Is it Groundhog Day in Mississippi? Only I see D J Trahan still leading by two? The figure that tells us it isn’t is that his price has halved overnight to about 4. But there’s a head of steam building up behind him and a flick through his record suggests the strong possibility of a wobbly round to come. Intriguingly one of his challengers, Joe Durant, heads my overall performance table, with the kind of profile tailor-made for this event. You’ve also got an old hand in the shape of Brad Faxon up there, although his current form really ...

Over so soon? 1.15 for Tiger Woods says it is, rain or no rain (and there’s some about Saturday as well). He’s in his special comfort zone and there’s seemingly no catching him. For a while Friday it looked like he had slowed down, but that was illusory. He’d had similar difficulty with the same back nine holes the day before until yet again he eagled the 18th. What odds he does it four out of four? The statistic that guides us today is that Tiger’s lead matches the competition’s 36-hole record - no prizes for guessing who’s it is ...

I fancy a dabble against D J Trahan. I know he really really needs the money and he’s two shots clear, but he’s out in the afternoon Friday and that could prove a little more taxing. By all accounts conditions tended to flatter those that went out early on day one. Trahan is one of that legion of somewhat infuriating golfers who post good-looking stats without translating them into results (a T4 in Milwaukee is all that stands out this year). Another that falls into that category is Bo van Pelt, and my finger hovers over his lay button, but ...

It’s all over, I hear people shouting. The runaway Tiger is back. But hold on a minute. As I sit typing not 20 miles from The Grove course, the heavens are chucking it down. It’s no torrent but I guess there’ll be quite a bit of rain landing on the course before daybreak. What was it Tiger Woods said yesterday? “When greens are slow I struggle and I always feel more comfortable on fast greens.” Well, it looks like they will be slower Friday and you would imagine the course will also play a bit longer. So it strikes ...

Interest in this event is pretty rock bottom. The money in the winner market is barely in the tens of thousands and it’s not exactly captured the imagination of the world’s press either. Look at what happened at San Antonio last week and think it could happen here too as the dash for qualifying cash gathers pace. To add to the confusion, it’s not quite the same course as last year because the greens have been changed to Bermuda grass. making them flatter, firmer and faster. I’m going to leave this one well alone at this stage. The fact that the ...

Back to normal service with Tiger Woods this week? At least he returns to what he does best and the stats he brings with him are frightening - 9 wins from 14 WGC strokeplay events and he’s never finished worse than ninth. He’s a four-time winner of this event alone, one of them in Ireland. And of course, he’s seeking to equal his 1999-2000 record of six strokeplay wins on the trot. While the last two weeks suggest a reverse side, I would always discount matchplay performance and you can look at his Ryder Cup glass as both half ...

Memo to Justin Rose: if you can’t win a tournament like this against a bunch of rookies and journeymen what’s the point? Eric Axley was there for the taking Sunday, four-shot lead or no four-shot lead. But he was never put under the slightest pressure, so much so that at one stage he and his caddie were having a long and animated discussion about music, with full vocals. Rose wasn’t the only one to blame. Just about everyone melted away - too busy protecting what they already had in the bank I guess. It was over before Axley had even turned ...

Let the excuses begin. For PGA commissioner Tom Finchem the Americans were outputted. For Captain Tom Lehman they never got momentum. For others it was lack of American team culture (you don’t have teams in America then?). For Scott Verplank the problem was something he knew (but didn’t tell us), adding hurriedly that it wasn’t the PGA of America, it wasn’t Lehman, in fact it wasn’t anything at all. Confused? Moi? I’ve got no excuses. Some you win, some you lose. But I am annoyed, because in backing America I believed they would at least come out fighting. Maybe I’ve watched ...

Difficult to know what to make of Eric Axley after yet another sizzling round of 63 on Saturday put him four shots clear of the pack. His stats are hot - first for greens in regulation, fourth for putting, sixth for accuracy off the tee. Look at his previous record and wonder where on earth all that came from. Four over Sunday morning is not necessarily such a large margin - we’ve seen far more experienced players throw away bigger leads on “wobbly Sunday". Ted Purdy for one thinks there’s still 20 players in with a chance. So just how ...

So here’s the deal guys. Basically, we forget all this European nonsense and revert to the way it was, you know just you and us, USA versus Great Britain. That way you get to win every time (well, until Paul Casey learns how to get holes in one on the par fives) and we don’t get all those miserable American faces on our TV screens. To be honest, you guys don’t do adversity particularly well. My suggestion has actually appeared in print this weekend, so comprehensive has the European domination of this event been so far. Now of course, there’s ...

Eric Axley anyone? Best results T24 this season and missed the cut 13 out of 23 outings. He hasn’t really crossed my radar before. and with earnings of just $200,000 he’s got a mountain to climb to qualify for next year. But a seven under is a pretty strong message on day two. Co-leader D A Points does not come into sight too often either - it’s that kind of tournament. He’s missed the cut 16 out of 24 but at least he managed a T10 at the Honda Classic in March which I vaguely remember. He also lurks very much ...

I’m sure glad they don’t behead people for treason here in England any more or I’d be in trouble. Every time an American sinks a birdie putt and I let out a muted ‘yesssss’ I get the filthiest looks you can imagine. It’s no good telling them its purely business, they want the Yankees beat like never before. If you ask me Dubya and his Iraq war have more to answer for than we thought. But he’s not the only one. I don’t know why everyone keeps laying into poor Tiger Woods - at least he brought something home on ...

Oh my goodness there’s Justin Rose trying to kick the door down again! Amazing - it’s not raining in Texas yet there he is bold as brass at the top. In fact hardly a whisper of wind interrupted Rose’s majestic early morning procession to 64 Thursday. I suppose one of these days dear Justin is going to end our (and his) years of frustration and win one of these things, and no one will celebrate louder than me when he does. But until then I am going to lay him when he hits the front, especially if it’s ...

Let’s get right down to it: it’s got to be America. Not that I think they are definite winners, just that I think they are the better bet for one simple reason. If they win you get more money - more than 2.4 against 1.9 for the Europeans. Did anyone catch the biggest bet in golf history going on the Americans Thursday? Some Brit with deep pockets stands to win just over $1m if the Stars and Stripes ends on top. But he’s had to risk half of that for the privilege (gulp). For all the arguments about who has the ...

In a land far, far away, a band of men are fighting for their golfing lives. Who said Ireland? I’m not talking about the Ryder Cup. Believe it or not there’s quite a big golf match going on in San Antonio that could decide one or two careers before the weekend is over. I know, there’s only one golfing story and it’s not happening in the Lone Star state. Even AP seems to have sent all its people over to the Emerald Isle while the PGA Tour site has been running the same story all week - that even in ...

You wonder why some players bothered to turn up Sunday. Rory Sabbatini four over for the day? J B Holmes five over? David Toms, Vijay Singh, Sean O’Hair two over? Even Steve Stricker was doing an Italian job. Sure the drying course made scoring difficult. And the return to grounded balls caused considerable angst, with several players moaning to rules officials how muddy their balls still were (cue jokes about mud-wrestling). There’s certainly something odd when it’s safer to play into the rough than the fairway because the ball stays cleaner. But that’s no excuse for the droopy performance by ...

The jumbled mass of humanity (golfmanity?) atop the 84 Lumber leaderboard must have the layers cracking broad smiles Sunday morning. “Like a pileup of Ladas” is the most amusing description I caught on the forums. Bit unfair - there’s a few BMWs there. Indeed there’s a few decent players all the way down to Vijay Singh, now six shots behind the leader, and in this company and these conditions you wouldn’t discount a winning charge from any of them. How about Rory Sabbatini, for instance, to repeat last Sunday’s smash and grab attempt? We all know what Vijay can do ...

I wonder if Shaun Micheel feels anything like General Custer, the last American left standing at the matchplay in Wentworth, surrounded by those pesky Europeans. But even though other members of America’s Ryder Cup squad were also falling like flies at Farmington this week, don’t raise the surrender flag just yet. At least two of your number have valiantly risen from the dead. I had great hopes for Chris DiMarco and Brett Wetterich at the start of the 84 Lumber and, while those hopes lie mostly in shreds, at least the pair stand shoulder-to-shoulder above the cut line - just. Not ...

Look through rookie Nicholas Thompson’s PGA Tour record this season and you’ll see missed cut after missed cut after finishes in the 70s and 80s. It’s been getting better - he hasn’t missed a cut since early August and he’s been finishing as low as the 40s. And there’s that one T6 at the BC Open courtesy of a final round 64, the only clue to yesterday’s storming start by the American. His scorecard is busy - only five pars - and the stats tell a surprising story of the triumph of accuracy over distance - on a day ...

The 84 Lumber website celebrates “50 years of helping to build America!". Unfortunately, after lavishing untold squillions on this course for the best part of 10 years, it has decided building America no longer includes golf. Which is bad news especially for golfers who love firing missiles into the near blue yonder. But beware those say this is simply a bombers’ course. Ben Crane only ranked 35th for distance when he came third last year, but made up for it with his putting. And some of the strongest fancies this year are not as high up the distance chart as you ...

Tom Lehman can take all the heart he likes from Jim Furyk’s victory and the late surge by Stewart Cink Sunday that put him in a tie for 11th, if not ever in contention. But if I was him, I would be ruing the fact that I had a seemingly out-of-sorts Vaughn Taylor on my Ryder Cup squad instead of a hot-to-trot Sean O’Hair. Mind you, neither O’Hair nor Bart Bryant were hot enough to force Furyk into a playoff as they might (should?) have done at the death. So Sunday was profitable, but not the trading bonanza we ...

There is obviously a small difference of opinion between myself and Canadian weather people over the definition of a light shower. To me that’s such a gentle and short sprinkling of water it’s hardly worth putting up the brolly. To our hairy-chested Canadian weathermen (and hopefully not so hairy-chested women) it is clearly just a few degrees down from having to tell Noah to build his boat. Okay, Saturday’s downpour might not have been le deluge exactly, but it was enough to delay proceedings for two hours and send them out by the threes (Noah please note). Armed with such information, ...

Form an orderly queue. The wind and drying conditions flattened a few reputations Friday and enhanced others, but the end result was a logjam at the top. It all seemed to happen so suddenly. One moment everyone was bumbling along nicely, Nathan Green three under on the day, Tom Pernice Jr cruising nicely in his wake, when suddenly bogeys started peppering the scorecards as frequently as the birdies. The Hamilton course at last found some bite. Fears about the afternoon session were well founded. By the time Jim Furyk came out to play he had the field at his mercy. No one ...

Form an orderly queue. The wind and drying conditions flattened a few reputations Friday and enhanced others, but the end result was a logjam at the top. It all seemed to happen so suddenly. One moment everyone was bumbling along nicely, Nathan Green three under on the day, Tom Pernice Jr crusing nicely in his wake, when suddenly bogeys started peppering the scorecards as frequently as the birdies. The Hamilton course at last found some bite. Fears about the afternoon session were well founded. By the time Jim Furyk came out to play he had the field at his mercy. No one ...

If I was America’s Ryder Cup captain Tom Lehman my brow would be ever so slightly creased at the moment. Sure, I can see Jim Furyk in mean form and riding high atop the Canadian Open leaderboard. But when I look down the other end I see one of my footsoldiers, Vaughn Taylor, already in all sorts of terrible trouble. He’s showing every sign of shell shock, before any have actually been fired. A round that included a triple bogey and a double bogey would have ended over by double figures had it not been for a consolation birdie at the ...

The big question at the Canadian Open this week is how bruised and battered Vijay Singh and Stewart Cink are after their brutal encounters with Tiger Woods. Both had victory ripped from their grasp at the last, so how will that affect their mindset this week? Between the two of them I’d go for Singh, because there were big positives from last week’s encounter which make him the stronger candidate. One compelling fact is that Vijay’s only win this season came at Westchester, New York, a course I am assured bears an uncanny resemblance to this week’s track. Mind you, that ...

You can see a tornado coming from quite a distance. The Tiger Woods twister hit virtually without notice on the second hole Monday. Five holes later Vijay Singh’s ambitions had been mercilessly trashed by two eagles and two birdies. A three-shot lead had been turned totally on its head. And just in case his wily adversary had any ideas of a back nine comeback, Tiger killed it off by out-birdieing him on the 15th. The Fijian must have wondered what hit him, and by the time he found out it was far too late. So hats off to Tiger for a ...

The people with the biggest smiles on their faces right now are probably the head honchos at Deutsche Bank. I can’t imagine they were too excited heading into Sunday’s gloomy rain-drenched parade. To come out with a Labor Day rerun of 2004’s famous head-to-head between Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh, most likely with good weather to boot, must have them in the banking equivalent of heaven (vault?). You will rarely get a more absorbing day’s golf than Sunday’s third round. Even when Singh blazed to five under at the turn I couldn’t imagine he’d net another five birdies for a course ...

I wonder if Justin Rose is praying for more wind with an added spot of rain Sunday? He’s English after all, and that sort of stuff is meat and drink to us. It’s when the sun comes out we start to get confused, although global warming is forcing us to adjust. He got the wind Saturday, and how, but Ernesto’s much dreaded rain never materialised. So the wind-dried course didn’t play as long as expected and the greens actually played faster. A measure of how good Rose and co-leader Robert Allenby were was that the afternoon crew shot on average more ...

Probably the most influential character in Saturday’s second round doesn’t even play golf. Tropical storm Ernesto might have been downgraded to a mere depression, but that’s still too stormy by far for the poor saps going out in the afternoon. “What I heard is two inches of rain coming. Guys are going to get hammered in the afternoon.” That was Tiger Woods speaking Friday. I couldn’t see if a smile was creasing his face, but as luck would have it - again - he’s off in the morning and looking to have 36 holes tucked securely under his ...