Bonjour y’all! We gon geaux head down der to da bayou this weekend for the Zurich Classic of ‘Nawlins for a plateful of po-boys, crawfish, crawdads, mudbugs, and a bowl of gumbo.
We’re hurting a little bit in NLU country these past few weeks with travels, work, bachelor parties, and soaking up the first few rays of real spring sun. I’m also left spending most of my time searching for the meaning of life after witnessing all I’ve ever really wanted to see in my existence as a human (Spieth be with you).
Half of us are still on vacation, and the other half are struggling to get hyped for an event that lacks star power, on a course that’s as forgettable as this preview, and that is sandwiched between a slew of big name events. The list of A-Group options in Yahoo! Fantasy this week looks like the length of a list of Bubba Watson’s biggest fans on tour.
Speaking of Bubba, he won this event in 2011, and is skipping it for second straight year. Instead he opted to go overseas and bank some fat appearance fees in China last week instead of being the man of the people that he claims to be. Even George W. Bush thinks that Bubba has abandoned the people of New Orleans. At least when former BP CEO Tony Hayward caused widespread destruction across Louisiana, he stuck around afterward and at least gave the appearance that he was helping to clean it up.
Rare Combo of #OilSpill and #TourSauce
After Bubba went ahead and ruined the rap game last week, I wouldn’t be surprised if Kanye’s next step is to go on TV and tell us that “Gerry Lester Watson Jr. doesn’t care about black people.”
The 2013 winner, our boy Billy Horschel, is thankfully in the field. We’still regularly use this reaction GIF on a near weekly basis.
We’re putting as much effort into this week’s preview as James Harden does defending a 3-on-1 breakaway so bear with us.
Course
TPC Louisiana
When watching this event on TV in 2011, it took me until Sunday to realize that I had played this course just six months prior to this tournament. That’s how utterly forgettable this track is, and I’d imagine that’s part of the reason as to why it’s ranked as the 8th worst course on tour per Golf Digest’s player survey. The course is about 25 minutes from Bourbon Street in Avondale, and it’s clear that once you’re five minutes outside of “New Orleans”, you’re actually in Louisiana. When your course’s wikipedia page has two sentences (!), it’s pretty easy to figure out why you have Seung-Yul Noh and Ben Crane in your “feature groups.” However, you will hear countless compliments about the tournament staff putting on one of the better events of the year from a player perks perspective (unintentional alliteration, I promise). The wives love coming to this event and the festivities probably entice more guys to show up than otherwise would, which is scary. But as far as the course goes, drink your coffee.
Vibe
New Orleans, Louisiana is unlike any other city in the US. The bars don’t close, the food is spicy, and it feels like you’re in a European country than a large American port city. From neworleansonline.com:
But it is an American city — just a very different place with a very peculiar history. New Orleans is a place where Africans, both slave and free, and American Indians shared their cultures and intermingled with European settlers. Encouraged by the French government, this strategy for producing a durable culture in a difficult place marked New Orleans as different and special from its inception and continues to distinguish New Orleans today.
The overwhelming theme you’ll hear this week is about the food. Gumbo, po-boys, crawfish etouffee, jambalaya, muffulettas, and beignets will have you reaching for the Pepto Bismol in real time. Be prepared to see more food tweets than that one annoying person on Instagram that you still have no clue why you haven’t unfollowed. There won’t be much of a vibe outside the ropes at TPC Louisiana, mostly because there are just way better things to do in and out of New Orleans than watch a mediocre field tear up a mediocre track.
Last Year
Are we positive this event happened last year? I don’t remember one single thing. Like, if you would have came up to me and tried to convince me that this event was washed out because of an alligator infestation last year, I wouldn’t have believed you, but I would have at least googled it.
The Fringe
- I couldn’t muster up the energy to attempt to handicap this event. I think DJ wins this week, but he’s a 7/1 favorite, and I just never bet guys at odds like that. The only hunch I have this week is on the hometown boy John Peterson.
- Ian Poulter made the worst analogy you’ll ever see this week. He compared his skipping of the BMW PGA to Usain Bolt entering a marathon. Seriously. He thinks he’s comparable to the fastest man in the world. I’m very confident that Poulter couldn’t beat Bolt in a race even if he was in one of his five Ferrari’s. I would link to the tweet, but I’m blocked.
- I saw someone float the question on twitter this week as to whether or not Tiger should have entered the Zurich. Tiger has a better chance of buying Zurich than ever entering this tournament. I’m actually just assuming at this point that editors of golf publications are making their writers do a minimum of two Tiger posts a week, and they have to have a question mark in the headline.
- Here is what we noted a year ago this week regarding Koepka: “As we noted on twitter this week, Brooks Koepka shot 64 in the Monday qualifier and earned his way into the field. With a made cut, he can lock up temporary membership on the PGA Tour, and can toss aside his passport for the rest of the year. This guy is a potential American star, and more should be made of the fact that he had to go to Europe to play his way onto the tour due to the new Q-school process (the blood is on your hands Finchy).” #BrooksWasHere
- We’ll leave you with this. One of my favorite SNL skits ever. The premise is that everyone in the courtroom except for the plaintiff is a New Orleans transplant who moved to Maine after Hurricane Katrina, yet never lost their ‘Nawlins roots.