Yani Tseng capped of the 2011 Grand Slam Season in style. She ran away with the RICOH Women’s British Open at Carnoustie. Her -16 total was four ahead of the field and gave Tseng her second consecutive British Open title.
At 22, Tseng is the youngest golfer to collect a fifth major. Tiger Woods was 24, Jack Nicklaus 26, Se Ri Pak 28, and Annika Sorenstam 32 when they reached that mark.
This was Tseng’s second major of the year. She won the Wegman’s LPGA Championship by ten shots in June at Locust Hill Country Club.
Tseng has saved her best golf for the major championship season. Five of her nine LPGA wins have been majors. Four of them have come since April 2010.
Last April I wondered who would fill the game’s power vacuum following Lorena Ochoa abrupt retirement. Tseng had just won the Kraft Nabisco Championship and looked like a promising star, but had won just three LPGA events.
Several international players vied for the title. Jiyai Shin was the reigning Rookie of the Year and was about to become World # 1. Ai Miyazato had won twice already that season and would swap places with Shin as the game’s best throughout the summer.
America’s Christie Kerr would run away with the Wegman’s LPGA Championship that summer and would also spend a few weeks as number one.
Young Americans began rounding into form as well. Paula Creamer won the U.S. Women’s Open at Oakmont in July 2010. Michelle Wie grabbed her second victory later that summer at the CN Canadian Women’s Open. Stacy Lewis, the University of Arkansas product, won the 2011 Kraft Nabisco Championship
None of the young guns has won since. Creamer lacks the distance to become a consistent major championship contender. Wie has all the talent in the world, but has a balky putter that’s held her back since she turned pro. Many hope she’ll realize her full potential after graduating from Stanford next year. Lewis is a regular on leader boards, but so far hasn’t built on her record since that magical week in the California desert.
Tseng, meanwhile, has tremendous firepower and has dominated the competition since Ochoa stepped away last spring. She is one of the game’s longest drivers and can overwhelm many of the courses on tour. She brought Carnoustie Golf Links to its knees this week.
After opening with a disappointing 71 on Thursday, she fired back to back 66s on Friday and Saturday. Her dialed- in iron play gave her several kick-in birdies. At times her ball-striking was Hoganesque, an apt term since Ben Hogan won his final major (and capped off his Triple Crown Season) at Carnoustie in 1953.
Tseng entered Sunday two behind Germany’s Caroline Masson, a youngster playing in only her second major championship. Masson faltered on the front nine and lost her lead early (she faded to a final round 78). Tseng grabbed the lead for good by the 7th hole and cruised to victory.
Her play on the home hole was indicative of her performance this week (and this year for that matter). Her drive split the fairway. She chose a nine iron from 135 yards and hit it to four feet. Those two impressive shots dismantled what many consider the game’s most challenging final hole. From there she tapped in for a birdie three and a four shot victory.
Bobby Jones once said of a young Jack Nicklaus, he plays a game that I’m unfamiliar with. Many on the LPGA marvel at Tseng’s skill set. The ball sounds different coming off her clubface. She can hit shots that others can’t and puts up scores others only dream of.
Brittany Lang, who finished second this week, raved about Tseng’s performance: “She’s just got it all. It’s pretty cool, cool to watch.”
Tseng has already totaled Se Ri Pak’s major championship total. She’s two behind Karrie Webb. And she’s halfway to Annika Sorenstam’s mark, the most in the modern era (post 1970) of women’s golf.
This year Tseng dismantled the competition. Golfweek’s Alistair Tate called her “untouchable,” and if she’s not that, she certainly is the Champion Golfer of the Year.
This week the NFL achieved labor peace; camps opened; and free agency began. “Football is back,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell proclaimed Monday when the NFL Players’ Association signed a new collective bargaining agreement that runs through 2021, ending the five month NFL lockout. Players reported to team facilities on Wednesday. All teams will open camp by Sunday July 31.
GM’s worked at a feverish pace. Teams signed their draft picks and began acquiring missing pieces to complete their rosters. The new salary cap requires teams to spend 99% of their cap space ($120.375 million) this year.
The new salary cap (due to the labor situation, 2010 had no salary cap, 2009 salary cap was $128 million) forces some teams to massively cut salary while others must spend like drunken sailors.Dallas ($136 million),Green Bay ($129.8 million) and the New York Jets ($128.5 million) must shed payroll whileKansas City ($74.7 million),Philadelphia ($80.8 million) andSeattle ($81.1 million) must enhance it.
Over the last decade, Redskins owner Dan Snyder has made the NFL off-season fun to watch. Each winter he fired up Redskins’ One and signed the year’s big name free-agent. Bruce Smith, Deion Sanders, Donovan McNabb, and Albert Haynesworth all received huge contracts from the profligate Snyder.
This year, the Redskins are not the story: the Philadelphia Eagles are. The team traded back up quarterback Kevin Kolb to the Arizona Cardinals, signaling their faith in dynamic quarterback Mike Vick, who dazzled in his first year under center for the Eagles. Vince Young, the former Tennessee Titans quarterback, will back up Vick. On Friday they beat out their hated rival, the Dallas Cowboys, and landed the top free agent on the market: cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha. With Asomugha and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie (acquired fromArizonain the Kolb trade), the Eagles substantially enhanced their secondary and became a Super Bowl favorite.
Another perennial contender, the New England Patriots, made some head- scratching moves. They rid the Washington Redskins of troubled defensive lineman Albert Haynesworth. They got big-play receiver (and prolific personality) Chad Ochocinco to help Tom Brady stretch the field. While both men have enormous talent, both come to Foxboro with tremendous baggage. Haynesworth was a bust in Washington. He was often out-of-shape, took a number of plays off (famously quitting on the field against the Eagles last fall) and ran into trouble with the law. Ochocinco is one of the game’s biggest talkers, a famous tweeter, and seen by many as selfish player.
The Patriots will have plenty of sizzle this year. So will their hated foe, the New York Jets. It’s impossible to calculate the intrigue and attention coach Rex Ryan has injected into this (formerly moribund) franchise. He has taken the franchise to two AFC Championship game’s in his first two seasons with the Jets. He has given the team panache and swagger. Since arriving in the Meadowlands, his Jets are the talk of the NFL.
This week the NFL Network should have been renamed Jets’ Network. Reporter Scott Hanson reported from the team’s headquarters every few minutes as reports suggested the team was a front-runner for Nnamdi Asomugha’s services. Many speculated that Asomugha, coupled with lock-down corner Darrelle Revis, would form the best cornerback duo in a generation, and strengthen Rex Ryan’s potent defense.
That deal ultimately fell through when the Eagles swept in and (surprised everyone) by grabbing Asomugha. Shortly thereafter, HBO announced that (due to the lockout) it would not have Hard Knocks this summer (the pre-season show that highlighted the Jets last year). Talk about a blow to football fans everywhere. Not all is lost for the Jets, though. The team retained Santonio Holmes’ services, hoping the formerOhioStatereceiver will inject life into their oh-so ordinary offense.
In the NFC South, the Carolina Panthers spent lavishly to bring in talent to surround rookie quarterback Cam Newton. They retained their pro-bowl tailback Deangelo Williams (5 years $43 million) and defensive end Charles Johnson (last year’s sack machine, $32 million guaranteed) and brought in defensive tackle Ron Edwards (3 years $8.5 million) fromKansas City.
Out west the Seattle Seahawks turned a page when their quarterback for the last decade, Tim Hasselback, signed withTennessee. Tarvaris Jackson, one of the many Brett Favre backups, came to town. Wide-out Sidney Rice came fromMinnesotaas well. It’s a new era in thePacific Northwestfor second year coach Pete Carroll.
Big name free agent signings will continue for the next several days as rosters are finalized and teams prepare for the upcoming season. The first pre-season games will begin in a fortnight and Week 1 will kick off on Thursday, September 8, while the first Sunday will come on September 11.
Condensed free agency has made this week an entertaining one for fans. Breaking news occurred nearly every hour, as teams made deals signing one big name or another. Mike Lombardi and Jason LaCanfora of the NFL Network frequently commented on the latest transactions. Adam Schefter and Chris Mortensen were ubiquitous on several ESPN platforms.
For years, baseball has thrived during its winter hot-stove season when free agents hit the open market and big names get traded. But the hot-stove takes place over several months between November and February. It’s Christmas for baseball fans during the interminable off-season.
Santa arrived for football fans this July. The NFL is back and, as the free agent carousel has shown us, as entertaining as ever.
Michele Bachmann has surged in the polls since announcing her presidential candidacy last month at the CNN New Hampshire Debate. The Des Moines Register poll put her in a dead heat against front runner Mitt Romney in Iowa. Public Policy Polling has her in second place inNew Hampshire. The media consider her a serious contender for the Republican nomination. A skeptical public ask: is she for real?
Most think she must win Iowa. The state is made for Bachmann: she was born and raised in Waterloo, shares the social conservative worldview of most caucus goers, and is a retail politician in a state where voters expect presidential candidates to press the flesh, knock on doors, and eat in local diners.
Powerline’s Scott Johnson, a Minneapolis tax attorney and longtime Bachmann watcher, says her skill at retail politics has allowed her to survive smear campaigns from the Left. The most notorious attempt came in 2008 after Bachmann appeared on MSNBC’s “Hardball” and questioned Barack Obama’s beliefs, wondering if he shared anti-American views. Liberal groups flooded $1.5 million into the campaign coffers of her opponent, Elwyn Tinklenberg, in an effort to knock off the first term Republican. Bachmann eked out a three point victory on Election Day.
Liberals have been trying to shut Bachmann up since she got into Minnesota politics in the late 1990s. She became an education reform advocate after seeing her daughter coloring posters in an 11th grade algebra class. Appalled at the watered down academic standards, she decided to run for the local school board in 1999.
She lost that contest but remained active in local Republican politics. A year later she challenged her state senator Gary Laidig, an eighteen year GOP incumbent. Fed up with the status quo, Bachmann put in name in nomination, gave a rousing five minute oration at the nominating convention for the state senate, and ran away with the party’s nomination. She won 61% of the primary vote and sailed through in the general election.
She became a vocal social conservative while serving in the Minnesota legislature. She championed foster care (she has raised 23 foster children), traditional marriage, and the right-to-life. In 2005, she supported the teaching of creationism, in addition to evolution, in public schools. She called the scientific community’s support of evolution dogmatic and condemned its censorship of creationism.
In 2006, Bachmann made a run for the U.S. House of Representatives when Congressman Mark Kennedy left his seat to run for the U.S. Senate.
2006 was a horrible year for Republicans: The GOP was tarred by the unpopular war in Iraq, Mark Foley’s sex scandal, the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, and the failed presidency of George W. Bush. Democrats won back control of Congress for the first time since 1994. Bachmann won 50% of the vote in Minnesota’s 6th district, and became one of thirteen new Republicans in the Class of 2007.
A freshman congresswoman in a minority party has little ability to shape legislation, so Bachmann turned to the media to advocate her views. She became a fixture on cable television and on conservative talk radio. Her good looks and straight talk made her a go-to-member of the Republican Caucus, serving a role Anthony Weiner would play for the Democrats. Bachmann offered plenty of red meat to the base and became a master of the outside game (excelling on television, as contrasted with the inside game of shaping legislation).
Frequent media appearances made her a target for liberal attack ads. Bachmann became one of the Obama administration’s sharpest critics and one of the most polarizing figures in Congress. She regularly went on television and ripped the president’s liberal policies. Talking on live television also revealed a hyperbolic tendency, opened her up to criticism for gaffes, and prompted Chris Wallace to recently ask her if she was a “flake.” But the media also made her one of Congress’s most recognizable figures and helped her become an incredible fundraiser. Last year she had a $13.5 million war-chest at her disposal in her re-election quest.
It’s no surprise that in the Age of Obama she was an enthusiastic supporter of the Tea Party. Bachmann founded the House Tea Party Caucus in July 2010, and went around the country leading up to the November mid-term elections championing fiscal responsibility and a return to constitutional first principles. This January, Bachmann offered a Tea Party response to the president’s State of the Union address.
She became, in the words of Matt Continetti, The Queen of the Tea Party. But she was a queen without much power. At 55, she was a House member years away from chairing a congressional committee and had little chance of winning a state-wide election in blue-leaning Minnesota. So she decided to use her political celebrity to run for president.
Last month at theNew Hampshiredebate, she received rave reviews for her performance. Many credited her new campaign advisor Ed Rollins, the man who ran Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign in 1984 and helped Mike Huckabee win Iowa in 2008, for her new-found discipline. Throughout the debate she remained on-message, touted her congressional experience, and re-iterated her conservative social and fiscal views.
She also conducted a weekend interview with the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore. In it, she differentiated herself from Sarah Palin, the populist heroine to many on the Tea Party Right. The headline said it all: “On the beach, I bring Von Mises.” Bachmann said Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman, Walter Williams, and Ludwig Von Mises shaped her intellectual worldview.
She presented an economic outlook reminiscent of Jack Kemp and the supply-side revolutionaries of the 1970s and 1980s: She plans to reduce the corporate tax rate from 35% to 9%, eliminated the capital gains, death, and alternative minimum taxes, and reduce tax rates across the board and broaden the tax base to bring in more tax revenues.
Echoing Ronald Reagan and Paul Ryan, she wants to preserve the social safety net but think the country’s perilous fiscal condition puts everything else on the table. She would have no problem eliminating the Department of Education, for instance—music to many conservatives’ ears.
But she has one serious hindrance that leaves many wondering if she’s all talk and no action: Michele Bachmann has no legislative record to speak of. She has sponsored 40 bills and resolutions since coming to Washington four years ago. None have been signed into law.
This is not an insurmountable hurdle. After all, Gerald Ford spent a quarter century in the House without authoring a piece of legislation. He easily was confirmed as vice president in the wake of Spiro Agnew’s resignation and assumed the presidency after Richard Nixon stepped down in August 1974. But Ford never won a national election either, and was defeated by Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Bachmann hopes her record and her rhetoric will appeal to Republican primary voters and the president’s job-performance will sink him in a general election. She reminds everyone that she voted against TARP, the stimulus package, cap and trade, and Obamacare.
But some conservatives wonder if she can pass her agenda, and limit government, with her limited experience.
Commentary’s Peter Wehner is one of those skeptics. He criticized Bachmann for ducking questions on entitlement reforms and her banal observations about improving Medicare. Talking points don’t make policy. While Bachmann has mastered the outside game and attracted enormous media attention for her conservative causes, she has no experience shaping policy.
Neither did Barack Obama. Obama won the presidential election based on his media celebrity, had national favorability ratings over 50%, and had super-majorities in both houses of Congress, but struggled to pass his agenda. The media labeled him the orator in chief: still, he spent the first year of his presidency getting his health care legislation through Congress.
Obamacare passed on a party-line vote, but was never popular with the electorate. Critics said the president outsourced the legislation to Congress, and blasted him for refusing to enter the inside game. Perhaps that’s why it was such an uphill battle to pass the legislation. The president never convinced a majority of Americans his proposal was a worthwhile initiative; a recent Rasmussen poll shows 53% of Americans want the legislation repealed.
To reform entitlements and preserve the welfare-state, the next Republican executive must excel at both the outside and the inside game. So far, Bachmann has only mastered the former. She will spend the campaign trying to convince voters she’s serious about policy and ready to tackle the challenges facing the country.
She hasn’t done so, yet. A recent Iowa headline captured the Bachmann phenomena (so far) best: “Bachmann focuses on waffles, not issues in Iowa City.”
Jon Huntsman is the most curious of Republican presidential hopefuls. While every other candidate appeals to the conservative base, Huntsman is seeking to win over independents’ support. George Will has called him a Republican who appeals to those who don’t like Republicans. Peggy Noonan labeled him an enigma. Most Americans wonder: who is Jon Huntsman?
He introduced himself to most of the country last week when he announced his presidential bid at New Jersey’s Liberty State Park, the site where Ronald Reagan launched his 1980 candidacy.
Quickly he established his foreign policy credentials and reminded voters he’s the only Republican candidate with foreign policy experience: he was ambassador to Singapore during the George H.W. Bush administration, served as a deputyU.S.trade representative during the George W. Bush administration, and was the most recent American ambassador to China.
He is fluent in Mandarin, learning the language as a youngster while serving as a Mormon missionary toTaiwan. Many think he’s the country’s leading authority on China, the emerging Asian power and America’s most important bilateral partner.
But it’s his time as governor of Utah that makes him a presidential contender. He established his conservative bona fides during his tenure. He signed the biggest tax cut in Utah history into law, reducing the top rate from 7% to a flat 5% rate. He approved three anti-abortion measures. He got a school voucher proposal through the legislature, though it was later overturned on a referendum. He also endeared himself to the National Rifle Association, approving two pieces of legislation that weakened gun-control.
East Coast observers noted his success in Salt Lake City. The Pew Center described Huntsman’s Utah was the best managed state in the country. Forbes called Utah the best state for business. Many in Washington thought President Obama pulled a master stroke by putting Mr. Huntsman into his cabinet, believing he’d removed one of the leading 2012 conservative contenders.
Huntsman wasn’t an orthodox conservative during his gubernatorial stint: he took some controversial stands in one of the country’s reddest states. He came out in favor of civil unions for homosexuals, supported in-state tuition for illegal aliens, and thought cap and trade was necessary to address the environment and combat global warming. Despite these heterodox positions, he maintained strong approval ratings (regularly over 80%). He sailed to re-election in 2008, capturing 77% of the vote.
Many Republicans worry that he’s too moderate for the conservative base. They point to his contrarian views and highlight his service in the Obama administration. Huntsman has done nothing to mollify the situation: he decided to forgo the Iowa Caucus, claiming the social conservative base there was too narrow and consisted of angry zealots.
The candidate wants to make the GOP a Big Tent Party, reaching out to independents and Democrats disappointed with the president’s performance. He thinks the party should address three issues that it’s previously ignored: gays, the environment, and immigration. Huntsman fears the GOP risks becoming a permanent minority party if it refuses to address the concerns of these constituencies.
Political strategist Mike Murphy agrees. He points to the 2000 and 2008 presidential elections. George Bush won narrowly (in the electoral college/he lost the popular vote) in 2000 while John McCain lost decisively (by 7%) in 2008. Both men won 55% of the white male vote.
John Weaver, Huntsman’s top strategist, concurs. He told Time Magazine the GOP faces a demographic “ticking time-bomb,” and the party must address the needs of young voters and Latinos, who don’t share the Republicans’ view on social issues. Naturally, he says Huntsman is the man to help the party reform and become more competitive in the 21st century.
Many Republicans in 2011 think Jon Huntsman’s the one out of touch.
Conservatives see Huntsman as a man who spent the Obama years abroad, and is not in-sync with the Tea Party agenda. How can a technocrat fix Washington, when many in the base feel that Washington is irrevocably broken?
The Tea Party has attacked President Obama directly since early 2009. CNBC anchor Rick Santelli launched the movement in February 2009 when he condemned the housing bail-out (the Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan), said the government was rewarding bad-behavior, called for a Chicago Tea Party, and asked: “Mr President, are you listening?.”
Tea Parties broke out around the country on April 15th and the independent (though right-leaning) movement played a pivotal role in helping Republicans win back the House in 2010.
Donald Trump energized the Tea Party earlier this year, jumping to the top of the GOP presidential polls by challenging the president. Trump called Mr. Obama “the worst president in my lifetime,” demanded to see his birth certificate, and said Obama wasn’t Ivy League material.
Republican presidential hopefuls have piled onto the rhetorical attacks against the president. Michele Bachmann has called him “very anti-American,” Rick Santorum said the president: “has refused to…call evil, evil.” Herman Cain, the only African-American in the GOP field, described Obama as “not a strong black man,” Tim Pawlenty said the president was a “chicken,” and Newt Gingrich, channeling Dinesh D’ Souza, claimed the president had a “Kenyan anti-colonial world-view.”
By contrast, Huntsman has refrained from personal attacks. He says he shares a different worldview than the president, but both are working to make the country a better place. Too many Republicans, in his estimation, have made personal attacks on the president, rather than laying out policy alternatives that will get the country back on track.
Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review has noted the difference in tone between the former Utah governor and the rest of the GOP field. Other conservatives are more strident in their opposition to the president while Huntsman is calm and sensible in his. Ponnuru is right; the GOP base has been hijacked by the Angry Right.
Jon Hunstman is likely not the messenger to appeal to the GOP in 2012. But one hopes his demeanor prevails in the end. The GOP should argue against Mr. Obama’s policies, not make ad-hominem attacks against the man. Theirs should seek to renew America and restore its economic and entrepreneurial spirit, not polarize the country and viscerally attack its leader.
