This is getting to be a habit that organizers of the PGA Tour's Turning Stone Resort Championship wish would go away.
For the second consecutive year, rain and cold temperatures plagued the opening round at Atunyote Golf Club...
It got a little better for the second round of the Turning Stone Resort Championship at Atunyote Golf Club - as in it didn't rain all day.
In fact, the sun even made a morning appearance before the precipitation returned in the afternoon - just as Vaughn Taylor was on his final hole.
Taylor parred that 18th hole, ending a second consecutive 67 that put him at 10 under par, one shot ahead of Nicholas Thompson, Matt Kuchar and Leif Olson at the midway point.
Three years ago, Taylor found himself on the world stage, playing for the United States Ryder Cup team in Ireland...
Turning Stone Third Round: Kuchar, Piercy In Front
pblackwell, Random Thoughts
Neither Scott Piercy nor Matt Kuchar left the 18th green at Atunyote Golf Club late Saturday afternoon with total satisfaction, but still shared the lead at the PGA Tour's Turning Stone Resort Championship after three rounds of play.
Piercy, with a 66, and Kuchar, with a 67, both finished at 14-under-par 202, one shot clear of Rod Pampling and Leif Olson...
Okay, so it's Monday morning, about 8:30. Maybe you have a little time on your hands before work, or can afford to be a little late to the office.
Then for no charge, you can pull up to the Atunyote Golf Club and see two men play one hole, or perhaps more, and finally settle the Turning Stone Resort Championship.
Turns out that 72 holes wasn't enough to settle things. Nor was 74 holes enough, or even four days. Matt Kuchar and Vaughn Taylor remain deadlocked, one good shot - or bad shot - from resolution.
They both finished at 271, 17 under par, Taylor after a sizzling 66 in the final round, Kuchar after a 69...
Okay, so you thought that, because we spent so much time talking about the five days of golf at Turning Stone, that we weren't playing attention to events on the high school gridiron. That's not the case.
In fact, we are now turning into the regular-season homestretch, where playoff races intensify and teams try to stake out their position for the important stuff later in October.
During a fifth week of football that featured a furious Friday rain, plenty took place.
We were all psyched up, in Class D, to hype up the D South championship showdown between unbeaten Westmoreland and unbeaten Waterville.
Except that Waterville isn't unbeaten anymore, thanks to Oriskany knocking off the Indians 23-12 last Saturday...
You'd expect Matt Kuchar to flash that giant trademark smile Monday morning as he accepted the $1.08 million and first-place trophy for winning the Turning Stone Resort Championship.
It was as much a smile of relief as anything else.
After five days, rain, wind, sun and the longest PGA Tour sudden-death playoff in 23 years, Kuchar finally beat Vaughn Taylor Monday morning on the sixth playoff hole.
When last we left you, Kuchar and Taylor had gone through two playoff holes and darkness had descended upon Atunyote Golf Club.
So the pair of survivors, plus a hearty bunch of fans who came to the course free of charge, returned at 8:30 in the morning. As it turned out, they would need an hour to settle the thing.
They first played the 13th, a par-four...
So they'll have three rounds of baseball playoffs over the next four weeks. And it might be impossible to top what happened on Tuesday night.
Minnesota refused to wave goodbye to the Metrodome. In one of the best games you'll ever see, the Twins and Detroit Tigers decided the AL Central, and it took 12 innings before the Twins pulled it off, 6-5. Big hits, great defense, two double plays that thwarted rallies, an exchange of runs in the 10th, blown chances - this had everything.
Yeah, Detroit blew a seven-game lead to the Twins in the last month of the regular season, and that will be amazingly difficult to swallow. But at least they can know that they, along with the Twins, gave everything they could with a season on the line...
About the only thing we know for sure, when it comes to the three-year-old Turning Stone Resort Championship, is that there will be a fourth edition in 2010.
Think beyond that, though, and it’s anyone’s guess.
When Matt Kuchar finally won his six-hole playoff over Vaughn Taylor Monday morning, the wind howled, a bit of rain fell and it was chilly, bringing the whole event full-circle from its raw start back on Thursday.
Actually, make that two straight years that the first week in October brought both the world’s finest golfers to Central New York, and also a stark early reminder of the five months ahead in the form of cold precipitation.
Hey, at least it didn’t sleet, like 2008...
Matt Holliday was all set to hit the sinking fly ball in left field. It was over. St. Louis Cardinals 2, Los Angeles Dodgers 1, National League Division Series even at one game each, see you at the Arch.
Except Holliday dropped the ball...
At least in this blog, what we'll do is give you the pairings for the start of the Class C and D playoffs later this week.
Yes, it was already a short regular season, and yes, it was made shorter by budgetary concerns. Still, if we went one more week, it's doubtful the current order would have changed.
The extra round, and the doubling of the field from eight to 16, insures that something like 2008 (when General Brown was 6-1 and not in the field) couldn't happen again.
As it was, GB took out all the suspense this fall by crushing everybody not named Watertown IHC...
As promised, today's entry is about where we sit in Section III football going into the final week of the regular season, which is full of games that will alter the picture in some kind of way.
Up in Class AA, we know 6-0 Baldwinsville will take the AA-1 division title, get the top seed and be at home for the opening round. It's everything else that's an open question.
One answer will be provided when archrivals Liverpool and Cicero-North Syracuse get together Friday night at Bragman Stadium. They share equal 3-1 league marks after the Warriors pummeled CBA and the Northstars shut out Rome Free Academy last weekend...
By far, the prime lesson offered by the first round of the Major League Baseball playoffs is that nothing is safe in a game until that last out.
The beauty and madness of baseball manifests itself in multiple ways, none more so that the lack of a clock. A game can, in theory, go on forever, an inning perpetual until that third out.
And at the end of games, acquiring the final outs requires the most stress - especially in October. One bad pitch, or one defensive mistake, and victory can turn into defeat. That happened in each of the Division Series.
Minnesota was three outs from getting even with the heavily favored Yankees. But Joe Nathan, normally a lights-out closer, hung one to Alex Rodriguez - and A-Rod crushed it over the fence...
Those Mayflower trucks, pulling away in a snowstorm in the middle of the night, out of Maryland and toward the Heartland. It’s an image no NFL fan ever wants to see again.
Hard to believe that it’s been a quarter-century since Robert Irsay took Baltimore’s Colts and sneaked them away to Indianapolis. Despite all the noises Irsay had made about moving the team for years, the actual deed proved too much for most in Maryland to bear.
Recently, ESPN, in promotion of its 30th anniversary, did something smart instead of self-aggrandizing. It took critical sports stories of the last three decades and gave then to talented, heartfelt filmmakers...
This blog, like last week's, will regard high school football in two parts. The initial segment will cover all that went on last Friday and Saturday as the regular season ended for some and the post-season began for others.
About all that we were sure of going into the weekend in Class AA was that Baldwinsville had the AA-1 regular-season title squared away. The perfect season part? Well, 286 yards of Malik Burks at Rome Free Academy took care of that problem.
And so RFA would not be in the playoffs for the first time. As in ever...
As promised, we now give you a synopsis on each of the 20 Section III football playoff games coming on Friday and Saturday. It won't get the same kind of attention as that whole balloon thing in Colorado, but at least this action is genuine.
We start in Class AA, where Baldwinsville puts its 7-0 mark on the line at Pelcher-Arcaro Stadium against Fayetteville-Manlius. On the one hand, don't be fooled by the Hornets' 2-5 mark, for it's a far better team that got beat by the Bees 49-27 early this season. On the other hand, Malik Burks is still wearing red, and as long as he's running wild and the defense can remain sound, B'ville will be AA favorites.
Corcoran has to shake off the 54-14 debacle at Auburn, but at least gets to do so at home against Cicero-North Syracuse...
When the Cincinnati Reds edged the Boston Red Sox in the epic 1975 World Series, Sparky Anderson said it well: "We're the best....but not by much."
Such was the theme of the Section III girls tennis team finals played Tuesday at Utica's Parkway Courts. Three matches, three classes - and each of them decided by a single point.
The fact that Fayetteville-Manlius, who hadn't lost to anyone in Section III for 16 years, was in such a match was news enough. But Baldwinsville had scared the Hornets in a 5-2 match the week before, so it had some belief that the 273-match streak could end.
Two singles wins and one doubles win later, B'ville was on the brink - but the Hornets didn't allow more, winning the other four matches in straight sets...
While the Section III field hockey playoffs don't start until next week, we still are getting a good pulse on where things stands just by events in the last couple of weeks.
In Class A for much of this season, it appeared quite predictable - Liverpool would have a few nervous outings, but no one was going to keep up with the high-powered Warriors as it aimed for three titles in a row.
A couple of dissenting voices have emerged, though. Rome Free Academy has hummed throughout the autumn, getting coach Linda Harjung to 300 career wins and even tying Liverpool in September.
Then there's Cicero-North Syracuse...
Maybe, just maybe, the character of Philadelphia sports, so ingrained into America’s larger sports culture, altered itself in that magic moment 12 months ago when Brad Lidge sank to his knees after the final strikeout of the World Series.
Y0u know the cliché by now – Philly sports fans, toughest in America, toughest in the world, booed Santa Claus, booed Mike Schmidt, booed Donovan MacNabb on draft day in 1999, drove Charles Barkley out of town, on and on it went…
So much of that is frustration, folks. It’s awfully tough to have teams in all four of the major professional sports and not win a championship for a quarter-century, as Philadelphia’s teams did until that 2008 World Series.
And it goes back much further, too...
Around 6 p.m. Friday night, the latest round of the Section III football playoffs kicked off, Corcoran meeting CNS. Four quarters and two overtimes later, the Cougars had advanced.
So the tone was set - no one really was safe in the 20 games that took place, unless you played for General Brown. That was especially true in Class AA's quartet of Friday showdowns.
Corcoran-CNS was crazy enough. Andrew Falvey makes a 47-yard field goal early on, yet sees two of his attempts to put the Northstars ahead (one late in regulation, one in double OT) get blocked...
Well, at last it's here. Five days shy of Halloween, they'll kick off the Section III girls soccer playoffs, two weeks of pure drama where, every time, someone's season will end.
There's fewer participants in 2009, as the 40 percent rule (teams must win 40 percent of league or overall games to qualify) returned. Thus, Only Class C split into two parts. Everything else stays together.
Of the five teams defending sectional titles, none will be a bigger favorite than Baldwinsville in Class AA...
They play great soccer in Central New York - that isn't a secret. And it's clear that the 2009 season has built upon what happened last fall.
Between Hamilton's state Class D title and the trips by Baldwinsville and Fabius-Pompey to the state final four, area teams gained a higher level of respect that reflected in this season's polls...
If it seemed like all the cross country league championship meets took place a bit early this fall - well, you're right.
As with many other fall sports, the tendency this year is to avoid doing anything on Oct. 31. With Halloween on a Saturday, that's led to some odd scheduling, like all 10 football semifinals on Friday, plus lots of soccer and volleyball on that day, too.
It also meant league cross country meets taking place as many as 19 days before the Nov. 7 sectional gathering at Jamesville Beach, and the results proved somewhat illuminating.
They started on Oct. 20 with the Tri-Valley meet at VVS (the 2010 sectional and 2011 state course), where Holland Patent, led by the Racha Brothers, completely dominated the boys side, claiming six of the top nine spots...
All right, no jokes here - no shots at Philadelphia and its prickly fans, no jabs at New York and its heavily bankrolled self-importance.
No, this entry on the World Series will focus squarely on the teams themselves, Phillies and Yankees, because the potential is there for a true Fall Classic.
And baseball needs a classic. Not since 2003 has the Series even gone six games, and it hasn't gone to the limit since 2002. It just seems like, once momentum goes a team's way in a high-pressure setting like this, it just stays there...
Sure, it was the eve of Halloween, but there was nothing shocking about what took place in any of the 10 Section III football semifinals.
Oh, some favorites got really pushed in a way they hadn't been all season, but that still didn't change the results - and of the 10 teams that earned tickets to the Carrier Dome next weekend, seven are unbeaten, which is a rarity.
Of the five classes, AA provided the closest pair of contests, as the fans at Bragman Stadium had to stick around to the very end to be sure of the outcome.
Henninger's reign ended at CBA's expense in a 21-20 battle. The Brothers won because its offense was a more difficult puzzle to solve...
