Pargie’s Sporting Weekend
I was let down in the golf where my two punts Rory Mcilroy and Jordan Spieth finished runners up and third respectively in the BMW European event in Johannesburg and the Sony USPGA at Hawaii. The former was won by Graeme Storm who very nearly lost his European tour card. He was 100 euros light when it transpired that Patrick Reed had not played enough events and was therefore ineligible creating a further place. Storm aged 39 is a journeyman pro whose only success was the French Open some 10 years ago. This went to a play-off determined on the third playing of the 18th. It reflects well on golf that his polar opposite Rory, 4 major winners, multi millionaire 12 years his junior, should be laughing and joking with Storm, pulled a face when Storm narrowly failed to putt out should clearly have a good relationship with him. Golf unlike football and cricket still has a fine level of etiquette and courtesy between competitors.
In Hawaii Justin Thomas maintained his fine start with his second consecutive win this time by 7 strokes with a PGA record of 253 strkes. . Every year a fresh slew of young golfers emerge from the college circuit and the best of them are Thomas, Smylie Kaufman and Phil Rodgers who are putting pressure on Jordan Spieth and Dustin Johnson as well as the older hands like Jim Furyk. However I’m not sure if Thomas has it in him to win a Major, whereas the man I shall be putting the Pargie tenner on is Hideki Matsuyama at every Major.
Come Sunday I needed to retrieve golfing losses if I was taking the missus to IKEA. Two lays appealed to me: Manchester United and Juventus. I don’t believe Manchester United are anywhere near the finished article. Pogba, whose marking was poor at set plays, has yet to make an impact to justify his £100m price tag and there are too many players below the required level. As a club fashioned on the idea of the individual (George Best, Eric Cantana) working within the collective they have yet to buy into Mourinho pragmatism. Conversely, Liverpool have been a revelation under Jurgen Klopp. The merry German seems to have generated a team spirit of which Shankly and Paisley would have been proud. I fancied them for at least a draw and this is what happened. I often regarded Migmolet as Liverpool’s weakness. However he made a good save early doors which gave him the confidence to make few more. Over in Florence, Stefan thought that Fiorentina would hold Juventus at home and duly went better by beating them. With skinny odds I can go beyond the Prague tenner to back against the favourites and to coin that phrase beloved of flutterers “just about broke even”.
