Results
Summary
Matt Every rose on Sunday while everyone melted down all around him. Adam Scott could not make a putt to save his life (63 putts on the weekend). Every tried to give it away by making a poor decision on a punch out on 16 that lead to a bogey, and by missing a 5 footer on 18 that would have guaranteed a win. The win was the first of his career and of course gets him into the Masters for the first time. Shockingly, the method of complaining on twitter about not getting in did not work for him:
#PipingHotTakeaways
Some Claritin D will clear that right up bro
1.) Before we had even started the live thread Thursday, Adam Scott had fired off a 62, and Gerry Lester Watson, Jr. had taken an 11 on number 6, and withdrew with “allergies.” This excuse would make sense if the tournament wasn’t played TEN MINUTES from Gerry’s house. As someone who has battled allergies for decades, I know how miserable they are, but this is not an injury. His withdrawal is a slap in the face to any and all of the alternates that would have killed for a chance to play in this tournament, and it’s a slap in the face to Arnie as well. Golf is a humbling game. It’s embarrassing to shoot a high score, I get it. I’ve been there. But quitting is infinitely more embarrassing than shooting 11 over par. Everyone goes nuclear from time to time. You can handle it like a little bitch and take your ball and run home, or you can be a veteran like Lumpy (who shot 80 on Thursday) and go out and pipe out birdies until they make you leave. We certainly aren’t going to be one of them, but people paid for tickets and show up to watch Gerry play.
Whether he is -11 or +11, they want to see the towering tee shots and the shot shapes (and probably want to see the Tour Sauce) in person. If you enter the tournament, you play it out, unless you’re injured and at further risk of injuring yourself. Continuing to play with a running nose and some sneezes put him at zero risk of further injuring himself. This isn’t a Tiger situation with a faulty back that could clearly be damaged further. This is allergies. This event is played ten minutes from your home. Your profession is to play golf outdoors, and you can’t be prepared for the outdoor conditions in your backyard? Get outta here with that shit.
2.) Adam Scott blowing what was once an 8 shot lead pretty much sums up everything we’ve seen from Masters favorites over the last month or so. Between Tiger’s back injury, Jason Day’s thumb, Phil’s dialed back schedule (no top 10’s this year?), Rory playing almost no golf (3 stateside events this calendar year), we’re not exactly flying into Masters week with a lot of momentum from our biggest names. Way too early to sound the alarms, but at least get it on your radar that we could have a Mike Weir-like disaster on our hands for the 2014 Masters.
3.) Kevin Na was in the news for all of the wrong reasons again, although its hard to blame him this time around. While we support a creative post shout yell if it gets a giggle out of us, there is absolutely no place in the game for the harassment of players during the course of play. Save that shit for the NASCAR track. Yelling at him and distracting him more sure as hell isn’t going to increase his pace of play.
4.) Matt Every was quietly having a really solid 2013-2014 before this win, so this wasn’t out of nowhere. This week was his 5th top 10 of the season, and it’s only March. We’re a house divided at NLU as to how we feel about Every. On the one hand he’s gone out of his way to propagate that arrogant, edgy Floridian who goes out of his way to advertise that he doesn’t give a shit.
His hilarious pot bust in 2010 created a stereotype that sort of set the tone for the next few years, as he didn’t exactly handle that like a mature adult. Here was his interview at the 2012 Sony Open about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7frSiOlL6c
Conversely, though, how is this any different than NLU favorite Spencer Levin (who we’ve labeled as a breath of fresh air and trumpeted his praises for his not giving a shit ways)? The biggest difference seems to be that Spence is California cool, while Every’s got that rough-around-the-edges Florida grit that isn’t exactly an endearing quality. He made some noise with these comments on Saturday: “A lot of fakers out here just‑‑ just because you wear stupid clothes doesn’t mean you have style. It means you wear dumb clothes.” While he’s clearly still immature, Matt Every seems be taking baby steps to turing the corner from brash, Big Break bro, showing small glimpses of maturity as he creates some credibility (we imagine that being a Big Break graduate is kind of a scarlet letter in tour circles). He’s not for everyone, but he’s a nice counterbalance to some of the drones plying their craft on tour.
It’s tough for us to gain an understanding of someone based upon a few short interviews, sporadic tournament coverage, and a few blurbs in columns. So while we’re there’s positives and negatives with Every, the number of guys who went out of their way to congratulate him on his victory spoke volumes about him and suggests that there’s much more to him than comes through in limited coverage.
How Our Picks Fared
- Kevin Na – T14
- Ian Poulter – T20
- Zach Johnson – T43
- Rickie Fowler – MC
- Justin Rose – MC
- Lee Westwood – MC
- Ken Duke – MC
- Gerry Lester Watson, Jr. – DFL – WMD
I spent an hour trying to figure out how to make the font on this section as small as possible. Remind us of this next time we get braggy about our picks.
Oil Spill of the Week (Brought to you by BP)
For the second consecutive week, the NLU oil spill was obvious. Apparently Gerry was allergic to dry land on his way to carding an 11.
We were able to locate some footage of the event that the PGA tried to destroy:
NLU Shot Tracker of the Week
Adam (we desparately need a nickname for this guy) brought the par 5’s to its knees all week, and eagled number 4 after piping it on from 270 out on his way to a 62.
Looking Ahead
The Florida Swing ends and gives way to the Texas Swing (doesn’t quite have the same ring to it). This is actually the real week we start looking towards the Masters, as neither the Valero Texas Open or the Houston open attract enough big names to keep us engaged. We’ll start rolling out our Masters previews this week.