Tiger!

That 7-iron on the 18th (and the birdie putt that followed) sent a message, don't you think? A little piece of punctuation to give the others pause. Tiger had to make his move today and so he did, shooting the day's low round and patiently avoiding all of Augusta's boobytraps. Vijay struggled a bit, as players often do after a perfect round the day before. Goosen moved up smartly, but now faces the prospect of playing with Tiger in the final pair. That's definitely a good news/bad news deal.

Els, Garcia and Mickelsen are all within striking distance, but have no margin for error. It may be one of the great leaderboards of the last ten years. It promises to be a great final round. Set your Tivos.

Vijay!

When Tiger Woods first exploded on the professional golf scene in 1997, his Tour colleagues had two options. They could play for top 10 finishes (as opposed to outright wins) or they could start working a lot harder on their games. Vijay Singh chose option two. And it paid off yesterday, with a 7-under par round of 65. Vijay's back nine (6-under par 30) is about as close as one comes to golf perfection.

As for the rest of the lads, well, they're all there, except for Davis Love III, who gave back three strokes after his nearly flawless opening round. And a bunch of them will be teeing it up early this morning to finish their second rounds. Famously, Saturday is known as "moving day" at Augusta. Tiger needs to get moving this morning, lest Vijay disappear from view.

Side bets: Aside from Vijay, the best player on the course yesterday was the veteran Nick Faldo, who is 5-under par through 16 holes (-2 for the tournament). The cut will probably fall at plus-two. More rain and thunderstorms are expected this morning. So today's scheduled play will be interrupted at least once.

Masters Update

Okay, I figured out the IBM Leaderboard pagination problem (it was my problem, not theirs). In the box on top, click on the "Traditional View." In the box below, click on the button that says "scorecard." Then click on a player by name (say, Davis Love or Sergio Garcia) and -- bingo! -- up pops his scorecard. If you want a Leaderbard with a hole-by-hole summary, click the button to the left of the top box. Kudos to the IBM folks. It's great.

Other Items:

Davis Love III was the only golfer who shot a bogey-free round today. Which means he will make three bogeys tomorrow, because you can't play 72 holes at Augusta National and not make at least 9 bogeys.

Bernard Langer blew up on the final four holes and fell back into the pack, but he'll almost certainly make his 19th consecutive Masters cut. No small feat, that.

The most interesting stat is "average score by hole." In years past, they had to put the ninth pin in impossible places to prevent the players from making birdies. Now it's the most difficult hole on the golf course. If you look at the individual scorecards of the names atop the leaderboard, you'll see bogey after bogey on the 9th. It's even playing harder than the 10th, which is a monster.

A Great Leaderboard

Big guns, ball-strikers and the wizards of the short game are all over the top of the Masters Leaderboard. The greens softened with Tuesday's and Wednesday's rain, and there was virtually no wind all day today. So despite the added length, about half the field is at level par or better.

A couple of items: (1) Driving accuracy isn't going to make it as a statistical category. The leader after Round One is Gary Player (100%) and among the leaders is Arnold Palmer. So what exactly does that tell us? Not much. (2) I like the IBM Leaderboard feature at the Masters website. You can download it and then just leave it on your computer. It refreshes every two minutes. There's some unnecessary pagination to get to the player scorecards, but with a high-speed connection, you can blow through that in a nanosecond. (3) In general, the USA Network/CBS coverage of the Masters is excellent. The CBS crew's camera work is sensational. The commentary is often smart and helpful. But then the boys in the booth start lactating about Augusta National and the Masters "tradition" and one's only hope is the mute button. What makes the Masters so compelling is the golf course and what happens on it. The faux emotion we can do without.

The return of Davis Love III is most welcome and it's also nice to see Nick Price and Bernard Langer in the thick of things. My friend Seth Kaplan and I have a side bet. He's got Greg Norman (-1) and I've got Nick Faldo (+3). I like my chances.

Hall of Shame

Thanks to Dale Gardner for the first contribution toward building the new site. I've never met him, but he is now $50 better in my estimation than certain members of my family (not you, Mom!), none of whom have visited the Amazon Gift Box. I intend to publish a list of these deadbeats, unless they pony up before the end of the month.

A Public Broadcasting Moment

I'm not sure where this blog leads, but I am certain that I'll need money for the newly redesigned site. The future JohnEllis.blogspot.com site will be called "Elsewhere In The News" and will have a number of new features (links, letters, archives and newswire).

I need your help to defray expenses. If you can contribute $25 through the Amazon bug, I'd appreciate it very much. It's easy and it's fast. Thank you in advance for your help.

Tiger Woods

After Tiger Woods won the 2000 US Open at Pebble Beach, it took a while for the golfing world to grok the magnitude of his accomplishment. I wrote a column about it for New York Press and it still applies.

The Masters tournament begins tomorrow. Television coverage can be seen on the USA Network (Thursday and Friday) and on CBS (Saturday and Sunday). I have a sense that Tiger will dominate this tournament as he did the US Open at Pebble. He's been driving the ball long and straight. His short game is both technically sound and wonderfully imaginative. And he putts the Augusta greens as well as anyone ever has.

The best quote ever about golf was Tom Boswell's in a long ago column for the Washington Post. I can't remember his exact words, but the nut of it was: "it's not that the pros are better than your average club champ, it's that they're so much better." Updated, it's not that Tiger Woods is better than your average PGA Tour professional, it's that he's so much better.

Wall Street's Brand Name Boiler Rooms

New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is widening his investigation into the "play for pay" scandal at some of Wall Street's leading finanical services institutions. According to The Financial Times, "(Mr.) Spitzer is understood to have ordered several investment banks, including Credit Suisse First Boston and Morgan Stanley, to disclose documents that could reveal possible conflicts of interest between analysts and investment bankers." You can read the rest of this by clicking here. Yesterday, I posted an item about Merrill Lynch's sleazy conduct in this regard, which you can read by scrolling down.

Highly Motivated

When details emerged about Arthur Andersen's role in the Enron scandal, the accounting/consulting firm responded by saying that a rogue partner, David Duncan, was solely responsible. Yesterday, Mr. Duncan pleaded guilty to one count of obstruction of justice and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors hunting for higher-ups. To say that Mr. Duncan is "highly motivated" to assist the feds would be something of an understatement. Something large.

The notion that Mr. Duncan was solely responsible for Andersen's disgraceful conduct in the Enron matter was a non-starter from the get-go. No professional services firm works that way (you just go out there and break the law and we'll give you a bonus). The fact that Andersen tried to sell this story through Congress and the news media is yet more evidence of the firm's utter cluelessness. And now the guy they turned on will be in a position to sink the enterprise.

Media Geezer Big Think

My friend and former editor Kurt Andersen has jumped on the media geezer bandwagon with a good piece in Slate. You can read it by clicking here. Andersen looks at the demand side, saying that baby-boomers want geezer media because it allows them to imagine that they are still young. Mike Wallace is still on television, therefore I am not really fat and fifty.

Transforming the US Military

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz today testified before Congress about the Administration's plans to transform the US military and the thinking behind that transformation. It is worth reading and you can do so by clicking here.

Merrill Lynch's Disgrace

You'll not be surprised to learn that Merrill Lynch used its research division to generate business for the firm's investment banking unit. Or that it pumped and dumped stocks that its analysts privately referred to as "dogs" and "pieces of shit." New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer lays out the case in compelling detail. Those seeking the quick summary can click here. Those who think that this problem is confined to Merrill Lynch should have their heads examined.

The corruption of Wall Street begs a major news media investigation. But with the notable exception of The Wall Street Journal, no one seems willing to really tackle the story. Weeks ago, I argued that the regular and reliable flow of advertising dollars from Wall Street to major media (like The New York Times) had dampened the news media's investigative zeal. A few weeks after that, I argued that the regular and reliable flow of campaign contributions to the Democratic Party and "individual attention" to Democratic Party bigwigs diminished the ability of the Democrats to capitalize on their best class warfare issue.

Spitzer's brief makes plain the opportunity cost of that regular and reliable revenue.

Geezer, Gasbag Alert

Geezers first: Louis Rukeyser has landed a job at CNBC, which will air a carbon copy of his dreadful "Wall Street Week" program at 8:30 on Friday nights. This is the same time slot he had when the program aired on PBS.

Gasbags next: CNN anchor-gasbag Lou Dobbs huffs and puffs in today's Wall Street Journal, defending himself against charges that he's in the tank with Arthur Andersen. He acts as if he just found out that journalism is a business of cheap shots. He'd be a lot more convincing if he didn't pretend to be so naive.

Robinson Holloway

Ms. Holloway compiles the best golf writing available on the web and makes it available to you at PGATour.com. Greg Connors of the Buffalo News profiles the woman who keeps the golf community posted.

Pulitzers

The Pulitzer Prizes are awarded every year to four newspapers; The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. No surprise, they all won again this year, with the Times taking the lion's share (7 Pulitzers).

The surprise was what (and who) didn't win. David Maraniss's reporting on the aftershocks of September 11 did not win, even though it was by far the best thing written on the subject. The Wall Street Journal's Enron coverage, which blew the company away, did not win; indeed, it wasn't even a finalist. Hiawatha Bray, the Boston Globe's technology writer, was yet again passed over (I'm not sure he was even nominated by his own paper). One could go on (and on).

But look on the bright side. Gretchen Morgenson won for business reporting. And deservedly so.

Midterms and The Price of Gas

In the fall of 1998, I served as a consultant to the Fox News Channel. My task was to head up the Decision Desk operation for the network's election night broadcast. In preparation, I consulted a number of leading political analysts about mid-term election dynamics.

The general rule is that the party out of power in the White House gains in mid-term balloting. So most everyone I spoke with told me that they expected the Republicans to gain in 1998. But one Republican pollster had a somewhat different take. "Tell me what the price of gas is on the 1st of November," he said, "and I'll tell you whether or not the Republicans gain any seats."

At the time, gas was selling for about $1.10 per gallon in the New York metro area and (a lot) less than that in key districts across the country. Which meant that voters everywhere were buying gas cheap, leaving money left over to buy other products. Which meant high consumer confidence. Which meant high levels of satisfaction with the party in power in the White House. All of which translated into a net gain for the Democrats in the 1998 mid-terms. Even though the President, Bill Clinton, was well on his way to impeachment.

You can track consumer confidence -- almost exactly -- by tracking the price of gas at the pump. Upward spikes in gas prices are followed by slumps in consumer confidence. Falling gas prices result in increased consumer confidence. So it's no surprise that the White House political operation is alarmed by the recent upticks in gasoline prices. The Washington Post has a good story about this today.

Blocking Pop-Unders

If you're at all like me, you're experiencing a torrent of "pop-under" advertisements on your computer screen. I was tooling around the web this morning, gathering material for a column I'm writing for Fast Company, and by the time I was done, I had a pop-up window for Fortune magazine subscriptions, a "travel prize" pop-under window for a Caribbean vacation, an "Orbitz" pop-under window for air travel, and yet another pop-under window for "super-sexy" sunglasses. I don't need these ads. I don't like these ads. I want them to go away.

What to do? My best bet (and yours) is the ad-blocking software program known as AdSubstract. The link to the company's website is here. The link to a Hiawatha Bray review of the product is here.

AdSubstract software costs $29.95. I have it installed on the laptop and it works like a charm. Most important, it speeds up your Internet connection, since the downloading of all that advertising is blocked. A 56K modem actually works like a 56K modem should.

Update

Dear Mr. Ellis,

I read your post about blocking ads, and I have found WebWasher to be better than Ad/Subtract. You can download it free for personal use, I think at webwasher.com. I have no personal interest in either product, so this isn't a commercial endorsement.

Sincerely,
David A. Caplan

Update, Part Two

Another reader follows up on ad-blocking software:

The one I use now is Popup Ad Filter at http://www.meaya.com. It is $24.95. The only problem I have with it is that it doesn't work with Netscape. This is not a problem for me, though, because since versions 4.0 of Netscape and IE, I only use Netscape for testing my development work.

Media Geezer Alert

A number of people (okay: 2) e-mailed this morning to make sure that I had seen the story (registration required) about Mike Wallace announcing his semi-retirement, effective next year. One of the emails suggested that my little blogspot campaign against media geezers might be having some small impact.

Au contraire. Mike Wallace has been announcing retirements, semi-retirements, virtual retirements for years. Sixty Minutes Executive Producer Don Hewitt gives the game away, telling the Times that he intends to "die at (his) desk." That is what the entire Sixty Minutes Geezer Patrol intends to do, regardless of what they tell gullible reporters and wishful-thinking management.

Fee Fatigue

After I started this blog, I finally caved and paid Microsoft an annual fee ($19.95) to provide me with more storage space for my Hotmail account. I'm thinking about paying Major League Baseball a fee of $15 for audio streams of all MLB radio broadcasts. I already pay the Wall Street Journal an annual fee of $40 to access their site(s). As I scan my junk mail, any number of service providers are lining up to offer me on-line fee-based services, most of which I neither want nor need.

The ever excellent Thomas Weber has a good column about this in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required!). I suspect he's right that "fee fatigue" will be the next malaise of the on-line world, as companies struggle to figure out how to make their web offerings pay.

Augusta Changes

Vijay Singh played a practice round at Augusta this winter and came away impressed by how much harder the course played. According to the story I heard, he went on and on about it, until someone finally asked him what he shot. "Sixty-three," he allegedly replied. I don't doubt it.

The newly lengthened Augusta National (the course is now roughly 7200 yards long, up from roughly 6900) was the subject of an excellent Clifton Brown story in Sunday's New York Times (registration required). Those seeking even more detail should click here to read Greg Norman's analysis of what the course changes imply for the players this week.

The Worst Party of the Year

From: JConason@xxx.xxx

To : undisclosed-recipients:;

Subject : Book Party: Save the Date

Date : Sun, 7 Apr 2002 23:26:55 EDT


Please join us to celebrate the publication of David Brock's new
memoir "Blinded by the Right: the Conscience of an Ex-Conservative" on
April 19, 2002, (Patriot's Day) at the National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy
Park South, 6-8 p.m. You should also receive an invitation in the mail with
instructions to RSVP.

If for some reason you do not receive a mail invitation, you may
RSVP via return e-mail.