Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Bubble players take center stage at Wyndham

Bubble players take center stage at Wyndham

AP - Sports
Bubble players take center stage at Wyndham
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GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) -- For Padraig Harrington and the rest of the players on the bubble, the PGA Tour's postseason starts this week at the Wyndham Championship.
A strong showing in the tournament that starts Thursday could propel them into the FedEx Cup playoffs. But a rough week in central North Carolina, and they can forget about the postseason.
''There is a different sort of feel to it ... and your preparation is different,'' Harrington said. ''It's definitely a distraction in it, and yeah, maybe on Sunday if I'm right in the bubble coming down the stretch. ... Starting off as well on Thursday, you could be a little bit cautious, because you're trying not to play your way out of anything at the start.''
Harrington arrived at Sedgefield County Club at No. 129 on the points list and probably needs to break the top 40 to jump into the playoff field. The top 125 qualify for The Barclays next week.
Only one bubble player played his way into the postseason at this event last year, and among the recognizable names joining Harrington outside the top 125 are Vijay Singh, David Toms and Davis Love III.
''All the work I do this week, it really isn't to be playing well next Monday,'' Harrington said. ''It's to be playing well this week, whereas at most regular events, as much as you're trying to play that well that week, you're always trying to get your game ready going forward, whereas this week has a finite end to it.
''If I don't play well this week,'' he added, ''it's the end of the season for me over here.''
There isn't quite as much urgency for past winners Brandt Snedeker and Webb Simpson because their playoff spots have long been secured.
At No. 3 on the points list and No. 7 in the world golf rankings, Snedeker - who won this tournament in 2007 - is the top-rated player in the field.
Simpson, the 2011 winner, isn't too far back at No. 18 on the points list and 26th in the world rankings, and another victory here could give him enough points to qualify for the Tour Championship, the final event in the four-week playoff schedule.
''Every point means something,'' Snedeker said.
Those two join defending champion Sergio Garcia for a threesome Thursday and Friday. A bad sign for Garcia: Nobody has won this tournament two years in a row since Sam Snead in 1955-56.
''It's part of the tournament, I guess, to see the history of it, but I don't know what the actual cause of it is,'' Garcia said. ''Obviously, I think that it's a very demanding golf course. ... Hopefully it will be nice to change that bit of history. The only thing I can do is go out there, hopefully play well like I know I can do and we'll see if that's good enough to repeat.''
Low scores certainly have been the norm for winners at Sedgefield.
The last two champions - Simpson and Garcia - finished at 18 under par when they won, 2010 winner Arjun Atwal was at 20 under and Carl Pettersson set a tournament record with a 21-under performance in 2008 in its first year back at this course.
Snedeker predicted a score of 12-to-15-under might be good enough to win here this year because the greens are playing faster.
''Last year, what got the scores a lot lower was how much rain we got and the greens softened up,'' Simpson said. ''I don't quite see 18 (under) being out there, but you never know with how good guys are playing. You get hot. But I definitely think it's more challenging than it was.''
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Follow Joedy McCreary on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/joedyap

Pepper welcomed back into Solheim Cup circle

Pepper welcomed back into Solheim Cup circle

AP - Sports
Pepper welcomed back into Solheim Cup circle
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PARKER, Colo. (AP) -- Never mind that Dottie Pepper's comment about ''chokin' freakin' dogs'' inspired the U.S. women in their stirring, come-from-behind victory at the Solheim Cup in 2007.
Those three little words nearly cost Pepper so much of what she had achieved over her distinguished career: Her reputation. The friendships. Her standing as America's heart and soul in the premier team event in women's golf, to say nothing of a future role as captain that had been all but preordained.
Pepper spent six long years in exile because of those words, uttered during the 2007 broadcast when she thought she was off the air. But after being coaxed back into the fold with a fence-mending move by current U.S. captain Meg Mallon, she is back wearing red, white and blue for one of the biggest weeks in her sport.
''Meg did something nobody else had probably thought of doing in the past,'' Pepper said Wednesday, two days before the United States begins the quest to regain the cup it lost to Europe two years ago in Ireland.
It was in 2007 in Sweden that Pepper became a pariah to the team she had led not so long before.
While doing color commentary for the Golf Channel, Pepper got frustrated watching the Americans miss putt after putt that turned a couple of likely wins into disappointing ties. Thinking the telecast had gone to commercial after one particularly galling miss, Pepper called the Americans ''chokin' freakin' dogs.''
Word of the insult spread quickly, and it turned out to be the fuel that triggered a huge American comeback in the rain and wind of Halmstad, Sweden. After the U.S. won 16-12, most of the talk was about Pepper, and how her inadvertently aired words motivated a number of players and captains she had once called friends.
''Hurtful, very, very hurtful to all of us on the team,'' then-assistant captain Beth Daniel, a contemporary of Pepper's, called the comments after the 2007 victory was sealed. ''Dottie's been there. She knows what it's like. Even if she said it off the air, it was ill-spirited.''
Though Pepper has never been known for hiding her emotions, or her opinion, the words did come as something of a shock. Pepper, after all, lists her 13 Solheim Cupvictories - more than any American besides Juli Inkster - at the top of an accomplished career that also includes two major championships.
In earlier times, she made it a habit of getting under the Europeans' skin. They once rigged up a ''Dottie Pepper punching bag'' to take out their aggression on the woman who went 10-1 from 1994 to 1998, when the U.S. won the cup three straight times.
Then suddenly, it was Pepper inflicting pain on her former team.
''The older you get, the better you used to be,'' 2007 captain Betsy King said in the aftermath of the win. ''You think you were perfect, and you don't remember anything.''
What hardly anyone knew at that time was that Pepper had tried to apologize almost immediately after she found out her words had made the air. The problem was that producers on the Golf Channel didn't tell her until six or seven hours after they'd aired. By that time, the story had taken on a new, inaccurate life of its own, including the rumor that Pepper had used an expletive to describe her one-time teammates. It took nearly five years to patch things up.
''It did hurt me,'' Pepper said. ''What hurt the most was that I went to the players that night and was told, 'We don't want to talk to you.' They slammed the door in my face. That's the part people don't know. They think I just blew it off.''
Shortly after she was named the 2013 Solheim Cup captain, Mallon set about repairing the damage. And it would take someone of her stature - universally well-respected and with an impressive 13 Solheim Cup victories of her own - to do this job.
''When I came home and listened to the telecast and heard how she said it, I started laughing,'' Mallon said. ''Because I know Dottie and I knew she had inserted herself in that match and that's what she would've called herself in that match. So I got it. From that point on, I felt like, OK, this is a little silly.''
It was no small thing, however, to sell Pepper's return to the American team - or to convince Pepper that coming back was in everybody's best interest.
''Meg told them, 'You need to know the facts before you continue to harbor all of this,''' Pepper said. ''That was a big deal.''
One of the deepest scars left from the affair was between Pepper and Laura Diaz, a player on the 2007 team who is serving as Mallon's other co-captain this year. Pepper and Diaz go back - way back - to when Pepper dated Diaz's brother back in high school. Diaz went years without speaking to Pepper. That relationship has been smoothed over, as well.
''I've known Laura Diaz since she was 6 years old and I went to prom with her brother,'' Pepper said. ''If you can't eventually move past that, then we're not very good people. Like I said in March (when she was announced as co-captain), the Solheim Cup is big enough to drive people apart but it's also big enough to drive people together, and that's what happened.''
Once considered a shoo-in as a captain someday, Pepper said she had ''grown content with the thought that nothing would ever happen with me in the Solheim Cup again.''
Now that she's back in the family, it doesn't seem impossible anymore. But that debate is for later.
For now, she's simply happy to be back.
''Meg has brought the team together and she deserves a lot of credit,'' British Open champion Stacy Lewis said. ''Because we needed Dottie.''

If Caddie Races Are Banned, What About 'Mashed Potatoes Guy'?

If Caddie Races Are Banned, What About 'Mashed Potatoes Guy'?

Yahoo! Contributor Network 
COMMENTARY | The Waste Management Open in its current form has been a hotbed for excitement and as a unique fan experience for more than 20 years.
Not only do the PGA Tour players in the tournament shoot obscenely low scores -- Phil Mickelson finished 28-under-par for the week in 2013 -- but the rowdy spectators at the par-3 No. 16 have become as much a part of the tournament as birdies and pars.
At this year's tournament at TPC Scottsdale, caddies started racing one another on the unique par-3 for some ungodly reason. What resulted was the funniest -- and unintentionally exciting -- spectacle on a golf course since golf carts. Golf fans both in attendance and watching on TV loved every minute of it.
Now the PGA Tour has decided to take Caddie Races away from all of us. Not cool.
What makes even less sense in all of this is the fact that the PGA Tour remains silent on a much more annoying and prevalent extracurricular activity as of late: the "Mashed Potatoes" Guy. This makes absolutely no sense to me, and it shouldn't to you, either.
On one hand, we have a group of athletic, able-bodied grown men choosing to make fools of themselves by racing one another with over 50 pounds on their backs for the enjoyment of fans everywhere. Their bosses -- the players competing in the tournament and who ultimately sign the caddies' paychecks -- don't seem to mind. Better yet, the overwhelming response to Caddie Races has been positive.
On the other hand, we have a select few drunk, disorderly grown men choosing to make fools of themselves by shouting nonsensical phrases at players milliseconds after a golf shot is struck. Is that still original if everyone does it all the time? Probably not.
What is the worst-case scenario for both situations? With Caddie Races, the worst thing that could happen is that a caddie trips, falls and injures himself while running to the green. The player would likely have to find another guy to carry his bag -- which shouldn't be a problem -- and everyone goes on his merry way.
The downside to Mashed Potatoes Guy is much more severe. Keep in mind that Mashed Potatoes Guy is only watching one golfer; other players on the course can be distracted by the shout at any moment. It also seems that the shouts are much more prevalent at major championships lately, which could be a huge problem should a player in contention become distracted mid-swing by a screamed food phrase. The spectator then gets escorted off the course, and, in the example of Augusta National, banned for life from every returning.
 From a side-by-side comparison, it would seem that belligerent shouts directed at a player is much more of a problem and detriment to the game than watching a couple of loopers take a jog. Yet, the PGA Tour feels differently. 
What am I missing here, exactly?
It seems as though the PGA Tour has completely missed the mark with this decision. Look no further than the post-PGA Championship feedback golfers like Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood and Tiger Woods provided in various forms about the persistent shouting they heard while playing the season's final major. Three of the biggest names in the game expressed their displeasure with the practice, yet the Tour remains mum and instead chooses to take away a fan-favorite spectacle that nobody complained about. Not once.
Golf is a game that has an image problem for many casual fans. The game can be seen as "uppity" or "elitist" while making a vain attempt at remaining traditional and true to its values. Yet, when a player the likes of the colorful, flat-brimmed Rickie Fowler or the loud, social media savvy Bubba Watson comes along and wins over a legion of younger fans, the PGA Tour welcomes the "fresh new look" with open arms.
Heaven forbid caddies start running amok all over the fairways. That would just be improper, wouldn't it? I'm sure Bobby Jones and Old Tom Morris is spinning in their graves.
Whatever.
Adam Fonseca has covered professional golf since 2005. His work can also be found on the Back9Network. Follow Adam on Twitter at @chicagoduffer.