Für unsere Gäste » Thornton: Youre in your mid-30s, never w

AVONDALE, La. -- Ben Martin made his way through most of the TPC Louisiana course with the type of sparse gallery one would expect for a player who had missed seven cuts in his previous nine starts on the PGA Tour. The few who followed him, including his mother, father and wife, were treated to a round never before seen at the current home of the Zurich Classic. Martins 10-under 62 in Thursdays opening round broke the course record by two strokes, highlighted by a chip-in from 55 feet and two birdie putts of 20 feet or more. "It was one of those days you dream about," Martin said. "I started the round with two birdies in a row and they just kept rolling in." Martin birdied 10 holes and made pars on the rest. His final birdie came on his chip with a 54-degree sand wedge on the par-3 17th hole, which hugs a water hazard and was made more difficult by afternoon winds. Martin said the challenges that hole posed led him to take a conservative tee shot with a 5-iron rather than a longer club, and the way the 26-year-old South Carolina native executed his plan exemplified the type of day he had. "That was just managing my game. I knew that hole was into the wind with water left," Martin said. "I felt like short of the green was a pretty easy chip." He certainly made it look that way. "Really, everything was working well," Martin said. "It was just one of those days, just like you draw it up." The previous record at TPC Louisiana was a 64, accomplished many times, including on Thursday, when Andrew Svoboda did it to take a lead that held up until Martin surged past late in the day. Peter Hanson and Sueng-Yul Noh were tied for third at 65. Last weekend, Martin matched his career best with a third-place tie in the RBC Heritage at Hilton Head, S.C. He also finished third in early March in the Puerto Rico Open, but missed four cuts after that. Martin opened the Zurich with a 10-foot birdie putt, the first of six birdies on the front nine, most set up by approach shots within 10 feet. One exception was his 26-foot birdie putt on No. 5. He opened the back nine with a 14-foot birdie putt, made a 10-footer on 11 and a 20-footer on 13. Svoboda birdied six of his last nine holes. Like Martin, the 34-year-old Svoboda has never won on the PGA Tour. While much can change with three rounds left, New Orleans has seen its share of maiden tour triumphs. It has happened in six of the past nine years, and 10 of the past 16. "Ill take that stat," Svoboda said. Svobodas best career finish on the PGA Tour is a tie for 15th at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in Las Vegas in October. Hansons round was highlighted by an eagle on the par-4 sixth hole, accomplished with a 6-iron from 183 yards. Erik Compton, Chad Collins and Michael Thompson were tied for fifth at 66, and Jeff Overton, Stuart Appleby and Robert Streb followed at 67. Compton, a two-time heart transplant recipient, spent the early part of the week meeting with children at a New Orleans-area hospital and participated in a junior golf clinic. Although that limited his practice time, he thought it helped his mindset. "It seems to really relax me and really puts things in perspective," Compton said. "I seem to play better during the weeks where I have hospital visits." On the par-5 seventh, his 297-yard drive sailed right of the fairway, crossing a cart path. But he belted a 227-yard shot out of the rough to the foot of the green and two-putted for birdie. He ended his round with a 22-foot birdie putt on nine to briefly put him atop the leaderboard. Compton, also winless on the PGA Tour, said he feels "very comfortable" on New Orleans Pete Dye-designed course. "You have to hit a lot of long iron shots and drive it well here, and those are some of the strengths of my game," he said. Adeiny Hechavarria Jersey . CBS Sports Jon Heyman is reporting that Santana will sign a one-year deal, likely in the next two days with one of a trio of suitors, with the Toronto Blue Jays believed to be heavily involved. Dwight Gooden Mets Jersey .The league also seems to have a fairly active Twitter account www.twitter.com/bikinihockey that features the description “We provide a positive alternative to the hockey community and a venue for adult female hockey athletes to continue in their sport. http://www.metssale.com/mets-noah-syndergaard-jersey/ . Adding playoff teams. Monitoring instant replay from league headquarters. Possibly creating a set of guidelines to prevent locker-room bullying. Nolan Ryan Jersey . Diego Costa headed in Gabis corner seven minutes from time to secure victory ahead of the return match in Madrid on March 11. "We know that at Madrid it will be another game, which will also be important and very difficult," Milan coach Clarence Seedorf said. New York Mets Jerseys . Jones took a beating, the worst one of his record reign, in a bout against Alexander Gustafsson that knocked the light heavyweight champion on the canvas for the first time in his career and put his belt in jeopardy.The challenges of playing hockey in a Canadian market are well documented: higher taxes, over abundant media coverage, lack of anonymity, an unrelenting and vicious winter, way too much Rush in rotation on FM radio. What makes Canada such a great place to be a hockey fan makes it a difficult environment to play in. Canada is indisputably the centre of the hockey universe, and at that universes core is Toronto. The Greater Toronto Hockey League is over a hundred years old and the largest minor hockey league in the world. Despite their futility, the Leafs could sell out Rogers Centre for home games charging $1000 and first-born children for upper deck seats. The Marlies are flourishing in the AHL. Next years World Junior Hockey Championships (co-hosted with Montreal) are sure to be the most successfully attended and celebrated ever. And yet, as a player, what would entice you to ply your trade in the Big Smoke?The crowds at the ACC for Leafs game are an embarrassment to hockeys most important market. The stories of the suits in the expensive seats, absent for starts of periods and reticent to loosen their ties even as Brian Burke undid his, are well known. The arena is eerily quiet compared to its contemporaries, a conservative and reserved audience in a sport and city renowned for its maniacal fandom. And this is not indicative of Toronto crowds, as we witnessed during the Raptors playoff appearance this year, rowdy afternoons at Jays games at Rogers Centre, and the masses that turned out this year and last in Maple Leaf/Raptors Square. But those involved fans (who make up the vast majority of Leafs Nation) enthusiasms are negatively tempered by the lower bowls reservations, reservations bred by alternately flawed and complacent approaches to building a competitive team and the absence of a winning presence. As a player who is passionate about his vocation, why would you want to commit to an environment that doesnt match that passion, especially when the home ice advantage can be such an important component of the game?Often in pieces that claim players like Thornton are interested in playing for the Leafs, the prospect of coming "home" is cited as a key factor. The very notion of "home" is a flawed premise in this lazy argument. Even if you call "home" somewhere in Southern Ontario, as a hockey player you probably havent lived there since you were 16. Thornton has lived in San Jose for nearly a decade, is a naturalized US citizen, has a wife, a mortgage, perhaps a few pets, maybe a café he really likes to go to, a favourite pizza place, a butcher who cuts his ribeyes to just the perfect thickness. But the Toronto Sun is going to tell him where his home is.For many players, one might suspect that playing at home in front of an overbearing hockey dad, mum and her new husband, and sycophantic high school acquaintances just a few blocks from where that girl broke your heart is the very definition of hell. And is working in your hometown really all that enticing? How many of you work in your hometowns? Hardly any. Youve all moved to Toronnto.ddddddddddddThornton is from St. Thomas, Ontario, which would place his NHL "hometown" in Detroit or Buffalo as much as in Toronto, and yet those markets media dont seem to be making the "coming home" argument. Torontos hockey media is the most intense in all of professional sports. Maybe Montreals is equal, but half of the vitriol and conjecture there is in French, and only a fraction of NHLers understand it. (Reasonably, even those of us who are bilingual dont really understand it.) In Toronto, there is endless speculation, much of it even based in fact. Each flaw, each mistake (on and off the ice) is dissected and disseminated ad nauseum. Trade rumours are fabricated on a daily basis, the ubiquitous "NHL executive" noted as an unimpeachable source. The discussion of hockey in Toronto has become an insufferable wall of noise for an uninvested observer, so imagine if the discourse directly affected your family, your income, and your life.It seems a lot to ask of a player to endure such amplified attention, especially given the fact the Leafs have not been a competitive team since 2004. And that is final circle of the NHLs Hell: irrelevance. Toronto is still recovering from the John Ferguson Jr. era. They have some formidable pieces in Kessel, Morgan Reilly, and Jonathan Bernier; a young skilled forward, puck moving defenseman, and promising goaltender around which to build. They have a top-ten pick in the coming draft, some interesting if not spectacular prospects (Stuart Percy, Matt Finn), and some movable pieces (Nazem Kadri, Jake Gardiner). Brendan Shanahan emanates stability and hubris. But theyre still saddled with bad contracts (Dion Phaneuf, David Clarkson), a suspect coaching philosophy, and a lack of depth. And to watch the Kings, Blackhawks, and Rangers this spring is to know the Leafs are far removed from that level of hockey.So if you were an unrestricted free agent, or a player on the trading block with some say in his future, why would you come to Toronto? Consider Thornton: Youre in your mid-30s, never won a Cup, live in the perfection of Northern California, in a market that sustains you but doesnt invade you, and youd chose to move to Toronto, with its high taxes, magnified attention, and with as much of a chance of winning a Cup in the next five years as Quebec City? Toronto is a world-class city, cultured and cosmopolitan, a great place to live and make a life. The Joe Thorntons of the world should want to play home games at the ACC. The challenges of the market need to be offset by a tradition of winning and the only way for Toronto to do that is to build a stable and competitive franchise through hoarding draft picks and young controllable players, and eschewing the temptation of quick expensive fixes like Clarkson, or Thornton. The best thing for a successful NHL would be a dominant Toronto Maple Leafs team. Given the teams last decade, however, it seems like that wont happen until Hell freezes over. Fortunately for Toronto, most of it freezes over every January, so the wait may not be that long. ' ' '