Monday July 02, 2007

July and 23-Under

Schedule Update
I hope everyone is having a great morning and like many I have time off this week. We are taking a week’s vacation on the radio show. Monday and Friday Brett Jenson will be guest hosting. Tuesday and Thursday we will have “Best Of” shows. Wednesday the entire station is off for Independence Day.

I will write a blog each day this week but because I want to coordinate the radio show and the blog with our position previews I will take a week off from the position previews and return with wide receiver information next Monday. This week I will hit a couple of topics each day on several items concerning Clemson athletics.

67-67-67-70 and Then 62
Clemson golfer Luke Hopkins has worked hard in the last year to rebuild his golf swing and it appears the hard efforts are paying off. Hopkins finished third in the Dogwood Invitational last week outside of Atlanta. The prestigious amateur event was Hopkins most impressive finish so far in his young career. Hopkins shot 67-67-67-70 to finish 13-under for the event.

I talked to Hopkins on Sunday about his fine play in Atlanta as he was making the turn in a casual round of golf with his family only to find out he had an even better round going at the time. Sunday’s play at The Walker Course in Clemson started at number 10 and Hopkins pared numbers 10 and 11. But that is when the magic began. He birdied numbers 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 to shoot 29 on the back.

I guess he figured seven straight birdies were not enough so he birdied the first hole (his 10th). His string of eight straight birdies was broken on number two but he did birdie number three to move to nine under par.

The Greenville native bogeyed the fourth hole but rebounded to birdie numbers five and seven. The course record is 10-under 62 first set by Clemson golf coach Larry Penley so Hopkins needed to birdie eight or nine top break the long standing course record. After a par at the long par three eighth, he hit his approach to about ten feet on the ninth. Unfortunately Hopkins missed his 10-footer and had to settle for a course record tying 62.

I would say the hard work really pays off if you can go 23-under par over a five round stretch. In talking with Coach Penley earlier last month he thinks Hopkins can play a big role on the 2007-2008 squad.

I could be wrong but with the nation’s top ranked amateur, Kyle Stanley, returning and players like Sam Saunders, David May, Hopkins, Ben Martin, Tanner Ervin and Phillip Mollica the Tigers may be poised for another run at ACC and national titles in the near future.

Beach Music at the Beach
I guess the beach music scene will have another talented singer hit the grandstand this week when Cliff Ellis takes over the Coastal Carolina men’s basketball program. Seems like a natural fit to me.

July
I love our country and think Independence Day is awesome but the rest of the month is the most difficult to get through if you are a sports fan especially a college football fan. Tennis has become boring so Wimbledon does not do it for me. I will watch the Daytona night race this Saturday but it is not the Daytona 500. Baseball’s All-Star Game is the best of the major sports but still nothing to get too excited about. I guess the British Open is the sports highlight of my month unless you count NCAA Football 2008’s July 17 release.

This year is a little different for me because I am taking my family to New York July 20-22 for site seeing and Yankee games. My wife and daughter have never been there and my son is still steamed at Major League Baseball for calling last October’s game 2 of the American League Divisional Series even though it was not raining on us. We may have been the only two people in the world that paid $2,000 to see the Detroit Tigers take batting practice.

So this trip will help but July is still tough on us college football fans. I will grant you that football recruiting helps because there is more news now in the month than there used to be.

When August gets here I can get the practice updates. I can see the injury updates and get some news about the players that are climbing the depth charts. In August I get to hear the news of the true freshmen and their performance on the field as opposed to what we all think they will do. In August I get scrimmage reports from around the ACC and SEC and I get real stats even though they mean nothing.

July is a different story for college football fans. By the time July rolls around we have read all of the pre-season magazines. We have looked at the schedules, depth charts and coaching moves. We have heard all of the reviews of how the rising senior class looked in the summer camps.

I am ready but July is not. If only Barry Bonds was a nice guy with a clean past then it might be a great time in sports. If only Wimbledon was Borg and McEnroe again. If only Dale Junior were Dale Senior then July would be a fantastic month. If only Jason Giambi were Tino Martinez, Bobby Abreu were Paul O’Neil and Kei Igawa were El Duque.

They are not so my month as a sports fan will turn to Tiger at Carnoustie and NCAA Football 2008.

O August, August! Wherefore art thou August?

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