Final Update: I just wrote my thoughts on the Triple Crown winner American Pharoah in a comment, so I won’t repeat them here, but I felt the same kind of happiness as when Secretariat did it all those years ago.
As for Memorial, this tournament has the feel of one Justin Rose is going to win. I noticed that about midway through today’s round. I’m not sure what it was, but something made it seem like he was ready to take this one to the house. There’s still a lot of work to be done, and it seems like someone near the lead goes low every day, but Rose looks solid, and three strokes is three strokes. Let’s see what that oddsmakers think… Ladbrokes has Rose at 1-2, which equates to a 66 percent chance.
Phil and Tiger Break Par at Memorial:
Check my math, but I think that’s 1-under for their best-ball score.
This is NOT a Stupidstic: Jordan Spieth shot 72 today. Tiger Woods shot 85. Now consider this… Woods had a better statistical putting day than Spieth. (Woods gained 0.806 strokes on the field, Spieth 0.052.)
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2:30 pm Update
Yesterday… All Kelly’s troubles seemed so far away
12:30 pm: The Yips are Back in Town!
(I might have felt bad for posting this, but not when I think back to the deification of Woods by the golf media for the past fifteen years. A deification which continues to this day.)
11:41 am: Oh, my. A gallery member just shouted, “Nice shot, Eldrick…. Eldrick!” This is not going well for Mister Woods. DJ is -7 on the day. Blair was -4 before a double.
11:45 am: Golf Channel just said, “This is not the Tiger Woods we are used to seeing.” Come on, guys, this is more or less the Tiger Woods we’ve been seeing for darn near a decade. And especially lately. Time to say things like, “We can expect more and more days like this as Tiger Woods winds down his career.”
11:30 am: Throwing in the Towel
I give up. Updated Flash, updated video drivers, still crashing. I used to be able to watch live streams without the crashes. I guess they “improved” it. Oh, well, Golf Central Pregame is just about to start. I’ll watch them hang their heads and wring their hands.
11:o5 Crash Report: I could be talking about Woods, but I am talking about my PC. Another crash. This live stream is about as dependable as that new Tiger Woods driver Nike is promoting. Well, the new video drivers should be in place now, so here goes….
Leaderboard Comments: Hard to say who surprisingly ignored among top players. Hideki Matsuyama or Jim Furyk. Dufner getting a bit of attention; good to see his game coming around again. Patrick Rodgers is playing this week like I expected last week; he seems like a pretty sure bet to be, at the least, a solid Tour player.
10:22 am: Woods has 42 on front nine. One Live@ announcer said, “He didn’t make a single bogey on this nine Thursday or Friday.” The other replied, “Well, he’s certainly made up for that today.”
10:15 am: I have the stream up, so this post may disappear before I finish, but the Live@ guys just said, “If you are looking for a bright spot, he just hit two fairways in a row.” That sounds like something someone would say about my game.
10:10 am: My machine crashed again. Thanks, CBS, thanks, Live@, thanks Flash Player. Thanks for causing me to miss Woods blading one across the green. Oh, well, my team of experts has updated my video driver. I need to reboot, but instead of doing that I’ll just watch the live stream for five minutes until it crashes and automatically reboots.
9:30 am: Through five holes, Zac Blair leads Tiger Woods by three shots. My live stream has been up about five minutes with no crash. My fingers are crossed.
9:15 am: Back into the breach. Lanny H Golf stops at nothing to keep our customers informed. Our computer experts have just updated our Flash Player software. Now we will try the Live@ Machine Crasher program once again!
8:15 am: Zac Blair and Tiger Woods tee off in fifteen minutes. Here’s a look at their OWGR ranking trendlines:
And they’re off! I have mixed feelings about American Pharoah winning the Triple Crown. Part of me wants the dry spell to continue; I must have some kind of memory-preservation psychological thing going on. However, I read a short piece last night that will allow me to celebrate a new Triple Crown winner, should it happen, “CBS2 Exclusive: American Pharoah’s Jockey Looks To Higher Power Before Belmont Stakes.”
Cheyenne Autumn Fall: Yesterday’s exploitation of Cheyenne Woods showed Golf Channel’s classlessness. They made a huge deal out of her good opening round. I mean a HUGE deal. It was weird. I like Cheyenne Woods; she has a bubbly personality; I don’t like feeling a touch of joy because she played poorly on the second day. Is Golf Channel trying to foster a wave of “haters” who will cheer Cheyenne Woods’s failures?
That’s no way to watch golf. I have firsthand experience in the person of Brandt Snedeker. Because of the Euro Seven thing, I found myself pulling against Snedeker, who happens to be one of the nicest, classiest, most decent guys on Tour. I let jalnichols (and myself) force me to pull against Sneds. I didn’t enjoy it. Golf Channel, for all their surface joviality, is sowing the seeds of great negativity when it comes to Cheyenne Woods. She deserves better.
Greatest Shot in Golf History: We loyal Golf Channel viewers know the greatest shot in golf history was struck yesterday at Muirfield Village. Tiger Woods got up and down from 40 yards to make the cut — changing golf history for all time.
Porter Waggoner and Tiger Parton: There has been recent discussion of Kyle Porter, CBS Golf’s pride and joy. Porter seems to work Tiger Woods into nearly every headline/article he writes. I maintain he’s trolling. Case in point: Today I encountered an article where he casually referred to Tiger Woods as the “greatest golfer of all time.” The idea there is to get someone to comment, “Porter, you suck, Woods isn’t the greatest, it’s Jack Nicklaus.” Then someone will respond to that with, “You can’t handle the truth. Woods’s winning percentage makes Jack look like a fag.” Others join in. They all leave comments, then check back to see if they got a response. The view count climbs.
If Porter hadn’t written “greatest golfer of all time,” it would have been crickets and tumbleweeds. That’s why you’ll find one or more of these comment triggers in pretty much every article Porter writes.
Lanny H Golf 
Since most people don’t have much in-depth info about horse racing, they will put their money on the favorite…The odds are VERY high for most of the other horses……Since alot of sports are rigged, I’m sure the horses got together and decided the split the oats evenly, regardless of who wins…
Which announcer drew the short straw to cover Eldrick and friends on the ‘featured group’ today…Having to wax poetic about very average golf for 4 hours must be really exciting to do…
Cheyenne’s sudden coverage puts NBC as the MOST rigged network of the year……Again, why is EVERY featured group the SAME group? It’s actually comical since that means you aren’t golfing well…..Guess they don’t pick the group out of a hat….
The greatest shot of all time, prior to yesterday’s up-and-down, has recently been portrayed as Woods’ chip in on #16 at the Masters. Since Stevie the caddie with tunnel vision who saw only golf and not PEDs or sexual affairs has been talking a lot, this has been all over what passes for the golf media. That was a great shot, no doubt. One of the big reasons that it was so memorable was the great camera angles and Verne’s call. But greatest shot of all time? Really?
So much for Watson getting out of the deep rough at Pebble in 1982. So much for Mize winning the Masters on a long chip-in. So much for Sarazen’s 235-yard 4 wood to pretty well lock up the Masters. Forget about Nicklaus’ 1 iron at Pebble Beach in ’72. All arguably more difficult shots, all definitely as important when it came to winning. But no. No. Tiger’s chip-in on #16 was the greatest ever.
9:36 update: Tiger in a heated battle to hold off Ken Duke. And no one else. He’s one spot from the bottom.
His sycophants are now quick to count how many cuts Day and Fowler and others have missed in their careers. And how Tiger made the cut yesterday so you can see how competitive he still is. You know you’re grasping for straws when making cuts is a triumph. It’s late 1990s Seve all over again.
It’s good that he made the cut. The more exposure what’s left of his game gets and the more comparisons can be seen between Wood’s game and the games of the actual top players in golf, maybe reality will eventually sink in to his pathetic, shrinking fan base.
10:10: Woods now dead last. I smell WD brewing. I’ll go with “tweaked his knee.”
Oh, no, no, no. Infected blister.
How can you stand watching the live stream?! After back to back doubles Tiger hits a fairway with a driver and it’s “he’s found something, maybe he can fight back and use that experience in if not this tournament the next one.” Meanwhile, his playing partner is putting on a clinic and they say “he splits the fairway again, great start” and that’s it. Your computer is crashing in an attempt to save you from yourself.
I heard that, too! Coming off a 42, he hits a good drive, and the said that! “He might have found something!” I’m laughing now typing it.
Oh how I hope you just heard that discussion of the “more human” Tiger Woods. A classic.
“That drive was not as far off.” This is great fun!
Great fun, huh? You’re a stronger than I am. Now he’s got to play the last 6 holes in -1 to break 80. Tell me how they’re twisting it to be a good thing.
Lanny…your blog is on the move…you have more comments than Shackelford and his lame attempt to join the mainstream…keep it up!
Haha, it’s kind of funny. I never got my “Lanny H is Most Powerful Person in Golf” article written, but one thing I was going to show was the stats for this site when, supposedly, golf media was struggling. They’ve been going up every year, and are already past last year’s numbers this year and it’s still June. People WANT to laugh at what a joke Woods and the media obsession over him have been.
The live stream just crashed my flash player for the first time. It crashed when it was coming back from commercial, which is a problem I’ve had in other live streams. I think it has something to do with the banner ads that change to match the video ads. If I’m watching a live stream in a browser with more than one tab open it crashes coming back from commercial.
Ah…. I almost always have multiple tabs open. Maybe that’s my problem. I wonder if I should try it in it’s own browser with nothing else going…
Golf Channel is all Lingmerth right now! Too funny. Woods barely mentioned. No Tale of Two Woods?
Spoke too soon, now it’s the Tiger Woods failure hour. I’ve had the most luck with the live stream by itself in a completely different browser and all my other tabs open in my main browser.
Uh, oh, I’m probably doomed then… 🙂
I am using Firefox. IE got so slow for me (in general) I had to abandon it. I also have Chrome, but in the past, it made no difference if I used that — still saw the crashes.
Haha, oh no. Yeah, I’m using chrome to play the live stream and firefox for everything else. It’s not perfect. The stream didn’t crash my flash, but it did freeze bad enough once to have to refresh the page. I guess my lap top isn’t good enough for these newfangled live streams.
My machine is getting up in years. I plan to get a new one with the new Windows later this year. That will be the first time I have had a new PC and new OS in quite a while. (My last new PC buy was forced, and was not long before a new OS was released.)
Tiger’s Scorecard looks like mine!
Well if your scorecard is like Eldrick’s, you must be worth talking about too….We better analyze your swing for a really long, repetitive time…Do you have any video of your swing from 2000, so that we can do alot of comparisons?
Actually, at this point mine looks better!
Yep I’m officially getting my ‘BACK CAM VIDEO to the car exit’ ready…After Eldrick shoots a 82 round or so, then there just HAS to be a reason….It can’t be that he’s no longer on ped’s and not as good anymore….Maybe it’s global warming(which is fake too), or maybe a comet hit the earth and changed the gravitational constant of the universe….ANYTHING…There HAS TO BE AN EXCUSE, and the golfh channel is going to find out, be rest assured…..
I need constant analysis after that…I need shot by shot of the meltdown…I need Charlie Rymer talking jibberish….I NEED IT, darn it!!!!!! PLEASE GIVE US WHAT WE NEED…..I want a 4 hour, heck a 24 hour special on THE STATE OF ELDRICK’s game”……where’s my pills….oh I shouldn’t have typed about my pills…um…well this is awkward….um…well..
And Brandel talking about the problem being nothing more than his current coach, and that, by golly, Butch would straighten him out in 30 minutes.
You really to wonder what happens at the US Open if Woods hits these same tee shots. Does he break 85? 90?
When does La Cava jump this ship?
I was wondering about that today while watching the live stream (in between reboots). I wondered if maybe he is on a straight salary.
Players are going to have fewer putts when they don’t hit greens. Tiger’s strokes gained in putting were more than offset by his strokes lost tee to green.
Well, the strokes gained/lost stat takes all of that into consideration. The strokes lost tee-to-green was my point. His poor showing wasn’t magnified at all by bad putting. His putting was, by that stat, slightly better than average. Yesterday, he was +4 last I saw, and on Thursday, he was +2.
In other words, that 85 was not “the worst possible score I could have had.” It was indicative of his play.
I get -1 too.
I can’t wait to see who the ‘featured group’ is tomorrow….Gee, who could it be……
I hesitate in making this comment but, I think I could have shot an 85 out there today.
Haha, well, I know I couldn’t have. Last time I was at the range, my swing felt like Joe Namath’s looks in that commercial.
This just in. A debilitating toenail fungus has caused the former number one to withdraw. I’ve heard that can really ruin your swing.
Watching the pre-game to the Belmont, and thought—why don’t they have Kelly Tilghman and Charlie Rymer do this race? We’d get to hear how the horse has an, um, Tiger like poise or stare….Charlie would say how the American Pharoah horses confidence reminds him of the 2000 Pebble Beach event when Eldrick played, ect, and so on…………
LOL — don’t give them any idea!
Well, I see the interview questions in horse racing are just as inane as in golf… How does it feel to finally… What does this mean to… Just how happy are you…
I’m glad to see American Pharoah do it. I’ve had mixed emotions in some past attempts, because I remember the Secretariat/Seattle Slew/Affirmed era, but it’s been an even longer wait than it was for Secretariat. This was a good thing and my heart was pounding as the other horses tried to make a run off the final turn.
yeah the ‘how do you feel’ questions 10 different ways is really, really, really original….At least they didn’t ask the horse how he felt…..
Haha, give them a few years to think of that.
Lanny, do you remember the great horse Spectacular Bid? 1979, I think.
That was the Belmont that broke my heart. Loved Bid.
I sure do. I got Sports Illustrated back in those days (that was a very big deal to me) and I read the articles on the horse races in the spring. Quite a number of them made the cover.
I just remembered one from that era that made me very sad to recall: Ruffian.
Sitting here reflecting, you could make a case for the 60’s-70’s as the golden age of sports. The Olympics still meant something. Muhammad Ali. Connors back when tennis was a national obsession. Bobby Riggs and Margaret Court/Billie Jean King. The birth of jogging. The birth of the Super Bowl and NFL taking off like crazy, with Monday Night Football (with its weekly highlights at halftime, and the pregame show was the two minutes before the kickoff). Nicklaus, Arnie, of course. Maybe it’s rosy remembrance, but it sure seems like there was more going on, and it wasn’t as forced and bogus and corporate. Now it seems there is way more sizzle than steak.
American Pharoah winning the Triple Crown made me all nostalgic!
Another article on Golf Digest about why we still care about Tiger has 95% of the comments saying “Who is this we? We stopped caring a long time ago, move on already.” It’s amazing, I don’t think I’ve ever watched a horse race in my life, but when I watched American Pharaoh win today I felt the weight of it. Is that how people used to feel about Tiger?
Oh, man, I just went and read that. That’s such obvious trolling. That’s like writing, “Why We All Think O.J. Didn’t Do It.” You KNOW people will react.
Plus, if they are going to write such an article, how can they not suggest that people watch him because they like to see cheats and jerks and phonies get their comeuppance. The golf media has vacated journalism, if you ask me. I think golf is about to take off, but it’s going to be with a new wave of golf reporters.
well said Lanny…and the 60s-70s was the last era before cheating became rampant…the honor left sports and big money and PEDs took over…