Mark’s Kaddy Korner

Who, Who, or Who?

Match play is a different breed, takes a special character to survive five days of head-to-head competition, just take a look at who won last year, Ian Poulter one of the game’s obtuse characters. Stroke play is a steady grind, match play is constantly ebbing never flowing and your emotions take a beating. A steady tee to green game can be destroyed by a swashbuckler who throws around as many bogeys as pars. One well placed birdie or two can win a match play event while you’re on the way to shooting 75 and your opponent is grinding out a smooth 70.

Your Chicago suburb resident and Sony Open Champion, Mark Wilson, decided to play this week despite his beloved Packers teeing it up against the Bears. The game will be broadcast approximately the same time they’re playing in Palm Springs so you can count Wilson out this week, his concentration will be on the oblong ball or he may miss the cut (purposely?) and have his feet hiked up in front of the screen sipping a cold beverage with a brat or two.

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Sony Open – Predictions, Facts, and Stories

Just after John Houston waylaid Waialae with his sister on the bag in 1998 Seth Raynor’s track has been quite daunting. The PGA Tour mandated changes, now fairways are difficult to hit, the rough is basically unplayable, the 30-40 mph crosswinds wreak havoc with club selection and putting the grainy greens treacherous. Newcomers think they are going to enjoy the Hawaiian sun and tear up this short layout. They’ll get a nice tan, only the veterans shoot numbers in the teens.

Masters Preview from Kaddy Korner

When Arnie and Jack hit the ceremonial first drives Thursday morning hopefully all the Tiger trash will be over. The Monday press conference could drag on into Tuesday morning and nobody is worried about the golf yet. A lot of the players are gearing up for the press onslaught, the reporters will have a lot of down time and they’ll be looking for someone to talk to besides Tiger.

Transitions Championship – Innisbrook – Tarpon Springs, FL           

The Transitions Championship (a few other sponsors also) has been coming to Innisbrook since 2000 and prior to that the Mixed Team PGA/LPGA was held here in the late 80’s and early 90’s. It was a lot of fun back then, still challenging, but it was the off season and a chance to make a little Christmas money. Now the course has been redesigned (1999), lengthened, and toughened up enough that a major could be staged here.

The CA Championship has only been coming to Doral since 2007; my first trip here was 1988. Back then the Blue Monster was probably one of the toughest courses on tour, now it ranks eighth easiest among the par 72 tracks on tour. If the wind doesn’t blow the top players in the world eat this course alive.

In the late 90’s the Doral Resort and Spa owners brought in Ray Floyd to toughen up the layout and put some teeth in the Blue Monster. He followed their orders, added some bunkers, tee boxes, and created some doglegs to challenge the tour players. After some sniveling and whining the course was softened again and Raymond took some unnecessary criticism for ruining the Blue Monster. He was only following orders and the pampered PGA Tour players couldn’t handle the challenge.

Hey all,

Bittersweet, that’s all there is to say about last week; home without a job but it’s really not home any more. Shawn and Cindy were gracious; they let me and Alaskan Dave crash at their place for the week while we searched for work. It was nice, I guess, seeing some old friends, my dog Zach, but I was ready to get out of their Tuesday after a futile job search. On Monday I thought my prospects were good but Tuesday morning there was large gathering of experienced caddies in the parking lot.