Digging through some of my old Ryder Cup photos from Valhalla, I just had a theory as to why Jose Maria Olazabal is not Ryder Cup Captain for 2010 in Wales, and it comes from this photo: I think assistant captain Olazabal might have been a little too close to the bloodbath last fall to be lead a 2010 rebuilding effort. Olazabal was a steadfast supporter of Faldo’s decisions, and if I remember correctly, the European team’s press conference that Sunday night ended with a stern, “That question doesn’t even deserve an answer” from Olie after a member of the ...

Citing rust from rehabbing his two knee surgeries and having not played since his Torrey Pines triumph in 2008, Phil Mickelson missed the cut at the FBR Open with a 7-over two-day total, putting him T123 and seventeen shots behind leader Charley Hoffman. Mickelson is only six players up from the bottom. “It’s been a long time since I played competitively after a long off-season of rehab, and I have to learn how to compete at the highest level again,” said Mickelson. Wait a sec…Oops, sorry, that’s Tiger Woods who had the knee surgeries & the long layover. I just ...

2009 is going to be different for Michelle Wie, we know that much. She’s finally earned her tour card, so we can’t say she doesn’t belong on on the LPGA Tour anymore. But Wie’s not out of the woods quite yet. She still needs to get the 1000-pound gorilla off her back and win her first professional event that, at one point in her career, seemed inevitable. These days, it’s hard to say a win is a sure thing, especially after a poor 2008 full of missed cuts, DQs and blow-up rounds. So in a couple weeks, Wie begins her ...

The state of California does a lot of things right, like their movement towards green energy & conservation. One of the things I’m most impressed with the state is how affordable it’s public universities can be for residents. It’s also the home state of some of the liberal blogoshere’s most dedicated foot soldiers, like WorldGolf.com’s Bill Wolfrum. But their government can’t seem to balance the budget, and because of that they may be coming after golfers. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to add sales tax to a round of golf in hopes of reducing the deficit. The state rate is 7.25% ...

I learned about this golf news event that’s gone a little under the radar thanks to all the Presidential Inauguration hubbub from writer Tom Bedell (formerly of BadGolfer.com) at the Brattlebro Reformer: The Northern Trust Open (Feb. 16-22 at Riviera C.C. in Los Angeles) announced this week a fitting sponsor’s exemption for these breakthrough times with the new Charlie Sifford exemption, offering a spot in the field to a player who “represents the advancement of diversity in golf and wouldn’t otherwise be eligible to compete.” Announcing this on the weekend of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the inauguration ...

I’ll admit it: I was player-hating. On Saturday when I checked in on the scores at the Sony Open in Honolulu to see where hometown pepperpot Tadd Fujikawa was on the leaderboard, I started from the bottom up. After scrolling about halfway up I wondered if I was looking at the wrong tournament, or if he ended up withdrawing. Alas, his name was way, way up near the top before finishing with a respectable T32 and a $29,237 paycheck that should pay the bills for a few months and take a little pressure off. So now Tadd will carry some ...

A bitter and sudsy news alert coming across the wire has me hankering to start happy hour early today… The Open Championship has a new official beer, partnering with South African beer giant SAB, owners of the world’s first pilsner beer, Pilsner Urquell from the Czech Republic. This might be bad news. Drinking one of these fantastic bitter beers (my favorite beer in the world actually, especially when I’m in a local Czech pub) has a tendency to turn into two - or three - or six. We might see a lot of golfers at Turnberry this summer missing their ...

Now, the next time your airplane is skidding off a runway, or you’re being held captive in a Middle Eastern prison, you’re never too far away from instant golf & travel updates. Okay, so maybe golf won’t be the first thing on your mind then, but the new social networking tool Twitter, which you may have heard about on the news for being the tool of choice for users caught in some sticky situations, has a variety of uses. WorldGolf.com has jumped on board to distribute it’s content in “micro-blogging” fashion and also keep an ear to the ground of ...

These days it’s pretty easy to find a five-star restaurant just about anywhere in the world. But often times the most savory meals are the spontaneous ones (also dished up on the cheap). When I was in Rabat, we had attended a gala with the Prince for some pretty swanky cuisine. But I’ve got warmer memories from a rather random evening two nights later when we headed out into the outskirts of town and ate at an outdoor butcher shop, where alley cats were jumping out of bushes trying to get a piece of our meat. So in that spirit, ...

You know how these new, space-aged metal drivers make it so even an 80-year-old grandma’s drive sound like it’s been shot from a cannon? Well a new study from British scientists report that these new drivers can cause hearing damage (Click here for the MSNBC article). In the study, the drivers commonly recorded decibel levels on impact of over 130. Anything higher than 80 is said to be dangerous by most doctors. The question is, do drivers need to be that loud? One source in the article suggests that the equipment manufacturers design them to be loud so it’s more ...

While the PGA Tour gears up for it’s first tournament of the year this week on Maui at the Mercedes-Benz Championship at the Kapalua Resort on Maui, two notable absents are floating around the Islands of Aloha… Hawaii’s two hyped teenagers, Michelle Wie and Tadd Fujikawa, have not been invited via sponsor’s invitation to the Sony Open January 12th-19th in their home town of Honolulu. Wie, who has competed in the event four times and has twice shot a 68 (but never made the cut), said last year she was going to scale back the men’s events as she struggled ...

The Hawaii CVB has to be giddy at all of the free publicity they’ve received this past week thanks to President-elect/global phenomenon/shirtless heart throb Barack Obama’s vacation spent on Oahu’s beaches and golf courses. I would wager there will be a Barack Obama Oahu Golf Trail any day now, pairing his most frequented golf clubs and some sight-seeing around his former neighborhood. That train is never late… Most of Obama’s constituents are fully aware Hawaii is a can’t-miss, often once-in-a-lifetime vacation. I don’t think I’ve ever had a friend or colleague of mine - golfer, surfer, hiker, boozer - come ...