It’s okay guys, it’s safe to come out and play now, he’s over in the Gulf giving the European boys some grief instead. So we can all relax and look forward to a rowdy four days of warm-up to the Super Bowl in the desert with hopefully more of a golfing competition than last week. What intrigued me most in the aftermath of the Buick was that television ratings were down 18% on the previous year. Not everyone is captivated by a Tiger Woods masterclass it seems. Fortunately it looks as if we are to be spared the bad weather that spoiled ...

The people entitled to feel really pleased right now are those who gave themselves a Christmas present of a bet on Tiger Woods for the grand slam. At that time they would have got a price somewhere a little south of 30. After just one outing by the great man you’ll struggle to get on at 16 (it’s 14.5 on Betfair). So they are already as happy as pigs in the proverbial, able to lock in a hefty profit, albeit one they might have to wait until August to collect. Given Tiger’s absolute mastery of the Buick Invitational, despite Sunday’s wind-blown ...

It’s raining, the wind’s already up around 20mph, and it’s not yet dawn. There’s plenty more rain on the way - up to two inches we’re told - plus some hail, we could see lightning too, and the wind’ll likely gust anywhere up to 40mph. It’s not the way I remember California. So heaven knows when we’ll finish this one, if at all. Which is a pity considering it is effectively already finished. You can lump all your money, your house, your car, yacht, life insurance on Tiger Woods if they’ll let you, although at 1.01 on the exchange and 1.005 ...

There’s a big storm a’coming, but it’ll have to go some to match the one that’s already passing through. As Tiger Woods himself said, he’s been driving like a dog, yet the rest of his golf has blown him to what must surely be an unassailable position. To struggle so much off the tee on Friday yet still card a bogey-free round is quite something. This is actually a rare position for him at the Buick, despite being a five-time winner. Before Woods has invariably had to play catchup at the half-way stage. In the last two years he was seven ...

Not only was Troy Matteson’s seven under on the south course the most surprising round of the day, the manner of it was even more startling. No one else among Thursday’s leaders came close to his stats - top ten in all the key disciplines. But he is by no means an unlikely leader - he was the choice of at least one prominent tipster for the Hope last week because his record shows a predilection for the pro-am format, including his win two years ago at Las Vegas. A week ago he never recovered from a horrendous opening round of ...

The betting on the real ’season opener’ is predictably lopsided. The money on Tiger Woods is already a flood running at more than 30 times his nearest challenger, Phil Mickelson. I suppose it’s a bit late to suggest both sides of the betting equation are a trifle barmy. The case against laying Tiger is obvious. A five-time winner, including the last three on the trot, who even in an off-year finishes top 10, and his nearest challenger this year supposedly suffering the after-effects of bronchitis. Tiger sounds raring to go at the start of a quest to do the grand slam. ...

Justin Leonard put a brave face on things, but that defeat is going to hurt for a while. Strikes me he got a bit cocky over Sunday’s opening holes, with his four-shot lead still intact after D J Trahan’s bogey on the seventh. Some of his shots were positively swashbuckling. Then “puff", in the space of three holes the lead was gone. But I doubt Leonard is feeling any worse than the punters who spent more than £150,000 on the Betfair market alone chasing his price all the way down to 1.09, while gleefully slagging off the layers that took them ...

So Justin Leonard, which do you want first, the good news or the bad? Okay, here’s the bad. The local Palm Springs newspaper The Desert Sun thinks you should be aware that in this tournament’s 48-year history only 19 of those leading on Sunday morning have gone on to win. It even handily does the math(s) for you - that’s a success rate of just 39.5%. Must have been easier in the good old days then, because since the turn of the century that figure has fallen to 37.5 %, with just three winners out of eight events. Ah yes, you might ...

The really surprising thing about Boo Weekley’s 10 under on Friday was that it was one of only two rounds to go that low. With no wind to speak of these courses are particularly defenceless. Leader Robert Gamez for one was surprised so few managed to make a big impression. Birdies, he said, “were out there for the taking.” Saturday provides a perfect opportunity for the players to redeem themselves as the weather watchword is “calm". It should certainly be just the job for Justin Leonard to lay his Classic course “bogey” - 71-72-74 since the course came ...

So far there’s everything to like with what Justin Leonard is doing, although fate is playing its part. It was pretty calm at Silver Rock when he played what is proving the most challenging of the four courses, especially to someone who struggles for length as he does. Then when the wind kicked up Thursday he found himself at La Quinta, as he said afterwards “probably the golf course that you want to be on a windy day". This decade he has never played the course better than Thursday’s 64 - his previous best was as a 67 in 2003 when ...

There are no problems, only opportunities, I am often told, usually by a boss as he deliberately stands on my foot. That seemed to be the watchword for the opening day, where the lack of wind left all four courses open to a massive attack. What did I say about distance? Forget it. In these conditions the biggest problems were the logjams created by all the amateur snails. To have to wait 40 minutes as Tim Petrovic did at one stage is crazy. It’s still a bit of a puzzle that the four courses should play within a stroke of each ...

There’s a spirited body of opinion in the forums this week that can be classified as “I wouldn’t be seen dead backing Justin Leonard at less than 30.” Poor Justin is not the tipsters’ favourite either - he warrants hardly a mention. It all sits oddly with the fact that he seems to be attracting the most money in Betfair’s winner market. He might trail favourite Mike Weir on 16 by four points, but so far he’s pulling in almost double Weir’s money. Admittedly the market is thin, probably because as usual the Wednesday start will come as a bit of ...

It might not seem so to Rory Sabbatini, but that was a hot round of golf he served up on Sunday. The wind made it hell on tees for everyone - an average of more than two strokes harder than the day before. The lowest round of the day from George McNeil was only 4 under and just two of the top ten managed to get in under par. Sabbatini might rue a few fluffed putts and wayward tee shots, but the pressure of having to haul in K J Choi’s huge lead meant costly errors were bound to happen in ...

You don’t really have to do the sums. The market price of less than 1.3 says all you want to know about the likelihood of K J Choi ending up a wire-to-wire winner. It’s going to take a monumentally bad day at the office for the Korean to let this one slip. He has been easily under par all week, he has increased his lead each round and his closest rival is a rookie untested in the heat of PGA battle. Even if Choi didn’t manage to break par, all but Tim Wilkinson would have to fire their best round of ...

Steve Marino and Fred Funk are looking like the exceptions that disprove the rule. We all know what a stickler Funk is for accurate tee shots and he is again the most precise player after round two to edge himself up into 4th place. Marino might not have much of a reputation for finding fairways but he only missed four of them Friday. Yet around them are a host of players for whom the fairways often might as well have been on the moon. K J Choi barely managed to find half of them and Kevin Na and Jimmy Walker ...

So remind me. Who is it I can’t say should be lynched? Because I’ve got a long list here (I’m in a particularly vindictive mood today), but I really wouldn’t want to fall foul of that Rev Sharpton geyser. He sounds scary. Is he really a Christian? Mind you, come to think of it I could quite do with a two-week suspension a la Kelly Tilghman. I’m up to my eyes in stuff and these Hawaiian hours are doing my head in. They seem to be suiting K J Choi, though. I was surprised he did so badly at Kapalua last ...

Where’s Michelle Wie when you need her? Yes, I know I used to rant about all the media attention she used to siphon off at events like this, but at least it injected a scintilla of life into the proceedings. The news from Honolulu this year is so riveting that most column inches have been filled up with a ridiculous row over whether Tiger Woods supports capital punishment. Or did I get the wrong end of the rope? Everyone else seems to have. Back at Honolulu it’s like first day at school, with all the new first-formers lining up in their ...

I was almost on my knees by the end praying for someone to win it. The sun might have been setting on the drama at Kapalua, threatening a spill-over into Monday, but back here in England we weren’t far off the other end of the day. You really don’t want playoffs in Hawaii. What Kapalua proved beyond peradventure is there is one law for Tiger Woods and another for the poor proles that chase after him. If it had been Tiger, at least one of Daniel Chopra’s teetering birdie shots would have disappeared into the hole. In case you’ve forgotten, here’s ...

Since the turn of the millennium this competition has gone one of two ways on Sunday: the overnight leader has taken the spoils or the victor has sprung out of the chasing pack from four shots back. That’s happened three times: Stuart Appleby in 2005, Sergio Garcia in 2002 and none other than Jim Furyk the year before that. That little factoid strikes me as particularly interesting now our Jim appears to have found his feet at last with a sizzler of a back nine Saturday. He looks a potent threat in what should be an enthralling final day at Kapalua, ...

I wish all you guys would stop talking about Canada taking over the leaderboard. Mike Weir might be topping the chart at the half-way stage, but he has a doughty Brit sitting right on his tail in the shape of Stephen Ames. Don’t look at me in that tone of voice. It’s all quite clear, he said so himself at his media conference. “It is a British Commonwealth, Trinidad was a British Commonwealth. I am British, also.” So that’s settled then. If we could claim Greg Rudsetski as one of our own, which we did (with rather mixed results it has ...

So where was PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem when his small but perfectly-formed band of professionals needed him at Maui? Considering the special ceremony they held to inaugurate the 2008 season, you’d have thought he might have made at least a flying visit. Yes, I know it’s a long way to go to make a speech, but it’s not exactly Devil’s Island. He obviously agrees with Vijay Singh about the season starting too early. Heck, if the head honcho can’t be bothered to turn up, why should anyone else? Course, you could always make me commissioner instead. I assure you I’d have ...

If more players shun this season opener you’ll easily be able to fit those left into a single Merc, which would be handy for sightseeing. Not that the dwindling numbers deter the PGA Tour people. They’ve decided to hold a special ceremony at Kapalua to mark the start of the season. Before you know it we’ll have marching bands and flypasts! At one point it looked like our band of 31 would be down to 30 when the new, improved PGA Tour website was gripped by the gremlins and left Aaron Baddeley off the field sheet. But he’s there in the ...