Favorite Tour Picture

[jmck]

Here's a rarity. Ben Hogan --almost-- cracking a smile.

 

[jmck]

A precursor to Phil's button down shirt. Jack in '73:

 

 

 

Johnny Miller with a bit of Nicklaus in his putting setup and stroke:

 

 

[jmck]

Ryo Ishikawa bringing back the plaid.

 

[Christosterone]

Ryo Ishikawa bringing back the plaid.

 

 

Ryo (pronounced Yo) had headcovers that looked like him complete with visors matching what he was wearing that day...

 

All his pants were 100% tailor made....not TM but made by a tailor...

He even used elastic stitching....

 

I am a huge ishikawa fan

 

-Chris

[emncaity]

/snip/

 

Norman hit far more good-to-excellent shots on Sunday than bad shots.

 

lol. No. No no no no no no no no no no. Just no.

 

That's the fundamental problem with your analysis. You're judging "good to excellent" and "bad" shots by your standards, not by the standards of a professional golfer trying to win a major. You're treating it like it's qualifying for the B flight of the local club championship with a $5 friendly on the line with your best bud, rather than Sunday at Augusta with a six shot lead while trying to become the first Australian to win the Masters and add a capstone, career defining victory after 20 years marked by a surprising amount of disappointment and underachieving on the biggest stages. Doesn't matter if he hit one (or 10 or 20 or 70) more "good to excellent" than "bad" shots by your reckoning. That is a metric that means absolutely nothing at that level of golf.

 

Norman shot a 63 on Thursday and in nearly identical conditions on Sunday was a full 15 shots worse. Faldo beat him by 11 shots on Sunday. Faldo could've given him five a side and still beat him.

 

Off the top of my head Norman duck hooked his drive on the first tee, chunked a chip on #10, three putted from 10 or 12 feet on #11, and flared a short iron into the creek on #12. His "good to excellent" shots don't count for anything when he's busy hitting that many bad shots at key times. Did Spieth choke a Masters away by rinsing two balls on 12, or was that also not a choke because he hit "more good to excellent" shots than bad shots over the course of the day? What about Van De Velde? Surely he hit more "good to excellent" than "bad" shots over the course of his Sunday at Carnoustie in '99.

 

Since this is a thread about pictures, let me try it that way. Pictured below are two men, one of whom hit enough "good to excellent" shots to shoot 67, one of whom hit enough "bad" shots to shoot 78:

 

 

To any list police who are going to lose it over a side discussion here (when it's a simple matter to scroll past all this), I'll just say again that I've started a new thread on this topic titled "Was the Norman collapse at the '96 Masters really 'choking'?", and also that -- again -- I'm going to answer whatever's in my inbox from this thread, on this thread.

 

If anybody doesn't want to read this long response, I'd suggest simply avoiding it. It's really easy. If you don't see a photo, move the f--k on instead of adding yet another post without a photo to b!tch about it. Meanwhile, I'm continuing to encourage people to move to that thread for anything further.

 

So back to jmck: You asked for it, so here it is.

 

You say "no" all the times you want, but it doesn't make you any less wrong here.

 

Of course Norman "hit enough 'bad' shots to shoot 78." That's always self-evident with any round of golf. What you shot is what you shot. And I said so already. He did indeed hit enough bad shots. That is not in conflict at all with the statement I made about "good-to-excellent shots." And having competed as a plus-2 amateur and as a pro at a level a little better than that, I'm pretty familiar with good shots, so you can stow all the "this isn't golf with your buds" thing. It sounds like you're one of those who ascribe too high a level of perfection to professionals, but that's yet another side topic, so we'll just stick to the specifics of what you got wrong here.

 

You say Norman had "a surprising amount of disappointment and underachieving on the biggest stages." That was true to a degree and up to a certain point in his career, but not nearly as true as people like you seem to think, especially during the previous three years leading up to this Masters.

 

Again, Norman had been #1 in the world for three straight years (after having been #1 for a couple of years in the '80s). He had shot one of the greatest final rounds in major championship history at the '93 Open while starting that round a shot back of the #1 player in the world that year (Faldo). Also within two or three strokes were Price, Els, and Couples. Anybody who does that isn't prone to "choking" on a big stage in any reasonably understood sense of the word. He also followed that with a stretch of the highest level of play anybody's ever seen, including that insane performance at the Players in '94, which is an awfully big stage itself, and won the Memorial and the World Series that year, along with finishing third at the Masters and second at the U.S. Open.

 

In addition, people tend to look at this as if everybody outside U.S. borders has the same perception of relative importance re the U.S. majors as a U.S. fan does. Norman was an international player who, in addition to his 20 U.S. tour wins, won 45 European and Australasian events. Not that he didn't consider the U.S. Masters a huge thing, because of course he did. But, as with the U.S. Open versus the British or Australian Opens, there's a tendency for American fans to think every international player feels "big-stage" pressure only in American majors, so that discussions about who's prone to "choking" focus only on those. Pros tend not to think about these things the way fans and the media do. You might also recall Snead's argument about the overemphasis of golf media and fans on the majors as opposed to other tournaments with fields at least as tough, but again, that's a completely separate argument, and it's right to isolate a consistent standard on this particular question. The point is that Norman's competitive world was bigger than just that single tournament, and especially in his mid-to-late career he wasn't the stereotypical "guy who had problems on big stages" in that narrative people keep wanting to advance.

 

What you seem not to understand, and certainly would understand if you'd competed at a high level, is that there is, or can be, surprisingly little difference between a terrible score and a very good score at a level this high, in terms of what the round looks like and how most of the shots are hit. I didn't have a lot of time or opportunity to attend tour events when I was competing, but I did manage to follow Norman around during a 66 (I think that was the score) at Colonial once, and it didn't look like anything. I remember thinking I didn't see a single shot I couldn't have hit. What he did do was hit a lot of fairways, miss it in good places and get it up and down on his few misses, and make about four decent "opportunity" putts in the 10-to-15-foot range. No penalty strokes, of course. I think there was one kick-in, and he birdied the par-5s by hitting it close to or on the green on second shots and making relatively simple up-and-downs and two-putts. If he makes only one of the opportunity putts and only half his up-and-downs, he's shooting par or one over while looking exactly the same to most people. It reminds me of when I was a teenager playing in a tournament and saw somebody break 70 for the first time in person. You'd never know it by looking at the shots. I remember thinking "that was it?".

 

Obviously that's a different thing in the Masters, but not as different as most people would think. Without going back to look, can you describe, say, four or five really impressive shots from Faldo's three wins at Augusta, aside from the winning putts in playoffs? No? Almost nobody can. And yet he won three. How about one from his U.S. Open win? What does that tell you?

 

Just setting the table here. People just don't understand what they're watching and what's important. They just hammer the same tropes over and over. Norman's a choker, Tiger's a clutch player, this is the greatest generation of golfers with the toughest competition ever, on and on.

 

But re the final round at Augusta in '96, at the other thread, I'm working on a hole-by-hole summary which I'll try to get posted today or tomorrow, so I don't want to get into every single hole here. I'll just address what you've posted:

 

At #1, he bogeyed after (as you say) hooking it into the left woods, then missing from about six feet, following a decent but not great bunker shot. Followed that on #2 with two excellent shots and a putt from off the back of the green that he nearly holed for eagle.

 

No, he didn't "chunk a chip" at #10; he was overaggressive and hit it past the hole, but the real problem on #10 was hitting it left to a left pin in the first place, with 40 feet or more of green on the right. You can see on the video that he's nowhere near aiming to the safe side. Ought to be hitting it at the tower in back of the green, and he's hitting it at the hole or a couple of feet right at most, off a hook lie. Too aggressive there. Too aggressive with the little pitch from beside the green.

 

Probably also too aggressive with the first putt at #11, after two perfect shots.

 

Definitely too aggressive at #12. Depends on what you mean by "flared" there, but that pin on the right suckers a lot of players, even players who are trying to shade left. Norman is exactly the kind of player that pin is made for, in that it requires a discipline of mind in a situation like that, not hyperaggression at all times. That pin will find you out if you know you should pick a target in the middle of the green but your instinct is to push it toward the flag.

 

Again, go look at the video. He should be aiming middle to left side of the bunker, and clubbing for past pin-high, even back fringe. Instead you can see him barely shading it left, and then -- like so many others before and since -- having that impulse to hold it off and cheat it a little closer. And as with so many others, the bank just cuts in too much to allow you to do that.

 

If you know anything about Augusta, you know that. You know part of the problem is visual perception, with the front bunker giving the illusion of being about even with the front of the green on the right, which it isn't. This is where you have to be a "think" player and not just a "visual" and "feel" player, and where a guy like Nicklaus has an advantage for that specific reason.

 

Also, if you know Augusta at all, you know the whole problem at #12 is getting the right club, and the green is so narrow on the right, with the bank cutting in so much, and the wind direction and velocity so unpredictable, that it just destroys people over and over.

 

The right criticism of Norman at that moment isn't that he "choked" with a poorly-struck shot. In fact, you can even hear the announcer (sounds like Clampett) say it's a "good-looking shot," not "oh, he chunked it" (or whatever), and even late in the flight of the ball he's saying "is it the right number?", clearly with the idea that it still looked like a potentially good shot, not a hack. And it's not like the ball flies in the water or halfway up the bank. It hits almost at the crest -- which is just about even with the back part of the right end of the bunker, or for those who know the hole, about even with the front third of the green on a line over the left half of the bunker, which is where he should've been aiming it.

 

You can also hear Nantz saying immediately afterward that he was aiming it at the flag. Looked to me like he was aiming a hair left, but not nearly enough left. Player after player comes to that hole, gives it a small margin to the left, and then holds off the release a little with that picture of the flag in mind, and ends up regretting it. It's not so much a shove as it is an instinct to respond to the flag, and you just can't let that happen. You can look back through what various winners have said about the hole, and they'll tell you that if you're in a position where you just need 3 there, you pick out a tree or some other mark behind the green, and you hit it with serious intent exactly at that target, forgetting about the hole entirely. The green narrows in the middle, but you can hit it front or back bunker, or back fringe, and still make 3, certainly no worse than 4.

 

So: IMO because of his unchangeable instincts and personality as a player, Norman just got suckered and didn't stick with what should've been the plan, which was 30-40 feet left, where a misclub gets you front bunker or back fringe, and you walk on to 13 and 15 still with a chance to win the tournament. Or maybe he actually did intend from the beginning to hit it at the flag, and just misclubbed or caught a gust. Either way, this was a problem with his mind and his approach, not with "choking" and mishitting a shot badly.

 

Then he came back with a nice birdie at #13 with a smart play out of the pine needles and a decent pitch, shading long and smart. Then a smart par at the 14th, then another birdie-almost-eagle -- and then the death blow at #16.

 

In sum, other than the drive at #1 -- you might also have included the second at #8, which he tried to hit too hard off an uphill lie, missed it (left) in the only bad (-ish) place you can miss it, and still almost holed out a greenside chip for birdie -- there just weren't any other badly hit shots here up through #12. One actual badly struck shot, at most two, in 12 holes. Bad tee shot at #1 gets punished when he barely misses par. Bad decision at #4, going at pin behind bunker for absolutely no reason. Bad swing at #8, but more a matter of not reminding himself there was all kinds of room to miss right, and going too hard at it, slipping and hanging back a little. Two well-hit shots on #9, but a terrible decision on the second shot not to get a yardage 20 feet or so past the hole. (He talked about that later.) Bad decision on #10 second shot after perfect position from the fairway. Two perfect shots on #11, then a three-putt when he leaves himself a second putt he can miss, most likely thinking how good a birdie would be, instead of thinking about putting the chutes on and having no more than inches left for par, maybe falling in for birdie on accident. And then what you call a "flare" on #12, which I think means you think it was poorly hit, but it almost certainly wasn't.

 

So to the extent that your characterization is that he was missing shots all over the place, you're just wrong. That's how so many people remember it, but that's not what actually happened. It's just that Augusta punishes bad decisions. If he hits the shot at #12 exactly the same way but on a more sensible line, for instance, he's two-putting for par (maybe). If he aims 35 feet right of the flag on #10 and hooks it about the same amount, he's right by the hole. If he's aiming at seven yards past the pin on #9, he's not going to bogey there. If he recognizes the need to get some stability once he's on the green at #11, maybe he floats that putt down there instead of hitting it far enough past the hole that it was missable coming back. And so forth. Bad decisions. Failure to recognize what's needed at the moment, rather than just "must birdie must birdie must birdie." When you're a hammer, everything is a nail. His cure for everything is more birdies. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

 

The sum total of this is, he hit only two really badly-struck shots all day. But he made bad decisions that got punished on at least six other holes. He also hit a lot of good shots and had more good holes than bad. At Augusta, two really bad shots, plus bad decisions on a third of the holes, is plenty enough to shoot 78 even if you're doing well on two-thirds of the holes. Which is exactly what I've said from the beginning. This is more a repeated failure to adapt than "gagging," and that's the point. If you're "gagging," how do you keep coming back with good holes over and over again?

 

All of which is to say, it's not such a good idea to go "off the top of your head" in a thing like this. Actually go look at the round again. It matters what actually happened, especially when you're ranting on somebody who's seen the whole thing twice in the past couple of weeks.

 

Norman's problem wasn't fear or "choking" in any commonly understood sense of that term. It was being like the driver who thinks pedal all the way down is always the best thing to do in every situation no matter what.

 

The odd thing about your reply is that you seem to be agreeing with me while believing you're disagreeing and taking me down, or whatever you thought you were doing. My position is that he hit way more good shots than bad; he hit a few solid shots that were terrible decisions at the wrong times, and those got punished; and he hit only a very few truly bad shots, most notably the coup de grace at #16, that abysmal short dumpy pull-hook into the water when even by that point he was still two down with three to play, just a birdie-bogey exchange on any of the three holes.

 

So then here you come, and you say...Norman hit more good shots than bad, but it takes only a few bad ones at that level, in that situation. Gee, if only I'd said that. But I did.

 

What little difference there is between the two positions is that you think they're all just "bad," and I'm saying -- this is the whole essence of the argument, and why I think it's important to any competitive player -- there is a difference between a well-struck shot that is badly planned (in this case, IMO, always by relentless unchanging aggression) and a shot struck badly out of fear because the player hasn't been in that situation before, because he shrinks from the occasion, etc. Norman's problem -- again -- is that he either could not or would not adjust to the needs of the situation.

 

Being that aggressive puts a demand on your game to respond. When it does, you fly. When it doesn't, you crash. If you have no answer for what to do when it doesn't, you're going to look bad. And so he did. He also played some of the best golf ever played when everything was working. He probably looks at it like he never would've had B if he'd had A. I disagree, because Nicklaus, Hogan, et al. showed that you can, but Norman's the guy with the majors and all the tournament wins. I've played with guys like this who just take the consequences and have fun anyway.

 

If anybody's looking at this as a fan or low-level "bud" player, it's you, not me. The line between disaster and decent is thin at that level, even thinner at a place like Augusta. And pretty much nobody with Norman's record by that point in his career is going to "choke" in the common sense of that word in a situation like that. It matters that it's something else. You want "choking," go look at the early Watson (also one of my absolute favorites, btw). Even he'll tell you he just had no idea how to handle things when he was in that position, and he says (rightly) that getting over it is a matter of being in that position again and again until it's familiar to you.

 

Also, the point was never that he did nothing wrong that Sunday. I've never said that and would never say that. I'm saying it wasn't "choking" in any meaningful sense, because it wasn't out of fear or unfamiliarity with the situation, or feeling too small for the occasion. It was a misapplication of personal style and a failure to adapt and adjust in the right ways to what was going on.

 

It's also not a matter of being dumb, which he's often accused of, because of that one-gear thing. You don't build the kind of business empire he built and win all the tournaments he won by being "dumb." It's just a personality thing, and on that day, it was the wrong approach.

 

You can say "but he shot 63 on Thursday under the same conditions," but that's based on a completely false premise, like the rest of what you're saying is. If it were all about same-course-same-conditions, everybody would shoot their lowest score every time the course and conditions were the same. This was a case of a guy who lost track of where he was and what was needed at the moment, because of his singular focus on getting back to near-perfection and birdie-every-hole mode. If anything, the fact that he'd just shot 63 probably hurt him in that regard.

 

At any rate, by this point in his career he'd been in final-round situations before and had responded well. So why did he "choke" here but not when he was three years younger, with more players in range and ready to beat him (at the '93 Open)? How about the '89 Open, when he shot 64 to get into a three-way playoff? Or 69 in the final round at Turnberry in '86 under bad conditions, after a 63 in the second round that Watson said was the best round ever shot in a tournament he'd ever been in?

 

So think whatever you want to think. Bang on the Norman-as-choker trope, I guess. People do all the time.

 

As for the "Faldo could've given him five a side" thing, of course he could have, on that day. Those are indeed the numbers. So? It's not the degree of the collapse, or rather the degree of the collapse contrasted with Faldo's great play (which emerges even more, the more I go back and watch this thing), that was at issue in the first place. Nobody disputes that it wasn't a bad number, and nobody says it was kinda sorta not that bad a round. The question is why it happened. Maybe your consternation results from a complete misunderstanding of what I'm saying in the first place -- maybe some idea that, as one poster said, I'm an "apologist" for Norman, which connotes the idea of trying to minimize the degree of this disaster. That's never been the point.

 

As for the "metric" that matters in golf, if we're really reducing it to that, it's only score. That's a big part of the beauty of the game. It's only what you shot, in the end. The point of this discussion is something else: Why did Norman collapse? Was it "choking" in any normally understood sense of that word, or was it something else? There's no "metric" in that. Nor is there a "metric" in the "way more good-to-excellent shots than bad" comment, which I stand by. That was simply a response to people who talk like he was scared sh!tless and chopping it around the course on every hole, and he just wasn't. That's what the comment was aimed at. If he was "choking" and "gagging," why did he have so many good holes and hit so many good shots?

 

You also mentioned Spieth and Van de Velde, in a weird bit of illogic that takes an argument about the specifics of Norman's round that day and tries to apply it to all collapses everywhere for any reason.

 

So let's straighten that out: It is true that almost invariably, every collapse by a pro is going to be in the context of a round where there are more good shots than bad, or at least more reasonably solid shots than disastrous shots. I have not said that the simple fact that Norman hit more good shots than bad necessarily means, without any regard to any other evidence whatsoever, that therefore it could not have been a matter of "choking."

 

Are you following here? It's not the mere fact of "more good shots than bad" (an oversimplification of what I actually said, but anyway) that necessarily means what Norman did was "not choking."

 

I'm saying that the way people characterize that collapse is as if he was absolutely floundering on every hole or most holes, mis-hitting and making bad shots all over the place, which he absolutely was not. If he's "choking" in the usual sense of the word -- being so affected by fear, unfamiliarity, nerves, etc., that it makes it hard to make a good swing at any time -- how does he go three under on the next three after the disaster at #12?

 

So yes, it's obviously true that a pro's collapse can occur with only a small minority of shots at the wrong time. Of course. This is a point so self-evident that it's not really worth making. Proceeding briefly with Van de Velde and Spieth:

 

1. Had Van de Velde won majors before? Had he been the #1 player in the world for several years? Had he proven that he could handle the pressure of a major or of being a top player with huge expectations placed on him? No? Then it's very likely that fear, unfamiliarity with the situation, not feeling big enough for the occasion, something like that, was the likely cause of his collapse. (Incidentally, if you know anything about VDV, he's kind of a mensch personally, and he went on to be a big factor in the development of competitive players in France, not to mention a larger level of participation among French in golf from the pro level on down, with tournaments and courses, etc.) Also, the difference between Norman's collapse and VDV's is that VDV's came at the very end, with the decision at hand. There's just no chance whatsoever that Norman made a bad swing off the first tee with a six-shot lead because he was "choking," nor that his second at #9 (when he still had a three-shot lead) was a "choke." And so forth. Different situations, different players with different histories, different reasons for the collapse. What you're doing is what so many others here are doing: You just toss it all into the "choke" box, and figure there's no point making any distinctions about any of it. Might not matter to you, but it matters to a tournament player.

 

2. Spieth's problem was more comparable to Norman in his early years, in that it was a persistent technical problem that asserted itself in situations where he was being more emphatic and in "try-harder" mode, although Spieth obviously achieved more at a younger age and clearly has a different mentality and different gears, which is a separate issue. Yet another separate topic.

 

 

And with that, I'd suggest again that further responses ought to move to the thread titled "Was the Norman collapse at the '96 Masters really 'choking'?". I'll be happy to continue this there.

[emncaity]

Composition Skills: 5/5

Golf Analysis: 5/5

Historical Knowledge: 5/5

Ability to Post Picture: Remedial Classes Suggested

 

That's actually funny, and without being nasty. Not a bad trick out here these days.

 

Incidentally, I have posted several photos here. You can see them anytime.

 

Also, almost all of what I've posted here on the Norman matter consists of replies to responses (or responses to replies, if you prefer).

 

Also also wik, I'm repeatedly telling people that another thread ("Was the Norman collapse at the '96 Masters really 'choking'?") has been up on this subject for nearly a full day now, and I keep telling people to go there with anything further. But I'm also going to respond on this thread to whatever anybody sends me from this thread. Whatever list police want to get pissed off about that, get pissed off at everybody who's responding too.

[justasgood]

Again with this crap......WTF man. FAVORITE TOUR PICTURE!!!!

 

Stop with your Effin nonsense.

[Hawkeye77]

Again with this crap......WTF man. FAVORITE TOUR PICTURE!!!!

 

Stop with your Effin nonsense.

 

Exactly, he should just post the pic of himself he's dying to post and get it over with and move on.

[Obee]

Composition Skills: 5/5

Golf Analysis: 5/5

Historical Knowledge: 5/5

Ability to Post Picture: Remedial Classes Suggested

 

That's actually funny, and without being nasty. Not a bad trick out here these days.

 

Incidentally, I have posted several photos here. You can see them anytime.

 

Also, almost all of what I've posted here on the Norman matter consists of replies to responses (or responses to replies, if you prefer).

 

Also also wik, I'm repeatedly telling people that another thread ("Was the Norman collapse at the '96 Masters really 'choking'?") has been up on this subject for nearly a full day now, and I keep telling people to go there with anything further. But I'm also going to respond on this thread to whatever anybody sends me from this thread. Whatever list police want to get pissed off about that, get pissed off at everybody who's responding too.

 

By the way, don't EVEN think you're going to get away with "also also wik" and have no one get it. ;-)

[1t2golf]

Clean up complete.

 

Let's keep posts on topic.

[iBanesto]

Billy Casper.

 

With range balls?

 

[iBanesto]

From Fiji to major champion.

 

[augustgolf]

Here's a rarity. Ben Hogan --almost-- cracking a smile.

 

 

BITD - you had to BE somebody to be able to wear an Amana hat. Hogan refused to wear logoed apparel.

 

Another reason trying to compare players from different eras will never be able to provide a clear, concise answer as to who is better.

[emncaity]

I'm glad we can get the best thread on GolfWRX back on the rails.

 

Y'all remember this one?

 

Oh yeah.

[emncaity]

Here's a rarity. Ben Hogan --almost-- cracking a smile.

 

 

BITD - you had to BE somebody to be able to wear an Amana hat. Hogan refused to wear logoed apparel.

 

Another reason trying to compare players from different eras will never be able to provide a clear, concise answer as to who is better.

Billy Casper.

 

With range balls?

 

Possibly the most underappreciated American top player ever. 51 wins on the PGA Tour (nine on the senior tour), three majors, nearly all of them against Nicklaus, Palmer, Player, Trevino, et al. There are young players coming up today who don't even know who he is. (Because, you know, Tiger invented golf, and nothing matters before that.)

[iBanesto]

Seve Ballesteros with Mac O'Grady at the 1994 Masters.

 

 

Hitting it left-handed during his match against Ernie Els at the 1994 World Matchplay.

 

 

Arguably one of the greatest shots ever.

 

 

The photo at the green everyone knows. But this photo is great. Seve at the 1984 Open Championship on the 72nd hole.

 

[emncaity]

Seve Ballesteros with Mac O'Grady at the 1994 Masters.

 

 

Hitting it left-handed during his match against Ernie Els at the 1994 World Matchplay.

 

 

Arguably one of the greatest shots ever.

 

 

The photo at the green everyone knows. But this photo is great. Seve at the 1984 Open Championship on the 72nd hole.

 

 

Yeah, if you post a photo of Seve doing pretty much anything, the reaction is going to be "oh, sure, he hit that shot / did that thing."

[iBanesto]

Did anyone imagine it would take Garcia 18 years to win a major after his performance at the 1999 PGA Championship? :lol:

 

Golf is hard.

 

 

 

[gpepegolf]

Winter tour!

[Christosterone]

Here’s a few of seve..

I went thru Getty ting to find pics I hadn’t seen before...

Not iconic necessarily but really cool.

 

Loved his game and swing...

Wow, he could play!!

 

-Chris

[iBanesto]

Prime Tiger.

 

 

[ChillyDipper]

Taking a page out of Christosterone's book and started delving into Getty Images. Found this picture of Sam Snead working the Pro Shop at Greenbrier, with his Ryder Cup bag beside him. Hard to imagine any of today's pros having a "real job" so that they can support their pro golf career. Also, it's no wonder players have gotten better over time, considering that they no longer have side jobs to attend to and can devote more time to their swings.

Also, it makes the counter case for playing for pride at the Ryder Cup vs a performance bonus, but let's not litigate that here.

 

Here is the photo, and the original caption:

 

"Sam Snead's Greenbrier Golf Shop

(Original Caption) Many of us have seen pictures of golf pros in action - that is, taking part in the big tournaments that capture the fancy of sports enthusiasts throughout the year. But what does a golf pro do when he's at his base of operations, the base usually being one of the nation's big country clubs? Typical example is Virginia-born Slammin' Sammy Snead, who's been winning championships and tournaments since 1936. He recently gained nationwide attention and a huge admiring gallery when he won the Masters in Augusta, Georgia. Snead is the pro at swank Greenbrier Golf Club in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, where Acme staff photographer Harry Leder took these photos to show a day in the life of a golf pro. Ed Thompson, of Palm Beach, Florida, drops into Sam Snead's Greenbrier golf shop to buy some new golf balls. Note Snead's U.S. Ryder Cup bag at left"

[No_Catchy_Nickname]

Here's a few of seve..

I went thru Getty ting to find pics I hadn't seen before...

Not iconic necessarily but really cool.

 

Loved his game and swing...

Wow, he could play!!

 

-Chris

 

Third one from the bottom: looks like he's going all-out on that one. Wow!

[paulshack]

How come seves broad didn't tell him to shave his unibrow

[iBanesto]

How come seves broad didn't tell him to shave his unibrow

 

If it works, don't change it.

[iBanesto]

Jose Maria Olazabal.

 

Ollie was world no. 2 at one point before the injury took him out of the game for over a year. He came back to win the 1999 Masters.

 

 

[OldTomMorris]

Seve Ballesteros with Mac O'Grady at the 1994 Masters.

 

 

 

Funny seeing them on the range with a home video recorder.

 

A penny for Billy Foster's thoughts?

[Texas1]

 

 

 

[Ferguson]

Two Good Champions...........

 

 

[augustgolf]

 

 

Quite a few green jackets in their combined wardrobe