Double Bogey Causes Millions of Remotes to Switch Channels

On the 11th hole at Bay Hill, Tiger Woods made a few more bad swings out of the rough, and then mindlessly three putted for a double bogey while VJ moved up on Tiger by 5 and Tiger was done. He limped home with a double and a triple for his highest score since he was 12 or something like that. The next invisible sound you heard were millions of TV sets turning off.

Johnny Miller and his NBC partners tried to make us care, but with VJ on cruise control and the only other player being Sergio who can’t sink a meaningful putt to save his life, it left us with Roco Mediate to stir our golf hearts, but it wasn’t enough.

There was a brief interview segment earlier in the broadcast with Mr. Palmer, who when asked if he were the Ruler of Golf for a day, what would he change? He echoed his pal Nicklaus’ comments regarding the hyper golf balls and that he would scale it back to bring back the classic old courses, but then he really hit his stride. “I think the players really need to connect with the galleries more. I know there is a lot of money out there, but it really has gotten too business like.” You think?

Most of us in the industry already know, that the majority of the PGA Tour players are obsessive compulsive prima donna’s who don’t give galleries the time of day, let alone even any eye contact. And when you reflect back on Arnie’s Army we are reminded that he connected with the crowds like no one has before or since. He relied on them for his energy on Sunday’s and that connection earned him the title, The King.

Palmer is right on the money of course. They are playing a game, not performing brain surgery, and I just wonder to myself if perhaps they would allow themselves to interact a bit more or a lot more that maybe, just maybe some of these guys who can’t close might loosen up a bit and perform better on Sunday.

Vaughn Taylor continued to demonstrate that over par is just about par on Sunday, dropping out of the lead with a 73 after starting the day two strokes up. Sergio missed to putts inside 4 feet on two of the last three holes to drop from under par to one over costing him a tie for third and about $100K. I guess he can afford it.

I couldn’t agree more with Mr. Palmer. These guys need to quit obsessing about how cool it is to be on Tour, and remember the galleries, and enjoy themselves, instead of having their testicles tighten up to finish off a tournament.