Alex Kreitman - Stealing signs

It seems like an eternity since a young Sergio Garcia dueled with Tiger Woods at the 1999 PGA Championship at Medina Country Club.

That 19-year-old boy has grown up without winning a big tournament, until now. Garcia won The Player’s Championship on Sunday in thrilling fashion with an island-green playoff victory.

The ending couldn’t have been more dramatic even after his opponent Paul Goydos plunked his tee shot into the water. Garcia, really only needing to avoid getting wet, followed with a beautiful shot within a few feet of the cup.

Finally, Garcia was able to win a big tournament on the PGA Tour. After blowing last year’s Open Championship I thought he might be cursed. Here’s a guy who was one of the most talented youngsters in golf back in ’99, but never really amounted to much since then.

I’m glad Garcia finally got to win a big event, but his words after winning solidified my claims in last week’s blog. Garcia thanked Tiger Woods for not playing in the event, saying that it makes things much easier when he isn’t out there.

With Woods out with an injury, he was unable to play the event, but should be back for the U.S. Open in June and hopes to return to play before then.

Another note from The Player’s Championship is that Goydos, the runner-up, was such a good sport. I was pulling for him to win a little bit just because of how cool he seemed. Even after tanking on the playoff, Goydos was all smiles and joked with Sergio on the way to the green. He complimented and congratulated him at every opportunity. He even wrote “Mom” on his golf ball for Mother’s Day. I hope we see more of him this year.

So, I played in the Alamance-Caswell County Hospice Golf Classic on Monday at Alamance Country Club. To no surprise, my team didn’t win, but we might have come close. We shot an even-par 71 in the Captain’s Choice format and that score isn’t impressive by any standard, but the way the tournament was set up, we might have had a shot.

The organizers divided all 35 teams into four flights, with a winner for each flight. The winning teams shot 58, 62, 66 and 70. That’s right, one of the teams was just one shot better than mine. There were several teams better than 70 that didn’t win, but apparently all the teams in the 70 flight were just as awful as mine. Too bad we didn’t shoot one stroke better, we may have won $500. But that point could be mute since we might have been in the flight with the score of 58 all along.

I wasn’t happy with our score, but I guess I can’t be disappointed either. None of us had played in this event before and none were too familiar with the course. I’d played there just once about three years ago. Also, the conditions were tough with gusts over 30 mph blowing right into our face.

Also, we made the mistake of not purchasing a lot of mulligans. They had a table set up before the event to buy mulligans for $5 a piece. I didn’t see the table, therefore didn’t get any. Our team had three and we used them, but they didn’t help us at all. Who knows how many other teams bought, but from watching other groups take about 10 putts on the last par 3, I think they had a lot more than we did. Rookie mistake. I’ll know better for the next time.

But as my Dad says, a bad day on the golf course is better than a good day at work. And it wasn’t a bad day of golf, it was really nice.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 7:22 am and is filed under Blogs, Golf. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.