- 01:06 AM
- 06/20/13
| Name: | John McClure |
|---|---|
| Location: | UK |
| Member since: | October 15, 2003 |
| Last visit: | June 19, 2013 |
JJ has posted 152 links and 2340 comments to SportsFilter and 22 links and 231 comments to the Locker Room and 5 columns.
Death in the London Marathon: Claire Squires, 30, from Leicestershire, collapsed on the final stretch of the 26.2-mile course on Sunday. She was running to raise money for the Samaritans, for whom her mother has been a volunteer for 24 years, and in memory of her brother who died of an overdose. She hoped to raise a few quid. As of this post, her Justgiving account had raised almost £450,000 from more than 40,000 donations.
The second weekend in April: means only one thing to a golf fan - it's Masters time. Tiger Woods won two weeks ago at Bay Hill and is the 5/1 favourite. Mark O'Meara likes what he has seen of him in practice. Rory McIlroy threw it away last year, but is second favourite this time out. Faldo thinks Donald has got what it takes. Hunter Mahan cursed himself by wining last week. Big Phil's playing well, and even Harrington thinks he might have something to show. Martin Kaymer has yet to make the cut in four starts, but skipped one over the water into the hole at 16 in the practice round, so maybe this is his year! Let the jacket fight commence!
posted by JJ to golf at 09:02 AM on April 03 - 10 comments
Tiger Seal: Tiger Woods was considering abandoning golf and joining the Navy SEALS, former coach Hank Haney has claimed.
posted by JJ to golf at 11:45 AM on February 29 - 17 comments
Tiger back on top: ... of the second page of golf's World Rankings. After 780 weeks in the top 50, Woods drops to number 51 in the world. He will play this week in a 2nd tier event in California, fulfilling one of his recently added "goals for 2011" of playing in a tournament he hadn't played in before.
Juventus have a new stadium.: In 1903, Notts County answered the call of a Juventus member to send a set of the club's black and white striped shirts to replace the pink ones worn by the players of the Italian club since their founding. So to return the favour, Juve invited Notts County - currently 12th in the third tier of English football - to come and play in the stadium's inaugural game.
posted by JJ to soccer at 08:06 AM on September 09 - 6 comments
The changes at Muirfield are interesting. Key things I noticed:
Several holes - the 1st, 6th and 15th - have been made into more acute doglegs. Maybe it's just the way things sit to my eye, but this actually makes the holes easier in my view. The first, from the old tee, for example, I have always found difficult because it's not quite a dogleg. The correct shot from the tee is probably a 3 or 4 iron down to the very slight bend to the right, but it's very hard not to really want to haul off with a driver and let it drift right into that bend. From the new tee, it's an obvious choice - you either hit an iron up to the corner, or you take on a definite shaped cut round the corner. I'm not sure I'm explaining that well, but somehow making the driver tee shot more difficult seems to me to make the choice easier, and in doing so removes the subtle trick those tee shots used to be able to play on dummies like me!
The new tee at the ninth is actually similar although there's no change in angle, but by taking it back 50 yards, it somehow makes it less interesting, because you'd have to really muller it to get it all the way up into the nasty trouble. From the old tee, you're faced with a choice of hitting a long iron short of the trouble and leaving yourself a long second shot, or trying to hit driver over the trouble and through a narrow gap to leave yourself a much shorter shot possibly setting up and eagle. It's a slightly unsubtle solution.
The strangest one I found was at 18. From the old tee, I hit 3-iron to stay short of the bunkers on the left, but managed to get into the first one (at about 260). That's links golf for you. But we went back to the new tee and I hit 3-iron again, and to my amazement, hit it into the same bunker (at +300). When you get up to the fairway you discover a very subtle downward slope from the beginning of the fairway for about 40 yards. Had I hit my iron shots further, I'd have landed on a flatter bit of ground and stayed short of the bunkers; as it was, I was catching that downslope and launching forward into them.
My favourite change is one I wouldn't have really noticed unless I'd asked the question. I thought I was just driving badly so was mostly joking on the tenth tee when I said to my playing partner: "Did this hole get narrower?" He informed me that it had. They've moved the three righthand bunkers 15 yards left to make room for a new chipping practice area for the Open. Naturally, I then smashed one straight right into that practice area. It's very nice, but makes the 10th quite long!
posted by JJ at 05:29 AM on June 19
It's worth a lot, 86 - thanks for the link, I love stuff like that! I played at Muirfield last weekend. That place is just wall to wall awesome...
posted by JJ at 11:07 AM on June 17
Jimmy White and the World Snooker Championships (6 finals, 0 wins).
Poor old Phil. Seems like it's just not meant to be. He's had some pretty good chances over the years. That one was up there but I don't agree with his own assessment that it was his best yet. I think Winged Foot is still the one that really got away.
The next one that ends on his birthday is Pebble Beach in 2019. The following year, he'll turn fifty two days before the championship starts at Winged Foot. Of the next seven venues for the US Open, Phil has been second at three of them (Pinehurst, Shinnecock, Winged Foot).
It was nice to see Rose close it out so well. He kept his head while those around him were losing theirs. A sign of the times at the last when he drove to the very spot from which Hogan hit "that shot" with a 1-iron in 1950; Rose hit a 4-iron. Hogan's 1-iron had 17 degrees of loft on it. I don't know the specs of what's in Rose's bag, but standard for a 4-iron these days is 23 degrees and I'd guess his probably isn't any stronger than 21 degrees.
posted by JJ at 10:08 AM on June 17
Joey Dunlop talking us through some of the TT circuit. Never fails to scare and impress me in equal measure.
posted by JJ at 11:10 AM on June 03
That was pretty exciting stuff in the end. The more I watch the shot Sergio hit (and, boy, are they hitting replay on the Golf Channel with it this week), the more I reckon he wasn't taking that flag on at all and just came out of the shot a little early. He leaves his hands so far behind the rest of his body on the way down that if he clears his hips even a little early, there's almost no chance that his hands can catch up. The result when he gets out of it seriously early (or when Tiger is picking his nose in the vicinity or whatever) is a massive block like he hit on Saturday; but when he's just fractionally off, possibly because the pressure is on in the final round, the result is just a little bit of a thinned push. If he was playing for the middle of the green, he had to have a club that couldn't go long if he adrenalined it, so as soon as it goes right (and loses distance) you're in big trouble.
So the story he came out with afterwards that he took on the pin and failed might have been disingenuous.
Those last three holes are great for the end of a tournament, especially with the pin at 17 out right like that. If you get a bit quick on it at 16 and leave one out right, you're dead. If you throw your hands over the top to guard against doing that, you're then left with a horrible pitch back towards the water. At 17, everywhere is pretty much dead other than on the green. The joy of it is that it's such a short hole, so the pressure actually increases. Then at 18 you have two choices - pull it into the water or block it into the trees (or, if you're tiger, just rip it like it's a PlayStation with a hard hook round the shape of the hole) and then you've either got to come at that front left pin from a mile away because you dunked the tee shot, or you've got to come across the slope at the front of the green out of the right rough and hope you can somehow get it stopped before it gets wet.
posted by JJ at 04:24 PM on May 15
That's golf. That's Sawgrass. That's 17 at Sawgrass. Sergio really only hit one bad shot. Maybe not even that. Looked and sounded a decent strike, so he maybe just got a badly timed gust of wind. That was the ball game. The further capitulation was irrelevant really.
I'm watching the Golf Channel: Tiger's conversion rate of 54-hole leads into wins = 52 out of 56. That's obscene. Nicklaus for his career was 40 of 64, which is also obscene, but not even in the ballpark.
Woods now just 4 short of Sam Snead's record 82 PGA Tour wins. Snead was 46 when he won his 78th title. Woods is 37. Most ominous for the rest of the fields for the rest of the season - this is the fastest he's made it to four wins in a year ever.
posted by JJ at 07:44 PM on May 12
If so, can he have a word with Tiger and Sergio? I love it when PGA Tour players behave like actual golfers and not publicity-courting advertising hoardings. Did Tiger pull that club on purpose to distract Sergio? I doubt it. But having done it, did he miss the opportunity to let it get under Sergio's skin? Certainly not! If you're there, rcade, muscle your way into a press conference and ask Sergio how much further right he might have hit it if he hadn't been distracted.
[Speaking of sending emissaries to golf events, I've been invited to play at Muirfield over the weekend of 8th/9th June, so about five weeks before the Open Championship is played there. While I may have to change the names to protect the inebriated (lunch at Muirfield is not for the faint-livered), I will report back on how the course is set up.]
posted by JJ at 09:46 AM on May 12
Speaking of rally drivers... in case anyone missed this in the Guardian last week. If you're offended by swearing Irishmen, don't watch it.
posted by JJ at 11:23 AM on May 10
I'm sure this probably counts as a self-link, but if anyone's still interested in matters golfing, I just posted a bit of a rambling comment in the Adam Scott thread. Naturally it had nothing to do with Scott (rather, Tiger) and nothing to do with long putters (rather, the rules about where your balls may drop *cough*). I'll check back from time to time if anyone wants to get into it.
posted by JJ at 02:05 PM on April 23
Speaking of rulings at the Masters (which no one really was, and certainly I doubt anyone's still hanging around this thread now anyway), the one with Woods on Friday was one I came across years ago and wrote to the R&A about. They replied too, with some helpful clarification.
Playing in an amateur championship in Ireland, I lost a ball with an approach shot. On returning to the original spot from which I hit struck the shot, I read the rule book, specifically Rule 26-1(a), and began to wonder why it was worded so vaguely. All of the other dropping situations in golf are clearly defined ("drop within one club length" for example), but this one uses the rather imprecise term "as near as possible to the point of the original shot".
Dilligent youngster that I was, I found the divot I had taken and dropped my ball as near as possible to it; so near, in fact, that the ball ended up in said divot, sitting on top of the piece of turf I had replaced. I called for a referee and successfully argued that I should be allowed to drop it again because the divot was created (slightly) closer to the hole than the position in which the ball originally sat, so I had unintentionally dropped closer to the hole. The referee agreed, I redropped several feet away from the divot and the ball was back in play.
Later that day, I saw the referee again and over a beer we discussed the rule. I'd spent most of the back nine that day thinking about how many times you'd have to drop a ball until it was realistically "as near as possible" to the original spot. It's a philosophical minefield.
After the tournament, I wrote to the R&A rules committee about the rule, asking why it wasn't stated more clearly, suggesting that "within one clublength of the point from which the original ball was struck" would work well as alternative wording. I allowed myself to get quite excited. If they reworded the rules according to my suggestion, I thought, I could legitimately lay claim to having had a gamechanging influence on my sport.
They wrote back (it was a more civilised time) thanking me for my question and answering it. The problem, they pointed out, is that it's not always easy to identify the exact point from which the original ball was struck. What if no divot was taken? What if one was playing from deep rough? Demanding that players discover the exact location of the original shot would lead potentially to a vast increase in the number of provisional balls being hit. Indeed, in any serious championship or tournament, it would be imprudent not to hit a provisional ball every time your shot finished out of sight.
As a wild and wayward hitter of some renown, I immediately saw how this would worsen the already tardy pace of play. I wrote back and thanked them for taking the time to reply.
All of which of course really has nothing to do with what happened at Augusta. Tiger not only dropped the ball too far away from the (clearly defined in this case) original point, he then decided to brag about doing so afterwards. The resulting furore should go down as a dark moment for golf. The tournament organisers should have had the stones to disqualify him. They didn't, so Tiger himself should have withdrawn, with a bashful smile about his ignorance of the rules, an acknowledgement of the hubris inherent in his comments on the Friday night both about what he did and his glib remark about Guan Tianlang ("rules are rules"), and then a quick reiteration of the line in his "apology" back in 2010: "I don't get to play by different rules."
He could have closed with a word or two about Bobby Jones, the co-creator of the Masters Tournament, and how he was known throughout the sporting world not only as a supremely talented athlete, but also as an upholder of the highest levels of sportsmanship - the very man who, when lauded by the press for calling a penalty on himself that essentially cost him the US Open in 1925, replied merely that one "might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank" - and that in that same spirit, he (Tiger) couldn't possibly continue to participate in the tournament.
His moral rehabilitation would have been complete. His sponsors would have come flooding back. The public would have clutched him ever closer to their bossom. And curiously, almost without noticing, he'd have started to feel better about himself. He'd have started to feel once more what I'm guessing he hasn't genuinely felt for a long time: like he was destined to win, destined to reach and surpass Jack's record. And because he felt it, he might just have done it.
In fact, he copped out. He didn't win the tournament. He won't win at Merion in the US Open in June. He won't catch Jack.
He's a wealthy man, but "poor and content is rich, and rich enough..." as Iago would have put it had he ever watched the Masters.
posted by JJ at 02:02 PM on April 23
I'm a bit late to the party on this and I suspect there won't be much further debate to be had, but just in case anyone's still checking back, I'll throw in my take on the long putters debate.
When they first started getting used on tour (Johnny Miller was one of the first to try one out) in the 80s, they were seen as crutches for golfers with crippling doses of the yips. As such, said golfers were to be pitied - they were terrible putters without a long putter, and at best mediocre with it, but at least the long putter would allow them to continue to play. The rules bodies (the R&A and the USGA) looked at them. They clearly contravened an original and quite explicit rule of the game - that the club should always be swung freely and never "anchored" to the body in any way - but really, they reasoned, what harm would it do to let the floundering putters extend their golfing lives a little by letting them use these remedial devices?
Then, slowly, the nature of the long putter changed as people experimented with other methods of anchoring it to various parts of their body (the arm, the belly, etc.). Increasingly, it became clear that for some players who may have been below average putters (but were far from being "crippled" by their poor putting), using one of these alternative methods improved their performance.
Today, we're in a position that has forced the rules-making bodies to examine again the phenomenon of the anchored putter and decide whether or not it should still be permitted. It would seem that they are going to alter the status quo, although how exactly they're going to do that remains unclear.
One of the primary arguments put forward by the pro-anchoring faction is circular and will not stand. In essence, it says: there is no statistical evidence that anchored putters make putting any easier. If that is true, how can you have an objection to their removal? At the same time, if that is true, how can anyone else have an objection to their continued use?
Statistics can only go so far - they struggle to reflect the importance of the putts being holed (or missed) in the context of a tournament. My own opinion was simply backed up watching a very exciting Sunday at Augusta. I love watching players come down the stretch and facing challenges. I love to see someone faced with a six-foot putt under pressure; I think to myself 'now we'll see what you're made of... how your nerves are.' Scott faced several challenges of that nature during the course of the final round and holed all of them. Nerveless, you might say. Or, if you're me, the anchored putters make it too easy to avoid the little twitchy mistakes all players are prone to on the greens as the heart beats faster and blood thunders in your ears.
I also don't like the argument that has often been put forward about players in general and Scott in particular: "He's a wonderful player, but his putting lets him down." My response tends to be to point out that putting is and always has been part of the game. If you take it away, or reduce its influence of the outcome, why bother walking around a golf course at all? Tournaments could be held at driving ranges, given that they would be reduced to mere hitting contests.
Hogan argued, with his tongue a long way from his cheek, that putts should only count half. Why? Because he hit the ball more consistently well than everyone - possibly ever - and he felt aggrieved that lesser strikers could beat him quite often by virtue of their superior putting. Far be it from me to disagree too stongly with a player I have come to think of as my favourite of all time, but that's simply too narrow a view of the game as a whole.
The rule-makers have arrived at a sticky issue - partly through their own lack of foresight (they gave an inch and now seem surprised that a mile was taken) - but they ought to act, and in my opinion, they ought to outlaw the anchored putting technique. Had the (in my view, entirely predictable) outcome been made clear to the rule-makers when they first considered anchored putters, they would never have permitted their use in the first place. As it is, they let the cat out of the bag and now have the devil's own job herding it back in there.
posted by JJ at 09:35 AM on April 17
I don't know whether one is allowed to drive it on the green or not (given that at many golf courses one is prohibited from doing all manner of seemingly harmless things, such as wearing jeans or being female), but the guy in the video claims it has a "footprint" 30 times lighter than a human footprint so leaves no trace.
I suppose it would be fine to drive it over the green as long as you didn't stop.
posted by JJ at 05:34 AM on April 05
England's Rose take U.S. Open
What I would also add is that if we don't get any "weather" - which of course is unlikely - someone might shoot a silly score. There were some R&A members from the championship committee playing in the match I was playing in and their response to that possibility was basically "so what?", which I found quite pleasing when set against the USGA's continued obsession with defending par.