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| Saturday, June 17, 2006 |
While Tiger Woods‘ game goes into the toilet, Steven Taylor has broken 100 for the first time. Shattered it, in fact, shooting a 97.
Tiger Woods shot a 6-over Friday to go 12-over for the tournament. At 120th he needs 60 players to do worse for him to play on the weekend. This U.S. Open will be the first cut Woods will have ever missed at a major as a pro. The golf superstar recently endured the death of his father and hasn’t played a tournament in over two months.
UPDATE (James Joyner): It’s official.
Tiger Woods has missed the cut at the U.S. Open, the first time he’s done so for any major since turning pro.
 Father’s Day. The U.S. Open. They have always gone hand-in-hand for Tiger Woods, and he no doubt envisioned this week as the perfect time to win one for Dad. Instead, he will be a spectator, the result of a surprisingly terrible two-day display that ended in Woods missing the cut in a major for the first time as a pro. Playing from under trees, in the rough and even from the wrong course Friday, Woods shot his second straight score of 6-over-par 76 to miss the cut by three strokes.
“I don’t care if you had what transpired in my life or not,” said Woods, playing for the first time since his father died in May. “Poor execution is never going to feel very good.”
It would have been a great story had Tiger won the Open, so soon after his dad’s passing. But golf is mostly a mental game. It would have been surprising even for someone with Tiger’s legendary focus to be able to do it, let alone on the brutal Wingfoot course, while still grieving for his loss.
OTB
From AP-
WILLISTON, N.D. – State officials voted Thursday to sue the NCAA for penalizing the University of North Dakota over its “Fighting Sioux” nickname and Indian-head logo.
Following a meeting with state Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem, the North Dakota Board of Higher Education voted 8-0 to authorize the lawsuit, which would be handled by Stenehjem.
The NCAA last year announced a ban on ethnically or racially “hostile” or “abusive” nicknames, mascots and imagery at championship events. It found 18 schools, including UND, in violation of the policy.
Several of those schools have since changed team names and mascots or won appeals after local tribes came to their defense. In UND’s case, though, the NCAA rejected the appeal and told the school it may not use the Fighting Sioux nickname and Indian-head logo during NCAA postseason tournaments, nor host a tournament if it continues to use them.
Stenehjem complained that the NCAA’s decision was delivered by a committee that used constantly changing standards.
Teams that have continued using Indian nicknames with the NCAA’s blessing include the Florida State University Seminoles, Central Michigan University Chippewas and the University of Utah Utes.
NCAA President Myles Brand has said the NCAA will defend its policy “to the utmost.”
The lawsuit will be paid for out of private funds, not taxpayer money, officials said.
In addition to this being an idiotic PC driven policy, The NCAA is uneven in how they apply it. When challenged in court, I think the NCAA will lose.
Of course North Dakota could just change their name. What’s more important, educating students or the name of a school mascot? In a more intelligent world this kind of stupidity by both parties would never make it to the courts.
Colin Montgomerie was the only golfer to break par in the first round of the US Open at Winged Foot CC in Mamaroneck NY.
The 42-year-old Scot birdied three of the last 10 holes to complete a one-under-par 69 on a difficult, blustery day at Winged Foot Golf Club where the average score was 75.98.
Mickelson, bidding for a third consecutive major title, had to settle for a five-way share of second place after scrambling to a 70 that included two birdies and two bogeys.
Level with the American left-hander were compatriots Jim Furyk and Steve Stricker, Spaniard Miguel Angel Jimenez and Britain’s David Howell, who got to four under with four holes to play before slipping back.
Several of the game’s biggest names faltered in the testing conditions, among them world number one Tiger Woods who battled to a 76.
Making his tournament return after a nine-week break, following the death of his father, Woods struggled with his putting and accuracy off the tee, setting the tone for his day by bogeying the first three holes.
Twenty-two players carded 80 or worse and the first-round scoring average was the highest at a U.S. Open since the 77.8 at Shinnecock Hills in 1986.
“This course is about finding the greens in regulation, and I’ve always been pretty good at that,” a smiling Montgomerie told reporters after capping his round with a 25-foot birdie putt at the par-four 17th.
“I think the expectation of me in the ’90s to win this thing was very high. I gave it a go a couple times and got quite close.”
Long regarded as one of the best players without a major victory, Montgomerie finished third on his U.S. Open debut in 1992 and was runner-up in 1994 and 1997.
“The last few years I haven’t contended, and it does make a difference where you are more relaxed,” he added. “I can go out and sort of free wheel, if you like.”
I wish Colin well this weekend. In actuality, I wouldn’t mind seeing him win. It would be a long overdue major triumph for Colin. He also lost the 1995 PGA Championship in a playoff to Steve Elkington.
A low score of 69 testifies to how tough Winged Foot is playing. At the US Open in 1974 the first round leader Gary Player shot 70 at this course to lead after one round. 287 or Seven over was the winning score for the week. Hale Irwin winning the first of his three Open titles. Dick Schaap chronicled all of this in a book titled ‘Massacre at Winged Foot‘.
Could we be in for another massacre? I think we are. US Open scoring is lowest on Thursday and Friday. Just look how two-time Open champ Retief Goosen blew up on Sunday at last year’s Open at Pinehurst. He shot an 81. Jason Gore another leader that day shot 84. Johnny Miller’s 63 at Oakmont in 1973 is a rarity on US Open Sunday. The best golfers in the world could be in for a rough weekend.
Not that this is bad. It’s very different than the usual birdie tournaments seen on the PGA tour from week to week. Instead be prepared for a survival test. If history is any guide, it will bring one of the best golfers in the world to the top at the close of finish.
Note- I wasn’t surprised by Tiger’s slow start. Too much has happened in his life of late and a two-month layoff had to leave him rusty for sure.
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| Thursday, June 15, 2006 |
Ben Roethlisberger’s statement after the motorcycle accident.
The Steelers this afternoon released a statement from Ben Roethlisberger commenting on his recent motorcycle accident, and the injured quarterback said that if he rides a motorcycle again, he’ll do so with a helmet.
The statement reads: “In the past few days, I have gained a new perspective on life. By the grace of God, I am fortunate to be alive, surrounded by loved ones and lifted by the prayers and support of so many. I am sorry for any anxiety and concern my actions have caused others, specifically my family, the Steelers organization, my teammates and our fans.
“I recognize that I have a responsibility to safeguard my health in the off-season so I can continue to lead our team effectively. I never meant any harm to others nor to break any laws. I was confident in my ability to ride a motorcycle and simply believed such an accident would not happen to me. If I ever ride again, it certainly will be with a helmet.
“My deepest appreciation goes out to the Steelers organization and my teammates for the compassion they have shown me. The physicians and support staff at Mercy Hospital were simply amazing, and I will forever be grateful for their caring treatment.
“I want to assure everyone I am committed to a complete and timely recovery. I look forward to being at training camp in Latrobe and to winning football games this season.”
Glad to see he’s learned from this, and also good to see him out of the hospital.
The big concern now is the weight he’s going to lose. He’s going to be training at a weight he isn’t used to – let’s hope he can take it. That was a scary few days for Steeler fans, seeing as how no one knew for a while if he would even live to tell the tale. Also, Big Ben is the first quarterback Steeler fans have gotten behind in a meaningful way in a long time, and it would have been a shame to lose him so soon.
Here’s to many years of Big Ben (and while I’m at it, many years of Carson Palmer as well. I want him to be around so we can beat him twice a year).
Eric Edelson at Espn.com makes the case-
There is plenty of talk about Tiger Woods’ impact on golf, and rightfully so. There is lots of talk about Michelle Wie’s impact on golf, and rightfully so.
But it’s hard to find an athlete who has had more influence on the sport than Se Ri Pak. The PGA Tour still does not have a great deal more African-Americans or Asians than it did when Tiger arrived on the scene. And Wie’s impact, bringing the young and the daring to both men’s and women’s tours, is still years from showing up.
But Pak has single-handedly changed golf. Eight years ago, she brought her powerful game and maniacal work ethic to a country where she did not know the language or the culture. She was afraid to go into the locker room, worried that someone would ask her a question in English and she would not know how to answer.
Yet when she took her shoes and socks off to play a shot out of the water to help her win the 1998 U.S. Women’s Open, an entire nation of Korean people fell in love. Millions of little girls (and their sports-crazed fathers) suddenly dreamed of being just like her.
“In 1998, there was one Korean on the tour,” says Karrie Webb, an Australia native. “Now there are 32. That’s because of her. She is the face of Korean golf. If they don’t already know, they should know now how much she’s done.”
Counting Se Ri, seven South Koreans have won on tour in 2006. Mi-Hyun Kim came to the LPGA a year after Se Ri. Peanut may or may have been drawn by Se Ri’s sucess on tour. Grace Park was already playing in the US as an amateur and Hee Won Han and Gloria Park either were pros or had signifigant amateur sucess outside of Korea. It is certain that out of the 32, 27 of them came following in Se Ri’s footsteps.
And so this week we saw the tiny but intense Mi Hyun Kim, with her jaw jutting and her gaze burning. We saw her Saturday on the 17th hole, pulling out a fairway wood for a short par-3 and launching it over a bunker and onto the green, then making her putt for birdie. She tied for third. We saw the porcelain-faced Shi Hyun Ahn, with the quietest and most peaceful swing in women’s golf, matching Wie shot for shot for two days straight and finishing within a breath of a playoff. She finished tied for fifth. We saw Seon Hwa Lee, so focused on the fairways that a nuclear detonation couldn’t cause her to dart her eyes. She won last week, and is running away with the Rookie of the Year race.
Seon Hwa Lee is dominating the rookie of the year race. With a win and three second place finishes, Seon Hwa has earned over double what the more heralded Ai Miyazato or Morgan Pressel have won. In spite of her sucess, Seon Hwa has gotten little press. Golf World magazine has done two features on Ai Miyazato in five months but not one on Seon Hwa.
Then GW put LPGA Commissioner Carolyn Bivens on the cover this week instead of Se Ri Pak. This golf publication’s stupidity never ceases to amaze me. They didn’t put Karrie Webb on the cover either after her Nabisco win.
Half of this season’s LPGA tournaments have been won by Koreans. They are 15 percent of the tour, but have won roughly one-third of this year’s prize money. They have made a more perfect world in women’s golf. And they have done so because of Se Ri. Name another athlete who has had as much impact.
*****
And for a time, Se Ri was forgotten, lost in the excellence of Annika Sorenstam and the awe of Wie. When the 16-year-old Korean-American became the first woman in 61 years to make a cut on an international men’s tour last month just outside Seoul, many golf fans forgot that Pak made a cut on a domestic men’s tour three years ago.
But no Koreans forgot. Pak is still worshipped in Seoul. (“I’m still the queen,” she said with a big smile on Sunday.) Like Wie may one day be in America, Se Ri is the woman who changed what was possible. She is the woman who made a statement not only for golfers and athletes, but for people who never really considered all the possibilities for their lives. In Korea, Se Ri is not just a star, not just an icon.
She is a metaphor.
And now, after her comeback, Se Ri means not only challenging and inspiring and winning, but she suddenly means overcoming, withstanding, lasting. Pak jumped for joy for the first time ever on a golf course Sunday, but it was also a jump for relief — an enormous weight lifted. Last night, members of Pak’s family flew overnight from Korea to cheer her on today. Now Pak will spend a day or two with them, relaxing and eating and talking and doing all the things that golf once forbade..
Edelson lays it on a little thick. One thing he doesn’t mention the Korean juniors in this country. Michelle is the first, there will be more.
I think Se Ri has the biggest impact on ladies golf at present. As to all of pro golf, I think that is a bit of a stretch. Without Tiger Woods, the men’s tour wouldn’t be playing for as much money as they are.
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| Wednesday, June 14, 2006 |
Dr. Z notes that, in the harsh world of professional football, an injured player is a forgotten player.
Harris Barton had been a 10-year starter for the 49ers at right tackle, a multiple All-Pro, a mainstay of three Super Bowl championship teams. But when he suffered a serious knee injury in his 11th year, his life changed overnight. “It was like one day I was living, the next day I was dead,” he said. “All of a sudden I went from a person to a non-person. I felt like an outsider in my own locker room. Coaches would look at me doing my rehab and frown and then look away. Players I’d been close to would give me a ‘hi, hello,’ and keep walking. I’m sure that some of them felt it was kind of a jinx to get too close to me. Boy, did that ever open up my eyes to what the NFL was really like.”
I’m sure that Steve McNair also has had his eyes opened up to what the league is really like. He is part of an unsightly little quarterback club. Hero one day, injury liability the next. Drew Brees is a member. So are Daunte Culpepper and Chad Pennington.
Does Ben Roethlisberger belong after his motorcycle accident on Monday? No, not yet. He’s in the class of the Bengals’ Carson Palmer. They’re still young. The injury wasn’t a re-injury (that one will put a guy in the “nuisance” class quicker than anything else). And they didn’t have any knocks on them before the injury. At least not big ones.
Fingers are being wagged at Big Ben now for riding his motorcycle without a helmet. I wonder how many of those finger-waggers wear their seat belts every time they get in a car. Ben said he felt more free when he rode his bike without a helmet, and boy, does this ever sound frivolous, in retrospect. But the world at large has a hard time thinking as a superior athlete in a dangerous sport might think. I’m not saying it was the smartest thing in the world for him to ride without a hat, but the high-level athlete who is used to taking chances, to throwing his body around, does not always think along the lines of safety first. Maybe that’s part of the reason he can be successful, wading through the land mines of professional football … as callous as this might sound.
They say that everything’s going fine with him right now. I wonder. I also read that four surgeons worked on him for seven hours. That’s a lot of attention for a broken jaw and a broken nose. I’m not trying to play doctor here. I just hope that everything works out OK. The same with Palmer.
But I’ll tell you something. If either of them should come back too early, should rush his rehab and then get re-injured, then everyone’s perception will change. The two QBs will drop into the “yes, but” category. Yes, it’s a shame, but he shouldn’t have come back so quickly.
Pennington is in that class. Until he hurt his shoulder two years ago he was the savior of a Jets franchise that’s constantly on the lookout for one. There wasn’t a blemish on him. He was a bright-eyed, team-oriented kid with a lot of talent and a real feel for the game. Then he got hurt.
[...]
It’s unfair, for sure, but do you know what it’s like? Did you ever see the movie The Guns of Navarone? A bunch of commandos on a daredevil mission. And then one of them gets hurt, and just as we get ready to enjoy the exploits of this team, we have to put up with them dragging a hurt guy around for the rest of the movie. Damn! Get him captured or something, but please, proceed without him.
Heh.
After reports of Ben Roethlisberger flying off his motorcycle and landing on his face I feared a long recovery for the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback. That doesn’t look like that will be the case:
Doctors did not discuss Roethlisberger’s condition in detail, at the request of his family, but the quarterback’s only major injuries were to his face: a broken upper and lower jaw, a loss of two teeth, a broken nose, broken facial bones and various cuts and bruises.
Jaw injuries can vary greatly in nature and, because of the rather limited protection provided by a football helmet, have the potential to sideline a player for a lengthy period. But the surgeons who operated on Roethlisberger for seven hours Monday said all of his fractures were successfully repaired.
Roethlisberger suffered a concussion but nothing more serious. He could be ready for the Steelers’ opener Sep. 7.
His pockets must have been stuffed with four-leaf clovers and rabbits feet. He’s a lucky man.
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| Tuesday, June 13, 2006 |
JJ Redick arrested at the worst possible time – right before entering the NBA Draft.
Redick, 21, was pulled over at 1:03 a.m. after police saw a 2005 Toyota SUV approach a police checkpoint at South LaSalle Street near Kangaroo Drive, then do an illegal U-turn, said Durham police spokeswoman Kammie Michael.
An officer followed the SUV, which pulled over in the parking lot of the Belmont Apartments on McQueen Drive, Michael said. There were several passengers in the SUV, Michael said.
Police arrested Redick and almost 90 minutes later, at 2:30 a.m., Redick registered a 0.11 blood alcohol level, according to the citation. The legal limit in North Carolina is 0.08.
The officer wrote that Redick had “very glassy eyes, strong odor of alcohol coming from breath.”
Wow . . . talk about dumb. At least Big Ben had proved himself at the pro level before doing something stupid. This is much less intelligent than what Roethlisberger did – for one thing, this was illegal. For another, he had the potential to kill a lot more people (Roethlisberger was at least alone for his part, and accidents happen – he would have crashed had he been wearing a helmet, he just would have escaped the nasty head injuries). This will make all the Redick haters go nuts.
I mean driving . . . with people in the car, and then making an illegal U-Turn to avoid the checkpoint! It doesn’t get much dumber than that. And this from someone who is obsensibly a “smart athelete”. My guess is that Redick goes lower than was projected for him.
From Reuters
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) – Phnom Penh patriarch Non Nget has told Cambodia’s 40,000 Buddhist monks to remain passive while watching World Cup football games or be defrocked.
Non Nget said on Monday monks should not watch the games in public, cheer or bet on matches as such actions were against Buddhism.
“It is very difficult to ban them because new technology means the games can be aired live and seen everywhere,” he said. “They may watch, but must be calm.”
“But if they make noise or cheer as they watch, they will lose their monkhoods,” Non Nget told Reuters.
Non Nget seems to have forgotten Buddhist monks are people too. Isn’t the world just full of nuts?
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