Roaring Rory
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- August
- 24
Had the chance to talk to Rory Sabbatini today, and found out—in a small dose—that what most of his colleagues on the PGA Tour say is true.
He’s a good guy who speaks his mind.
Sabbatini is one of a kind  brash, bold, brutally honest  and particularly so unique among the vanilla set that makes up most of the PGA Tour. Those things that everybody else is thinking but won’t say … Sabbatini says them.
Those things that nobody else would dare say about Tiger Woods, in particular … Sabbatini says them, too.
Hey, more power to him.
There’s no room for trash talk in golf, no room for verbally stomping on a guy or even showing him up. But there is nothing wrong, at all, with being confident that you can beat a certain golf deity, even if you have yet to do so.
OK, maybe it’s not the smartest thing to get Tiger ticked. Surely Steven Ames knows that, and Vijay Singh, too. You don’t pull on Superman’s cape. You don’t spit into the wind.
Sabbatini tugs, though. He had the guts to suggest Tiger was letting down the FedEx Cup and the PGA Tour by skipping this week, while Els and Phil Mickelson would only joke about sitting out a playoff week.
But to believe Tiger’s beatable sometimes  and there are weeks when he’s not beatable by anyone currently walking the earth  well, what’s wrong with that? Isn’t part of the whole broad-brush criticism of the Tour’s players that they go out there knowing they can’t beat him? That he beats them all in his red shirt by putting his tee in the ground on Sunday?
Sabbatini doesn’t think that way, like the rest of the lambs. Has he paid for annoying Woods? Yeah, he has. The theory is that pretty much everybody else has paid for his ramblings, too, because when Tiger has added incentive, they are all so many bugs on his windshield.
Regrets? Nope.
“The thing is, you can’t live life regretting stuff,� Sabbatini said. “You just gotta look at what’s occurred and learn from it. That’s about all you can do. I don’t think I regret anything ever. The situation is, you just kind of have to take what happens and try and learn and become a better person for it.�
This entry was posted
on Friday, August 24th, 2007 at 6:34 pm by Carp.
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Nathaniel Mwangi
August 28th, 2007 at 2:16 am
Big golf fan and play the game,couldn’t help but laugh at your column written in the Journal News on August 25,2007�Leader is in a giving mood�.Carp ,how much of the lovely Sabbatini kool-aid or maybe martinis were you sipping at Westchester Country Club when you wrote this article!Sure every professional better believe that when he tees it up on Sunday,that he should win the tournament,better yet every hacker(this writer included)better believe that he can win that $10 nassau when he tees it up on Sunday.Yawn… big deal that Rory Sabbatini thinks and says,�Tiger is beatable “and that,�I wish I could play with him in the final group on every Sunday�,that is if he wants to play for second place, or worse! Look at his final score at the Wachovia..74 How about Bridgestone..wow 74!In your article you insinuate that the PGA tour is made up of a bunch of wimps,�Sabatini doesn’t think that way,like the rest of the lambs�.Every golf fan out there loves when Tiger is challenged to the fullest on Sundays, who can forget Bob May going Mano a Mano in the PGA of 2000 at Valhalla which ended with Tiger winning in a playoff, or Rich Beem winning the 2002 PGA Championship at Hazeltine National, shooting a final round 68 to edge Tiger out by a stroke!Rory should not be celebrated for his guts, when he has not produced on the big stage with his skills,but only with his mouth,please…. spare us the trash talking, and produce when it counts ,now that would be memorable!In your article you mentioned that Sabbatini’s low point publicly,came when, “he stormed away from Crane in the fairway�when he was frustrated with Crane’s slow play.In my opinion that paled in comparison to when he graced a ticket paying fan on Sunday at Bridgestone with a profanity ,and had that fan thrown off the course because the fan made a witty comment,�Hey Rory still think Tiger’s beatable�,this guy thinks he’s a competitor!What.. to come up so small on Sundays against Tiger ,to get what he wants in being paired with Tiger on a Sunday,then having a fan kicked off the course solely for what the fan uttered!Please let’s not celebrate this guy like he’s this big swashbuckling,tough talking competitor let a pro show us by his actions on the course if he is truly worthy, rather than with is big mouth