SPORTS w/The Jock 4-7-11

by Tom Weppel
THE MASTERS
April is here, which means The Masters has begun! The first Major golf tournament is being played this week at Augusta National…considered an unbelievably traditional setting.
And with good reason. There is no question this championship holds a certain standard within the golfing community. If you win this event, you are recognized and talked about for the rest of your career.
The field for this tournament is stacked with talent and competition, in all ways, both young and old. If you look over all the names that are playing, you can see where a number of players have a very good shot at winning The Masters this week.
But there is no question there will be one name that will stand out, above and beyond everyone else. You probably already know who that is.
Yes…most of the discussion is sure to focus on Tiger Woods, and with obvious reason. Here is a guy who has gone sixteen months without winning…by far the longest time in his already-storied career. He has fallen out of the top 5 for the first time in quite a while. In fact, Tiger really hasn’t been in contention in most of the tournaments in which he has played. It has made people wonder.
Tiger Woods is 35 years old. He has won 71 tournament events, including 14 major tournaments. And he has four Masters championships to his credit.
For any other golfer, past or present, that would be considered absolutely amazing! But for Tiger, golf fans now are actually wondering what is going on with this guy. Why isn’t Tiger winning? Is he done? Is he struggling to get back to the level he had reached? All of this concern, questioning, and discussion has continued to fuel the interest in Mr. Woods.
But is so wild about this deal is this…my feeling is a lot of golf fans want to follow Tiger and even root for him, but they are almost AFRAID to show their support! They don’t know how they should be treating this guy who did wrong to his wife and family. They feel like they should enjoy watching Tiger win, and they WANT him to win!
Its just that fans almost feel like they will get in trouble if they say anything positive or in support of the guy. Its amazing, and its ridiculous, to be honest.
In the meantime, you have all these other guys who are coming along and winning tournaments, a lot whom are actually doing it for the first time so far this season, and no one is even remembering who their names! They don’t care to follow them around after a tournament win. They don’t make note of what event they won, and whether they can be a factor down the road or not.
They simply don’t care about the rest of the field, pure and simple.
For sure, fans remember the old names, such as Nicklaus, Palmer, Player, and Watson. But forget about Bubba Watson or Jhonattan Vegas or Luke Donald or Jim Furyk! Those guys could all go many places in public and not get stopped once!
Tiger, though, can’t go ANYWHERE in public without getting looked at or stopped! I’m sure he doesn’t like that on bit.
For Woods, he is wanting to get back into a good groove and live some kind of cool life. He is now completing his fourth swing alteration in his career. A lot of players rarely change their swing at all in their ENTIRE career!
My guess is that if Tiger Woods comes out and plays well, that people are going to take notice, easily. If his name is on the leader board, people are going to be very attuned to what he is up to.
And if he goes on to win this Masters, there will be a tremendous amount of discussion as to what it all means, and also where things will go from here with him.
Overall, The Masters is a great tournament to watch, especially with the limited number of commercials. It’ll be interesting to see how things unfold…

ITEMS OF NOTE
I simply cannot believe Donald Trump is driving the pace car for this years’ Indy 500! For starters, Donald probably hasn’t driven a car ANYWHERE, having been escorted around everywhere in a limo for all these years!
Secondly, I’m almost afraid to wonder what he will do with his hairstyle! How on earth will he keep it all in place? I can’t even imagine!
There is a point where too much exposure drives overkill. I think you can clarify that right here and now with Trump driving at Indianapolis! Watch out!
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I have a distinct feeling this NFL deal is gonna last quite a while. There is no question both the owners and players want this to be over with, but they want it done on THEIR terms, since they both believe that they are right and that they should be getting what they think is fair. The problem is, both sides don’t think what the other side wants is indeed fair. And therein lies your problem.
And neither side wants to give in, either, and that is what negotiating is all about. It actually might take binding arbitration for this thing to get settled. In the meantime, there are quite a few players who would’ve liked to have been signed by a team during the regular free agency signing period in March. You will also have a lot of kids coming out of college who will get drafted, but they won’t be getting signed anytime soon until an agreement has been reached by the two sides.
And you’ll have a whole lot of player agents who are missing out on getting deals done, since none of their clients can be signed to contracts.
And last but certainly not least, you’ll have the fans, who are sitting and waiting for something to be resolved so they can make they payments on their season tickets!
If all this is sounding more and more like a complete mess….IT IS!
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Meanwhile, congrats to the Connecticut Huskies for winning the NCAA’s! The only negative to the whole thing was the simple fact that the Final game was a mess! The shooting was bad, the playing was bad, and it was essentially a drag!
But Uconn survived, and they are the Champs! There are a lot of other teams that would’ve loved to have been there and done that…believe me!