Sports galore this week
I've been very happy so far with how the Phillies have performed in the last week and a half, under their new manager, Ryne Sandberg. The ultimate goal should be to finish with a .500 record to match last year. The sad part to this is that it seems like the same players who weren't showing up for Charlie Manuel have, for whatever reason, decided to play a little better. I hope they feel bad about that and continue playing well for the rest of the season but also publicly make an apology to Charlie at the close of the season. We can only hope that he is making the most of his time away from the stress of managing and lining up a new job.
Ok, I am finally paying attention to the Eagles now that we are past the third preseason game. The offense is looking very good but the defense doesn't seem to be exhibiting much improvement from last year. I sure hope the defense plays better when they play their very first official game against Washington on "Monday Night Football." No pressure!
The U.S. Open Tennis Tournament started this week. It looks like the only American male who has a chance to do well in the tournament is John Isner. He has a great serve for the hard court surface. If he can actually win some return games he can at least make it to the quarterfinals. On the women's side, Serena Williams is a huge favorite to win the whole thing. She has to stay injury free, and from the looks of it, she is ready! I will have a much fuller recap of the tennis when it wraps up in two weeks. The Open has always been a real marker for me for the close of summer and the unwelcome beginning of the long wait 'til spring!
Last week's first FedEx event for golf was very exciting to watch. There were a lot of potential winners in the field last Sunday, but Adam Scott was the only one who held on and he took the win. He's now in second place in the overall standings for the FedEx Cup. He has a beautiful swing and is really fun to watch. I hope he continues to play well. Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson will be seated in first and third place going into this weekend's second round. The most talked about story for this week will be whether or not Tiger Woods will be able to play after hurting his back on Sunday. Because he is in first place, he doesn't even have to play in this second round. He has to feel a lot of pressure to play not only because of TV ratings but also because his foundation is one of the sponsors for the tournament. I hope that if he decides to play that he has spent this week getting a ton of PT and chiropractic adjustments! It was obvious that he was really hurting on Sunday.
I also wanted to be sure to mention that the Little League World Series was won by the team from Japan. It was pretty awesome that Delaware was represented in the final weeks of the playoffs. We can now look forward to a repeat for next year.
