End of the Year BookKeeping . . .

So Luke Donald is emphatically #1 . . . but Webb Simpson must be awarded the Greg Norman Snakebit award for 2011 . . . in 2 straight weeks the winner of the tournament has lapped him in the last lap with 6 straight birdies . . . .8^0 . . .

 

Yani Tseng wins at Yang Mei over Amy Yang, for her 10^th victory this year . . . Y-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-n-g, that’s strong . . . 8^)

 

Sergio wins on his home course, for the first time in 3 years . . . 8^o . . . (Yawn) . . .

 

KJ wins the CJ at JeJu, SK by 2 . . . 8^D

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/23/SPR31LLBSK.DTL

 

 

Mickelson Buys Sanctuary . . .

Noted by our on-site Observer, Mr Science     

 

Phil Mickelson Buys Golf Course in Arizona

By mustang6560 on 5/4/11

Phil Mickelson is the beneficiary of an over-populated golf course market in Arizona. 

The golf star and his agent recently purchased Sanctuary Golf Course in Scottsdale for a cool $2.2 million. Not a bad price considering five years ago that course was probably valued near $20 million.

Golf clubs all over Arizona, from Superstition Mountain in Gold Canyon to Seven Canyons in Sedona, have been hurt. But the economic fallout is especially noticeable in Scottsdale, the pinnacle of the Valley's sprawling golf landscape of close to 200 courses.

There are just too many golf courses for the metropolitan Phoenix market, said Roger Garrett, an Insight Land and Investments partner who has sold golf courses for 25 years.

I live in Mississippi where there are just over 200 golf courses in the entire state. In metropolitan Phoenix alone, there are 200 courses. Granted, there are more people in Phoenix than in the entire Magnolia state, but you wonder how they ever thought they would be able to support all 200 plus courses. Tack on an economic recession and a crumbling housing market and you have yourself a Grade-A problem. But hey, that's capitalism, right? The boom and bust cycle. The minority of people boom while the majority bust. And then the vultures come in and pick up the scraps (I'm not hating, Phil). 

 

http://www.oobgolf.com/content/fore+play/1-4723-Phil_Mickelson_Buys_Golf_Course_in_Arizona.html

 

Phil Mickelson is 41 years old. His putting prowess has disappeared, he won just one tournament each of the past two years after multiple victories the previous six seasons, and kids half his age are winning majors.

 

Yet Mickelson is convinced that the PGA Tour hasn't passed him by. In fact, he believes his career is about to get a second wind.

 

"As good as these young players are, there are glaring weaknesses in their game," Mickelson said Tuesday. "I feel like being out there (on Tour) for 20 years, being able to work with top-notch instruction and have the practice really apply to my performance, that some of my best years are coming."

 

Mickelson, the Arizona State product who now lives in the San Diego area, was in north Scottsdale to promote the newly christened and re-designed McDowell Mountain Golf Club, formerly known as the Sanctuary Golf Course.

 

http://www.azcentral.com/sports/golf/articles/2011/10/11/20111011phil-mickelson-still-confident-in-game.html#ixzz1aZc95HqQ

 

 

Its Only Golf But I Like It

http://thisisnthappiness.com/page/599

Mt Kum Gang NK

When is a golf tournament not just a tournament? When it's in North Korea.

Mao Zedong's 'ping-pong diplomacy' thawed Chinese-US ties. Could Kim Jong-il's 'golf club diplomacy' do the same for North Korean-US relations?

By Bryan Kay, Correspondent / October 4, 2011

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA

Call it "golf club diplomacy." North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s latest charm offensive involves a golf tournament, open to one of his country’s rarest sights: outsiders.

Mr. Kim may well be taking a page from 1971. That's when Mao Zedong, then leader of Communist China, famously invited American table tennis players to his country for a series of matches against local stars of the game. The move, later labeled “ping-pong diplomacy,” led to a thaw in Chinese-US relations.

North Korea's latest attempt at detente – the use of golf to entice a new branch of tourists – represents a departure from decades in the shadows as a notorious recluse. Desperate for foreign currency amid a cut in aid and reportedly crippling food shortages, the unlikely quest for foreign visitors, say observers, will mean striking a balance between tapping the market of adventure tourists and ensuring the visitors gain as little access to locals as possible.

North Korea recently gave the green light for the tournament, dubbed the DPRK Amateur Golf Open, to take place in next May at the Pyongyang Golf Course, which is about 27 kilometers from the capital and next to a military range. Not incidentally, this is the very golf course where Kim Jong-il's is said to have scored a "five holes-in-one" in his first-ever game.

 

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2011/1004/When-is-a-golf-tournament-not-just-a-tournament-When-it-s-in-North-Korea?google_editors_picks=true

 

As for the kind of experience tourists can expect? Ian Garner, tournament director, paints a more surreal picture of the course environment.

“The golf course wasn't designed as well as courses on the amateur circuits in Europe and America,” he says. “It was about the experience ­– the experience of soldiers patrolling the course, the experience of playing in a country that is so closed to the rest of the world.”

 

Diaries

Wife's Diary:

 

Tonight, I thought my husband was acting weird. We had made plans to meet at a nice restaurant for dinner. I was shopping with my friends all day long. So I thought he was upset at the fact that I was a bit late, but he made no comment on it. Conversation wasn't flowing, so I suggested that we go somewhere quiet so we could talk. He agreed, but he didn't say much.

 

I asked him what was wrong; He said, 'Nothing.' I asked him if it was my fault that he was upset? He said he wasn't upset, that it had nothing to do with me, and not to worry about it. On the way home, I told him that I loved him. He smiled slightly, and kept driving. I can't explain his behavior I don't know why he didn't say, 'I love you, too.' When we got home, I felt as if I had lost him completely, as if he wanted nothing to do with me anymore. He just sat there quietly, and watched TV. He continued to seem distant and absent. Finally, with silence all around us, I decided to go to bed. About 15 minutes later, he came to bed. But I still felt that he was distracted, and his thoughts were somewhere else. He fell asleep; I cried. I don't know what to do. I'm almost sure that his thoughts are with someone else. My life is a disaster.

 

Husband's Diary:

 

A four putt; who the hell four putts?

 

Moses, Jesus, & the Old Man

Mojžíš, Ježíš a starý pán spolu hrají v nebi golf. Mojžíš zahajuje hru. Usadí míček, míří k jamce za jezírkem a odpálí. Míček letí a padá do jezírka. Mojžíš však zvedá hůl, vody se rozestupují a míček se po vodním dně dokutálí na břeh, dva metry od jamky.

Ježíš nechce zůstat pozadu. Připraví míček a střílí stejným směrem. Ale i jeho míček se pomalu snáší na hladinu jezírka. Ježíš zvedá svou hůl a míček se po dopadu na vodní hladinu, navzdory přírodním zákonům, po hladíně dokutálí ke břehu. Zastaví se metr od jamky.

Na řadě je starý pán. Ledabyle ťukne do míčku a ten se odrazí doprostřed jezírka. Tam se zázračně odrazí a letí k nebi. Letadlo nad golfovým hřištěm ho odpinkne na dálnici. Míček se zařadí do levého pruhu a předjede tirák s návěsem. Odbočí zpět k hřišti, proletí branou, po cestičce se dokutálí k jamce a spadne přímo do ní.

Mojžíš se nakloní k Ježíšovi a zašeptá: „Já opravdu nerad hraju golf s tvým taťkou!"

 

Moses, Jesus and the old man are playing golf in heaven. Moses startedthe game. Settle the ball goes to the hole for the pond and explodes. The ball flies and falls into the lake. Moses, however, raises the rod, the watersplits the ball after the water bottom dokutálí ashore, two feet from the hole.
Jesus wants to be left behind. Prepare the ball and shoots the same direction. But the ball slowly to the surface suffers lake. Jesus raised his stick and ball after impact on water levels, despite the laws of nature, the surface dokutálí to shore. He stops three feet from the hole.
At least, the old man. Casually taps the ball and it bounces off the middle of the lake. There is miraculously bounces and flies to heaven. Airplane over the golf course odpinkne him on the highway. The ball shall be placed inthe left lane and overtake tirák with a semitrailer. Turns back to theplayground gate flips after the dokutálí path to the hole and fall right into it.
Moses to Jesus leans and whispers: "I ​​really do not like to play golf withyour dad!"

The Key to Putting: Not Thinking

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904716604576544542323806566.html

 

Dave Stockton suddenly seems to be the "it" instructor on the subject of putting. Current or recent students include Rory McIlroy, Phil Mickelson, Matt Kuchar, Adam Scott, Yani Tseng and Suzann Pettersen. But he's actually been teaching other pros for years—just more quietly.

 

"In those days, I just wanted to play. I didn't want people coming up all the time and asking me questions. So when I worked with someone, I'd tell them, 'You don't owe me anything, I just want you not to tell anybody that I helped you,' " he told me this week.

 

He advocates minimal attention to mechanics, no practice strokes and rolling the golf ball smoothly, like an artist applying paint to a canvas. His most successful early student was Annika Sörenstam. She credits Stockton for helping take her from a two-win 1999 LPGA season to 24 wins over the next three years.