One of the greatest additions to sports broadcasting in the past year has been the increased use of slow-motion footage shot at thousands of frames per second.
These clips give the viewers a level of detail that give us a better understanding of what exactly is going on during moments that are too fast to break down with the naked eye.
The latest is this clip produced by TNT during the PGA Championship, showing a wedge shot by Robert Garrigus, who is currently tied for the lead at 7-under...
Tiger Woods hasn't won a major in five years yet if he wins one of the next three majors, he will still be ahead of Jack Nicklaus's pace when he set the record with 18 career major championships.
Like Nicklaus, Woods has won 14 career majors at the age of 37. Nicklaus did not win his 15th major until the third major after he turned 38 (The British Open). Nicklaus then won two majors at age 40 and his final major at age 46.
Tiger's pace has slowed considerably, but his pace was so fast when he was younger, that there is still plenty of time to get back to the top of his game and catch Jack. But he needs to win one soon...
Jason Dufner became the 24th player in history to shoot a 63 in a major and now holds a 1-shot lead over Matt Kuchar at the PGA Championship.
Dufner had a putt on the 18th hole to break the record for lowest round ever in a major, but his 12-foot putt came up short (see GIF below).
Dufner's day got off to a great start when he eagled from the fairway on the second hole and he never cooled off. He birdied two of the next three holes to shoot a 4-under, 31 on the front nine.
His score is also a course record at the Oak Hill Country Club.
The low score is not a complete surprise. The Oak Hill course played easy today as Dufner was the 16th player in the clubhouse with a score under par. Several other players on the course also have a good shot at shooting in the 60s.
Here is the putt that would have broken the record...
There has been a lot of criticism this week at the PGA Championship for the very difficult rough which caused a lot of players some headaches.
Well, things are so bad that even Phil Mickelson, who is well-known for his ability to hit short wedge shots, is struggling. On the par-4 seventh hole, Mickelson needed three shots to cover the ten feet from his ball to the green.
Mickelson, who had moved to 1-over earlier in the round, would triple-bogey the hole and is now 5-over, 14 strokes behind the leader. Here is the video. You can see a GIF of the three shots below...
And here is a GIF...
With the leaders struggling in the third round, Rory McIlroy birdied the final two holes of his round in dramatic fashion and is now back in contention to win his second straight PGA Championship.
On the 17th hole, McIlroy sank a 50-foot birdie to move to 2-under. Then, on the 18th hole, McIlroy chipped in from just off the green and found himself just four shots behind Jason Dufner who was 7-under overall and 2-over on the day.
Of the top five golfers on the leaderboard, none are under par in the third round, with all having played at least seven holes. Here is video of McIlroy's long putt and chip-in ...
Jason Dufner won the 2013 PGA Championship with a nearly perfect final round to outplay Jim Furyk and win by two strokes.
Dufner went 26 straight holes without a bogey before the streak ended on the 17th hole of the final round. However, Furyk, who was just two strokes behind at the time, missed an opportunity to cut the lead when he also bogeyed the 17th hole.
Dufner may have sealed his win on the 16th hole when his approach shot rolled back to within one foot of the hole ...
Furyk also birdied the hole but was unable to cut into the lead. Later, when Dufner bogeyed the final two holes, Furyk couldn't take advantage with a pair of bogeys of his own.
The win is the first major championship for Dufner. Prior to this win, his best finish was tied for fourth at the U.S. Open this year and in 2012.
Here are Dufner's final two putts to win the PGA Championship ...
Lee Westwood shot a six-over 76 in the final round of the PGA Championship and finished in 33rd place.
It's the second-straight time he crumbled on Sunday at a major. He shot a 75 in the final round of the British Open to choke away a two-stroke lead.
Last night, after Jason Dufner won the PGA, Westwood went on a bizarre, sometimes-NSFW Twitter meltdown that lasted three hours.
He called his haters "girly boy trolls" and told people to get a life. At the end of it all he confirmed that he wasn't hacked, closing with, "Westy out."
He apologized for the outburst today.
Here's a sampling of what he tweeted:
Perhaps this is a clue to what motivated the outburst:
Only 13 golfers were still standing in the final round off all four majors this year with Adam Scott and Jason Day posting the best overall scores, and Tiger Woods not far behind.
In all, 291 golfers played in a major golf championship this year. Of those golfers, only 163 made the cut during at least one major and only 60 played in all four majors.
From that group, only 13 made the cut at all four majors in 2013. Jason Day and Adam Scott led the way posting a combined score of 2-over par in their 16 rounds at the majors this year. Woods was sixth (+14) and Phil Mickelson ninth (+21).
Woods wasn't able to get over the hump and struggled on the weekends. But he is still one of the best golfers in the world and it would seem that winning another major is inevitable...
Jason Dufner is becoming something of a cult hero after his big win at the PGA Championship.
The 36-year-old Southerner played the tournament with his signature lip of chewing tobacco, and after he sealed the deal on the 18th hole he gave his wife Amanda a little pat on the butt as he walked off the green.
It was immortalized in this photo:
His everyman status has only strengthened as his popularity has grown in the aftermath of his win.
For example, this article in East Alabama Living about the Dufner wedding surfaced today, and it's great.
Jason and Amanda got engaged on a rooftop bar in New York City in July of 2011.
At their wedding in Auburn, Alabama (where Dufner went to college), they had a cocktail hour at the reception featuring mini golf and corn hole — the backyard drinking game where you try to throw bean bags through a hole in a wooden board.
They are America's royal couple:
The wedding was officiated by Auburn football chaplain Chette Williams. Amanda, who actually graduated from Alabama in 2010, had two wedding dresses made — one for the service and another for the reception, which she says had "a Miami club vibe for the night."
These two are the best:
Being one of the top 150 golfers in the world is basically a perk in and of itself.
Once you've made the top 150, life is pretty good. You play golf all day. You get to travel around and see the world. And, in general, you make good money on the course and off the course through sponsorships and corporate outings.
Sure, there's some stress that comes with being a pro golfer. You're not on a contract like a football or basketball player. So, you have no guaranteed income. It's up to you to play well. One bad swing at the wrong time can ruin a round, costing you hundreds of thousands.
But, again, you're a very good golfer, so that's pretty sweet.
Here's another little perk for golfers that most people probably don't know about: courtesy cars. The PGA Tour provides players with loaner cars for the week of a tournament.
This week's tournament is in Jersey City at Liberty National golf course.
We were there earlier in the week. One thing that jumped out walking from the media center to the course was the players' parking lot which is filled with BMWs.
The Tour has a deal with BMW for this event, and all the players get a BMW for the week.
At other events, the players get different cars. (We were told that one of the events near Dallas gets Cadillacs.)
Of course, there are probably better towns to have a BMW in. Jersey City isn't exactly a driver's paradise. Many players are staying in Manhattan this week and they're taking water taxis to the course.
The parking lot looked like a BMW dealership. The players might even be allowed to use these cars to drive the next tour stop, which is in Boston next week. Since the players cover all their own travel expenses, this is a nice bonus.
When Scott Brown teed-off on the 16th hole of the opening round during The Barclays, it looked like his ball was going to land in the water. Instead, it ended up just two feet from the hole.
In the latest example of where it is sometimes better to be lucky than good, Brown's ball bounced off the cart path bridge that crosses the water and landed on the green. From there, it rolled to within two feet of the hole.
Here is the video (via Devil Ball Golf)...
In honor of the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic "I Have A Dream Speech," the Golf Channel solicited bourgeois fantasies from its Twitter followers.
Dreaming of overcoming centuries of oppression and bigotry is not the same as wanting to do fun golf stuff.
They took down the tweet about 20 minutes after it was posted:
Lindsey Vonn says her notoriously competitive boyfriend Tiger Woods tends to get the better of her in every game they play, except one.
"We're really competitive with everything, ping pong, tennis and whatever. I usually lose, which is really depressing."
Tiger once played the US Open on a broken leg and told ESPN that winning is the only thing that drives him to play golf, so obviously he's going to try to beat his girlfriend in ping pong.
And while he basically came out of the womb playing golf, he likes free diving and weightlifting and seems to be a pretty well-rounded athlete.
Vonn said there is one thing she's better at: the hand-slapping game.
"I've got better reflexes and better balance," she told USA Today.
That seems to make sense. The skillset of a world class skier — the ability to detect changes in your surroundings and instantly react — is probably more conducive to hand-slapping prowess than a world-class golfer's.
She does have great balance:
Here's what the hand-slapping game looks like:
These two:
SEE ALSO: 16 Examples Of Tiger Woods' Insane Competitiveness
Every sport has it’s superstitions and golf is no exception.
I’m not alone – there are plenty of golfers with strange superstitions. Here are some of my favorites:
This isn’t a superstition I’m prone to believing, but red is the color of stress and aggression – maybe that’s where it comes from. It’s hard enough keeping your focus on the course without added subliminal pressure.
I know some golfers who just love certain irons or woods – they swear by them. They take their favorite club with them and it never leaves their bag. Most of them probably don’t even remember why they love that particular club. In fact, many of them barely use their favorite.
The best I can figure is that they nailed an amazing shot with their favorite club a very long time ago. After that, they don’t want to use it because they’re afraid to destroy that memory with a bad shot.
Somewhere inside some golfer’s head the thought occurred: “Maybe a ball, once it lands in the water, is forever attracted to every other water hazard that exists.” Or, maybe the golfer who was first bit by this superstition thought that water worked like a magnet.
I think this was started by people who couldn’t keep their shots on the fairway and got tired of having their balls stolen. This superstition says that if you pick up another person’s ball that was hit out of bounds, your game will be cursed and your score will suffer. I can’t hear this superstition without hearing a witch in the back of my mind chanting, “Double, double toil and trouble.”
Sure, it’s bad manners – but it’s not going to screw your game.
Okay, sometimes you’ll stumble across balls that aren’t out of bounds. The karma gods of golf aren’t going to penalize you for nabbing this ball. Well, unless you use it during the same round.
You see, if you nab another person’s ball that is in bounds, you just have to wait until the next round. Then you’ll be safe!
So, you just sunk a putt where the ball was more than three feet away from the hole. First, great work. Before you take the ball out of the hole, you need to tap the ball on the cup’s wall. If you don’t do this, says the superstition, you’ll suffer on every hole for the rest of your round.
The only possible explanation that I can even think of for this is that some golfers need routines. We know that pre-shot routines help golfers focus – maybe the same thing can be said for post-shot routines. If you don’t start this habit, you’ll never have to keep it up.
Are you having a great round? Have you just birdied three consecutive holes? For goodness sake don’t wash your ball off! After all, your success on the course is clearly the result of some magical, invisible substance coating your ball and not you and your skill.
Two-time Masters champion Ben Crenshaw doesn’t use any balls that are numbered higher than four. Why? Because he doesn’t want a score higher than that on any hole.
Could he have won two Masters without this? Maybe, but he’s a two-time champ and I’m not calling him out.
Remember that round you hit a 79 in the blue Nike shirt? Then, the next day you shot 103 in a black Nike shirt? Clearly the blue shirt is just a good luck charm. Lee Bacchus, writing for Golf World, admits he falls for this superstition.He writes, “It’s a damn good thing I’m a consistently bad golfer or else I may be still wearing the same Calvin Kleins I donned when I started the game two decades ago.”
It’s pushing your luck, tempting fate, and you’re going to lose whatever ball you’re swinging at – all of this because you kept one in your pocket. I’ve also heard that you should never golf with anything in your pocket, but that makes a bit more sense. Sure, something in your pocket could cause discomfort and a messed up swing – but I don’t think it alone will cause you to lose your ball.
Throwing concern to the wind, some golfers refuse to tee off unless they actually have something in their pocket. Tom Weiskoff needs three cents and three tees in his pocket, and Jack Nicklaus will only golf when he has three coins in his pocket (the denomination doesn’t matter).
This one comes from Ernie Els. Again, the man has been incredibly successful – so maybe he’s onto something. If you watch Els, every time he birdies he switches balls because he doesn’t think you can get more than one birdie with the same ball.
This is another common area where superstition prevails. There are many different beliefs about ball markers – some people will only use coins with pictures of states where they played a good round and others will only use coins of certain denominations.
While it’s fun to get laughs from superstitions, ultimately they can benefit players. Like I said earlier, many superstitions can be thought of as pre-swing routines – just a habit that helps golfers focus and stay calm. Sure, they may be silly, but they can help, too.
What superstitions do you follow? Leave a comment and let us know.
This week we learned that Tiger Woods goes all-out in every sport, even when he's playing his girlfriend in ping pong.
It's a small reminder that Tiger is one of the most competitive people in sports.
That competitiveness — even more than his strength and focus — is the attribute that has allowed him to dominate golf for more than a decade.
There are a ton of great anecdotes about how cutthroat the guy is.
Source: ESPN
Source: OC Register
Source: Time
Farmers Insurance has a new ad campaign centered around Rickie Fowler playing a golf private investigator styled after the P.I.s seen in 1970s television shows.
Fowler, who goes by the name "Dick Fowler, P.I." in the commercials, works with a sidekick to help stop rude golfers.
The commercials are simple, fun, and funny. But maybe the best part is that Fowler did not need a wig, just a mustache. Here is the first "episode" (via The Big Lead)...
And here is the second "episode"...
Tiger Woods struggled at the Deutsche Bank Championship, finishing 4-under, 22 strokes behind the winner, Henrik Stenson. But he did provide one notable highlight as he and his daughter, Samantha, wore matching outfits.
This isn't the first time Tiger's daughter has worn red during a final round. Samantha was still a baby when she wore red and white during the playoff round of the 2008 U.S. Open, the last win by Woods at a major.
Here is Samantha following Woods on Monday (via Yahoo! Sports)...
And here is dad and daughter at the 2008 U.S. Open...
If you watch the Golf Channel's pre-, or post-round shows during major tournaments you've seen lead analyst Brandel Chamblee unloading on Tiger Woods and his Sean Foley-tuned swing.
For instance, earlier this month he said, "It's a very complicated golf swing that he's trying to work on, that much fold, shaft lean, the down and the up that he has, the excessive down, the excessive up; you know, his driver might as well be a dead mackerel wrapped in newspaper at the moment. It's just awful watching him hit that golf club, just awful. It's really fun to watch guys like (Graham) DeLaet and (Henrik) Stenson and Adam Scott drive the golf ball. So yes, I definitely think Tiger Woods is over-coached."
Tiger has won more tournaments this year than Scott, Stenson and DeLaet combined. Yet, somehow, Woods' swing is the worst of the bunch?
Why is Chamblee so angry about Woods swing? He gave a fuller explanation to media reporter Ed Sherman (via Geoff Shackleford).
In short, he thinks Woods could have won 25 majors if he stuck with his first Butch Harmon-built swing. The fact that he took it apart for no apparent reason drives Chamblee nuts:
While I’m critical of the changes he’s made, what I’m most critical is the toll and time it took to make those changes on his body. The greatest gift is time. He achieved this incredible success and consistency, only to tear it down and build it back up. To get where? To get back to the same exact spot where he was. To then tear that down and build it back up. Where was the goal? To get back where he was.
I get it. A friend of mine said this: He is like the pianist who has mastered every piece of music. The only problem is, in order to advance, he needs more music. Well, Beethoven is dead. So how does he come up with new music? He has to create it himself.
Tiger always was going somewhere with his golf game. Now he’s going somewhere with his golf swing. That’s where I’m critical of him. He was in the middle of this one, long flawless note and he stopped or he was interrupted, whichever one you want to choose. And he’s trying to recreate it again.
I’m also critical, because I stood next to him and I watched the greatest golf swing the game has ever seen. The greatest stretch of golf the world has ever seen. And he willfully dismantled it. That’s the craziest thing in the history of sports. Not golf. All of sports. There’s no equivalent to it, but if you’re a sports fan, it’s literally the ’27 Yankees starting with a new roster in 1928.
Jim Furyk became just the sixth golfer in PGA Tour history to shoot a 59 when he sank a short three-foot putt on the final hole. The putt was set up by an incredible approach shot and helped him overcome a 3-putt bogey earlier in the round that seemingly ruined his chance at tying the record.
Here is the final putt. You can see how Furyk got to 59 with the GIFs and images below...
[EARLIER] Jim Furyk is off to an incredible start in the second round of the BMW Championship, shooting a 28 on his first nine holes. He is now 10-under through 12 holes and has a good shot to tie or break the PGA Tour record for lowest round ever.
Furyk had six birdies and an eagle on the first nine holes to open 8-under for the round. He needed just nine putts on the first nine holes.
The PGA Tour record for lowest score in a round is 59, which has happened five times.
Follow along here for updates...
3:40 - Furyk birdied the second hole (he started on the back-9) and is now 9-under through 11 holes. He needs to get to 12-under to shoot 59.
4:00 - Furyk just sank a long putt on the third hole and is now 10-under through 12 holes. He just needs to go 2-under on the final six holes to shoot 59. Here is the putt...
4:13 - Furyk is in a zone now. His approach shot on the fourth hole left him with this short putt to go 11-under through 13 holes. He made the putt and now needs just one more birdie on the final five holes to shoot 59. If he goes 2-under he will become the first to ever shoot 58 in a PGA Tour event...
4:37 - Furyk 3-putted the fifth hole for a bogey. He now needs two birdies on the final four holes to shoot a 59. He did birdie the seventh hole in the first round and the eighth hole is a par-5. So he still has a shot.
4:49 - Furyk 2-putted for par on the sixth hole. He still needs two birdies on the final three holes. However, the seventh and eighth holes have been the second and third easiest holes on the course today.
5:02 - Furyk's approach shot on the seventh was on line but scooted about ten feet past the hole. Furyk sank the putt and is now back to 11-under through 16 holes...
5:30 - Furyk's second shot on the par-5 eighth hole came up short, leaving him an ugly third shot that he needed to get close for a good shot at birdie...
And here is a GIF of the shot. He would 2-putt from there for par...
5:45 - Furyk came through with a huge approach shot on the ninth hole. He now has just three feet for birdie to become just the sixth player to shoot 59 during a PGA Tour event...
After the approach Furyk was all smiles...
The final round of the BMW Championship was postponed until this morning with Tiger Woods (-9) trailing Jim Furyk (-13) by four strokes.
But when Woods started his round, he looked different. He was not wearing his signature red top that he wears during the final round of all tournaments. Instead he was wearing a long-sleeved black top. It does appear that he is wearing a polo with a black collar under the top. Even if the polo is red, it is not visible and it just looks weird not seeing Tiger in red.
Here is the view from the front...
And the view from the back...
