Caddying at a PGA Event

During the Northern Trust Open Pro-Am at Riviera Country Club, Windy City Critic was able to caddy with the eventual event winner Bill Haas. Yet the PGA competition wasn't the only highlight of the week.

Rich Hyland was asked by Northern Trust to participate in the exclusive event, he then asked Windy City Critic to carry his bag. How could I turn it down? A free trip to Cali to rub elbows with the upper class for just carrying a bag, I’m in.

The experience started off with a practice round at Malibu Country Club with Hyland, WCC, Rich Eidson and Mark Hyland. Rich and Rich played well, Hyland lost $300 on the last hole after many rollovers. Mark and WCC weren’t betting and it was a good thing because they were spraying the ball all over the course.

Despite the poor play, former Cub Derrek Lee and ESPN’s Roger Cossack were in the two groups playing behind us. We did get to speak with them due to slow play as a result of many groups of women on the course.

For our evening entertainment, we attended a Northern Trust event where Freddie Couples and Hunter Mahan spoke. It was interesting, but they talked about Tiger Woods way too much.

After the discussion with Couples and Mahan, the pairings for the Pro-Am were announced. We were paired with Haas, the man who hit an $11 million shot out of the water at the Tour Championship last year.
The next morning we left at 6:00 AM for our 7:40 tee time. We had a quick breakfast and headed to the tee. While waiting for our time, we just watched the PGA stars. It was amazing to walk in places that even the media couldn’t go.

The time had come to tee off for the best ball match, which takes the best score of the foursome on each hole. The group paired with us consisted of Giancarlo Turano of Turano Bread, Jim Bridgeman of Northern Trust and Haas. The amateurs just tried to hit it past the ladies tees and avoid embarrassment. They all hit it past although they weren’t all straight.

After the first hole jitters the group relaxed. The foursome had good chemistry probably because the three amateurs are Chicagoans. Another commonality, Haas had a family member on his bag, Jay Haas. Bill’s older brother has recently started caddying for him and wants to play against his sibling someday.

As for a caddie, I wasn’t too good. My golfer wouldn’t listen, I would say “you should lay up” and he would respond with “gimme the 3 wood.” I couldn’t even hold my laughter when my golfer had two 3-shot bunker outs.

At the turn the group was 7 under in the hunt for the win, but the mood became a bit more serious. The new mood hurt the foursome, through 16 holes they were two behind the leader and only 8 under . The last two holes they turned it up with two birdies, Hyland accounting for the final one. Despite the closing push, the group finished second with a respectable 61.

The day was capped off with a private Tony Bennett concert where I sat next to former Charlotte Bobcats owner and BET owner Bob Johnson. I said nothing to him due to my offensive and rarely thought-out responses.

On Sunday, Haas beat Phil Mickelson in a playoff with a 45-foot putt worth $1.1 million.

The Greatest Sports Rivalry is not in the US

As much as American’s think that they have the most heated rivalries, it’s just not true. Soccer around the world is way more intense.

On occasion a fan gets beat-up at an American game but rarely it results in death. The recent soccer riot in Egypt resulted in  zero deaths.

Sports riots in North America are much different. When Vancouver lost the Stanley Cup in 2011, a riot ensued there was looting, arrests and people injured but there was

Yes, the unrest in the Middle East played a part in the riot, but still a death toll of that size is unreasonable. 73 deaths.

Title IX Opens Doors

Forty years after Title IX was instituted, women are taking advantage of the opportunity.

Howard Schlossberg said that nearly three and a half million women play high school sports and Title IX is partly responsible. The Act caused schools to equally distribute funds throughout their educational programs without sex bias.  

Before Title IX women rarely received athletic scholarships, now over 15,000 student athletes play women’s college basketball according to collegesportsscholarships.com. The 1972 Act doesn’t just allow women to play sports, it gives them the chance to continue their academic career.

Title IX helps women equalize their standing in society by furthering themselves academically. Even in the 1970s women didn’t receive the same rights as a man in the workplace. Now women are seen in authority positions, but it still isn’t level.  In a recent business class, my teacher said that women are expensive to hire and men are better candidates for a company.

So even today women aren’t treated the same as men, but it’s moving in the right direction.  

Trading for Howard Without Losing Deng = Championship

If Chicago could keep Luol Deng and acquire Orlando’s center Dwight Howard, they would be championship favorites this year.

Chicago’s “Big 3” would be better than Miami’s with Derrick Rose, Howard and Deng. Rose and Howard both play an inside game but in different ways. Howard plays from the post and Rose plays with the ball. Unlike Dwayne Wade and Lebron James who both play with the ball in their hands. It will work great, the defense will collapse on one of them in the paint leaving open shooters all day. Deng is perfectly suited for the number three role, he’s a good jump shooter, skilled defender and all-round great player.

On February 8, Howard destroyed the Heat scoring 25 and grabbing 24 boards in a 102-89 victory. How much could he beat the Heat by if Rose and Deng were playing?

“If I could play with Derrick Rose right now and God wanted that to happen, it will happen,” said Howard to the Chicago Sun-Times. So Howard is open to playing for the Bulls but they are not at the top of his list. Consequently if they do acquire him it is uncertain if Howard would stay past 2011. It will be risky, but success could persuade Howard to stay in Chicago. Chicago’s offer could include Joakim Noah, Taj Gibson and C.J. Watson, who are under 27-years-old. The Bulls also could trade their 2011 and 2012 first round picks, and a Charlotte Bobcats first round pick that was acquired in the Tyrus Thomas trade. 

The problem is getting the trade done. ESPN.com’s Rumor Mill has reported these players are on Orlando’s trading block: Howard, Hedo Turkoglu, Chris Duhon and Glenn Davis. It will be tough for the Magic to unload all those players because they’re contracts are worth nearly 40 million dollars just this year, but the team wants to get rid of at least three.

Lakers, Mavericks and Nets are Howard’s top three destinations, the Knicks and the Bulls are on the outside looking in. The Mavs and Nets have the least to offer, and the Knicks are offering two blotted contracts, Tyson Chandler and Amare Stoudemire. It seems the best two deals would come from the Bulls and Lakers.

A trio of players entering their prime and a trio of first round draft picks sounds like the best deal for Orlando. Unless the Lakers are willing to part with Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol subsequently the Bulls would have to add Deng to the mix. There are three trade scenarios that workout financially for both teams. 1. The Bulls trade Noah, Gibson and Watson for Howard and Duhon. 2. Chicago trades Deng, Noah, Gibson and Watson for Howard, Turkoglu and Duhon. 3. The Bulls trade Deng and Noah for Howard and Turkoglu.

Noah’s contract says he can’t be traded until March 1 and the Magic want to keep Howard until after the All-Star game that is in Orlando on February 26. So expect the Howard deal to go down between March 1 and March 15 at the trade deadline.

Salaries and trade scenarios were provided by the ESPN Trade Machine.  

The Return of the UFC

The UFC’s long-awaited second appearance in Chicago was successful despite a disappointing main event.

The headliner, Rashad Evans vs. Phil Davis, was a stinker, it turned into a boring five round wrestling match that ended in an Evans victory. The rest of the card was pretty damn good.

The highlights were Charles Oliveira's insane knee lock, Cub Swanson's thunderous knockout and the former Chicago cop Mike Russow's victorious return to Chicago. All of those moments were on the early broadcast on Fuel.

The last three fights on Fox weren't as interesting. The Chael Sonnen/Michael Bisping fight was the most competitive of the main fights, but it wasn't great. It resulted in a Sonnen decision victory, all three fights were decisions. Demian Maia vs. Chris Weidman, the first fight on Fox, showed Maia take a beatdown for three rounds.

As a whole, the event that started at 3:30 and ended around 10 was enjoyable for Chicago fight fans. "The whole day was awesome, but Davis and Evan sucked," said Chris Walters, who was at the January 25th event.

MMA fans at home tuned into the fights in bunches.

UFC on Fox 2 is the second highest rated UFC cable event ever, even though there were no titles on the line. The ratings were down from UFC on Fox 1 that an average 6.4 million viewers. It still put up an average 4.7 million viewers, ranking third among Saturday night programming on broadcast television.

Ratings were provided by tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com.

The Best Super Bowl Party I've Been To

It's 2007, I'm in a high rise on Michigan Avenue about to watch Chicago take on Indianapolis in Super Bowl XLI with 20 of the rowdiest Bears fans.

The night starts off with a bang. Devin Hester returns the opening kickoff, the one room apartment explodes with enjoyment. Everyone began screaming, jumping and dancing to the "Super Bowl Shuffle." Led by the owner of the place, people began smashing beer bottles and plates on the floor. It was completely out of control.

The night was all down hill from there. The Bears D and Rex Grossman made costly mistakes, and Chicago lost the Super Bowl 29-17. Everything went wrong, we even ran out of beer.

Since everyone at the party was illegal drinkers, there was limited ways to get beer. While we discussed how to get more, one Bears fan stood up and said he could steal beer from the Jewel on Wabash. So a couple of us made our way to Jewel not expecting him to try it, hoping to find another way to get our precious alcohol.

The whole time we told him it's a sketchy plan, but he assured us it would be fine. Before he went into the store, we asked him one more time "if he really wanted to do it." He put in a fat dip, said "I got this" and confidently walked into Jewel. He had no chance.

After a couple of agonizing minutes, we saw him come out of the store stumbling and fumbling with four cases underneath his arms. He was a hero. For only a few seconds though, right when he got outside a Jewel security guard grabbed him.

The drunk, depressed Bears fan was put in handcuffs and led into the security closet. The man tried to escape by spearing the guard, but he would later find out it's nearly impossible to spear someone at close range while handcuffed. The guard just laid on the Bears fan until help came.

The cops were called and he spent the rest of the Bears Super Bowl night in jail. The whole experience resulted in one Chicago loss, one noise complaint, which eventually became an eviction, and one misdemeanor battery conviction.