"If you knew me, it's tough for me to concentrate out here. But on the flip side, I'm on the PGA TOUR and I'm not going to take it for granted, so I know when to put my partying on hold, and I know when to put in hard work. Yeah, there's some good sights out there."
-James Nitties, Australian PGA Tour rookie and resident party boy.
That's right, 20,000 people can jam into the grandstand around this golf hole. It's the par-3 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale, Arizona. Home of this week's PGA Tour tournament, the FBR Open.Who have been the best Australian golfers at the majors since 2000?
Geoff Ogilvy managed to finish superbly with soldiers falling around him to win the 2006 US Open but has he been around long enough to be our best performing golfer in the past 9 years?
We all know you can make stats say whatever you want. So lets look at a number of different areas.
After assigning points based on a golfers final position in a major (as outlined in the first "Australians at the Majors" article) Stuart Appleby comes out on top. He has played in every major golf tournament since 2000 and has always done quite well but never quite enough to grab onto any silverware....or clothing. Here's the Top 5 Australian golfers according to points earned since 2000.
| Points | Majors | |
| Appleby | 66 | 36 |
| Ogilvy | 62 | 19 |
| Scott | 47 | 30 |
| Allenby | 45 | 34 |
| Hensby | 28 | 9 |
Ok, so Appleby has the most points but he's played the most tournaments! A quick look and it's obvious how well Geoff Ogilvy has done. Even Mark Hensby's record is good after his stellar 2005 where he finished Top 5 at the US Masters and the US Open.
What about cuts made in a major? It might give us a better look at who does well. Here's the Top 5 according to % of cuts made since 2000.
| Majors | % cuts made | |
| Ogilvy | 19 | 78.9 |
| Hensby | 9 | 77.8 |
| Scott | 30 | 70.0 |
| Appleby | 36 | 69.4 |
| Allenby | 34 | 64.7 |
Was 2008 the worst in Australian sporting history? Does that mean it was the worst in Australian golfing history?
The 2009 Australian Women's summer of golf kicks off tomorrow with the NSW Women's Open. Four tournaments make up the tour with the inaugural New Zealand Women's Open making an appearance despite the Clearwater Resort website having nothing to say about it at the time of publication. The Australian Open and The Australian Ladies Masters make up the quad tour. There's some great golfers joining us this year. Home grown stars Katherine Hull, Karrie Webb and Sarah Kemp (pictured) to name a few are here. The always in Australia, Laura Davies will be back as well as US Open champ Inbee Park, British Open winner Jiyai Shin (5th in the world) and LPGA winner Yani Tseng (world number 2).
The full calendar and information for each event is at the great ALPG website.
Here's the schedule for the four tournaments mentioned above:
| LG Bing Lee Women's NSW Open | Oatlands GC, NSW | 23-25 Jan 2009 |
| NZ Womens Open | Clearwater Resort | 30 Jan - 1 Feb 2009 |
| ANZ Ladies Masters | Royal Pines Resort, Qld | 5-8 Feb 2009 |
| Womens Australian Open | Metropolitan GC, Vic | 12-15 Feb 2009 |
Geoff Ogilvy has been doing his best for Australian golf over the past few years with a fine US Open victory in 2006 and a great win at Kapalua last week just a couple of his achievements. He's been doing his bit to bring the beard back to tournament golf and has been doing his best to bring a taste of Australia to the US, his current place of residence. Geoff Ogilvy was born in Adelaide and spent much of his childhood in Melbourne and subsequently became a St.Kilda fan - no one is perfect. He apparently wears his St.Kilda gear in the US all the time according to this interview through the St.Kilda Football Club's website. What is it about St.Kilda and celebrity fans (Shane Warne, Molly Meldrum)?
There's been another part of Australiana Ogilvy is doing his best to bring to the USA. Australian meat pies. Any Australian that has lived in the US for any length of time may understand that the humble Australian pie is something that is sorely missed. Geoff Ogilvy is apparently a founding owner of Mojo Pies, an Australian pie company based in Scottsdale, Arizona (surprise, surprise) and distributing at the moment to California and Kansas as well as Arizona.
What is even more interesting about this is that Peter Senior and Tim Clark are also in on the company by the looks of the website. It's tempting to ask Peter "who ate all the pies?"but we all know once you've had a pie it's hard not to want more.
On course recently there were some differing opinions as to whether the pin can be attended when another golfer plays a shot from off the green. Confusion abounded and we all agreed to disagree but what is the correct rule?A keen but unskilled golfer plays the same course every week, and has particular trouble with the water trap on the 14th hole, losing a ball in it every time he plays that hole. One round he decides that this process is too expensive and decides to use an old cut-up ball instead of a good ball. He opens his bag and gets the old ball, tees it up and addresses it. Just as he commences his back-swing a mighty voice comes from on high:
"USE THE NEW BALL..."
Figuring any advice from such a source should be worth following he picks up the old ball and tees up the new one again. He starts his back-swing but once again is interrupted by a voice from the sky:
"TAKE A PRACTICE SWING..."
The man steps away from the ball and rehearses his swing. Just as he steps forward to readdress the ball, the voice speaks again:
"USE THE OLD BALL."
Other golf jokes:
Mother Superior
Love on the course
Golf terms
The ball you can't lose
Using the new ball
Deserted island
Cow encounter
The passing of another year means the dream of making it to the world of professional golf is fading for many of us. But in the eyes of some, an Obi-Wan Kenobi-like hope has emerged in the form of the Champions Tour. Is it possible to live a normal, 9-5 working job only to "retire" onto this lucrative seniors golf tour?You putt your ball past the hole, off the green and ends up 20 metres away down the middle of the fairway. Bad putt but can you declare it unplayable, take a one shot penalty and replay your shot from on the green?
A stumble, a stutter and a six shot lead became just one. Memories of other six shot lead failures were beginning to come to mind but an eagle and a whole glut of birdies coming home saw Geoff Ogilvy win the Mercedes-Benz Championship in Hawaii by, yes, six shots!
Young gun Anthony Kim, Sean O'Hair, and veteran Davis Love III provided enough great golf to make it interesting when Geoff Ogilvy faltered by bogeying the the 1st, 2nd, 7th and 8th holes before steadying the round with a fine eagle on the 9th.
Ogilvy put together his round of 68 with 4 bogeys, 7 birdies and 1 eagle and showed some real grit and determination to turn the day around and win so easily. Even bigger things to come this year I think. Potentially the major playoff tussle with Mathew Goggin I'm hoping for!
Aussie Golfer followed much of this event online at the PGA Tour website. They have a play-by-play option for each player among other things and noticed this little snippet describing Anthony Kim's drive on the 15th:
Play by Play for the Par 5, 555 yards 15th Hole
Shot 1 292 yds to native area, 285 yds to hole
292 yds to native area?! Is that a euphemism for bad drive into deep, heavy rough?! I'm going to use this when someone mentions I just hit a bad drive. No, no, I just hit it to a native area.
Being the obsessed golfing nut I am, I've often dreamed of playing golf on the street. Down wide four lane highways or through small back streets. Could I hit a 7-iron from this roundabout to the small park, 4 blocks down on the left?
Maybe playing the three Australian tournaments is the way to go in order to be prepared for the start of the PGA Tour season? Stuart Appleby had the Mercedes-Benz Championship on a string for a few years, Daniel Chopra won it last year after a visit to Oz and it appears Geoff Ogilvy may be going down the same path this year. Ogilvy fired a bogey free, 8-under 65 to sit six shots ahead of Justin Leonard and D.J. Trahan who is obviously in the wrong profession.
Ogilvy had a stellar three weeks back home winning for the first time on home soil at the Australian PGA Championship and finishing second at the Australian Open. The PGA Tour wrap on the event so far have left writers a little bemused by how well the Aussies perform here:
"Leader Geoff Ogilvy is a good wind player and has gone wire-to-wire before (see: last year at Doral). Not to mention he's Australian, something that, for whatever reason, seems to work well at Kapalua and in this tournament."
It's only three events but the Aussie swing events are on tough, non-target golf courses in tough conditions. Seems like a perfect build up to me. Maybe they should move this tri-tournament block to the month before the US Masters?
Let's see if the man named Geoff can win this thing. We'll know about 2pm Monday (Australian time).
From the "strange creatures with golf balls" department comes this image taken by Richard Heathcote, Getty Images at the Johannesburg Open yesterday. I'll begin the crazy captions sure to arise with:
Oooooh. Geoff's off to a flyer coming off the back of a great few weeks back home where he won his first tournament on home soil, the Australian PGA Championship at Coolum. He shot a 67 today at the PGA Tour Mercedes Benz Championship at the Kapalua Resort in Hawaii, to hold the outright lead after the first round.
You putt your ball past the hole, off the green and ends up 20 metres away down the middle of the fairway. Bad putt but can you declare it unplayable, take a one shot penalty and replay your shot from on the green?The Australasian Tour, which has initiated the formation of the OneAsia Tour, has subsequently held meetings in Asia without inviting the Asian Tour to these meetings, which we view as going against the spirit of cooperation and an attempt to ‘invade’ Asia.Pretty blunt! The Australasian Tour cannot afford to go without the Asian Tour and if this is all correct, its a poor way of going about uniting golf in the region.
The Asian Tour has been the official sanctioning body for professional golf tournaments in Asia over the past 14 years and represents players from 26 nationalities and travels to 17 different countries to stage tournaments, which in 2008 held a record 30 events with an unprecedented US$39 million in total prize money.
Hence, we are appalled with the Australasian Tour’s attempt to create another tour in this region as the Asian Tour has already successfully achieved this objective with our well-documented growth over the past decade.
Thanks to his 3rd placing at last year's British Open, Greg Norman has the opportunity to play the US Masters once again and with little fanfare he's going to accept when the invitations are sent out shortly. He's already preparing himself for it, his son Gregory will be on the bag and in an article over at FoxSports he had some interesting things to say. Here's an excerpt:"At the same time, it was a huge turning point in my life. When I had that six-stroke lead and it didn't work, I mean, I was elevated in the world of the public eye by losing, not by winning.
"That changed my life. I can tell you that, dramatically, just by the outpouring of emails and letters and support that I got. No matter whether I walked anywhere, somebody would make a comment about how it changed their life towards their son or daughter by the way I handled it.
