B
l
o
w
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Away
Purkey: Previewing 2013
Stricker Cutting Back Schedule
Team Canada Wins Copa de las Americas
Who knew the weather gods would upstage
the golf gods last week at Kapalua, a place
where normal people go the first week in
January to enjoy the mild trades and watch
professional golfers, who go to enjoy free
rooms at the Ritz-Carlton, a small field, no cut
and a guaranteed fat paycheck?
Who knew the season opener on the PGA
Tour would suffer more false starts than the
Cleveland Browns?
The constipated beginning of the year’s
weather-shortened tournament was a cruel
blow to the flagging fortunes of an event that
will now struggle even harder to keep its title
sponsor, its increasingly dated qualification
criteria and its remote mountainside venue
on a course where the greens roll funny, the
slope tumbles off the charts and the players
complain the elements can damage their
swings. Already its critics are saying it’s finally
time to say Kapaloha to Kapalua despite
all the impeccable hospitality and goodwill
engendered there through the years.
Who knew ferocious Kona winds would
upstage delicious Kona coffee?
Meanwhile, back on the U.S. mainland,
Alabama played for a national championship
in college football Monday night just a few
hours before The Post put its first edition of
the year to bed with a feature package on
a staff “Postmen” buddy trip to that state’s
Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail (see inside).
Now it’s time for full-field events to
resume all over the globe. After Kapalua’s
inauspicious start, the hope is that the last
two digits of this new calendar year won’t turn
out to be an unlucky harbinger.
