The fate of golf would seem to lie in the hands of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club and the United States Golf Association. Can we expect that they will protect and reverence the spirit of golf?
MAX BEHR
Gary Van Sickle at golf.com's press tent blog tracks down the image on Neiman's web site and offers his thoughts on this latest masterwork.
Personally I think you can tack that baby to any wall in the Guantanamo Bay prison, throw on Celine Dion's greatest hits, and no one will ever ask about waterboarding ever again.
"They need to win badly," said the five-time Major winner. "I hope the Americans win this year in all seriousness.
"I see the Ryder Cup getting very boring because we are beating them so badly. Everybody is losing interest. I think it will be good if they win the next one. It would give the Ryder Cup a lift.
"I just hope the matches are a little bit closer because they have been no-contests. My heart is always with the Europeans but my head is with the Americans for the good of the trophy."
You may recall that when Ian Stafford reported Paul Azinger's comments on Nick Faldo, I hoped there would be an audio tape. Seems that the The Mail On Sunday has one and posts it online.
An unbylined Independent item sums up what's on the tape:
So The Mail On Sunday did decide to put last week's already infamous interview with Paul Azinger on the internet yesterday and helped to clear up some of the confusion in the process. Azinger claimed the British journalist had taken him "out of context" in an interview. Azinger was quoted as using the term "prick" in connection with Nick Faldo, his opposing Ryder Cup captain in Kentucky in September, and told a fellow scribbler here on Wednesday that he would not be speaking to any other Fleet Street reporters "in a million fucking years" because of this blatant distortion of the truth. On The Mail on Sunday website Azinger can be clearly heard saying: "You know, if you're going to be a prick, and everybody hated you, why do you think because you're trying to be cute and funny on the air that they're all suddenly going to start to like you?" Now, whatever Azinger says, that is "in context". So it will be interesting how Faldo reacts now. Yesterday, he was too busy up in the CBS tower to respond to the new development, although Sam Torrance, the victorious 2002 captain, is under no illusion why Azinger chose to backtrack on his outburst. "Paul Azinger is a very bright person," said Torrance, who has been part of the BBC commentary team at the Masters. "The Americans have suffered a lot of losses and he's trying to stir up a hornets' nest to get things unsettled. He has said it knowing that there will be repercussions and it has backfired on him. It was rather silly, especially as you have the tape and it's there for all to hear. What Azinger said was unnecessary, uncalled for and is not what the Ryder Cup is about."
This should take you to the audio.
WSJ: Any thoughts on how the course will be set up?See. Here's one interesting comment, though I don't buy the usual stuff about golfers being honorable, therefore they would never cheat on the drug test:
MR. AZINGER: It's another one of those things that's going to really depend on the makeup of that team. I don't want to say I'm not going to have any rough out there and then Nick Faldo picks his two biggest hitters because he thinks it gives him an advantage. I don't want him to know anything. I'll just do what I can based on the makeup of the team.
WSJ: What are your feelings on drug testing in golf?
MR. AZINGER: It's time for the tour to be drug-tested. What I'm opposed to is that we're supposed to drop our pants to our ankles and pull our shirts to our chests to prove we don't have someone's urine strapped to our side. It just seems a little silly to me to that you can't just say, "You're going to be drug-tested today, go in that bathroom, pee in a glass and just leave it there." [Instead, they are saying], "Go in that bathroom, I'm coming in there with you, and you have to drop your pants, lift up your shirt." It's not who golfers are.
I don't think there was any consideration on the [PGA Tour's prohibited substances list] of performance-enhancing drugs [for] what's performance-enhancing in golf. Stimulants are on this list. I mean, guys don't take a handful of stimulants before they tee off at the Ryder Cup. That's the last thing they need.
If you had under 10 hours in the Azinger denial pool, you win!
Gary Van Sickle scores the detailed response from Azinger to the Daily Mail story where he's quoted blasting Nick Faldo:
Azinger said he phoned Faldo after he first read the story and left a humorous message to needle his friend. "I said, 'Nick, this is Zinger,'" Azinger said. "I said, 'Well, it's already started. I don't know if you've seen it, but one of those papers said I called you a pr--k and that everyone from your generation hates you. Even though you pretty much are and everyone pretty much does, I have more diplomacy than to say that.' He called back and said, 'Zinger, I read this whole article and, you don't like Monty more than me, do you?'"
The Daily Mail's Ian Stafford hopefully had his tape recorder running when Paul Azinger made some of these comments about Nick Faldo, because you have to figure Azinger's going to either A) deny having made them or (B) suggest that they were taken out of context.
"Nick Faldo has tried to redefine himself," says Azinger. "I'd say he is both who he is and who he was. Some people have bought it. Some have not. But if you're going to be a p***k and everyone hates you, why do you think that just because you're trying to be cute and funny on air now that the same people are all going to start to like you?And...
"The bottom line is that the players from his generation and mine really don't want to have anything to do with him. He did what he did as a player and there are relational consequences."
Faldo may have had the edge on Azinger when it came to money, majors and his standing in golf's hall of fame, but Azinger never lost against Faldo in the three Ryder Cups when they were up against each other. One of those victories came at The Belfry in 1989 when Azinger and Chip Beck defeated the hitherto unbeatable Faldo and Ian Woosnam in the second afternoon's fourballs.Well so much for that camaraderie between captains. Oh, wait, there's more...
"On the 11th, Faldo squatted down behind Chip's putt," says Azinger. "I asked him what he was doing. 'Oh, just helping out,' he replied. I said: 'I'll help my partner, not you'. I told Chip: 'I'm taking this match personally'."
The Americans won 2 and 1.
Azinger lets out a deep sigh of acceptance. "I guess I've always felt a rivalry with him, probably more than he has with me," he says. "I've got to know him better now but it doesn't change what's happened and, come September at Valhalla, something will have to give."
"Faldo will be a loner as a leader: very thorough, but a loner. I've got three assistants with me and, although people (Jack Nicklaus being one) have suggested the players don't need them, they must understand that the assistants are for me, not the players.
"Faldo and I both played Valhalla recently and I watched him making notes from start to finish. He reckons he's going to play in the Ryder Cup. Well, he's not, and neither am I. Telling the players what to do will just piss them off."
John Huggan offers this on the 2010 Ryder Cup Captaincy and Sandy Lyle's chances:
Not for the first time, Sandy Lyle this past week expressed an interest in assuming the role of European Ryder Cup captain when the matches make their first visit to Wales in 2010. This is entirely appropriate. Not only does the former Open, Masters and Players champion command universal respect for the undoubted quality of his playing career – for a brief period in the late 1980s the Shropshire-born Scot was the best player on the planet – he is also one of the nicest people in the game, a man who would easily unite any dressing room.
Sadly, however, the odds are that the likeable Lyle will go down as the only member of European golf's "Big Five" not to fill the role of skipper in the biennial contest with the United States. A combination of European Tour (petty) politics, his age and the drum beating that has already been set in motion by the well-connected Colin Montgomerie's various media mates, will probably see Lyle, who recently turned 50 and embarked on a new career on America's Champions Tour, passed over. Which is a shame, even if – whisper it – the best and most qualified man for the job is actually two-time Masters winner Jose Maria Olazabal.
Monty over Olazabal or Lyle?
Wow, Monty really is well connected!
Serves me right for not paying attention to Steve Elling's piece on Paul Azinger and his sit down with the scribblers last week. Seems the Ryder Cup captain is open to the idea of picking the hottest players, no matter what tour they are playing on.
His approach gave Jim Achenbach and Rex Hoggard something to debate. Achenbach got a good chuckle out of Azinger's remarks while Hoggard likes the Captain's open mind.
You gotta love Fred Couples.
Talking about his desire to be a Ryder Cup captain, quoted by Thomas Bonk in the LA Times:
"I can promise you there are 12 guys who don't want to do 75% of the stuff. My goal would be to slough some of the stuff off."
Couples said his first move would be to appoint Michael Jordan and Robin Williams as assistant captains.
"I would have Michael Jordan tell stories every single night and I would have Robin Williams tell jokes for 30 minutes. That's what I want," he said. "I don't want a rah-rah speech. My God. If you need a rah-rah speech to play the Ryder Cup, you've got some serious issues.
"If we lose, we lose because we lose, but I can promise you we'd have a good time."
Furyk raised an eyebrow when he heard Couples' choices as assistants. But he had no problem with the potential candidacy of Couples, who has played on five Ryder Cup teams and four Presidents Cup teams.
"Anyone with that kind of passion, I think Freddie would do a good job," he said.
I was stunned to enter Sherwood's cart barn today to find a jovial group of writers parsing the Colin Montgomerie transcript, only to hear things like "he really can be nice if he wants" and "he's not the fat shlub I thought he would be" and "how's that mysterious looking shredded chicken?"
Apparently Monty put on quite the show for his 9:15 press conference, which is about three hours before any sane individual would arrive to listen to any tour player but Tiger. However, there are those with early deadlines so the turnout was lovely. You can read the lovefest here, or get the overview from Mark Lamport-Stokes.
Or I can put it more succinctly: Monty and Captain Faldo have figured out a way to give the impression that they get along.
Lamport-Stokes:
"I've spoken to Nick and it's fine," Montgomerie told a news conference on Wednesday during preparation for this week's Target World Challenge. "It doesn't concern me."
After being criticised by Faldo for an apparent lack of team spirit at the Seve Trophy in September, Montgomerie countered by saying such comments should have been directed to him personally instead of through the media.
With that hatchet now seemingly buried, Montgomerie believes it is paramount for Europe to maintain the team unity that has helped them win the Ryder Cup five times in the last six years.
"Let's hope the ambiance of our European team remains as it has done throughout that time, meaning that we go in there relaxed, we go in there as a team," he said of next year's contest in Louisville, Kentucky.
Ah that's the team spirit!
Monday, May 19, 2008 at 08:21 PM