Lame Moments in Sports #2

Annika Sorenstam misses the cut at the Colonial. Yes, I know this has been done to death already, but now it's my turn. Sorenstam's missing the cut is not lame because it indicates that she can't play with the guys. It doesn't. It's not lame because it indicates that the LPGA in general can't give Sorenstam a challenge. It doesn't do that either. It's lame because it took a classy, talented, althlete, performing under tremendous pressure and in the face of some of the worst sportsmanship ever, and did not give her a happy ending. Instead, it let morons like Fulton Allem wander around thumping their chests while relief oozed from every pore on their bodies.

Ah yes, Fulton Allem. "The golf gods don't lie," he said, or words to that effect, when informed of Sorenstam's failure to progress to the third round. In that spirit, I though it might be interesting to examine exactly what the golf gods have to say about Allem. Let's see here... Well, they say he hasn't won a PGA tournament since 1993, which was also coincidentally the last time he placed in the top 100 (yes, one hundred) on the money list. And was also the last time he finished in the top three in a tournament. He's scrabbled a handful of top-10s since then, but none of those since 1998. He hasn't made half the cuts in a season since 1996. He's two for nine on making the cut so far this year, and is averaging 74.18 strokes a round, one-and-a-half strokes worse than Sorenstam's PGA average. In short, the golf gods say that the only reason anyone in the golf community is going to remember Fulton Allem is because of his being a shithead one fine May weekend late in the twilight of a career that defined the word "unspectacular."