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It is only the second time he’s not made the weekend at a major championship. From AP-
Tiger Woods has missed the cut in a major for only the second time in his professional career.
Woods made two double bogeys on the way to a 4-over 74 Friday and won’t be playing the weekend at the British Open, missing the cut by one stroke.
That’s happened only one other time since he turned pro — at the 2006 U.S. Open shortly after the death of his beloved father, Earl.
Woods tried to rally, making birdies on two of the last three holes, but a chip from the back of the green at No. 18 came up short and he settled for par.
The top 70, plus ties, make it to the final two rounds. Woods was at 5-over 145, one over the cut line.
The British Open doesn’t have a 10-shot rule, which allows anyone within that margin of the lead to keep going.
Tiger didn’t play well at all either today or yesterday. If the British Open had the ten shot rule, Tiger was unlikely to have been a factor this weekend.
Steve Marino and Tom Watson are tied for the 36 hole lead with Marc Calcavecchia one shot behind. 28 golfers are even par or better and within five shots of the lead. It looks like a wide open weekend at Turnberry.
On the surface I like this idea, because the US Women’s Open is too often played on courses I don’t think should be hosting the biggest tournament in Women’s golf.
This might be as close as golf gets to a doubleheader.
The USGA said Monday the U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open will be held over consecutive weeks in 2014 at Pinehurst No. 2, the first time in golf that women have a chance to share the stage with the men.
“It’s a big opportunity,” said USGA executive director David Fay, who came up with the idea. “I really do think this will generate some buzz for women’s golf and the Women’s Open. And I think a lot of people will take advantage.”
The U.S. Open already was scheduled to return to Pinehurst in 2014 for the third time in 15 years. The Women’s Open has been held three times at nearby Pine Needles since 1996, but never at the fabled No. 2 course at Pinehurst.
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Holding back-to-back championships on the same course should save time and money. The USGA already will have tents in place for corporate hospitality, concessions and the media. The ropes already will line the fairway. And there will be no need to tear down, transport and rebuild grandstands and scoreboards.
Here’s the problem I have with back to back opens. What kind of condition will Pinehurst be in after 156 men just spent seven days playing and practicing there. Will the women golfers be playing out of divots? Will the greens be up to quality or showing signs of wear and tear? I think these are legitimate concerns.
I’d love to see the women play the Open at Pinehurst(Or Pebble Beach too) but I think it would be better if they did so in a different year than the men do.
What is the penalty for impersonating a member of the golf media? From Alex Miceli at Golf World:
In one of the best cases of chutzpah in modern media centers, a fan sneaked into Tiger Woods’ news conference Sunday after The Memorial and sat amongst the ink-stained wretches, two rows from Tiger, waiting for a chance to get a Woods autograph.
After 19 questions, the guy could wait no longer.
“Jack’s going to hate me for this,†the interloper said, standing. “Tiger, congratulations for winning The Memorial. I’m a normal person that snuck in here with a patron badge. I was just wondering if I could get an autograph.â€
After a lot of stunned media looked at one another, Tiger snickered before red-faced security staff escorted the man out of the interview room.
Nicklaus was classic with his response.
“If he’s got that much guts, he can get it, right?â€
And then the patron’s badge was passed up to Woods, who signed it and passed it back to security to deliver to the very gutsy patron.
Since he was so sucessful in the media room, if I was there I would have given the person a chance to impersonate Ron Sirak or Doug Ferguson. Who knows, they may have done a good job of reporting the tournament. Cue the sarcastic laughter.
From personal experience at the two tournaments I have blogged, the security person by the media room door was always the same. After the first day they would recognize me and not ask to see my credential.
At the ADT Championship, there were two ways of getting in the media center. The main entrance where a guard was, and a back entrance door alongside the interview room. This was next to a parking lot that was used by officials and tournament cars. All someone would have to do was walk past the signs warning not to go further (but didn’t have any guards around) and get to the interview room via the parking lot.
If the LPGA ever reads this post, they probably won’t appreciate my sharing these secrets. Well, I could have said something worse. Like what if a woman tried to impersonate….never mind. If you want to keep non media members out of the press area, all exits and entrances need to be covered.
He died at age 82 after falling in Indio California.
Rosburg or ‘Rossie’ as he was nicknamed was the 1959 PGA Champion and came one shot short of a playoff at the 1969 US Open. He may have been Scott Hoch before Hoch was. Rossie missed a short putt on eighteen to tie.
Fifty years removed from his major championship triumph, Rosburg is best known to the casual golf fan for his work on television broadcasts. I don’t critique the announcers very often(or very well) but remember what my father said about Rosburg. Some chip or pitch is always ‘an impossible shot’.
Golf Observer’s Sal Johnson wrote a long tribute(I posted some of it below) up to Rosburg and I suggest all of your read it. RIP Rossie.
Bob Rosburg, who became more famous as a commentator for ABC Sports than as a major champion, died Thursday morning. “Rossie” had been battling cancer for the last year and a half, but the cause of death was a head injury suffered in a fall coming out of a restaurant in Indio, Calif. He was 82.
Rosburg won six times on the PGA Tour, the highlight being his victory at the 1959 PGA Championship. Instead of becoming a club pro in the mid-1970s, when his PGA Tour days were over, Rossie turned to television. He had dabbled in TV during the late 1950s and ’60s, but when ABC hired him in 1974 Rosburg took on a special assignment. He became golf’s first truly on-course announcer.
The idea to have an announcer walk with players was hatched by Roone Arledge, the head of ABC Sports, and golf producer Chuck Howard. Their first stab at on-course commentary involved Bud Palmer, who was stationed on a tower behind the 15th hole were he did commentary until the last group past his hole. He then put on some special gear and would pick up the final group and follow them in. Palmer was a very capable announcer, but he was a fish out of water in terms of on-course analysis. Howard quickly realized that the job needed to be handled by a player. He was hunting for a special player and Steve Reid, who was the television coordinator between ABC and the PGA Tour told him about Rosburg. He interviewed for the job and got it. In talking with Howard 20 years later, he said that Rossie was just what they wanted because he knew the players, so they didn’t feel it was intrusive when he looked over their lies and assessed the circumstances for viewers. Rosburg figured out early that his job was to tell what kind of lie a player had, what kind of shot that player had to execute, what the conditions were, and how well the player succeeded. Rosburg perfected the art of the roving announcer, thus paving the way for Judy Rankin, Roger Maltbie, David Feherty, Mark Rolfing and others.
Rosburg was with ABC for 31 years, making him the longest serving active golf announcer on television. He didn’t do much work for ABC after 2000, but the network did make sure he was aboard for their last PGA Tour telecast, the Tiger Woods Target Challenge in December 2006.
Rossie was a renown story teller. As a Tour player, he competed against and socialized with Ben Hogan, Billy Casper, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Dave Marr and Raymond Floyd. When Rosburg first came on Tour, he became friendly with Hogan and played a lot of high stakes practice rounds with Hogan and Claude Harmon.
This news comes as no surprise to this golf fan.
Without a new title sponsor, the future of Milwaukee’s PGA Tour stop will be in serious jeopardy. Getting that kind of commitment out of a company is not easy in this economy — especially for a tournament that is played opposite the British Open.
U.S. Bank will not renew its sponsorship after this year’s tournament in July, and tournament director Dan Croak is searching for a replacement.
“We need a big sponsor — or, as we’ve had in the past, a couple of big sponsors — to take the biggest piece of the puzzle,” Croak said Monday. “And then we’re able to sell smaller pieces within the community. We are moving forward as if we need a title sponsor to continue.”
Sponsorship is a major chunk of a tournament’s budget; Croak wouldn’t give a specific figure, but allowed that it accounts for “probably 50 percent” of revenues.
“The way that the PGA Tour structures itself, you can’t do it without [a sponsor],” he said.
That’s untrue. The now defunct BC Open was still a PGA Tour stop till 2006 and never had a sponsor in its 35 year history. Its only been in the last two decades that almost all tournaments came to have a sponsor. Better yet, before US Bank became sponsor, The modern Milwaukee Open never had a sponsor from the 1968(It’s first tournament) up till 2003. It was called the Greater Milwaukee Open for all of those years.
The PGA Tour and its golfers have to be realistic. You can’t expect a sponsor to shell out millions for an event where no top golfer with the exception of Kenny Perry can be expected to play. What do you do? Play for less money or not play at all? I predict the PGA Tour and its players will have to make that decision about this tournament and a few others.
Croak says the tournament’s commitment to raising money for Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin makes it more attractive to companies.
“It’s much easier to say the primary beneficiary of this tournament is Children’s Hospital,” Croak said. “And then they say, ‘Oh, yeah. It is about charity.’”
The charities will have to decide too if less is better than none.
Seoul Broadcasting System aka SBS will be replacing Mercedes. From AP-
The PGA Tour added its first new title sponsor since the economic meltdown and shored up its season opener in Kapalua by announcing a 10-year deal Thursday with Korea-based SBS International.
Seoul Broadcasting System also extended by seven years its exclusive agreement to show PGA Tour events in Korea.
The deals run through 2019.
The tour has had mixed economic news this year. It is losing title sponsors in Phoenix, Milwaukee and Florida, while agreeing to contract extensions for four other tournaments through 2014.
But this represents its first new sponsor since the economy’s downturn last fall. SBS is the only media company to be a title sponsor on the PGA Tour, which has relied largely on the automobile and financial industry in the last decade.
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SBS had been the title sponsor of an LPGA Tournament on Oahu, which ended this year. SBS president Sang Chun said its LPGA deal helped spur interest in golf in Korea, and he expects the same dynamic with its PGA Tour deal.
SBS ended its sponsorship of the LPGA season opener in wake of how they were treated by the tour when they decided to enter into a new Korean television deal.
The contract with J Golf, which has yet to be announced by the tour or the network, but details of which were obtained by Golf World, is a multiyear deal likely worth in excess of $4 million annually, according to sources familiar with the negotiations. That is up significantly from the $2.25 million SBS says it paid to broadcast 30 events in Korea this year. Asked if his company would continue to sponsor the SBS Open when coverage moves to J Golf next year, Sang Y. Chun, president and CEO of SBS International, said: “Absolutely not.â€
Chun, who said he was “disappointed, upset really†at losing the contract, said his feelings were “not about the money [but] about the way we were treated.â€
The PGA Tour is much more sponsor friendly than the Carolyn Bivens led LPGA Tour. Cases in point include past LPGA sponsors Shoprite, Wendy’s, ADT, and SBS. All of whom were not happy with the their treatment. Now the LPGA’s schedule is falling apart at the same time the world wide economy is in bad shape. Any sensible people at tour headquarters in Daytona Beach, plus the LPGA players would certainly like those sponsors back. The firing of Carolyn Bivens is long over due, but how wrecked will the LPGA be before she gets the axe?
Ryan at Waggle Room is also commenting.
That means both the PGA and LPGA Tour have tour stops in China now. From AP-
The HSBC Champions in China has been elevated to a World Golf Championship this year with a new qualifying criteria and a $7 million purse, the highest ever for a golf tournament in Asia.
Tiger Woods already has said he will play, along with defending champion Sergio Garcia.
The HSBC Champions began in 2005 and had been sanctioned by every major golf tour except the PGA Tour. That changes with its designation as the fourth World Golf Championship, and the only one not staged in the United States.
Woods was runner-up his first two times playing the HSBC Champions, and will return for the Nov. 5-8 event.
The continuing globalization of professional golf tours. I don’t see the PGA becoming as world-wide as the LPGA Tour has become.
Update- Steve Elling has more about the HSBC status on the PGA Tour-
Because of concerns that the cash-heavy, limited-field event would badly skew the PGA Tour money list with only one week remaining in the season, the HSBC victory and any tournament earnings will be considered unofficial in the U.S. Moreover, the winner won’t get the customary two-year PGA Tour exemption, either, or a berth in the Masters.
The tournament is at the very end of the PGA schedule, and has a limited field. It would only skew money for people who won lots to start with. Elling goes on to say it could have a lower player bump someone from the top 30. I think its just dumb not to count it. Either HSBC is a PGA Tournament or isn’t.
It was a surprise to many, including myself. A closer examination of Cabrera’s record, shows he has never finished outside the top 20 at Augusta. Make note to myself- Check player past performance more closely in the future.
Cabrera was the recipient of a very lucky break. His drive on the first playoff hole landed behind a tree. The Argentine suicidally bravely tried to play the ball out to the right in the opposite direction of where the hole was. Cabrera hit a tree but the golf gods intervened and his ball ricocheted out into the fairway.
Kenny Perry again comes up short at major championship time. He lost the 1996 PGA Championship in a playoff also. At age 48, Perry is unlikely to get another opportunity like had this last weekend.
Did Perry choke yesterday? He made bogey on 17 and 18 to set up the playoff. Then he didn’t play well at all in the playoff. There have been worse collapses in majors, including the Masters. Ed Sneed bogied the last three holes in 1979 and like Perry lost on the second hole of sudden death. Sneed’s finish was worse in regulation but Perry did much worse when the playoffs are compared.
Chad Campbell also lost in the playoff. He unlike Perry, may contend again at The Masters. Campbell finished tied for 3rd in the 2006 tournament. He seems to like playing Augusta National.
Other notes-
*- Phil Mickelson looked like he was charging to the greatest come from behind victory in Masters history. Mickelson played the front nine in 30 and was 10 under for the tournament. A 34 on the last nine holes would have made the playoff but it wasn’t to be. Two missed short putts were just the the most prominent lowlights of a back nine that started with so much hope.
*- One of these days The Masters will finish on a Monday morning because of CBS policy of having play end at approximately 6:45-7 p.m. A playoff of longer than two holes or a Sunday weather delay seem to be the only things that will change this reckless course of action.
For the second year in a row, Tiger won at Bay Hill in Orlando Florida by making a dramatic birdie putt on the 72nd hole. Last year Bart Bryant was the loser, this year it was Sean O’Hair.
With the win the talk of Tiger not being back to form will end. It will instead be replaced by golf journalists opining on what his chances are of winning the Masters. The first men’s major championship of 2009 begins on April 9th.
Sadly another big golf tournament will get lost in the buzz of Tiger’s win today and all the hype for the upcoming Masters. The LPGA Tour’s Kraft Nabisco Championship begins this Thursday. A few years ago the tournament’s dates were shifted so it didn’t butt heads with The Players Championship any more. The TPC has since moved to May, but the Kraft still gets short changed. Golf writers and the Golf Channel rather talk endlessly about The Masters that hasn’t started yet than a major championship that is under way.
Back to Tiger. He’ll win at least one major championship this year. What a reckless golf prognosticator I am.
Craig Dolch left the Palm Beach Post last August and as you could have been expected golf writing there has gone down the toilet-
Since Woods announced Thursday that he would test his reconstructed left knee at the CA Championship, ticket sales at the Doral Golf Resort & Spa have been “though the roof,” said the tournament’s executive director, Eddie Carbone.
Tiger entered the CA Championship last Friday, not Thursday. Apprarently Mr. Frias or his editors don’t read their own newspaper.
I’m not done with this article either.
Tiger can tame the Blue Monster. Padraig Harrington knows that. That’s why the 2008 PGA Player of the Year, who won the British Open and the PGA Championship after Woods won the U.S. Open in July on a bad left knee before deciding to have surgery, would rather not engage in too much Tiger talk.
Tiger won the US Open last June, not July.
But wait, Mr. Frias isn’t done yet.
He played his first event since the June surgery two weeks ago at the Accenture Match Play Championship in Arizona, where he won his first-round match, but lost in the second round to South Africa’s Tim Clark.
He won the US Open in July but had surgery in June! Tiger truly is Superman!
The error prone inconsistent golf writing by Mr. Frias has me reaching for some dramamine. I’m getting a case of motion sickness because he is all over the road in the same golf article.
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