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While nothing really stacks up to a Major Championship weekend on the PGA Tour, this weekend was really good for the game of golf with four tournaments that garnered the public’s attention.
Let’s take a look at the winners and losers from this weekend’s play.
The Winners
Obviously included in this group are the four actual tournament winners: Vijay Singh (WGC – Bridgestone Invitational), Ji-Yai Shin (Women’s British Open), Eduardo Romero (Men’s Senior U.S. Open) and Parker McLachlin (Reno-Tahoe Open). Aside from that group, here are a few other names and organizations to chew on.
The PGA Tour
It’s not easy to produce compelling theater each and every week without Tiger Woods, but the PGA Tour is doing so with a combination of luck and talent.
A final round leaderboard of Vijay Singh, Phil Mickelson, Lee Westwood, Stuart Appleby and Retief Goosen was the best collection of talent vying for a championship in recent memory.
Combined, that group has accounted for 81 PGA Tour victories and eight Major Championships. It would have been great had the tournament ended in a playoff but you can’t argue with the star power present as Sunday winded to a close.
This bodes well for public interest heading into the upcoming PGA Championship as well. Don’t be surprised if a plethora of elite players are in contention next week at Oakland Hills – a course that has frequently been the site of Major Championships.
Reno-Tahoe Open
Michelle Wie attracted some decent galleries during her two-day stint at the Legends Reno-Tahoe Open at Montreux Golf and Country Club. The fact that this tournament actually became a hot story in the golf world on a weekend featuring a World Golf Championship and two major events on other tours is quite an accomplishment for tournament director Michael Stearns. Granted, much of the novelty wore off before the final gun sounded but it was a noble effort nonetheless.
The Viagra Generation
Just thought that was a clever title; not presuming anything about Vijay Singh or Kenny Perry’s ability off the golf course.
The 45-year-old Singh was the third player in his 40’s to win on Tour this year, joining Steve Lowery and Kenny Perry, who has won three times. In a year dominated by younger talent such as Anthony Kim and Sergio Garcia, it’s good to see the older, more experienced players can still hang with the kids.
“I think he’s done great this year,” said Singh when asked if Perry’s performance this season spurred him on to play better. “It shows that you can still play no matter what your age is. It’s just a number.”
Greg Norman is another old-timer playing remarkably well. Norman posted his third consecutive top five finish in a Major Championship, placing fourth at the U.S. Senior Open Championship in Colorado. Norman will now dedicate some time to his new bride, Chris Everett, and his business ventures but it was one hell of a three week stretch for a 53-year-old part time golfer.
The man who has held the No. 1 spot in the Official World Golf Rankings longer than anyone not named Tiger Woods certainly helped fill the void left by the world’s best player.
Argentina
Newly-crowned U.S. Senior Open champion Eduardo Romero and 2007 U.S. Open champion Angel Cabrera are from the same village in Argentina. Villa Allende has a population of just 35,000, making it an unlikely place to produce two USGA Champions in two years.
The Losers
LPGA Tour
I hate to continue harping on this subject but I notice that it really affects my viewership of women’s events so I’m assuming others out there feel the very same way.
This weekend’s Women’s British Open was won by South Korea’s Ji-Yan Shin. Shin was followed by Taiwan’s Yani Tseng, Japan’s Yuri Fudoh and South Korea’s Eun-Hee Ji as Asians took the first five places.
It’s obvious that the dominance by Asian players on the LPGA Tour is here to stay so I would suggest a considerable effort be put forth to introduce these players to American audiences. If this can’t be accomplished, expect a drop in viewership akin to when Tiger isn’t involved on Sunday or worse when no familiar names appear on the leaderboard.
Phil Mickelson
Nobody gets up and down like Lefty but perhaps nobody’s game is as up and down as the three-time Major Champion’s.
Mickelson looked like he was headed for at least a playoff on Sunday before he crashed down the stretch, including a critical bogey on No. 18 that would have left him outside of a playoff by one-stroke had Singh missed his par putt on the 18th hole.
I think we all want Mickelson-Woods to be Palmer-Nicklaus but with Lefty’s propensity to either produce wildly entertaining shots down the stretch to win tournaments or make highly-inappropriate decisions down the stretch to blow tournaments, he just doesn’t have the consistency to get it done. Everyone remembers that quadruple bogey at the U.S. Open, right?
Mickelson should have easily won this weekend; after all Singh was trying his best to give the tournament away.
“I’m turning 63s and 64s into 70s and that’s kind of what happened today,” said Mickelson. “I couldn’t get any putts to go in, and then in the end I made some bogeys.”
Well at least he is admitting his problem.
Michelle Wie
I’ve defended Michelle Wie’s decision to play in Reno from the start but her 8-over-par second round score is hard to go to bat for . It was just too much of a grind filled with par-saving putts for the 18-year-old and it caught up to her, resulting in some big scores over her final nine.
She undoubtedly displayed that she is quite a talent, but now it’s finally time to stop trying to compete with the men and focus on defeating the ladies. Judging from her flashes of brilliance in Reno, Wie is certainly capable of winning an LPGA event on any given weekend.
But her critics had to enjoy another missed cut, making Wie a loser this weekend. There isn’t any other way to slice it.
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