Thongchai Jaidee leads Alstom Open de France: Live leaderboard
Alstom Open de France has kicked off at the par-71 Le Golf National in Paris, France with a star-studded field. The European Tour event, carrying a purse of ?3,000,000, is taking place with light wind blowing across towards the West,
which is forecast to pick up speed later in the day. Here is a quick look at the leaderboard.
Thongchai Jaidee smashed a score of 4-under par after fourteen holes to occupy the top most spot o...
07/07/2011
José María Olazábal pulls out of final qualifying for the Open
? Spaniard still in the field for next week's Scottish Open
? Top-five finish would be only way of playing in Sandwich
The European Ryder Cup captain José María Olazábal has withdrawn from the Open Championship final qualifying competition at Littlestone in Kent on Tuesday.
The 45-year-old Spaniard, who has battled with arthritic pains for over 15 years, has also pulled out of the French Open starting on Thursday, but is still in the field for next week's Scottish Open.
His only way to play in the Open at Sandwich now would be to finish in the top five at Castle Stuart near Inverness.
The former US Open champion Michael Campbell is among 288 players competing over 36 holes for just 12 Open places over four courses. He plays at Prince's alongside the South African Hennie Otto, who was the first-day leader at Royal St George's in 2003 and went on to finish 10th, and the 1993 Ryder Cup player Joakim Haeggman.
His fellow Swede Jarmo Sandelin, part of the 1999 European side, is at Rye, while the 1991 Ryder Cup player Paul Broadhurst is at Royal Cinque Ports.
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07/06/2011
Bubba Watson's Performance Very Oui-K in France
I don't toot my horn much on headlines, but isn't that one great? I think so. You can all send me $4 for that. Thanks.
Being a superstar is a tough thing. A very tough thing. You get pulled in all directions and are expected to be ON 100 percent of the time. If you're not, you get ridiculed, even if you're having a bad day. Nobody cares about how you're feeling, they just want their photograph with you or autograph or minute of your time.
So I understand how it can be frustrating. I'm sure it is. I bet a lot of the times, it sucks.
But that doesn't mean you can instantly turn into some jerk. I'm a little worried that's the way Bubba Watson is heading. The problem? I like Bubba a lot. I've spent some time around him, enjoyed the way he acted and his outlook on life. But that was before his three wins and booming popularity.
The latest story out of France, where Bubba is playing this week thanks to a $200,000 appearance fee, couldn't paint him any worse.
Here are the list of things he's done to piss people off this week in Paris, courtesy of Bernie McGuire ...
-- He said of the event, "I think this might be the only time I play in Europe. I miss my home." Umm Bubba, don't you know one of the four majors is over there?
-- Called the Eiffel Tower "that big tower." Called Versailles "the castle we are staying next to." Called the Louvre "a building starting with L." Called the Arc de Triomphe "this arch I drove round in a circle" and also "the arch way." He only needs to insult Notre Dame and the Mona Lisa to hit for the dumb American cycle.
-- Told a female reporter to "See my manager" when asked for a headshot.
-- Said of the tournament, "It's not a normal tournament ... there's no security."
-- Failed to give a ride to a fellow competitor from the hotel to the golf course.
Hum. That's not exactly what I call "making a good first impression."
Who knows how much of this is exaggeration and how much of this is totally true, but it comes from a reliable source and just isn't good.
Like I said over at Devil Ball, I hope Bubba comes out and apologizes to the people of France and some of the tournament officials. He does have a good heart, and is a good guy, but this sure won't make him a big draw over in Europe, and it's fairly important to get those people on your side. Remember, the Open is there ever year, and if you want to be a top player, you're going to have to deal with those fans in Europe for years to come in the Ryder Cup.
Speaking of Ryder Cup, does anyone know where they're playing it in 2018? Oh yeah. France.
Getty Images
Sean O?Hair?s wayward tee shot helped save a fan?s life
We've all heard those stories about a freak accident that ends up saving someone's life. A person breaks their arm, and when they go in for surgery, the doctor notices a far bigger medical issue that may not have been caught in time had it not been for the broken arm.
They're pretty cool stories that prove things do happen for a reason. If you don't believe me, just ask Sean O'Hair, who helped save a guy's life with a wayward shot off the tee at last year's AT&T National at Aronimink Golf Club.
Playing his last hole of the day in the final round of last year's tournament, O'Hair's drive on the 18th hole went off line, eventually hitting 25-year-old spectator Chris Logan in the temple, an injury that one could only imagine wasn't the way Logan had hoped to spend Fourth of July.
But as Philly.com noted in the story, the shot ended up being a blessing in disguise.
As emergency medical technicians hustled him to a nearby tent to be examined, Logan had no idea this would be the luckiest day of his life.
While checking him out for a concussion, a doctor inquired about a lump just below his throat and urged him to visit his family doctor to get it checked out. The lump turned out to be a malignant tumor on his thyroid. He underwent two surgeries less than six weeks after being struck by the ball.
Of course, the best news of all is that Logan is now cancer-free, and he even got the chance to spend some time with O'Hair during Tuesday's practice round.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is the first time in the history of golf that a fan getting pegged by a ball was the one saying thank you.
GolfTube: Tape delays, fun with Nantz, and Philly frustration
Sizing up the TV coverage from the AT&T National ... and away we go.
The final round of the AT&T National was a definite must-watch for golf fans. Nick Watney, Rickie Fowler and K.J. Choi were contention, giving the tournament more than enough star power to draw people to their couches on Sunday afternoon.
With Watney walking down the back nine nursing a one-shot lead, viewers at home figured they were in for a great finish. Little did most of them know that the great finish they were watching had already happened an hour earlier.
CBS decided to tape-delay the round, after a chance of showers forced tournament officials to move all tee times up. That meant when the network went live on the front nine, players were already well into the back nine.
This isn't the first time CBS has pulled this stunt before. It happened earlier this year at the Honda Classic, and rain never even hit the area. Who knows if the storms would have delayed the final round, but what seems to be the biggest issue of contention is that the network plays it off like it's business as usual.
As viewers, there's really nothing we can do but take the decision on the chin, and hope a friend doesn't send us a text or Twitter message with the result. Even still, the choice to tape delay the round is one of the more frustrating parts of televised golf.
There has to be a happy medium in there somewhere. Maybe CBS could wake up and figure out what it is -- a live stream online? -- before its viewership declines even further.
More follows ...
Faldo sides with Vijay's U.S. Open decision
Vijay Singh's streak of major championship starts ended when he failed to show up for U.S. Open qualifying. While some saw a problem with him skipping his tee time and not notifying tournament officials, Nick Faldo wasn't one of them.
"He decided that the qualifying, which it is tough when we get to our age; I tried it. The 36 holes is a brute to try and qualify. With as much golf as he plays, you can't blame him when he wants to take some time."
After that comment, it would appear Faldo's definitely on Singh's Christmas card list.
Tiger talks rehab for Achilles, knee
Getting Tiger Woods to open up on the status of his injuries is like trying to break into a Vegas vault with a toothpick; it's an impossible task that really isn't worth trying.
But despite the challenge, CBS's David Feherty tried anyway, interviewing Woods during the final round on the status of his Achilles and knee. The two are friends, so the questions didn't come with a Peter Kostis-like glare, but the answers we're Woods' usual style: bland and with little insight.
"Yeah, you think? I'd rather be out there playing against these boys," Wood said, when asked how much he'd like to be on the course. "But they're all playing well ... it's fun to see, but it's also not fun to see."
When asked about the injury and when he'd be back, Woods gave his normal response from earlier in the week.
"Well, I don't know yet," Woods said. "That's the hard part; as I mentioned earlier this week, I'm taking it one day at a time. I still haven't hit balls yet, so I'm just trying to get the leg right so I can."
Feherty made one valiant effort at the very end of the interview to nail Woods down to a specific return date, but he received another generic answer. Regardless of Woods' responses, credit goes to Feherty for trying to conduct an interview with one of the worst interviewees in the game.
Beaned and beautiful
Nick Watney may have won by two shots, but he can still thank an innocent bystander at the tournament for giving him a little help in the final round. Teeing off on the par-4 12th hole, Watney's tee shot hit a fan in the forehead, before bouncing 25 yards back into play.
CBS's camera crews caught the moment on tape and replayed it, which led to a ho-hum comment from Jim Nantz: "It looks like the ball bounced and caroms back into play. A big break for our leader."
"It looks like it hit a fan and bounced back into the fairway." Feherty noted, as cameras showed the guy and the bruise on his head. "[Watney] should autograph that bruise."
Hard as is it to believe, the guy with the bruise was in good spirits and smiling for the camera. No doubt about it, guys from Philly are tough as nails.
Fun with Jim Nantz
Leave it to Nick Faldo to produce the best one-liner of the week. Talking about the Fourth of July crowds at AT&T National, Faldo mentioned a trip around the course earlier in the week that proved how popular this tournament is becoming in the Philadelphia area.
"It really is a great atmosphere out here. I tried to tour the golf course, and the spectators were so inconvenient they were in my way when I was trying to cart it right," Faldo jokingly said.
"How rude of them," Terry Gannon said. "Didn't they know who you were?"
"Well I was driving Jim Nantz's cart," Faldo said.
Unfortunately, there wasn't a rim-shot following Faldo's comment. What a letdown.
High praise for the Golden Era
Like most of the field at Aronimink, the talking heads were raving about the course in Newtown Square, Pa., as one of the best tracks on the tour schedule. Count Nick Faldo as a big fan of the course's renovation that turned back the clock and brought a number of old-school features to Aronimink.
"I love the Golden Era of the great architects designing courses during the late '20s," Faldo said. "And also, I admire the golf clubs, a bit like Winged Foot, that have found original photographs of the golf course, from back in that era, and brought it back to that time period. Obviously length has been added to it, but I think that's fantastic that clubs bring these classics, these gems, really, back to how they were originally designed."
Split tees cause major headache
Aronimink's eighth and 10th greens made for an interesting final round. With the pin on eight playing in the back left, and the 10th green funneling shots off the back and into a collection area on the left side near the eighth pin, players had to wait all day to hit shots into each hole.
As CBS's Ian Baker-Finch said during the final round, it had everything to do with the delay on each hole.
"Absolutely," Baker-Finch said, as the camera panned to show how close the greens were to each other. "Wouldn't it be great if it was a dual green surface, similar to the one at St. Andrews, where all those double greens add up to 18?"
Seriously? This was one of the biggest reasons the TPC at Las Colina -- the course for the Byron Nelson -- completely redesigned the fifth and ninth green complex that shared a green. It was a major headache.
Baker-Finch may be the only commentator in America who thinks shared greens are a good idea.
Philly frustration
Two days after players said Aronimink was a tougher test than the U.S. Open at Congressional, the track went in reverse on Saturday with a course-record 62 from Watney and a pair of 63s.
"After the scoring here yesterday, I think we're fortunate there are two holes on each green. Probably, you know, you could have gotten away with one," David Feherty joked on Sunday about the extremely low scoring conditions. "The members have got to be deeply upset."
That might be the understatement of the century.
Nick Watney blisters Aronimink with back nine 27
For three-plus months of the PGA Tour season it appeared the golf world had an answer to one of the biggest question marks coming into this season: If Tiger Woods couldn't continue to be the most dominant American golfer in the game today, who had the ability to pick up the torch and lead the way?
That golfer for the early part of the season appeared to be Nick Watney. Despite his quiet demeanor and relatively boring game, Watney was setting the world on fire with a win and five top-15 finishes in his first six events. But as soon as Watney started to look the part of best American, he quickly disappeared off the radar, finishing T-46 at the Masters and missing the cut at the U.S. Open.
It seemed like Watney couldn't handle the pressure. And just when he started to become an afterthought, Watney went out and hopped right back right back into the picture on Saturday with a mind-blowing back nine at the AT&T National, firing a video game-esque 8-under 27 on an Aronimink course that some players claimed was a more difficult test than the one at the U.S. Open.
The round included birdies on the 10th and 11th, and a Fourth of July fireworks display down the stretch, as he birdied four of his final six holes, also throwing in an eagle for good measure.
It was a brilliant back nine that allowed Watney to post an 8-under 62 that saw him soar up the leader board. But in the process of soaring up one board, he did the same thing on another, moving back into the picture as the best American golfer in the game.
He still has the final round in front of him, but if Watney can somehow find a way to hoist the trophy, that would give him two wins on tour, a feat only Mark Wilson and Bubba Watson have been able to accomplish this season.
Given Watson's current form and Watney coming on strong, there's a good chance we could be talking about Watney as the top American again on Sunday evening.
Erik Compton wins Nationwide Tour event, becomes ?a player?
When Erik Compton won on Sunday at the Mexico Open, his first ever win on the Nationwide Tour, he said something that really can only make sense to those golfers in the ropes week in and week out. He told Golfweek's Sean Martin, "I've played on sponsor invites, and people have always given me a hard time that I'm 'the heart guy' ... I got that monkey off my back. I'm a player now."
For those that have ever watched a professional tournament, or seen Compton, the two-time heart transplant recipient, hit a golf shot, they would be baffled to think of him as anything but a player. But he doesn't mean he's now a player, as in someone that can go out and fire a low round. He's now a player in the sense that he's accepted by his peers. From now on, Compton will be just another one of the guys, and lose the charity look and feel from his fellow golfers.
It wasn't easy for the 31-year-old, but heck, what has been in his life? This is a guy that was dealing with viral cardiomyopathy at the age of 9, had his first heart trasplant in 1992 and is now on his third heart, but still trying to play this game at the highest level.
During a week that was far from regular on the Nationwide Tour (more than 12 hours of rain delays), Compton was the ultimate fighter, a role he's had to play for most of his life. He stuck it out, posting a final-round 65 that put him ahead of the field by two shots.
Now Compton is heading to the PGA Tour for real. He is second on the Nationwide money list, and after this win, who knows what Compton could do with a full season with the big boys. Just know this, PGA Tour members: Compton is a player now, and he's coming for you guys in 2012.
