Tina eliminated from Big Break Ka’anapali

You would think that since Tina Miller has the fanciest website of all the Big Breakers that she may have won the Big Break Ka’anapali. If so, you would be wrong. Tina lost in a short game shoot out in the elimination round on last night’s Big Break Ka’anapali episode 6.

Last night’s episode also featured the dreaded “C” word out of Christina Lecuyer‘s mouth (btw, somebody scooped up christinalecuyer.com and it wasn’t Christina -oops! – hint to Kim, buy www.kimwelch.com now). I thought the Big Break producers would hype it up more but apparently they are saving some for next week’s episode. During the second challenge of the evening, Christina said that she hoped Tina choked on her shot to the green. When Tina missed her first shot, Christina practically shouted, “YES!” I guess fierce competition can bring the worst out of all of us. Or maybe Christina dreads the idea of being in the elimination round and will choke if she gets into one.

Lori has to love Christina for taking over as the new villain on The Big Break. She doesn’t seem so evil now. In next week’s clips, it appears that Lori will be playing some head games (focused around the “C” word) with Christina during the competition. Should be interesting for two room-mates to go at it.

How did we get here? We started out with a 95 yard shot to the green with differing point values depending on how close to the pin your shot was. A 105 yard shot followed that. The women were divided up into teams of two based on their point totals. The team with the most points after hitting four total shots to the two greens was safe from elimination. Lori and Samantha won the competition by a point over Courtney and Sophie.

The next challenge was a hole of golf with two target areas. One team member had to drive into the first target area that was 180-280 from the tee. The next team member had to hit into a target area on the green. Lowest number of strokes avoids elimination. After almost winning the previous challenge, Courtney and Sophie took a five as Courtney took four drives to find the target area. Susan Choi stepped up and hit her drive right in the target area (this was right after both Susan and Christina choked on their last shots to the 105 green – getting 0 points). Kim hit her drive in the target area on one shot as well. From there, Tina took two shots to find the green’s target area (it was on her first shot that Christina wished that Tina would choke).

Christina took two shots as well so we had a tie between those two teams. The two teams went to another target area and Tina, feeling the choke pressure, talked Kim into taking the shots. Kim took four to get it in and Christina stepped up and hit it in on one.

So Tina, Kim, Courtney and Sophie were in the elimination challenge. The elimination challenge consisted of getting up and down from any of four locations 120, 90, 60, and 30 yards from the green. As a competitor got up and down they were safe from elimination unless the other three got up and down from the same location. They started at the 120 and moved in from there.

Courtney was absolutely terrible in this challenge as she gagged on almost every one of her shots. Kim was solid on her first shots but her putting is the weak part of her game. Finally, on the fourth location, she put her 30 yard shot into gimme range and was safe from elimination. Sophie hit a nice bump and run to about 6-8 feet on the fifth location and got up and down. Tina missed a 8 or so footer to keep Courtney alive and they went back to 30 yards again. Courtney dribbled one up to about 12 feet and Tina had another 12 footer. Tina missed again and Courtney finally drained a putt (the only decent shot she hit out of 12). Maybe Christina was prophetic.

After watching all the episodes, here’s my ranking on the remaining players:

7 – Courtney – that swing will not hold up under pressure
6 – Susan – dangerously clueless, has hit the two best bunker shots in big break history, has managed to pull through marvelously as well as kak in the heat of the moment
5 – Samantha – too much self-doubt to make it much further
4 – Lori – ugly swing but somehow makes it work
3 – Christina – has canned a number of clutch shots but shouldn’t be worried about others choking
2 – Kim – handles the pressure great but putting is suspect
1 – Sophie – has the most poise under pressure

By the way, check out my publication on how to break 80