If there’s one big consolation for having my schedule ruined by the Deutsche Bank’s later start, it’s the prospect of the big three charging round the field in the opening rounds. How often do we get to see Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh stand tall (ish) together on 18 tees? If any guys should know how to deal with the negative effects of playing against the Tiger circus it’s his initial partners this week. Heck, they’ve got circuses of their own. With Tiger’s price hovering just below 3 there’s a temptation to take him on, but it’s wise to resist. ...

There’s a theory going the rounds that Steve Stricker won because he lost: that as he watched K J Choi’s dramatic recovery from dropping three shots on the front nine he decided the game was up, relaxed and - voila! - the birdies started flowing. It’s not quite the way Stricker tells it, but even he says he thought ‘Here he goes’ as Choi’s recovery evoked memories of how the Korean stiffed him and others at the AT&T. No matter, Stricker’s four-birdie spree down the last five holes was as sweet a finish as you could hope for, even if it ...

I’m offering a prize (bar of chocolate enough?) to anyone who can tell me what K J Choi was talking about after his round Saturday. He’s a great and generous guy, and a mighty fine golfer to boot, but he doesn’t half mangle his English. I guess the transcribers at asapsports.com have the same problem because they only managed a couple of terse and barely intelligible paragraphs themselves. All I recall is the word ‘left’ peppering his replies quite a lot, as in that is where his ball keeps going. That obviously isn’t quite the plan for someone who has ...

Ernie Els’s monosyllabic answers after his par round Friday displayed intense frustration at a great opportunity thrown away. We were lucky even to get those few words out of him, because at the time he clearly believed he was just four shots adrift and still in with a fighting chance. Instead, thanks to another stonking round from Korea’s finest, K J Choi, he’s six shots behind and looking every inch a loser again. At Westchester a six-shot deficit at the half-way stage is a very tall order, even when its wet. Word on the fairway is that it’s going to ...

It’s obviously kick a Tiger week. There was an interesting discussion with Steve Flesch about the golfing work ethic after his solid 6-under performance Thursday. This is the 26th event he’s played this year and he was almost apologetic about having skipped last week to recover from the PGA “inferno". It’s only the second time this year he has missed an event he’s eligible for. You might think, now he has pocketed half a million dollars from the Reno-Tahoe Open, he’s entitled to relax a bit, but he doesn’t see it that way. Instead, he has a hard time understanding ...

I love the PGA Tour website: it’s a super resource for anyone following the tour. And it’s obvious they’ve burnt a few midnight candles to get their redesign just right. A bit on the dark side, a trifle moody blue, but very slick. A pity some of the features don’t match it for quality. In their desperation to kindle some excitement in their new competition they include a piece entitled simply “Expert picks: FedEx Cup” (I point blank refuse to mimic the illiterate marketing ploy of joining up those words. Only a German would write FedExCup.) Guess what? The experts all ...

How’s this for a bit of Tiger-bashing? “When you’re playing well the rule of thumb is to keep playing, not take weeks off.” I don’t know if Brandt Snedeker was thinking of Tiger Woods when he said it after Sunday’s victory, but it has a certain ring now the world number one has decided to skip the first of the FedEx playoffs. Compared to Tiger, Snedeker’s a golfing workaholic - 25 appearances this season to Tiger’s 12 - which is not surprising when your prime concern at the outset it simply keeping your card. Worry no more. Not only is he ...

If you’re thinking of taking on Jeff Overton Sunday, bone up on a little tournament history first. For the last eight years the third round leader has gone on to lift the trophy. For all that this course delivers birdies like confetti, it’s a democratic process and playing catchup is not as easy as you might think. With Overton sitting on a three-stroke lead, which we haven’t seen here since Shigeki Maruyama in 2003, you have a mighty challenge for the rest of the pack. Still think Overton’s beatable? Of course he is, but it’ll likely only be if nerves and ...

I suspect at the start of the season many people had Anthony Kim down to win the PGA Tour’s rookie of the year award. So far he has largely not disappointed, although he has shown signs of going off the boil of late. Now he needs to watch his back for Steve Marino moving up swiftly on the outside. Four top tens and four more top 20s so far this season have already eased him into the FedEx playoffs. Now he’s just two rounds away from a serious result. His strong driving plays well on this course, but it’s his ironwork ...

Among the things Will MacKenzie likes to do as an ice-breaker, apparently, is stand on his head. He boasts a “stellar reputation". This week he’s even managed to stand the form book on its head to lead round one. Yet there are some intriguing similarities to last year when he notched his breakthrough victory at the Reno-Tahoe Open. That came in August too, after a string of missed cuts and poor finishes. And it was begun with a low round - a 63 that time, one better than Thursday’s effort. So although the PGA Tour website reminds us that first-time leaders ...

The Wyndham Championship drew one of the shortest straws in the PGA Tour’s big reorganisation this season. Turfed out of its comfortable September-October slot into the darkness between the PGA Championship and the start of the FedEx Cup playoffs, it’s small wonder there’s precious few bankable names about. Then, adding injury to insult, out goes defending champion Davis Love III to have some kidney stones removed. Tournament cheerleaders insist there’ll be riveting competition among those in the last chance saloon to get into the FedEx playoff series. Hunger for FedEx points might even throw up a winner, they suggest somewhat unhelpfully. ...

The shot of the round in my mind was the 7-iron Tiger Woods fired to the green at the 15th. It had been a rather tentative, roller coaster affair up to then and he’d had his fair share of luck. That banana putt for birdie on the 8th was as “out” as two of his missed putts on the 18th in previous rounds had been “in". And as he walked to the 15th tee after his third bogey of the day had left him just one shot ahead of a rampant Woody Austin, the great man was cursing himself with some ...

There’s so little left to write about that some hack has even snatched that line from me. Everywhere you go it’s Tiger Woods’ championship to lose and the forums are full of yawning punters boring their mates with speculation about who will be top “Rest of World” player. I can’t find anyone who’s much looking forward to today’s expected Tiger procession. What has upset many people is the less than inspiring lineup behind Tiger. Where, they ask, are Singh, Mickelson, Furyk, Harrington, Garcia, Stenson? There are valid excuses for only some (though not Garcia, because he was already wrecked when he ...

You don’t get to watch too many rounds of golf like Tiger Woods’ on Friday. The precision of his approach work and deadly accuracy of his putting were often spellbinding. Some observers were instantly dubbing it one of the greatest rounds in golfing history. Maybe that goes a little far - it needed that infuriating final putt to go in for that - but I’ll enjoy the inevitable debate. That was so “in", the putt on the 18th. Woods was very sanguine about it afterwards, but he sure looked mad as hell at the time as fate chucked it back at ...

I wonder if Graeme Storm was whistling ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the Midday Sun’ as he set off on his, uh, storming round yesterday (Sorry but everyone else has been at the Storm puns (’Storm steals PGA thunder’ etc) I don’t see why I shouldn’t). You had to be a bit loopy to set off in the midday sun Thursday as temperatures hit the ton. I tell you who wasn’t mad though: the lucky punters who put more than £500 on Storm’s head at odds of 1,000. There’s huge excitement on the forum at the quoted stat that ...

Tulsa already has winners without a shot being fired in anger. They’re the perspicacious bunch who lumped on Tiger Woods for the PGA championship way back when his price was out over 4. Cue comprehensive victory at Firestone that shortens the price to just over 3, and they’re sitting pretty whatever happens. Should they hedge back for safety or let it run and go with the betting flow that says Tiger will streak home? Only a hermit would be unaware of the big difference of opinion on Tiger’s chances at Southern Hills. The naysayers make much of his last outing in the ...

Whoosh! Is it a bird, is it a plane? No it’s Tiger Woods saying ‘That’s enough births, deaths and marriages, let’s get on with the golf’. Such a masterful performance was well worth losing money to witness. So why am I mad as hell? Because of Rory Sabbatini of course. Not so much that he slunk from the challenge like a dog with its tail between its legs, although that was painful. Matchplay? Call it mismatchplay on a grand scale. But such headlines as ‘Woods rubs Sabbatini’s nose in the mud’ will be punishment enough for someone with his ego. What really got ...

A pity the threatening weather means everyone is now going off in threes. The media have done their level best to squeeze every drop of juice out of a dramatic final pairing of Tiger Woods and Rory Sabbatini. Now Kenny Perry gets in their way. Even so, the two main protagonists have refused to rise to the bait hung out by hungry hacks. Sabbatini even went out of his way to describe Tiger as good company on the course, which strikes me as odd since I always thought the great man disappeared down a tunnel of concentration when he had clubs ...

You know what they say about when the going gets tough. Maybe it wasn’t such a surprise to see Rory Sabbatini and Zach Johnson push the pace on a day that played on average almost a stroke harder than Thursday. But Davis Love III’s 5 under is almost as much of a revelation as Stewart Cink’s 9 over was the day before. Love has missed his last four cuts and hasn’t had a top 20 since March. His reaction to the round sounded a lot like Hunter Mahan’s the day before, and Phil Mickelson, and … in fact there was almost ...

I hope Paul Casey didn’t go double-or-quits on his little bet with coach Peter Kostis that he couldn’t hit 67 or better, or he’ll likely starve. It’s going to get tougher to get around Firestone as the rough grows and the sun bakes the greens. Casey, whose coach owed him a meal for his table-topping opening round, has a habit of following a low number with a somewhat higher one. The course seems to have taken everyone by surprise, not least Stewart Cink with five bogeys, two double bogeys and not a single birdie. Who expected to see him propping up ...

These are supposedly exciting times for golf nuts. The last of the majors hoves abruptly into view after which we hurtle relentlessly into the FedEx Cup playoff finale, all topped off with the Presidents Cup at the end of next month. With Tiger Woods back this week doing something quite exceptional - playing the week before a major - you’d think there’d be a special buzz about the place. Seems there’s more excitement about the historic Women’s Open at St Andrews. Tiger breezes in at the last minute with hardly a stir, Phil Mickelson has been as quiet as a mouse, ...