Saturday, May 21, 2022

Watching Golf and Horse Racing on TV Today

As I await the pivotal third game in the NBA Eastern Conference championship series between the Boston Celtics and Miami Heat (go Al Horford and Jimmy Butler!) this evening, two more "minor" sporting events are going on this afternoon: the PGA Championship tournament (third round) in Tulsa, Oklahoma and the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore, Maryland.  If I told you that the temperature at one of these events was 57 degrees and for the other it was 91, you might think the golfers were sweating it out while the horse racing attendees would be wearing sleeves...not so, there's a record-setting heat wave going on right now in the American northeast, while the weather has been wreaking havoc with the golfers in Tulsa, for the first two days blasting hot air with strong winds from the south and today abruptly switching to cool, strong winds from the north...the wildly changing scores are reflecting the tumult. As expected, Tiger Woods...and I wish him the best...received an excessive amount of attention even though he just barely made Friday's cut and shot a 79 today to go into the final round, at this writing some 22 strokes off the lead.  I expect the leaderboard to change a bit leading into an exciting final round...at this writing a couple of relative unknowns (Zalatoris and Pereira) are leading it while more recognizable names like Justin Thomas, Bubba Watson and Cory McIlroy are right behind them.  As for the Preakness, the "second leg" of the annual Triple Crown of horse racing for three-year old thoroughbreds, Rick Strike...the surprise Kentucky Derby winner...won't be running in it.  Still, the race should be interesting with Derby runner-up Epicenter the strong favorite and Kentucky Oaks winner Secret Oath the second favorite.  The field has only nine horses...other than Epicenter, Simplification and Happy Jack the entrants did not run in the Kentucky Derby.  The media fanfare is also much less than with the Derby, NBC televised pre-race coverage slated to start at 4 pm Eastern Time, with the race to take place at 7:01.  I think I'll go for Secret Oath.  The PGA Championship is being televised on CBS...wonder what kind of weather they'll get tomorrow...

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