The Golfchick

That chick blabbing about anything golf related.

Category: Pro Golf And Golfer Commentary (page 4 of 7)

The Wait is Over for Se Ri Pak

November 12, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Se Ri Pak winning smile

Se Ri Pak had all the points she needed to make it to the Hall of Fame three years ago, but she had to complete 10 seasons to officially qualify. Now the wait is over.

Today, the stellar South Korean golfer will be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame and the LPGA Tour Hall of Fame. Not only is she an incredible player, she has enriched the sport by inspiring countless young women in South Korea to take up golf and excel at it.

“In 1998, there was one Korean on the tour,” says Karrie Webb, an Australia native. “Now there are 32. That’s because of her. She is the face of Korean golf. If they don’t already know, they should know now how much she’s done.”

Congratulations to Se Ri on this much deserved honor. She is the definition of a winner.

Se Ri Pak trophy collection

Next post.

Justin Timberlake will host the Las Vegas PGA Tour event

November 12, 2007 / / 5 Comments

The Q-tip is at it again. Justin Timberlake’s name is often bandied about in the world of golf. The buff mouseketeer isJustin Timberlake lines up a putt often seen on the golf course and plays in Pro-Ams and celebrity tournaments, and with his six handicap has talked about wanting to turn pro. Whether or not that ever happens, now he’s found a way to be an official part of the PGA Tour without being a member.

Today, the Tour announced that Justin will be the host of its Las Vegas event starting in 2008, with a five year contract. Formerly sponsored by Frys.com, the event will now be known as the Justin Timberlake Shriner’s Hospitals for Children Open. Says Justin: “Raising money to better children’s lives while playing golf? I can’t think of a better way to pass the time.” Can’t argue with that – raising money for any worthy cause while playing golf is about as Pabstian* as it comes.

*“It doesn’t get any better than this.”

Naturally, JT will play in the event’s pro-am, but he also plans to host a concert during the week of the tournament. No word on whether money raised from the concert will benefit Shriner’s, but I’m guessing it will, at least in part. Which would make sense: “Music” for children benefiting children. Nice match, Justin. Congrats on your new gig.

Next post.

Paula Creamer destroys field in Alabama

November 12, 2007 / / 1 Comment

Paula played great golf this week at the Mitchell Co Tournament of Champions in Mobile, AL.

Creamer faced and frustrated a formidable field of all the top female golfers. She took a commanding lead in the second round and finished at 20 under, 8 shots ahead of Birdie Kim and 10 shots ahead of the third place winners Annika Sorenstam, Pat Hurst and Natalie Gulbis. With this win, she moves up to 3rd on the LPGA money list behind Lorena Ochoa and Suzann Petterson (who finished 9 and T6, respectively). I was surprised to find out she only won $150,000 for her efforts. Meanwhile, Phil Mickelson flounders and shoots a 76, but recovers to win in a dramatic playoff in a field with few recognizable names. Lefty’s prize? $833,000. Hrmph.

Paula Creamer Mitchell Co champion

The pink panther, possibly the cutest golfer on the LPGA tour, will take some serious momentum into next week’s ADT championship with its $1 million first place paycheck.

She has quite a fan following, and I wonder if the t-shirt scorers will head over to Florida to watch her play there. You know, the three grown men in pink t-shirts on which they kept her scores, tracked her birdies and professed their undying devotion? Nah, traveling across state lines would probably be too over-the-edge.

Congrats to the fuzzy pink kitty-kat and good luck next week. Now that you’ve won with that silly pink ball, can you put it away please?

Next post.

Telephone conversation with Annika Sorenstam

November 3, 2007 / / 1 Comment

Meet Sunshine, another kind of golf chick. Sunshine is a talkative African Grey parrot who lives with our friends Hugh and Keets. Evidently, he gets phone calls from professional golfers. In this video, we listen in on one of those calls. Every noise in this video comes from Sunshine. He does all his own sound effects, including the phone ringing, the pop-top can opening and the Nextel-like beeps. My favorite is when he makes the squeaky-shoe noises as he walks. He doesn’t reveal who is on the phone until the end.

Next post.

Annika Sorenstam : Classy as Michelle Wie : Brassy

October 10, 2007 / / 2 Comments

The ever astute golf chick Stina Sternberg put up a great post over at the Golf For Women’s Editor’s blogs about Annika declining a spot at the Samsung World Championship while Michelle Wie accepted one. I agree with her wholeheartedly and I couldn’t have said it better myself. I only add that Michelle puts the “I” in We (because I think I’m so clever).

Here’s a taste:

So let’s recap: the best player in the history of women’s golf decides to sit out a limited-field tournament to allow a higher-ranked player to take her place. And a college student with a season-best T-69–who’s not even a member of the tour nor has any plans to become one–decides to play despite taking a spot from a player of Natalie Gulbis’ caliber. It’s flat-out embarrassing, both for the Wie camp and Samsung. Sorenstam, on the other hand, just looks classier every minute.

Read the rest here.

Michelle Wie and Cindy Crawford

Michelle Wie – 17, lovely and set for life, she still has a lot to learn.
Yes, that’s Cindy Crawford.

Golf Annika's Way book cover

Annika literally wrote the book on how to play (and win) like a pro.
This should be on Wie’s required reading list at Stanford.


Next post.

FedEx Cup: Success? Tiger Woods: Sick.

September 17, 2007 / / 5 Comments

23 under? REALLY? That’s the golf course we want them to play for the finals of the first ever Fedex Cup?

Sure, that was only Tiger, and it’s not like he’s human or something, but the actual men in the field laid waste to the course as well a mere 8 strokes behind that. Yes, mere. Tiger’s ability is just sick, so it’s not fair to compare other golfers to him.

Of course he won the FedEx Cup. And the Tour Championship. And Player of the Year. With authority. It wouldn’t seem right to have any of those titles go to anyone other than the world’s best golfer ever. So in that respect, the FedEx Cup was a success. I know a lot of folks were rooting for Stricker to win so the $10 million bonus would mean something, and at least he earned himself the $3M second place annuity. That’ll be some decent retirement money at any percentage rate. But let’s face it – if Tiger “sat on his laurels” and decided not to win, the Fedex Cup would have been criticized for not delivering the true champion. It would have been weird to have the Tour Championship trophy go to one guy, the Fedex Cup to another and the Player of the Year to yet another. Weird and wrong.

The Fedex Cup will continue to be criticized for its other problems – like the fact that the winner only had to play in 3 out of 4 playoff events (and could have done it in two), and the points system, and the schedule, and the final golf course, to name a few. But if nothing else, at least the right man being won.

Tiger Woods Fedex Cup

Is this a human drinking glass?

Next post.

Natalie Gulbis blogs from the Solheim Cup

September 13, 2007 / / 2 Comments

Want a behind the scenes glimpse into what it’s like for the players of the Solheim Cup? Check out Natalie’s blog.

Natalie Gulbis and her mom at the Solheim Cup

Natalie and her mom. Photo taken by Morgan Pressel.

In addition to discussing the golf course and the play, she talks about fun details like:

  • getting dolled up for the festive events
  • the “cute outfits” they got and what they’re wearing on the course
  • fire alarms
  • jet lag
  • learning a new bunker shot (really?)
  • preparing for cold weather
  • practicing with teammate’s brand of golf balls to get a feel for them (as well as how the pairings might be based on how they play with certain golf balls)
  • the gifts they’re receiving from the captains and players
  • room decorations … and more

It’s a really fun read and so far she has posted every day this week. I hope she continues the pace and keeps us up to speed throughout the competition.

Each player was given a Canon Powershot camera and they’re all taking their own photos, which are being posted on the LPGA website as well as at the Golf Channel site. Here’s a shot of Morgan Pressel’s room:

Morgan Pressel's room at Solheim Cup

Now we can add blogger to the list of all things Natalie. Thanks, Nat!

Stina Sternberg is also on location at the Solheim Cup and is blogging on it over at Golf For Women.

The Solheim Cup coverage doesn’t come on here until 11 PM, but of course I’ll be Tivo-ing it and keeping up with the tournament as well as watching how the Tour Championship/FedEx Cup final plays out.

Thanks to Golfgal for the heads up on Natalie’s blog!

Next post.

How the FedEx do these Playoff points work???

August 28, 2007 / / 5 Comments

Okay, I haven’t paid that much attention to the FedEx Cup from the start so I’m a little behind, but I can’t be the only one!

I remember hearing or reading that when the FedEx Cup Playoffs began the points would reset. Silly me, I thought that meant to ZERO. Isn’t that a reset? I also remember that there are eliminations in each playoff tournament and only the top however many will advance to the next round. So, when I found out Tiger was skipping the first event, I thought he was essentially shrugging off forfeiting his chance at the FedEx Cup since he wouldn’t earn any points and would be eliminated. It turns out that after the completion of the first event, Tiger is fourth in the standings. How the fedex did that happen?

I just had to look it up, didn’t I?

Until now, I hadn’t taken any time to look any of this up but I always read a lot of golf news and opinions and what I’ve seen on the points system is so bogged down and confusing I tend to just skim over it. I just took a look at the “About the FedEx Cup” page on PGATOUR.com and literally shook my head and made that bleuhhbuhluhbuhluh noise. Of course, the reset wasn’t to zero, but players were seeded based on their performance during the “regular season” and reset with a different point total than what they had. Of course. Why play all season just make it to the playoffs? There has to be seeding. Without it, the top players would have to play in all the playoff events to avoid elimination and I’m sure they didn’t want that.

*Side thought* I wonder – if my Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim win enough games in September, can they skip the Division Series and go straight to the League Championship Series? Ah, the leisure of being a baseball fan: the most difficult thing to figure out is the magic number and home-field advantage. *End side thought*

Still, they got me – I couldn’t resist clicking on the “Fan Guide” link to find out if there was a simple way for me to understand it all. There isn’t.

Watch and learn?

I spent most of my golf watching time this weekend on the Safeway Classic and the US Amateur, but I managed to TiVo my way through some of the Barclays on Sunday to try to get an idea about how the wholefedex cup FedEx Cup playoff thing was working. They had a lot of graphics with projections like “if he makes this par putt, he’ll be at 102nd in the rankings… if he misses it but makes the bogey putt, he’ll be at 116th”… and on and on. Maybe that kind of stuff will get more exciting the further into the playoffs we get, but for now? Yawn. Double yawn for having to rely on behind-the-scenes statisticians figure it out and the production team to air it.

As the field narrows and if the points gap gets wider, it might be easier to predict parts of it ourselves. Something like “For Vijay to have a fedexing chance at winning the cup, he must win at the BMW and the top three guys need to finish at 5th or lower.” It’s easy to get excited about playoffs when they’re easily understood: if team A wins a game here and team B wins a game there, they will face each other in the championship; if Team C gets a touchdown and a safety and Team D scores two field goals, I win the pool. Hey, maybe we need a FedEx Cup pool!

Predictions aside, there’s also the trouble of possibly having two winners at the final – the winner of the tournament (hooray!) and the winner of the Cup, who finishes 10th in the event but has more points than anyone else (polite golf clap).

fucked up cup logo

I want to get excited about the FedEx Cup. I really do! But even the prize is confusing. I’m not a financial analyst and if I won $10 million in the lottery, I would need someone else to manage it for me. I’m one of the dumb-dumbs in the “if I made less money I’d take home more” tax bracket. I don’t understand tax shelters for multi-millionaires or how the FedEx Cup $10M annuity could entice Tiger Woods when he can make that in cash for an appearance fee. Frankly, I really don’t think I want it explained to me, either. Though I usually enjoy rooting for Tiger – or at least don’t mind when he wins -I think I’d rather just root for some obscure player to win the Cup, which might just be possible the way this thing works. Plus, that coincides nicely with the one thing that truly is exciting about this system, at least for those obscure players: Finish in that top 30 in FedEx Cup points and earn exemption for the next season. That’s gotta be less stressful than Q-School!

“The PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedEx Cup will change the way you watch golf and produce a true PGA Tour champion.” That’s their tag line. Will I glaze over and start to drool as I watch golf? Will the true PGA Tour champion be the best golfer on Tour?

The most exciting thing about the FedEx Cup playoffs for me right now is whether or not the FedEx Cup playoffs will get exciting. If not, at least I’ll have a new swear word. Stop. I. Can’t. Stand. The. Giddiness.

Next post.

U.S. Solheim Cup team captain’s picks announced

August 27, 2007 / / 3 Comments

Betsy King, captain of this year’s United States Solheim Cup team, announced her picks and assembled the team for a press conference yesterday.

Here is the team that will be representing the U.S. against Europe at the Solheim Cup in Sweden September 14-16:

2007 U.S. Solheim Cup team

Captain: Betsy King
Assistant captain: Beth Daniel
(The first 10 players qualified for the coveted spots automatically with their accumulation of Solheim Cup points):
1. Paula Creamer 741.00
2. Cristie Kerr 713.50
3. Morgan Pressel 532.50
4. Juli Inkster 512.00
5. Stacy Prammanasudh 483.50
6. Pat Hurst 449.00
7. Natalie Gulbis 412.50
8. Brittany Lincicome 396.50
9. Angela Stanford 372.00
10. Sherri Steinhauer 324.50
Captain’s picks
Nicole Castrale 277.00
Laura Diaz 240.00

History and stats

Beginning in the U.S. in 1990, The Solheim Cup has been played every two years, alternating locations in the U.S. and in Europe. It’s a match play competition with a format similar to the Ryder Cup. The U.S. team has a strong lead in this U.S. vs. Europe competition, having earned victory at 6 out of 9 events. However, only one of those wins came on European soil. Will the team Betsy King has assembled be able to make that 2 this year at the Halmstad Golfklubb in Sweden? Or will we have to wait until the competition comes back to the U.S. (Chicago) in 2009 for the next team to get that Waterford Crystal cup for America again? Trivia tidbit: Did you know The Solheim Cup was named after Karsten Solheim, the founder of of the manufacturing company that makes PING golf equipment?

The big snubs?

Of course, since this competition only includes U.S.- and European-born players, the world’s No. 1 female player will not be competing. Lorena Ochoa – who just captured her 3rd straight win(!) at this weekend’s Safeway Classic – will have to sit back and watch with the rest of us. So will Se Ri Pak, who recently qualified for the LPGA and World Golf Halls of Fame (and will be officially inducted in November). Back when the Solheim Cup began in 1990, Mexico wasn’t really an issue and the Korean explosion hadn’t happened yet. Even Se Ri didn’t hit the scene until 1998. A U.S. vs. Europe event might have seemed nearly all inclusive. While I’d love to see an event that was more of a truly international team match play competition, I don’t have a proposal for how to do it. I mean, Korea would be a force to be reckoned with but any team Mexico could field would essentially be a one-woman show. If we broke it down by North and South America vs. The Rest of the World, where’s the rivalry and National – or Continental – pride?

Christina Kim Solheim Cup

Speaking of National pride, one golfer who did have the chance to make the team but didn’t, is Christina Kim. Christina was part of the winning U.S. team in 2005 and dearly wanted to make the team again this year. In fact, at this weekend’s Safeway Classic, she seemed to be more interested in looking good for Betsy King than in the 2nd place purse she won (tied with 3 other players). She practically said as much in her on-camera interview when she finished on Sunday. Maybe winning that tournament would have caught Betsy’s eye, but Lorena Ochoa ran away with that prize, defeating all the second place winners by 5 strokes.

Still, the first captain’s pick for the team happened to be 11th place in Solheim Cup points and a win yesterday would have knocked Nicole Castrale out of that position. Of course that wouldn’t have guaranteed her a spot – Nicole might have been chosen anyway – but it might have been more difficult to justify. King’s second pick wasn’t about points, because Christina had Laura Diaz beat in that regard. Nothing against Laura here, but it also wasn’t about sponsors and ratings because I think Christina’s charm and enthusiasm would win that hands down. Diaz must have been chosen for her experience in Sweden (and in years) as well as whatever influence King thought Diaz would bring to the team. I’m sure Diaz has passion and team spirit but I’m also sure she won’t express it like Christina Kim does.

Calm and stability won out over buoyancy but that’s not to say that’s how Captain King made her picks. I’m sure she looked at all angles and made the decision she thought would be best for a cohesive team. I just hope it’s a winning team. And I feel for Christina.

Go get ’em, U.S.A.!

Next post.

Best wishes to Annika and her new fiancé, Mike McGee

August 26, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Annika Sorenstam announced on her website today that she got engaged to Mike McGee this morning. McGee manages the Annika brand, so I’m sure he’ll be fine when she doesn’t change her name to Annika McGee.

She said the engagement marked the two year anniversary of the first weekend they spent together. Two years ago today would have been August 25, 2005, which was three days after her divorce from David Esch became final. She filed the papers 6 months earlier so perhaps the weekend was a celebration. Now they have something else to celebrate.

The AP article that’s making the rounds on many golf websites points out that no date has been set for a wedding. Is that such a big deal? I don’t think too many people set the date the same day they get engaged. Give ’em a minute to enjoy it!

Congratulations to Mike on scooping up one of the best golfers in the world and someone who seems like a sincerely sweet person.

Best wishes to Annika for a long and happy life with someone who must be worthy.

annika sorenstam mike mcgee

Photo posted with apologies to Annika, Mike, David, Walter Iooss, Jr. and Sports Illustrated.

Next post.

Older posts Newer posts

MENU

© 2024 The Golfchick

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑