Predictions: St. Jude Classic

After missing last week due to some "off-the-course" issues, I'm back with my picks for the St. Jude Classic. I'll be reporting "live" from Memphis after the final two rounds, so stay tuned on Saturday and Sunday. The food and music will be great, and hopefully the weather will be better than last year!

Three players I'm watching closely this week:

* Heath Slocum. He had a top-10 here last year, and I'm expecting the same this year.

* David Toms. He's won twice here, and was runner-up last year. Hard not to pick him this week.

* Robert Allenby. Yes, I've got Allenby on the bench for the first round, instead of starting. Ordinarily, he'd be a sure-thing starter, with top-5's in the last two years here. However, I've got serious questions about his mental game at this point, and his two-day-only showing at Memorial did nothing to alleviate those concerns. If he turns it around early, he'll start in later rounds.

My Yahoo Fantasy Golf team for this week:

"Front 4": Heath Slocum, David Toms, Fredrik Jacobson, Paul Goydos
"Bench team": Jason Dufner, Robert Allenby, Brian Gay, John Senden

Current Yahoo Fantasy Golf standings: 3157 points, 81st percentile.

Best of luck to all!

The blog is back! 2010 predictions

When I decided to take a six-week sabbatical from blogging to work on 2010 scheduling and some issues in “real life”, little did I realize that “the Tiger Woods story” would explode a week later and pretty much dominate golf media until…well, it hasn’t really stopped yet.

But it’s a new year, and I’m turning the page on 2009 and its scandals and looking forward to watching the action on the links in 2010. Here are my predictions for 2010.

When will Tiger return? Probably the most-asked question leading up to the 2010 season. I’ll assume that there will be no more major developments in this case, and say that he’ll be back for the Masters, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s back at Doral. Of course, if there are further major developments, all bets are off.

The impact of some young guns. Rickie Fowler will win at least once on the PGA Tour in 2010, likely in a weaker-field event. Rory McIlroy will win at least once outside the U.S., and possibly win a major (see major predictions below). If McIlroy does win a major, he will be Rookie of the Year. If he does not, Fowler will be.

On the other side of the success coin… Anthony Kim, Adam Scott, Sergio Garcia, and Camilo Villegas will combine for a total of one win worldwide between the four of them, and it may be a European Tour win.

Kiss the trophy. Kevin Na gets his first PGA Tour win in 2010. Robert Allenby gets his first PGA Tour win in almost ten years in 2010. Jim Furyk gets at least one PGA Tour win in 2010.

Major winners: Phil Mickelson wins the Masters. Nick Watney wins the U.S. Open. Tiger Woods wins the Open Championship, unless he doesn’t play; if he doesn’t, Rory McIlroy wins. Ross Fisher wins the PGA Championship.

Ryder Cup: Europe wins the Ryder Cup in Wales. Each team fields four rookies. The margin will be 3.5 points.

Enjoy the 2010 season!

About that bulletin board...

There’s a lot of talk, especially in the NFL and other “marquee” sports, about “bulletin-board material”: a player or team uses an opponent’s trash talk as motivation to deliver a beatdown on said trash-talker. There isn’t as much talk about it in golf, though Tiger Woods has on several occasions seemingly used comments by his fellow players as motivation to teach said talkers a lesson. Just ask Steven Ames and Rory Sabbatini. It seems that Tiger now has company in the “bulletin board” club, in the person of Anthony Kim. Kim’s controversy with Robert Allenby is well-known, and in their first meeting since the President’s Cup, Kim delivered a sound beatdown to Allenby. Not only did Kim make seemingly every putt, but he refused to concede a single one of Allenby’s putts, even those within commonly-considered “gimme” range. The lesson to be learned here: if you’re going to be playing Anthony Kim, don’t give him any bulletin-board material. You’ll only hurt yourself.

Kim v. Allenby: The Rematch

Break out the bottles of rioja, senores y senoritas, it’s time for a Kim vs. Allenby rematch in Spain. Yes, only a few weeks after the infamous “sideways” comments Robert Allenby made about Anthony Kim following Kim’s win in the President’s Cup singles match, the two are poised to face each other again in the semifinals of the Volvo World Match Play on Saturday.

Here’s an idea: On the tee, let there be a number draw, as in sudden death. Whoever draws number one gets the option of the following: the winner of the hole gets to do a shot of the alcoholic beverage of their choice, or the loser of the hole gets to do a shot of the winner’s alcoholic beverage of choice. At any rate, by the end of it, the issue of who plays better “sideways” will have been resolved, and it could prove for a very entertaining 18 holes.

Since I know one of the players involved, but not both of them, I’ll reserve judgement on who the winner might be!