The worst kept secret in golf is finally out. Tiger Woods will play in this year’s Ryder Cup, captain Corey Pavin having elected to give the embattled 14-time major winner one of his four wild cards.
No great surprise there. As poor a season as he has had by his own high standards, compared to the rest of the guys on tour, Woods has done not too shabbily in 2010. Plus, his divorce now finally official and public, and his relationship with his soon-to-be-new-coach Sean Foley blossoming, he seems to be finding some late-season form. Read more…
World No.1 Tiger Woods’ cloak is on a shaky peg – and England’s Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter and Paul Casey plan to unscrew it for good.
The English trio believe Woods’ 258-week run at the top of the tree is fast-nearing its end. Begging the question – which one of the monkeys on his back will reach the top of that tree first? Three’s a crowd, after all.
On merits, it would appear that Westwood would be the favourite. The nearly-man of the Masters, pipped at the post at the Players, that big win is surely just around the corner for Westwood. And, as the current world No.3, he is the closest of the three to catching Tiger’s tail.
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Just a matter of hours after Ryo Ishikawa became the first player to shoot a 58 on any major professional golf tour, the Japanese teenager’s fellow prodigy Rory McIlroy shot a course record 62 to win his first PGA Tour title at the Quail Hollow Championship.
Cue excited conversations about how these achievements signal a changing of the guard in terms of golf’s dominating protagonists, fuelled further by Tiger Woods missed cut at Quail, only his sixth in his professional career and second in ten months.
Is such gossip justified or idle? A little bit of both, probably.
Ishikawa and McIlroy are hardly new to the golf stage and the limelight that goes with it. Read more…
The 2010 PGA Tour season crowned its first winner this weekend when Geoff Ogilvy (pictured) won the season-opening SBS Championship.
However, if you had tuned in to watch the Australian’s victory on Sky Sports, you would have been forgiven for thinking that you had mistakenly tuned in to an episode of “Wish You Were Here?”
Reason being the footage from the tournament was regularly and repeatedly interrupted with advertisements on behalf of the Hawaii tourist board.
All I wanted to see was how Scotland’s No.1 Martin Laird was faring as he went after his second PGA Tour title.
Instead, what I got was footage of some drama school drop-out getting all misty-eyed after swimming with sea turtles. Read more…
As the fallout ensues surrounding Doug Barron’s suspension from the PGA Tour, we are, again, being treated to the well-versed dispute as to whether golf, like athletics and cycling, will see the benefit of drug testing.
Tiger Woods is in no doubt.
“I heard about it [Barron's ban]. It’s unfortunate, but that is one of the reasons why we have the policy to make sure no-one does anything that’s improper for the game of golf and I think that it is great that we have the policy in place,” said the world No.1.
“I don’t know if he tested for performance-enhancing or recreational, but the whole idea is to keep our sport clean and that is why we created the policy and it has been executed and unfortunately one player didn’t obey the policy.”
Supportive as he may be of golf’s foray into the prevention of substance misuse, he alludes to one fact that throws into perspective the credibility of what is a damning indictment of journeyman Barron. Read more…
Breaking news: the Scottish Qualifications Authority has just announced changes to next year’s Higher Mathematics paper.
From 2010, candidates who can successfully explain the FedEx Cup points system will be awarded an automatic ‘A’ pass and sent a letter of congratulations from PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, the (cough) brains behind the contentious play-offs.
Okay, so I’m being a tad facetious. But let’s face it, anyone who understands the FedEx formula must either be on a parallel wavelength to Finchem and his cronies or Carol Vorderman.
Despite a number of revisions since it was introduced in 2007, the FedEx Cup is still golf’s Rubik’s Cube. Read more…