Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Creep of the Week: Legacy Edition

[image courtesy of flickr user amacapugay]

This edition of COTW is a departure. It's meant to celebrate, not condemn. Commonly overlooked in the discussion of golf's most colorful characters of all-time is Sergio Garcia. Actually when it comes to making headlines for bizarre behavior he is the runaway leader. Not John Daly. Not even close. And Sergio's melodramas tend to play out on, not off, the golf course, or else n the press room right afterwards, and that makes him the arguably more compelling golfer.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Fun With Sports Betting: WGC Matchplay



It's been a while since a shit was given about PGA TOUR golf, so here goes.

When I was growing up back in the dark ages, a.k.a. the eighties and nineties, sports betting was regarded as a vice and an illegal activity. Then one day, well into adulthood, I wake up and suddenly realize that sports betting is now a normal acceptable feature of ordinary life. Now, people talk freely about their wagering exploits online. Now, otherwise law-abiding folks openly and regularly engage in office-wide betting pools, during work hours for Christ's sake. And employers don't even look twice at any of it. Everyone's in on it, schoolkids, grandparents, hell even most chicks nowadays put some cash into their workplace March Madness contest.

Every goddamn person in the western world seems to be cashing in on this wholesome-yet-lucrative hobby. Everyone except me--naive, clueless, slow-adopter. What the hell happened, where was I when all this was approved. When it comes to sports betting I might as well have been in a coma for the last couple decades.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Dark Thoughts: Snow Day



What I've come to realize in the last few days is that this current winter is the worst winter I've ever experienced. Funny that I'm just now figuring it out. Then again this one didn't really come out and announce itself as the winter to end all winters. It just kept piling on slow and steady, and now it's all this.

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Ghetto Golf, volume 11: Douglaston Park Golf Course, Queens



[This edition of Ghetto Golf was plucked out of the earth a couple weeks ago and stored on a shelf so that it could be enjoyed during these barren times.]

The latest stop on the Legitimategolf New York City Golf Tour takes us out near city limits once again, way out to the neighborhood of Douglaston, Queens. I was hereabouts not that long ago, whacking balls and checking out the instant noodle selection at the Alley Pond practice range. Douglaston Park GC is like Alley Pond in that the Korean flag has been pretty much planted here--this is K-town golf territory now.

Sunday, February 2, 2014

A tribute to Not Bill Earle's Ball



The ball, it's been said, is possibly the single most important piece of equipment in golf. The only one, in fact, that's involved in every single goddamn play that's made on the course. Metaphysically speaking the ball is, in a sense, our surrogate, our representative, our emissary to the sky. Wherever the ball goes, so does a little piece of our soul along with it. At its full flight best, a golfball is up there with Kitty Hawk, the Wright Brothers, Goddard's rockets, the Saturn V, etc and so on. Man's eternal quest to kiss the sky, soar like a bird, say "up yours" to gravity, and "eat my wake" to the earth, if only for a brief moment.