Thanksgiving and its following weekend gives us sports fans plenty to be thankful for. We had a great slate of NFL games on Thursday and Saturday brings us “Rivalry Weekend” in college football with so many exciting match ups.
Hopefully, the great golf going on down under doesn’t get lost in all this football hype. The stage is set for a thrilling finish at the Emirates Australian Open as many golfers are jammed atop the leaderboard with some big names poised to make a charge. 
Aussies Greg Chalmers and Brett Rumford share the lead with American Jordan Spieth at five under par. Australia’s favorite son, Adam Scott sits only one stroke off the lead. Rory McIlroy who actually had a share of the lead in the third round fell off the lead with a tough 76 is still only six off the lead.
The Aussie Open airs at 8:00pm EST tonight on The Golf Channel and it offers a great break for those who have grown football weary.
One of the more famous Australian golfers who would like to be a bit further up the leaderboard is Geoff Ogilvy. Ogilvy is tied for 35th at +4 and nine shots back.
Ogilvy is one of the more thoughtful and insightful golfers on tour and he loves golf and golf architecture but don’t think he’s just a golfer. He‘s so much more and he shares his thoughts in December’s Golf Digest.
Guy Yocum gives us an unvarnished Ogilvy in his “My Shot” article.
I’VE ALWAYS THOUGHT tall, dense grass is the least attractive hazard in golf. Slowly we seem to be moving toward shorter, lighter rough, even at the U.S. Open, which more than any championship was defined by penal setups that permitted little in the way of recoveries. Was the setup at Pinehurst for the U.S. Open not wonderful? Did not the best player that week [Martin Kaymer] win? To the last holdouts for deep rough, I’d ask this: If Bubba Watson were in tall, dense grass to the right of the 10th hole at the 2012 Masters and had to pitch out, would that have been a good thing? Wasn’t the attempt at a bold recovery great to see? Would you have rather watched Phil Mickelson reflexively lay up on the 13th hole in 2010 instead of having a go from the pine straw? Case closed. 
IT’S OBVIOUS that narrow driving zones, extreme length and dense grass don’t suit me. I dislike them. So how did I win the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot on one of the most penal setups in golf? Well, nobody hit a lot of fairways. On a course that is supposed to reward pure ball-striking and tremendous driving accuracy, the opposite happened, more or less. I wound up lumped in with everyone else. The penal setups are how Phil Mickelson, far from a precision player, has finished runner-up six times. In 2006, it came down to who was best from 100 yards and in. For that week, it was me.
Note: I was there, with my brother and my Greek brother when Ogilvy won and it was his chip in for par from some ugly rough on 17 that kept him in the race. With that chip in we looked at each other and thought, “Oh boy, that could be it.” And it was.
THE MOST POWERFUL WORD in golf might well be “par.” Can you imagine what would happen if the par-5 13th hole at Augusta National were downgraded to a par 4 on the scorecard? The psychological effect of “par”—an arbitrary number, when you think about it—would be enormous. And negative. Fewer players would go for the green in two; they’d lay up for fear of making double bogey. And then they’d complain. Fans, the less-knowledgeable ones especially, would hate that eagles were impossible and birdies rare. Mind you, the winning 72-hole score would still be the same. The 13th’s stroke average of 4.79 since 1934 wouldn’t change much. It’s just a number on the card. But people would hate it.
FROM THE BEGINNER TO RORY MCILROY, everyone loves super-short par 3s. Everyone loves the 106-yard seventh hole at Pebble Beach, or the par-3 Postage Stamp at Troon in Scotland. They’re considered genius architecture. The question is, why aren’t there more of them? 
IF YOU WANT TO SEE a lot of players who look “right” over the ball, come over to Whisper Rock in Scottsdale. I’m a member there, and on any given day of the week there are so many good players hanging around, it’s a joke. I don’t just mean the 30 or so tour players. I’m talking amateurs, guys with regular jobs, who I will not give strokes to. The club championship is 36 holes of stroke play, and I’ve never won it. The year I came closest, I got beat by an amateur named Jim Strickland. Turned out, Stricky had gone to Arizona State with Phil Mickelson. There are a lot of guys like Jim out there.
GOLF WRITING on the whole isn’t as enjoyable as it once was. I love reading Bobby Jones’ books, and it’s a shame there’s nothing like them being put out today. There are few masters of the craft left.
Note: Geoff needs to spend some time on Links Life Golf.
SERGIO GARCIA has gone from being merely a superb ball-striker to being the best in the game. Sergio has always been a “flusher,” someone who hits it solid. But today he plays golf utterly the way it was meant to be played, drawing or fading the ball at will, probably the way Hogan did it. The strange thing is, his putting evolved at inverse proportion to his ball-striking. At age 17, Sergio was the best putter I’d ever seen. From 15 feet he was practically automatic. But as his ball-striking got better, his putting got worse.
PICTURE A RYDER CUP AT AUGUSTA NATIONAL. The way the back nine would provoke heroics and collapses when it mattered most? It’s impossible, of course. The timing of the event, the condition of the course in the fall, the fact the club would never consent. But we can dream, can’t we?
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