Category Archives: Op-Ed

World’s Longest Usable Golf Club

Most drivers these days are 46 inches long, but Karsten Maas from Denmark has made a super-sized 4.37-m-long (14-ft 5-in) club.  Maas’s club is the longest useable golf club in the world, according to the Guinness World Records, and from watching the video, it is a golf club that you need to have to have a slow and smooth swing in order to hit.

Getting a free drop of one club-length is a pretty big deal with this club.

81-year-old man hits hole-in-one in three straight days

There was a story today in the Toronto Star about an 81-year-old man getting a hole-in-one three straight days.

Dom DeBonis scored his first ace 45 years ago, and then scored 4 holes-in-ones in a span of 33 days, including three aces in three consecutive days on three different courses.

  • October 6th, playing at Farmstead Golf Club in Calabash, N.C., DeBonis had a hole-in-one at the 112-yard 17th, using a 9-iron.
  • October 7th, at the Thistle Golf Club in Sunset Beach, N.C., when he aced the 129-yard sixth hole using a 7-iron.
  • October 8th, at Blackmoor Golf Club holing an 8-iron from 118 yards on the fourth hole for his third hole-in-one in three days.

How many golfers out there are still waiting for their first ace?

More U.S. Team Behind the Scenes

There was an article by ESPN.com about an ugly meeting of the U.S. team the Saturday night before the singles matches.

In the article, multiple sources apparently confirm that in the meeting, Tom Watson essentially told his squad “You stink”, and then it went downhill from there.

Toward the end of the meeting, Mickelson spoke to the team about each of his teammates and generated some team spirit and hope for a possible comeback from a 10-6 deficit.

After the ESPN article, Tom Watson issued his own statement. In the statement, Watson finally acts like a captain and takes full blame for the Ryder Cup results, and also says that he has spoken with Mickelson since the infamous post-matches press conference, and the conversation “ended with a better understanding of each other’s perspectives”.

The drama continues.

2014 Ryder Cup

So Team Europe once again beat Team USA to win the Ryder Cup, which is not a big surprise as most golf pundits had been saying all summer how Europe was going to win in a blowout.

For those of you keeping score at home, the matches were up for grabs until the Saturday afternoon foursomes.  That’s when everything went sideways (drives, irons, putts) for the Americans. Team Euro won Saturday afternoon 3.5 to 0.5 to open up a four-point lead, 10-6.

So I guess it was a lunch on Saturday that Tom Watson lost his team.

A lot has been written about what happened at the Ryder Cup. Mostly it has been written about the Team USA post-Ryder press conference where Phil Mickelson had the nerve to honestly answer a question asked of him.

You can read all about what a terrible American/teammate/person Phil Mickelson is all over the internet, specifically at http://www.golfchannel.com/news/golf-central-blog/mickelson-takes-not-so-subtle-jabs-Watson and http://www.golf.com/tour-and-news/phil-mickelson-american-ryder-cup-team-and-your-questions-answered.

Who knows what really happened behind the closed doors of the US team at the Ryder Cup.

Here is what I haven’t heard.  I haven’t heard any of the US players rising up to defend Watson, or denounce Phil.  In fact, I think Phil was probably speaking for the team with his comments.

Regardless, congrats to Team Europe for another convincing victory.

Here are the Golf Channel’s grades for participants in the competition.

Last Pre-Ryder Cup Team Power Rankings

The 2014 Ryder Cup is about to start, so here are the final Power Rankings for the two teams.

The table below has all of the players on each team. Each player has their current power index number followed by their power ranking position in parentheses, as of Sept. 21.

 Europe  USA
Rory McIlroy 21.71 (2) Jim Furyk 20.21 (4)
Jamie Donaldson 17.42 (10) Rickie Fowler 18.58 (6)
Sergio Garcia 15.17 (20) Matt Kuchar 10.50 (42)
Justin Rose 10.54 (41) Bubba Watson 10.00 (45)
Victor Dubuisson 7.58 (75) Jimmy Walker 9.58 (51)
Stephen Gallacher 6.58 (92) Hunter Mahan 8.00 (67)
Martin Kaymer 6.00 (99) Webb Simpson 6.13 (97)
Graeme McDowell 5.83 (104) Phil Mickelson 5.50 (112)
Henrik Stenson 5.71 (107) Patrick Reed 5.42 (116)
Lee Westwood 2.63 (238) Keegan Bradley 4.71 (135)
Thomas Bjorn 2.25 (249) Zach Johnson 4.54 (140)
Ian Poulter -1.08 (697) Jordan Spieth 4.54 (140)

It looks like the middle and bottom of the U.S. team is currently in a little better form, otherwise it looks pretty close.