Ah it’s April. March Madness is wrapping up. The sun is staying up later. Birds can be heard chirping again which may or may not be a welcome sound.
April also signifies that golf tournament down in Georgia called The Masters. It is also the Super Bowl of golf. This realization came to me in grade 8. The Monday after the 1996 Masters all my classmates were talking about the final round that year. Of course who could forget Greg Norman’s epic six stroke collapse to eventual champion Nick Faldo.
This is just one of the many great Masters moments. The course and setup lends itself to amazing moments every year. Based on the play of the world’s best golfers, the 2013 edition will not let us down.
Tiger Woods has found his game with three early season wins. A slew of young challengers are ready to take the green jacket away from the odds on favorite Woods.
Now before starting my Internet marketing business, I use to be a Golf Professional. And every Sunday I would sit in front of the TV for 4+ hours waiting for the drama and amazing moments to unfold.
But you don’t have to be a Golf Professional like me to enjoy this event. To get you in the spirit of Masters week, I wanted to share with you five great moments in Masters final round history.
Jamie Sadlowski can hit a golf ball really, really far. The guys on the Morning Drive yesterday found this out first hand when they had him try out the Golf Channel studio simulator. He did warn them ahead of time that it probably wouldn’t hold up. The best line is when you can hear Sadlowski mentioning that “Breed’s gonna be pissed”. Just slap some duct tape on there and it’ll be as good as new… or not.
Deadspin recently got a hold of an audio recording of Huntingdon College director of golf Matt Mahanic ripping his team a new one after a poor performance at a tournament in Alabama.
Fortunately for us (and unfortunately for 2007 Huntingdon graduate Mahanic) somebody on the bus was recording the whole thing on their phone. The fun starts around 1:55 in the clip above. I’m putting the highlights after the break given the NSFW language, but one thing really stood out to me:
Mahanic makes a big deal out his father asking him at the tournament “why the f*** are you recruiting these kids?”. Recruiting? In D-III where they can’t offer athletic scholarships? Maybe somebody can fill me in, but D-III golf seems about like high school golf as far as I can tell. If you’re a player on that team, why on earth would you put up with somebody (who only happens to be 5 years older than you) chewing you out like that when you’re not even getting a scholarship out of the deal?
That would be like Bob on the company softball team cursing out the rest of the team after a loss. You’d tell Bob to go pound sand and put his stapler in jello when you got back to the office.
Will Ferrell really likes bean burritos and lukewarm iced tea. He’d also like to play in Scotland but being on the no-fly list has made that rather difficult…
This is pretty cool. Mercedes decided to see if they could catch a golf ball in the air with an SLS. Apparently this is now some kind of world record according to Guiness (farthest golf shot caught in a moving car – 275 meters). The golfer was Jake Shepherd and the driver was former F1 driver, David Coulthard. Check out the behind the scenes video after the break.
You’ve probably heard of Casey Martin before. His lawsuit and eventual victory at the Supreme Court gave him the right to use a golf cart in PGA Tour competitions. It turned out to not make much of a difference as Martin lost his tour card and eventually became the golf coach at Oregon. He qualified for the Open last week and now will be making his first US Open appearance since 1998 (also at Olympic).
If you’re at all interested in Casey’s story, this is a great video. Martin is entertaining, engaging, and humble. Regardless of what you think of the Supreme Court’s ruling in his case, it’s hard not to pull for the guy.
