Rio de Janeiro

String Bikinis in Rio

Little do I know about the International Olympic Committee and how they do what they do. I’m still scratching my head in wonderment over their decision to choose the least prepared of the 4 competing cities.

Rio has the least-prepared infrastructure of any of the four cities that competed for the hosting opportunity.

Nearly half the stadium capacity it needs will have to be built and additional renovations will be necessary to provide another 24 percent of the minimum required seating.

Rio’s metro system does not link the city center and most of its hotels to the outskirts of Barra da Tijuca, where most of the venues are concentrated.

It’s a beautiful setting, but it’s also notorious for violent crime in its shantytowns, or ‘favelas’, ruled largely by warring drug gangs. However, Rio says it will spend heavily on its infrastructure, and hopefully they will find a way to contain the drug lords.

I can’t imagine where the golf events will be played. The courses that I saw there did not appear to me to up to the standards for Olympic competition. But, there’s plenty of time to construct a course that will be a good test.

Me, I think I’ll just hang around the beaches of Ipanema, Copacabana, or  Angra dos Reis and look at the girls in their string bikinis.

Jeff Ogilvy

Jeff Ogilvy sure likes that golf course at Kapalua. This time he let his competitors get ahead of him, then made a dashing comeback to take the tourney by one stroke over Rory Sabbatini. He was a picture of confidence as he made up a two-shot deficit over his final 10 holes with good decisions and perfect golf for a 6-under 67.

This year he had to do it alone, as his wife stayed at home, in the final month of pregnancy with their third child.

Ogilvy posted his eighth consecutive round in the 60s at Kapalua. “I like the golf course, I think it’s fair to say,” Ogilvy said.

With so much talk about the V-shaped grooves required this year, Ogilvy said that helped him on the 14th, where it’s easy to spin the ball off the front of the green and back into the fairway. “I was happy with the smart play, and it paid off,” he said.

Sabbatini, who started the final round six shots behind, ran off five straight birdies on the back nine to seize the lead. He couldn’t reach the green on the 663-yard 18th in two, however, and missed a 10-foot birdie putt that ultimately cost him.

“I said to my caddie, ‘We need to birdie the last two holes to have a chance,”‘ Sabbatini said. “The situation was you had to keep moving forward to put pressure on him. I had my opportunity, and unfortunately, it didn’t pan out.”

Ogilvy finished at 22-under 270 and moved back into the top 10 in the world with his seventh career PGA Tour victory.

Fred Couples

Corey Pavin

I must be getting really old, ’cause Fred Couples and Corey Pavin are joining the 50 and older Champions Tour! Maybe, if I sent each of them a case of Grecian Formula and a back-brace, they would consider staying on the regular tour. We don’t get to see much of the Champions Tour, so I’ll miss them as I do Arnie, Jack, Gary, Lee, and many others.

They will be joining six others……Ben Crenshaw, Hale Irwin, Bruce Lietzke, Mark O’Meara, Gary Player and Curtis Strange…..all 8 with sponsors exemptions, in the season opening Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai. The tournament is the first of 26 official Champions Tour events for 2010 and will be held for the 14th straight year at the Jack Nicklaus designed Hualalai Golf Course in Ka’upulehu-Kona, Hawaii on January 19-24. The eight will join a field of eligible players who are winners of Champions Tour major championships in the last five years and winners of Champions Tour co-sponsored events which awarded official money in the past two years.

Photo by Chuck Berman/Chicago Tribune

78 golfers played in the 47th annual Eskimo Open at Cog Hill in Lemont, Illinois, last Sunday. They played special winter rules which included an automatic two-putt when you were within 36-inches of the cup.

I certainly hope the bar was open and had an ample supply of whiskey.

Can golf survive the ‘indefinite’ loss of Tiger Woods?

Tiger-less 2010? golf may have to do without Tiger Woods after he goes on indefinite leave Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Can golf survive the “indefinite” loss of Tiger Woods?
Absolutely. If you try to forget, or at least gloss over, the travails of the sport’s top player for a moment, you find that the next 12 months promise enough intrigue and jealous rivalry to keep even Tiger-hunters entertained.

Will the Ryder Cup in October be one to remember?

Some say this biennial bonfire of the vanities is over-hyped, but that simply is not possible in a year when Colin Montgomerie could be the captain of Ian Poulter.

For all the Scot’s façade of good grace and statesmanship, Montgomerie’s leadership will be its own source of fascination at Celtic Manor. Will Poulter, assuming he qualifies, be ordered to go easy on the peacock hairstyle? Will he be allowed any say on the European team’s dress code for the final-day singles?

A performer of peerless Ryder Cup pedigree, Montgomerie is little versed in the management of such egos. He remains acutely vulnerable, too, to the raucous banter and cat-calls that have tended to disfigure – or enhance, depending on your point of view – this event. That ‘Mrs Doubtfire’ soubriquet still stings.

The dynamic with Corey Pavin, the United States captain, has a similar potential to be explosive. While Pavin’s official pronouncements have so far been studies in blandness, his apologists tend to forget the fiery, moustachioed renegade he used to be – not least when he revved up the Americans to memorable effect at Kiawah Island in 1991.

No one could fail to romanticise the prospect of 50,000 people galvanising 24 players for three days amid the splendour of rural South Wales. The one imponderable is how sodden and bedraggled those people will be after braving the Usk Valley in October.

What are Westwood’s chances of breaking his major duck?

Within a few minutes of holding aloft his Dubai World Championship trophy, Europe’s No 1 was articulating his strategy for 2010. In the absence of those fashionable mind gurus whose advice he eschews, this could be pithily expressed: to win a major. Any major. The US Open at Pebble Beach or the Open at St Andrews could hardly be better places to start.

What are you most looking forward to in 2010?

Tiger’s return. All the sensible money is on a grand entrance for Woods at Augusta in April. You could say that four months represents an indecently short sabbatical for a man on “indefinite” leave. But the Masters offers a crucial advantage above all other early-season set-pieces on the US Tour, by its notoriously strict policy on media access. The National Enquirer would not be welcome down Magnolia Lane.