Good AHL-related story from the… PGA?
Yep. Yusaku Miyazato aced two holes in one round this week; the PGA had said that was the first time it happened, but apparently someone did it 50 years ago in the GHO, when it was the Insurance City Open. (And right, it isn’t even the GHO anymore.)
Who called out the oversight? None other than Bruce Berlet, Hartford Wolf Pack beat writer for that paper upstate. (He’s also the golf writer, which should remove any surprise you might have.)
(Hat tip to JB)
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The Brakettes finish up their first pro season today, and win or lose, it was a pretty good one. For a team with that much old-school support and that much tradition, adding in the gimmicks and promotions and loud music is a delicate thing. They seemed to strike a good balance for a first try this year.
The league they’re in has some work to do. The difficulties of travel and weather are obvious, but the league has to get teams to make up missed games whenever possible. I’m not expecting Chicago to jet two hours to make up two rainouts in Stratford, but those four games New England and the Brakettes lost here at the very beginning of the season had to be made up. That they would be scheduled and then abandoned at the end of the season is a shame.
That leaves teams battling for playoff position while playing different numbers of games; the playoff teams ranged between 41 and 46 games played out of a scheduled 48, with some teams playing additional exhibitions that may or may not count. And when Chicago plays the Michigan Ice eight times and the Brakettes play no one worse than Taiwan in a championship-season game, there’s discrepancies.
On the other hand, once teams got into the playoffs, seedings only set the matchups; the teams flip a coin to determine the home team in the playoff games. There’s backhanded justice in that, I guess, though it allowed the fourth-seeded Riptide to leave the first-place Bandits on the field Saturday in the ninth inning. And while the the one-and-done playoff format is understandable, it makes a couple of 1-0, extra-inning, one-bad-break semifinal games a really tough way for two good teams to go out.
But worst of all Saturday was hearing PA announcer Hal Baird accosted by a league official Saturday night over some kind of discrepancy in the script, when if an error was made at all it came from the league office, not him. A bummer. Baird, for those too young to remember Camelot on Orange Avenue or too averse to softball to show up at DeLuca, is a pro’s pro and a good man who deserved better Saturday night.
It’s a start, though. Crowds were good Saturday; the Brakettes reported more than 1,200 tickets sold for their game Saturday night.
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Now if you’ll excuse me, The Little Punk’s in town. And he dyed his hair a little. Gotta call him names.