Karlsson is a major factor

Golf Betting Lines

08/07/2008 - Bloomfield Hills Township, MI (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Who is the only player to register a top-10 finish in each of the season's first three major championship?

That would be the tall Swede, Robert Karlsson.

He tied for eighth at the Masters, shared fourth at the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines and last month, Karlsson used a final-round 69 to get into a tie for seventh at the British Open Championship.

Karlsson shot a two-under 68 on Thursday and shares the early lead at the PGA Championship.

So it must have been all of the success he's accumulated all year that propelled him to the top of the leaderboard, correct? That had to be the thought process, right?

"To forget about those three top eights, that's the most important thing," he said.

What?

"This has nothing to do with the other three," Karlsson explained. "If you look at the other three, obviously I'm really, really ecstatic about the way I played at the U.S. Open and Masters, and the British Open just sort of happened when the weather came up on the last day. I don't think I've ever been so good in the lounge at the airport before."

Fair enough.

Karlsson is 22nd in the world rankings and played on the last European Ryder Cup team. He owns seven victories on the European Tour, and although he might not be a household name in the U.S., Karlsson's a big-time player in the world of golf.

The 6-foot-4 Swede has not missed a cut anywhere in the world this year. He hasn't finished outside the top 20 since a tie for 30th at the WGC-CA Championship in mid-March.

Karlsson is almost assured to be part of Nick Faldo's Ryder Cup team next month and now, at Oakland Hills, Karlsson can earn major championship win No. 1.

Karlsson did not get off to the kind of start one expects from a leader. He double-bogeyed the first, but then rattled off three consecutive birdies from the second. He added birdies at six and eight and found himself three-under par.

When Karlsson birdied No. 11, he was the only competitor at four-under par. Unfortunately, an errant lob-wedge at 14 and a couple of trips to bunkers at 15 both led to bogeys.

He parred out to get in at minus-two.

While Karlsson's in the hunt for his first major, it's still early. Just don't ask him to think too highly of his 2008 major year.

"Well, Tiger's not playing all of them, is he?"

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FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.