March Madness!!!!

AFN is doing us right again, and they have 2, sometimes 3 channels devoted to March Madness. Hammer and I are currently holding down the fort in the office watching a classic battle between Maryland and Davidson. It is going to be a long weekend for us, as the games run pretty much all night. In fact, we have basketball on until 0630 tomorrow morning. We are looking forward to it though, it will be a nice distraction from the mundane. Sleep is a crutch anyway!

Once again, I'm buying into the hype and have picked KU to win it all. We watched the KU vs Texas Big 12 title game and I came away really impressed with the Jayhawks. They can pretty much play any type of basketball and have a ton of depth which is important in tourney time. I think they are the best time in the nation, but we'll find out in about 2 weeks. Rock chalk!

British Open Final

Well, the British Open is complete and it ended as expected. Tiger didn't give anyone else a chance and played really well all day. My boy had some chances but couldn't make a big run when we needed to. A couple of observations:

• How scary is that Tiger wins the British Open by 2 strokes and only hits Driver one time? The old tiger won by bombing drives and hitting short irons into every green, the older more mature tiger dominated without the long ball. I think this would really bother me if I was Sergio, Els, Mickelson, etc.
• The emotional ending for Tiger was pretty cool. You would think that after winning 10 other majors he wouldn't get that excited anymore. I know a lot had to do with his dad, but it was still neat to see that he still cares so much about winning.
• Now, this may sound insensitive, but who else thinks that the media made a little bit much of the fact that Dimarco and to a lesser extent Tiger are out there playing again so soon after losing a parent? Tiger took 9 weeks off and Dimarco took 3. Who else in this soceity gets a 2 month vacation when they lose a parent? Jim the mechanic and Dave the cop get their 3 days off for the funeral and then are told to get back to work. Nobody writes a story about how courageous they are for getting somebody's car fixed. If a soldier loses a parent they get 10 days convalescent leave and then are told to get back on a plane for Iraq.
• SSG Johnson and I thought it was comical that after Sergio got off to a terrible start, they didn't show any coverage for him like 10 holes. After we noticed it and started payting attention it was pretty darn funny. One hole he was putting and rather than show him they showed Tiger watching him. On another he was teeing off and the shot was of Tiger talking to his caddy who was picking a club. Sergio who??? It was like Tiger was playing by himself.

Well, back to the daily grind. Today is our 4th month anniversary, so we are 1/3 done with our time in country. Our section celebrates this milestone by going "out to eat" at BK or Pizza Hut. I think I'll have a whopper tonight.

British Open Final Round Underway

Final round is underway. Here is how I see it playing out today. Sergio is going to choke. We've seen this before, when he is paired with Tiger he doesn't bring his A game. Tiger is going to play good but not great. Ernie is going to stay steady all day. Tiger is going to break out the driver on 16 to try to get an eagle to open up some space, but instead will crush the ball out of bounds, giving the big easy an inside lane to victory!

I have been behind on posting some pictures, so I thought I would share one of Ben.

British Open Round 2

Time for another British Open update. I had duty today running the MWR computer lab. It isn't a bad gig but it took me out of the office for the whole day. Imagine my surprise when I finally caught the leaderboard and Tiger was already in with a 65 for the day to take him to 12 under for the tourney. Unbelievable. He holed out from 209 years on 14 for an eagle, pretty amazing. One place you do not want to be is behind Tiger at a major after the second round. He is 6-0 when leading after 36 hours and looks to be on fire. All is not lost however. Ernie Els is refusing to be intimidated by the greatest player in the game today, and is currently 4 under for the round to take him to 8 under for the tourney. He is playing 12 as we speak so he still has some scoring opportunities ahead of him and could pretty easily finish the day at -10. 2 strokes is more than Tiger needs but a man can hope. Somebody needs to make a run or it is going to be all Tiger all weekend.