tiger woods – The Rogers News

Spring Semster: Masters Week

School is as busy as ever, but the end is in sight. I am preparing for a team negotiation in Copyright Licensing. My team is representing a website developer who has been contracted by a small toy company. The essence of the project is to negotiate and come to an agreement on the controlling contract.

My final Judicial Opinion Drafting order is due one week from yesterday. I am writing as the Supreme Court of New Hampshire deciding whether the Superior Court erred in affirming a Department of Labor decision to award wages and liquidated damages to a peeved former employee who was denied her previous-year’s bonus when she left her job as an insurance agent with a small family insurance company for a larger insurance company. I’ll spend the weekend doing this, but at least I’ll be mostly done with one of my five classes.

Nothing much else notable regarding school work. Four of five of my classes have take-home finals. Most of my exam weeks will be spent writing documents from home, which should be less stressful than the typical “cram-dump” exam routine.

Barrister’s Ball is this weekend. I didn’t get tickets, and the only ones available are going for 100 to 200% above face value. It would be fun to go, but partaking in law-prom ranks quite low for me.

Putting all of the work in perspective is my anticipation of The Masters broadcast this weekend. This is by far my favorite golf tournament of the year to watch on TV. I’m hoping Tiger Woods makes a run for the green jacket, but that the contest is close. Who do you think will win?

Tiger Returns

Tiger Woods returns to the PGA Tour today and tees off at 2:02p. I have been looking forward to his return for months. The PGA Tour is just not the same without him – either because he draws interest or people just want to be interested in him.

From what I’ve seen and heard on the Golf Chanel and ESPN, it looks like he’s ready. The commentators are professing that they’ll be surprised if Woods doesn’t win. I feel the same way. Last time he took a break to fix the knee, he won… The 2008 U.S. Open! A couple years before that, when he took time to drain the knee, he returned and won at Torrey Pines.

The choice to return in a match play tournament was a wise one. Match play is a different beast than stroke play. Unlike stroke play, match play allows you to have a bad hole and not have to dig your way out of it stroke by stroke. If Tiger is at all inconsistent, he’ll appreciate the chance to throw away a few holes. Further, unlike stroke play, match play is more emotional. Tiger can better scrap out a win against a feisty opponent. Finally, if Woods is ousted early he’ll be disappointed, but no to the degree of a missed cut.

There’s a lot to watch for today at the WGC Accenture Match Play Championship. And when it’s done we’ll still get to look forward to Tiger’s stroke play debut. Bam. Bam. Boom!

My bracket for this tournament.

Lions and Tiger(s) and Wolverines, Oh My!

Forgive the title, I couldn’t resist.

The Lions won. The Tigers won. U of M won (finally). Tiger Woods won (easily), which meant the most exciting thing about the final tournament of the FedEx cup was finding out about the hidden arrow in the FedEx logo. Go ahead, look and see.

The Sylvania 300 was raced (Is that the lingo racing fans?) at the New Hampshire Int’l Speedway, which is fifteen minutes from where I live. The fans that didn’t (couldn’t? Do these things sell out?) get to see the race set up folding chairs on highway overpasses and watched the traffic driving south on I-93. They were watching me drive! I tried to give them a good show – a good clean lane switch. I overtook a Ford Focus in masterly fashion.

O.J. Simpson was arrested on a self-directed “sting-operation.”

The guy who bought Barry Bonds’ 756th home run baseball is asking the public what to do with it at vote756.com. There are three options: (1) send the ball to the hall of fame, (2) iron an asterisk onto the ball and send it to the hall of fame, or (3) banish the ball to outer space.

I don’t care about anything else that happened.

The U.S. Open

Tiger Woods decided, with one short stroke of his putter on the 72nd hole, that today’s round was not the final round of the 2008 U.S. Open.

Today was evidence of why I love watching Tiger Woods play golf. If he doesn’t dominate the field, which he hasn’t lately, and certainly didn’t do over the past few days, he puts on the greatest show on earth. Thirty on his back nine on Friday. Two eagles and a birdie yesterday. The putt to tie Rocco Mediate and force a playoff today.

What will we see tomorrow? I can’t wait.

Lorena Ochoa – A New Tiger?

There has been a lot of discussion recently regarding Lorena Ochoa’s dominance of the LPGA Tour and claims that she is the next Tiger Woods.

The Streaks

Lorena Ochoa has won four tournaments in a row on the LPGA Tour. Just this past weekend, she shot four rounds in the sixties for a nineteen under total of 296 at the Ginn Open. That was good enough for a three-shot win. She’s also finished second, first, first in her last three Major championships.

Tiger Woods’ win at the 2008 Arnold Palmer Invitational was his sixth worldwide win in a row, however these wins did not come in consecutive weeks. In fact, only his end of 2007 wins in the BMW Championship and the Tour Championship were back-to-back. Further, Tiger’s Major finished for the past year have been second, second, twelfth, first, second.

Time Will Tell

There is no doubt that Lorena is red hot right now and has had more recent success than Tiger, but only time will tell if she truly is the next Tiger Woods or Annika Sorenstam.

What would make Ochoa an instant household name is success on the PGA Tour. No matter how you slice it, the PGA Tour is the dominant grounds of professional golf competition. Michelle Wie’s attempts to make a PGA Tour cut are evidence of this. When Ochoa tees it up in a PGA Tour event, makes a cut, and wins we can start calling her the next Tiger Woods. Until then, she’s the next Annika.

Tiger Woods Succumbs to the Utah Blade

Not really. But he did have arthroscopic knee surgery.

My only question is, would he have had the surgery if he won the Masters?

The knee has been bothering him since the middle of last year. Obviously he didn’t want to have it during the month he took off leading up to the Masters. Why not during his longest break from competitive golf?

Was he worried about his performance in the unofficial Tiger Woods Challenge?

Could he not get an appointment until this week?

Masters’ Leftovers

John Feinstein lets us know that “Golf Will Survive without a Major from Woods.”

Trevor Immelman does the Top 10 on The Late Show with David Letterman:

Geoff Shackelford excerpts from Golf World and The Times highlighting that the general consensus is that Augusta National “has become all about playing defensively and minimizing damage.”

My two cents — The Masters is boring now. There’s no movement. There are far too few opportunities on the back nine to perpetuate the foregone fact and now legend that “it all comes down to the back nine on Sunday at the Masters.”

Jay Coffin brags of his round at Augusta National on Monday after the Masters.

Patricia of Golf Girl’s Diary shares Brandt Snedeker’s snicker’s cocktail.

Golf Digest’s Bill Fields wraps up pretty much everything else having to do with this years’ Masters.

Geoff Shackelford excerpts Steve Elling’s “There’s more scoring in soccer.”

Seems like if the Masters wants to remain the April darling that it always was, something needs to change — fast. It’s nice to see the little guys win every so often, but not every year at the Masters. And certainly not without a heroic battle on the back nine of Augusta National.