Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.

Sports Watch

By Bill Kwon

Friday, March 24, 2000

GOLF WATCH

You can’t go wrong
with Woods, Webb

FORGET about the NCAA basketball tournament. It's too difficult to pick the winners, even though my Final Two - Duke and Michigan State - are still alive, last I looked.

It's easier picking who's going to win the next golf tournament. Just go with Tiger Woods and Karrie Webb. You can't go wrong.

Woods is two strokes back of leader Hal Sutton after the first round of the Players Championship going into today's second round. Who's going to bet against Woods, who's also a 5-1 odds-on favorite to win the Masters.

Webb, who won three of her last five tournaments on the LPGA Tour, leads by one stroke in the women's first major of the year - the Nabisco Championship.

Go with Woods and Webb all year long and you won't lose money. It sure beat trying to take a hunch on Gonzaga.

Maybe golf has become so predictable with Woods on the PGA Tour and Webb or Annika Sorenstam on the LPGA Tour.

Is that a bad thing?

If you're like me, a comfort creature, it isn't bad at all. Nothing like finding a security blanket in this insecure world.

That's why Tiger Woods is the greatest thing that has happened since, well, maybe Spam musubi.

You look at the leaderboard of any golf tournament that he has entered. If you see his name up there, you sit back and relax. All's right with the world, as you know it.

No Tiger, as the leaderboard scrolls down? The first thing you think is that he's not entered in the tournament.

If he is, you wonder, what happened? Why'd he shoot so lousy?

One-under-par, 71. I guess that's not an A-game for Tiger, who had his second double bogey all year when he splashed his tee shot at the TPC at Sawgrass' signature 17th hole.

Mind you, he had to sink a 10-foot putt for a 5. Anybody else would have been glad to be sitting in the clubhouse with that score.

But that's Tiger, and that's Karrie. Everybody expects so much from both of them when they play.

That's why all golfers should be elated that they are living in an era when they are seeing perhaps the greatest two players in the game.

We all grew up admiring Jack Nicklaus and Nancy Lopez. But, in Woods and Webb, we are moving along in time with maybe the best who ever played the game.

Now, that's awesome.

TIGER, WHO ELSE?

Tiger Woods will return to prime-time television Aug. 28 in an 18-hole match with Spanish wunderkind Sergio Garcia that's being billed as the "Battle of Bighorn" in Palm Desert, Calif., on ABC-TV.

It'll be similar to his duel with David Duval in the "Showdown at Sherwood," which drew great golf ratings. This matchup figures to be more appealing.

ARIZONA FAVORED TO REPEAT

The University of Arizona, the nation's No. 1 women's golf team, is favored to defend its title in the 15th Donnis Thompson Rainbow Wahine Golf Invitational starting Tuesday at the Olomana Golf Course.

Besides host Hawaii, among the other 11 teams competing in the 54-hole stroke play event are No. 3 USC, No. 8 Pepperdine, No. 9 Oklahoma State and No. 20 Oklahoma.

ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING

Due to an overwhelming response, another women's golf workshop will be held at the Waikele Golf Course, Aug. 12. Telephone the HSWGA office at 589-2046 for more information.