Saturday, March 21, 2009

The Golf Pundit Wins the Men's Golf Club Championship at the Moselle Golf Club in Cochem, Germany : At Age 61 One Secret is Custom Made Golf Clubs

Just for the record, we post here somewhat later than the actual season, the fact that the GolfPundit won the 2008 men's golf club championship at the Moselle Golf Club in Cochem, Germany, which was quite an event for this writer given the Golf Pundit's age at the time of winning - 61. (Update: Below is the later-posted official photograph of the Cochem 2008 club champions - from the left - women's, senior men's, youth, senior women's, and, at the far right, the Golf Pundit, the men's club champion - Andis Kaulins).


The Golf Pundit, a long hitter, was aided by the terrible weather on the weekend, with high winds and prolonged rain, which made the course very difficult to play for nearly everyone, especially the shorter hitters. The photo below shows the 575-yard par 5 signature 17th hole at the GolfClub Cochem par 72 championship golf course:


A long and accurate tee shot has to carry a biotope ravine so deep that the fairway can only be reached by going around the biotope on a horseshoe path through woods to the left (that path is not visible in this photograph as taken from the GolfCochem.de website). There is an out-of-bounds to the left about 10 meters from the edge of the fairway, all the way down the fairway to the green, and deep impenetrable rough to the right. A gigantic fairway sand trap (bunker) to the right catches long drives that try to cut the corner too sharply. The fairway slopes uphill all the way to a large elevated green fronted by a sand trap and there is almost always a strong prevailing wind in the player's face, making this hole almost impossible to reach in two, even for the strongest players. The Golf Pundit birdied this hole during the tournament.

The rough can look like this (taken from the GolfCochem.de website):



The 27-hole Mosel Golf Club in Cochem opened nominally for play on October, 2006. This year, in 2008, the course is in good condition for championship play. Especially the greens are already in excellent shape, given their very young age.

The 18-hole par-72 championship Mosel Course as well as the 9-hole Eifel Course were designed by two of Germany's leading golf architects, Christoph Städler and Dirk Decker.


The photograph above is taken from the GolfCochem.de website and shows the green of the 166-yard par 3 11th hole, with the 160-yard par 3 9th hole in the background above it - both severely uphill.

That same hole 11 is shown in the photo below looking down from green to tee, but that is a different sand trap than the sand trap at the right front of the green in the first photo (one can, from the left, also see the 16th green, then part of the 10th green and then the 17th fairway):


Below, the Golf Pundit is shown in a photo (by Hoffman) hitting a sand shot:


The story was reported in the Rhein Zeitung (RZ-Online, 16 September, 2008) and the print version also carried a black-and-white photograph by Hoffman of all of the championship winners [update: that photo is now shown in full in the original color at the top of this page], of which we show only a large scan of yours truly (pardon the garb, which is a fleece jacket with a hood, but we had rain and wind, and we were pretty matted down at the end):



That's golf.

New York Times on Tiger Woods includes LawPundit Posting on Woods at the Obama Inauguration in its Headlines on the Web : plus Why Tiger wins Majors

Today's February 8, 2009 edition of the New York Times in Times Topics features an article on Tiger Woods and includes a LawPundit posting on Tiger Woods at the Inauguration of new U.S. President Barack Obama in that NYT page's Headlines on the Web. As written there:

"Blogrunner automatically monitors news articles and blog posts and tracks news events as they develop across the Web. Blogrunner alerts you to topics that are frequently linked to and commented upon. The publications tracked by Blogrunner are chosen by New York Times editors." [Blogrunner links added by LawPundit]

Here is a scan of just the left half of that NY Times page, reduced in size, and with our red circular mark showing the LawPundit inclusion. Since we regard the New York Times to be the world's best newspaper, and given that we are a golf club champion in our own right, we are of course pleased to be included. If you are a golfer yourself, you might be interested to go to that New York Times page and check out some interesting statistics as to why Tiger wins so many majors (examine the graphs below the heading Multimedia).



Mirrored at LawPundit.

Tiger Woods at the Inauguration of new U.S. President Barack Obama

You can subscribe to the Tiger Woods Newsletter at his website. Being a golfer myself, I do. Tiger's most recent posting contains the following notable paragraph:

"President Obama recently asked me to speak at the inauguration opening ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. It was such an honor to be invited and be a part of history and to speak about something that means so much to me, our men and women in the military. He was very busy, so we didn't get to talk much. I didn't want to get in his way. I did ask him if he wanted to play golf and he said, 'I'd love to.' So we'll make it happen. I think the thing that impressed me the most about him was the way he carries himself. He has great leadership qualities, and his accomplishment truly embodies what's best about America. He represents what we as Americans have in common, not perceived differences."

See the inauguration remarks in this video:



The text of Tiger's inauguration remarks can be found at his website and at PGA.com.

Posting mirror to LawPundit.

ESPN Sports Blogs : Golf Blog : NFL Nation

ESPN has a number of sports blogs. Take a look at that link for a linked list.

We are, for example, following the newly founded ESPN Golf Blog which is a statistical treasure chest on golf thus far, and in view of the now ongoing NFL playoffs, we are following NFL Nation.

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