You've got to be joking. Who thought it was actually entertaining to watch Kenny Perry collapse on the 17th and 18th hole at the Masters? Not me. Who thought it was actually fun to watch Angel Cabrera, who had NEVER LED all week at Augusta, win on the last playoff hole? Not me.
The U.S. Open was a rained out joke. The most boring, drawn out major championship ever.
The British Open was a huge buzz kill. What could have been one of the greatest stories in major championship history turned into a painful trainwreck of a playoff because of a painful trainwreck of a putt on the 72nd hole.
Yes, Y.E. Yang was a nice story. Probably the best major of the year because of how he handled the pressure of playing against Tiger. Still not quite as fun as the week before at Bridgestone when P-Diddy and El Tigre went tit-for-tat until the 16th hole.
The only reason you loved this year in the majors is because you're an irrational Tiger-hater. Pretty much everyone else I talk to who follows golf seriously thought this year was a pretty big letdown as far as the majors go.
And what's up with your "that's what they get for betting against the field" quip? You know the stat as well as I do. Fourteen straight majors won with the lead after 54 holes. You'd have to be a fliggin' floggin' idiot to bet against Tiger in that situation, especially given the way he played the previous two weeks.
No matter how you cut the cards, Tiger has still had the best year out of anyone else in the field, so you Tiger haters can just stick that in your pipe and smoke it, I guess.
Ozzie, your paradigm of optimism!
Go To Hell carolina, Go To Hell!
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I have to agree with CTO on this. To me, a bad bounce is hitting a spot in the fairway that causes you to end up in the rough or ending up in a bad divot. Hitting it into the stands and ending up with a bad lie or hitting it into the rocks and ending up in the water is not getiing "bad bounces." Any result other than what he got would be called miracles.
After driving into the rough, Van de Velde's second shot cleared the burn, but hit the grandstand and caromed backwards, bounced off the top of the stone retaining wall lining the bank of the burn, and landed in deep rough short of the burn. Hitting three.
Rather than chip out to the fairway, chip on to the green and two-putt for a a tournament winning double-bogey, Van de Velde tried to reach the green from his terrible lie in the deep grass, and dunked it into the burn. That's when he took off his shoes and socks, climbed down into the burn and thought about hitting out, before deciding instead to pick it up and take his drop and penalty stroke. Hitting five.
Van de Velde's fifth shot cleared the burn, but landed in a greenside bunker. Hitting six.
His blast out of the bunker went about 8-9 feet past the hole. Hitting seven.
In the one good shot he hit on the entire hole, he rolled in the putt to preserve a triple bogey and get himself into a playoff with Paul Lawrie and Justin Leonard, which Lawrie eventually won.
Weiskopf, on the other hand, was Tin Cup 16 years before the movie came out. After hitting his first shot on the 12th at the 1980 Masters into the creek, he kept dropping and hitting from the tee box, rather than walking up to the drop area just in front of the creek and taking the much shorter and easier chip. He put four more balls into the creek before finally getting one on the green and two-putting for a crowd-pleasing dectuple bogey.
Last edited by Tom B.; 08-18-2009 at 10:13 AM.
I believe a "burn" is the Scottish term for a creek.
http://golf.about.com/od/golfterms/g/bldef_burn.htm
Rick Reilly wrote a great article several years back that discussed Weiskopf's 13:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vau...7061/index.htm
Thanks for the link. Definitely a good read, one that would have been better if Reilly didn't think he had to fill a one-joke-per-paragraph quota.
Sidenote: Has Reilly ever guested on the Sports Reporters while Mike Lupica's been on? The mind bottles at the thought of those two king-sized egos on the same panel.
Correct, I was referring to the Barry Burn, the creek that snakes in front of the green on the 18th hole at Carnoustie. The Barry Burn actually crosses the 18th hole twice -- it crosses the fairway about halfway between the tee box and the green (so it comes into play on the tee shot), and then loops back around and crosses just in front of the green. Van de Velde's tee shot on the 18th in the final round of the 1999 Open actually came close to going into the burn, and he probably would have been better off if it did. Rather than trying to play from the rough to the green on his second shot, he would've taken a drop, then he could simply lay up, chip on and two-putt for a double-bogey, which would have been good enough to win.
In 2007, the Open was back at Carnoustie, and the burn again made its presence known. Padraig Harrington came to the 18th tee on Sunday leading Sergio Garcia by a stroke, but he put two balls into the burn and ended up with a double-bogey six. He still managed to win the tournament, though -- Garcia bogeyed the 18th, so they went to a four-hole playoff. Harrington built a two-stroke lead over the first three playoff holes, so when they came back to 18 again he played it safe, stayed out of the burn, and won with a bogey.
Incidentally, after reading the Reilly article linked above, I realized that I mis-remembered one aspect of Weiskopf's 13 on the 12th at Augusta in 1980. I said that he kept hitting from the tee box, but that wasn't the case -- he walked up and took a drop, but he didn't drop as close to the creek as he could have. Instead, he dropped about 60 yards back, and kept hitting from that spot. It was the next day -- when he again splashed his tee shot on 12 into the creek -- that he kept hitting from the tee box. It took him two more balls to get on the green, then he two-putted for a seven, giving himself an aggregate score of +14 on the hole for the two rounds.
Ok, this is officially the craziest thing about Yang's win (Tiger's loss).
A bookmaker in Ireland actually paid off everyone who bet on Tiger to win the tournament... on Saturday. The bookie was so sure that Tiger would hold onto his lead going into the 4th round that it paid all bets as if the tournament was over.
It lost like 2 million dollars as a result. Stunning.
--Jason "the bookie says it is making no effort to recover the improper winnings from folks who collected on their Tiger bets" Evans
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
Van de Velde's was the king choke of all time - end of story. In fact, they should replace the word choke with "Van De Velde" just to give it its proper due.
The guy had a 3 stroke lead heading into the final hole, and the hole wasn't that difficult. Oddly enough, I was watching it live, after playing a round of golf in the a.m. with a friend. When he pulled out the driver (and Strange was going nuts), my buddy looked at me and said, "That's crazy." Then Strange said, "His caddy should take the driver away from him. Don't allow him to hit it."
Then he shanked it - and lucked out - because it almost went into the water. Then neither of us (nor Strange) could believe he was going for the green with the 2nd shot (a 2 iron or something). We were like, "chip over to the fairway, it's a par 5, you could get a 7 in your sleep." But he went for it...and then got saved again when the ball didn't go in the water...and once again, he tried the impossible shot. He should have chipped it sideways back over to the fairway.
After that, he was actually lucky to make his 8, and once he did, he was toast in the playoff.
Then again, he did come back the next year and shoot a hilarious take. Strange had said afterwards - "He could have made a 7 just using his putter," and Van De Velde just used his putter, and did indeed make a 7.
I loved Tin Cup. But to me the final scene on 18 would have been better if Tin Cup was facing a Van De Velde situation - up 3 instead of just up 1. Yet he still wants to shoot for eagle so he can go 10 under. The final result was good, but I would have liked it even more if he was in that situation.
You are testing my memory of the movie but...
Roy "Tin Cup" McAvoy was not up 1 on the 18th at the US Open. He was tied with Peter Jacobsen at 8-under par. Jacobsen lays up and makes his par. Tin Cup is playing with his rival, David Simms, who is at 7-under. Even though McAvoy tells Simms that David must "go for it" to have a chance at a playoffs, Simms lays up and settles for 2nd place.
McAvoy is faced with the decision of laying up -- hoping to make birdie but almost certainly getting his par to be in a playoff with Jacobsen -- or going for the green in two to get either an eagle (for US Open history and a 10-under par score) or an Open-winning birdie.
We all know what he chose.
--Jason "best scene in that film is when Cup hits the ball through the bar to knock the pelican off the pylon-- complete with Gary McCord commentary" Evans
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
Cool-- I found it on Youtube. The entire final scene (with a little editing to keep it PG).
--Jason "the commentary from the TV booth makes the scene" Evans
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
Jason - thanks for posting. Great scene (though they cut out the best line when Cheech said, "Then do it...and quit f@ing around." Classic.
But the best scene in the movie, was not the pelican - no way. It wasn't even the last hole in the U.S. Open. It was when Tin Cup snapped all of his clubs but the 7 iron because Cheech was giving him grief. Hysterical and really well acted by everyone.
Tough call between Van de Velde and Greg Norman at the 1996 Masters. On one hand, Van de Velde managed to blow a three-shot lead on a single hole, while it took Norman and entire round to blow a six-shot lead (and to give back five more strokes on top of it). On the other, though, Van de Velde's implosion only took about 10 minutes, while Norman provided a steady diet of agony over an entire afternoon, especially when things started to snowball on the back nine.
Norman in 1996 was painful to watch - no doubt...and he should have won...but I still wouldn't call it anywhere near as bad a choke as Van De Velde. First off Faldo, shot the best round of the day, with a 67, and was paired with Norman and put pressure on him from the very beginning. Yes, Norman played tight, and it was a choke - but not the biggest.
Hoch was huge. The two foot putt was just awful.
And really, the biggest choke for Norman, in my mind - was in 1986 the year Nicklaus won. Norman came to the 18th needing a birdie to win and a par to force a playoff. He hit a monster drive and was sitting in the perfect position in the fairway...and then he absolutely choked on his 2nd shot, hitting it into the crowd, above the hole. On that swing...he embodied the word choke. The pressure got to him, and he hit a terrible, terrible, terrible shot.
He ended up getting a bogey, which gave the championship to Nicklaus (well, Jack had earned it with a 65 that included an unbelievable 30 on the back 9). But to me, that was a bigger choke for Norman than the huge lead to Faldo.