Initial comments:
It took them 10 minutes to show golf today when the golf channel began their coverage. Blah, blah, blah - they just talk and talk on there - as if they think they are reason we watch instead of the golfers. Their opening sequence I think showed the babies of some of the players. This was while they played the Pat Green song. I don't know what the babies have to do with grown men playing golf. I mean if it was the LPGA tour, I could understand. Those players have to actually stop playing the tour for a bit when their babies are born (gee, can you tell I'm an accountant by trade). I saw some blonde haired woman with a baby and thought "Was that Tiger's wife and kid? Can't they stop trying to make money off of him for even one second?" I don't know if it was his wife and baby, but if it was, it was in poor taste and Tiger should look into trademarking his baby's likeness to keep people from making money off of her. All babies should be left out of the media. They can't give their consent, they can't sign contracts, and they can't even apply for work permits and pay taxes.
How much sucking up to an Absent Tiger Woods can the golf channel do? They just had to delve into the Rory Sabbatini - Target World Challenge controversy. I happen to think there is no controversy and much less of a story. Rory is that kind of guy who's going to do things to tick people off. And his favorite person right now to tick off is the ultra-favored Tiger Woods. So what. It would have been a story if Tiger had demonstrated some uncharacteristic response, but he didn't. He downplayed it so I think the media should do the same and move on. In any event, it's a personal issue and doesn't really have anything to do with this week's tournament. Rich Lerner is the biggest Tiger suck up so far this year with his 'writing the sentence on the chalkboard' editorial he did. As for Nike 'dropping' Rory - another blah, blah, blah moment for me. The announcers alluded to some 'conspiracy' that Tiger had Rory axed, but it's a more likely conspiracy theory that Nike is yet another big suck up to Tiger and proactively dismissed Rory because they thought it would keep their #1 Cash Cow happy. Faldo, for what it's worth, said that there were rumors circulating for a while that Nike was going to let Rory go, so I doubt that the Target World Challege had much to do with it. Don't really care. There are much better stories to follow.
Billy Andrade is doing some commentary for the golf channel this week. Sure, they just had to hide his cute smile and cute face behind the microphone.
As for the golf itself - it's hard for me to get interested in the first round when everyone is all bunched up together on the leaderboard. I don't know who to cheer for yet. I do hope Steve Stricker does really well. He wasn't doing so well when the golf channel's coverage began at 6pm eastern. Angel Cabrera is playing this week, as is Daniel Chopra, Mike Weir and many other winners on the PGA Tour last year. For all of the whining that Tiger and Phil never play the event, there are two of last year's Major Championship winners in the field - Cabrera and Zach Johnson. And you can't really fault Padraig Harrington for not playing - I'm sure it's a long trip from his home to Hawaii just to play one event. I don't think his year on the US Tour is starting for a few weeks yet. And how about some other players in the field this week: George McNeill and Mark Calcavecchia. And Jonathan Byrd. No one is talking about Jonathan Byrd so I'm going to mention him now. All the players in the field this week should be featured at least for a few minutes by the golf channel.
I'm not going into the Boo Weekley ammo story. You all can find that on the web if you want to read about it. My thoughts right now aren't that nice and I'm going to keep my fingers idle on that one.
And as for Hawaii in the middle of winter - well, we've had some snow this week and the temperatures at night have been really cold so it's nice to see the lush, green course and sparkling blue water. It wasn't so nice to see the nasty rain that half of the course is experiencing, but rain means warm temperatures so rain isn't so bad.
The Golf Channel has a new tech gadget thing - it lists a player's club head speed and a bunch of other stats in the corner of the screen. Not too exciting for me, but I'm sure players will like that. They also have a doppler radar thing where they show the flight of the golf ball - that's interesting. They still have aimpoint, but I don't know if they are calling it aimpoint.
Right now Scott Verplank is discussing some ruling about his ball moving at address. They were talking about addressing the ball and I couldn't help but think of the Honeymooners' sketch where the one guy tells the other one to address the ball, and the other guy says "Hello, Ball." Oh no. They've decided to play two balls to carry on the round while the issue is still in debate. I don't like that 'play two balls' idea. That just sounds like it would lead to even more rulings and trouble. I think I'm going to flip through some channels or go do something for a bit to get away from this little drama.
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