Masters Results

Sunday at Augusta never fails to please.  I didn't expect such a surge of contenders coming down the stretch but it sure was exciting. I thought the Dustin Johnson collapse in last year's US Open was bad but what McIlroy went through on the back 9 has to be up there as one of the worst choke jobs I've ever seen.  To have a 4 shot lead at Augusta heading into Sunday and shoot 80 the final day is a tough one to swallow.  Sorry to the 4 players that chose him.

Mitch Morales and Chris Sholer were the only players to choose Charl Schwartzel.  Unfortunately, BOTH had him as their alternate.  That only cost each of you $1.35 million.  Alternates are rarely used.  They are more for the "kick yourself in the ass" factor if they happen to go low or in this case, win the damn thing.  Better luck next time boys.

For those that didn't have any dogs in the hunt down the stretch, the top of the leaderboard was the best case scenario because no one chose any of the top 3 finishers so that will lessen the blow earnings wise.

With that being said, our winner for the week is Keller Crowley with Masters earnings totaling $758,934.  The winner last year pocketed a little more than $2 million so the lead is slim compared to last year. Keller, please send me your address or PayPal info and I will get your entry fee back to you.

See the 2011 Ranking Summary to see where you stand after our first major.  The Masters page will have each players' earnings.  Double-check to make sure your totals are correct:
Official Earnings

This is a long season so even if you're towards the bottom, there's plenty of golf left and anything can happen.  We only have 4 weeks until our next tournament so start thinking about your strategy for the Players Championship.  I will send out a reminder email a week prior.

Steve

Masters update through 54

Standings have been posted through round 3.  Duke Le holds the first place spot heading into Sunday.

Rory looks solid.  I'm not sure any one can catch him if he keeps playing this well.

Only 4 players chose McIlroy: Duke Le, Matt McGee, Paul Miller and Dale Smith.  If Rory holds on, each player will pocket a cool $1.35 million on top of what their other players pull down.  Not a bad way to start the season.

Look forward to tomorrow.

Cheers!

Augusta National In Person - Recap by Tommy Sommerville

This is courtesy of one of our players who just got back from Augusta.  Makes me want to start planning my 2012 trip.  Thanks Tommy for the writeup!

Wednesday 

Got there about 10 when things were warming up.  The town is pretty ghetto surrounding a really nice whites only country club.  If you want more of an explanation about that kind of thing, ask Sanders.  We park our car and we're already in a good place bc its only 10 dollars. Its this low cost stuff that makes you really really hate Jerry Jones.  We walk about two blocks and we look over and theres this big bus with tables out in front of it with all this gear and it is 2 time major winning and 2004 comeback player of the year John Daly selling John Daly merch out the back of a truck.  

The police were in the process of shutting him down because he didnt have a permit.  I love John Daly.

We get in and security is like the President is inside.  On the practice round Wednesday you can have cameras but not for the rest of it.  And you can never have a phone on site. If you get caught with one they take your pass and youre banned for the week.  Shits infuriating or you would have had 900 L7 emails on Wed.  First thing you walk up to when you get in is the driving range which is nicer than any golf course I have ever seen.  Lot of younger guys were still at the range which is where I got that pic of Rory McIlroy.

The kid is unreal, 21 years old.  All of these guys are just smoking it down the driving range, bullshitting with each other at the same time.  The Asian players kinda keep to themselves.  But every single one of them is just textbook. It was really quite depressing.

We walk in to the main area and it kinda looks like Six Flags.  We decide we gotta try out the food. And as I told you earlier its dirt cheap. Sandwiches are all a dollar (egg salad, pimiento cheese, bbq, club, etc) Beers are 3 dollars.  (Stella or Budweiser, thats it. So awesome)  You get through that and then you walk up on the Big Board which is the entrance to the course.

This is the first thing you see which is looking over the 1 and 18 fairways down into a few other holes. 1 green is to your right, 18 to your left.

We kinda roam for a little bit and notice the crowd over on 10.  It turns out to be Phil, Freddie Couples, Rickie Fowler, and the US amateur champ Uehlein from OK State.  Everyones watchin Phil, but Freddie is the shit.  During the practice round all the players interact with the crowd and talk to em. Its really cool.  You could tell this group had some action goin on and the amateur was losin his ass.   The kid is tiny but pretty cool.  My dad and our other guy didnt care for him. I dont know if yall saw him yesterday but he literally wore all green Puma gear.  Shirt, hat, pants, shoes, belt everything. We followed those guys for another couple holes and then we broke off to go watch Tiger.  He was playin with his boy OMeara and Arjun Atwal this new guy from India who was supposed to be a stud but didnt play well yesterday.  

Amen Corner

Intermittently throughout we would break off to go eat more sandwiches. Went on to the Par 3 tourney which is a separate 9 hole course on the grounds which is unreal sick.  It would be the most fun thing ever to play this with friends and gamble.  It would be the nicest course that we would ever play and its only nine holes.  

We watched a bunch of pairings and everyone interacts with everyone once again.  Signing autographs and crackin jokes at each hole.  Really cool.  Then we watched the full 9 holes of Palmer, Nicklaus and Player. 

I kinda just left my dad alone on that bc he was in his own little world. We watched that and drank some more by that time it was about 5 so we went back to the hotel.  Pretty awesome day.

Thursday

(The dogwoods and azaleas are in full bloom,  the crowds are filing in here at Augusta National Golf Course.  Hi everyone I'm Jim Nance, and this is the Masters...)

I dont have any pics so this will be a quicker summary.  Got there at 6:30 bc the gates opened at 7.  Daly had not woken up yet.  You get in just as the sun is coming up and theres still a fog over the course and its like 45 degrees.  Its pretty surreal.  We walked the course first before any of the players teed off.  Its just the most amazing thing you've ever seen.  I know we say this but we really need to go.  It would be a shit ton of fun with friends.  Followed Dustin Johnson, Nick Watney and Adam Scott early on.  Dudes just kill it.  I think Johnson must drive the ball 360 yards.  Its pretty empty in the mornings.  What you wanna do is buy chairs and you run to a hole that you want to be at later in the day somewhere between holes 11-16 and put your chairs down.  Nowbody moves em or steels em so you dont have to stay there to save em.  It gets real hot by about noon.  Television gives you a fairly good view of how pretty it is, but it has no way of showing how impossibly hard it is.  The fairways are wide open and there is absolutely no rough.  It really is all just like youre walking on carpet.  But the impossible part are the greens.  TV has no way to show all the insane slopes and bumps in the green.  False fronts, big ol knobs right in the middle and the hole placement is just insane.  One hole they put on a little flat area about the size of a dining room table and the rest of the green is just an absolute nightmare.  One putt we watched broke 4 different times.  And theyre fast as shit so you barely tap it and it goes 40 feet and sometimes off the green entirely.  We were set up at one par 3 tee box after the previous hole which had the hardest green on the course.  And this young player DA Points who is a really cool dude from U of Illinois had all his boys there to see him.  And we are standing next to his friends and after the impossible green he comes to the tee box and see his friends and he just looks at em and shakes his head.  This was their exchange:

Points:  That was the hardest green I have ever played.

Friend:  Wow you really sucked back there

Points:  Shut the hell up, I could have you kicked out so fast

Friend:  Then you'd have nobody here to cheer for you

Points:  Security! This guy has a cell phone! I think he's tweeting!

We followed a few different pairings

Els, Mahan and somebody else (Els is so smooth, Mahan has an ex cowboys cheerleader wife named Kandi with a K and I)

McIlroy, Fowler and Day (McIlroy is incredible, Fowler dresses funny)

Tiger and whoever he was with (He as weirdly small feet, and he just doesnt seem the same anymore)

Westwood, Kaymer and Kuchar (Coolest group, Kaymer World number 1 had an awful day, but Westwood is sick and Kuchar is really cool)

Phil and whoever he was with (Phil has bitchtits.  But he's just happy to be here.)

The crowds all move with Phil and Tiger.  You could be waiting for them two holes ahead and have nobody around you and then all of a sudden you just see waves of people heading towards you and you know its only 1 of 2 people. Like I said the trim was a little disappointing.  I guess we are just spoiled from the Colonial and Byron.   Amen Corner is unreal.  Greens are unreal.  Food prices unreal.  Whole place is unreal.  And John Daly sells tshirts out of a truck.  We all really really really need to go.

TSom

Masters Round 1 - Pool Leaderboard

To reiterate, this pool is determined by overall earnings and not cumulative score but I like to post our leaderboard just so you can see where you rank amongst the field after day 1.  I'll do this for each round if time permits.

Don't be discouraged if you're towards the bottom.  There's still a lot of golf left in this tournament and in the season.

Standings can be found under the '2011' link on the 'Leaderboard' tab.  For individual scores, refer to the 'Masters' tab.

Good luck tomorrow.

Masters Picks Posted - Other notes

We ended up with 93 players this year.  Surprisingly, we had more new entrants than returning, 40 returning players and 53 new players, so welcome to the newcomers.  There are still 13 of you that owe payment so please take care of that.  Final payouts cannot be posted until all entries have been accounted for.

All entrants' Masters picks have been posted under the '2011' link.  You can navigate different tabs of the spreadsheet at the bottom of the page.  Please double check your selections to make sure they are correct.  No changes will be made after the first group has teed off so please contact me if there is a discrepancy.

The 'Player Selections' tab will contain all of your picks throughout the season so you can see which golfers you've used.

The 'Masters' tab has everyone's Masters picks and will also be updated with each player's earnings at the conclusion of the tournament.  Each tournament will have a separate tab.

The 'Standings' tab will have cumulative season earnings and your overall rank.

As for this week, there's no surprise that Phil is the field favorite.  Out of the 93 players, 70 of you selected him as one of your golfers or roughly 75% of the field.

Other favorites are as follows:
Nick Watney - 46 players out of 93 (49%)
Matt Kuchar - 23 out of 93 (25%)
Hunter Mahan and Lee Westwood - 20 out of 93 (22%)

Results will be posted Sunday evening when final earnings have been posted so please check back then.

Good luck to everyone!

Time is Running Out

There are still a number of participants who either have not made payment, submitted their picks for the Masters or both.

If you are on the registration list and do not intend on playing, please notify me so I can remove you from the list.

Otherwise, please submit payment and golfers ASAP.

About submitting golfers:
Yes you can change your picks by resubmitting the form again but please try to submit only once per tournament.  Picks are manually input for all 80 players so multiple submissions could cause confusion.

Masters Pairings Released

Pairings for rounds 1 and 2 announced:

Masters Pairings

It's time

The Masters is finally upon us which kicks off our majors pool for 2011.  Please begin submitting your golfers for this week.  Remember that you select 4 golfers per tournament and can only use one throughout the year.

You can change your picks by submitting again and I will try my best to select the most recent submission but please try to submit only once per tournament.

I need all picks in by Wenesday night so I can post everyone's player selections prior to Thursday's round.

All picks are due no later than 9:00 PM CST on Wednesday, April 6th.

Beard Invitational - Barton Creek Austin, TX

A dozen of us headed down to Austin this weekend for my brother-in-law's bachelor party. Despite lots of lost Pro V1's and cosuming enough booze to kill a small horse, it was a pretty kick-ass time.

(For those that have never met me, I'm the non-white guy.)

Quite the motley crew



Jamie Davis puring the big stick with iPod speakers on the belt

Bachelor hitting his new Taylor Made Burner driver we presented to him on the first tee

This drive only went 330 (apologies again to the group ahead of us for hitting into you)



Loyd Davis with the shot of the day.  Knocking a 4 iron stiff on a par 5.  Not sure why he's reppin' westside.

 Eagle putt made = super gay celebration move

After 36 holes of boozing....