Luke Donald was chased by a baboon during the second round of the Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa.
I guess the baboon wanted to play through Donald’s group.
Luke Donald was chased by a baboon during the second round of the Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa.
I guess the baboon wanted to play through Donald’s group.
Apparently I have been missing out on a big story in golf and that is 3 year old Tommy Morrissey. Here is a video of Tommy and his dad visiting the Golf Channel’s Morning Drive.
So Tommy has met Tiger Woods, Bubba Watson, and Arnold Palmer, and Ellen too. I think that if I could have a round of golf with anyone in the previous sentence, I would choose Tommy.
I know that I could swing like Tommy but there is no way I would be hitting it anywhere near as well as him swinging that way (using two hands on the club I barely hit it as well as Tommy does with one hand).
GolfDigest.com has an article about 5 Statistical Oddities From the 2014 PGA Tour Season, which is a summary or excerpt from a book called “Pro Golf Synopsis” by statistician Richie Hunt. Hunt has analyzed the statistics from the 2014 PGA Tour and discovered a few trends in strategy to help pretty much all golfers.
The first one mentioned in the article is that “Laying up on a par 5 or a par 4 should be considered the last option”. Everyone scores better from closer to the green, so unless it’s to avoid a hazard you should never lay up and just get the ball as close to the green as possible.
Also found is that “Tour players tend to be more accurate with their driver than their 3-wood off the tee”, and “Scores are typically lower in the morning than in the afternoon”. What I take from this is, stick with your driver and get the earliest tee time possible. I think they are more accurate with their drivers because they probably practice hitting drivers more than their 3-woods, and scores are lower in the morning than the afternoon not because of higher winds in the afternoon, but because play is generally quicker in the mornings than in the afternoons. In my experience, faster play makes for lower scores.
The other trends noted in the article are “The better drivers of the ball often split their misses closer to 50/50” and “Round 1 Scoring Average has the strongest statistical correlation to PGA Tour success, followed by Round 2 Scoring Average”. These ones aren’t so interesting to me.
Tiger Woods returns to competitive golf this week at his tournament, the Hero World Challenge. Below is a tweet his foundation sent out, showing off his new pain-free swing on the practice tee.
And just like that, he’s back. Great day at the #TWCharityPlayoffs with @tigerwoods! https://t.co/Vah4LHpPhr
— Hero World Challenge (@TWFoundation) December 1, 2014
Martin and Sara of School of Golf talked about the myth of never lifting your heel of your lead foot in the golf swing, and Martin suggested that lifting the heel could generate more turn in the back swing and more power overall.
There are two keys to lifting your heel. You should start the downswing by planting your heel back onto the ground, and also you have to make sure that you put your foot back in the same position it was in at address.
There was a magazine many years ago called Golf Illustrated (I think there have been other Golf Illustrateds before and since) and I remember one issue where the banner story was John Daly’s tip to slam the heel for power (which is essentially the same thing as this lesson).
Another Golf Illustrated classic banner story was “Chi Chi’s Chip Tips”, where Chi Chi suggested using your fairway woods to hit bump-and-runs (this is back about 25 years ago in the days before hybrids existed).
So Tiger has a new swing “consultant” (whatever that means) named Chris Como. I had never heard of Chris Como until the other day when Tiger broke the news, and I still don’t really know much about him other than he is a Golf Magazine Top 100 Teacher, and he is Tiger’s new “consultant”.
By the way, how lame odd is Tiger that he doesn’t just say that he has a new coach, but a “consultant”. My new favourite word is “consultant”.
Other Consultants:
Golf.com posted an article called “Chris Como: 3 Things You Can Learn From Tiger’s New Instructor“. Here are the tips from the article:
Hopefully these tips will work for Tiger.
I’ve always been interested in how to read greens better. There are lots of tips on how to have a better swing, how to pitch and chip better, how to have a better putting stroke, but not many about how to read the green better. You can have the best, purest putting stroke in the world and never make a putt if you aren’t good at reading the greens.
School of Golf’s Martin Hall and Sara Brown describe 4 keys to reading the green.
The keys are:
Who the heck does Dan Jenkins think he is? How dare he write an article about an interview he had with Tiger Woods when he didn’t actually interview Tiger Woods?
I wish that everyone reads what must be the best fake interview with Tiger Woods of all time.
The next best part, and also the saddest part, of all of this is that Tiger felt he had to respond to Jenkins’s fake interview.
The interview might not have been true, but I thought it was funny.
But who is Dan Jenkins? According to Wikipedia, he is about to turn 85. He is also an legendary golf journalist and author (23 books and counting, including “Dead Solid Perfect” which was a story that pulled back the curtain of what the PGA Tour was really like back in the 1970s, and probably still is more true than not today). He used to cover golf for some magazine called Sports Illustrated, and now writes a monthly column for Golf Digest (although there was a period of time when he wasn’t appearing in too many Golf Digests, and that’s when I stopped my subscription).
Jenkins’ articles for Golf Digest are usually short stories that are satire, much like his fake interview with Tiger. Did I mention he is a legend?
So what was Tiger’s (over)reaction? First, to say that is was actually a “Fake” interview. Nailed it!! Then he comes off as the just the guy that Jenkins’ wrote about, the thin-skinned pouter who will fire or freeze out anyone who says anything about him that isn’t fawning worship. Tiger concludes this first paragraph with saying that Jenkins’ fake interview “fails as parody, and is really more like a grudge-fueled piece of character assassination.” And then proceeds to take some cheap shots of his own at Jenkins and Golf Digest.
While I agree with Tiger that he is not portrayed favourably at all in the “fake” interview, he must realize that it was never suggested that the interview was anything but FAKE.
What is Tiger taking umbrage about?
Here is what I get out of this.
Maybe I could be fortunate enough to have Tiger Woods complain about something from my site. Not that it really matters, but currently Tiger is ranked 1530 (out of 2055 players) on my Power Rankings, tied with Darren Clarke and right behind Greg Owen.
Here is Golf.com’s take on it, http://www.golf.com/tour-and-news/tiger-woods-calls-out-golf-writer-dan-jenkins-over-satirical-interview.
UPDATE – Here is USA Today’s Christine Brennan’s reaction to Tiger’s reaction. http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2014/11/18/tiger-woods-dan-jenkins-fake-interview-christine-brennan/19246965/