Welcome! Where are you, you ask. I’m calling this weekend 9. Think of it as a place to warm you up for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We will have thoughts. We will have advice. We will have tweets. But only nine in all, though sometimes perhaps more and sometimes perhaps less. But who am I? The following paragraphs tell some of the story. It can be reached at nick.piastowski@golf.com.
We don’t need Team Woods.
Because we still have Annika Sorenstam and son Will, who revealed this week that he recently beat his mother, a Hall of Famer.
And we still have John Daly and son John Daly IIwhom Elder Daly still fondly calls “Lil John,” though he is now a senior in college.
And we still have Bernhard Langer and his New York City businessman son Jason, who are sure to win this one. Again.
The point here?
This weekend PNC Championship is one of our major golf events, even without entry Tiger Woods and son Charlie, who had played in the last five PNCs but is absent this year as Tiger recovers from surgery. But that shouldn’t matter much.
Because we still have openings. We understand honesty.
The environment helps. The victory is nice in PNC, but so is the participation medal. (Friday, I enjoyed hearing this Nelly Korda was looking forward to seeing her father, Petr, a former professional tennis player, being “nervous”.) We’re also at the end of the year, both on the calendar and in the golf campaign. Things are looser. Everyone is also around the family. Things are less stuffy.
“You know, I started when I was 5 years old and I was immediately obsessed with the sport,” he said. “I’m sorry just saying that. Immediately hooked. Growing up in a small suburb outside of Cape Town, being able to watch major championships and PGA Tour events on TV late into the night because of the time difference. We’d record them on VHS and just play them and watch golf non-stop, professional golfers doing and doing those things on TV non-stop. hoping that one day I’d have the opportunity.
“The first Masters I ever saw on TV was the ’86 Masters, which is one of the most famous, and from that moment on, I was thinking to myself, OK, everything I do from here on out, the decision and the answer to the decision has to be: Is this going to help me get to the Masters one day?
“And so, I was very focused as a young man and the love was intense and deep and the fire burned very bright, and so I got good very quickly. I practiced a lot. My parents allowed me every opportunity possible to give me a shot at it.
“You know, I had a little grit, a little chip on my shoulder coming from the corner of Africa trying to make my way to the most competitive tournament on the planet and I got there.
“And then as your life starts to change a little bit and you’ve been on Tour 10, 15 years and I start to struggle a little bit, it gets a little bit tougher. It happens to everybody if you play this sport long enough.
“But that’s where that love really comes back to help you because at times, especially in my case, I was really beaten up after winning the Masters, injuries, out of form and struggles.
“You have to have that love, or you’re just going to roll over and give up. But at the end of the day, looking at it now from a little different perspective because of the role that I have now, everything that I have, everything that he (his son, Jacob) has, everything that our whole family has is because of golf, the PGA Tour, the major championships and, frankly, a better opportunity for America to be able to be the best players America’s good here.
“So that love is pretty intense, and I hope the people who watch me on TV on the weekends on CBS don’t fall asleep and hear that passion coming from the TV, because I really appreciate everything the game has given me.”
And here’s Immelman talking about nerves.
“I just found over the years, I don’t think you can control your nerves,” he said. “I think when you hear people say, oh, I’m just trying to control my nerves, that’s a complete and utter lie. We’re all human, we all get anxious, we all get nervous, we’re all insecure sometimes. Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason to it. It can happen on a 3-footer or a putt at any moment and it can happen to you at any moment. roll with it to.
“I just learned that — I always found it interesting that there would be times where I would feel super confident about a shot and a bad shot, and then there would be times where I felt absolutely exposed and thought there was no way I could hit a good shot and then I did.
“So I started asking myself, ‘Well, how much does it really matter how you feel?’ Just get on with it. Trust your training and trust what you have practiced. At the end of the day, if you give your best, then you’ll be able to put your head on the pillow at night.”
AND below it’s Padraig Harrington talking about scoring and hitting good golf.
AND below it’s Fred Couples talking a little bit about everything.
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No, we don’t need Team Woods.
Let’s see if we can find eight more items for the 9th weekend.
On Friday, Korda was also asked to name her favorite moment with him Lee Trevino. (Korda has played in five PNC championships, and Trevino’s appeared in each of them.)
“Just one line of it,” she said. “He’ll hit a shot or love the way he engages with the crowd and shares so many of his amazing stories. I mean, how many times have I caught myself saying, ‘Holy guacamole,’ every month because he says it.”
“It’s such a cool event because like I said, as someone from my generation where I get to play with the greats — like I mean, I saw Lee yesterday and he said, ‘Yeah, the left knee is all steel. I’m going to go next year for this knee.’ And he’s still here pressing pucks and playing the game he loves and engaging with all the fans and sharing his stories.
“I think that’s what makes this tournament so special, if everyone comes together from all different generations and shares their stories and plays alongside each other.”
A throwback to the week that was
3. If you are interested in the PGA Tour Form 990 from 2024, ProPublica has recently published it in its entirety and you can find it here. (A hat tip to Sports Business Journal Josh Carpenter for first distinguishing it.)
Another takeaway from the week that was
4. If you are interested in Nielsen viewership data, post below by Carpenter was good.
Here’s some year-end golf viewership data @Nielsen.
Among other things, he suggests the release of Happy Gilmore 2 in July helped with viewership around the FedExCup Playoffs, which were across the board. pic.twitter.com/ZhqAIce3IU
LIV events have not received OWGR points since its inception in 2022.
“When you look at the OWGR and how it’s made up of eligible tours around the world … it’s about meritocracy,” Immelman said of the Ferguson story. “That’s one of the beauties of our sport is earning your way into a tournament, fighting to keep your job in that tournament.
“And so it’s really been along those lines of working with them to understand their league from that point of view – meritocracy, promotion and relegation and just at the end of the day, the self-selection aspect of how their league is set up.”
A guide tip for your weekend
6. I thought the thought below it was good. It features Charles Howell III and is shot by GOLF’s Johnny Wunder.
A golf story that interests me
7. I thought of the memory below it was good. It features legendary instructor Butch Harmon and was broadcast on SiriusXM Radio.
Another golf story that interests me
8. I thought of the quote below it was good. (And LeBron, if you’re reading this and need more YouTube Golf videos to watch, here is a good link.)
Another golf story that interests me
9. I thought a story written by Tom Wroblewski of silive.com was good. It notes how golf balls have been found in Silver Lake Park Reservoir on Staten Island in New York.
But Wroblewski’s story also makes this point:
Silver Lake Golf Course is located across Silver Lake Park Road from the area.
This means that some golfers in years past have taken some pretty powerful swings, sending errant golf balls traveling over the golf course fence, along the parkway, over the fence surrounding the park and into the drink.
10. Let’s make 10 items! I thought of the picture below it was good.
What golf is on TV this weekend?
11. Let’s make 11 items! Here’s a roundup of golf on TV this weekend:
– Sunday
01:00-06:00 ET: AfrAsia Bank Mauritius Open Final Round, Golf Channel
11:30am-12:30pm ET: Final Day of PNC Championship, Golf Channel
1:30 p.m.-4:30 p.m. ET: PNC Championship Final Day, NBC
Another guide tip for your weekend
12. I still couldn’t play golf – but maybe I could caddy.
That was my thinking last week when I went to Las Vegas with some friends for a long weekend, which was four weeks since I had broke a rib in a car accident. I was good enough to do ‘Vegas stuff’ but golf was out of the question.
But then the temperature reached 75.
And a friend would play.
And the beer cart was in service.
i went I would help read shots. I would help choose the clubs. I would help select targets. I would cheer. Why not?
It was all interesting fun. By standing behind the ball instead of on it, you see things differently. Things also move more slowly. You only have to think, not think and react. The biggest takeaway was that I would play aggressively – but playing conservatively. With a little extra time, the safe plays were easier to spot.
;)
