Some one should tell Brett Quigley he doesn’t really fit in at the top of the leaderboard, because he’s not a former winner. There’s four of them sitting right alongside him, with two more in the wings: Woody Austin one shot back and 1999 champion Tom Pernice Jr just three shots off the pace after a strong 67 on Friday. You’d need a top-of-the-range crystal ball to predict how this is going to unravel over the next two days. I certainly don’t agree with a market that makes Jim Furyk such a clear favourite still at a little over 3. That ...

Four course winners in the top eight - who says course form is no guide? It can’t be too much of a coincidence that the same four top the betting at the end of round one. It’s not often you see that happen. What’s interesting is the order the odds-makers have them in. They are clearly less than convinced by leader Rocco Mediate’s assurance that a new therapist has banished much of his back trouble. They put him bottom of the pile on just over 14. Even Woody Austin, a shot back, nips in front of him at 13.5. But it’s ...

So that’s it then. Stick your money on Jim Furyk, open a can of beer, switch on the tele and watch the winnings birdie their way in. That’s what almost everyone seems to be saying and it’s not hard to see why. Furyk won this in 2003, was second last year and in 2001, and top 10 in the intervening years, against supposedly better quality opposition than he’s facing this year. This season he’s been as good as ever without actually winning anything: second twice including the US Open and three other top 10s. There’s his renowned accuracy off the tee which, ...

Jay Williamson’s wobble, when it finally came, was understandable. Yes, he tells us, he let nerves get to him with that birdie putt for victory on the 72nd hole, and it was goodbye to the breakthrough win he so desperately wanted and richly deserved. Full marks for his sporting reaction, allowing himself just the tiniest whinge about the rules official who wouldn’t give him relief when he landed on a drain at the first hole Sunday. On the tenth another official gave Hunter Mahan a free drop in similar circumstances. Trouble was, both players richly deserved victory for some exceptional golf and ...

You don’t end up with too many fairy tales in golf and it is questionable whether Sunday’s final round of the Travelers is going to add to them. It would be a great story if Jay Williamson won his way back onto the PGA circuit from his exemption, and he has played some impressive golf over the last three days. His accuracy off the tee is superb - he missed just one fairway Saturday and only six overall - which no doubt helped him top the field with his short game. If he can keep that up Sunday then of ...

Odd to think of golf as a game where it helps to bring along a mechanic. The way clubs are developing though, players might even think of doing a degree course in engineering themselves. Jay Williamson didn’t quite need that level of expertise to fix his driver Friday, but he’s sure glad his playing partner had a handy mini-wrench to apply to a loose screw. It enabled him to hit a worthy round of four under to share the lead at the half way stage. Interesting to see who else scored the best rounds Friday. They don’t quite qualify for free ...

TPC River Highlands appears to have turned itself into a kind of rehab centre. There’s a fair number of crocks, both of the physical and mental variety, who seem to have rejuvenated their game at the Travelers. Brad Faxon and Shigeki Maruyama come in trailing a long line of missed cuts and withdrawals. Kenny Perry is playing like a man posessed and even Carl Pettersson, though not having such a terrible season, has been a shadow of the player we saw last year. Most spectacular though was Thursday’s round of Chris DiMarco, winless since 2002 and with pretty much zero to ...

Time has not been kind to some of those who headed last year’s Buick leaderboard, as it then was. Winner J J Henry has managed just one top 10 and two top 20s this season. Hunter Mahan is only now showing signs of life after a lone top 10 against 8 missed cuts, and Nathan Green has fared only marginally better. The ailing Shigeki Maruyama’s best result is 44th against eight missed cuts and three withdrawals, while Bubba Dickerson has only made the cut once in six outings. One other to have punctuated a season of missed cuts with modest returns ...

Another Major needlessly lost on the last day. Not by Tiger Woods; I’m talking about the man who really should have won Sunday - Jim Furyk. It was his for the taking until he had his own minor Mickelson moment on the 17th with an over-confident choice of driver that had knowledgeable onlookers gasping in surprise. Result: overshooting into thick rough and struggling to a bogey and second place for the second year running. He can’t say he wasn’t warned - he had already suffered miscues with the driver on Sunday. As for Tiger, the claim of some scribes - well one ...

Okay guys, cut the excited chatter for a minute. All this babble about Tiger Woods, anyone would think you were trying to win the game for him before he’s taken a single shot Sunday. As usual, here I stand on my lonely redoubt, my red coat glowing in the sun, against the wall of cash, now probably well into the tens of millions, backing the great man to sweep all before him down the fairways of Oakmont. I don’t feel so alone, because if Woods really was such a shoe-in his price would be odds on by now instead of around ...

It’s been sooooooo good to be an Englishman these last couple of days. Paul Casey’s astonishing round Friday was the icing on the cake. It must surely rank among the great rounds of Major golf history. But it’s back to the old accuracy argument again. Our second round leader for hitting fairways is none other than young Mr Casey, who only missed one on Friday. That helped him reach 12 of 18 greens in regulation, a much more impressive figure than it looks, and some of his putting was out of this world. A bit lucky and certainly brave. He admits, ...

Accuracy off the tee? That’s for wussies isn’t it? Certainly seems so if you’re name’s Bubba Watson, who just about managed to hit seven fairways Thursday, yet finds himself just two shots off the lead in third. He’s not alone. None of the first round top four are higher than 38th for accuracy. The rough, it seems, is not so tough after all. It’s a point raised on the PGA Tour website, which looks back at last year’s Open to find a similar situation: everyone thought accuracy was the vital ingredient, but the stats said ‘no’. Distance off the tee doesn’t ...

I’ve read so many words about wrists I’m tempted to slash mine. When it’s not David Howell’s denying him a shot at the US Open, it’s Michelle Wie’s off-again on-again wrists tying her up in futile knots, or Phil Mickelson’s leaving us all guessing whether he’ll even make it through four days at Oakmont. What gets me about Lefty is that, knowing his situation, hundreds of thousands of squidollars, not to mention the odd euro, have been thrown at him by eager punters. I know his exchange price has gone out from 8 to about 18 since the extent of his ...

So I was right. David Toms did face a monumental task Sunday. Sadly, I was also horribly, awfully, catastrophically wrong as well. Because the monument in question turned out not to be the young figure of Adam Scott, the coming man of golf, but the far more weather-beaten edifice known as Woody Austin, a man who’s come and gone and come again. The memory of Scott’s 14th tee shot into the water will linger for a long time. So will the stunned reaction on the XM radio channel: Jay Randolph Jr: “I just don’t get it"; Doug Bell: “I’m stunned"; ...

Today’s quick question is this: name the three players with wire-to-wire victories this season. Hurry up because Adam Scott’s about to make it four. You’d probably get Vijay Singh easily enough in the season opener and it’s not too much of a stretch to add Phil Mickelson’s performance at Pebble Beach. But I reckon Fred Funk’s win down Mexico way would stump a few. Interestingly, there hasn’t been a single one since February. Of course there’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip, and Scott has done his best to dampen expectations, but he’s failed. This is a very stingy course ...

I’ve always been a huge advocate of keeping family away from the office. But never because I saw it as essential to staying alive. Who else but John Daly could steal a tournament’s headlines with a claim that his fourth wife came at him with a steak knife in his sleep? I know we’re not supposed to laugh, but this is John Daly we’re talking here, the golfer whose life seems to veer from the ridiculous to the totally absurd. “I think people can relate to some of the things that have gone on in my life,” he declared. I don’t ...

There’s some cruel people at TPC Southwind. Who needs Chinese water torture when you’ve got pin positions like Thursday’s. It wasn’t just the awkward locations per se, but the fact that they seemed to be sited to allow the wind to do its worst - at the front of greens where the wind was at players’ backs, at the back with the wind in players’ faces. The US Open should be a cinch after this. With gusts of up to 30mph making life fairly hellish on the PGA’s second most difficult course, it was small wonder only seven could break par. ...

There’s a bit of a knowledge gap at the top of this week’s leaderboard when it comes to the TPC Southwind course. Vijay Singh, Adam Scott, Sergio Garcia, Padraig Harrington … the list of top players who have basically chosen to give the place a miss - certainly this side of the millennium - goes down quite a way. Singh last played it in 1992. What’s changed? The obvious thing is that it now comes in handy as a last-minute workout for the US Open the following week. That was why Phil Mickelson was in it before being KO’d by his ...

Two days ago I was right on the button in suggesting the possibility that someone seven shots off the pace at the halfway stage could go on to win. Trouble is it wasn’t Jim Furyk repeating his feat of 2002, but K J Choi. Oddly enough, like Furyk in 2002, Choi was still five shots behind after the third round. That was a very tricky match to follow “in-play” Sunday: Choi ripping up the field to go ahead by two, but running out of holes and starting to falter, leaving himself with difficult par putts. You just had to think he ...

I don’t know about a good walk spoiled, but this is in danger of becoming a good tournament spoiled by the weather. That would be a shame considering the top of the table contest we have in store. Not the old guns you might have expected to dominate this event at the outset, but the young Turks bidding to take on their mantle. I had rather expected (hoped) Rod Pampling would have faded away by now instead of sitting three shots clear. But a price of almost 2.5 going into the final stretch of a tournament which historically heavily favours the ...

Fasten your seatbelts for the weekend. This could be a thriller. I like the AP line that Adam Scott ‘flirted with perfection’ Friday. He only failed to achieve it when he started thinking about it and lost concentration. But it was undoubtedly one of the great rounds of the season. His stats are gold-plated: his worst is 23rd for accuracy off the tee. He’s fifth for distance, third for greens in regulation and pretty much top of the heap for putting. No one else comes anywhere near. A round like that deserves to leave you with a huge gap to the chasing pack. ...

What an excellent way to shrug off the travails of The Players. Respect to Sean O’Hair for the way he threw down the gauntlet to the chasing pack Thursday. What is interesting is who took it up. Not Tiger Woods, having another of his periodic off days, nor Phil Mickelson, forced out by wrist trouble that had the legions who lumped on him thinking Tiger would indeed falter seething. Not even Zach Johnson, whose sore throat forced a hasty exit after an uncharacteristic triple bogey on the 15th. Instead it’s two unassuming Aussies, Rod Pampling and Nick O’Hern, dissecting the fairways ...