Smoltz Trying To Win The Golfing Lottery

The former Brave, Red Sock and Cardinal is one of 9,052 golfers attempting to qualify for the U.S. Open.

Anyone with a handicap index of 1.4 or below can enter the tournament, which begins with 111 local qualifiers spread out across the U.S. with satellite locations in the U.K. and Japan as well.

If he is one of a handful of people who qualify from each site, he'll advance a 36 hole sectional qualifier and from there, the going really gets tough. He'd have to compete not only with the other top flight amateurs that made the previous cut, but non-exempted PGA tour professionals, club pros, college players and other excellent sticks all anxious to make it to the big stage.

Tiger Woods has called Smoltz the "best non-PGA Tour golfer" he's ever seen and has predicted that he could make a Senior PGA Tour when he turns 50. Right now, Smoltz sports a +2 handicap (as in two under par) with several rounds of 65 already this year. He once beat Annika Sorenstam in a fun match and has shot a scorching 63 (nine under par) at the Floridian Golf & Yatch Club in Palm City, Florida.

Smotlz also has a some features on this property any golfer would die for:

Smoltz’s backyard, however, looks like a mini country club replete with a couple of synthetic greens, nine teeing grounds and a 10,000-square-foot practice green. Smoltz is involved with Southwest Greens International, which builds synthetic-turf greens, tees and athletic fields, so his yard “basically [became] a showcase for the company.”

“It was designed for me to go to the next level,” said Smoltz, “and I have not utilized it the way I would like yet.”

Even with all the skill and advantages Smoltz has, it's still going to take a good deal of luck for him to make it. The final field of the U.S. Open is composed of 156 players, but the majority of those spots are occupied by exemptions granted to anyone who has won the tournament in the past ten years, any other major in the past three years, last year's top 30 from the PGA tour money list, the top 15 from the previous year's European Tour money list, the top 50 in the World Golf rankings among others. And most of the ones not taken by exemptions are won by tour pros in qualifying.

Last year, there were 15 amateurs in the field at the Open and it would be safe to assume that there will be a similar number this time around. So that's roughly 8,900 non-professionals (9,052 minus the Tour and club pros trying out) competing for 15 spots and the right to get their ass kicked by the best in the world at Pebble Beach in June. Even if you grant that Smoltz is in the top 15% of the field, that still gives him only a scant 1% chance of qualifying. And all it takes is one bad round along the way to knock you out of contention.

As the former dominant starter and closer said:

The one thing [in pitching] is you can get away with a lot of mistakes. In golf, you have to play your foul balls.

An Athlete's Memoir David Foster Wallace Might Have Enjoyed

One of the most insightful things I've ever read about sports was written by someone who was never thought of as a "sports writer". It was tucked away behind wandering but focused first-person accounts of the Maine Lobster Festival and Adult Video News Awards, an in-depth look at conservative talk radio through host John Zeigler, a short essay about experiencing 9/11 from woman's living room in Bloomington, Illinois and six other works of varying lengths on a variety of other topics.

Like many pseudo-intellectual non-English majors, my first foray into the work of David Foster Wallace was through Consider the Lobster. Had it not been bundled with those nine other essays, I don't know if I ever would have discovered How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart. The piece was originally published as a book review on August 30th, 1992 in the Philadelphia Inquirer (when I was 8 years old), so I certainly wasn't in position to catch it when it originally appeared in print. I'm not a huge tennis fan and Tracy Austin reached the apex of her game years before I was born so it wasn't the type of subject matter I was likely to seek out after the fact. But when I did stumble upon it 16 years after it was written, it still resonated.

So how did Tracy Austin break David Foster Wallace's heart and why did I find it so interesting?

Austin did her part failing miserably to deliver on the promises made by her autobiography Beyond Center Court: My Story. "The inspirational story of Tracy Austin's long struggle to find a life beyond championship tennis", a note by the publisher on the inside of the glossy cover flap claimed. Wallace was a big fan of Austin, and although he followed her meteoric rise through from child tennis prodigy to U.S. Open champion and was an admitted sucker for sports memoirs, he was left dumbfounded by the emptiness of her supposedly candid book. "The book is inanimate because it communicates no real feeling and so gives us no sense of a conscious person", Wallace explains.

The reason I was captivated by Wallace's reaction was that he not only exposed the comical superficiality of the writing by Austin and her co-author Christine Brennan (and there are few things I enjoy more than making fun of bad writing), but he also found much deeper and broadly applicable meaning through its vapidity.

After reciting some of the more obviously vacant quotes from the "as told to" autobiography, DFW offers a theory as to why this genre is so popular and alluring despite the fact that they are "almost uniformly poor as books":

[Note: In lieu of blockquotes, I've embedded clips from the audio version of the essay.

No text version exists online and it's a whole lot easier than transcribing them.]

Wallace then goes on to recount the reasons that Austin's life had an almost classically tragic story arc but note that almost none of what was truly fascinating about her career was ever adequately described in the book. Austin chose to craft her life story to fit the conventions of the stereotypical rise to glory/fall from grace fairy tale to such an extent that at times it ceased to be believable.

She never addresses the fact that her compulsive work ethic and tireless effort caused her body to slowly atrophy through injuries like hamstring and hip flexors pulls and tendinitis. Austin mentions that her career was finally undone when the car she was a passenger in was blindsided on the JFK parkway literally on the way to the US Open in 1989, but instead of explaining how agonizing or iniquitous it was for her freakish natural athletic ability to be effaced by a freak accident, simply says, "I quickly accepted that there was nothing I could do about it."

In a final flourish, Wallace tries to explain why athletes can seemingly never describe what it's like to be a physical genius. He attempts to rectify how it is possible for one to excel against the highest level of competition under immense pressure but never sufficiently convey it to anyone else:

Wallace is essenitally referring to the psychological concept of flow, which explains that to be fully immersed in any sort of task - "in the zone", to invoke a trite cliche - necessitates a singular focus. And as he points out, it's not specific to Austin, but relevant for any athletic pursuit. I've heard that over-thinking is the greatest enemy of an athlete in competition by broadcasters and writers alike, but never deconstructed with such effortless eloquence.

The reason that I bring up a work that's so old it was published on a day when Sam Militello started for the Yankees, is because of the recent release of an autobiography by an different tennis player. This athlete, partially because of a domineering parental presence - just like Tracy Austin - turned pro before he was able to drive. He too ascended through the professional ranks with incredible speed en route to two US Open titles but hit a wall at an age when he should have been entering his prime.

However, for all the similarities between the backgrounds and careers of Andre Agassi and Tracy Austin, their books couldn't be any different. While Austin declares that her mother "did not force her into tennis" at age three (as if she could remember either way), Agassi admits that his father used chase him around the house with a racket to take any trophy that Agassi received for something less than winning (e.g. sportsmanship) and smash it to pieces. Both hustled adults in matches when they were only children, but only Agassi admits being complicit in the scheme. As opposed to Austin, who flatly denied knowledge of match tanking or drug usage despite both being rampant during her time as a top pro, Agassi candidly admits that he partook in both activities.

We can question the motivations of Agassi and even assume that the reason he was so frank in Open lies somewhere between the narcissistic desire to tell his story in the most public of forums and achieve the goal of selling as many books - and therefore making as much money - as possible. But those were the ostensible goals of Austin, too. The difference is that Agassi delivered on the promise of a tell-all memoir. He truly pulled back the curtain and told the audience things that they never would have known had he not chose to reveal them.

Unfortunately, if you are familiar with David Foster Wallace, you know that he'll never read Agassi's book because he took his own life a little over a year ago. He battled with depression for his entire adult life and, in the process of trying to ween himself of the anti-depressant that enabled him not just to function but to pen brilliant works like Infinite Jest, hanged himself in his California home while his wife was out running some errands.

The most probable reason Wallace read all of those sports memoirs and why he said - however playfully - that Tracy Austin "broke his heart" with hers, was that he deeply wanted to go inside of the mind of a great athlete. It showed up in some of his other work, particularly the profile of Roger Federer he wrote for the New York Times. One of the main story lines in Infinite Jest revolves around the tennis-playing Hal Incandenza and there was even a character reminiscent of a young Tracy Austin. Like many of us, Wallace was a good but not great athlete in his youth and I think he desperately wanted just once, for someone who ascended to the very top to reveal what it was - what powerful mental process - that made them so magnificent.

But as he came to realize in reading Beyond Center Court, that kind of athletic genius could never be revealed in a book. Those innate gifts can't be put into words. In Open, Agassi offers the opposite. Instead of trying to explain what made him so great, he exposes the interior struggles that made him human. That is something that has always been able to be conveyed by prose, but the desire to do so for someone who has achieved unquestioned success is rare indeed.

1999 World Series: Game 3

[With the Yankees squaring off against the Braves this week, we thought it would be appropriate to take a look back at the two World Series during which they faced off in the late 90's]

Just before Game 3, Luis Sojo flew in from Venezuela to rejoin the Yankees. Just before the World series had begun, his father passed away unexpectedly. There was a tragic air around the 1999 Yankees and the World Series in particular. As Matt mentioned during the Game 1 recap, Darryl Strawberry was still recovering from cancer as the season began. Joe Torre was diagnosed with prostate cancer and Scott Brosius lost his father, Marty, after a long bout with colon cancer.

Further adding to the general gloom, on the travel day between Games 2 & 3, golfer Payne Stewart's death made national headlines. On the morning of October 25th, Stewart boarded a private plane flight out of Orlando, bound for Dallas and the season-ending PGA Tour Championship. While en route, the cabin lost pressure and everyone on board was killed almost immediately. The Learjet, presumably still on autopilot, continued it's journey, flanked by F-16's until it crashed in an unpopulated area in South Dakota. Just a month removed from the American's dramatic Ryder Cup victory at Brookline, and four months past Stewart's U.S. Open victory at Pinehurst (the first of Phil Mickelson's many seconds), the American sporting landscape had lost one of it's more iconic characters.

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The temperature at game time was an unseasonably warm 62 degrees with a steady breeze blowing out to right field. Lefties Tom Glavine and Andy Pettitte took the hill for the pivotal Game 3. Both had turned into two excellent starts thus far in the '99 postseason, but each stumbled out of the gate.

To begin the top of the first, Pettitte gave up a single to Gerald Williams and a double to Bret Boone. Williams was driven in on a groundout by Chipper Jones, but Pettitte avoided further damage. Chuck Knoblauch reached on an E9 and was advanced to third on a fly ball by Derek Jeter. A single by Paul O'Neill evened the score at 1.

After a scoreless second inning for both hurlers, Pettitte ran into trouble in the third. He gave up a single, two doubles and another single, and by the time he had recorded three outs, the Braves were up 4-1.

Already facing the top of the order for the third time in the fourth inning, Pettitte gave up a triple to Williams and a double to Boone, making the 1-2 hitters for the Braves 5 for 6 against Pettitte with three runs scored. The next batter, Chipper Jones, finally chased Pettitte with a single. Andy had put up another poor performance in the Fall Classic, getting tagged for 10 hits and 5 runs in 3 2/3 IP. Jason Grimsley mopped up nicely however, keeping the Yanks in the game with 2 1/3 innings of scoreless relief.

Meanwhile, Glavine rolled along up until the 5th inning, when he allowed a solo shot to Chad Curtis. He didn't allow another hit until he gave up another homer to Tino Martinez in the 7th. 5-3 Braves.

Jeff Nelson came on after Grimsley and also did his part admirably, pitching perfect 7th and 8th innings. The Yankees had clawed back to within two runs when Joe Girardi led off the bottom of the 8th. He singled to center, bringing up Chuck Knoblauch, owner of exactly one home run in 160 postseason at bats. He lofted one just over the short porch in right, tying the game at 5. Bobby Cox decided he had seen enough and brought in his closer, John Rocker to close out the frame. Despite the 5 runs, (4 earned) Glavine pitched pretty well, but like Pettitte, he would not factor into the decision.

With the Yanks having pulled even, Torre brought in his closer to try to keep it that way. Mo faced the minimum three batters in the top of the 9th, but Rocker sat down the side in order in the bottom half to take the game into extra innings.

Bobby Cox burned through three pinch hitters in the top of the tenth, but all he got in return was a two out single by Ryan Klesko, who never made it past first.

Since Rocker had already pitched two innings, Cox called on Mike Remlinger to extend the game. He did not. Chad Curtis hit his second home run of the game, brought the house down and gave the Yankees a seemingly insurmountable lead of three games to none in the series.

During his postgame interview with Jim Gray, Curtis informed Gray on live television that the Yankees were upset with his treatment of Pete Rose two days earlier and that they refused to speak with him. When asked by the media after the game, Joe Torre said that there had been no meeting. There in fact had been an agreement between the players only to which Torre was not privy and Tino Martinez informed the manager that was the case. Curtis, asked Torre to set the record straight since the mix up had shown Curtis in a bad light, but Torre never did. Curtis remained bitter about the incident and was traded to Texas during the ensuing offseason for Brandon Knight and Sam Marsonek.

Sitting on the verge of yet another World Series sweep, the Yankees would still have to traverse another loss, but not on the field.

Fans Compensated For Soggy Thursday

Yesterday was a rare Thursday in the New York City area. There were two quality sporting events taking place during the day, one at Yankee Stadium and the other at Bethpage State Park Pond out on Long Island. A steady rain drowned the area, leaving both the Stadium and the course, as Stuart Appleby said, "Wetter then[sic] an otter's pocket."

Golf can typically be played in the rain so as long as there isn't any lightining, and the course doesn't become inundated with casual water. It typically has a slightly higher tolerance to precipitation than baseball does, but yesterday that was not the case. Play at Bethpage was suspended only 15 minutes after ESPN's TV coverage of the event began. The USGA thought they saw a window where play could resume around 1:30PM, but like the Yankees' false alarm at 4:00, that never came to fruition. Play was never resumed.

The Yankees, on the other hand, did manage to get their game in. After the third longest rain delay in MLB history, the tarp was removed to make way for an extremely frustrating experience for the fans who did wait out the storm. There weren't many viable options. To their credit, the Yankees did try to make it up to their fans who stuck it out by clearing the upper deck and allowing fans to sit in the Main and Field Levels. Even better, the Yanks are accepting any tickets from last night, regardless if they were used to get in the Stadium, in exchange for another non-premium game any time this year or next.

The Yankees had it much easier than the USGA, though. The staff couldn't just tarp the greens at Bethpage, and they weren't able to build a perfect drainage system directly underneath the entire course just last year. The USGA could have tried to give away free tickets to future Opens, but the Tournament won't be returning to the area until at least 2016, if not longer. In addition, they would be losing a potential 1/4 of the gate revenue for that year, as opposed to the Yanks giving up 1/81. Furthermore, tickets to golf events, the U.S. Open included, are sold by the day, not the round, so they couldn't give away free passes for the later days without dealing with serious over-crowding issues.

After fielding what must have been an incredible influx of complaints, the USGA just announced that they would be accepting tickets from Thursday's washout to the likely Monday session. Unfortunatley for those who purchased tickets for Sunday, thinking it would be the deciding round get indirectly screwed by the weather also. The upside is there should be a healthy supply of available tickets on the secondary market. So if you can get Monday off from work, it might be the only chance you'll have to see an affordbale U.S. Open for a reasonable price, on a course that is at less than full capacity.

Fack Youk Exclusive: Phil Mickelson Still Left Handed

This morning, my friend Mike and I had a tee time for 10:12 on Bethpage Red. The forecast looked pretty bleak, but not willing to blow off the time and risk a no-show fee if the course wasn't closed, we worked our way out the Long Island Expressway through pretty thick traffic. We walked into the shop and were told that due to all the rain, the course was shut down for the day. It kind of sucked, but typically when you get rained out of a round of golf, you don't get to walk around the course where the U.S. Open is going to be played in less than two weeks.

It was still raining pretty hard, but Mike and I headed over towards the first tee on the Black Course. An archipelago of umbrellas were lined up along the tee box, and given how poor the weather was, we assumed there had to be something worth seeing.
On the tee was Phil Mickelson, his caddy Bones and short game guru Dave Pelz. Phil hit three tee balls, two of them perfect blasts down the center of the fairway, looked at Bones and said "Okay, that's enough. Let's go inside". The balls were just left sitting in the fairway. Phil wasn't going to be playing golf today either (at least for a little while).

That there is the 18th green of the Black course. If it looks like it's completely covered in a sheet of water, well, that's because it was.

I have plans to go out a practice day next week (Tuesday or Wednesday) and possibly a day of the tournament. If either of those happen I'll get back to you with some pictures and a definitive answer as to whether Vijay Singh is as much of a douchebag as everyone says.