Capelle On Golf

Who’s the Greatest?
Golfonline.com ran a poll asking readers how is the greater athlete, Michael Phelps or Tiger Woods? Considering that the poll was run on a golf web site, Phelps did well in attracting 42.2% of the vote to Tiger’s 57.7%. Evidently MSNBC’s pollsters assumed that Phelps is the top athlete in the Olympics, but I disagree.

US Women’s Olympic gymnasts Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson finished 1-2 in the all-around and were incredible in the team event where they felt Ryder Cup type pressure. And both were phenomenal in the individual finals as they executed to perfection a series mindboggling series of twists, jumps, leaps and landings with the whole world watching.

Phelps, as they showed on NBC, was lucky to be born with a perfect body for swimming – 6’4”, 14” feet, long arms, huge hands, short legs and a long upper body. Unlike the ladies, he just swims a couple of different strokes and never has to worry about falling in front of hundreds of millions. As for Woods, if he had the same body control as these two ladies, his every tee shot would travel 300+ down the gut. So who is the greater athlete? If they’d put Liukin and Johnson on the ballot, they’d have gotten my vote.

Michelle Wie is Rock Solid
No, Michelle Wie didn’t play her way on to the LPGA Tour for 2009 at the Canadian Women’s Open. But after opening with a 75, she closed with solid rounds of 70, 69, 71 to finish 12t, one shot out of the top 10. Her final 54 holes beat seven of the 11 players that ended up in front of her for the event. Wie hit 69.4% of the greens, and carded just one bogey over her final 39 holes.
Who knows what this unpredictable teen will do next, but one thing seems clear: this 18 year old superstar in waiting still has plenty of game. But what she needs is 100% commitment to playing women’s pro golf and some schooling on the art of winning. When this is coming is anybody’s guess.

MSNBC Poll Selects Harrington for POY
Tiger Woods phenomenal stretch of play in an abbreviated season capped by his heart stopping win at Torrey Pines carried a lot of weight with many voters as he garnered 27% of the vote for Player of the Year on a poll at MSNBC. However, it seems that a much larger segment of the public feels that two majors and a full season peppered with several top 5s is more worthy of the top prize because 71% voted for Padraig Harrington. Despite the win and Woods’ popularity, the fact that a foreign player could win over American voters shows that there are limits to Tigermania.

Players in 2008 who Made the Cut at the Four Majors
Padraig Harrington and 10 other players made the cut at all four in 2008. His average of 71.19 on four exceptionally tough layouts was .87 shots better than runner up Robert Karlsson, who missed the Top 10 Slam by three shots at the PGA. The table shows their 16 round average in the 2008 majors and their finishes.

71.19 Padraig Harrington (5t, MC, W, W)
72.06 Robert Karlsson (8t, 4t, 7t, 20t)
72.12 Phil Mickelson (5t, 18t, 19t, 7t)
72.44 Andres Romero (8t, 36t, 32t, 7t)
72.69 Retief Goosen (17t, 14t, 32t, 24t)
72.81 Paul Casey (11t, 65t, 7t, 15t)
72.88 Jim Furyk (33t, 36t, 5t, 29t)
72.88 Stuart Appleby (14t, 36t, 51t, 15t)
73.06 Mike Weir (17t, 18t, 39t, 42t)
73.25 Robert Allenby (42t, 18t, 7t, 31t)
73.38 Justin Leonard (20t, 36t, 16t, 58t)