Weekend winners
This Tweet, which shows a wrestler entering a royal rumble dressed as Geoffrey the Toys R Us giraffe. He starts kicking necks and taking names. He’s finally ousted by another wrestler who makes a cell phone call, waits for an Amazon package delivery and uses the box to KO Geoffrey. Social commentary and rasslin’ are perfect together friends.
France. Bastille Day followed by the national team winning the World Cup. Here’s betting there’s not a lot of working getting done this morning in and around Paris.
Demi Moore. Yes, it’s been a while since Moore – who a couple of decades ago was arguably the biggest female star in Hollywood – has been in the public eye. Well, Moore made a brief, surprising and entertaining return this weekend at a celebrity roast for her ex-husband Bruce Willis. Her best zinger may have been: “After our divorce, he said he considered the end of our marriage his biggest failure, but Bruce, don’t be so hard on yourself, you’ve had much bigger failures. I mean Planet Hollywood, ‘Hudson Hawk,’ ‘Striking Distance,’ campaigning for Michael Dukakis, turning down Clooney’s role in ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ to focus on playing the harmonica?”
Tony Romo. Dude is living the good life. He’s become the best NFL analyst and on the shortlist of the biggest needle-moving announcers regardless of sport. Oh yeah, he also won the Tahoe Celebrity Golf tournament last weekend. Did we mention that he’s married to a former beauty pageant winner. It’s good to be Tony Romo friends.
Manny Machado. He’s the only baseball thing worth watching in Baltimore. He’s in a contract year. And he’s about to become the hottest name on the trade market, which means some contending GM is going to move a lot of pieces to acquire Machado, which means said GM is going to be motivated to keep Machado. Also, Machado is making the most of his contract year since he is in the top 7 in the AL in average (.315), homers (24) and RBIs (65). CHA-China.
Serena Williams returns to Julia Goerges during their semifinal Thursday at Wimbledon. Williams won 6-2, 6-4 and will face Angelique Kerber on Saturday for the title. Kerber beat Jelena Ostapenko 6-3, 6-3 in the other semifinal.Weekend losers
Tennis. Wimbledon – easily the sports biggest headline event – has come and gone and left standing are two players we’ve never heard of and this painful realization. When the mid-30s crew of Serena, Federer, Nadal and the Djoker leave the stage, tennis is facing a real and potentially critical star-power problem. (Yes, Stewwie, you are hoping for Isner and Co. to MAMTGA, but even then, this crew is not exactly moving the public needle anytime soon.)
Home run derby. Seriously, a field without Stanton, Judge and Trout, never mind home-run leaders Jose Ramirez and J.D. Martinez, seems less than All-Star caliber. Zero of the top-five HR leaders and only two – Bryce Harper and Jesus Aguilar – of the top 11. Hmmmm, this is how the dunk contest faded into oblivion.
The NFL. The classic two wrongs do not make it right. Forget for a moment all the head-turning headlines about arrests and deviant behavior from its current and former players if you can. How petty was the league’s decision to for all intent and purposes “ignore” Terrell Owens during the induction ceremony? T.O. decide to give his induction ceremony speech at McKenzie Arena – and this controversy and pettiness only helps the profile of the event at UTC – because he personally felt affronted by the Hall not inducting him sooner. Yes, T.O.’s decision to skip the speech was not expected and we can certainly see it as a slap in the face of the league and the Hall. His after-the-fact decision to give his speech at UTC helped smooth some of that over. But the league now is proving why T.O. wanted to skip it in the first place. (Side note: Speaking of off-the-field stuff, it’s quite interesting that the biggest critic of T.O. during this process is Mike Irving, who had nowhere near the stats and was a womanizing coke-head during his career but was perceived as a good teammate because the press found him entertaining. Side note, II: If we are going to talk about off-the-field stuff and this class, while T.O. was a distraction at times that pales in comparison to Ray Lewis, who was very-much involved in a bleepin’ murder for crying out loud.)
The rest of the AL East that is not in New York ot Boston. Egad the Red Sox and Yankees are running away with things.
The British Open
Let’s explore a few golf tidbits on the Monday of this year’s British Open.
First, we can all agree that the Masters is the best tournament in golf. Right? Right.
So, which Open do you prefer. Our Open or THE Open? (Side note: We will forever, not unlike THE Ohio State, call it THE Open. And if we are drinking tea or a Co-Cola, we will extend the pinkie as we say THE Open.)
We think the course has a lot do with that, and Carnoustie is on the short list of those courses. (Side note, II: We said last week that this is the first return of THE Open – pinkie extended of course – since Jean van de Velde melted down. We were wrong. It was back at Car-nastyin 2007.)
We also think the two groups running these Opens are in an interesting place of leadership for something that greatly will shape the future of the game.
Our Open and THE Open are two of the three tournaments that have the power to regulate the distance the dudes are hitting golf balls with today’s technology. For Peter Jacobson’s sake, Rickie Fowler hit a 458-yard drive at the Scottish Open over the weekend. Yes, you read that correctly. Amazingly, according to this list it’s only the second longest drive on Tour since 2010 behind a 463-yarder from Dustin Johnson at TPC Boston.
How can these age-old golf course battle that length, which is only going to get longer. What happens when DJ or Rickie or Bubba starts driving the 401-yard first hole at Carnoustie? Pretty cool fly over of ol’ Car-Nasty is here.
Or maybe no one thinks this is a problem – and the equipment and ball companies will fight this tooth and nail forever – but there you go.
And finally, we will have the contest.
OK, it’s official, we’ll have an Open for Business at The Open Championship Contest (Open for everyone). The rules are the same. Pick five golfers, your best four finishers count. If you pick guys who finish 1, T-3, 9 and 11, that’s 24 points (add all the places together, you see) and the low score wins. Need entries by close of BID-ness Wednesday night.
We are in with Fleetwood, Koepka, DJ, Rory and Justin Rose.
This and that
– Very interesting story on Jalen Hurd, the former UT running back turned current Baylor University wide receiver.
– Speaking of interesting – and we wrote about this last week on A2 – the lady involved in the #planebae “romance/social media nightmare” earlier this month broke her silence and her story is an interesting and at times frightening tale. Here’s her money quote: “I did not ask for and do not seek attention. #PlaneBae is not a romance – it is a digital-age cautionary tale about privacy, identity, ethics and consent.”
– Great job – as usual – from TFP business ace Mike Pare, who reminds us here that VW has been in Chattanooga for a decade. Wow.
– And we’re pretty sure NASCAR did something this weekend. Maybe.
Today’s question
Should any tournament try to limit the distance of the equipment in today’s game of golf? Discuss.
Weekend winners and/or losers. Discuss.
On this day, we will always remember the five servicemen killed here in town that added Chattanooga to the list of places that have hosted crazed killers. Thank you to all those who put on a uniform and pick up a weapon to defend the rest of us. (And no, I have never written the murders name, and I never will.)
On this day in 1941, Joe DiMaggio hit in his 56th consecutive game, a record that will forever stand.
Shoeless Joe Jackson was born on this day in 1887. Orville Redenbacher was born today in 1907. Jimmy Johnson is 1943 today. How that dude is not in the NFL Hall of Fame is staggering.
Phoebe Cates is 55 today. Thank you Phoebe for, well, you know the scene in Fast Times. God bless you.
And Will Ferrell is 51 today. Rushmore of Will Ferrell movies. Go.