I decided now that the golf year is essentially finished I would do a little year in review post. I'm sure I'll leave some things out both deliberately and inadvertantly, but that's how it goes....
PGA Tour -
Zach Johnson wins the Masters. Not only wins it, but beats Tiger to do it.
Mark Calcavecchia wins.
Tadd Fujikawa turns pro after wowing the golfing world at the Sony Open. Sure, Tadd hasn't made a cut since turning pro, but he's learning a lot about hard work and golf. He wouldn't have learned that by staying in school in Hawaii.
Mike Weir's Presidents Cup heroics. Yet another player defeats Tiger in matchplay.
Steve Stricker's run in the Fed Ex Cup playoffs.
George McNeill wins after finishing #1 at Q-School.
Sergio switches to a long putter. According to the PGA Tour website, his putts per round ranking is 17th and his putting average ranking is T15. Unfortunately, the rest of his game has been off for every other tournament except for the Players Championship and the British Open.
Angel Cabrera wins the US Open.
European Tour -
Spaniards win - Jose Manuel Lara, Carl Suneson, Gonzalo Fernandez Castano, Alvaro Quiros, Pablo Martin (Pablo wins as an Amateur).
Andres Romero wins.
Seve Ballesteros retires.
Padraig Harrington wins the British Open.
Justin Rose wins twice (including the European Tour's version of the Tour Championship - The Volvo Masters) and wins the Order of Merit title.
Champions Tour -
Fred Funk wins on both the PGA and the Champions Tour.
Bernhard Langer wins in his rookie year (nearly wins on the PGA Tour in Texas).
John Cook wins in his rookie year.
Loren Roberts wins the Charles Schwab Cup.
LPGA Tour (looks like there's two events left) -
Lorena Ochoa wins several times (about 7), finally a major, and takes over the #1 World Ranking.
Suzann Petterson emerges as a real contender on the Tour with about 5 wins.
Natalie Gulbis finally wins a tournament.
TV -
Aimpoint - best new tech-gadget thing. Shows you the line of the putt.
Winzone - Worst new tech-gadget thing. Completely cheezy.
Kelly Tilghman/Nick Faldo duo - AWOL for half of the tournaments.
Nick Faldo/Jim Nantz - AWOL for half of the tournaments.
Peter Oosterhaus - least vacation time of anyone.
Choking Dogs - Dottie Pepper's unprofessional comments during the Solheim Cup.
3 comments:
Good list. I do a yearly "Turkey Awards" around thanksgiving and biggest stories of the year in Dec some time.
Sergio has the gag reflex when the pressure is on. Long, short, tiny, huge putter...won't matter. But hey, maybe we'll see the video of his jump at Medinah in 1999 another 10,049 times though? We can only hope.
If they show Sergio's youthful leap another 10,049 times then maybe it will come close to the number of times they show the 'better than most' putt.
That is a very well compiled list. The only name I would probably think of adding the name of Ryo Ishikawa to that list, the young Japanese prodigy who won a title on the Japanese tour as an amateur becoming the youngest player to win on the Japanese tour.
At 15 he beat the previous record held by Seve Ballesteros, as the youngest player to win and already a lot of people believe he has a big future ahead and it will be interesting to see how his career pans out. There is a lot of media scrutiny on him and lets hope he does not get bogged down by the pressure and actually manages to justify the hype around him.
The shy prince as they call him definitely is the story of the year looking towards the future, unless of course you include the 12 year old girl Alexis Thompson to that list who qualified for an LPGA major. Wow, a 12 year old in a major!
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