Thursday, May 13, 2010

“Golf roundup” plus 3 more

“Golf roundup” plus 3 more

Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Golf roundup

Posted: 12 May 2010 08:30 PM PDT

Valero Texas Open

Site: San Antonio

Schedule: Today-Sunday

Course: TPC San Antonio, Oaks Course (7,522 yards, par 72)

Purse: $6.1 million; Winner's share: $1,098,000

TV (ET): Golf Channel (today-Friday, 3-6 p.m., 8:30-11:30 p.m.) and CBS (Saturday-Sunday, 3-6 p.m.)

Last year:Zach Johnson successfully defended his title at La Cantera, beating James Driscoll with a 10-foot birdie on the first hole of a playoff.

LPGA

Bell Micro LPGA Classic

Site: Mobile, Ala.

Schedule: Today-Sunday

Course:Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, Magnolia Grove, The Crossings (6,532 yards, par 72)

Purse: $1.3 million; Winner's share: $195,000

TV: Golf Channel (today, 6:30-8:30 p.m.; Saturday, 4-6 p.m.; Sunday, 4-6 p.m.)

Last year: The tournament wasn't played in 2009 because of course renovation work. In September 2008 at Magnolia Grove, Angela Stanford beat Shanshan Feng by a stroke.

Best of the rest

European Tour: Iberdrola Open; today-Sunday; Pula Golf Club (6,915 yards, par 70), Son Servera, Spain; TV: Golf Channel (Today-Friday, 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 8:30-11:30 a.m.)

Champions Tour: Regions Charity Classic; Friday-Sunday; Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, Ross Bridge (7,525 yards, par 72), Hoover, Ala.; TV: Golf Channel (Friday, 6:30-8:30 p.m.; Saturday, 6:30-9:30 p.m.; Sunday, 6:30-9:30 p.m.)

Nationwide Tour: BMW Charity Pro-am; today-Sunday; Thornblade Club (6,707 yards, par 71), The Carolina Country Club (6,877 yards, par 72) and Bright's Creek Golf Club (7,435 yards, par 72), Greer, S.C.; TV: Golf Channel (today, 12:30-2:30 p.m.; Friday, 12:30-2:30 p.m.; Saturday, 1-4 p.m.; Sunday, 1-4 p.m.)

Duramed Futures Tour: Mercedes-Benz of Kansas City Championship; Friday-Sunday, Leawood South Country Club, Leawood, Kan.

5/15: Wigwam Golf Resort & Spa chef battle

Posted: 13 May 2010 12:01 PM PDT

The Wigwam Golf Resort & Spa hosts an Iron Chef Competition on Saturday, May 15, pitting two of its chefs against each other in a battle of the homegrown culinarians.

At 6 p.m., Matthew Steffen, chef at The Grill, and Michael Scott, chef at Red's Steakhouse, will face off in a 90-minute sprint to prepare a three-course dinner using a secret ingredient to be incorporated into each course. Wigwam executive chef Urs Balmer will act as moderator and decide the secret ingredient.

At the same time, bartenders from each restaurant are competing in a Shake Off by creating a special cocktail also using a secret ingredient.

Members of the community can join the fun, watch the competition, enjoy the three-course dinner including appetizers, entrée and dessert, and judge the winner in both food and beverage. Admission is $42.

Creating a meal in just an hour and half could be grueling, says Balmer, a Swiss-born chef who joined the Wigwam in February.

"I'm not going to make it easy on them," he says with a laugh. "These two are really into it. They fight each other."

With a secret ingredient revealed only at the last minute, the chefs will have to think on their feet.

For the Wigwam culinary staff, Balmer says, "it brings the team together."

The Grill is located outside the main building of the resort. "You forget you have a restaurant there, too," he says.

As the competition heats up, Balmer will mingle with guests. "You like to interact with people so we know what they want on the (resort) menu," he says.

Balmer and his staff are currently working to revamp the menu at the resort's restaurants and to lower prices. With its central location in Litchfield Park, the Wigwam wants to be an integral part of its community and appeal to locals, he says.

Balmer was born in Wilderswil, Switzerland, near Interlaken. His sister owned a restaurant there that served country food, and he began working for her when he was a boy.

"I became attached to cooking," he says. "I like to eat. I love good food."

After completing an apprenticeship, Balmer worked in Amsterdam, Holland; Zurich and Montreaux, Switzerland; and then helped to open an all-vegetarian Swiss hotel in 1985. It closed after a year.

"It was ahead of its time," Balmer says, speculating that today a vegetarian hotel would be popular.

After the hotel closed, Balmer moved to Boston and worked in restaurants there several years before relocating across the country to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where he stayed 13 years. His next move was to the desert and Palm Springs, which he says prepared him for Arizona weather.

Destination Hotels & Resorts brought him to the Wigwam.

The Iron Chef Competition is part of his plan to bring the community back to the Wigwam. If it's successful, he'd like to create face-offs between his and other Valley resorts.

Details: 6-8 p.m. May 15. The Wigwam Golf Resort & Spa. 300 E. Wigwam Boulevard, Litchfield Park. $42. Reservations, 623-856-1032, wigwamresort.com.

Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Golf Digest Ambush

Posted: 13 May 2010 12:34 PM PDT

The Golf Blog: Blowing Where the Wind Takes Me

Posted: 13 May 2010 11:35 AM PDT

Click here to join The Golf Blog's email list.

I had the pleasure of playing two rounds of golf this past week.  One on Saturday, when the wind reached upward of 40 mph gusts, and again on Monday, when the temperature barely touched 58 degrees, without the 30 mph NWN winds.  

I'm not complaining, because as my brother-in-law would say, "It beats working."  But I am here to report that golf is frustrating and difficult enough when the weather is pristine, let alone when it's cold, windy, and rainy. 

These last two rounds have given me resolve beyond anything mechanical or psychological. They've proved to me the length I must go before anything remotely close to good golf is played.  Hitting a 5-iron 170 yards with wind in your face requires another gear I simply don't have.

Yet.

To avoid the effect the wind would have on a particular shot, a "punch shot" is needed.  To this point of my quest I haven't adopted this shot to my bag.  But even with the wind at my back, I stood over a 160 yard, slightly uphill shot, and pulled out my 6-iron.

As I made contact, I watched as my ball sailed wonderfully through the air destined for the green.  When it landed without any sign of a bounce, I began to think that perhaps I underestimated how much the wind actually carries a given shot.

When I approached the green, I finally found my ball twenty-five yards past the pin, lying in the rough on the downward backside behind the green.  

Now in my readings on golf, many preach how important it is to forget about distance and instead concentrate on contact.  With this in mind I focused on the trajectory of my shot rather than the end result. (Perhaps I should have worried about my up-and-down because I left my "up" four feet from the hole and missed my "down" par putt.)

The point being that wind is a factor of the game, and unless you can learn to equate how much of a factor it actually is, you should forget about considering yourself a good golfer.  I don't mean this in a jaded way, but only that golf's elements demand that you play at your best regardless of the conditions.  Going out on a beautiful sunny day as opposed to a treacherous one separates the men from the boys.  

I used to think that because the rain had such an impact on my psyche when I played in it, I could never consider myself a legitimate golfer when encountering slippery clubs and sloppy lies.  

Now it's the wind disrupting my ability to see myself clearly.  

I'm sure I'll get some feedback on how to adjust in it—and for that I'll be forever grateful—but here's what I gathered from two days of averaging 35 mph winds:

I consider myself a decent golfer in nice weather.  But if Mother Nature doesn't cooperate, then my confidence takes a significant hit.

And with that said, maybe working on my confidence is where I should be channeling my energies.  

Hours of practice: 399

Click here  to join The Golf Blog's email list. 

Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.
Posted by at

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)