“The Golf Guy Grill Room” plus 1 more |
| Posted: 10 Mar 2011 07:45 AM PST By THE GOLF GUY Posted: March 10, 2011 "Hey, bartender..." Like I've said many times before, a good bartender is not just someone that pours you strong drinks in a timely manner. No, a good bartender should be like a personal 'fun' assistant in a way: can talk sports, listen to you complain about your wife or girlfriend, make sure you get home safely, and, on occasion, be able to convince you when you've really have had enough to drink. Oh, and act as your bookie. Nothing serious, just some casual wagering on some of the bigger sports events: Super Bowl, March Madness, NBA Playoffs, golf's four majors and WGC events, Stanley Cup Finals, tennis' four majors, the entire NFL and college football seasons, and the Triple Crown in horse racing (I'm leaving off about 50 other events to keep this 'casual'). Anyway, speaking of horse racing, the thoroughbreds are in South Beach this week for the WGC-Cadillac Championships, and my bartender/buddy/bookie slid the following info across the bar for me to "have a look at - ya know, just for fun":  Gotta love G-Mac at 14-1 at the WGC-Cadillac Championship Martin Kaymer 9/1 Tiger Woods 10/1 Graeme McDowell 14/1 Phil Mickelson 16/1 Lee Westwood 22/1 Luke Donald 25/1 Nick Watney 20/1 Matt Kuchar 22/1 Paul Casey 22/1 Rory McIlroy 28/1 Charl Schwartzel 28/1 Dustin Johnson 33/1 Geoff Ogilvy 33/1 Bubba Watson 35/1 Ernie Els 40/1 Ian Poulter 40/1 Y.E. Yang 33/1 Justin Rose 50/1 FYI – Players in bold are my bartenders "suggestions" for the week in Doral. A Picture is Worth ... whatever it takes "Big Gut Larry was thrilled that not only could he finally use his cell phone at a PGA Tour event, but that he could also use it to call in an order of nachos at the nearest refreshment stand, as well as go to the bathroom all in one fell swoop." Random Thoughts... Being the Golf Guy and working for Golf Channel, I often have strange, useless dreams as I lay in bed at night. Like recently: I was on some sort of game show and Rich Lerner was the host. Instead of talking golf, he launched into his impressions of Christopher Walken. Which then led me to offer the following:
I Ask ... You Answer This week's poll question: Last week's result: When asked,"If you could choose just ONE of these players - Arnie, Jack or Tiger - to be on a Mount Rushmore of Golf, who would get your vote?" the readers voted for the Golden Bear (50 percent) over Arnie (36 percent) and Tiger (14 percent). Maybe not a surprise, seeing as Jack still owns the all-time major record at 18. The real surprise was the meager 14 percent generated for Woods. Maybe a victory of some kind will get the Tiger Train back on the tracks. Or maybe not.
Quotes ... From the Vault "This is a monster … a blue monster." – Frank Strafaci, Doral Golf Resort's first director of golf, who ultimately nicknamed the golf course after seeing the infamous 18th hole wreak havoc at the inaugural Doral Country Club Open.
Golf Guy's Time Travel Machine Since I'm not waiting any longer for Stephen Hawking to makes us a time-traveling machine, the Golf Guy is using his own mighty powers to transport us back - via a funny image gallery - to last year's WGC Championship at Doral. With a little South Beach thrown in for good measure. Stat-a-licious Since becoming a WGC event, the Cadillac Championship has been played 11 times since 1999 (it was cancelled in 2001 due to the 9/11 terrorists attack), and has been won by Tiger Woods a staggering six times. That said, Tiger has not won the event since '07. As for the other years he didn't win? A T-5, ninth, fifth, and a T-9 (DNP in '10). Woods has his work cut out for him this week to keep that amazing top-10 streak at this event alive. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Michael J. Critelli: Golf in the Next Generation: Internalizing Its Deepest Values Posted: 09 Mar 2011 03:30 PM PST On March 8, 2011, Gyre Entertainment, the film company we formed last year to create family-friendly films for the contemporary urban market, sponsored the NAACP Celebrity Image Awards Golf Challenge in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. One inspiring moment of a wonderful event was the introduction of a group of young people participating in one national youth golf program, the First Tee Foundation. First Tee is one of many programs formed to enable golf skill development to help young people build life skills. There are many other great programs, such as Midnight Golf in Detroit, Sticks for Kids, the National School Golf Program, the PGA Junior Golf Program, and the Urban Youth Golf Program. Like other sports, golf teaches discipline, self-reliance, emotional maturity, and a high degree of fine motor skills control. However, golf has the added dimensions of requiring players to respect nature, to play with integrity, to play with what they've got, and to recover from adversity. This last point particularly attracted us as Pierre, my son Mike, and I crafted the screenplay that became From the Rough. As I thought about what golf teaches, I was reminded of the humorous exchange several decades ago between Sam Snead and Ted Williams. Williams focused on the skill required to hit a ball thrown toward him at 90-100 miles per hour by a pitcher whose goal was to get him to miss contact. However, Snead got the last laugh by pointing out that, in golf, players have to "play the foul balls." Snead noted that, whereas, in baseball, every pitch, at-bat, and game is largely independent of every other, golf, like life, requires us to grapple with the consequences of previous failures. If we mishit a baseball into foul territory, we get a new pitch. If we mishit a golf ball, we must work ourselves out of trouble. Golf implicitly teaches young people to be resilient in working themselves out of tough situations into which their previous decisions or actions have put them. Life works that way, and the emotional maturity required to do that makes everything young people do in adult life a lot easier. Playing from the rough also requires other life skills. For example, the Bermuda grass prevalent in the Southeastern U.S. courses on which Coach Starks' Tennessee State teams competed in From the Rough is so hard and thick that the golfer must sacrifice distance to insure a more playable lie. Playing golf from the rough requires patience and planning, in addition to emotional resilience. Sometimes, when we hit a difficult point in life, we have to slow down, regroup, accept more modest forward progress, and even take significant time to reinvent ourselves before we can move forward. In all our lives, we are figuratively hitting from the rough at times. Internalizing this lesson in youth golf programs is an extremely valuable attribute of these programs. Playing from the rough also requires creativity. Elite golfers change their swing and their plan of attack. They might have to hit a shot higher in the air, to hit a shot that hooks or slices around an obstacle in order to cope with the consequences of hitting from the rough toward the hole. This requires a more creative assessment and execution than would be the case if everything went well. This, too, is a valuable life skill. What I most like about engaging young people in golf programs is that they are more likely to stay with the sport as an adult, and to be able to take advantage of the relationship-building opportunities it will give them. Hanging out with a playing partner or a foursome for 4-5 hours is a great way to get to know people in ways unlikely to be duplicated outside the golf course. We may not choose to use golf as a relationship-building mechanism, and, indeed, I have used it that way relatively infrequently, but having it available is vital for certain situations, particularly in bonding with non-U.S. business executives. I built a strong relationship with a business partner in India in 1999, and ultimately effected an acquisition of his company by playing golf with him at the Royal Calcutta Golf Club, the oldest country club outside the British Isles. The time to teach these values is when people are young, less fixed in their life path, and more receptive to teaching and mentoring. I commend those members of the golf establishment who are providing these opportunities. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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