A Fitness, Tennis, Squash & Sports Blog by Mayfair Clubs

The world of golf and tennis has always been dominated by Americans. But never before has it been so apparent that the rest of the world is taking over these two marquee sports.

Case in point, the highest ranked American male tennis player is Mardy Fish – currently #11 on the ledger – Fish had a great tournament in Miami a few weeks back making the Semi Finals before getting crushed by eventual champion and world number 2 Novak Djokovic. Fish is ranked outside of the top-10 and doesn’t have a big upside to his game. The chance of Fish moving up the rankings would be the same chance as Federer winning another French title.

On the other hand, Andy Roddick seems to be stagnating of late with his tennis and another Slam for the former US Open champion – let alone a rankings jump into the top 10 seems remote at best. Roddick is 13th in the latest ATP world rankings.

It is even more depressing on the Women’s side of things if you are an American Tennis fan. Serena Williams is the top ranked American tennis player at #10 – this is really no surprise to anybody. The shocking thing is Williams may not be involved in a competitive match for at least 6 months (or more) due to a string of injuries. Serena hasn’t played a match since last Wimbledon (early July) and may miss the entire year. Next is her big sister Venus – VW is ranked #15 and also is on the injured list. After these two future Hall of Famers – and who knows if they will ever be back on the courts again – and if they do return who knows for how long – it’s slim pickings. Bethanie Mattek-Sands is the next highest ranked American tennis player at #41. This is cause for concern if you are an American tennis enthusiast. Where are the Tracey Austin’s, Chris Evert’s, and Jennifer Capriati’s of the world? What is happening to American tennis? Never before has there been reason to panic – but now it seems to have hit rock bottom!! With Serena on the sidelines – her top-10 ranking will disappear in the coming weeks – and Americans will be shut out of the top 10 in both the men and women rankings. Something that would have seemed impossible a few years back!

On the Canadian docket – things are so much brighter with Milos Raonic and Rebecca Marino – both have the potential to be in the top 30 by year’s end!!

The American perspective is a little rosier in Women’s golf. 3 players ranked in the top 10 is not bad – but it’s not what it used to be. Back in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s we were used to seeing 8 out of the top10 being American. Now the sport is dominated by Koreans. Cristie kerr, Michelle Wie and Paula Creamer have great games and could be number 1 at any time, but the depth is gone, and most of the top 50 players in the world live in Asian speaking countries and train in the American South.

Men’s golf is really in trouble in my estimation. But you wouldn’t know it based on the latest rankings – it’s just not looking good down the road. Currently the Americans have 4 players ranked in the top 10. Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, Steve Stricker and Matt Kuchar – except for Kuchar these guys are getting long in the tooth. The Americans seem to lose every Ryder Cup – a trophy they used to dominate. Let’s see what happens when they play the International field for the President’s Cup later this year in Australia. When we talk about up-and-comers there are no Americans in the discussions. Golf has never been more global and it’s obvious that the Americans have no super-stars on the horizon.
The first guy that is making people’s jaw drop is a 20 year Japanese player. Ryo Ishikawa first made people take notice because of his golf. He won his first Japan Golf Tour event as a 15-year-old amateur, won the money title at 17 and last year became the first player to shoot 58 on a major tour. Yes, a 58 in a tour event. The guy has a swing that resembles Sam Snead, Ben Hogan and Tom Watson all put together. It is poetry with a golf club.

His latest eye-opening feat brought attention to his heart. Wanting to do his part to help victims of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated his native Japan, Ishikawa decided to donate his entire tournament earnings this year – plus a bonus for every birdie he makes – toward relief efforts. I can’t imagine Tiger Woods in a similar light!

Then there is Rory McIlroy – forget his collapse last Sunday at Augusta. This guy is for real and he’s going to win double digit majors. On 2 May, 2010 McIlroy recorded his first PGA Tour win after shooting 62 in the final round of the Quail Hollow Championship. The round set a new course record, and concluded with six consecutive scores of three. He became the first player since Tiger Woods to win a PGA Tour event prior to his 21st birthday. Being able to conquer a course as tough as Quail Hollow suggests this guy is one of the best golfers on the planet and if he wins a few majors in the next 3 years nobody should be surprised.

So that covers Ishikawa and McIlroy – but what about Matteo Manassero?? They guy just won a European tour event Sunday in Malaysia – beating out McIlroy – and he’s not even 18 yet. This stuff is Hollywood material!! Kids this young aren’t supposed to win their club championship yet alone a star-studded European tour event. He collected $415,000.00 dollars in the process. He will move in to the top 35 with his second European tour victory and will now gain access to all top flighted events on the world tour.

His second victory makes him the third youngest player on the major world tours to record multiple victories. The youngest three are: Ryo Ishikawa (Japan Golf Tour, aged 17 years and 46 days); Chinnarat Phadungsil (Asian Tour, aged 17 years and 293 days) and Matteo Manassero (European Tour, aged 17 years and 363 days).
These guys all have one thing in common – they are off the charts good and not American!!

What about team England – Lee Westwood (2nd), Luke Donald (3rd) and Paul Casey (7th)? These guys just seem to be getting better and better and the likelihood is strong that one of these bombers will win a major – maybe as soon as the up-coming US Open at Congressional.

Then there are the young guns from South Africa – can Scharl Schwartzel or Louis Oosthuizen win another major before the season’s finished? They own 2 of the last 3 majors. What about other South Africans – Tim Clarke, Ernie Els or Retief Goosen? This country is oozing with talent and it’s just a matter of time before we see another rookie with a perfect swing stun the golfing community as Schwartzel did last week at Augusta.

And we haven’t even mentioned the trio of Australian golfers who will likely challenge for another major this coming season – Adam Scott (17th), Jason Day (24th) or Geoff Ogilvy (29th).
All this is bad news for Tiger Woods and co. There are too many great players for these guys to win on a consistent basis.

The days of American golfers and tennis players dominating their respective tours are finished. And in my opinion, we’ll never see that kind of domination again.

If I was the commissioner of the entire sports world I would implement some major rules changes that would make the games we love more enjoyable. There are so many ridiculous rules in so many sports – I’m really not sure where to start. But I don’t think anyone would argue with my first selection.

1. The Single Point in the CFL needs to go. How is it possible that a team can be rewarded for missing a field goal? The ‘rouge’ as it’s known amongst CFL aficionados might be the silliest rule in all of sports. You miss a kick wide right or wide left – and that’s it – the other team should instantly be awarded possession of the ball – there should be no scoring allowed – not even a single point!! But the CFL – trying to be different than all other football leagues world wide – stands by this wacky rule and says it makes there game unique. And if you agree with this one – check out the last one!

2. Time between pitches in a baseball game. Once the ball is returned to the pitcher, he has 15 seconds to make the next pitch or it is automatically ruled a ball. The batter cannot step out of the batter’s box at any time during the at bat.

3. Redefine offsides in soccer. In basketball there is nothing prettier than a backdoor cut that ends in a dunk or a layup. But when the same thing happens in soccer – like USA’s Clint Dempsey’s controversial disallowed goal in the recent World Cup last summer in South Africa against Algeria – its offsides. So here is my recommendation: once a team gains possession inside the 18-yard box, there is no offsides. Playmakers like Lionel Messi would become offensive dazzling magicians like Wayne Gretzky used to be with the puck and defenders would be forced to defend, rather than hold their line and pray that an assistant ref’s flag saves them from embarrassment!

4. NCAA Football Playoff. NCAA division 1 football will adopt a 16-team playoff that will feature 8 automatic qualifiers and 8 at-large teams with the championship game to be played at a pre-determined venue.

5. Golfers shouldn’t suffer because of the wind! Sometimes I think the powers that be in the world of golf had too many pints on the 19th hole veranda as they made up the rules of the hallowed game! Golf’s rule book is filled with nitpicking that outsiders find silly – a stroke penalty if you accidentally drop your ball and it moves your marker, for example – but that purists defend to their grave. However, even hardened purists have to concede the following: if the wind moves your ball after you’ve addressed it, you MOST DEFINITELY shouldn’t be penalized a stroke. But according to the Royal and Ancient rules of golf – it is a one stroke penalty. Upon further review – this might be the dumbest rule of all – time to bury this one in a sand trap!

6. Icing the kicker in football. If the defensive team calls a timeout with less than 10 seconds remaining on the play clock during a field goal attempt, that team will be assessed a five-yard penalty.

7. Hawkeye Challenge System in Tennis! Okay this is a double edged sword. It’s the best invention in my estimation this century – not only for tennis – but for the entire sports world. My issue is simple – it needs to be on every court at every tournament. Can you imagine an NFL game where the fans were told – “sorry – your team is out of playoff contention and we are not going to replay any controversial calls in this game?” This would never happen and it shouldn’t be happening on the ATP tour or the WTA tour. It is unacceptable that these tours only have it for the big name players who are constantly on the “show” courts.

8. Hockey needs to make 4 major improvements. First, ban all head shots. Despite the recent ban on blindside hits, there has been no decrease in NHL concussions. Sydney Crosby has been out far too long and the game is suffering as a result. Second, institute no-touch icing. Eliminating headlong races for the first touch curbs colossal, end-board collisions between full-bore defenseman and forwards. And thirdly, ditch the trapezoid. What were they thinking a few years back when they came up with this one? If goaltenders can play the puck anywhere and not just directly behind the net, the D-men have to do less back-to-the-action puck retrieval, and thus are targets of fewer blindside hits. And finally, expand the ice surface. Increasing the playing area to international dimensions (200 feet x 100 feet as opposed to 200 x 85) enhances the value of skilled players. But it also makes lumbering enforcers obsolete. Guys incapable of contributing with their gloves on will be soon out of the league.

9. Baseball field dimensions. All baseball fields in both the American and National league will have the same dimensions across the board.

10. Contraction in the NHL. There are too many teams in the current NHL. Winnipeg, Quebec City and Hamilton all are granted expansion franchises while most of the Southern teams in the NHL are let go.

11. Bring Replay to Soccer. It is shocking to me that this MAJOR sport world-wide is so far behind the times. There were multiple examples at the World Cup of officiating errors that could have been rectified with instant replay. The fact that this sport is so reluctant to modernize itself tells me they think they have a perfect game – and from all accounts the players, managers, owners and fans are outraged that a system has yet to be put in place. If all the other MAJOR sports have come to the realization that replay is needed – why are the suits that make these decisions in soccer so stubborn on such an obvious way to improve their game?

12. Hold the World Cup Every 3 Years. South Africa 2010 reminded us that the planet’s biggest sporting event gets bigger every four years. Which is exactly why it should happen every three?

13. Hitting a golf ball out of a divot in the middle of the fairway. Okay, let’s start by saying I’m definitely not a golf purist. If I whack a ball with pin-point accuracy straight down the middle of the fairway and end up in a divot – you can be damned sure I’m not hitting it from there. Unless of course I’m playing in a tournament and I don’t want to incur the one stroke penalty. Golf has more questionable rules than all sports put together – but this may take the cake. You can’t penalize somebody for a perfect shot! I can’t be that far off with this opinion – the greatest golfer of all time – Jack Nicklaus – agrees wholeheartedly with my take on this silly rule!

14. Decide, once and for all, what is a catch in the NFL. Does anybody remember Lions wideout Calvin Johnson hauling in an apparent game-winning TD pass in week one of the NFL season? Here is a brief synopsis of what happened in case you forgot – Johnson made the catch, fell to the ground, and started to get up – but as he was getting up he flicked the ball away – he let go of the ball on purpose as he thought he had possession for more than enough time. The refs ruled it incomplete, saying Johnson failed to maintain possession through the entire process of the catch. Entire process??? Is this a joke?? As soon as a ball carrier breaks the plane of the goal line – even by one millimeter – his team gets six points. Can you say double standard? The same rules should apply to both the breaking of the goal-line play and a receiver making an acrobatic catch! This was a huge injustice that should be fixed immediately.

15. Get rid of the “let” in tennis. Most tennis people would think I’ve lost my marbles on this one – but I truly believe it would make the game more exciting. If the ball hits the net and dribbles over on shot 1 (the serve) or shot 10 (groundstroke, volley or overhead) the same rules should apply. So either play a “let” for all shots or zero shots but don’t do it just on the serve. This doesn’t make sense – singling out the serve seems to be nonsensical – purists believe this is right but they are steadfast on this rule because this is the way it’s always been done.

16. Adopt an NFL-like replay system in major league baseball. Managers will be granted two replays per game and one additional replay if the game goes extra innings.

17. Limit basketball teams to two timeouts a game. Some basketball games can take upward of 15 minutes with 45 seconds remaining on the clock. The game needs to be continuous, and with what seems like unlimited timeouts, the games length in the dying seconds of close games can be a major turnoff for the casual fan.

18. Length of the baseball season. The season will be reduced to 140 games and the playoffs will get started in early September.

19. Standardize the college games with their professional counterparts. For example, in college football the receiver needs to only have one foot in bounds to have possession of the ball – in the NFL it’s two feet. The uprights for a field goal attempt or extra point are 3 feet wider for college kickers. In college basketball the 3-point line is 20’9” in the NBA it’s 23’9”. The shot clock in college is 35 seconds and 24 seconds in the NBA. A backcourt violation in the NBA is called in 8 seconds, but in college they have 10 seconds. The fans and players alike would like these numbers to be the same – why make the rules complicated – some of these kids will go on to the next level – would it not make sense to standardize these rules across the board?

20. Don’t rely on the eye to judge field goals or extra points. It’s a fact that when a kick sails directly above one leg of a goalpost it’s a miss. But when a kick is as high as 20 feet over the uprights, it’s difficult for the ref standing below the post to tell for sure. So I hereby lobby for a motion detector or laser beams or some other newfangled 21st century technology – something that shoots straight up from each post. When a ball crosses its stream, a sound would ring out through the stadium or a light would flash on the scoreboard, indication a miss with surety.

21. Copy the NFL. The CFL should go to the NFL rules. That means 4 downs and a smaller field. The NFL game is much better – but the CFL rules makers will never let this happen. They are proud of their game – but in truth the NFL rules make more sense and their game is far superior to the lowly CFL!

Written By Michael Emmett

There was the eye-catching comeback of a Tiger.

The stirring revival from a crew from Down Under!

The excruciating collapse of a kid!

5 straight birdies on the back-nine by a former Major Champion!

And in the end, the championship crowning of a son of a South African chicken farmer named Charl Schwartzel!

Excuse my ignorance but who the heck is Charl Schwartzel? – and once again excuse my obtuseness – but how in God’s earth can a guy who looks like a shoe salesman win the most coveted golf event on the planet?

As the sun set on the luscious greenery at Augusta National Golf Club after the conclusion of the 75th Masters, amazed patrons struggled to take deep breaths. They had nothing left. It was a gut-wrenching day to be sure!

The world’s best golfers had just spent the afternoon delivering breathtaking shot after breathtaking shot. Nations united on a leader board – Antarctica was the only continent without a birdie-making ambassador in the chase – that was so jumbled and changed so often that it had a dizzying effect on its operators.

Fifty years to the day after South African Gary Player became the first international golfer to take home one of the famed green jackets, his similarly built countryman Charl Schwartzel (a super lightweight at 5-11, 140 pounds) out dueled the big hitters in what was one of the most exciting back nines in the tournament’s history. At different times throughout the proceedings 8 guys had their names atop the leaderboard for the 5 hour roller-coaster.

Days like Sunday are why the Masters is the best event in sports.

The Olympics come but every two years. Occasionally, a Super Bowl delivers last-minute drama. Every few years, a World Series is competitive. The NBA Finals sometimes has its moments. Every now and then, college football’s appointed finalists live up to the season-long debate. And the recent display at Reliant Stadium in Houston notwithstanding, teams in NCAA championship basketball games have been known to make a shot or two.

But time after time, year after year, the Masters delivers. It can’t get much better than this year’s edition. With so many players in and out and back in again, it had one of the more entertaining back nines Augusta has seen.
Sure, it was a Masters Sunday when you needed a defibrillator next to the couch, but in the end, what did we wind up with?

We got a green jacket being hung on the bony shoulders of 140-pound 26-year old and who knows if we’ll ever see HIM again. He seems like a work in progress. Even his first name is unfinished. Can you say “Louis Oosthuizen”??
This is the 10th different winner in the past 10 majors. It’s like golf is running some kind of contest. Hey, you. You just won the Masters. And I would bet on Congressional Country Club making it 11 for 11.

Tiger, please come back. The game misses you. Golf is so much better when Tiger is in contention – and he is so close to getting his game back – back to where it used to be!

When the final twosome reached the 12th hole, five players were tied at the top, and 10 were within two strokes of the lead. In all, eight players had at least a share of the lead at some point during the final round.

“Sometimes I would look at (the scoreboard) and not register what I saw,” the stunned winner said.

Schwartzel, a spell checker’s nightmare (Charl might be short a couple of letters, but it isn’t short for anything), earned the win with a magnificent final-round 66 – the best closing round in a victory since Nick Faldo’s 65 in 1989 – and a 14-under-par 274 total that beat Australians Jason Day and Adam Scott by two strokes.

Schwartzel began the day with a chip-in for birdie on the first hole and then holed out from 114 yards for eagle on No. 3 to move into a tie with third-round leader Rory McIlroy, who started the final 18 holes with a four-shot advantage.
Tiger Woods joined Schwartzel in challenging conventional wisdom that the tournament doesn’t really begin until the back nine Sunday by posting a brilliant 5-under-par 31 on the front, highlighted by an eagle at No. 8. It was the first time in a long time we had seen the Woods of old making noise on the leader board in the fourth round of a tournament.

There was a buzz that was so apparent I could feel it through my television – I felt the need to tell someone I was about the witness history. Tiger was down by 7 shots and he erased that deficit in fewer than 9 holes. Surely he would shoot 4 under on the “easy” back nine and win this tournament going away. Tiger had never won a major when he trailed by even ONE shot – but yesterday he was going to win while overcoming a 7-shot deficit. Or so I thought!

But then something weird, and normal, happened. The tournament really began. As you knew it would.

The winning story is typically the most compelling, and Schwartzel wowed with a birdie-birdie-birdie-birdie finish.
Schwartzel was first to ever finish with 4 straight birdies on the final day to win the trophy.

Not Rory’s day
But on this day, the sustained drama of the final round and even the roars accompanying a roaring Tiger were dimmed by the lack of roars for Rors.

Poor Rory McIlroy. The precocious 21-year-old Irishman teed off Sunday for what many expected to be his coronation as the game’s brightest young star. But instead of becoming the tournament’s second-youngest winner (behind Woods), he suffered through a difficult day, enduring a humiliation that this lovely but occasionally cruel game has bestowed upon golfers of all ages and skill.

McIlroy’s drive at the 10th found bark and didn’t bite, banging off a tree and settling between cottages that were not in Bobby Jones’ imagination as a possible launch spot for a second shot on that hole. It became almost unbearable to watch.
McIlroy, who led after each of the first three rounds, posted a triple bogey on the hole, a bogey on the 11th and a four-putt double bogey on the 12th. He finished with an 8-over-par 80, 10 shots off the pace.

“I was leading this golf tournament with nine holes to go, and I just unraveled,” McIlroy said.

Many will describe McIlroy’s experience as a teachable moment. But does anybody really need to go through what he went through – matching the highest final-round score of any 54-hole leader in tournament history – to learn something?
We witness the best in sport when accomplishment matches skill. The experts say McIlroy has the best swing in the game. He has the makings of a star player, a star personality. In this day, not all stars are champions. On this day, the young star didn’t take the championship.

But though he stumbled off the course with his shirt ruffled and his black mop of hair strewn about, he took his defeat like a champion.

It is a good bet that soon on some extraordinary day at Augusta National, at this tournament that doesn’t began until the back nine Sunday; McIlroy will have his championship day.

And it probably will be the best sporting event that year. Again.