Sports Goggles

Well people, it’s finally done. My blog blowing up just happened to - fortunately -coincide with sportsonmymind.com being built - and now SOMM, the .com is ready to go.

I’ll be writing there along with MODI of Cosellout, MCBias of Moderately Cerebral Bias, and SML of Stop Mike Lupica. We are going to absolutely throw it down every opportunity we get.

How SOMM works

When you visit Sports On My Mind you’ll notice some tabs with our names on the left column. That space is reserved for features, investigative articles, and in-depth articles and commentaries. Under that you’ll find a space for videos (Kobe jumping - next to - an Aston-Martin is there now). We’ll be popping up vids from the world of sports there. Beneath that space is where you’ll find the latest sports news of interest.

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Watching Tiger Woods play his final round of the 2008 Masters I have to admit that maybe I’m wrong. See, I continue to believe that Woods’ failure to win when trailing after 54 holes in a major (0-16 when trailing by six shots or less) is a fluke statistic. But Sunday, after watching him blow opportunity after opportunity to make the shots that would allow him to post a 68 and sit in the clubhouse and wait for those ahead of him to succumb to the pressure of bettering that score, I am now convinced that there is something missing in Tiger’s makeup.

There is something missing when an athlete must be leading from the start of a tournament to lead at the end. There is something missing when you are supposed to be the best golfer in the world and arguably the best of all time, yet you fail to come from behind each final 18 holes you play in the tournaments that matter most. There is something missing when you cannot look at the leader board on the morning of the final day, see a man who, statistically is one of the worst golfers on the PGA Tour, and say, all I have to do is post a score and this man will fold, then relax, go out and post that score.

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Sure Tiger Woods bogeyed two par fives the first two days of this year’s Masters Tournament. And those bogeys might eventually cost him the tournament. But Trevor Immelman’s gaffe at 15 yesterday turned out to be nothing. How his third shot, a wedge spun way too much that did not roll back into the drink, might win him the tournament.

Interestingly, on ESPN’s Sports Reporters this morning, Mitch Albom and Mike Lupica took the time to tag-team excoriate the 13-time major tournament winner.

Albom:

“He’s now looking at a couple of young guys who are in their twenties who have that bravado who are maybe saying, ‘we don’t know any better.”

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Dave Zirin of Edge of Sports has an XM Satellite radio show (for all those who don’t know). We did an “end of the month” roundup (replete with a shout-out to MODI at “Cosellout“) and from here on out, DZ has invited me to summarize the past month in sports. Click here for the segment.

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Also, here’s my regular NPR Tony Cox Internet Sports Round Table show talkin’.

(sorry DZ, SOMM fell apart, so I had to post this interview… it’ll be better as time goes on)

The Masters: the two with a chance

Tiger is right there. Sure, he’s four strokes back of Trevor Immelman and Justin Rose, but he was a bad break from being two or three under par yesterday. On the 13th hole, a par five, Woods bombed his drive down the middle-left side of the fairway. With a medium iron shot left to the green Woods’ hit caught the ball just a little thin and instead of his normal high raindrop medium iron shot that seems to fall straight down from the sky, his second shot bounced through the green.

Left with a difficult uphill pitch shot to a green sloping away from him, Woods attempted a chip into the top of the hill hoping the ball would trickle down to the hole. It was a near-impossible shot. Woods’ shot landed, perhaps, three inches short of its target and rolled back down the hill. The mistake resulted in a bogey.

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Free throws came back to haunt Memphis.

For all their previous bluster, Chris Douglas-Roberts and Derrick Rose went 1-5 at the charity stripe down the stretch and it cost the Tigers the game.

CDR and Rose choked.

Rose “should have had enough basketball IQ to foul” Sherron Collins.

The players have to take the lion’s share of the blame.

Is that it? Is that all the game comes down to – the players “choked”; low “basketball IQ?”

No.

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