MENS OLYMPIC GOLF 72 Holes, 3-Toed Sloths, Capybaras & various rodents 6:30am EST Thurs 11 AUG

ML Dog · Aug 7, 2016

Starts at 6:30 AM East/3:30 AM West Thursday Aug. 11 and goes through Sunday Aug14. The Golf Channel will broadcast 6:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. ET from Thursday through Saturday and on Sunday from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m

Format is not much different than the week-to-week grind of the PGA tour.

Course is very approximate the The Atlantic Ocean so Wind could be a factor during play.

No Rain is forecast as of now except for possible light Showers on Thursday, not enough expected to disrupt play. Clouds on Saturday are not expected to deliver precipitation. Sunday's final round is projected to take place beneath perfect sunny skies with a temperature around 80 degrees, cooler in the morning of course. Anticipated Temperatures during the event are expected to be consistent around 71 to 80 degrees.

https://weather.com/weather/tenday/l/Rio+de+Janeiro+Brazil+BRXX0201:1:BR

Matt Kuchar is one of four U.S. players in the men’s field,

Matt+Kuchar+Grey+Goose+Lounge+RBC+Heritage+8BIlNvO5uakl.jpg

but just one week out of Rio even he didn’t know what the format was, mistakenly believing there was a two-man team competition.

Unlike a regular professional tour event, the Olympic field is limited to 60 players in both the men’s and women’s tournaments. The U.S. has four players in the men’s competition because that’s the maximum number of qualifiers per country provided they’re in the top-15 of the world rankings. Outside the top 15, a maximum of two players per country could qualify.

The Olympic course was constructed on a former sand quarry along saltwater marshes. 18-hole layout at the Marapendi Natural Reserve.

Screen-Shot-2014-08-12-at-2.40.41-AM.png

The Course has the feel of some of Australia’s classic Sandbelt courses, its home to the world’s largest rodent

— the Capybara —

as well as a species of ground-nesting owl

the caiman

which is an animal that looks a lot like an alligator and has a similar disposition, boa constrictors,

monkeys

three-toed sloths,

crazy-looking FROGS like this

and this

other weird scary snakes

and whatever these things are:

Animal Laison Bruno

will be On Site from 7:00am until 11:30am and also between 2:00pm and sometime around 5:50pm each day in case theres any problems but does not expect any.

Odds courtesy of Bovada cuz thats where the picture available was from. Article accompanying this image though spoke of Golfers who are not in Rio. I don't believe any non-participants are listed below but Your Mileage May Vary.

clowncar · Aug 8, 2016

That one animal is a Maned Wolf, fwiw

ML Dog · Aug 8, 2016

clowncar said:
That one animal is a Maned Wolf, fwiw

Thanks, I thought it was Jackal.

Speaking of which...

Nice payouts if either of The Australians in attendance feel like Rising and capturing Gold for their Nation which of course they should be very very motivated to do as this represents a chance for them to get Australia talking about them instead of #1 ranked golfer In The World Jason Day.

Writeups are from just The Rio Olympics Australian website http://rio2016.olympics.com.au/team so they are all Wine & Roses on these guys but do provide a brief overview of who they are and their career highlights.

Deal is these 2 play on Euro Tour, Asian Tour, PGA and maybe even others so Stats on these dudes at PGATour.com are very incomplete, where these even exist at all. One must hop to so many different websites of each tour which generally do not provide as comprehensive Stats as PGATour.com does on players so its hard and very time consuming to get a gauge on what Form these cats are in, their strengths and weaknesses and their suitability for wagering on here. GolfWorld Link and also Google Link on each provided if anyone feels like going down that Ground Nesting OwlHole.

Marcus Frasier +15000

Marcus Fraser not only keeps on keeping on, he’s getting better as he does it. The almost permanent smile on the larrikin from Corowa belies the competitive fire that he has ridden to six professional victories in all corners of the globe, including three on the European Tour.

Having fought back from a career-threatening neck injury in 2010, Fraser has continued his prized knack of cashing in when in contention, including victory in the Maybank Championship in Malaysia earlier this year.

Lebenssinn_finden_Nachdenken_Gr%C3%BCbeln-640x400.jpg

The win vaulted him to the top of the Asian Tour’s Order of Merit, a lofty perch he has held since. It was his first win in six years and shows he is finding his best form ahead of the Olympic Games.

His best career finish in a major came in 2015 at The Open when tied for 20th. He was ranked 38th on Olympic adjusted rankings when selected, one behind teammate Scott Hend.

Fraser, who will turn 38 before the Games, has a world of top-level experience having played in 10 major championships and 10 WGC events and has become one of the most consistent pros of his generation, after turning pro in 2002.

http://www.owgr.com/en/Ranking/PlayerProfile.aspx?playerID=7070

https://www.google.com/search?q=Marcus+Fraser&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Scott Hend +8000

Hend, who’ll turn 43 during the Olympics, has been one of the great travellers in Australian professional ranks. But more, he’s been a prolific winner through a stellar career with 14 pro victories in nine countries on the Australasian, Asian and European tours.

Now based in Florida, Hend remains one of the world’s longest hitters and, in 2005, during his second of two seasons on the US PGA Tour, became the first foreign-born player to be ranked No.1 in driving distance.

The Queenslander, originally from Townsville, who turned pro in 1997 has made a great habit of winning in the past couple of seasons, particularly in Asia where he has won seven times since 2013, including twice already this season en route to his highest career world ranking.

Hend was ranked 37th on the Olympic golf rankings when selections where finalised, one place ahead of teammate Marcus Fraser.

Scott+Hend+BMW+PGA+Championship+Previews+798hp6nWHjAl.jpg

Hend's Ole Lady gave birth to twin babies in December 2006 and The Hends named them Aston and McLaren. According to Scott, it was pure coincidence that they were named after fast cars and the most angry in his life that he has ever been was when this stupid fat guy made this happen which I am not even gonna speculate about:

http://www.owgr.com/Ranking/PlayerProfile.aspx?playerID=1888

https://www.google.com/search?q=sco...EwiIqofmpbLOAhXJZCYKHTMIBK4Q_AUIBSgA&dpr=1.09

ML Dog · Aug 9, 2016

Eight things to know about the Olympic golf course
August 03, 2016
By Mike McAllister, PGATOUR.COM

The Olympic Men's Golf Competition starts tomorrow in Rio when when the Barra da Tijuca region of Rio hosts the first Olympic golf tournament in 112 years.

Despite having no prior knowledge of the course, players are not particularly fazed. After all, they often face similar situations at majors. Consider that only a handful of players in the PGA Championship 2 weekends ago had previous experience at Baltusrol, which had last hosted a major in 2005.

The deciding factor for the Olympic medals, in other words, will definitely not be course knowledge.

“We get pretty adept pretty quickly to figuring out a golf course,” said Justin Rose, who will represent Great Britain along with Masters champ Danny Willett. “It’s what we do, and we’re certainly down there early enough from the Friday before. So we have the best part of a week to play the golf course and figure it out.”

Just what kind of course is it? Here are eight things you should know about the Gil Hanse-built course.

1. No rough, no trees. Instead, balls that run beyond the fairways will end up in native areas of grass and sand. In addition, there are 79 bunkers, with Hanse calling them the “most dramatic” features on the course. He said the approach is similar to one he used when creating his Castle Stuart; the course in Scotland was one of his inspirations for the Olympic Course.

“The lack of rough will allow balls to move faster towards these areas which provide a more difficult challenge to the players,” Hanse told The Scotsman newspaper. He added that the goal of Castle Stuart was to keep golfers engaged and hopeful with wide fairways and short-grass recovery shots.

“We believe this style of design has worked at Castle Stuart and has been a great model for us on the Olympic course,” Hanse told The Scotsman.

2. Sandbelt style. While it has somewhat of a links-style feel, the more apt comparisons are the Australian sandbelt courses. And with good reason -- it was built mostly on what used to be a sand quarry. When Hanse presented his vision, he used the Sandbelt courses as an example.

<small>Native areas will replace rough as the primary out-of-fairway fear on the Olympic golf course. (Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)</small>

“There’s so few golf courses in Brazil,” Hanse said in an interview with Reuters. “In order to paint a picture for those on the selection committee, our best comparison was Sandbelt courses outside of Melbourne, Australia, that have similar vegetation and sandy nature.”

Rose, for one, thinks it will suit his eye. “Some of my favorite golf is the Australian sort of Sandbelt, and he’s actually tried to use of that inspiration for the golf course,” Rose said. “It has like an Openish-look, sort of a rugged look, to it.”

3. Wind will be a primary defense. That’s no surprise given its links inspiration; besides the 79 bunkers, water comes into play on just four holes. During the test event in March, there was no wind, but in Brazil’s winter, Hanse expects windy, dry conditions.

“The deciding factor will be the weather,” Hanse told Reuters. “It is typically very windy in August. We designed the golf course to handle wind. So if the wind blows like it does normally, I think it will be a really strong challenge. If it’s very calm, the scoring will be lower.”

The early forecast for Rio has winds less than 10 mph, although they could be stronger coming off the nearby Atlantic Ocean.

4. Expect a lot of half-par holes. The yardage is 7,128 for the men and 6,245 for the women, playing at a par 71. “Short yardages by today’s TOUR standards, which were intentional,” Hanse said.
Of the par 4s, four are 412 yards or less; the other five are 479 yards are longer. Thus, no par 4s between 413 and 478 yards. Hanse said he loaded up on the half-pars because “that’s really all you can do in this day and age.”<small>
</small>
5. Same clubs for men and women. From a club selection standpoint, there should be little difference between the two events. Knowing that the course was going to host both the men and women, Hanse said “an overriding concern” was having the men and women hitting similar clubs into the greens on their given weeks. Legendary LPGA player Amy Alcott was a design consultant, and helped immensely from that standpoint.

“If we’re asking the men to hit driver, 7 iron into a hole, and we’ve designed it as such, we need to sort of have the ladies play a similar-type shot,” Hanse said during a recent interview on the On Tap radio show.

That doesn’t mean the men and women will face similar obstacles in the landing zones. Hanse did not want to create massively long fairway bunkering; thus, there could be holes in which the men may need to avoid fairway bunkers while the women must deal with fairway undulations.
On the greens, expect similar hole locations for both events.

6. Sand variety. Due to its environmentally sensitive area, Hanse was not allowed to import or remove sand. Thus, he used native sand for all 79 bunkers – but he opted for three different types. Players will need to understand the differences and the nuances of each type in order to adjust as necessary.

7. Landscape variety. The course was carved out of three different sections. The northern end was once home to a mining operation. The middle section is where the miners extracted the sand. And the lower section was the environmentally conscious area.

That was the tricky area that Course Developers navigated through local concerns. More than 85,000 indigenous plants were included.

“There’s a certain section of the property where we were limited in what we could do,” Lead Develper Gil Hanse said, “and we voluntarily limited ourselves even further by shifting some golf holes around in areas where there is indigenous vegetation and wildlife.”

8. Fun finishing stretch. The 16th hole is a drivable 303-yard par 4. The 17th is the shortest par 3 on the course at 133 yards. And the 18th is the last of the four par 5s at 571 yards. Hanse said the final three holes provide a “great risk-reward scenario.”

He wouldn’t be surprised to see a contender go birdie, birdie, eagle in the final round.

ML Dog · Aug 9, 2016

Potentially helpful (at the least: entertaining....and gets better as it goes along...especially at 12:00 minute mark with discussion of Bubba) Brainstorming on Who presents Value in this Tournament video....

Start at 7:50, as prior to that, talk is about tournaments past and other not particularly relevant to betting this event....stuff.

ML Dog · Aug 10, 2016

Went ahead, took some Initiative in Response to those RX Members who experience slow pageload times due to too many images within posts of mine I put Longtime Poster BOURN in charge of images for this post, instructing him to include Bare Necessity of Images relating to this Olympic Golf Tournament. Hopefully this works out.

TV Schedule, Round One Tee Times, a forgotten champion and a gold medal lost somewhere in Canada.

NO CUT IN THIS EVENT

Seven players in the top 15 of the World Golf Ranking, a number that would best many regular PGA Tour events, the best groups for Thursday and Friday?

It's tough to choose.....

Guys needing to get off to a great start here, There are some potentially great Pairings...

There's Bubba Watson,

Martin Kaymer and Anirban Lahiri, but there's also Rickie Fowler,

Justin Rose and Jhonattan Vegas.

Reigning Masters champ Danny Willett will play along Matt Kuchar

and "promising Chinese youngster Haotong Li".

Reigning British Open champ Henrik Stenson (and odds-on favorite) is in a group with Rafael Cabrera-Bello and Thongchai Jaidee

And if those pairings are not YOOOOOSEEEEE ENOUGH how about Patrick Reed with Sergio Garcia and Emiliano Grillo?

The format will be no different than a usual tournament in terms of stroke play. Despite some confusion last week from Matt Kuchar, there is no team element to the tournament. There is also no 36-hole cut for this event.

When: Thursday-Sunday, Aug. 11-14

Defending champion: George Lyon (Canada, 1904)

(All Times Eastern Time)
Thursday: 6:30 a.m.-3 p.m. ET (Golf Channel)
Friday: 6:30 a.m.-3 p.m. ET (Golf Channel)
Saturday: 6:30 a.m.-3 p.m. ET (Golf Channel)
Sunday: 6:30 a.m.-3 p.m. ET (Golf Channel)

Tee Times
Round 1, Thursday

6:30 a.m. – Adilson da Silva (Brazil), Graham DaLaet (Canada), An Byeong Hun (South Korea)

6:41 a.m. – Padraig Harrington (Ireland), Matteo Manassero (Italy), Danny Lee (New Zealand)

6:52 a.m. – Kiradech Aphibarnrat (Translation: "Sucks of The Hind Tit) (Thailand), Gavin Green (Malaysia), Thomas Pieters (Belgium)

7:03 a.m. – Julien Quesne (France), Marcus Fraser (Australia) Shingo Katayama (Japan)

7:14 a.m. – Nicolas Colsaerts (Belgium), Wang Jeung-hun (South Korea), Espen "wtf?" Kofstad (Norway)

7:25 a.m. – Felipe Aguilar (Chile), Danny Chia (Malaysia), Soren Kjeldsen (Denmark)

Tenis: Caroline Wozniacki desnuda sus curvas en Sports Illustrated

7:41 a.m. – Fabian Gomez (Argentina), David Lingmerth (Sweden), Jose-Felipe Lima (Portugal)

7:52 a.m. – Rodolfo Cazaubon (Mexico), Bernd Weisberger (Austria), Brandon Stone (South Africa)

8:03 a.m. – Danny Willett (Great Britain), Matt Kuchar (United States), Li Haotong (China)

8:14 a.m. – Bubba Watson (United States), Martin Kaymer (Germany), Anirban Lahiri (India)

8:25 a.m. – Jaco van Zyl (South Africa), Mikko Ilonen (Finland), David Hearn (Canada)

8:36 a.m. – Gregory Bourdy (France), Fabrizio Zanotti (Paraguay), Pan Cheng-tsung (Chinese Tapei)

8:47 a.m. – Yuta Ikeda (Japan), Roope Kakko (Finland), Miguel Tabuena (Philippines)

9:03 a.m. – Wu Ashun (China), Nino Bertasio (Italy), Scott Hend (Australia)

9:14 a.m. – Joost Luiten (Netherlands), Ricardo Gouveia (Portugal), Siddikur Rahman (Bangladesh)

9:25 a.m. – Sergio Garcia (Spain), Patrick Reed (United States), Emiliano Grillo (Argentina)

9:36 a.m. – Thorborn Olesen (Denmark), Alex Cejka (Germany), Ryan Fox (New Zealand)

9:47 a.m. – Shiv Chawrasia (India), Seamus Power (Ireland), Lin Wen-tang (Chinese Taipei)

9:58 a.m. – Rickie Fowler (United States), Justin Rose (Great Britain), Jhonattan Vegas (Venezuela)

10:09 a.m. – Henrik Stenson (Sweden), Thongchai Jaidee (Thailand)

)

), Rafael Cabrera-Bello (Spain)

There was no sport at which he was not dominant – baseball, hockey, curling, football, tennis, and especially cricket – he even set a record for pole vaulting at age 19. However, it was not until he reached the age of 38 that he was persuaded to put down his cricket bat and try golf. That October afternoon at Rosedale Golf Course in Toronto he fell in love with the game and dominated the sport in Canada.

Over his life, in addition to numerous wins and awards, he captured eight Canadian Amateur Championships and – his greatest sports achievement - won the Olympic Gold Medal in 1904.

Lyon went on to found the Canadian Seniors’ Golf Association and was elected President of the Royal Canadian Golf Association in 1923. In 1971 he was inducted into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame.

Just like George Lyon's memory within history his Gold Medal got lost. somewhere along the way, no one has been able to find it.

Website link below explores the search for George Lyon's Gold Medal and who he was.
George Lyon died in Toronto May 11, 1938 and is buried beneath a very modest stone marker at Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

George Lyon, in some respects, was the Tiger Woods of his time. It's time his story was told.
His legacy to Canada, the sport of golf in Canada and Olympic Golf must not be forgotten.

http://www.georgelyon.ca/search-for-gold