Layers must be rubbing their hands with glee. It’s not often you have six players tied for the lead after two rounds - not since late 2005 in fact. And there’s a host of others well within firing range. Yet again Friday turns into bunching-up day, only this time we’re not even a single shot further forward. Bob Estes looked to have blown it when he struggled to post an early doors one under. But others who overtook him through the day were shot down in flames by the tricky conditions. Adam Scott was on the verge of running away ...

Stuart Appleby, Bob Estes, Steve Stricker, Mathias Gronberg - who’s the odd man out? Gronberg of course. He is the only one of last year’s Shell Houston top four not to be in this year’s top ten (including ties) after the first round. When Appleby failed to make it four wins in a row at the Mercedes his season started to disintegrate. It looks to be back on track this week, though he says himself he’s still not playing quite as well as he once did. Thursday he goes out into what will be the more difficult afternoon conditions, if the first ...

Knock knock, is anybody there? Only there’s a tournament on in Houston but no one seems to have noticed. Maybe they just don’t care. The newsfeeds are particularly bare and what reports we have seem to dwell on the fact that most big players have given this a miss ahead of next week’s Masters. Punters likewise. I don’t see how I can be expected to finance my lavish lifestyle on the paltry amounts swilling around this market. Oh, I forgot, Tiger’s not playing. That’s why no one’s interested. It’s understandable. Looking through the past records for this week’s contestants uncovers a forest of ...

This blog is late because, after Sunday’s Doral borathon, I decided to get in the car and rediscover the joys of playing golf. I have virtually no time for it so I am complete rubbish - a video would top YouTube’s comedy section within hours. But guess what: it was a magical day when almost everything went right. My drives skipped along the fairways, iron shots landed just about where I intended, the bunkers were a breeze once I sussed they were scoopers rather than diggers. Even my atrocious chipping was indecently good. Shame about the putting, but the greens ...

I’m thinking of training as an anger management consultant so I can combine work, offering on-course counselling to angst-ridden golfers, with pleasure, following the tournaments they play in. I’d skip Tiger Woods. He seems able to channel his anger in the right direction, producing two scintillating rounds at Doral. But Sergio Garcia needs a calming influence to stop him upsetting TV viewers, and possibly the golfing authorities, by spitting his anger into cups on the greens. Perhaps if I’d been around Ernie Els wouldn’t have given an unfortunate cameraman a hard time for asking him to step forward a pace - ...

You can stop clutching those straws, guys. You know the stats as well as anyone. Tiger Woods has won 26 of the 32 PGA Tour events he has led at the half-way stage and he doesn’t look like denting that record this weekend. Odds on (1.6) with two rounds to go speaks for itself. There’s a few looking up at Tiger and thinking that if he could implode last Sunday he can implode this Sunday too, but that is a huge dollop of wishful thinking. Tiger is so much more comfortable with Doral than Bay Hill and there’s no meaner machine ...

Oh dear, Tiger Woods is using the ‘P’ word again. Last week it was his whole game that was “pathetic". This time he identified putting as the root of his problem. It was clearly the same for other Doral old hands who, playing a lot from memory, were thrown by new greens. Tiger for one found several holes playing completely opposite to the way he remembered. But his driving wasn’t up to a whole lot either, leaving him well down the pecking order of a discipline he generally leads. At least as he spent Thursday evening in a heavy session on ...

To see Tiger Woods strolling around Doral happily chatting and joking with his buddy Roger Federer, you wouldn’t think he had a care in the world. It certainly isn’t the demeanour of a man tearing his insides out over last week’s abysmal performance at Bay Hill. Which is why the white flag of surrender already flutters atop my computer terminal. At the Doral, you take Tiger Woods on at your peril. This is his course and his tournament, now two events have been controversially rolled into one to suit the FedEx Cup competition. He’s won his last two outings in the ...

Never thought I’d read this in a month of Sundays. “Woods … played the back nine like an amateur - and not necessarily a very good amateur.” A pretty bad-tempered amateur I’d say, jumping straight in his car afterwards and driving off in a huge huff. I reckon Arnold Palmer finally got what he wanted in spades. Tiger Woods, the greatest golfer on the planet, was made to pay for his first-round hubris. So this wasn’t to be another tale of the Pied Piper of Florida, but of an old master claiming a much-desired crown that has eluded him over the ...

Talk about meltdown. The really odd thing about the third rounds of playing partners Rocco Mediate and Paul Casey Saturday was that their games got worse as the weather got better. Health problems? Did Mediate’s back perhaps send him few reminders? Casey apparently was complaining of being ill before starting his round. So a hugely different leaderboard greets us on day four. The wind and chill factor was a surprise Saturday and we may be in for more. Tom Lehman says it’s the northerly wind that is making things so difficult, and that’s what we look set for. Despite his two-stroke lead, ...

The ideal setup Sunday would be Rocco Mediate and Tiger Woods in the final pairing. That way we could see how the old pro handles the Tiger circus and how the young pro with the tunnel vision focus handles the incessant chatterbox that would be his partner. Boy can Rocco talk for America, and Canada, and Mexico; heck you might as well throw in all the Americas. His interview Friday goes on so long my scroll wheel started glowing. It was entertaining stuff - well worth a read - and you can well imagine him and Paul Casey almost forgetting they ...

“Arnie can’t like this,” says Rocco Mediate. “Players are shredding this course.” I prefer USA Today’s interpretation: “Bay Hill buried by low scores". Not just low scores, but a record 42 in the 60s, with some rounds still to finish. The rough was as terrible as everyone feared, but those who avoided it had a stroll in the park. The greens are as soft as you like, enabling players to attack the pins for all they are worth. My question is why, in that case, Arnold Palmer & Co made the pin placements so easy? Expect it to change Friday. Harder pin ...

So nice of Tiger Woods to turn up. After all he must be soooooo busy, what with courses to design and tournaments to inaugurate, not to mention his burgeoning family responsibilities. We should consider ourselves blessed. I’m not sure he will consider himself blessed by the end though. Seems Arnold Palmer has been busy trying to make his course as Tiger-proof as he can. Ultra-fast greens, tight fairways and, above all, deep, dense rough that Tiger says won’t let you reach the green if the grain is against you. Add to that Palmer’s decision to take two strokes off par and ...

Most interesting thing about Sunday was the news from Orlando about Arjun Atwal’s brush with death in what reports allege was some kind of road race. Golf getting too boring for him? It was for me as Mark Calcavecchia stuttered to the winning post. Heath Slocum’s challenge was entertaining, but didn’t seem to be going anywhere until Calcavecchia did his best to throw it away over the last three holes. Punters who had taken Calc’s price almost to the floor must have had their hearts in their mouths as Slocum stepped up to make that putt for a playoff on the ...

I came across a punter Saturday complaining that his money was solidly on joint leaders Mark Calcavecchia and Heath Slocum, plus fourth-placed Brian Gay. The reason for his angst was the money was on last week, when all three missed the cut at the Honda Classic. Go figure! It’s not too hard to fathom: they don’t do wind, last week’s dominant factor. Clearly, though, they do tough rough, narrow fairways and fast greens. Now why didn’t I spot that? I fancied Slocum last week, but because he bombed I left him alone this time, even though his stats still looked handy - ...

Sometimes, says Stephen Leaney, it’s easier to putt when you can’t see the hole. I’m still trying to figure exactly how that works, but it certainly did the business for him on the 18th Friday because he swears blind he couldn’t see where his 45ft birdie putt should go. “All I was doing was trying to get it past the hole … I was blinded by the sun.” Good fortune like that can win tournaments. Trouble is, the Australian (yup yet another one clambering the PGA’s greasy pole) needs two more lucky days on a merciless course. If things go on ...

Told you to bring the Golfing Who’s Not Who. As countless reports remind us, leader Cliff Kresge’s main claim to fame is falling in the water while making a putt at Q-School. His two eagles Thursday were no joke, but he did have the benefit of being first out of the traps before the greens had a chance to firm up. I doubt his struggles on the last three holes will be his last. So where did the wind go? It was left to the fast greens to sort the boys from the men: putting was by far the key ingredient ...

It’s all very well Tiger Woods prancing about the globe doing good deeds and becoming a father of children and golf tournaments, but it would be kinda neat if he picked up a golf club now and then and, you know, played the odd round. Only two US tournaments so far this season, one of them the matchplay, is hardly overdoing things. It would have been nice, for instance to see him at this week’s PODS Championship, less than memorably named after a storage and removal company (give me 84 Lumber any day). But then you could say that about quite ...

Pass me the tissues, I’ve just been listening to a real tear-jerker on XM radio. Winner Mark Wilson’s caddie Chris P Jones was dissolving in floods of them while his interviewer, his buddy and former caddie Michael Collins, was also balling his eyes out. It seemed the only decent thing to do was join in. The only one that didn’t end up crying was Wilson himself. You couldn’t call them tears of joy exactly, more tears of “redemption” as they put it. Try as I might to bring my normal cynical mind to bear, I couldn’t help feeling this is a ...

A bit of self-belief could go a long way at the Honda Classic Monday. A more tentative playoff foursome I could hardly imagine. But then I couldn’t have imagined a playoff group where the highest rated had opened the betting Thursday at just under 100. My preference would be Mark Wilson, both for Friday’s act of supreme honesty - turns out he caught his caddie giving club advice to his playing partner’s caddy and, although no one else witnessed it, immediately called a two stroke penalty on himself - and the way he saved his life Sunday with those two huge ...

PGA National and the wind from everywhere have them all flummoxed. Remember Robert (I’m gonna shoot five under) Allenby? They punished him for his hubris yesterday. Now there’s not a single player with an entirely sub-par week. So three days in and we’re just one stroke better off against par than day one, yet with an entirely new leadership. It really is a changing of the guard, from the old and wise to the lean and hungry. Mark Wilson, Boo Weekley and Daniel Chopra are no spring chickens, but they’re still chasing their first PGA win. Wilson has never led going into a ...

It’s hard to believe Robert Allenby has gone 139 PGA tournaments without a win. He said Thursday he thought one was imminent and this could it. He was, however, fortunate Friday to be one of the early birds that enjoyed some of the calmest conditions of the week. His stats tell a very impressive tale of all-round performance. Can he keep it up? He was a bit contradictory after Friday’s round. He felt he could easily go another five under this weekend, but then said the course “is only going to get tougher". Mmmmmmmm. But look back to the Nissan, another ...

Lets hear it for the old gits (again). Older and wiser heads prevailed at the Honda Classic Thursday as the wind doubled the challenge of an unforgiving course. Mind you, the level of difficulty depended on the level of success: Charlie Wi, our rather improbable 400-1 leader, thought it was easier to play than in practise rounds when the wind was in a different direction. Just 20 people under par and an overall average score of two over par (no difference between the morning and afternoon sessions) suggests it was a gruelling trial for most. It’s no coincidence to find so many ...

Jim Furyk has been knocking on the door so many times this season his knuckles must be bleeding. Three top tens and an 18th (ignore last week’s desert bomb run) suggests someone who really really wants to win something soon. He should have few better opportunities this week. It’s a long time since the Honda Classic’s new course, the PGA National, saw this level of competition and it has been hardened somewhat since by the sworn enemy of the cruise missile brigade, Jack Nicklaus. Narrow fairways, tough rough, doglegs aplenty - it’s awash with water hazards and mean bunkers. But the ...