When Torrey Pines was chosen as host of the 2008 U.S. Open, everyone and their mother safely assumed Tiger Woods would probably waltz right into the South Course and leave with another major. With 18 holes still to play, Tiger’s 14th major is close enough to smell. While that’s a ridiculous feat in itself, yesterday’s performance goes down in golf lore. Simple as that.

It’s downright silly. Nursing a knee injury that left him out of tournament golf for ten weeks, Tiger Woods has been able to tame a 7600 yard monster course, even though his knee buckled after every shot on yesterday’s historic backnine. Tiger knew he would cringe in pain after every shot late on Saturday. Didn’t matter, he hit great shot after great shot in one of the most tense atmospheres in sports: The weekend at the U.S. Open. That’s freakish, that’s mindboggling…that’s Tiger.

Once again, the storylines appear to be lining up for Eldrick. Today is Father’s Day, and we all know the impact Tiger’s dad had on his historic success. So, with that said, what better way to spend a Sunday afternoon? Call up pops, lay your ass on the couch, and watch the magic continue. Tiger tees off at 4:30 p.m. EST, 18 holes away from cementing his legacy even further.

Every year, we know Tiger Woods will be his dominant self, shattering records and making millions. But we can also safely assume that someone will chime in and compare themselves to Woods. Two years ago, Stephen Ames commented on Woods’ erratic play, only to lose 9&8 to him in match play. Last year, Rory Sabbatini said Woods is more beatable than ever, only to get dismantled on Sunday by Tiger. And now, it’s Ian Poulter’s turn to say something stupid.

“Don’t get me wrong, I really respect every professional golfer, but I know I haven’t played to my full potential and when that happens, it will be just me and Tiger.”

Let’s get one thing clear, here. Poulter isn’t a bad player at all. In fact, he’s ranked 22nd in the world and has nine professional wins to his name. But he’s also not the caliber of player that can make this statement and not get laughed at. For all his success, Poulter hasn’t won a damn thing on the PGA Tour, with all of his success coming overseas. Compare Poulter’s accomplishments to Woods’ 62 PGA Tour wins and 13 majors and it’s obvious they’re not on the same universe, even on Pouler’s best day.

Poulter then went on to guarantee a victory in June’s U.S. Open at Torrey Pines. Yes, the same Torrey Pines that Woods dismantled this past weekend. Despite having a grand total of one top ten finish at a major, we’re now supposed to believe Poulter can hang with the best player ever. I have news for you, Ian. By the time you reach that potential, Tiger’s game will continue to improve enough to leave you in the dust…again.

Hosts: Sonny and Ryan

In our new segment called the Sportable Soapbox, Sonny and I bash The Golf Channel’s Kelly Tilghman for her terrible advice on how to deal with Tiger Woods. We also assess the NCAA Tournament hopes of five surprise teams: Dayton, Rhode Island, Arizona State, Ole Miss and Vanderbilt.

Disclaimer: Unlike the Sportable Spot, the Soapbox is slightly more off-beat. It’s rated PG-13 due to language.

Updates: We’ll be adding the Sportable podcasts to the iTunes podcast directory, as well as a few others so that you can enjoy us on the go. There will be more on that later in the week, so stay tuned.

Also, we realize the audio quality has been shaky, we’ve been experimenting with bitrates, but that should be fixed by the next episode.

 

 Sportable Soapbox Episode 1 [18:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

When Hunter Mahan won the Travelers Championship in Hartford yesterday he climbed 70 spots in the FedEx Cup Standings. The only bad part for Mahan is that he trails points leader Tiger Woods by 12,534 points. With winners of each PGA Tournament receiving a minimum of 4,550 points; golfers can only hope they string a run of tournaments together to catch Tiger Woods.

Tiger Woods leads the standings with 19,524 points. The next closest competitor is Phil Mickleson with 15,818. Good luck making a comeback Phil. Picking a winner in this thing is not hard at all. For all you Phil supporters out there I am going to lay down a couple of points as to why Tiger will win the first inaugural FedEx Cup.

Tiger Woods has played in only nine tournaments this year achieving over 19,000 points. Phil on the other hand, has played in 14 events and trails Mr.Woods by almost 4,000 points. Are you kidding me? Can you imagine the number of points Tiger would have in 14 events? Just to get my disliking of Vijay Singh out of the way; the Fijian has played in 18 events and only has 15,723 points. Are the standings wrong or something? Vijay has played in double the amount of tourneys and still trails Tiger.

My second point that I would like to make is that Tiger Woods is going to make sure his name his carved on the first ever FedEx Cup trophy. If this is the “new era in golf”, Tiger Woods is going to make damn sure no one ever forgets ”his era”. Finally, my last point comes from a simple thing I like to call common sense. If Tiger is within reach of winning this thing when it comes down to The Tour Championship at the end of season, he will win it. Phil has lost his swing for the time being and Vijay won’t be able to string enough tournaments together. This trophy is Tiger’s to lose.

The only thing that can hold Tiger Woods back from receiving this FedEx package is his lack of playing time now that his daughter has been born. Actually, it won’t be a factor. Tiger will win regardless.

The U.S. Open at Oakmont this weekend was one of the more interesting tournaments in recent memory. I for one loved it, mostly because we didn’t see Tiger Woods win again. I know he’s the best player in the world, but I find myself rooting against him every single time. The announcers act as if he is the greatest thing that has ever happened to the world, and seem to hand him the trophy every time he steps onto the course.

I don’t understand how going into the last round down two strokes, the announcers had basically said he had the title wrapped up. Tiger is clearly the most dominant athlete in the world, but you know what, there were 60 other golfers out on that golf course and I sure as hell wanted to see some of them. Why was there no talk of the big group of players between five and seven over to start the day? All we heard was Tiger this, Tiger that, when in reality it was one of the guys in the bunch (Angel Cabrera) who won the tournament, and Jim Furyk, who was also back there, had a very real chance of forcing a playoff. Yet the entire time this was happening all we heard was Tiger. As Cabrera was firing an unbelievable 69, we just saw Tiger playing golf and Aaron Baddeley collapsing.

Multiple times throughout the broadcast I heard of how shot were playing right into Tigers creative approach to the game. Why didn’t they talk about the ingenuity of the shots that other people hit? I just can’t understand it. And then there is the issue of Tiger showing up in basically a muscle shirt to play a round of golf. You’re ripped Tiger, we get it, you don’t need to show up in mock turtleneck short sleeve shirt at the U.S. Open to prove it. Congrats to Cabrera for winning one of the toughest U.S. Opens in recent memory, I’m just glad it was him and not Tiger.

Rory Sabbatini decided that his five under first round at The Players Championship was good enough reason for him to do something stupid. Sabbatini called out Tiger Woods, calling him “more beatable than ever.” We have a term for what you did here Rory, it’s called sticking your head into the Lion’s mouth.

This is a ridiculous claim. Maybe if Tiger followed up his disappointing performance at Augusta with another loss, Sabbatini might have a point. The problem is, Tiger followed up his disappointment with a victory at the Wachovia Championship, proving again that he is still the most dominant in the game. And to add to the irony, Sabbatini was one of the ones who got pounded last weekend, losing by five shots. It is also quite good timing that Sabbatini decided now is a good time to call out Tiger instead of say, on a Sunday when they are competing against each other.

Sabbatini should probably take his three career victories and go wander off to play on a different tour. He won’t win this weekend, he probably won’t win next weekend either. He hasn’t done enough to get to the point where he can open his mouth at will. In fact, he hasn’t done enough to get to the point where he can open his mouth at all when it comes to Tiger.