Hole of the Week #36 - Deacon's Lodge Hole 4

The first of the "around the lake" holes at Deacons Lodge is a finesse hole which doesn't serve the Cahoonas well - especially during the drunken twilight scramble. The best shot is 210-15 yards in the middle of the fairway leaving a tough uphill approach to a blind (or difficult to judge at the very least) pin. There have been more than a few doubles with a very generous "Cahoona gimme" on this hole. I have many memories of trudging off the green toward the cart grumbling to myself about this hole. I have very few memories of confidently striding from the green looking forward to the next hole.

Hole of the Week #35 - The Preserve Hole 4

This is a short hole that screams "Grip it! - Rip it!" which probably explains why I'm always looking for my ball in the shit on the right. Be careful not to be long on your second shot as the steeply elevated green falls off fast to a row of pine trees. I know I have never scored as well on this hole as I should!

The good news is that I remember the beer witch being close by here all the time. She probably knows we need one by then!

Hole of the Week #34 - The Pines Lakes Hole 5

Looks pretty simple from the tee. It is the multi-tiered green that kicks your ass. The problem is that I never remember where the high/low parts of the green are.

I do remember yanking one left one time, screaming "fore" at the Cahoonas on hole 6 and having the ball bang off a tree to within four feet of the pin. Easy birdie boys. Can someone get me a beer?

Tiger Woods Reveals He Was Zach Johnson

AUGUSTA, GA—World No. 1-ranked golfer Tiger Woods, after appearing to struggle through the weekend—playing with uncharacteristic inconsistency, bogeying twice in the final rounds, and breaking clubs—shocked the crowd at Augusta by stripping off a carefully crafted mask and revealing that he had created the character of "Zach Johnson," played both Johnson's rounds and his own, and was in fact the winner of this year's Masters.

"Did you seriously think I was going to lose this weekend?" Woods said, holding his "Johnson" mask aloft just moments after sinking "Johnson's" final putt as the gallery, surprised and relieved to have witnessed the Tiger Woods triumph they came to see, redoubled their cheers. "No way. This tournament was mine from the beginning. My only regret was that I was so busy playing 'Johnson's' game and mine simultaneously that 'Tiger's' score suffered."

"But I did it to prove something to myself. They say in golf, the only person who can beat a true champion is himself," Woods said, peeling back the latex from his arms. "And that's exactly what happened here today."

The revelation is the ultimate twist to a story that began to unfold when "Johnson," by all accounts an unknown Iowan, began to pull away from the field in the final round. As the world watched what they thought was a scrappy underdog with an uncommonly cool head supposedly playing the game of his life, "Johnson" shot a three-under 69 in his final round and held off a late challenge from an unusually, almost suspiciously, harried Woods.

"As 'Zach,' I had an entirely different swing, which was part of the challenge of the whole persona," Woods said. "I also had to putt differently in order to make it look authentic, and some shots I'd normally hit well had to go into the trees to throw people off. It tested the limits of even my considerable talent."

As tension mounted, the heavily disguised Woods found his attention completely occupied with the strain of not only playing "Johnson's" game, but maintaining the soft-spoken character of his new persona by giving self-effacing interviews laced with Christian rhetoric, conferring with the actress hired to pose as his wife Kim, and holding the rubber doll that served as his baby.

"Naturally, in the end, I found my actual game suffered, and I tied for second with [Rory] Sabbatini and [Retief] Goosen," Woods said, while throwing his costume's amazingly lifelike latex arm-sheaths to the crowd. "Put on the Johnson costume, shoot his hole, take off the Johnson costume, shoot Tiger's hole. Tough day. I doubt anyone else could have done it and scored a combined four-over. I even came in second with all the strain, and I'm Tiger Woods."

"Still… When Johnson bogeyed 17 by missing a three-foot putt, then came back to save par on the last?" Woods continued. "Classic Tiger. I can't believe people didn't realize that Zach Johnson was in fact me right then and there. Who else could it be?"

"Although I have to say, I almost had me on the last few holes—bad driver, but if I'd sunk the birdie putt on 16, I close within a shot of myself with two holes left," Woods added. "And trust me—if any man alive can make a disguised Tiger Woods wilt under pressure, it's me."

Woods' announcement sent a wave of combined amazement and relief throughout the golf world.

"On a windy, cold day like this, for Tiger to fade the way he did? Unheard of. Practically unthinkable," said ESPN analyst Andy North. "And then for a no-name long shot from Iowa to come from literally nowhere to beat him and win it all? Unbelievable. Either story would have rocked the golf world. Together, they might have shattered it if they had come true."

"Luckily for us all, they didn't," North added. "Tiger's still Tiger, even when he's Zach Johnson."

Many are calling Woods the first golfer ever to finish a major in both first and second place, though golf historians have been quick to point out the 18-hole playoff in the 1942 Masters in which Ben Hogan defeated "Byron Nelson."

Imus in Perspective

I have never liked Whitlock and find myself in complete disagreement with him on most of the stuff I’ve seen from him, but he is dead on here. Imus is a stupid ass and it was only a matter of time before he offended the wrong person, but there are far more outrageous things being said by the rappers in the hip-hop culture and they have gotten a free pass on it. Here’s hoping that this Whitlock article gets the attention it deserves.

Imus isn’t the real bad guy

Instead of wasting time on irrelevant shock jock, black leaders need to be fighting a growing gangster culture.

JASON WHITLOCK

Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.

You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.

You’ve given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor.

Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.

The bigots win again.

While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I’m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s or Snoop Dogg’s or Young Jeezy’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos.

I ain’t saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don’t have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas.

It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.

Rather than confront this heinous enemy from within, we sit back and wait for someone like Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the mistake of repeating the things we say about ourselves.

It’s embarrassing. Dave Chappelle was offered $50 million to make racially insensitive jokes about black and white people on TV. He was hailed as a genius. Black comedians routinely crack jokes about white and black people, and we all laugh out loud.

I’m no Don Imus apologist. He and his tiny companion Mike Lupica blasted me after I fell out with ESPN. Imus is a hack.

But, in my view, he didn’t do anything outside the norm for shock jocks and comedians. He also offered an apology. That should’ve been the end of this whole affair. Instead, it’s only the beginning. It’s an opportunity for Stringer, Jackson and Sharpton to step on victim platforms and elevate themselves and their agenda$.

I watched the Rutgers news conference and was ashamed.

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke for eight minutes in 1963 at the March on Washington. At the time, black people could be lynched and denied fundamental rights with little thought. With the comments of a talk-show host most of her players had never heard of before last week serving as her excuse, Vivian Stringer rambled on for 30 minutes about the amazing season her team had.

Somehow, we’re supposed to believe that the comments of a man with virtually no connection to the sports world ruined Rutgers’ wonderful season. Had a broadcaster with credibility and a platform in the sports world uttered the words Imus did, I could understand a level of outrage.

But an hourlong press conference over a man who has already apologized, already been suspended and is already insignificant is just plain intellectually dishonest. This is opportunism. This is a distraction.

In the grand scheme, Don Imus is no threat to us in general and no threat to black women in particular. If his words are so powerful and so destructive and must be rebuked so forcefully, then what should we do about the idiot rappers on BET, MTV and every black-owned radio station in the country who use words much more powerful and much more destructive?

I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?

When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not looking to be made a victim.

No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There’s no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.

Hole of the Week #33 - Deacon's Lodge Hole 16

It's getting dark. There are Cahoonas back at the Tiger Woods cabin preparing seared mammal flesh for the group. The scramble match is tight and you want to get all nine holes in. It's time for some polo golf! This is the hole on which it begins!

This is another great hole - Deacon's is full of them. I love the solitude of this course!

Hole of the Week #32 - The Preserve Hole 8

This is a tough hole. The slippery green is hard to hit and there seems to be a golf ball magnet in the sand trap. Tough green to putt. By the time I play this hole, the troops are start their move so I have distractions as well!

New Must-Have Cahoona Gear

The perfect accessory to the Cahoona Foot Wedge