Hooked On Golf Blog

Good news for Tiger addicts, he’s playing this week in Shanghai at the WGC HSBC Champions, Sheshan International golf course.  Phil Mickelson and many other bigs will be there too.  So late in the season (snow has flown here already but melted) we can watch some good golf on TV this week.

HSBC Champions Television Coverage is on The Golf Channel:

Tony Korologos a.k.a. mediaguru European Tour, PGA Tour, Pro Golf, Tiger Woods Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, WGC

Phil Mickelson has confirmed he’ll be playing in the final major of the year, the 2009 PGA Championship at Hazeltine.  This is good.

Will the fourth and final major of the year have a big name winner?  So far, no big names like Phil, Tiger, Sergio…

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My hat is off to the Mickelson family after the news that Phil’s mother has been diagnosed with breast cancer, six weeks following Phil’s wife Amy’s same diagnosis.

Cancer is evil.  It took my beloved mother, a great lady, from me.

I send all my best Karma to the Mickelson family.

Here’s a link to a more detailed AP article at golf.com, but the article is poorly written.

Tony Korologos a.k.a. mediaguru Life Cancer, Phil Mickelson

Sports Illustrated has released a top 50 list of the highest paid athletes in America. This includes salary and endorsements. Hey, they should get together with Golf Digest since they love doing lists like that.

Anyway, Tiger Woods ($99.7 million) and Phil Mickelson ($52.9 million) are the top two highest paid athletes! Tiger has been #1 for six straight years. Golf wins over football, basketball and baseball! And the careers are so much longer. If I only could have taken up the sport earlier than 1990.

Here’s a link to the SI article but be careful. The popup ads are so pervasive they’ll almost jump out of your monitor and bash you in the head with a 9-iron. The ads are so bad in fact, that I couldn’t even get page four to load because they were taking so long to load. So I bailed.

Looking at these salaries and endorsements is interesting. Golf is the only “sport” other than Nascar where the “athlete” earns more in endorsements than in salary.

Tony Korologos a.k.a. mediaguru Golf Media, Miscellaneous, PGA Tour, Pro Golf, Tiger Woods Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods

St. Jude Classic
PGA TOUR
Thursday 6/11 3:30 PM – 6:30 PM ET GOLF
Friday 6/12 3:30 PM – 6:30 PM ET GOLF
Saturday 6/13 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM ET GOLF
Saturday 6/13 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM ET CBS
Sunday 6/14 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM ET GOLF
Sunday 6/14 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM ET CBS

McDonald’s LPGA Championship Presented by Coca-Cola
LPGA Tour
Thursday 6/11 12:30 PM – 3:30 PM ET GOLF
Friday 6/12 12:30 PM – 3:30 PM ET GOLF
Saturday 6/13 4:00 PM – 7:00 PM ET GOLF
Sunday 6/14 4:00 PM – 7:00 PM ET GOLF

Tony Korologos a.k.a. mediaguru Site News John Daly, Phil Mickelson

Good news on the Mickelson front.  It appears that they’ve caught Amy Mickelson’s breast cancer at a fairly early stage.  The earlier the better.  She’s not out of the woods yet and has more testing to undergo.  But the situation has lent itself to Phil returning to play for the US OPEN.

This is good for all involved and I’m very glad to hear it.

Tony Korologos a.k.a. mediaguru Miscellaneous, PGA Tour Amy Mickelson, Phil Mickelson, US OPEN

Fans either love Phil Mickelson or hate him.  Regardless of your preference in that department, I’m blogging to send my best wishes and positive karma to Amy Mickelson, who was just diagnosed with breast cancer.

Amy has undergone extensive tests and will undergo more.  Major surgery will be happening soon.  I wish her luck.  I lost my Mother to another form of cancer and it hits me pretty hard when I hear about people being diagnosed with it.

Phil Mickelson has cancelled his PGA Tour schedule indefinitely.

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Set your DVR or tune in, because Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Angel Cabrera and a whole bunch of other big guns are in action this week at the “Quail Hollow Championship.”

Quail Hollow Championship television coverage:
PGA TOUR
Thursday 4/30 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM ET GOLF
Thursday 4/30 8:30 PM – 11:30 PM ET GOLF
Friday 5/1 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM ET GOLF
Friday 5/1 8:30 PM – 11:30 PM ET GOLF
Saturday 5/2 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM ET GOLF
Saturday 5/2 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM ET CBS
Saturday 5/2 9:30 PM – 11:30 PM ET GOLF
Sunday 5/3 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM ET GOLF
Sunday 5/3 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM ET CBS
Sunday 5/3 9:30 PM – 11:30 PM ET GOLF

Open de Espana:
European Tour
Thursday 4/30 9:30 AM – 12:30 PM ET GOLF
Friday 5/1 9:30 AM – 12:30 PM ET GOLF
Saturday 5/2 8:30 AM – 11:30 AM ET GOLF
Sunday 5/3 8:30 AM – 11:30 AM ET GOLF

Tony Korologos a.k.a. mediaguru PGA Tour, Tiger Woods Angel Cabrera, PGA Tour, Phil Mickelson, Quail Hollow Championship, Tiger Woods

Lefties hitting right-handed, righties hitting left-handed…

Did anyone see Phil Mickelson’s right-handed shot out of the bushes with his club turned upside down? I rolled that back a few times on my DVR. While I don’t agree that the shot choice he made was a wise decision, it was impressive. The result wasn’t great and could have been a catastrophe if his shot kicked right instead of down. All that said, Phil’s right-handed technique looked picture perfect. It looked better than mine. Of course, all he’d have to do is look better than an 84 year old lady golfing to look better than my swing, but I digress.

That Phil shot reminded me of a similar shot Tiger Woods hit back in the 2004 Masters when he did the same thing from the trees. I’m thinking it was the trees right of #13 but it was a while ago so I may have the hole wrong. As I recall I also rolled that one back a few times on the DVR and marveled at how perfect Tiger’s left-handed technique was.

Do these guys practice hitting these shots or are they just that damn good?

Can we put the Sergio #1 talk to bed now?

So now that Phil won at Doral, he overtook Sergio Garcia for the world’s #2 ranking, and silenced the ridiculous “Sergio #1 in the world” discussion for now.

Phil becomes #1 and Tiger’s caddy Steve Williams makes the switch to Phil…

I’d like to see Phil overtake Tiger, if not for just a few weeks. Then perhaps Steve Williams (Tiger’s caddy), would want to switch over to working for Phil. And maybe hell would freeze over too.

Tony Korologos a.k.a. mediaguru PGA Tour, Tiger Woods Doral, Golf World Ranking, Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia, Tiger Woods

Sergio Garcia has a mathematical shot at gaining golf’s #1 world ranking this week. Mr. “Spit In The Hole” (see video below) would have to win at Doral and Tiger Woods would have to finish 27th or worse. They might as well anoint me #1. It makes as much sense.

I can think of several golfers who are obviously (at least in my walnut sized brain) better at this point, Geoff Ogilvy (two wins this year), Padraig Harrington (two majors last year), Anthony Kim, Phil Mickelson (one win so far this year), even Camilo Villegas.

Perhaps too much weighting has gone into 2nd place finishes? Perhaps not enough for major victories (Harrington)? But then again, too much weighting on majors might skew the slide toward players like Zach Johnson and Trevor Immelman.

And also, this whole discussion can raise the question: How can a player sit out for eight months and still be ranked #1 (Tiger)?

.44 points behind Sergio is Phil Mickelson. Why not any pundits discussing the possibility of Phil becoming #1?

Tony Korologos a.k.a. mediaguru PGA Tour, Tiger Woods Anthony Kim, Geoff Ogilvy, Golf World Rankings, PGA Tour, Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia, Tiger Woods, Zach Johnson