Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Tiger and Phil

It appears that Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Geoff Ogilvy will be grouped for the first 36 holes at the PGA Championship at Medinah this week. The group has all three major winners (Phil-Masters; Ogilvy-US Open; Tiger-British Open) together through the first two rounds. Several thoughts:
  • Can you imagine what those galleries will be like? Forget trying to get remotely close.
  • Who will the galleries be pulling for? I tend to think they will be louder for Phil initially, since he is reprising the Arnold Palmer role; but if he struggles and Tiger continues his strong play, then they will turn toward Tiger.
  • Why did the PGA do this? Wouldn't make more sense to space the Masters, US Open, and British Open champs through the field? If nothing else, to speed play?
  • Who is going to win? While it would never surprise me to see Tiger win, especially at a course where he has won a major before (PGA Championship in 1999), the PGA is such a wild card among the majors (see Rich Beem, Shaun Micheel, Mark Brooks). It could be someone like Carl Petersson, who has been in contention in the last several majors. Another strong possibility is Jim Furyk, who has played really well over the past couple of months.
  • I can't see Phil winning--after his disaster at the US Open, he has played pretty poorly the last several times out (T65 at Western Open; T22 at British; missed cut at International). Still, if he rises to playing with Tiger and especially if he puts out a low round on Thursday, then perhaps he can get the mojo going. It just seems unlikely.

2 comments:

Mark Bates said...

Are you sure that you are a church history professor? NBA, Tom Petty, PGA Championship, baseball? You are breaking the mold.

Since you are sports fan, have you heard about "The Wages of Wins", it is a book by a couple of economists that try to assess teh true value of NBA players. I haven't read it. However, Malcolm Gladwell (author of Blink and The Tipping Point) recently wrote an article on it called "Game Theory".
It woulld give you more fodder for your post on "Why I don't like the NBA".

Sean Michael Lucas said...

Hey, Mark: I'm really a frustrated sports writer (that's what I went to college to be until I was called to ministry)! Somedays I can't think of good theology or history things to write about, so I end up doing sports.

That Gladwell book looks really interesting; thanks for turning me on to it! I read Tipping Point and found it really interesting.

Hope all is well at UPC! Best, sml