Wednesday, 2. July 2008
20:45 Eurosport, US PGA Tour, Buick Open
21:45 Eurosport, European Tour, Open de France
22:15 Eurosport, Golf Club

Saturday, 5. July 2008
13:30 CNN, Living Golf
19:30 CNN, Living Golf

Sunday, 6. July 2008
09:30 CNN, Living Golf
20:30 CNN, Living Golf
23:30 CNN, Living Golf

As I need a new laptop / messenger bag I was surfing around and bumped into this Titleist messenger bag. Quite nice but with one problem: I couldn’t find an online shop that ships to Germany with reasonable prices.

In all the shops I visited, the shipping costs exceeded the bag prize. Can anyone give me a hint where to order this one in Europe / Germany?

Liebe Freunde des Royal Benzinger,
werte Golf- und Musikverrückte,

ab sofort laufen die Vorbereitungen für das 3. Royal Benzinger Golfturnier
am Samstag, den 11. Oktober 2008, zu dem wir Euch hiermit herzlich einladen.

Neben dem Turnier und der Players Party bieten wir einen Schnupperkurs für Rookies, eine 9 Loch-Spaßrunde für Fortgeschrittene und erstmalig ein Nacht-Shoot Out mit Leuchtbällen an!

Auf unserer frisch geschlüpften Homepage http://www.royal-benzinger.de findet Ihr alle weiteren Infos zum Turnierablauf sowie die Bilder des letzten Jahres.

Auch in diesem Jahr wird unser Turnier von der Popkomm und Intro präsentiert und alle Überschüsse des Turniers dem Sage Hospital gespendet.

Wer sich nicht zu spät anmelden möchte, benutzt einfach das Anmeldeformular.

Wir freuen uns auf euch!

Wednesday, 25. June 2008
21:15 Europsort, US PGA Tour, Travelers Championship     
22:15 Europsort, European Tour, BMW International Open    
22:45 Golf Club 

Congratulations Martin to your second victory in the 2008 season! A shaky round including the triple bogey on 11 made it close at the end, but the way you nailed things down on the first playoff hole showed your guts!

To many more victories to come!

Just returned home, opened the laptop to see the scores from the BMW International Open and this is what I found:

Martin Kaymer missed the course record of 62 by one stroke and is five strokes clear of the pack. Tino Schuster mached his opening day 69 with an even better 68 today. Brings back good memories! Inside the cut are also Stephan Gross (amateur), Alex Cejka and Bernhard Langer.

I just discovered that Phil of http://fooore.de/ is on the premises in Munich today, let’s see what he has to report in the upcoming days.

Teeoff.de hat ein Interview mit Martin Kaymer nach der ersten Runde der BMW International Open.

My meeting management needs some improvement. This time around last year, I was on a business trip to Munich and on my way back to the airport had a chance to stop by at the GC Eichenried. I’ll have to settle with the TV coverage this year.

This years tournament will mark the 20th anniversary of the event. The first winner back in 1989 was David Feherty, defending champion is Niclas Fasth who held off Bernhard Langer last year for the victory.

Bernhard will also give it a shot this year to win the only tournament on german soil that he hasn’t won in his career. He will lead a strong german field at the tournament, including the following players, sorted by entry category:

Category 3 — European Tour Order of Merit Tournament Winners
Martin Kaymer

Category 5 — National/Regional Orders of Merit
Alex Cejka
Richard Porter
Tino Schuster
Max Kramer
Christoph Günther
Gary Birch Jr. (rooting for GC St. Pauli, yeah!)
Dennis Küpper
Marcel Haremza

Category 9 — Top 40 2007 Career Money List
Bernhard Langer

Category 11 — Re-Rank 1 of players in categories 11,11a,11b,11c,11d
Sven Strüver
Marcel Siem

And as alternates 18 and 19
Category 99 — Amateurs included in the field
Sean Einhaus
Stephan Gross

Bernhard Langer and Martin Kaymer are being paired for the first two days with Graeme McDowell, they start their round Thursday morning at 08:30 at the 10th tee. Let’s see how many german players we will see on the weekend. Low scoring has been a feature of the BMW International Open since the event went to Golfclub München. In 1997. The average winning score has been 267, with an average 36 hole cut of three under par.

The official BMW website has all the news and an interview with Bernhard Langer, a “20 years special” so make sure you check that out. Should you plan to attend in person, the entry is free of charge on Thursday and Friday.

Edit: follow our live updates on http://twitter.com/leadinggolfblog

The PGA just informed, that Tiger Woods will be out for the rest of the 2008 season:

Woods said Wednesday he will have season-ending knee surgery, revealing he has had a torn ligament in his left knee since last July.

And he suffered a double stress fracture of his left tibia while preparing to return to the PGA Tour last month, which forced him to miss the Memorial and was the source of his pain at Torrey Pines when he won the U.S. Open.

Definition: Texas Scramble is a competition format that is a basic scramble with a slight twist.

Scrambles involve 4-person teams playing four balls, but with each shot coming from the same spot (the best of the four drives is chosen and all four team members then hit from that spot, and so on).

The variation in a Texas Scramble is that at least four drives of each member of the team must be used during the course of the round: At least four drives hit by Player A, four by Player B, and so on. In a regular scramble, a great driver might have his tee ball used on every hole. A Texas Scramble eliminates that possibility and allows even the weakest driver on the team to get into the action.

Well, the definition doesn’t say anything about having the same idea in what direction to play: