Thursday, January 22, 2009

Stars in Qatar; PGA Tour LITE; Captain Monty

While the PGA Tour Lite hit La Quinta, the best players in the world made way to the United Arab Emirates.

With the withdrawal of Anthony Kim due to injury, 16th ranked Steve Stricker is the top player in the field at the Bob Hope Classic. The top active players in the world this week all made way to the Doha Golf Club for the Qatar Masters, which got started today. Seven of the World's Top 14 players are in the field, trying to earn points for the Race to Dubai and get the winner's share of $2.5 MIL.

Many top players got off to a tough start, as Boo Weekley shot a 2-over-par 74, last week's winner in Abu Dhabi Paul Casey shot 76, Rory McIlroy also carded a 76, Justin Rose posted 74, Darren Clarke: 73, and defending champion Adam Scott hit the ball 73 times. Hopefully, some of these guys will bounce back and help give us an exciting weekend of golf.

Sweden's Henrik Stensen, who is currently 11th in the Official World Golf Rankings, sits atop the leaderboard with Spain's Miguel Angel Jimenez (#26 OWGR), and Scotland's Andrew Coltart, who won here in 1998. All three shot 66 on the par-72 Doha Golf Club.

Just a shot behind is Lee Westwood, followed by the American-born/Australian-raised Aaron Baddeley (-4), Sweden's 2008 Athlete of the Year - Robert Karlsson (-4), and 2007 Qatar Masters champ Retief Goosen (-3), who is fresh off a win at the Africa open.

Current Race to Dubai leader, World #2 Sergio Garcia shot a 2-under-par 70 and is tied with Ernie Els, among others, in 23rd place. Rising star Martin Kaymer has been playing some great golf and carded a 71 today, as did Colin Montgomerie.

Monty appears to be the new favorite to be awarded the Ryder Cup captaincy for 2010. Jose Maria Olazabal, who was a late withdrawal from Qatar this week with arm and wrist pain, was long considered the favorite but is now looking to be the pick for 2012. Personally, I think they will both be great, and would love to see JM make a push to make the team in '10. I think he still has the game to do it, and then captain the team in '12. Monty, love him or hate him, is a bulldog in the Ryder Cup and is always good for quotables. He is probably America's favorite player to hate and his captaincy would make for some good competitive drama.

That's all for now. I'm currently watching the Blah Hope, which features a leaderboard of Pat Perez, followed by Richard Johnson, Jason Dufner, Brad Adamonis, and Tom Pernice Jr. These guys are all extremely talented, but I can't pretend that I'm the least bit interested.

No comments:

Post a Comment