U.S. Open/3 worth a stab
 

Paddy Harrington (30-1) has got to break through eventually and win a major. He is too good a player not to.

Sean O'Hair (60-1) is playing well and plays tough golf courses well. Worth a small play.

Tim Clark (125-1) playing better of late in the majors and could be due for a breakthrough.

Dude, can you imagine how hard this course will be. Tiger has played more practice holes here than any other ever. +5 won last year, are we looking at +6 - +8? Seriously?

Kev Ive backed Furyk, O'Hair (dont know much about him to be honest) and Funk... it;ll be an interesting open...

Furyk is a solid bet. What kinda odds did you get with him?

btw, from what ive heard off harrington this week,id be very surprised if he did well this weekend. He just didnt sound too positive. Id love to see him win it as an Irishman but Im not too confident...

18-1 Fuyrk, 66-1 O'Hair and 200-1 Funk

square price on all of them. I will root you home this week.

Furyk to me looks the best bet by far.. He is just a grinder and should really love the course. Funk had great fairway accuracy (but my friend tells me it doesnt mean alot on tough courses, thats odd to me) and O'Hair is basically what I picked up from you,

What's up with #8
 

HATE FOR 8
PLAYERS RIP 288-YARD PAR-3
By MARK CANNIZZARO
June 14, 2007 -- OAKMONT, Pa - The Oakmont 8th has conjured up some serious conversation at this week's U.S. Open, with some pros whining about its severe length - 288 yards with the tee pushed back.

After a number of amateurs were hitting 5-iron into the hole, then measuring at 252 yards, during the 2003 U.S. Amateur, the USGA had a new tee built 36 yards back. There is a huge bunker, called "Sahara," situated about 220 yards from the tee to the front left of the green, which, unlike most of those on the course, is relatively flat with little undulation.

Most of the pros are hitting 3-woods and 5-woods. Tiger Woods said he's hit some 3-irons there with the tee up. Woods, who's been short of the green using some 3-woods, joked that using a driver on a par 3 "is against my religion." Some players who are not as long as Woods and the other big hitters, however, are hitting drivers to get there.

No. 17, at 313 yards the shortest par 4 on the course, is only 25 yards longer than No. 8.

The following is a sampling of comments from the players about No. 8:

Jerry Kelly: "It's not the longest par 3 in U.S. Open history. It's the shortest par 4 in U.S. Open history."

Woods: "It's what? A 900-yard par 3?"

Geoff Ogilvy: "We don't have driver or 3-wood par 3s. Everyone has been talking about that hole for quite a while. If it blows into the wind, no one is going to get there in one."

Arron Oberholser: "Why does the USGA even have par? Why not just have 18 holes out here with distances? Lowest score wins. Forget about par. The USGA doesn't play by the rules anyway."

Phil Mickelson: "You don't know what to call it. It's probably a par 31/2, so the USGA is going to round up or down. Well, we know what way that is going to go."

Sergio Garcia: "If you make 4, you're not really losing a lot of ground. There's not going to be many 2s there. Hopefully, you make your 3 and run to the next tee. Get out of there as quickly as possible."

I'm in a pool; my 2 keys are Furyk and Ryan Moore! My longshot is Monty!

Those are great odds. my place had furyk at 8/1 this morning.

why the hell ESPN continues to let Chris Berman have anything to do with some of their golf telecasts...especially the US Open, is beyond mind boggling to me. The guy is the biggest no-nothing, blow hard when it comes to golf...

You obviously haven't watched him do anything else lately.

This from Phil Mushnick in today's NY Post:


June 15, 2007 -- IMAGINE the auto deal ership that will sell you a car but won't let you buy one. You tell the salesman, "OK, I'll buy it," but he keeps trying to sell it to you. That's what TV does.

A few years ago, FOX missed the first pitch to half-innings of the World Series because it was airing an MLB promo that encouraged viewers to watch the World Series on FOX.

To that end, someday we'll tune to the start of one of golf's majors and we'll hear: "This is a major. Therefore, aware that that you've tuned to the start of this telecast because it's a major and because you're eager to see it being played, let's get right out to live play."

But someday wasn't yesterday.

ESPN didn't show a live golf shot from the U.S. Open - let the record show it was an Ernie Els putt - until its telecast was 10 minutes old. The sell was so protracted that we actually saw what appeared to be a live shot of a course-side stretch of the Pennsylvania Turnpike before we saw a live shot of a ball being struck.

And, once again, an audience that was in place and eager to watch - no sell necessary - had live coverage delayed in favor of a come-on designed to encourage them to watch.

*

Someone must have given ESPN's Chris Berman bad info, again. He mistakenly believes that Open audiences, every few minutes, should be reminded that the Open is all about him, his forced nicknames and silly one-liners included.

Why, after all, would Berman tell us that early leader Nick Dougherty is from England or provide any other specifics about the man when he could cleverly keep saying he's "from across the pond?"

Par?
 

Kev or anybody else.

What does par mean on a course like this?
I hear all these players describing the greens like it is some bizarre putt-putt course where you can end up further away from the hole than you started on every putt. Surely the USGA or whatever can get more creative than making sure there is no flat part on a concrete green and then putting the hole at the top of one of the numerous mounts on the green. Thats to easy to make "hard".
Dont you try and make a course with the intent of making it challenging and playable. When no one has a real possibility of breaking par on a course (assuming it does not rain) what the heck does par mean? I dont like watching people constantly trying to lag putts and hardly ever trying to actually make a long to medium range putt. Do people really like to watch a winner come in at 10 over...? What is so special about that?

I dont want to see a course where everyone and their mother can birdie all the holes, but I dont like seeing a course that plays to luck either. The greens seem absurd based on what I have read.

I heard him say NIIIIICCCCCCCCCCEEEEEEE after a shot one too many times yesterday and had to go the mute route. I don't need the anchor in the tower rooting like a teenager for every shot.

Simply awful. Gimme the chick and Faldo from the Golf Channel for the early rounds over this garbage any time.

I also got sick of the white flag with the ESPN logo flashing across the screen WITH A SOUND EFFECT each time they switched groups. Not necessary, I was fully aware that I was watching ESPN, I don't need it rammed into my head every 15 seconds or so.

No way the winner is 10 over. I say 3-5 over at the most. I happen to love this type of golf competition, when the course is so difficult with very high and thick rough and extremely fast and undulating greens. The difficult course makes for a great competiton.

Really, you cannot blame all those high scores on the greens, you need to hit fairways to be in contention here.

The US Open is always this hard!

Tiger is hitting the the ball really smooth right now. He is the the zone. He looks like a winner.

OK.
So maybe I am wrong.

Looks like me golfing. Punching back into the fairway, wandering around trying to find out where in God's name my ball went... 20 foot put for bogey.
It does not look like they are having fun.
Cant your job be fun? Tell these guys to have some fun today... and I think they would smack you in the mouth.

They are playing for the Open Championship, I think the ones who are playing well are having fun. They realize a 70 or 71 is a good score and I bet its a lot of fun to shoot that score this weekend.

Pat....in all honesty...par means nothing. It is just a gauge. The idea is to take the fewest amount of strokes possible. If it takes 280 or 295 to win...the idea is to outlast, outperform and out grind every other player in the field.


...and I just heard Berman say Anders "look ma no" Hanson...my God...SHUT THE F*CK UP ALREADY.

I hope someone gets back to 140 so that Mickelson will miss the cut.

I love the demeanor of these guys atop the leaderboard...and their demeanor is exactly why they are up there.

and for what it is worth....I think the winning score will be between 287-289

So that's 7-9 over,right? Agree....only domination will be the Course!

I think I could make a junkyard into a par 5008. I dont think that would be fun. Cmon just a second. Some of the grass is just damn ridiculous. They got half of the course officials searching for a ball in a 3 square foot area? Why not just put some land mines out there and blow some of these guys up...

Thats a penalty. You struck a Land mine while searching for your ball. And thats not a 1 stroke penalty, you lose your life dammit.

as the famous quote goes..

"No, we are not trying to embarass the best players in the world, mearly indentify him."

Only Paul Casey seems to have tamed the Monster for today(-4)

and that was done VERY EARLY in the day Timm...very different conditions.

I do hope Cabrerra makes this birdie on the last to get to 140 and cut the nuts off all those at +11...1 player in particular.

Kev: I'm not entirely comfortable with that idea? You?

Im very comfortable with it.

I might go for the last man standing contest!

If I want to see 20 under, I'd watch the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic every week. Those birdie fests hold no appeal to me.

I agree, but there should be some balance in there somwhere.

screw balance....it will not hurt these guys to struggle 2 or 3 times a year.

tomato....tomatoe:p

Kev it has to get to a point where you would have a chance against Tiger in my junkyard course par 5008... yes?

There has to be some point at which the course gets so unfair as to be a tossup.

What is unfair about this course?

I was chatting to one of my good friends on Wednesday and when talking about the Open, the first player that came to my head was Bubba Watson, but he completely took me off him. he said that he is very liable to put in a horrendous round (still may happen) so I plumped for Funk instead...Is shaping up to be a very interesting last 2 days. I feel sorry for Harrington though.in 4 holes, triple bogey x 2, double bogey and bogey..

only half way home bro.....tons of golf left to be played...

I should have said a course.
I am not an avid golfer but I enjoy watching contests of skill, and this game is so damn hard I have no time to even think about being able to play well. So I dont have enough credibility to say what is unfair. But does that stop me... So

The grass is ridiculous if one hits long on greens that dont even hold and there are no spots to roll it on (like the British open). When it takes at least five or six people to find a ball in grass that looks like 5 yards off the fairway... and everyone sees the ball go in and they cant find it. They had people stompin all around in that mess.

Hows that work?

Or from what I heard from the players. A par 3 that if the wind blows, they will not be able to hit with a driver. So this is the one tournament that they make every pro play a wood into a Par 3?

I bet if I played Tiger Woods underwater on a long hole that was also about 20 feet deep, no mask, I could beat him. I am good at holding my breath at depth.

going tomorrow
 

Just found out that I'm going up to Oakmont tomorrow ... not a huge golf fan, but I went when it was here in '94 and had a blast.

Well,the 2 guys that are very tough when they get in the zone are Cabrera(10-1,)and Casey(14-1.)Cabrera doesn't get into the zone that much,but I remember that nice win he had in England a couple years ago,and he was too tough.Casey can simply dominate when he starts to click(unstoppable.)The question is whether they can do it in a major.I respect Tiger,and Ogilvy,but they are no bargain at this point.AAMES is a good player,but I don't think he is really in the zone this week(maybe he will prove me wrong.)Sure don't trust any of the others to make a putt Sunday.

Did you play them? Just curious....