FEETS DON'T FAIL HIM NOW!!!

Another Texas Victory for Justin???

JG's new sponsor?

No. Not the Houston Astros, but rather Major League Baseball? Gore was shown a lot on the Golf Channel's coverage of the Shell Houston Open. He was sporting a Houston Astros cap during his round.

Smile Pretty

A link to his website: www.justinleonard.com

FPGP RULING

This comes straight from the top...

"Any attempt to jinx Justin Leonard, for example by making posts such as 'Look how well Justin is playing' will be greeted with a $100 fine by the commish."

Just keep your snack shutes quiet!

Deafening Silence

Well... Shades decided to not post the ass-whoopin' he put on me today. Hmmm... the psychological warfare for the Nelson golf weekend begins.

I am in Charleston for work, and flew in early to play a round with Jeff at Oak Pointe on Kiawah. I'd like to blame my shitty ass game on being tired from getting up super early, or on being stuck on a 3 hour flight... but crap... I just stunk it up out there today. I put up a fugly 83 to Shades' 80. My bogey-par-double-double finish was like watching a monkey fuck a football.

On the bright side, it looks like I get 3 strokes in April. Sweet.

Nice course... more "target golf" than I am comfortable with, particularly since Shades offers no guidance whatsoever. The course seemed to be designed with my game in mind, as I found every sand trap on the damned place, a water hazard or two, and various other spots that "members" like Jeff seem to avoid with ease. The classic was the last hole... it looks a lot like the 18th at the Ocean Course... Jeff says "it's 230 to carry the hazard." It is so flat, all of the bunkers in the distance look like they are beside the green, so I say "uhhh... ok" and proceed to hit what I thought was a good ball... then I hear "oh, that's in the trap." Well, shit. A 270 yard frozen rope 3-wood, right into the middle of a bunker that looked like it was 350 yards away. Shit again.

And yeah, Shades did provide a yardage book... but I like to play by "feel." (OK, I am choking on my own spit on that one...).

NCAA Pool...

I just got the latest update on the pool that some of you joined... there is no possibility for any of us to cash. If you want the spreadsheet, let me know and I will email it to you.

Oh, and MG... you may need a collection agency to get your bet $$$ from Talonflier... he still hasn't coughed up the $10 he owes me for that pool. There may be a new Rodent in the midst...

UPDATE 3/26/07

Here is this week's update... Johnny V. has vaulted into second as a result of my going backwards on the Brett Wetterich performance. Damn him. It is a flimsy second place though, as Johnny V. has already made his trade, and I can grab 100 points right now by dumping JL. To keep some of this in mind, I'll color the FPGP players names who have made trades in blue. This should show up when Jeff makes this more 'perty.

276 .... Da Bandit
251 .... Johnny V.
214 .... Stevie T.
171 .... Vic / Talonflier
132 .... Stan the Man
126 .... Joel / Excal
22 .... Krust
15 .... Stevie V.
13 .... Jeff / Shades
-21 .... Tev
- 61 .... Robbo / Buzz
-133 .... Timmy D.
-266 .... Murph

Hey New Tex and Bandit

SHORT THIS



Brett Wett earns a nice check ($800K) at the WGC-CA event at Doral.

Joel da Mime

I found Philp!!!

Or is this him?

UPDATE 3/19/07

Here is this week's update... the big mover was Johnny V., by virtue of Rocco Mediate's performance.

As always, if you want a trade to be effective for this week's event, I need an email by Wednesday.

One Hole

I always figured that on any given hole, I could take down a Tour guy like JG. Unfortunately, I usually play 17 shitty ones around it... anyway, today was one of those holes. The 10th at the place I play is a 545 yard par 5, that winds around downhill and to the left. Today it was playing downwind. I nutted a ball off the tee about 350, hit 7-iron in from 195, and drained a 20 footer for eagle. It was my 12 minutes of "holy shit, maybe I can play this game." Of course, it was sandwiched around a bogey on 9 and a bogey on 11... but that is not the point. For one hole, the world was right. I was playing with Krust, and showed him the 7-iron before I hit it so he could attest to it... I knew I was going to make an eagle on that hole... I don't know why.I shot 74, which was not half bad considering I was half drunk and it was windy out. I shot 78 in the morning which was a tragedy... bogeyed four of the last five holes.

The wife is out of town, so I snuck in a "quick" 36 today.Another mini highlight for the day... I made a pair of 2s on the same par 3. Last week I made a friggin' triple bogey on that little hole... today, I made an 8 footer in the morning and a tap in (hit the pin with the tee shot... what the hell?) in the afternoon.

On the day, I had 5 birdies, and eagle, and a hole lot of slapping the ball around the course. Let's start talking trash boys... it's not just about making fun of the best players in the world. That stupid "mygolfrecord.com" has my handicap at 1.9, and I am almost starting to believe it. Woot!Update tomorrow...

There may be a Hank Kuehne sighting in a few days.

My boy, Hank, is listed in the field for next weeks Nationwide tour. While not the PGA tour, it does mean that Hank is alive and able to swing a golf club. Given the quality of my team this is a very nice baby step. And how funny that another of my guys is playing there too, Craig Perks. One guy to watch is Kevin Gessino-Kraft. I've seen "Krafty" play a couple of times. He's got some game.

And that was you Nationwide Tour Update.

How did Justin Leonard make the cut at Arnold Palmer's tourney?

Did he find his groove and shoot a great score to get into contention?
Was it the shoes?
Was he fortunate enough to have the cut move back to +3?
Did Tev let the "real" Justin Leonard out of his basement captivity?

Or was it that fine swing with the big stick?

Leonard In Position to Make Cut

JL battled back with a smooth even par round today. He's a half decent round away from making his first cut of the season.

In other news, there are freeze warnings in hell.

Mickelson: "I'd Hit Driver Again."

Interesting post on espn.com today from Mickelson... you can read it here.

Trade 3/15/07

We had one trade this week. Johnny V. has picked up Brad Faxon and dumped Bob May.

New Feature

I added a link to the sidebar which will take you to all of the updates posted this year called ALL UPDATES. If you are looking for some historical data on how bad your picks are, this is the place to go.

NCAA Pool...

I sent the spreadsheets to Megan, Stevie V., Vic, Jeff and Da Bandit, so check your email InBoxes...

You can fill out as many sheets as you want, just save them as separate spreadsheet files. Don't forget to put your name on each one also.

Anyone Out There Playing Well Yet???

I had another red-letter schizo round today... a not very inspiring 82 which included a pair of doubles, a triple, and two hole outs... one from a bunker for a par, and one flop shot from behind the 18th green for a birdie... the proverbial "keep ya coming back" shot. I seem to have two shots right now... "pretty damned good" and "sweet holy shit, have you ever played this game before." As a great example, on the #1 handicap hole, a bitchy little tight downhill then uphill par 4, about 430 or so that was playing into the wind, I hit a "stinger" 3-wood off the tee (it runs downhill a good bit and you can actually go to0 far if you hit the ball long... for Joel this would be "not an issue.") practically against the 150 post... and then I duck hooked a 7-iron. So... hit it 280, into the wind, with a 3-wood... and then hit your iron shot 30 yards short/left of the green. Nice. That all of my clubs still exist in one piece each is the biggest miracle of all. I was joking that I felt that I could shoot any score from 70 - 90... well, if I play 20 rounds this year, I might just shoot every one. Scratch off 82, 81, 77, and 75 so far. The real question right now is which will come first, the 70 or the 90.

Anyone else playing yet?

UPDATE 3/11/07 - Post PODS Tournament

Sometimes the best moves are the ones we don't make. Offline, Bandit told me he was thinking of dumping Jonathan Byrd... turns out he held at just the right time as Byrd made a decent check and vaulted forward about 40 spots. Gang, Mr. Bandit is completely in the driver's seat right now.

New Tex Can Predict The Future

He sure can. How do I know? He sent me an instant message via the Microsoft IM Network. It read,"Asswhooping".

On Friday morning I took my kids to school and was going to sit down at my desk and check out a few stock charts. That's when I saw the "Asswhooping" prediction. I simply replied by asking if Jesper Parnevik had teed off yet. See, he was making this prediction because at the time, prior to half the field teeing off on Friday. New Tex would have been up a ton of Fed Ex points in our weekly side wager had the tournament been over at that point. He had VJ and Jesper in the top 10 after Thursday's round and my guys were just hanging around the cut line. I guess New Tex had a special feeling down below. No not that one, a different one. One that made him feel an Asswhooping was en-route. HE WAS RIGHT! An Asswhooping occurred. Ol' Shade's here almost beat New Tex 2 to 1 in the FED EX points (1200 to 600) this week.

While our YTD totals are still in New Tex's favor by a pretty good margin, we have learned one thing. New Tex can predict an Asswhooping before it happens.

On another note, Boca Bandit should have gone in on our side wager action. He kicked some serious ass this week and is leading in Fed Ex points.

PGA Tour Fantasy Salary Cap

SirShanksAlot talks about a friend of ours

A guy with a website called "sirshanksalot" wrote a blog about JG and Nike. He then speculates that Cobra would be the best fit for him. JG, I don't really care who you use for equipment. That's obviously up to you. But you would be part of an interesting group of top young guys that are Cobra Tour Professionals, like Camilo Villegas, Geoff Ogilvy, Ian Poultier and JB Holmes. I would recommend against dressing like Villegas and Poultier though.

Get the FPGP on your Yahoo or Google Homepage

Just click the link on the right to add it to your Yahoo or Google homepage. I'll see about adding one for Microsoft too.

Callaway Balls?

I have blogger set up to alert me when someone makes a comment on the blog, which is why I tend to respond quickly. Unfortunately, there is only room for one email address in that blogger settings field, so you guys are screwed... haha. Anyway, I mention this because JG had left some comments down on the 2/25/07 Update post that were far enough back that you may not have noticed. He just asked whether any of us have ever hit Callaway balls, so I thought I'd just repost the thought here and let everyone chime in. I expect a dissertation from Shades.

Me... never. I've pretty much hit Titleists my whole life. I don't like Pro Vs though, as I tend to spin them too much and inconsistently, which messes up my already fragile short game. I typically just hit the NXTs now... they are reasonably priced and pretty consistent and have a "harder" feel to them than the Pro Vs, which I like. Back in the day, I'd hit 100 compression Titleists because I wanted to feel my mishits, so I guess I've always like a harder feeling ball.

Anyone else?
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As a side note, I just noticed Jeff's post about that mygolfrecord.com website (this thing lets me know when comments come in, but not new posts... weird). It really is a neat little web site for tracking some basic stats, and it doesn't cost anything. If we are ever going to get an FPGP golf outing together, we'll need to figure out shots, so this could be a good central place for us to enter scores.

NCAA Pool?

If anyone is interested in getting in to a $10 NCAA basketball brackets pool, hit me with an email or comment here... I have a friend running one, and I will distribute the spreadsheet for you to fill in next week.

This Week's Trades

Well, I can see this is going to be chess match between Bandit and I... he intimated that he was going to pull the trigger this week, but alas... he did not. Personally, I am committed to riding the damned Justin Leonard Train for a few more weeks. Anyway... 2 trades.

Tev trades Jim Furyk for Retief Goosen

Stevie V. trades Justin Leonard for Jason Gore

These trades are effective this week.

MyGolfRecord.com

Fellow FPGPers, New Tex and I are putting our golf scores and some of our golf stats on the web for all to view and you can too. Go to www.mygolfrecord.com and set up your free account. You can track your golf stats, show what's in your bag, see your handicap and more. Then once your account is set up add me (Shades) and New Tex (Steve) as friends. Then you will get to see our stats and scores and we can see yours.

Trades Are Comin' In!

My Inbox had two trade requests this morning... since no trade takes effect until the start of the next tourney, I'll keep these little gems to myself until first thing tomorrow (I do not intend on making a trade today). Remember gang, if you want the trade to take effect this week, I need your requests by tonite.

Jeff is a Slacker

Because the old boy hasn't updated the sidebar data during this crucial trade period, I'll send the spreadsheet to anyone who wants to take a look.

UPDATE 3/5/07

Here is this week's update... no changes in the top 3. Krust is starting to sneak up the board, and has cracked into the positive numbers and leading this year's rookie class. He even has Capt. Medical Examption (Jeff) covered. Jeff's score took a bit of a hit this week as the Gossett line moved from 216 to 220. Two of his positive picks are actually in the Gossett Zone right now.

Jeff should have the rest of the data updated and pretty by tonite... you should have all you need to make a trade by tomorrow morning, if you wish to do so. Email me if you have any questions.

293 .... Da Bandit
236 .... Stevie T. / Tex
224 .... Vic / Talon
143 .... Joel / Excal
139 .... Stan the Man
93 .... Johnny V.
4 .... Krust
-11 .... Jeff / Shades
-31 .... Tev
-94 .... Rob / Buzz
-128 .... Stevie V.
-183 .... Timmy D.
-308 ....Murph

There were no changes to our Gossett players this week. By the way, if anyone has Justin Leanord's contact info, I'd appreciate that... yeah... thanks. I need to drive over to Southlake and find out what the hell is going on. That little shit is killing me.

Let The Trading Begin

The Greg Owen Period is now over... the Trading Period begins tomorrow at the conclusion of the Honda. Remember, you can't trade short picks... you also don't have to make a trade this week or any other week for that matter... there is a couple month window, so pull the trigger when/if you are ready.

We'll get an update done tomorrow afternoon/night. Stupid Monday playoff pushes everything back here at FPGP Central.

My Game

Is completely schizophrenic so far this season... today was my third round of the year. My first two rounds have been so-so... 77-81. Today was psychotic... I had 5 birdies but managed to shoot 75. It was pretty much all or nothing out there today... I made the turn in 34 (-2), bogeyed 11 to go back to -1, then birdied 12 to get back to 2 under... and completely collapsed coming in. I really didn't hit the ball that great all day, but the putter was red hot and I never hit into any major trouble... but some swing hiccups finally got the best of me and I bogeyed 5 of the last 6 holes. I am at the point now where I feel like I can shoot anywhere from par to 70-85. Ugh.

Can I trade a guy for a 2nd short guy?

Just wondering even though what I need is 2 or 3 trades.