Monday, November 16, 2009

Michelle Wie - The Next Tiger Woods?

It was a busy weekend and I allowed work, family obligations, SO obligations and football to get in the way of my golf game. I do have games lined up at Phoenix Country Club (if the club allows me in) and Arizona Country Club over the next ten days so I am hoping to improve on my recent scores. I did get to the driving range for an hour on Saturday and Sunday and as usual I was striping the ball right down the middle! In addition to all of the other swing thoughts muddling my brain, I tried to swing a little inside on the backswing and swing out toward second base, per instructions from Chad Feldheimer. I was hitting the ball in the middle of the club with a nice little draw. Now, if only I could take that to the course.

As of this morning, there was no decision from the judge on the Doug Barron case. The second round of the Q-School begins Wednesday. The PGA is denying Barron access to the course or practice facility pending the court's ruling.

Tiger Woods won the JBWere Masters in Melbourne, Australia and the Australian government, which paid half of Woods' $3 million appearance fee, claims that the economic return was $20 million. Over 100,000 people attended the 4-day tournament in person and the Australian television audience averaged 440,000 viewers per day, a 92% increase from the previous year. The winning prize money was only $250,000, but Tiger played like it was a major. There is no question that you get your money's worth with Tiger. There was an incident in the third round after Tiger hit another wayward drive. The television cameras did not catch the entire incident and the announcers were saying that Tiger flung his club into the gallery, but I think that he flung it into the ground and it bounced into the gallery (which is not to excuse his action). Luckily no one was hurt and Tiger apologized to the gallery.

Michelle Wie finally won an LPGA Golf Tournament! It was her 65th LPGA Tour event. Her Solheim Cup teammates seemed genuinely happy for her. It is hard to believe that Michelle just turned 20 years old. She first qualified for a USGA event when she was 10 years old and played in an LPGA event at age 12. The LPGA Tour needs its own Tiger Woods to add excitement and increase television ratings. Michelle Wie may be the answer.

David Duval missed the cut at the Children's Miracle Network Classic in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, and dropped out of the top 125 money winners on the PGA Tour. It looked like Duval would be the comeback player of the year after his second place finish at the U.S. Open earlier this year, but he missed the cut in seven of the last eight tournaments in which he participated.

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