He is still on indefinite leave. From ESPN-
The field for next week’s World Golf Championship is set and it does not include Tiger Woods.
The world’s No. 1 golfer had until 5 p.m. ET on Friday to commit to the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship and the deadline passed without a word.
England’s Ross McGowan, who has never played in a World Golf Championship event, is the beneficiary, earning the final spot in the field because he was ranked No. 66 at the close of the qualification period last week. No. 2 Phil Mickelson is also skipping the event to take a family vacation.
Steve Stricker will be the No. 1 seed in the 64-player match play event, which begins Wednesday.
Woods has won the tournament three times and made his highly anticipated return to golf following knee surgery at last year’s event in Arizona, winning his first match before being defeated in the second round by South Africa’s Tim Clark.
This will he won’t he saga will continue for every tournament normally on Tiger’s schedule till he plays competitve golf again. I don’t expect Woods to play before the Masters.
She was a 7-time national champion. Funches died over 3 weeks ago but her death was only reported yesterday in the Washington Post. RIP.
Ethel Funches was six days short of her 48th birthday when she teed off against Althea Gibson in the quarterfinals of the 1961 black women’s golf national championship.
Gibson, the tennis champion who had recently traded in her racket for a set of clubs, was famous. Mrs. Funches, who was a cafeteria manager at Dunbar High School in Northwest Washington, was not. But what Mrs. Funches lacked in renown she made up for with a long drive, an elegant chip shot and a fierce distaste for losing.
“My name is Ethel P. Funches,” she was fond of saying. “The ‘P’ is for powerful.”
Mrs. Funches not only won the match against Gibson, she also captured seven national titles and, during an amateur career that spanned more than 30 years, went on to win so many tournament trophies that she had to set aside the basement of her Northeast Washington home to hold them all.
“Between 1950 and 1980, Ethel Funches was the best of the best,” said M. Mikell Johnson, author of “The African American Woman Golfer: Her Legacy.” “She would have been identified as a phenom according to the standards of today.”
Mrs. Funches died Jan. 6 of cardiovascular disease at a D.C. nursing home. She was 96.
A new tournament in 2010. From Randall Mell at the Shag Bag-
The LPGA announced Tuesday the debut of the Sybase Match Play Championship. The tournament will be held at Hamilton Farm Golf Club in Galdstone, N.J., May 20-23.
Sixty-four of the top players from around the world will compete for a $1.5 million purse, with the winner earning $375,000.
Hamilton Farm was the site of the 2005 and 2006 HSBC Women’s World Match Play event. This will be the first official match-play tournament contested since its demise after the 2007 season.
Seon Hwa Lee defeated Ai Miyazato in the finals of the last edition. The LPGA continues to get healthier under its new Commissioner, Michael Whan.
He is a winner of 13 Champions Tour events since 2007. From AP-
Professional golfer Jim Thorpe has been sentenced to a year in prison for failing to pay more than $2 million in income taxes.
Thorpe’s attorney, Mark Horwitz, said Friday that Thorpe must turn himself in to authorities by April 1. The golfer also was sentenced to two years of supervised release and 200 hours of community service. He must try to repay the taxes while he’s on supervised release.
In September, Thorpe pleaded guilty to two counts of failing to pay income taxes and had faced up to two years in prison.
Thorpe has accepted his punishment and says he will get on with his life. A good idea. I always liked Thorpe, one of the few black golfers to win on the PGA Tour. Thorpe won three tournaments in the 1980′s and contended in a couple of major championships.
They are only doing this year’s event but have an option to pick up more. From AP-
The San Diego Open has found a title sponsor one week before its tournament at Torrey Pines, with Farmers Insurance Group agreeing to a deal for at least one year.
The PGA Tour said Monday that Farmers, a subsidiary of Zurich Financial Services, has an option to be the title sponsor beyond 2010.
The tournament, formerly the Buick Invitational, will be called the Farmers Insurance Open when it begins Jan. 28.
There have been plenty of Chicken Little impersonators among both golf bloggers and writers because of the PGA having lost multiple sponsors of late. Farmers Insurance stepping forward is just the latest case of these people being off target. Doom and gloom sells or makes for a better column or blog post, remember that.
Part of The Four Seasons Resort and Club Dallas at Las Colinas, is the TPC at Las Colinas golf course, which has hosted the Byron Nelson since 1983*. From the Dallas Morning News-
One of the Dallas area’s most exclusive hotel properties is facing a possible foreclosure.
Lenders have filed to foreclose on the Four Seasons Resort and Club Dallas at Las Colinas, a 400-acre hotel, spa and golf club in Irving.
The Four Seasons Resort and Club Dallas at Las Colinas has almost 400 rooms and hosts the annual HP Byron Nelson Championship golf tournament. The tournament isn’t expecting any impact from the resort’s financial problems.
The more than 400-room hotel is one of the state’s top-rated accommodations and hosts the annual HP Byron Nelson Championship golf tournament.
U.S. Bank NA is seeking repayment of a $183 million loan on the property and has scheduled a forced sale on Feb. 2, according to legal filings.
The foreclosure posting is the largest in North Texas in more than 20 years.
Golf is taking economic hits just like the rest of the U.S. economy. The annual San Diego Tour stop is without a sponsor and faces an uncertain future.
The 2010 Byron Nelson won’t be affected by the foreclosure sale.
George Conant, tournament chairman for the 2010 HP Byron Nelson Championship, said the golf tournament will not be affected.
“We are pleased with the improvements that have been made to the property in recent years to enhance the golf and fan experience at the tournament, and we look forward to another fantastic championship this May,” he said.
Even if Tiger Woods, the 1997 Byron Nelson Champion, is back playing the PGA Tour he probably won’t be in the field. Tiger last played the Nelson in 2005.
*- After the 1985 edition of the Nelson, which is infamous for Payne Stewart double bogeying both the 72nd hole and the first hole of Sudden Death, the Las Colinas Sports Club was transformed into the TPC at Los Colinas. I don’t know about anyone else, but I consider the changes to the course not to constitute a site change. Some golf journalists will probably write otherwise.
A site change- When a golf tournament moves from Course A to Course B. Not when Course A is rebuilt and renamed Course B.
Hat tip- Ryan at Waggleroom
In the aftermath of Geoff Ogilvy’s win yesterday, the golf writer takes us down memory lane as he tells us about other Australians who have had success at professional golf.
Greg Norman, of course, is the Australian who probably comes to most golf-watchers when they consider players from Down Under who have been big winners. Norman won the 1986 and 1993 Open Championships and some 90 other tournaments around the world. He tied for third in the 2003 Open, when he was already a senior golfer.
Actually Norman finished tied for 3rd at the 2008 British Open. This may just be a typo. Also Norman’s PGA Tour profile lists his total victories as 89, two of which are those Open Championship victories of his. Rubenstein has it as 2 plus 90 other wins.
There is more……
But Norman was only following a long line of Aussies who have ruled the game. Peter Thomson won five Opens between 1954 and 1965. David Graham won the 1979 PGA Championship and the 1981 U.S. Open. Wayne Grady won the 1990 PGA while Steve Elkington won the 1995 PGA. Ian Baker-Finch won the 1991 Open. Adam Scott has won six PGA Tour events.
Let me point out something about Thomson. His five British Open Championships are impressive, at the time he did it, those were not considered PGA Tour events. Retroactively they have been changed to wins, and if they weren’t, Thomson would have only one PGA title to his credit.
The reason I mention this. The introduction to Rubenstein’s article.
Greg Ogilvy* is the latest in a string of Australians to become a big winner on the PGA Tour
In his day, Peter Thomson wasn’t considered a big winner on the PGA Tour.
I can name four Australians that Rubenstein fails to mention who have won more tournaments on the PGA Tour than Adam Scott. Can anyone take a guess who those are?
Stuart Appleby 8 wins
Bruce Devlin 8 wins
Bruce Crampton 14 wins
Jim Ferrier 18 wins including the 1947 PGA Championship making him the first Australian born golfer to win a major Championship.
But wait didn’t Ferrier become a U.S. citizen? Yes, but so did David Graham at least of those listed above by Rubenstein.
And let’s not forget Kel Nagle, who won the 1964 Canadian Open. The Canadian Open was a very significant event in those days. Who finished second to Nagle? None other than Arnold Palmer.
I know Rubenstein works in Canada and understand his Canadian Open focus. You want to hear what else Nagle won with Arnold Palmer finishing 2nd?
How about the 1960 British Open.
Rubenstein didn’t write a horrible column, just a mediocre and incomplete one.
*- A name slipup obviously. I pick at Golf writer’s work all the time, but I make those same type of mistakes. There’s a level to my nitpicking.
It didn’t take long at all for golf writer in 2010 to offer up a bad already tried idea. Harig writes-
To help, perhaps a new format for the season-opening tournament — whether it is in Hawaii or elsewhere — is in order. Does any sport have a meeker opening than golf? A winners-only event sounds fine, but just 28 players are in Hawaii this week.
Maybe one of the World Golf Championship events could kick off the season.
This has been done already.
January 8, 2001
Melbourne, Australia — Steve Stricker needed a lot of help to win the Match Play Championship, but not from anyone he played.
Three days before Christmas, Stricker was No. 90 in the world rankings and preparing to start his season next week in Tucson, Ariz., at a second-tier PGA Tour event. He wound up in Australia at a $5 million World Golf Championship event when Tiger Woods, David Duval and two dozen other top players decided against a trip halfway around the world.
So Hariq doesn’t just propose an idea that’s been tried already but one that was a abysmal failure as top ranked players skipped the tournament in droves. Remember only the top 64 go to the match play tournament. At least 26 players(and I think the actual total was in the low 30′s) skipped a WGC event when it was the season opener. Brilliant idea, let’s do it again. NOT!
Harig did say the tournament would be mandatory. Aren’t players independent contractors? If a healthy Woods or Mickelson says no, can the tour keep other players from bailing too?
Do note- Only 3 players are skipping this week’s season opener, the SBS Championship.
If Hariq picks up his call, I’d suggest he take he take some remedial lessons in golf history.
The first U.S. pro golf event begins today in Hawaii. SBS, also known as Seoul Broadcasting System a former long-time partner of the LPGA, is sponsoring it’s first ever PGA Tour event. This weekend’s will feature a gathering of all the PGA winners in 2009. Back in the days of tournaments without sponsors, this was known as the Tournament of Champions and was played in Las Vegas or La Costa California up through 1998 when it was moved to the island of Maui.
Tiger Woods isn’t there, and I’m sure you all know why. Phil Mickelson is also skipping the event, something he has done for several years. The only past winner of the tournament playing this week, is Geoff Ogilvy, the 2009 champion. Much has been made of this fact.
I’m not going to speculate on whether the PGA Tour will survive without Tiger, because they will. Firstly because Tiger will be back some day, secondly because the Tour lived successfully for many years without Woods. Could the Tour lose fans? Absolutely, but they are fair weather ones that have limited interest in golf to begin with. If Michelle Wie could finally take off, the PGA’s loss could be the LPGA’s gain.
A few tournaments are without sponsors. I think the Fall Series could be in for a shaky time. The rest of the tour will do just fine. So let the golf begin.
For those of you who don’t know what a Pollyanna is, it is a person who is blindly or excessively optimistic.
That’s how Dorman sounds in an article written a few days ago-
The L.P.G.A. enters 2010 with a strong hand.
A strong hand? There’s only 24 tournaments, one of which is totally TBA event(The South Korea event) and another on a one-year deal(Jamie Farr). There is only 23 certain events this year, the lowest on tour in almost 40 years and right now for 2011 could even dip even lower.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not as pessimistic about the LPGA’s future as I was when Carolyn Bivens was Commissioner. Right now I’m taking a wait and see stance with new Commissioner Michael Whan. I don’t see how he CAN’T be improvement on Bivens. That is good news for the LPGA.
Dorman is making Pollyanna sound like Chicken Little.
The NY Times writer isn’t done either.
the four-year domination of Lorena Ochoa is now challenged by a strong Korean contingent led by Jiyai Shin. After a long wait, Michelle Wie has emerged as a legitimate contender.
Wie can contend for #1 at this stage? Absolutely not. About 5th on tour, yes. She isn’t going to climb over Ochoa, Tseng, Choi, Creamer, Kerr, and not to mention Shin at this stage. A few of them? For sure. All? NO! Could Wie do it in another few years? It’s a possibility.
Someone please adjust Dorman’s meds aka Happy pills.
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