Golfing Journal

"Golf is a nice walk spoiled." "When ancient man threw sticks on the ground and screamed unintelligible words, they called it witchcraft; when modren man does it, the call it golf." I think that most people can agree, golf is an acquired taste. A lot of people have a taste for it, a lot of people don't. I happen to have a taste for this game, and I enjoy it quite a lot. Something that I've decided to do as an addition to this blog, is to include my own journal about my experiences golfing.

When I first started golfing, I was a kid. A teenaged who didn't really like it when he wasn't good at something. Naturally, I both liked and hated golfing. I liked the challenge, but hated how bad I was. So naturally, the only thing to do was get better. Around college, I stopped playing. I like to try and pretend that it was because I was focusing on my studies and all that, but I think it was more because I knew how bad I was and didn't care to be reminded of it every time I went out. I did go a few times, saw the clubs in the basement and figured it was better to give them a little bit of use instead of just letting them sit there and collect dust. Let me back up a bit. There was actually a summer, I want to say right after my freshman year of college, where I was actually decent. My best round ever came in that summer, as well as what would have been my best round, had the damn lightning not come in. My best round ever was an 84. Honest to God, 84. Ever since then, I've been fighting to be able to break 90, and sometimes 100.

I think what first got me back into the game was my father in law. He is an avid golfer, and probably the most honest golfer that you will ever see. What he puts on his score card is absolutely, positively, exactly what he shot. He knows every rule there is, and applies every penalty that happens to a pro, to himself. He kind of sounds like the type that might really annoy people to golf with, and I suppose to some people, he might be, but I, personally, love golfing with him. You'd have to meet him to fully understand, but if you want a truly irreverant good time, then you'll have to play with him. True, he takes it seriously, and gets mad at himself, but both of you can't really help but laugh when he swears like crazy, and then the next hole it's like it never happened. I definitely felt more comfortable, knowing that if I wanted to just let an f-bomb fly when I got mad at myself, I could and it wouldn't matter. It started to help me relax. Since then, I have done my best to make sure that I go golfing with a buddy or a relative, somebody I'm comfortable with, which is really the best way to golf anyways, in good company.

I've been out a couple of times this summer, and am going with my father in law again tomorrow. Played a par 3 course with a friend of mine that I'm trying to teach the game, and a 9 hole executive course with my dad on father's day. Good company, nice and relaxing. I'm actually at a point where I can expect that I can shoot a few pars each time out. I'm excited to get out and play 18 for the first time this summer. My hope is that I can hit it in the 90s. Only issue is that I'm up in Alaska and don't have my own clubs. This is both good and bad. When you rent clubs from a place, you usually get some really nice clubs from the pro-shop, but it's hard to know. I'm quite comfortable with my clubs, especially my driver and my putter. It's hard to change those up. I'll let you know how things go.

To conclude my first entrance of this, I am a big fan of golfing. I think I've developed the right attitude towards approaching it, and just go to enjoy myself. As long as I'm enjoying myself, I'm sure I'll get better. My eventual goal, I want to get my actual handicap figured out, and move towards breaking 80. Long term goal, definitely, but I'm hopeful that it can happen.

See ya on the links!

Free Agency: NHL Style

I am definitely well aware of the fact that I am late on starting this, but that is not a problem. I must also apologize for not writing in quite a while. My wife and I have been quite busy moving. I got a new job up in Colorado, HOME STATE BABY!, and we have been quite busy packing and such. So that is why I have taken quite a while in updating this. So again, my apologies.

Now, I'm going to focus my attention on my hometown boys, the Colorado Avalanche, for the vast majority of this. Now, Greg Sherman, Avalanche GM, has made it abundantly clear that they are committed to a "build from within" style of management. Looking to "not take any shortcuts through trades or free agency." In general, I'm a fan of this idea, but there are some negatives. The good about it being that you are going to put your faith in your players, and allow them to prove themselves. You keep a core of guys together that you know work, and that ensures some great chemistry, and a pretty low payroll. We saw that promoting Joe Sacco was a great success for the Avs, as were many of the players that he brought up with him from Lake Eerie, the Avs AHL affiliate. The problem with this being that they are absolutely refusing to even consider making any signings out of free agency.

Don't get me wrong here, I understand the concept of not really wanting to shell out insane amounts of dollars to players that don't really deserve the contract, and I understand that the Avs have been guilty of that before (i.e. Ryan Smyth, Scott Hannan), but there were/are 2 players that I desperately wish the Avs had pursued during this time period. First, and most obviously, Ilya Kovalchuk. The Avs have slightly more than 30 million dollars worth of cap space this offseason, and could totally use a legit, all-star, sniper left wing that everybody has to pay attention to. Yes, his contract demands (10 million per year for 10-12 years) are pretty ridiculous, but the Avs are one of the teams out there that could actually afford this and still have some space left. I'd be happier with the whole 8 million a year for 8 years, but Kovy, and apparently the Avs, seem to have different plans. The other guy I really wanted, and is a totally moot point so I won't go too deep into it, was Anton Volchenkov. Just a beast of a shot blocking defensemen who is far more physical than any of the D-men we currently have on our roster. Oh well, I suppose that even though both of these guys are good LONG TERM options who are still quite young, Sherman believes that this is shortcutting, and would hurt the team in the long run. I call BS on that.

So far, 3 days into free agency, I'm most surprised at how crazily busy the Vancouver Cannucks have been. They have signed all kinds of folks, including coveted d-man Dan Hamhuis. This is a team that has won the NW division the last 2 seasons, and 3 out of the last 4 years. The NW is usually one of the most competitive in the NHL, and the Cannucks are showing that they realize this. I honestly think that they are the most likely to win it again, and have shown their fans that they are committed to getting better. What are the Avs showing? I'm not entirely certain yet. I'll let the year play out before I decide that this build from within strategy is bogus or not. But I can't imagine that the exact same guys are going to be THAT much better from one year to the next. Especially since we gave up so many shots last year, and Andy can't be as amazing as he was all the time. Eventually, he'll get tired of being peppered every single night.

So far, I give the Avs a D- for their performance during free agency.

"king" James

Yeah, I think that's fitting. Because really, how is one truly a king if they have never fully made it to the mountain top? How is one truly a king if they quit on their team in the middle of a pivotal game in a series, and then not take their share of the blame after? To me, and to most people who have either watched sports or ever studied history, a king is a leader. Something that most people were always willing to say that Lebron James was, until recently.

After game 5, Lebron made a rather..., no an incredibly arrogant comment. "When you have 3 bad games in 7 years, it's easy to pick on them." No saying that he didn't play as hard as he needed to. No saying that it was on him for not picking his teammates up. No saying that he would work harder, and be better than anybody else for the rest of the year. Just saying, well what did you want me to do? Well, I bet most of your fans and the city of Cleveland wanted you to act like the leader that you think that you are, and play like you care more about winning a title than getting the highest bid in the offseason.

But there's the rub, that is the thing that he cares the most about. No, not the title, the being the most coveted free agent in his generation. Again, Yahoo Sports has been talking about this as well, and I have to agree with their take 110%. I watched clips of his post game interview, and a couple of times makes mention of approaching things with his "team", and implementing a game plan with his "team" over the summer. Now, to most people, they might think, "Oh, he's still planning to work things out with his team in Cleveland." But I don't think so. To him, his team is Team James. His agent and his "possee". This game plan regards free agency. If you even thought he cared about what happened in this game, just look at his body language during the post game interview. Questioned about the game and what happened, he almost deflects the questions. Little waves of the hand, as if to say the fact that they are now out of the playoffs is no big deal. But then quite serious when asked about his offseason plans. At one moment he says he hasn't really thought about it, but then makes a comment about how he and his "team" have a game plan that they want to execute. All of this paints the picture of a very different Lebron than most people are used to.

This Lebron is one that is, for lack of a better term, kind of a jerk. That kid from high school who has sort of had everything given to him on a silver platter, and knows that people will bow to his whims because he is capable of putting a ball in a basket. A prima donna who is more concerned about playing for the name on the back of the jersey, not the name on the front of the jersey. So, until he shows himself to be the kind of leader that made people call Wayne Gretzky The Great One, 4 time Stanley Cup Champion, that made people look up to Michael Jordan, 6 time NBA champion, and Magic Johnson, 5 time NBA champion, he'll always just be "king" James. Because the thing that all of those people have the Lebron doesn't, and that they all desperately wanted more than him, are championships. But only Lebron can decide what his priority is.

One of the Saddest Stories I've read

So, I was perusing the yahoo sports articles while at work the other day, during my prep period, and I came across an interesting story. You can take a look here. Apparently, down in Texas, there was a 22 year old man who was caught posing as a 16 year old high school student, and was playing for the basketball team. Now, you hear about this, and you read the article, and you look at the pictures, and the same thought really should come into everybody's head. How in the world can this happen?

Well, if you look at the guy's picture, which is provided from the same link above, you could say he looks young. But does he look 16? I guess that's hard to say. According to the articles I've read about this, they said that he presented adequate paper work, but I'm curious how hard they really looked. Or what all they actually looked at. One can forge a driver's license, or some form of state ID pretty easily, but how can one adequately forge a birth certificate (please don't anybody actually answer that). I think what they may have looked at the most is that the guy is 6'5", and was way bigger than everybody else there.

The next thing that comes to mind, or my mind anyways, is exactly how sad this is. I mean, I don't mean to rip on a guy that's going to go to jail for fraud and such, but come on! Is your real life really THAT bad, that you need to pretend to be a 16 year old so that you can relive your glory days in high school? I mean, things must really be going bad for you, as a person, to not just want to go back to high school, but to ACTUALLY go back to high school. I mean, I look back on my days in high school fondly, for the most part, but you couldn't pay me to go back and pretend to be a kid again. I mean, if he wasn't a dirty cheater who couldn't find anything better to do with himself than to try and reach for his glory days as a teenager, I'd almost feel bad for the guy.

The biggest kicker of all this is that, according to the first article I read on this, this is only the latest in a recent trend of 20 somethings pretending to be high schoolers so they can play on the sports teams. Seriously, this is just pathetic! I understand that it is hard for some people to grow up, but this is absolutely ridiculous. I guess some people literally do never fully escape high school.

A brief plug for another blog.

Hey all, as I've shared before, I'm a teacher, and I've come across a blog that is very interesting. It's quite young, but it is being written by another teacher that I know very well. So if you have an interest in seeing things through an educators eyes, take a look at this blog.

http://educatorseyes.blogspot.com/

Thanks!

Avs out, Sharks move on.

Well, after 4 games in the playoffs that nobody expected to go the way they did, the Avs finally succumbed to the attack of the Sharks in games 5 & 6. The Sharks win, Avs go home, but all is not so bad. Sure, the sting of losing in the playoffs is never very fun, but there is so much positive for the Avalanche as they look into the up-coming offseason.

Firstly, the Avs should be congratulated, and should feel very good about their season. Most people picked the Avs to, once again, be the bottom-dwellers of the Western Conference, have no shot at the playoffs, and barely be a blip on anybody's radar. Well, they definitely overcame that, and while the whole team is obviously to be given credit, there are 3 people, in my opinion, that did more than their share. 1. You can't turn things around without a coach that people believe in, and the players clearly believe in Joe Sacco. Many people were thinking that Patrick Roy may make a return to Colorado to coach the lowly Avs team, mostly as a ploy to get people back in the stands, but they went with Sacco, who had been the coach of their AHL affiliate in Lake Erie. Great move. Makes total sense, especially for a young team. Bring up the coach that most of them have already played for, know what to expect of him, and know what is expected of them. Sacco could be considered for the Jack Adams trophy with the huge turn-around the Avs had this year, but probably won't be given all the credit he deserves.

Second, Matt Duchene. There were some who thought it would be a mistake for Duchene to come right up to the league so quickly, and thought that he might need some more time with his junior team to develop. Well, a season later, Duchene led all rookies in points, in the top 2 for rookies in goals scored. In my estimation, he WILL win the Calder, for rookie of the year. He provided energy, tenacity, and amazing maturity from a kid, yes, a kid, who is only recently 19 years old. If I'm the Avs, the second this kid's third year comes up, you sign him to a HUGE contract extension and keep him around until he's 80, just to be safe. The Avs will continue to get great things from him.

Third, and most obviously, the signing of Craig Anderson. Nobody knew who this guy was, as he was an underused back-up in Florida, though last year he was third in the league in save %. Again, I know he won't win this award, but you look at things, and what player has been more valuable to his team than Anderson has been to the Avs? He played 71 of 82 games, faced the most shots of any goalie in the NHL, had 7 shutouts this year, and still kept a very respectable .917 save %. Without Andy in net, the Avs would have been those bottom dwellers. It seems there is finally some stability in the Colorado net again. Though I don't know if playing him another 71 games would be wise. Yes, he's young, but that many games and that many shots will wear down anybody.

So what's next? Well, for a while the Avs must watch the playoffs with everybody else, but I think there will be a very active free agent market this year for the Avs. Mueller will be an obvious person they will want to re-sign, as he came alive the second he step foot on the ice in Colorado. I think we'll have a decent amount of cap space to play with as well. By my guess, I doubt we will see the following people back in an Avs jersey next year, at least not at the price they currently have. Darcy Tucker, Marek Svatos, David Koci (a rather stupid signing in the first place), Brett Clark, Ruslan Salei, maybe Adam Foote (depending on whether or not he decides to retire). Svatos made 2.35 mil this year. Clark made 3.5 mil. We've already got 7.7 mil in space before letting those guys go, add in their salaries to that, and the others that are going, then there could be room for a run at a serious D-man, which may be a HUGE help to the Avs. Never know, because there are also some big offensive names coming up for free agency as well. Ilya Kovalchuck, Patrick Marleau (will depend a lot on how the Sharks do the rest of the way in the playoffs), our old buddy Wojtek Wolski is a free agent again. The Avs could add some serious fire power on to what is a very talented squad.

In the end, the Avs are in good hands. I look forward to free agency, and to the next season for the Avs. Who knows, in a couple years, my wife may even let me get season tickets! **crosses fingers!!** I'll be writing another big on the Sharks very soon, probably tomorrow.

First round for the Broncos.

Broncos ended up with 2 first round draft picks tonight. First one, not a big surprise. A lot of folks figured they would go with an inside linebacker, but apparently not. Broncos traded down twice, and ended up with Demaryius Thomas, see his draft report here. A big wide receiver to replace the one the Broncos just traded. Will he be as good as Marshall? Maybe, it's hard to tell if a rookie will be able to have the kind of impact that Marshall did. But the off the field issues aren't there with this guy, at least at the moment, so he seems like a good match.

But then, out of the blue, the Broncos come back and trade UP to get the 25th pick in the draft, from the Ravens, for none other than..... Tim Tebow???? Ummm, wait a minute. Didn't we take care of what we wanted at QB? Didn't we sure up our back up spot with Brady Quinn? I'm going to be honest, with the still very large need at line backer for the Broncos, this actually shocks me. We didn't need another back up quarterback, we needed somebody at ILB. Who knows, maybe the Broncos will get somebody in the second round, but this is still a pretty glaring need.

Just another move by the boy king that kind of defies logic. Why get a line backer that can come in in the first year and help make a difference on a defense that needs it when you can draft a QB with questionable mechanics that is definitely going to be on the bench for at least 1, maybe 2 years? I guess that's what makes the difference between me and most Broncos head coaches of late, only they can really understand the moves that they make.

Big Ben's Big Bad

I would like to start this off by giving massive kudos to Roger Goodell, the Commissioner of the NFL, for his actions regarding Ben Roethlisberger. As I'm sure everybody has heard, Big Ben was being charged for raping a girl in Georgia and in Lake Tahoe. These charges were later dropped because the "victim wished to avoid court proceedings." But, as we have learned of late, Roger Goodell doesn't need a guilty verdict to sit you down.

Roethlisberger was suspended, today, for 6 games!!! 6!!! Again, kudos to Goodell for the consistency. It would have been incredibly easy for him to bow to the popularity of Ben, knowing that he is a huge name in the sport that is a household name. I mean, that kind of thing happens in the NHL all the time. Goodell has made it clear, with a variety of players, it is a privilege to be in the NFL, and if I see your name in any kind of publicity that makes the NFL look bad, you will pay for it. He doesn't care who you are, and I applaud Goodell for that.

So what do the Steelers do now? Do they just deal with the suspension and hope that a back up will help them weather the storm? Do you trade him? Do you cut him? From what it sounds like, according to the ESPN article above, it seems as if the Steelers are looking into the possibility of trading Roethlisberger in hopes of getting themselves up in the top 10 picks of the draft. I don't know what I would do, but again, allow me just continue to voice exactly how much I appreciate the fact that Roger Goodell has made it clear he hold all players, not just the thugs, to the same precedent. This is something that is long over due. Now the players know that they have to earn their ridiculously high salaries both on the field, and off!

Stanley Cup Playoffs

I know that I constantly say how we're "in one of my favorite times of the year" for a lot of my posts, but in this case, this is the biggest and the best! My favorite time of the year is the Stanley Cup Playoffs. After watching these games, I really can't believe how anybody can't LOVE hockey! I mean, this isn't like the NBA, where you almost always guarantee that the 1 seed beats the 8 seed. Yes, it definitely happens more frequently than not, but the NHL playoffs provides far more competitive action.

Proof positive of this comes from tonight's games of San Jose vs. Colorado. San Jose dominated most of the play after a fairly even first period. But that X factor came out to play. Craig Anderson, who I know won't win the Hart Trophy as the MVP, but honestly, who on earth has been more important to his team than Craig Anderson?, stopped 51 shots! And Ryan O'Reilly gets a stick on a puck that ricocheted in past Evgeni Nabokov. Yes, the Avs were not the better team that night, but the nature of hockey allows for them to stay in, and win what ended up being an amazing game. How many times do you see that type of thing happen in the NBA? Never!

It's just the nature of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, anybody can win, and if you don't come to play every single game as if it is your last, then you won't win! The Olypmic tournament provided us with some absolutely amazing hockey, and I think that the Stanley Cup Playoffs will provide us with a lot more hockey like that. During the playoffs, it isn't about your contracts, it isn't about your endorsement deals, it's about winning the cup. For my money, I'll take a triple over time thriller over Kobe vs. Lebron any day of the week.

Time for the sporting world to go CUP CRAZY!!!

Long Wait, but now Some Takes

Man, it has been quite a long time since I've written anything, and a lot has happened! So I'm going to give my take on what I see as some of the biggest things that have happened this sporting season!!

First, Tiger. I wrote an earlier post about Tiger Woods praising his character. For not acting like a diva when a kid hit a better ceremonial drive off the tee than he did. Then, all of this stuff happened and we learned that the squeaky clean Tiger Woods has some blemishes. First off, his wife is freaking hot! Can we honestly think that any of the women that Tiger was messing around with had it going on more than her? Seriously. More seriously, though, I do hope that they are able to work things out, although trust issues like that have a tendency of never going away, no matter how ok things seem. I hope they are able to work this out for their kids. It's hard enough to be a kid with a celebrity for a parent, it's even harder when those parents have to break up and you see it plastered on the news every day of your young life. I hope Tiger's words are sincere, but it's just hard to know now. Tiger has shown us that we really don't know what kind of a person he is, and just because he says the right things on camera, doesn't necessarily mean that he's doing the right things as a person.

A lot of things going on in football! The Broncos traded to get Brady Quinn. Not a huge bit of news in and of itself, considering it was for a rarely used FB and a 6th round draft pick for a guy who has played on one of the worst teams in the last few years, but Brady Quinn does still have the potential to be a great player for a long time. A year to get used to the Bronco's system and to work with a full time QB coach will only do good things for him.

A new overtime rule. Really? Is it really needed? Granted, it is only for the playoffs, but come on. How long have we gone with the previous version and been ok with it? How many actual NFL players have called for changes to this rule? It has always only been fans of teams that lost in the OT and "expert" columnists that claim that it was needed. The players have always been matter of fact about the whole thing. We didn't stop them, so we didn't deserve to win. Ok, that seems like a good enough reason to me. How much of this is because it was Brett Favre's team that lost in the NFC championship game? It wasn't needed, but it may provided the public with what they want. Something they've deemed "more fair" than before. I guess I can live with that.

Donovan McNabb got traded!? No really! This time he actually did! For how many years have the Eagle's fans been calling for him to be traded, only to love on him when he took the field the following year? Sure, they got to a bunch of NFC Championship games, and only won one of them. Lost the only Super Bowl they played in, more because they didn't begin to play quickly until far too late than anything else. And what's more, they traded him WITHIN THEIR DIVISION!!!! This guy was the best quarterback that the Eagles have ever had!! Why on earth would they trade him to a division rival? I know they wanted to do right by McNabb, or at least Andy Reid did, but come on! You still have to think the most about your team. Do you really think that Kevin Kolb is going to out duel McNabb when they take the field against each other? This is definitely a HUGE gain for the Skins and Mike Shanahan. A mobile quarterback who can throw anywhere on the run. Hmm, nah, Shanahan doesn't know how to work with a guy like that. cough cough, John Elway, cough cough. This could be the start of something really good in D.C.!

Duke won March Madness for the 4th time! Congrats to the Blue Devils and the Cameron Crazies! Duke was my favorite college basketball team for a long time when I was growing up. Then I stopped caring. But man, I wish that I had actually watched that Duke v. Butler game. Sounds like an incredible amount of drama for such a low scoring game. At any rate, I did NOT predict really anything in the NCAA Toury. After a promising start, my bracket took a pretty huge nose dive. Thank you Kansas, New Mexico, Georgetown.

NHL! After an up and down year, my Colorado Avalanche have clinched a playoff spot! It looks as if they will be playing the Sharks in the first round. The Sharks are quite a good team, with quite the history of blowing it, big time, in the playoffs. The Avs are a young team with a lot of energy and a goalie that has been out of his mind. Even though it is a 1 vs. 8 series, I wouldn't be at all shocked if it went a long way, or even if the Avs won the series. Matt Duchene should be the runaway winner of the Calder Trophy, NHL's rookie of the year award. I'm sure that Joe Sacco won't win the Jack Adams trophy, coach of the year, but turning a team from last in the conference to a playoff team, with the youth and inexperience of the team, deserves serious consideration. And I know that Craig Anderson will not win the Hart Trophy, but if you look at things, he has absolutely been the player that has been most valuable to his team, in my opinion. How many unbelievable saves has that guy made in tight times? He has faced more shots than any other goalie this year, and has a 2.56 GAA, a .916 sv. %, and 7 shutouts! That's insane!! It will obviously go to Ovechkin or Crosby, but really, what guy has made a bigger difference for his team than Craig Anderson?

I'm going to try and be much better about my blogging. I hope to make certain I do things once a week, but the school year is winding down, and I'm going to be moving here pretty soon. So I may not be able to hold onto that promise. Anywho, if you're still reading, thanks very much for your time! I hope that you stay around!