News Flash: Tiger Wins

Tiger Woods won the Accenture World Match Play Championship, a World Golf Championship event (trust me, that sounds a lot more important than it actually is), by defeating Stewart Cink 8 & 7 in the 36 hole final match played yesterday. As this wasn't a normal stroke play event, you may be wondering what 8 & 7 means. Prepare to be bored to tears, because I'm going to tell you. In match play, golfers play each other directly – so, if I par the first hole and you bogey it, I win the hole and go 1 up. If I birdie the next and you double bogey it, I go 2 up. Notice I didn't gain three strokes on you when I won that hole, as I would in stroke play. I only won the hole. If you win the third, you trim my lead back to 1 up. Ties are called 'halves'. If we fast forward to later in the match and I'm 4 up with three holes to play, you can't numerically win the match – the best you could hope for would be to beat me on the final three holes and lose 1 down. Since golfers are lazy, we would stop playing the match on the 15^th hole and I would win 4 & 3 - literally 4 up with 3 to play. Another difference between match play and stroke play is concessions. If you're an inch from the hole, I can 'give you' the putt and allow you to pick it up without putting out. If you're three feet from the hole – or 300 yards from the hole for that matter – I can give you that shot as well, but I'd think equally hard about both of those examples. Different players use different tactics when it comes to concessions. For example, some are very generous in the beginning to make you expect putts to be conceded, only to look the other way when you have a testy downhill two footer to win a crucial hole late in the match. Gamesmanship takes many forms on the golf course – just ask Seve Ballesteros and Paul Azinger.

So when Tiger Woods won the World Match Play Championship yesterday 8 & 7 by making 13 birdies in the 29 holes played, he won by an absurd margin and the match was over on the 11^th green of the second 18. Did you read what I just wrote?? 13 birdies! That's birdie on almost half the holes he played.

I'd talk about somebody else, but what's the point?? Phil Mickelson lost some weight... er, Boo Weekley and Sergio Garcia apparently don't like each other... and Michelle Wie tied for last in the LPGA Fields Open after taking a semester off from Stanford. Whoops. Better hit the books, Michelle, because I don't know if chasing that little white ball around is going to pay off after all. At least Tiger lasted a couple of years at Stanford before cashing in. Try some accounting courses - they'll help you add up your scorecards.

Alright, that's enough out of me. And don't pay any attention to the Mike Santa Barbara lovefest below... he's just happy because I made him a burger at 3 am last weekend.