A super sports Saturday

There was plenty to watch on cinco de mayo day on TV if you were a sports fan.

Today was the running of the most prestigious two minutes in sports. The Kentucky Derby for this year hit the airwaves with the running of the 3 year old horses. I'll Take Another, a strange name for a horse, won the derby after winning the prestigious Santa Anita Derby by a nose to get in. I totally unexpected victory that will certainly shake up the monied teams in the sport. It was quite a finish as this horse really knew how to get to the finish line from the middle of the pack. He won going away by 5 furlongs. Its always nice to hear the crowd sing "My old Kentucky Home" and to suffer through 2 hours of space shuttle talk.... hummm background stories on the horses before the 2 minute race actually occurs.

The hometown bums er Giants were playing on TV this Saturday on the national broadcast. They had there Gigiantes jerserys on to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. They defeated the Milwaukee Brewers. There seems to be so much more color in the set when the game is played for the national audience. It also helped that San Francisco had one of its storybook weather days. 

Not to be outdone for color on the screen, the Wells Fargo PGA tournament tune up was broadcasted from Charlotte, North Carolina. Quail Hallow is some kind of photogenic course.. even if Tiger Woods didn't make that cut at even par on Friday. The next week golf heads to one of its majors.. the Players championship. Golf is an interesting sport to watch on TV. Most active golfers want nothing to do with the televised tournaments. They don't want to admit that they have any connection with the feeling of success when the pros play. I think that this is in fact due to the dumming down of the professional course. A PGA course is in fact a pretty difficult place to play. In recent years the technology of golf has zoomed ahead of the course design. I think that it is obscene that the pros need a 14 under par score to come close to winning a tournament. A PGA course should have its holes reflective of the challenge. Par should be a respectable score on any hole that is properly measured. The difficulty now is that many of the classic courses are too short for the modern equipment. Except for the USOpen. The penalty for missing a fairway should be catastrophic in a major tournament. It has been in the past. It will be for this years US Open on the Olympic golf course in San Francisco in June. That is unless the course superintendent provides a short mowed down mid rough area to bolster the scores. It will be a difficult course like it always is because it is played on a very steep hill. Traditionally the putting greens are very fast and difficult. Tiger better have his swing in shape by the time this June tournament arrives. It is totally unforgiving with narrow platform fairways and miniscule greens. The US Open Tournament in 1998 was a total target shoot with irons with no drivers in sight. There is no water on this course. Three is a par three down at the foot of the hill beside the lake that has an extremely narrow fairway with steep nine foot sand bunkers lining it. There were a couple of hole in ones on this hole in the last US Open held there.

One should not forget that there was a serious NASCAR nationwide series being run at the fastest course of NASCAR, Teledega. Of all the NASCAR races this one is the one to watch if you are into drafting. The cars are hauling around the track thee wide and and about eight rows deep. The speed occurs when these cars form "trains" of twos and threes right up next to each other at incredible speeds, full well knowing that they cannot maintain this close proximity too long as the radiators over heat and the performance drops. This is really tight race and most cars remain of the lead lap. The course is just 2 miles long and the spectators have a wild view of the entire race. Danica Patrick was in this race and was often up in the second and third spots without support to shoot her through to the front. There were two massive accidents in this years race. The one at the end resulted in a race stoppage and a helicopter employed to airlift the injured driver to safety. Many times this race gets down to who can save the fuel and the tires to the end.

With NASCAR Teledaga, The Wells Fargo PGA golf tournament, The Kentucky Derby, The Giants playing the Brewers and rumors of a pay for view boxing extravaganza from Las Vegas, its no wonder not much was getting done in the yards of America..... : ) Pat