Arkansas Sports 360 - ArkansasSports360.com

8/9/2010 at 2:39pm

Saw this description from Sports Illustrated's Cameron Morfit and wondered if he'd been spying on me at Hot Springs Village's Granada golf course:

Was he awful? Or would it be better to say he was scattershot? How about dangerous? He was all of the above ... caught it fat, hit into the water and slashed through the trees, but all too rarely did he find the cup."

Actually, he's talking about Tiger Woods, who is either on a one-man crusade to make us all feel better about our golf games, or wants to be ruled out for the Ryder Cup next month and will play as bad as it takes to do so.

Woods shot the worst 72-hole score in his professional life. Phil Mickelson once again did everything he could to avoid moving into the No. 1 in the world spot. Nobody is No. 1 in golf these days. The guys they talk about moving into the spot, outside of Woods-Mickelson, rarely win. Now, we turn attention to the last major of the year, the PGA Championship, at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin. Maybe Vijay will win there again and add another name to the mediocre contenders for world's current best golfer.

BTW, have you noticed the beatdown that bentgrass is taking these days around Central Arkansas? Even North Little Rock's Stonelinks, which seems to have the best luck with bent, lost its putting green and is playing on temporaries. Granada had a temporary green on No. 2 (a joke of a temporary green, too; pretty much uncut, with auto two-putt rule in effect) and 17 other severely stressed greens.

Betcha Pleasant Valley, Rebsamen, Maumelle CC and the newly reopened North Hills are glad they put in Champion Bermuda. A few more 100-degree days may rout the bentgrass courses completely.

Elsewhere, it took a guy dying to even know there is competitive sauna sitting. Well, there used to be a World Sauna Championship in Finland. The Russian guy dying took care of that after a 13-year run.

It's rare that two Arkansans pitch in major league baseball on the same day, much less win, but it happened Sunday. In one, Dustin Moseley was impressive over nearly seven full innings for the Yankees against the fading Red Sox, garnering a big ovation from the Yankee Stadium crowd when he departed with a 7-1 lead (New York won 7-2). ESPN used an overhead view to show the amazing control Moseley had over the outer thirds of the plate as he handcuffed the Red Sox. The Texarkana product is just up as a fill-in starter for the Yanks while Andy Pettitte mends, but it probably has folks wondering if Moseley should get some of A.J. Burnett's starts. Coincidentally, both players are repped by Little Rock's Darek Bruanecker.

Meanwhile, Bryant's Travis Wood held down the quittin' Cubbies for the streaking Reds, who are 16 games over .500 for the first time in 11 years.

The Reds and Cardinals start a huge three-game series tonight in Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati. St. Louis manager Tony La Russa has set up his rotation so that the best three Cardinals hurlers will go against the Reds: Carpenter, Jaime Garcia (rocked in his last start by the Astros) and new staff ace Adam Wainwright (though Carp has returned to normal after the All-Star break).

The statewide daily sports section went nuts about the race in Watkins Glen, N.Y., won by Juan Pablo Montoya. (In golf parlayance, NASCAR fans look at this race as a "major.") Question: Does any other state WITHOUT a NASCAR track and only one sigificant presence on the circuit see this much coverage to the sport from its largest newspaper? That said, it was a nice sports-page respite from college football practice in helmets and shorts. Not sure how many times you can write and rewrite the same preseason "we're gonna be good, this is our year" stories before it just numbs the writers and the readers, not to mention the teams.

And lastly, Bobby Petrino is considered about as precise as they come in all his football pronouncements, but there was one moment during his address at Arkansas' media day on Saturday where he referred to senior linebacker Jermaine Love as "Jemarcus" Love. Easy mistake to make while talking about dozens of different players on the team, considering there is also a DeMarcus Love, and he's on offense, and Petrino tends to see and talk more about the offensive players than his defenders.

Still, it got a couple of media types named Bahn and Harris to thinking Saturday about how a former Razorback football coach who seemed detached from all the players' names might have handled Media Day in Fayetteville the way it's done now, in front of the throng of writers, TV and radio people. We're talking, of course, about Danny Ford, circa 1997. Here's how we thought it might go if he were talking about Jermaine Love and the Hogs in 2010:

"Number 53 [Love] really needs a good year. I think he's No. 53. Anyway, whatever number he is, that guy needs to have a big year. So does the guy behind him. No. 46. Both are seniors. Both have been here long enough. Unless the sophomore moves up to 2 and we move that other senior back over to SAM [linebacker]. Then only one middle linebacker has been here long enough. Yeah, that's it. But Coach [Miles] Aldridge or Coach [Dennis] Winston could probably answer that better for ya.

"Shoot, did we just score?"

Tagged: NASCAR, DeMarcus Love, Jermaine Love, Tiger Woods, Travis Wood, Dustin Moseley, Bobby Petrino, Danny Ford