For Christmas I received a Sports Illustrated daily calendar from Amy’s parents. Every day it has something that happened in the world of sports on that day and then an excerpt from a Sports Illustrated issue about that event. Yesterday, the calendar marked the 1999 PGA Championship at Medinah in Illinois. This was the famous dual between Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia where Woods beat out Garcia by one stroke.

Woods was 23 and had only won one of this major’s and Garcia 19 at the time. The memory of that tournament and the excerpt provided from SI made me think about how much we all expected from the Spaniard. Alan Shipnuck (the author of the excerpt) made comparisons to Nicklaus and Palmer saying that Woods and Garcia would far surpass that rivalry.

Here we are, almost 10 years later and Woods has become far and away the most dominant player in the world, and well on his way to proving he is the best ever. Garcia still in many respects seems like that 19 year old trying to prove to the world, or at least America, that he belongs. Garcia has found success on the European tour, but has constantly faltered playing here in the states and in the British Open.

Like so many others before him and since Garcia never really rose to the challenge of Tiger Woods. Garcia didn’t enjoy the horrendous collapse that David Duvall did when he tried to challenge Tiger for the number 1 spot. Nor is he like Vijay Singh, who has aged out of contention on a week to week basis. Garcia just faded into the noise of the PGA crowd, always clamoring to break into that top echelon, but it always being just out of his reach.

Garcia almost redeemed himself at the PGA Championship this year, but Padriag Harrington stormed back on Sunday overtaking Garcia, once again leaving him just outside the winner’s circle. Though he has never challenged Woods in a major a second time, this year’s PGA was not the first time he fell at the hands of Harrington. In the 2007 British Open Garcia lost a 4-hole playoff by one stroke.

In the end, the tale of Sergio Garcia will sound a lot like what will Michelle Wie’s story. So much talent, so young but forever beaten by their own ego and emotion. Never will they achieve the greatness promised to America in their teenage years.

Well it has been a month since the last time I wrote on TSPN or TNSPN. I guess I need to go down and get some quick hits in so I can get caught back up to real time.

There have been 2 majors in golf, the British Open and the PGA Championship, both won by the same man, whose name doesn’t start with a ‘T’ and end in an ‘iger’. Padraig Harrington came back from injury to defend his British Open crown, putting him into the category of multiple major winners. Less than a month later, Harrington put away Sergio Garcia at Oakland Hills. Harrington is quickly putting together a great year, he also finished fifth at the Masters and is fourth on the money list (though less than $300k separates him from being number 2 behind only Woods). Harrington stands at third in the World Golf rankings, though with how Mickelson has faltered over the past year or two, you could easily slide in Harrington ahead of him. If Tiger Woods doesn’t win player of the year, it will hands down be Harrington.

The Major League Baseball trade deadline came and went. There was a flurry of trades in the last week before the deadline that shifted several future hall of famers. Manny Ramirez, Ken Griffey Jr, and Ivan Rodriguez all changed uniforms before the beginning of August. That is all not mentioning CC Sabathia, Mark Texeria and Rich Harden, which were by no means small moves. How much these trades mean in the end will be seen…well in the end. The only player out of those who doesn’t seem likely to play in the post season is Pudge, as the Yankees are 9 games out of the divisional lead and 6 games back in the wild card. Sabathia could prove to be the biggest “get” of them all, he is 7-0 since going to the Brewers with an ERA under 2, and he has 4 complete games in eight starts. The last stat is a sign that the Brewers probably don’t have much of an intention to sign him in the off season; it will be fun to watch the bidding for his services sky rocket.

The NFL started the pre-season. I am not really into the pre-season, but it is nice to see football back. Sometime around April I seem to forget how much I like football until this time of year, now I am itching to see some. The Brett Favre thing happened; I really don’t want to get into it other than to say everyone behaved ridiculously. The Ravens trotted out their first round pick; quarterback Joe Flacco (who I will continue to call Falco). Joe made a poor showing in his first appearance, it was probably good for him to get out there, but also a nice reminder that there are worse things than Kyle Boller (for example Kyle Boller a few years ago).

Lastly the Olympic Games kicked off in Beijing. I have actually enjoyed watching the games a little more this year than in the past few. I am not really sure why, maybe it is the HD, who knows. Michael Phelps has not disappointed, he may not get all 8 of his medals, but he now has the record for career gold medals. He is still a young man too, he could come back in four years and win a few more. Fellow Baltimore swimmer Katie Hoff; however, has not lived up to expectations. I enjoyed it 2 years ago when Bode Miller went to the Olympics all puffed up about how much he was going to win and he so spectacularly failed. I feel bad for Hoff, but she had not been nearly as talked about as Phelps.

Seems to me the biggest stories coming out of Beijing are all about how the Chinese have blown things. From faking a lot of stuff at the opening ceremonies to the embarrassingly empty arenas, the Chinese have to be ashamed of how they are being seen. Olympic organizers are actually going out and basically hiring people to sit in the stands and cheer for the games. This is in addition to how the Chinese have also cheated, it sounds like they are allowing girls to compete in gymnastics at too young of an age. The rule is that they have to be over 16, and some of their girls might be quite a bit younger than that. Who knows what the fall out will be, but if the allegations are true, I would think they will be stripped of their medals.

Sorry for leaving you for so long. I will try to be back to at least once a week next week…though I have said that before…

While I enjoy golf, both playing and watching, until this weekend I had never been to watch a golf tournament. Though some find it slow, I really like watching golf on TV. I find it exciting to see the competition and really like to see these guys play, they all just have such control over what they are doing it is quite impressive.

My Dad got us tickets to go to the AT&T National down at Congressional for the Thursday round. The tournament is hosted by the Tiger Woods foundation, so when he bought the tickets we thought it was a good bet Tiger would be there, unfortunately that obviously didn’t happen, but it was fun nonetheless.

We walked onto the course at about 8:15, through the gate located near the fifth fairway, right as the first group was teeing off on number five. My Dad had gone through the list of players the night before so we knew who we would want to try to find once we got there. As we walked in they handed us a pamphlet with the tee times and a map of the course, so it was pretty easy to find the players we wanted to see.

It was great fun to watch these players, especially when we stayed at the same hole for a while. We watched number 2, from the green for quite a while and number 17, also from the green. It was neat to see how the different players approached the holes and how they all fared. Number 2 had a really tough pin location on Thursday, we watched at least 10 groups go through there between the morning and the afternoon, and I don’t think we saw a single birdie.

A few noted differences between golf and most other sporting events I have attended through the years. The first thing I noticed was with few exceptions the people who work there are incredibly nice and friendly. From the moment we got out of the car we were greeted by smiling faces that were happy to see us. There were a few of the course marshals that were clearly drunk off the power they wielded with their little quiet sign, but other than that everyone was fantastic. Also, the people attending were quiet nice and respectful, this did not surprise me much. Though there is no assigned seating or standing, there was never any pushing or anything to try to get position. People did drink, but it didn’t seem like anyone was drunk, or at least acted like typical drunk sports enthusiasts.

One other big difference was the players. Some did interact with the crowd a little, not talking or signing autographs per se, but acknowledged the crowd. I was a little surprised that there didn’t seem like there was much back and forth with the players. There was an occasional, “Good shot” or “Nice putt”, but that was about it, mostly they kept to themselves or talked to the caddies.

The biggest difference to me was how close to the action we were. There was little between us and the actual course. We were definitely close enough to touch the players, though I am pretty sure a high five would have been frowned upon by the tournament officials. It was really neat and you really felt like part of the action. . The only bummer was you couldn’t have a camera on the course (though I understand why). All in all, the ticket is a pretty good value, it was something like $30, but we got about 9 hours of entertainment out of it. The US Open is at Congressional in 2011, I am not sure if we will be able, but I think it would be a lot of fun to be there for that.

I had planned to stay out of commenting on this past weekend’s US Open. I really don’t have much to say that hasn’t been said a lot, but I have to some where, out loud for the record ask the following question:

Could Tiger Woods be any more dominate?

Just when you think his performance at Torrey Pines was impressive he comes out on Wednesday and announces that is was miraculous. Coming back and walking a full 18 holes on Thursday for the first time since the Masters was impressive enough. Winning the US Open on the 19th hole of a playoff was good enough. Collecting his 14th major title was good enough. But as we all know with Woods, good enough simply isn’t good enough.

No, in addition to all of that Tiger felt the need to increase the level of difficulty and play on a broken leg. Everyone knew he had a surgically repaired knee, but no one knew he had a double stress fractured tibia. By the way he is now also going to have surgery to repair his ACL, which will keep him out of the rest of this season.

I mean come on, at some point this just becomes embarrassing for all of the other golfers. Next time, I say in addition to crucial injuries, let’s blind fold him, and if he still makes putts we tie one arm behind his back.

So since his season is over, let’s recap 2008 for Woods. He played in 6 events, while having a damaged knee (he originally announced the injury after last year’s British Open). In those six events he won four of them, including the US Open, and at worst finished fifth at the WGC-CA Championship. He also didn’t win the Masters, though he was the runner up. In fact the last time Woods finished worst than 12th in an event was more than a year ago.

Woods leaves the season first on the money list, though everyone else in the top seven has played in at least 8 more events. He is ranked number one in the world, and by a large margin. Though the points are incredibly hard to understand, which is clear is that his points average is more than double number 2 on the list (Phil Mickelson) and more than four times that number 3 (Adam Scott).

Also, for those who want an update, since Tiger’s big drought of major titles (2003, 2004) he has been on fire. In the 16 majors since the start of 2005, Woods has finished in the top-10 12 times with 6 wins. At this point, barring an injury or some kind of tragic plane crash, it is almost an inevitability that Tiger will pass Jack. He will be 33 at the end of this year, which gives him at about 10-12 more good years on tour, though remember, Jack won number 18 at the age of 46.

I think I am out of step with the main stream on this one (surprise, surprise), but I don’t understand what the Patriots did that was so bad. The details as I understand it in the “Spygate” scandal is that the Patriots had a guy who taped the signals sent in from the sideline and then taped the play. The idea being they could figure out what the signs are and know what play is coming. They are on the right side of this one; I do not think they crossed the line.

First of all, the reason that the defensive coordinator (or whoever it may be) gives signals rather than holding up a big sign that says the play is to try to do it without the other team knowing. The reason the signs are so complicated is to try to throw the other team off, so if you can’t come up with something deceptive enough than that is your fault not the fault of the team trying to figure out your signals. To me it is a lot like a runner on second in a baseball game. It is on the catcher and pitcher to try to communicate coded enough for the runner and batter not to be able to do anything about it.

I guess I liken the “Spygate” taping to playing cards. If you hold your cards far out in front of you and the people at the table can see your cards, it isn’t their fault. If a player glances over and can see your cards that is not their fault. It isn’t like the Patriots were leaning way back in their chair or looking in a mirror to see the other teams cards if you allow the analogy to continue.

More than all of that though, I still do not understand what business it is of Congress to do anything about this. I understand that the professional sports leagues enjoy some monopoly excuses from law makers, but I don’t understand why they care about video taping football games.

The steroid business was grandstanding, but I could at least accept that there were some greater health concerns for children. Baseball players using steroids does have an influence on kids and I can buy that the welfare of our children is the business of Congress. Keeping football fair; however, has nothing to do with their powers. The NFL investigated the matter and I think has dealt with what is necessary, in fact I think it was a little heavy handed with its punishment. Now the book is closed on this, Congressional Grandstanding not withstanding.

Spygate: Over!

By the way: Happy Birthday Dad.