West Coast Bias

Brethren: Where the hell does NBC get off showing coverage of the 3rd Round of the 108th US Open past 8 PM EST on a Saturday? Don't they know I had B.Y.O.B. reservations at a Thai restaurant at 9 PM and therefore was not going be able to see Tiger?

West Coast Bias.

But seriously, that was an unreal performance on a Saturday at the U.S. Open. I doubt that there's even much of a need to play today's fourth round -- who is going to pass Tiger on a Sunday at the U.S. Open after he put together that back nine on Saturday? Two eagles and a birdie on a gimp knee in the last six holes. And two of those three scores came after horrendous drives off the tee. ESPN Video has a full hole-by-hole recap of his round
here.

More of Tiger's brilliance, desde


Brethren (cont'd): The most underrated part of Tiger's day was his approach shots that kept him lurking in the early part of the day. He hit a groove somewhere around the turn that put him in a position to do his Tiger thing on 13, 17, 18. I say Tiger thing, because there isn't a living (or dead?) person alive who can do what he did on those last six holes on a golf course.

On the 614-yard par 13, from the rough, hitting over the green onto the fringe. The same green that it took Phil Mickelson as its bitch, giving him a Mickey Cloud-esque quadruple bogey 9 on the hole. Then, Tiger putts the 50 foot eagle shot with a huge right to left break and he nails it.

On the par four 17, a wayward tee shot gives him no chance but to put it into greenside rough, which of course, he one hops off the pin and into the hole. He even started laughing because he knows these are things golfers just don't do! And he caps it off by nailing another eagle putt on 18 -- and there's not much I can say about that one because he did it the "normal" way -- fairway, shot to 25 feet, sink the putt.

Oh yeah, and he was doing this on a surgically repaired knee that was giving him fits and would mentally destroy any human golfer.

Just absurd. Just Tiger.

Ed. note: Forgot to hit Publish when I wrote this at 11 AM ET. Whoops.