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Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Here’s hoping Winged Foot still has plenty of kick
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Before trundling off to the U.S. Open at Winged Foot Golf Club in New York, I have some catching up to do. Mainly, it’s sort of tidying up a melange of topics that are close to the heart, or have slipped by without close personal attention. That said, we’ll lead off with a subject relating to the Open:
• No one in this country has ever written on golf with the aplomb and skill of Herbert Warren Wind, and no U.S. Open course has aroused more commotion than Winged Foot in 1974, about to be broached again, and that includes the blather at Shinnecock Hills two years ago. Hale Irwin only had to shoot 7 over par to win in 1974, and there had been nothing close to such a debacle since Sam Parks won at 11 over par at Oakmont in 1935. Irwin’s score harked back to the days of brassies, niblicks, mashies and such. The players were appalled, felt insulted.
So Herb Wind took his typewriter in hand and addressed the matter, “which created more controversy than any Open course in years.”
“Many observers and players felt that it was demanding to the point of being unfair. I was a member of a group that saw it somewhat differently. The U.S. Open course, I think, should provide a hard test — the hardest test our golfers meet each year. While there were a few aspects of the way the course was set up that seemed overdone, my basic feeling was that scores ran high as they did mainly because the field did not perform well.”
Ouch! Old Herb really knew how to hit ‘em where it hurt.
When the Open was next played at Winged Foot 10 years later, the winning score improved from 287 to 276. In 1974, for example, Jack Nicklaus three-putted three of the first four holes the last round. After all the bawling of the past, it is to be hoped the USGA hasn’t gone soft again. Play away, gentlemen!
• It may surely have escaped your attention, for horses don’t get much space around here, that there has been an outburst of Georgia Bulldog in the Dogwood Stable. A few years ago, Stablemaster Cot Campbell named a colt Trippi, for the great Georgia back. Trippi finished fourth in the Kentucky Derby, later retired to stud, sired a pair in his own image, one named Sinkwich, for Frank, who won the Heisman, then another who was named Poschner, for George, a great end severely wounded in WWII.
Well, last Saturday, Sinkwich won the first race on Belmont Day, paying a nice price. Poschner has still to get to the track, just a 2-year-old, but he and Sinkwich are full brothers, and the Dogwood hope is that the Trippi blood runs thick. It does sound bit odd when at the track the breeding is announced and it comes out, “Sinkwich, sired by Trippi.”
• Last week, a dear friend of mine and a treasured friend of the state of North Carolina passed away. I can only make a weak pass at reporting on the things Hugh Morton did for his home state. He owned a mountain, Grandfather Mountain, bequeathed by his grandfather, where he gave impetus to hang gliding; he was an avid but sensible environmentalist; his blood ran Tar Heel blue, and he turned an avocation into an art. For years he traveled about shooting pictures for my sports section at Charlotte, when the going rate was $3 a shot.
Later, he published two exquisite books of photography, the first titled “Hugh Morton’s North Carolina.” His hand could be found at nearly every turn in the Blue Ridge, and no man ever had more Tar Heel friends. His career took one left turn: when he ran for governor — briefly — until he found out how sordid politics can be. Any state needs a Hugh Morton, only North Carolina was that lucky.
• You can’t appreciate how harrowing it can be covering an international sports event until you’ve read Mike Knobler’s e-mail from Germany. Press journalists have been relegated to the state of herded chattel at such events as the World Cup. Where once they were courted and given stage status, they are now shuffled about and denied access to the story. International officials have turned prostitute. Television pays, television rules. A once glamorous assignment has now become garbage collecting.
• One parting thought; For his own sake please get Chris Reitsma out of town before it’s too late. The man is in misery. Anguish is etched in his face. He can pitch. But not here, and not as a closer. What about the new TV thing, “The Closer?” Might that be his call. Just kidding.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Golf
CWS links Tech to UGA — again
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The Louisville broadcaster Jock Sutherland once described the frustration of having to live alongside the hugely popular Kentucky Wildcats: “You could be in a hole at the center of the world with five other people, and one of them would be waving a pennant and saying, ‘Go Big Blue.’ “
Omaha, Neb., is not to be confused with a hole in the ground. It’s the site of the College World Series, where most every amateur baseball player dreams of going. Georgia Tech is going. So, almost inevitably, is Georgia.
You have to feel for Tech. Its baseball program is a model of consistency, having missed the NCAA tournament once since 1985. Georgia, by way of contrast, alternates big seasons with lesser ones — the Bulldogs have graced consecutive NCAA tournaments only once in their existence — but which side has reached Omaha more often? (Georgia has qualified five times, Tech three.) Which side has won a national championship? (Georgia, in 1990.) Which side has eliminated the other more often in NCAA play? (Georgia has ousted Tech three times; Tech has dismissed the Bulldogs once.)
[an error occurred while processing this directive]“That’s just the way baseball runs,” said Jonathan Wyatt, the Georgia left fielder from Kennesaw. “Tech has been a top-line program since I can remember. We get hot toward the end of the year, which is the best time. Tech stays hot all year and comes up a little short.”
Mike Trapani is Tech’s second baseman. He lives in Dunwoody and played at Marist, so he has been around Bulldogs all his life. He’s a Tech guy now — a Tech grad, actually — but at no time in his life has he been a Georgia backer. “I’m a die-hard Auburn fan,” he said. “Auburn and Jordan-Hare Stadium have a special place in my heart.”
So does the memory of last season’s epic Georgia-Auburn football game, the Tigers winning by a point after the Brandon Cox slant pass to Devin Aromashodu on fourth-and-10 and Courtney Taylor’s subsequent recovery of Aromashodu’s fumble. “There’s nothing better than hearing all [Georgia’s] fans [whining] and moaning,” Trapani said. “I have to listen to all the buddies I grew up with talking about how Georgia’s going to win the national championship every year, and I never say a word.”
About baseball, Trapani is more circumspect. The Tech-Georgia collisions, while fun for fans, aren’t quite as meaningful. The teams meet in separate midweek installments, including one at Turner Field. (Georgia took two of three this season.) Neither deploys its best pitchers, saving them for the weekend conference games. “It’s a shame we don’t play on the weekend,” Trapani said. “I know the fans would show up.”
As it happens, Tech and Georgia could well play a best-of-three series for the national title. (The schools can’t meet in Omaha before then.) Even though the Jackets, who haven’t yet lost in this NCAA tournament, are playing as well as any team in the land, the Bulldogs, who have faced four elimination games already, take special pleasure in defying form. When last they met in the postseason, Georgia won a 2004 super regional on Tech’s field. “That was a great weekend,” Wyatt said. The Jackets enjoyed it rather less.
According to Wyatt, there’s “no hatred” between the teams. “That’s more for the fans.” But how could the men who represent the state’s best baseball program not feel a measure of resentment toward the team that pops up more often than its pedigree suggests it should?
According to Trapani, the Tech players didn’t pause to watch Georgia beat South Carolina on Monday night, convening instead at a steakhouse for a celebratory dinner. “It really didn’t matter [whether Georgia or South Carolina] won,” Trapani said. “They’re on the other side of the bracket.”
And that’s true. But the Jackets also have to share a state with those infernal Bulldogs, and now they’ll have to share the College World Series.
Your opinion
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The Tuesday Countdown
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
10: I’m not going to suddenly act like a soccer expert and express outrage that the U.S. could lose its first World Cup game 3-0 to the Czech Republic. But for the coach, Bruce Arena, to accept no blame and hang his players out to dry after that opener is weak.
9: OK. Now we can go back to not caring about soccer again.
8: I didn’t play pro football. But I did ride a motorcycle. It was my primary mode of transportation for two years. (My rebel days.) I wore a helmet. How Ben Roethlisberger just won a Super Bowl should go down as one of the great miracles of science - because the man’s an idiot.
7: You know, you get past the whole, “A helmet just doesn’t look cool” thing real quick when your face suddenly looks like a ball of Playdough that was run over by a Winnebago.
6: I hope the woman whose car Roethlisberger hit has 24/7 security at her house. Given your average Steelers fan, she might as well be a member of Al-Qaeda.
5: Duke’s J.J. Redick was arrested for a DUI a few weeks before the NBA draft. Must’ve still been distraught over the lacrosse team.
4: Carolina is about to become the second straight team from the southeast (Tampa Bay) to win the Stanley Cup. If you’re wondering how this is going over in Toronto, imagine somebody from New Jersey coming down here and winning a barbeque contest.
3: Heather Mills is suing a tabloid for claiming she was a prostitute in her younger days. Let’s see: She’s 38 and could make $360 million by divorcing Paul McCartney, 63, after a four-year marriage. Hmmm.
2: Does McCartney wear a helmet?
1: I’m normally not one to pump college baseball. But with two schools (Tech and Georgia) in the College World Series and the Braves dropping to Division III, this might be a good time to pay attention.
Permalink | Comments (23) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
