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The Hot List: August 23
Sports Illustrated's Alan Shipnuck takes a weekly look at who's hot and who's not in the golf world.
HOT 1. Tiger Woods. The greatest season in golf history. Period. 2. Bob May. After much clamoring, finally someone gets in Tiger's kitchen. So he's not a tall South African with a pocketful of U.S. Opens, or a pumped-up snowboarder, or any of golf's other glamour boys. Chubby, balding, emotionless -- May was exactly what we've all been waiting for, even if we didn't know it. 3. Valhalla Golf Club. The most mocked course in championship golf redeems itself as a stage for grand theater. Although, let's be serious, any track with a faux waterfall should not be hosting a major championship. 4. Jose Maria Olazabal. The erratic Spaniard -- who has the worst driving record this side of Shannon Doherty -- matches the lowest score in major championship golf, 63, despite a course overgrown with five inches of bluegrass rough. 5. The PGA Championship. Two years running the best tournament of the season, fueled on adrenaline and on starpower. What did the comb-overs at the PGA of America ever do to deserve this? NOT 1. Jack Nicklaus. Not the year of swan songs the Bear envisioned: 78-81 on the weekend at the Masters, and missed cuts at the other three majors. Wouldn't it have been great if he retired in May of 1986? 2. The vaunted Time magazine cover jinx. Back in 1949 Ben Hogan was featured, and a month later, on a lonely stretch of West Texas highway, he collided with a 10-ton Greyhound bus. Apparently it is going to take something of equal magnitude to slow down Tiger. 3. Ernie Els. Hoping to avoid the Grand Slammed -- finishing second in all four majors -- Els instead four-putts his way to 34th place. This is progress? 4. David Duval. A lost year ends with him at home on his couch, nursing a sore back, while history is being made at the PGA. Hopefully Duval was paying attention to all those incessant, obnoxious instructional tips during the telecast. 5. Tiger's first round at the 2000 Masters. Were it not for that mysterious 75, we could be lining Broadway right now, readying for the first Grand Slam ticker tape parade since 1930. Oh well, at least we have something to look forward to next year.
Don't forget to check out Alan's new column, On Tour, posting each Thursday. Click here to send him a question or comment.
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