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Showing posts from July, 2014

The Olympic Golf Tournaments are Going to be Terrible

We're two years away from the 2016 Summer Olympics, when golf will join the list of Olympic sports. Whether golf needs to be or should be an Olympic sport is something I've always been agnostic about. Personally, I don't care whether golf is left out of the Olympics, which means that it also doesn't bother that it will be included. But now that golf is part of the Olympics, what kind of tournament will we see in two years in Brazil? I'm glad someone else did the work for me, because I wouldn't want to have to figure out which golfers are likely to be in the Olympics and which aren't. Someone else has already done that: You can see sample fields for both the men's tournament and women's tournament , what those fields would be if the Olympic golfers were chosen today. And those fields are pretty lame. For example, while all of the current Top 10 men would make an Olympic tournament if it was chosen today, No. 11 Jordan Spieth wouldn't. Neit

The Beatles on the Golf Course

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With the 2014 British Open at Royal Liverpool, here are a few photos of Liverpool's most famous export - The Beatles - playing golf. OK, they aren't actually playing golf; none of The Beatles were (or are) golfers. You can tell by the way they are holding the clubs they have no idea of the right way to hold golf clubs. But, it's the Beatles, it's golf ... yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Arnold Palmer Coolatta from Dunkin Donuts

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It wasn't too long ago - maybe just 10 years ago - that you might have to explain to someone (even many golfers) what an Arnold Palmer is. Not the golfer - the drink. But these day, the Arnold Palmer drink is darn near ubiquitous. It really started in the early 2000s when Palmer licensed his name and image to the Arizona Brewing Company, which then created a whole bunch of Arnold Palmer tea-and-lemonade mixes. Then there was a Sportscenter commercial featuring Palmer making the drink, and later still a short ESPN 30-for-30 documentary about the drink. How common is the Arnold Palmer today? So common that Dunkin' Donuts will serve you up a frozen one. They call it the Arnold Palmer Coolatta: "Iced tea and lemonade with a refreshing twist. Our Frozen Arnold Palmer Coolatta® is just the ticket to keeping you icy cool in the heat," the Double-D says. Have you tried one? It's basically a slush - frozen tea and frozen lemonade blended together in a 50-50 mix. If

Video of Black Swans Charging Golfer Turned Into 'Game of Thrones' TV Commercial

For the last few months a video of two black swans charging at a golfer has been making the rounds. The golfer, with his buggy, hit too close to the swans' favorite water hole, and they didn't like it when he showed up to try to play his golf ball. (The giggling and cackling videographer lets loose multiple f-bombs, so take that into consideration depending on where you are watching this.) The incident took place at Grimsby Golf Club in England. And the video, after sitting on YouTube for a short while, was noticed by Blinkbox, an on-demand video service in the U.K. They digitally replaced the swans in the original video with dragons, and, there you go: a neat commercial for Game of Thrones :

Jack Nicklaus: Friend or Foe?

Most people have strongly positive impressions of the Golden Bear. Most golf fans admire him personally as well as professionally. But not everyone. About eight years ago I was interviewing a golf course owner and developer who had built some of the top courses in Southern California. His company had worked with both Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. And he owned a home alongside a fairway at one of those fancy courses, one that was once the site of an exhibition match between Palmer and Nicklaus. This fellow and his kids waited in back of their house, next to the fairway, as Palmer and Nicklaus played that hole. When Palmer reached this little group of fans he was friendly and chatty. "You won't be surprised to learn that Nicklaus wasn't," the fellow said to me. He continued: "Nicklaus, as I'm sure you know, is an ***hole." As I'm sure you know . Well, no, I didn't know that. And I still don't know that. I'm sure Nicklaus, in