khandor’s sports blog

Bradley wins 1st major tournament

If you happened to miss this weekend’s PGA tournament, well …

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Keegan Bradley’s PGA CHampionship win ‘a dream’

Your winner of the 2011 PGA Championship left his rented townhouse Sunday with a batch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches made fresh by his mother, Kay. Just before he drove away, Keegan Bradley told her, “I’m gonna do it, Mom.”

“I know,” she said. “Yes, you are.”

And then he drove to the Atlanta Athletic Club, teed off at 2:30 p.m. local time, overcame a five-stroke deficit with just three holes left to play, somehow squeezed his way into a playoff and made the kind of golf history that lasts forever.

Bradley not only won the PGA Championship, but he won it in his first majors appearance. That’s not too big of a deal, except for the part where it’s only the third time in nearly the last 100 years that someone has done that.

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you missed dramatic golf history in the making.

Stirring stuff, to be sure! … even without names like Rory, Tiger, or Phil in the mix at all.

From 13 years ago …

When the Legend was cemented, forever …

Yes, sir!

Concerning the tragic fall of Eldrick …

Tiger Woods was the best golfer of all-time, for a period of 10+ years, because of THE WAY HE COULD WILL HIS WAY around a golf course in fewer strokes than anyone else in the game, based on his sheer mental strength and his almost inhuman capacity to DO ANYTHING HE WILLED HIMSELF TO DO, in any area of his life, not just on the golf course.

Once that WILL has been broken, it can never ever be put back together again, in the same way.

Woods will win again, if and when the time is right; but, he will never ever be the player he once was … when he had a supreme belief in his own ability to do the near impossible, time after time again.

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PS. The current time is 3:45 PM EST … and, Mr. Woods is -5 for the day, -10 overall, and just 1 stroke behind the present leader during the 4th Round of the Masters golf tournament, as he is putting for Par at the 9th Hole. Could it possibly be …

PPS. Yours truly sincerely hopes that it is.

PPPS. The Masters only begins, however, on the back nine, Sunday, at Augusta National Golf Club … the most theatrical 2+ hours in the history of sport.

Real Housewives of the PGA Tour … Headed to A Reality Show?

Well, maybe.

If a certain group of Tour pro wives can make it happen, a reality show based on their lives of golf watching, spa hopping and fundraising could be coming to a flat screen near you. Heck, you might even catch the ladies posing in swimwear, as they did during a recent photo shoot.

See photos of the PGA Tour wives who are looking to launch their own reality show.

“We’re the bad girls, I don’t know what else to say,” Liz Estes, Bob’s wife and one of the women pursuing the show, said half-jokingly in a phone interview.

Joining Estes in her quest for reality-TV stardom are Melissa Weber Jones, wife of Matt Jones and a former Miss Idaho, and Alli MacKenzie, Will’s wife and a model who has been featured in a pictorial in the men’s magazine FHM. (Leot Chen, Vaughn Taylor’s fiancée, and Erin Walker, Jimmy’s wife, who writes a blog about traveling on Tour, also partook in the photo shoot, but they said they have no interest in appearing on a reality show.)

The women have partnered with a Los Angeles marketing firm, Reverb Collective, and in its first major play to generate some buzz, Reverb has released some edgy photos of the girls.

“We were so careful not to do anything that would be offensive to anybody,” Alli MacKenzie says of the shoot. “We got a bunch of old Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues and looked at athletes and athletes’ wives in them and made sure we didn’t do anything that was more provocative than what they did.”

Liz Estes, an aspiring pop musician, is hopeful that the PR push will work and that the show will find a home given that production companies have shown interest in her and the other wives in the past. “We were approached by the guys who did Pawn Stars,” Estes says of the History Channel show about pawnbrokers. “We talked to them three times, but they never called us back. And then this guy from VH1 asked me to put a show together with the other girls, and I’m like, ‘Well, I’m not putting it together.’ ”

If a show materializes it would be golf’s answer to Bravo’s popular Real Housewives series, “but with a cool twist,” says Amir Amiri, Reverb’s chief executive officer. Amiri believes the time is ripe for a program about Tour wives given the swell of attention the Tiger Woods scandal brought to the personal lives of pro golfers.

“We’ve talked to a lot of [television] bigwigs, and they’re all interested,” Amiri says. “I definitely think this could work out.”

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From the perspective of someone who was reared in the halcyon days of Barbara [and some guy named Jack] Nicklaus …

Nuff said.

… at one of the game’s most venerable locations, looking back on 4 of the all-time great shots in golf history is like taking an exhilerating stroll down memory lane.

#4 Nicklaus’ 1-iron at Pebble Beach, 1972

#3 Woods’ chip shot at Augusta National, 2005

#2 Mize’s chip shot at Augusta National, 1987

#1 Watson’s chip shot at Pebble Beach, 1982  

Even “Hollywood” cannot script dramatic happenings like the ones which can sometimes occur in real life, given the time, place and specific circumstances.

The highlight of a very busy weekend in the world of professional sports?

… which included:

* The 136th running of the Kentucky Derby
* The beginning of the 2nd Round in the NHL Playoffs
* The beginning of the 2nd Round in the NBA Playoffs

What this fine young player from Northern Ireland accomplished Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoon, on the PGA Tour:

Best get accustomed to seeing his face.

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Golf’s changing of the guard

To see Irishman Padraig Harrington, grinning wider than an Augusta fairway, in his civilian clothes, waiting for McIlroy after the round, throwing a paternal arm around the lad, telling him he’d just crafted “a good bit of stuff”; to see stoic Jim Furyk give him an earnest soul shake by the scorer’s table; to see Phil Mickelson’s caddie, Jim (Bones) Mackay, interrupt a McIlroy press session outside to congratulate the winner; to see Rory himself give the Euro-styled “hands over head” appreciation clap to the crowd … to see all that was to see a golf world embrace the new kid in town, and to read into that the existence of a little Tiger Fatigue would not be the wrong call at all.

Throw in a springtime rebirth for Mickelson – he followed his win at Augusta by beating everyone at Quail Hollow not named “Rory McIlroy,” then gushed about McIlroy to CBS afterward, trumping Tiger’s post-Masters pout – and you have Tiger wondering where he fits in at this party.

A ready made “next” slogan for corporate giant Nike?

“Prolific winners like Tom, and prolific winners of majors are always going to have class, that’s why they’ve won so many … so, age is not really that much of a factor.” - Lee Westwood 

there is almost always A Way …

One-legged player amazes at Dunhill Links Championship
Simon Dyson was the winner Monday at the Dunhill Links Championship, but Manuel de los Santos may have made the biggest impression at the pro-am event, which is played on St. Andrews, Kingsbarns and Carnoustie.

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In Canada, this is Thanksgiving Weekend.

Enjoy yourself, one and all!

When you read the details …

Yang’s story captivates golf-mad South Koreans
Yang’s mother, Ko Hee-soon, said he was determined to leave their tough life behind. “When we urged him to go into farming, he would say, `I’m not going to live like my father,’” she recalled, beaming.

… it becomes an even more amazing tale of rags-to-riches.