Tagged: Billy Horschel
2016 Not So Bold Predictions
Welcome to the 2016 version of the PGA Tour!
Regardless the sport, many news outlets will have a writer post a list of “bold predictions” for the upcoming season. Here’s the process: 1) get some outlandish predictions on paper. 2) Incite argument, get page views (which turns out to be great alternative lyrics to the song Get Money, nsfw language). 3) At the end of the season, after none of the predictions turn out to be correct, the author can just say that the boldness means they weren’t likely to happen anyway!
Well I think those articles are way overdone, so this year, the GOTM preview article for the 2016 season will consist of Not So Bold Predictions. Predictions that will very likely be the case, along with some generalizations that are pretty much guaranteed to happen. The goal here being say things that nobody can argue with! Enjoy!
Rory, Spieth, Day will win at least 1 of the 4 majors
They’ve accounted for 5 of the last 8. I’d say that’s good odds one of them will win at least one of the majors. If I was bold, I’d say they’d win at least 3 of the 4. But I’m not so bold.
Media will refer to a group of the X top players as “the big X”
Quite possibly, but not limited to a “Big 3” consisting of guys above.
Tiger will get headlines
Everyone loves reading about a good comeback story! And if you’re one of those terrible cynics who loves when the top guy falls so hard, you’ll probably be able to read about that too. Either way everyone is happy. Except Tiger in the second case.
People won’t be complaining about the US Open
Unlike last year where interviews were littered with complaints from player ranging from the benign “the ground might be a little too dried out” to Billy Horschel’s wavy arm and fake putter slam.
TOUR Championship by Coca-Cola — Why are all the letters in “tour” capitalized?
MinLast tournament of the year! Only 30 players left at East Lake (excluding Hunter Mahan who said screw it and is playing over in Europe this week). Who’s gonna win? Will the $10 million giant check that I assume the winner gets fit in their pocket? What does Morgan Pressel look like in a video game? Find out below!
About the Sponsor
Compared to pretty much every other sponsor on the PGA Tour, Coca-Cola has got to seem like the odd one out. I mean we got insurance companies, we got car companies, we got banks, and we got … soda?
Honestly, I’m not that big a fan of Coke.
I suppose it fits because Coca-Cola is based in Atlanta, and they they are sitting on an pile of cash with a market cap of over 168B. Geez who knew you could make that much money in soda?
Well obviously Coca-Cola isn’t going to put all it’s carbonation in a drink that goes well with whiskey, so I looked up some of the other ways they make dat money. They own a couple other brands of beverage, including Minute Maid, Sprite, and Barq’s, but by far the most interesting way Coke has made money is by buying Columbia Pictures in 1982 for $692 million and selling it in 1989 to Sony for $3 billion. Not a bad return for 7 years. In reality though, I guess Coke is just one of those brands the pretty much everyone everywhere likes. And the fact that they distribute in 200 countries doesn’t hurt.
BMW Championship — Germans love sponsoring PGA Tour events
Only two weeks left in the season, we’re down to 70 players left as well. No cut, only the best, who’s gonna come out on top in Chicago?
About the Sponsor
I’ll be honest, in my 25 years, I never once thought to myself, “I wonder what BMW stands for.” So if anyone out there knows off the top of their head, I’ll be impressed. For everyone else, it stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke. In American, Bavarian Motor Works, which makes complete sense.
As with many older companies in Europe, BMW became BMW in part because the result of one of the world wars. When Rapp Motorenwerke was forced to restructure following the treaty that ended WWI, they ceased making aircraft engines, and shifted towards motorcycle and automobile engines. This treaty didn’t do much good, since when WWII rolled around, they were back to making aircraft engines again.
The rest of its history is littered with buying little car companies and stuffing their engines in them, to put it mildly. Which is really kind of interesting because it shows that BMW isn’t really a car company, but rather an engine company. I kind of wonder how many other car companies are really different behind the veil. Guess more of them are going to have to sponsor golf tournaments for me to find out.
About the Tournament
The rich history of the BMW Championship goes all the way back to … 2007, the first year of the FedEx Cup. Well not really, since it’s merely renamed version of the actually storied Western Open which dates back to 1899. The BMW is still run by the Western Golf Association, but really it isn’t the same event at all.
They also run the Evens Scholar program too
Back in the good old Western Open days, it was a “normal” PGA tour event, but was considered top tier. Tiger won it 3 times when it was the Western Open, and if you’re getting Tiger to play, it’s automatically top tier (except maybe this year’s Fry’s). For the most part, the Western Open was played at Cog Hill (Dubs Dread) in the Chicago area, which has now undergone a facelift in hopes of getting a US Open in the future.
The Barclays — … The Barclays What?
The Barclays sets itself apart from most other tournaments by deciding to not use an identifier or other words in the tournament title besides the name of the sponsor. So I guess it’s neither an Open, nor a Championship, so probably just a Tournament. Actually, I’ll go with invitational since you have to qualify. So this week, it’s The Barclays Invitational. I asked Barclays officials about what kind of event this really is and they declined to comment.
About the Sponsor
I’ve sat here for a while now trying to think of what to say about Barclays. I figured I needed to mention that you have to say “Barclays” with a English accent, cause 1) it sounds better, and 2) that’s a good enough reason on its own. But that’s about the only interesting thing about it. In reality, all you really need to know about Barclays is that it’s a British bank that does bank like things all around the world.
Barclays — Impressively Boring
About the Tournament
Beginning in 1967 (and first won by Jack Nicklaus), The Barclays had a rich history of being played on the same course until 2008. The tournament was pretty much synonymous with Westchester Country Club, even donning the name “Westchester Classic” for the first 9 years of existence.
But money changes things, and in 2007 when the FedEx Cup began, the tournament was moved from June to August, and also started moving around host courses (and hasn’t returned to Westchester either). Currently, the tournament seems to be on a 5 course hosting rotation, with Plainfield being a part of it.
Golf On The Mind 