Two Year Anniversary

With today being March the 12th, we have arrived at the second birthday of Season Tickets With Weston Corbitt.  First I'd like to thank my fans, my family, my friends, all my readers (which include John Madden, Tom Izzo and Calvin Johnson) for supporting this blog over the years.  All my guest bloggers who brought a better experience for people.  And all the other great blogs who have shown me some love.  It makes it all worth it.

Sadly, I don't have the time I would like to blog and write like I used to.  I have been pretty busy with school and work this year and although I try to make time to write its still hard to find the time.  I will keep writing, hopefully more than the past few months, and hope over the summer to really write a lot about my number one passion. 

The blog has come a long way, since the ESPN news feed style stories to actual kind of good writing.  I have included my family and friends, which is the most fun I have had blogging.  The playoff picks to season predictions has been a lot of fun to think of and see on my screen.  I have so much fun doing this and I hope to for many more years past this. 

So, much like the first blog, I follow MSU and their march to madness.  This year has been rougher than the last two, but still they are alive and that is more than I could say a few weeks ago.

Thanks for reading and I hope you can continue to read and find the joy I have writing these fun little posts on my views on sports. 

Tiger Woods: What’s the next step?

My friend Alex Johnson is a golf expert.  Playing, watching, following and analyzing.  To better cover the entire sports world, I asked him to cover golf for STWWC for the majors, players and other stories in golf.  Here is his first entry, and although it is a little different than what I write, I think you will like it.

In the past year and a half or so, Tiger Woods has gone from having not only the Golf world wrapped around his finger, but the entire sporting world. He was the most adored athlete across the globe.  Americans loved him because he was the world beater, and he belonged to us. China loved him because he was a proven winner, and they respect that. Hell, he gave the Black and Asian communities common ground (Tiger’s mother is Taiwanese, his late father a Black American war veteran.) He was loved the world over.

 Then he crashed his BLACK Cadillac (an AMERICAN company) while wearing clothes made in an ASIAN country  into tree and fire hydrant. Symmetry.

You all know by now that he is divorced, loves feeding his kids mac and cheese more than going to the range, and is $150 million lighter in the wallet. I am all for the institution of Marriage and what it stands for, but Tiger’s biggest mistake wasn’t having sex with all those women. Tiger’s biggest mistake came when he said “I do.” Without those two words, Tiger Woods is simply golf’s Derek Jeter. Big sports star gets a ton of action and nobody cares because “Hey, he’s a single guy.”

The Masters saw Tiger return to professional golf. He played to a T4 finish and everyone thought “This guy hasn’t missed a beat.” Then Tiger shot his worst competitive total last year at Firestone, a venue he dominated. He made a run at a few other tournaments, and was leading after 54 holes at his own tournament the Chevron World Challenge. Tiger Woods after 54 holes doesn’t lose. Until Graeme Mcdowell caught him and handed him a nice second place finish worth $650,00. Don’t feel too bad for the guy.

Now it is 2011, Tiger is 15 months or so removed from his last competitive victory. He’s dropped Hank Haney as his swing coach, Swedish Supermodel Elin Nordegren as his wife, his sex addiction, his #1 spot in the Official World Golf Rankings, and seems to be completely lost as to where to go now.

Don’t worry Tiger, I’m here to help.

Sean Foley is now working with Tiger on his swing. I have seen a couple major changes in this new swing as compared to the Hank Haney swing and the Butch Harmon Swing.

The Harmon swing was just a full out, guns blazing slash at the ball. His hips began to clear before his hands got set at the top. His swing plane was much flatter, and the speed at which his body unwound was unreal. It was more of a power and talent swing then. It literally tore his knee apart. So after 8 Major titles and a couple knee surgeries, he made the decision to let go of Harmon, and begin working with Hank Haney.

The Haney swing saw Tiger’s plane go more upright, a more refined swing. It didn’t torque his knee as much, and saw the emergence of deadly precision with the scoring clubs from anywhere on the course. Through both swings, Tiger’s putting was phenomenal. You expected him to make every putt in a clutch situation, just like Rocco knew he’d make that curler on the 72 hole of the 2008 U.S. Open. Tiger doesn’t miss those putts, ever. End of discussion. 6 more Majors and another knee surgery – why not, let’s switch coaches again.

And this brings us to present times and coach. Sean Foley. Sean has worked with Hunter Mahan, Justin Rose, Sean O’Hair. They are all solid players. They all have about the same problem. Short game and consistency. Justin Rose won twice in a month last year, haven’t heard of him since. Hunter Mahan has a short game that makes most weekend golfers think they could hang with him from 50 yards in. Sean O’Hair just doesn’t make sense, weak as they come on the PGA Tour if you ask me. So what does this have to do with Tiger?

Since working with Mr. Foley, Tiger’s short game has looked average at best in spots, and downright awful in others. He stills shows flashes of brilliance, but not nearly as often as we are accustomed to. Tiger is missing greens from the middle of the fairway with a short iron in his hand. Never happened with his old swing(s). His putting is also average, now you wonder if he still has the magic stick when it comes to crunch time.

Tiger is just mentally shaken. He is torn between trying to make a golf shot and make a golf swing. Yes folks, they are different. You think about the mechanics of your swing during your swing, making a good golf shot becomes damn near impossible. And you aren’t Tiger Woods.

The sooner Tiger can get his mind off of where his hands are supposed to be at the top of his swing or when to fire his right hip and just trust what he has done on the range, the better of fhe will be. And he has to switch putters. The Titleist he has been using isn’t working for him anymore. He’s playing more like the weekend duffer than he has since he was 4 years old, might as well give some new equipment a try like the rest of us do.

I do think that Tiger will get comfortable enough with his swing to win a golf tournament this year. No Majors. But he will win a tournament by a couple shots, I’m guessing at the end of the year some time. Once he gets that taste of victory back, everybody else better get ready.

They’ll be playing for second place once again.

My Sister’s Playoff Pick Winning Blog: Twilight: The Series/Romance Story/Teen Obsession Of The Early 21st Century

As you may know, my sister won the playoff pick contest between me and my family.  Her prize?  A blog written by me about a subject of her choice.  So ladies and gentleman, the phenomenon known as Twilight:

In the Twilight movies (and I assume books) it basically revolves around a girl and her choice between living with werewolves for the rest of her life, staying human and collecting casino revenue from her new husband, WMU student Taylor Lautner.  Or she can choose to be a vampire with a group of about 14 other really good looking vampires and live a rich and pampered vampire for the rest of her undead life with absolutely no downside to being a vampire at all.  Meanwhile, she does normal high school stuff like go to dances, try to help her 27 year old friend deal with being prettier and more Oscar worthy, going to chemistry class and try to find a lab partner and hang out with dad, who is by far the best character in the entire series. 

Along the way, the vampires and werewolves fight because they do in every other movie dating back to Abbott and Costello meets Dracula and the Wolf Man Fighting over Something.  It is really getting old.  Don’t zombies fight somebody nor have feuds?  Why is always those two?  Anyways, they fight over protecting her and keeping her safe because although she is incredibly normal, she is special and this point is told to us about 30 times a scene.  Just accept the fact she is special and the whole thing goes by smoother. 

The first movie is basically where we all know everyone is a vampire but Bella is oblivious to it all.  Her better looking and more outgoing friend tells her they all can’t be out in the light, that they are pale, that the keep to themselves, they don’t like garlic in their Italian food.  Bella kind of wanders aimlessly and meets some new friends while she is awkwardly friendly towards everyone in the town of about 354 people.  Her dad, by far the best character in the series, has a legendary mustache and is the town’s sheriff, trying to solve the mystery of all the vampire related deaths started by a clan of other good looking youthful strong vampires that just came into town.  The vampire, Edward, hates the werewolf, Jacob, thus explaining Team Edward and Team Jacob stuff you have heard on Burger King Commercials.  Some guy dies in the end.  That is the first movie.

The other two films that have been released (out of five movies) were mostly the same, where there is some fighting, some other bad vampires, the enemies teaming up for some reason, and Bella not knowing what is going on.  Luckily, her dad’s mustache is there to bring us some masculinity in this movie series.  Dakota Fanning is in one of the movies for no reason too. 

Overall, it’s not a terrible movie series, and it’s even better if you throw in some rifftrax.  You can do much worse to waste an afternoon watching some of these movies.  To improve the final two movies, I’d have the soundtracks done by the classic metal band Europe; add a few machine guns, and Bruce Willis and Bill Murray.  Then, the movies could be watchable for people of all ages.  And all the boyfriends dragged to these movies could resist chewing their arms off before the movie is over.