Hootie The Prophet

Now posted is my Golfobserver.com column complimenting Hootie Johnson on (some) of his foresight and wisdom. Oh, and in the "let's get Hootie signed up for Shotlink department": reader Josh noticed that Tiger's long drive for the week (and seemingly every other player's) came on the fourteenth hole. Tiger's longest is listed as 315 yards. Considering he had at least two in the 375 range that we saw on live TV (#2 Sat., #1 Sunday), plus at least 10 more during televised coverage that pushed the 320 range, I'd say it's time for Hootie Johnson to bring ShotLink to Augusta. On second thought, if it leads to more tree planting....maybe not.

Seth Davis of SI has an excellent report on his day following Tiger from start to finish. The m ost hilarious (or disturbing?) note came from his time in the press lookout tower on 18 .

“Even though I was surrounded by several dozen of the most dedicated golf writers in the world, nobody could say for sure where the playoff was going to take place. Just when I was wondering how I was going to beat the crowd to the 10th hole, I hear that the playoff will actually begin on the 18th. What luck!”

Rudy Martzke in the USA Today explains why CBS couldn’t show coverage on USA during the weekend mornings , then pretty much writes about the brilliant job the CBS announce team did. He must have flipped over to a baseball game when Verne Lundquist went on about the vibrating 6th green or when no one at CBS seemed to know what was being said between Chris DiMarco and Masters officials on the eighth hole. And then there were the times Bobby Clampett opened his mouth...still, they have Feherty and Oosterhuis to save the day.

For a superior CBS coverage review, check out Peter McCleery’s piece on GolfDigest.com . Not only does McCleery point out that NBC and the USGA added morning round completion coverage at Pebble Beach in 2000, but he also notices just how close (again) the Masters came to running out of sunlight Sunday evening.

I didn’t see the coverage on this, but last week Dan Bickley in the Arizona Republic looked at rumors of Mickelson's gambling addiction. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that “this week’s most outrageous rumor for the caddie clique," said Mickelson switched from Titleist to Callaway “because he has run up considerable gambling debts.”

Which led to this comment from radio talk show host Jim Rome : "Callaway officials angrily deny this saying they did an intensive background check on Mickelson’s gambling history. Look, the fact that Callaway felt it necessary to do an intensive background check or that Mickelson even has a gambling history to speak of, tells you something right there. Look, it’s always dicey to comment on rumor and innuendo, but where there’s smoke, there’s fire and there’s an awful lot of gambling smoke coming off of Phil Mickelson right now."