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.

Photo credit: Scott Halleran/Getty Images

With the new season on us and memories of the down 2009 season, PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem is moving swiftly to make as much out of the 2010 season as possible. He has already visited the Kapalua Resort as the season-opening tour event approaches and welcomed the new sponsor Seoul Broadcasting Corp. The SBS Championship begins Thursday at the Plantation Course with only winners of last year’s tour events eligible for the $5.6 million tournament.

“We’ve had two very challenging couple of years, but I think we’ve turned the corner,” said Finchem. There is no mystery about what has occurred with economic challenges and the media blitz over golf’s icon, Tiger Woods. He did offer one observation: “I’ve never seen such media scrutiny, such a frenzy for coverage. It was bigger than 9-11, bigger than anything else you can think of. It was never ending there for a while. Thankfully, there’s a lull.”

Very important, at least early on, is Finchem’s travel itinerary.  He plans to jet back and forth between his headquarters and west coast golf events for the next two months. Sponsors need to see him and players need to see him. Two tour events, San Diego and Palm Springs,still require sponsors. But at least AT&T, which recently dropped its sponsorship of Woods, remains committed to two PGA Tour stops, the Pebble Beach Pro-Am and the AT&T National, the event hosted by Woods which will move from the Washington D.C. area to Aronimink GC outside Philadelphia.

Finchem will not be able to be at the Sony Open in Hawaii, next week’s first full-field event. But he will make an appearance at six or seven of the next eight tournaments. He’ll be required to do some heavy duty traveling early in this new season to try to salvage what some say may be a disastrous season for the PGA.

Bill and daughter Renee... AP Photo/Phil Long

Bill Powell, who was the first African-American to build, own and operate a golf course, died Thursday. He was 93.

In August, Powell received the PGA Distinguished Service Award, the association’s highest annual honor. In November, he was inducted into the Northern Ohio PGA Hall of Fame and honored as the Person of the Year by the Ohio Golf Course Owners Association.

Recently, the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce also presented the Powell family with its Community Salute Award.

“Bill Powell will forever be one of golf’s most unforgettable American heroes,” PGA of America president Jim Remy said. “Bill made us appreciate the game and each other that much more by his gentle, yet firm example.

According to Gary Van Sickle, Senior Writer for Sports Illustrated, 2009’s award as the worst golf year ever was sewed up by Tiger Woods’ fall.

Here’s an excerp from his article:
“This year was scary bad. Every golf tour in the world is downsizing, some at alarming rates, along with advertising and sponsorship dollars. More courses are closing than are being built in America. Golf equipment makers have been forced to cut jobs. Golf real estate values, like most real estate values, have plunged. Golf hasn’t seen a dip like this since the Great Depression, not counting Charles Barkley’s swing. In fact, that’s how bad 2009 was — a show featuring Barkley trying to fix his spastic Mr. Roboto swing was one of the year’s guilty pleasures. We could all relate to Sir Charles.

The men’s major championships, while thrilling to watch, were ultimately bastions of buzzkill. If Kenny Perry, Phil Mickelson and Tom Watson had won the first three majors, and if Woods had finished off the PGA Championship, we might be talking about one of golf’s all-time storybook seasons. With no disrespect to the champs — Angel Cabrera, Lucas Glover, Stewart Cink and Y.E. Yang — the winners we had were less compelling than the stories of the nearly men.”

(I don’t want to sound like a pessimist either, but I agree with him. This no-name decade ended with a golf year that left a lot to be desired. This was a banner year for my naps in front of the golf on TV. I’m hoping 2010 will be less restful and provide us some real golf entertainment.)

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.

Courtesy South Florida Times

President Barack Obama played golf and strolled a surfer beach, on Saturday, the second day of his Hawaii vacation.

The president played at the Klipper course at the Marine Corps base near his oceanfront rental home in Kailua.

The president’s group spent over five hours playing 18 holes. He was joined by three high school friends from Hawaii, Greg Orme, Mike Ramos, Bobby Titcomb and Eric Whitaker from Chicago.

After golf, the president stopped for a few minutes at Pyramid Rock Beach, a popular playground for surfers and picnickers.

Obama,  walked from his motorcade to the sands on the shore, where he gazed at the ocean and waved to beachgoers.

The president and the first lady started their day with an early morning workout at the Semper Fit gym at the base.

The Honolulu-born president arrived in Hawaii on Christmas Eve with his wife, daughters and friends for a two-week vacation. They’re due to leave on Jan. 3.

This is his first return to the islands since he was inaugurated last January.

“Tiger’s Travails are boon to Yahoo”, a headline above a story in AdAge.com.

Yahoo’s front page has seen huge traffic surges that are driven by Woods’ personal trouble.

“God bless Tiger,” Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was quoted telling a group of analysts at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference in New York this week.

It’s noted that the interest in the Woods’ story has exceeded the interest in the stories about Michael Jackson’s death.

“Asked if all the fuss surrounding Mr. Woods would help `make’ Yahoo’s quarter, Ms. Bartz replied, `Oh, absolutely. He already has,’”AdAge.com reported.

Unfortunately, for golf in general, all Woods’ news is negative. Now, what we need for 2010 is some positive news that will generate golf interest. I’d like to see Anthony Kim, John Daly and Boo Weekly finish in a tie in the Masters. then, play sudden death with Happy Gilmore rules of etiquette. And, if they would just play barefoot in swimming thongs, that would help.