Meanwhile, in Alabama Last Weekend.....

While the eyes of the golf world were on the Old Course in St. Andrew's and the British Open last weekend, the PGA Tour was chugging along in Opelika, Alabama last weekend staging the Barbasol Championship.

I had an interest in this event because competing in it was Richy Werenski, the winner of 

Golf Channel's  "Big Break Palm Beaches" show from last spring.

http://grandstander.blogspot.com/2015/04/congratulations-richy-werensky.html

Part of Werenski's prize for winning The Big Break was an exemption into this PGA Tour event.  I always like to track how Big Break winners fare in the Tour events into which they are awarded an exemption.  It is usually not a pretty result, but Werenski did better than most.

First of all, he made the cut, and he did shoot even par over the course of the four rounds.  That's the good news.

The bad news is that his score of 284 was nineteen (19) shots behind the winning score posted by Scott Piercy, and it tied Richy for third from the bottom (T-72) of all the seventy-seven golfers who made the cut.  Werenski cashed a check for $6,825 for his efforts.

Werenski is only 23, and he appeared to me to be one of the better golfers that have paraded through the Big Break over the years, so perhaps he can build on this and carve out a living as a touring pro.  I hope so, because he appeared to be an awfully nice kid.  On the other hand, at age 23, he is two years older than Jordan Spieth, so he does have a long road ahead of him.

Also of interest in this tournament was the fortunes of Sam Saunders, 27, who happens to be the grandson of Arnold Palmer.  Saunders competes on the minor league Web.com Tour in hopes of making it to the PGA Tour.  He actually led the tournament after the first round, but ended up tied for 32nd place, eleven shots behind Piercy, and earned $21,219.

Golf Channel was no doubt able to get an exemption of it's winner into this event because they knew that all of the really great golfers would be competing in the British Open last week, and that was certainly the case.  Still, it is interesting to go down the scoreboard at the Barbasol Championship and see who actually was competing in that event.  Lots of names you never heard of, but also some really familiar ones: Boo Weekley, Aaron Baddeley, Johnson Wagner, Jason Gore, David Toms (a PGA Champion), Duffy Waldorf, Trevor Immelman (a Masters Champion), Charles Howell III, Chad Campbell, Shaun Micheel (another PGA Champion).  Some of these guys, in addition to being former Majors winners, have won on the PGA Tour and have, at one time or another, been considered Young Guns and Up and Comers in the world of professional golf, yet none of them are currently good enough to have qualified for The British Open. It just goes to show you how hard it is to compete at the highest level in this sport (or any sport, for that matter), and that for every Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson who win big, hang around at the top for twenty or so years, and earn tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, there are scores other guys who have to compete in a backwater like Opelika, Alabama just to make expenses and try to keep their Tour Cards.  

It ain't easy.

Congratulations, Richy Werensky

Congratulations to Richy Werensky, the winner of Golf Channel's "Big Break, The Palm Beaches, Florida".

The 23 year old Georgia Tech grad secured his victory with a 2 and 1 defeat of runner-up Justin Martinson.  About halfway through the season, it became apparent that Werensky, Martinson, and third place finisher Robert Rohanna of Waynesburg, PA were the best golfers on the show.  This made Werensky's win a well deserved one.

For his Big Break, Werensky will get an exemption into the PGA Tour's Barbasol Championship which will be played in Alabama on July 16-19.  This is an event which will run concurrent with the British Open Championship, so, obviously, all of the very best players on the PGA Tour will not be playing in the Barbasol event, which means that Richy could have the opportunity to fare well, certainly better than past Big Break winners have done in the events in which they have played.  The Grandstander shall be monitoring the event come July and will provide an update on how he fares.

Some Thoughts on Television.....

So, what else do you do when it snows to beat hell and the temperatures are in single digits or sub-zero?  You watch a lot of TV, that's what......

Through the magic of the DVR, we finally finished watching the 3 and 1/2 self-congratulatory Saturday Night Live special that NBC aired this past Sunday night.  Based on the comments on Facebook while the show aired, I know that I am going to be at odds with a lot of folks, but that show could have been squeezed into ninety minutes, two hours, tops.  I have long maintained that the humor of SNL is generational.  My parents didn't "get" Chevy Chase, Dan Ackroyd, John Belushi et al, and I never quite got people like Chris Farley, Adam Sandberg and people of that ilk, but that's okay.

As for the show on Sunday, I liked the Jeopardy sketch, the Wayne's World sketch, some, not all, of the Weekend Update stuff, the tribute to those who died, including the item about Generalissimo Francisco Franco, Paul Simon, and seeing some of the original cast members.

And the jokes about not being able to read the cue cards, which EVERYBODY made, got old after the second person did it.

Last weekend we did a major Binge Watch of Seasons Four and Five of HBO's terrific "Boardwalk Empire".  What an great series that was.  The short, eight episode fifth and final season did a fantastic job of bringing the entire story full circle, and it led to an absolutely perfect conclusion.

If you like crime dramas, and haven't seen this show, then do whatever you can...buy/rent/borrow the DVD sets, go to Netflix, OnDemand, or stream in some fashion, but watch this series.

Golf Channel is now three episodes in to its current season, "Big Break, The Palm Beaches FL".  Men only contestants this time.  No one yet has stood out as a "villain" in the show, as Anthony Quesada and Mary Narcisi had in past seasons, so there is no one to really root against as yet.  The guy that I am sure that the producers want to go all the way is Chad Pfiefer, and Iraqi war vet who is an amputee with a leg prosthesis.  In truth, Chad is not as good a golfer as most of the others, so I can't see him hanging in there for too long, but he has already been to two elimination challenges and sent three other contestants packing, so who knows?

From a local perspective, one of the contestants if Robert Rohanna of Waynesburg, PA.

If you've read the agate type in the Pittsburgh sports pages over the years, you know his name.  A local professional who represents Nemacolin Woodlands Resort, he has kicked around the mini-tours, and he seems to be a likable guy. Also, he is seen in some clips on the show wearing an Andrew McCutchen tee shirt.  So, Let's Go Robert!

CBS has decided to do a reboot of Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple".  As TV critic Rob Owen stated in the PG yesterday, Why?  The show premiered last night following "The Big Bang Theory", which should have given it a large audience, and it wasn't awful, but, again, why?  Why follow what was a classic TV series, which was based on a classic movie, which was based on the classic Simon play?  This one stars Matthew Perry of "Friends" as Oscar, and some guy named Thomas Lennon as Felix.  Perry is okay as Oscar, but Lennon's portrayal of Felix is so over the top that it is going to be hard to take on a regular basis, I think.

At least two of the lines in last night's episode were direct lifts from the original Simon play.  So give Perry, who had the writing credit for this episode, some props for sticking with the original.

Watched an episode of "Fantasy Island" on wine of those "classic TV only" cable stations on Wednesday night.  Hey, I told you we were getting desperate.  Anyway, this show was circa 1978, and it hit the perfect trifecta of TV Awfulness: bad acting, bad writing, bad editing.  Can't believe that was regular television viewing for us back in Seventies.  Makes you realize that television has indeed improved over the years, despite some of the dreck that still populates it.

Finally, and I know I'm a bit late on this one, but I guess that I must comment on Brian Williams.  You all know the story, so I won't restate it again, but when the news of his false heroics emerged, I knew at the time that this would not end well for him.  I feel bad, because, I liked Brian Williams at the NBC anchor desk.  The fact that he continued to repeat this story, and even embellish it over the course of ten years is what is so befuddling to me.  I am surprised, actually, that it took this long for this particular shoe to drop.

Williams is currently on a six month suspension form NBC.  I am sure that we will see him again on television, but not at a network anchor desk, and probably not on NBC.

Hubris strikes down another icon.  It is a story as old as time.