It’s my Parting Shot for my Monday Musings…..
Scottie Scheffler won his second green jacket by winning The Masters yesterday at Augusta National. The tournament turned in his favour on the ninth hole when Scheffler was inches away from holing out from the fairway for eagle while Colin Morikawa found the trees with his drive on the same hole, put his second in the green-side sand trap, needed two shots to get out and two-putted for a double-bogey and a three-shot swing that Morikawa couldn’t recover from!
The tournament organizers and greens-keeping staff continue to do enough to keep Augusta National fresh and relevant and able to withstand the onslaught of today’s brutish, long-hitting pros – many of whom also possess deft putting touches. But, between rain in Round 1 and the nasty wind in Round 2, the scores weren’t too, too low. Scheffler’s winning aggregate was 277 for 72 holes, 11-under-par – not the 20-to-30-under scores we see a lot of weeks on the P-G-A Tour!
I realize elite professional golfers have the talent and are able to do this on a regular basis, but distance needs to be curtailed, or else all golf courses will be obsolete. Drive and a wedge on all par fours – and even some par fives – I’m not a fan and want to see variety of length of shots, meaning use of all clubs in the bag!!
As much as I like to see Tiger Woods compete and his presence lends a sense of suspense to a tournament’s proceedings, I fear that Tiger needs a lot more than everything to come together for him to win again at an elite level!!
My Winnipeg Jets won 7-0 Saturday in Denver over Colorado! At the time, I thought that was wonderful, then I realized that these two teams are going to be meeting in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, beginning this weekend. That means the Avalanche will have plenty of motivation to get revenge on the Winnipeggers and, as I now fear, take them out in pretty short order. I hope my fears are just my version of sports fatalism creeping in and I’m wrong! In these instances, I sadly find that I’m usually right!!
That’s my Parting Shot. I’m Les Lazaruk…and it turned out nice again!…..