

There He Is.....

I wondered if 60 Minutes had actually come on as scheduled so I turned the tv over to CBS and found that the Masters was still going on. So, I turned back to the Tennis Channel and kept checking back about every 15 minutes or so. This meant that I did actually see the Jacket Ceremony in Butler Cabin. After Jim Nantz went on and on and on in his "Oh Trevor is the greatest golfer here today" tone of voice (the one that sounds so insincere after all the years of him fawning over the cash cow, uh, I mean Tiger), I really and truly thought he was going to launch into the Miss America song. And that last shot of Trevor wearing the jacket - I was stunned that they didn't give him a crown. Really. That thought did run through my mind (Where's the crown, he's not wearing a hat or anything.) I know Augusta National and the people who run the Masters have very favorable opinions of themselves, but gee whiz. If the sprinkers had come on in that cabin, everything would have melted it was so sugary.

As for Trevor Immelman, it's good that he won. And it's good that Brandt Snedecker, Andres Romero, Miguel Angel Jimenez, and Sean O'Hair get invites to next year's tournament because they finished in the top 15. And I had the feeling that Zach Johnson wanted to high-five Trevor or jump for joy or something. He looked like he was ready to burst.

One final comment on the CBS announce people - I don't know how they can live with themselves when they spend four days talking up Tiger and talking down the rest of the field and then at the end they say something nice about Trevor. I'm sure they can't be sleeping well at night.

Spaniard Read: Masters Edition

Since I'm not watching the Masters, I can't do a Spaniard Watch post, so it's Spaniard Read today. And apparently the only one left to read about is Miguel Angel Jimenez. Jose Maria and Sergio both missed the cut. I've read that Jose Maria plans to go home and rest for a few weeks, that he states he was not formally offered the Ryder Cup Captaincy, and that his deal with MacGregor expired at the end of last year and that's why we don't see the clubmaker's name on Jose Maria's hats.

Olazabal Offered Ryder Cup Captaincy

Not this fall. But in 2010.

Here's the news article about it. It also gives a little bit more information on Jose Maria's health.

Round 1 Masters

As I said before, I'm not watching it, but I did check out the leaderboard and here are a few scores:

Justin Rose tied for first at -4
Jeev Milkha Singh -1
Andres Romero -1 through 15
Angel Cabrera +1
Bernhard Langer +1
Fred Couples +4
Jose Maria Olazabal +4

If you're looking for news or recaps and the like, then try Hooked On Golf Blog.

A Gladiator Among Men

In this article, Butch Harmon compares Jose Maria Olazabal to a Roman gladiator. A very good compliment I think.

A Rare Entry

A rare Masters Week entry from me. I don't plan on watching it so I am just reading things on the web about the Masters. I found this humorous article today talking about the pairings. While it was kind of funny, I don't think Jose Maria will punch Rory Sabbatini like this guy speculates.

Final Round Notes

Houston Open:

Fred Couples finished tied for 4th. His rounds got lower every day. Brett Quigley shot an 82 today. I hope it wasn't because of an injury or anything. Jose Maria Olazabal was -1 in his final round and finished tied for 26th. And Johnson Wagner won the event and earned over $1 Million and a trip to the Masters.

LPGA:

Lorena Ochoa won the first major of the year with a 5 shot lead. Lucky for tv watchers, she was playing the 18th just as Fred Couples finished up his round, so if you flipped over to watch Lorena take the leap into the pond, you didn't miss much of the Houston Open - well, you didn't miss Fred. Hopefully now people will stop trying to find excuses for not giving Lorena Ochoa her due. For some reason, the press wants to keep from recognizing her #1 status by saying things like "Annika was hurt last year." The press doesn't want to compare her to Tiger Woods either. But, ESPN did yesterday and had some interesting stat comparisons. Truth be told, the press just doesn't want to give the LPGA any recognition because they can't make as much money off the LPGA as they can Tiger.

Estoril Open de Portugal:

Bourdy won in a playoff. David Howell had a really good week in getting into the playoff. And Gonzalo Fernandez Castano contended in the final round.

Houston Open, Round 3

Jose Maria came back with two birdies after making a double bogey on the back nine in round 3. He's at -4 going in to the final round.

Brett Quigley and Fred Couples are doing well too.

Adam Scott withdrew due to cold/flu symptoms. I'm sure playing in the rain yesterday didn't help him a bit.

Jimmy Roberts asked Fred Couples a question and then interrupted him while he was answering. Why didn't they send Jimmy Roberts out to the horse racing event? They don't need him at the golf tournaments.

How Do I Rate?

Blogged.com has this blog rated at 8.2. I checked out Blogged.com and it looks like a nice way to waste a lot of time looking for new blogs to read. I'll have to check it out more using my mom's high speed internet connection.

Round 2

Jose Maria Olazabal continued his good play today and was under par for round two of the Houston Open. I will have to try to watch the rest of the tournament this weekend.

Brett Quigley was doing well when the Golf Channel ended their coverage this evening. I hope he continues to play well too. He needed to make some money for the medical exemption thing from where he had knee surgery last year.

BBC Coverage

I was watching the BBC World news this morning before leaving for work and they had a recap of the first round of the Houston Open. The guy said that Wagner Johnson tied the course record. I can understand thinking that Johnson was a last name. It usually is. But I've never heard of Wagner being a first name. Maybe it's a popular first name in the U.K.

Mouthing Off About the Masters

And no, I'm not talking about Colin Montgomerie. I found this news story while googling Jose Maria Olazabal. According to the story, Stephen Ames says that the Masters is the easiest major to win and it's easier to win than the Players Championship. He goes on to talk about how 'weak' the Masters field is.

Yeah. The Masters is so easy to win. That's why Ames has all those Green Jackets in his closet.
What's that? The only green jackets he has he bought at the mall? Oh, well then..........

What a Surprise

Not only did I get to watch Fred Couples and Jose Maria Olazabal this evening on the round one Houston Open coverage, but there was no Kelly Whatsername, so I got to listen to some of the commentary as well.

As for what I saw:

Fred looks like he's lost some weight. Good for him. That's got to help his back a little bit.

Jose Maria shaved. I was almost getting used to seeing his beard.

Jose Maria finished up round one at 3 under par. That's very good after a long flight to America. I hope he plays very well at Augusta next week.