Now THIS is reporting.

Speaking of Ian O'Connor -- since I brought it up -- what did USA Today do with his weekly spot on its column roster? Does it take another Gannett columnist?
(Yes, I know, I'm hired!)

 

I've seen people do the Fleck angle. Well, yeah, Fleck is an Iowan, too. But the comparisons between Fleck's victory and Johnson's are otherwise quite a stretch.

Johnson, lest anybody forget, was already accomplished enough to have made a Ryder Cup team. Jack Fleck was, well, Jack Fleck.

Perspective. God, is it ever missing in this business.

Oh, and Vaughn Taylor quote was about about Tiger.

 

Until Michelle Wie stares down Tiger in the 2012 U.S. Open, Fleck's will stand for all time as golf's most unlikely victory. Still, when a second Iowan, though maybe three shades more famous than Fleck, wins a major by beating the day's best player in the world, the comparison must be made.

On the Taylor quote, I'm now thinking Taylor, outside the scorer's hut, spoke of Tiger as Superman, then later in the press room was asked, "OK, then what does that make Zach?" Anybody know if that was the sequence?

 

I defended Ian on another golf thread a few months ago, so this seems like a good time to plug his book that is coming out next spring about Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. Having talked to him about the level of research he put in and having seen some of it in person, this is pretty much SOP.

And no, I'm not flacking for it... unfortunately. This would be an easy book to plug and getting Ian on talk shows next spring to talk about it would be a kick-in putt.

 

Don't follow the pack?
Who didn't bring up Jack Fleck in this circumstance? Jack Fleck was leading the pack, for goodness sakes.

 

Not saying that. It was an excellent column, and Ian's terrific.
I just wish people wouldn't push the same buttons all the time: Milan High, Jack Fleck, the 62 Mets, etc.

 

I actually liked the quote Ian got from Fleck.
I did not agree that it was the biggest upset in golf since.
Curtis' British Open win was much more of a from-outta-nowhere deal.
Johnson was a U.S. Ryder Cupper last year, so success is not entirely foreign to him.

 

Making too much of the Fleck reference. He had 3 sentences on the guy. Do agree, though, on overstating the magnitude of the upset. In 2003 Shawn Micheel and Ben Curtis won majors. The next year, Todd Hamilton. All more unlikely than Zach Johnson.

 

These guys who bought shares in Zach Johnson, they must've been pretty good guys, right? They agreed to let the deal die the minute he made the pga tour, costing them real coin on their investment....the investor guy definitely made the column, not fleck.

 

An even better trick would be for someone to come up with the "Babe Ruth Shot" when Tiger wins. Not to diminish Ian O'Connor's excellent work, but the Zach Johnson story everybody got at Augusta on Sunday was fresh. So what if everybody in America wrote it, most people who read newspapers only read one, and, in the hands of a good columnist, they got a pretty compelling read.