Monday Morning Golf Recap

Trent3/16/2015 1:40 PM

Alright so if you missed it last week this is a new thing I’m trying out. It’s basically a recap of the previous week in golf. It centers around the televised tournament of that week (this week it was the Valspar Championship) and what happened there. It’s also just kind of a place where I cover the golf news of the week and whatever else I feel like talking about in terms of golf. So there ya go. Enjoy. Or don’t. Up to you. It’s a free country and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna stand in the way of you hating this blog.

Tournament Details:

Name: Valspar Championship

Dates: March 12th -March 15th

Golf Course: Innisbrook Resort- Copperhead (Par 71 7,340 yards)

Location: Palm Harbor, Florida

Purse: $5,900,000

2014 Winner: John Senden

Tournament Recap:

How lucky have we been so far with these golf tournaments? Free golf left and right. Feels like we’ve had play off holes every week for the past month. Today was a busy day in sports with hockey, college basketball conference championships and Selection Sunday so maybe golf wasn’t exactly on the front burner but it was an AWESOME ending to the tournament.

Despite Jordan Spieth holding the trophy in the thumbnail we won’t start with him. We’ll start with Ryan Moore. He entered yesterday with a one stroke lead over Spieth heading into Sunday’s final round. It was his tournament to win. It wasn’t like last week when J.B. Holmes had a huge lead heading into Sunday but it was a lead nonetheless. However, there was a point where Moore had a 3 shoot lead heading down the stretch and the tournament looked to be his. It was around that time when guys like Spieth, Patrick Reed, Henrik Stenson and Sean O’Hair turned up the heat on Moore. It was golf at it’s best actually. Spieth, Moore, Reed, Stenson and O’Hair all exchanging haymakers on a Sunday back 9. One guy would grab the lead then another guy would grab the lead then there’d be three guys tied for second while one guy held a single shot lead. And around and around we went.

Eventually, Patrick Reed finished up first and set the high watermark at -10 with a great clutch birdie putt on 18. That was the mark to either beat and win or tie and head to a play off. Moore faded down the stretch with bogeys on both 16 and 18 putting him at -8 for the tournament. A few groups later, Jordan Spieth finished up 18 with his own clutch putt for par that put him in the playoff at -10 as well. I gotta tell ya, I didn’t appreciate O’Hair sneaking into the playoff. I really wanted it to be Ryder Cup buddies Spieth and Reed going at it alone. Alas.

Off to the play off we went. Everybody parred 18. Everybody parred 17. Then the par-3 16. O’Hair put it on the green. Reed put it in the bunker. Spieth put it on the green. Reed made a great bunker shot that left him about three feet for par. O’Hair’s second was a putt he left a few feet short. And the stage was set for 21 year old Jordan Spieth to try and sink a long birdie putt for the victory.

UNREAL. Unreal stones from the kid. Such a great putt for the win. PGA victory #2. He’s 21 years old, people. Lots of the talk surrounding young American golfers is about Rickie Fowler (and for good reason) but there’s another guy and his name is Jordan Spieth. 21! If he had stayed at Texas he’d just be finishing up his senior year. What were you doing your senior year of college? Smoking a bunch of weed and drinking almost every night because you were afraid about post-college life? Join the club. Spieth is out there winning golf tournaments at the highest level. You can’t help but love his moxy. Big win for him.

Shot of the Week:

LOTS of candidates this week with a lot of them coming late in the day of the final round. When you’ve got a bunched up leaderboard where guys are taking the lead then losing the lead then taking the lead again there have to be some great shots happening. But it really could only be one. Jordan Spieth’s 28-foot birdie putt for the win on the third playoff hole. A+ putt and A+ celebration.

Just for shits, here’s a few of the other candidates for SOTW:

Patrick Reed’s Sunday putt on 18 that put him as the leader in the clubhouse at -10 and looked like it might win it for him. It eventually led him to the play off. Love him or hate him (I still haven’t decided how I feel about Reed) the dude is good for golf. Either as a hero or a villain, doesn’t matter. We need both.

Spieth’s clutch up and down on 18 that allowed him to remain at -10 and enter the playoff.

Ryan Moore’s Sunday eagle on the par-4 6th that put tied him atop the leaderboard for the time being.

Jonathan Byrd’s hole-in-one on Friday at the par-3 15th,

Fan of the Week:

This is a biased pick but I don’t give a shit. When you have your own blog you can pick whoever you want. My Fan of the Week goes to the Stoolie who dropped a HUGE “Viva La Stool” on eventual-winner Jordan Spieth during his Sunday round. Dropped it right on his head. I’m not saying the fact that Spieth had the backing of Stoolies had anything to do with his win but I kind of am.

Random shit:

Ernie Els murdered his club

He died doing what he loved. RIP.

Tiger announces that he won’t be playing at Bay Hill this week

“I spoke to Arnold today and told him that I will not play in his tournament this year. I’m sorry I won’t be in Orlando next week, but I know it will be a really successful event. I’ve put in a lot of time and work on my game and I’m making strides, but like I’ve said, I won’t return to the PGA TOUR until my game is tournament ready and I can compete at the highest level. I hope to be ready for the Masters, and I will continue to work hard preparing for Augusta. I want to thank everyone again for their support.”- Tiger Woods

I gotta tell ya, this announcement made me pretty damn nervous. Nervous about Tiger’s chances of playing in the Masters despite saying he hopes to be ready. It’s concerning for a couple reasons. One, the Masters is less than a month away and the last time we saw Tiger he couldn’t make it through a round of 18 without withdrawing. So he clearly doesn’t feel like he’s ready to play a full 18 yet, let alone possibly 4 rounds. But it’s mostly concerning because of this:

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, plays better at Bay Hill than Tiger. He’s won there 8 times. If there’s a tournament that Tiger could use as a tune up and confidence builder leading up to a major, it’s Arnie’s tournament. It just is. So for him to be like, “Nope, I’m not ready to play at the place where I’ve won 8 times since 2000″ makes me super nervous.

ALL TIGER EVERYTHING

Nope, it was real. A lot of people saw it. Whether or not it was just a glitch doesn’t matter. Still funny. Or maybe they did it on purpose. Tiger gets ratings no matter what he does. This is reminiscent of the times when LeBron takes a dump in the locker room and every single tab on the SportsCenter rundown is LEBRON LEBRON LEBRON LEBRON. Tiger is like that for golf channels.

Michelle Wie made a hole-in-one

No video but I thought it was noteworthy. Did I include this just so I could post the video of Wie twerking after her U.S. Open win? I don’t know, maybe.

JOHN DALY WATCH