Tiger takes 10th major, locks up POY

Written by: Tony Korologos | Monday, July 18th, 2005
Categories: European Tour • PGA Tour • Tiger Woods

tiger2005british Introducing the 2005 PGA Player Of The Year: Tiger Woods. It’s a lock.

Tiger won his 10th major championship today by taking the Open Championship trophy. Apparently the tweaking he’s been doing with his swing is finally paying off. His balance, tempo and form looked as good as I’ve seen.

The other quite noticeable thing about Tiger was how calm, in control and confident he looked all week.

So he’s now more than half way to Jack’s 18 majors. I’m still not sure he’ll get there. But it will be fun to watch him try.

Nike’s marketing may really pay off in 10-20 years…

Written by: Tony Korologos | Sunday, July 17th, 2005
Categories: Golf Media • Miscellaneous

Every few days my boy and I jump onto the course where we live and find golf balls. It’s a fun way of doing a father/son bonding thing. Today’s take was 101 golf balls.

It’s funny to see how my 9 year old son gets excited when he finds the Nike balls. He’s a young golf fan. He loves Tiger. Tiger plays Nike, so that’s what he wants. He’s not interested in the ProV1’s we find. He gives those to me.

It’s making me think that even though Nike doesn’t have a large market share on balls now, they may when golfers like my son get old enough to start buying their own gear…

Man that was fast!

Written by: Tony Korologos | Saturday, July 16th, 2005
Categories: Miscellaneous • PGA Tour

open2005flag 5 days ago I got a wild hair and decided to order some goodies from the Open Championship web site. I ordered a little gift pack with balls, tees, markers etc. I also ordered a St. Andrews Open Championship flag that you see here.

Amazingly this stuff got to me in 4.5 calendar days. This is no ’round the block shipment either. It had to go from the Open Championship warehouse (presumably in Great Britain or Scotland), to me here in Utah. I’ve had UPS ground shipments from 30 miles away take 4 times longer!

Open Thoughts

So after day 3, Tiger still holds the lead. Today was that “down” round I expected him to have. Today was the struggle. I still think he’ll finish the winner at -13 as I predicted before the open started.

Nice to see Jose Maria (2 strokes back) in the final group. That should be an interesting pairing. The more nervous Jose gets, the more times he looks at the target before he swings. He’s got it under control lately but let us see if that habit creeps in. Seriously, count how many times he looks at the target from preshot routine to striking the ball. I counted 32 once…

Then you have Goosen and Mrs. Doubtfire…er “Monty” in the next group (3 strokes back).

It’s been a fun week of golf and I’ll be sad when it is over.

Uh, don’t forget about Tiger…

Written by: Tony Korologos | Friday, July 15th, 2005
Categories: European Tour • PGA Tour

So while Jack is getting all the airtime and discussion, Tiger is quietly taking care of business.

And how about driving the green on #10? That was a mere 380 yards.

Goodbye Jack, and thank you

Written by: Tony Korologos | Friday, July 15th, 2005
Categories: Champions Tour • European Tour • Golf Media • PGA Tour

jackslastteeshot
I couldn’t hold back the tears as I watched Jack Nicklaus’ last professional competitive round this morning. Above is Jack’s last tee shot on 18 at St. Andrews. He ripped one down the middle 300+. (The ball just goes too far eh?)

jackgoodbyebridge
This shot Jack paused to wave goodbye to the audience, and to his competitive career. He also had Tom Watson, Luke Donald, his son Steve and the respective caddies join in for a photo opp. Just imagine being in that historic group picture.