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Thoughts From the Sidelines

Something for everybody

June 26, 2014

I'm sure everyone knows by now about the second World Cup game for the U.S. against Portugal that had an agonizing finish with that last goal for Portugal in the final seconds for a 2 - 2 tie! Soooo close to having that win - if it hadn't been for the injury time added to the clock! I hope they can recover enough to last against Germany and be able to advance to the next round. They only need a tie. GO, USA!

I try to stay off controversial topics in my articles, but what's up with Uruguay's Luis Suarez and biting!? In the game between Uruguay and Italy, Suarez, who is indeed one of the best players in the world, bit another player on Italy's team. This is the third time in his career he has taken a chunk out of another player. I think he should be suspended from all soccer for at least a year and get some required counseling to figure out how to deal with his taste for human flesh!

And with a great transition, I will flip to the gentleman's sport of golf. Just kidding. There are some good stories to share here - just not as frenzied as the World Cup soccer tournament. This was the first time ever that the Women's U.S. Open Championship was held at the same course as the Men's U.S. Open in back-to-back weeks at Pinehurst Number 2 in North Carolina. Martin Kymer played out of his mind for four straight rounds to win the Men's Open at 9 under par and Michelle Wie won her first major championship at 2 under par. The Women's Open also featured an 11-year old qualifier who shot under 80 on both of the first two rounds and scored lower than a significant number of other LPGA players. Pretty impressive! Both championships were very interesting to watch and challenged both fields of players to get a feel for a course that most of us would not want to play. The trend in the designs of courses to try to use less irrigation is making the players have to come up with difficult shots on many different surfaces. This is a challenge for golf for the future of the sport. The second big golf story, and really more fan interest news, is the fact that Tiger Woods is coming back this week to play in the Quicken Loans Invitational at The Congressional Country Club in D.C. His return will definitely have a strong impact on fan attendance at the tournament and many more folks will be turning on their TVs to watch this weekend's tournament to see Tiger play. I hope he does really well and has been able to make a full recovery with adjustments to his game so that he sticks around for a whole lot of tournaments to come. Whether you are a Tiger fan or not, he has had a huge impact on the viewing interest of the game.

In Phillies news, last week Jimmy Rollins became the all-time hit leader in Phillies history, passing Mike Schmidt with his 2,335th hit. If Rollins continues at this pace, he might be a borderline Hall of Famer by the end of his career. It would be great if the Phillies could win more consistently and get back into some level of competition in the National League East. The stats of a bunch of the teams haven't made for a very exciting baseball season to date.

And on a final note, Wimbledon starts this week as well. I'm sure I'll have some good notes of interest on some of those match ups next week!

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