Charles on… anything that comes along

I’m tiring pretty rapidly - hell, I’m already tired - of the blog posts (Scoble, Winer, JaffeJuice) lauding the great putt that Tiger Woods hit to hole at the 16th in the final round of this year’s Masters. (Mostly lauding the “advert” Jaffe Juice made with that putt.)

Why? Because that putt didn’t win the tournament, despite any suggestions or implications to the contrary you might have heard - and there’ll have been plenty.

(Stick with this even if you don’t like golf. I have a point to make.)

You want to know the facts, from someone (me) who’s reported on a lot of sports? The truth is, that putt saved Woods from being beaten outright. The mythology growing up around that shot (which almost stayed on the lip, in which case Woods would have just got a par) is stupid, because it fails to tell the story of those last two holes, which is where the tournament was almost won and lost.

Here’s what happened. I know because I was watching it live on TV. (Lovely phrase.) Woods followed that great shot with a stinker of a drive at the 17th - so bad that it went onto the adjacent fairway. Bogey.

On the 18th he hit a terrible second shot, and three-putted. Bogey. A two-shot lead coming off the 16th turns into a tie.

What’s also overlooked is that Chris DeMarco, supposedly destroyed by that 16th-hole Woods putt, almost holed his third shot at the 18th - the ball rattled the flag on its way past. That would have been a birdie and won him the title. Why is nobody making an “advert” about that?

Because all people see on the news is the 20-second clip of the 16th-hole putt going in, they think that’s all there was. In fact, the last two holes showed Woods seriously messing up, while DeMarco held steady and almost had it. This was not a procession of brilliance. It was a bag of nerves up against a nerveless professional. DeMarco was the latter one. That’s not the story you heard?

Can you say short attention span? Sorry, what was the question?

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• "Tails are cool" (26 October 2005; score: 43.68%)
• Get it while it's late: my exclusive review of Tiger (you know.. that new software thing) (2 May 2005; score: 38.48%)
• The hi pri of wi fi; and another Tiger review (4 May 2005; score: 33.32%)

New at The Register is my examination of why Sony won’t release Fiona Apple’s completed third album - not even as a digital-only release.

(Fiona Apple, if you don’t recall, is an American singer-songwriter who had some big hits in the late 1990s, with the album “Tidal” and single “Criminal”. Since which, what?)

I came across her unreleased third album while listening to internet radio - and got intrigued enough to try to track down what had happened. It’s a tale that shows that Sony, which wants us so much to buy its Network Walkman gear, is desperately confused about the best way to get new music to us. In the case of this third album, which has been sitting around since 2003, it could be decades before you hear it officially.

Unless, of course, you seek out its BitTorrent site, and grab that. Not that you would, of course.

And did anyone else notice that Sony is fighting on both sides of the MGM vs Grokster case? Yup - it owns MGM, and is a “petitioner” as Sony Music, against Grokster. Yet one of the amicus briefs filed on behalf of Grokster comes from the US’s Consumer Electronics Association - whose members include Sony Electronics. Mixed up? Oh, yeah.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• How Yahoo takes good stuff, and makes it bad, from Flickr to music videos (16 September 2005; score: 81.05%)
• The Golden Rule for deciding whether to buy the album when you hear the single (26 May 2005; score: 59.32%)
• Best and worst value on the iTunes Music Store (3 August 2004; score: 54.48%)