PGA Tour finally gets its playoff payoff

It may be impossible to get the FedEx Cup playoffs exactly right because, as seemingly everyone including me has pointed out, golf isn't a playoff sport.

Still, the PGA Tour, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and television had to be pleased with the way things played out this year. Sure, Tiger would have been happier to have won the Tour Championship but he still picked up $10 million for being the best player through the year and, particularly, through the playoffs.

Mickelson admitted he didn't deserve to win the FedEx Cup because he played so poorly during the first three playoff events. Winning the last one, Mickelson said, shouldn't offset what he didn't do in the first three.

Woods was the best through the playoffs despite running hot and cold on the greens. He hit the ball well at East Lake but couldn't get the ball in the hole, especially on Sunday. By the time he finally made a couple in the final round, it was too late.

At various stages of the final round, as many as six players still had a chance to win the $10-million FedEx Cup bonus. Every hole, the permutations changed. It was too complicated to keep up with but it was still fun trying.

There was even a time when it looked possible that Tiger and Steve Stricker might share the FedEx Cup, which would require a $10-million playoff. Now that would have been fun.

It's an imperfect system but a better one than the two previous models. I'm guessing there won't be any significant tweaks for next year. Making sure the top five in points can win the FedEx Cup by winning the Tour Championship added a necessary element of uncertainty, unlike the previous two years when Woods and Vijay Singh had already essentially locked down the cup before landing in Atlanta.

It's probably unlikely they'll change the week off next year either. Though it would be better for the playoffs to play two events, take a week off then play the final two, it's more likely to remain three on, one off, then the Tour Championship.

That's because the Ryder Cup in Wales will follow immediately after the Tour Championship. Tiger, Phil and the other top players would prefer to make the Ryder Cup a second straight week, not a third straight week.

Playing crazy eights at the Tour Championship

I'm not one of those who takes pleasure in watching PGA Tour players chop it around like Murray the bartender on the golf course.

If I want to see double bogeys, I can play golf myself.

Let me see them work magic. Let them hole bunker shots, and hit 180-yard 7-irons. Let them make more putts in a day than most of us make in a month.

But it does a heart good to see them make an eight once in a while.

Eights have been in vogue recently on the tour. You may rememeber Padraig Harrington making an eight to end his duel with Tiger Woods in the WGC-American Express Championship last month.

Here at East Lake, Phil Mickelson made a snowman on Thursday when his otherworldly short game look third worldly. Lefty bladed a bunker shot over the green, bladed his pitch shot back over the green into the same bunker, he left the next one in the sand and made an eight the way the rest of us make them.

On Friday, Stewart Cink was tied for the lead until he started hitting big, ugly hooks off the 1oth tee. Cink roped one driver out of bounds, teed up another, and did the same thing. Nothing if not persistent, Cink hit a third driver and it turned left but not far enough to fly the green fence along the property line.

By the time he was finished, Cink had made an eight and fallen four shots behind the leaders.

It didn't take long for someone to call him Ocho-Cink-O. Wish I could take credit for it but I can't. But I can pass it along.

The real success of The First Tee of Charlotte

There were many impressive things about the fund-raising dinner for The First Tee of Charlotte held Tuesday night at the Quail Hollow Club.

There were more than 250 guests, many thousands of dollars were raised through silent and live auctions (the featured item was a trip to play Pebble Beach and Cypress Point with accommodations at the Lodge at Pebble Beach, which drew a winning bid well into five figures) and author Jim Dodson supplied just the right touch of humor and insight with his after-dinner talk.

But the most impressive part of the evening was the three young people who are examples of what The First Tee can do. Arissa McNeal, a 15-year old North Mecklenburg High student, 15-year old Sameer Aery from Ardrey Kell High and 17-year old Stephen Graddick from Olympic High, allowed the guests to put names and faces to the Charlotte program.

McNeal, Aery and Graddick have been in The First Tee program for several years and they're examples of how the program is about more than golf. It uses golf as a framework and a foundation but it's more about life skills. The First Tee program is founded on nine core values including honesty, sportsmanship and integrity and it's touching and helping young people here and around the country.

It has not been an easy road for The First Tee of Charlotte to get rolling but moving into its new building at Revolution Golf Course this summer helped push it over the the top. It has momentum, support and Tuesday night it gave dinner guests a look at the good work it's doing.

Executive director Vincent King and director of programs Brandi Edwards have worked with hundreds of young people, introducing them to golf while teaching them fundamentals of life.

Tuesday night at Quail Hollow, The First Tee of Charlotte showed what it can do.

Bad time for a bye week

Between the college football games on Saturday and another NFL Sunday, could you sense the excitement building for the Tour Championship this weekend?

Didn't think so.

Taking a one-week break after the first three events of the FedEx Cup playoffs and before the 30-player money grab/trophy chase at East Lake this weekend may have seemed like a good idea in theory. But it killed whatever modest momentum the playoff series had generated.

If there's goinig to be a break during the FedEx Cup playoffs, it needs to come after the first two events, not the third one. That may create practical scheduling problems but if the goal is to generate as much interest as possible in the playoffs, this isn't the way to do it.

This isn't the Super Bowl, much as the PGA Tour might like it to be.

When Tiger won the BMW Championship, he did what he does like no one else -- shouldered the PGA Tour into the weekend news cycle and video loop on a big football weekend. Tiger makes the world away from golf pay attention.

If he's in contention this week at East Lake -- a pretty good bet -- the interest meter will spike as it always does. First, though, it will require recapturing some of the attention that dissipated during the week off.

The good news is the PGA Tour keeps working to make the FedEx Cup playoffs better. Adjusting future weeks should be among the tweaks for next year, if possible.

Tiger wins, Snedeker really loses

It's possible that Tiger Woods can have a win, two seconds and a tie for 11th in the PGA Tour's four playoff events and still not win the FedEx Cup this year.

That's the, uh, beauty of the FedEx Cup playoffs which are taking this week off to allowed all those tired golfers to rest before the 30 still standing head to Atlanta for the Tour Championsnhip next week.

For all Tiger has done this year -- six wins including his dominating performance in the BMW Championship over the weekend -- the playoff scenario makes only one promise:

If any of the players ranked in the top five wins the Tour Championship -- that's Tiger, Steve Stricker, Jim Furyk, Zach Johnson and Heath Slocum -- they win the FedEx Cup. That means Furyk, who hasn't won in two years, would be the champion if he wins at East Lake.

That's the way playoffs work, even in golf where the points system is like heiroglyphics.

Tiger said he's okay with it. What's he going to say, "Hey, I've won six times, carried the tour again and you're telling me I can finish second or third at Atlanta and still not win?"

There's a difference in winning the FedEx Cup and being player of the year. Tiger's the player of the year regardless of whether he wins the FedEx Cup.

Do the playoffs work?

Well, some people are still paying attention to golf right now, which is an improvement. It helps that Tiger is playing every weekend in the same way that it helps to have oxygen to breathe.

The most compelling story at the BMW Championship beyond Tiger's performance was Brandt Snedeker's 72nd hole meltdown. If you haven't heard, he needed to make a bogey on the final hole to qualify for the Tour Championship. He didn't do it.

Snedeker kept batting the ball around the hole until he'd four-putted himself out of the Tour Championship.

Besides the embarrassment, it cost Snedeker more than $350,000 when you add in the money he lost at the BMW plus the guaranteed money for making the Tour Championship and the hit he took in the final points standings.

"I just showed you why 3-footers that mean something are a lot longer than they look," Snedeker told reporters at Cog Hill.

"I just started thinking about the wrong things, man; I didn't concentrate over the bogey putt and I was thinking about all the stuff the Tour Championship comes with, and I did everything you're not supposed to do. I'm sure Doc [Bob] Rotella and I will have a nice long talk tonight and he'll tell me everything I did wrong and we'll learn from it."

Tough lesson to learn.

Happy Birthday, Arnie

Arnold Palmer turned 80 today.

Golf should declare his birthday a national holiday. Everybody smiles, hitches their pants with their wrists, makes eye contact with others, whips at the ball like a man pulling a vine from a tree, tries a shot they shouldn't, wears an alpaca cardigan with the sleeves pushed up like back in the day and, at the end, everyone raises a glass to the King.

There never has been and never will be anyone like Arnie.

Phil Mickelson comes the closest these days but even Lefty will admit he's no Arnie.

Arnie, at least since he introduced golf to the television age, has always been bigger than the game. He'd argue that out of respect for the game but he remains, even in the glare of Tiger Woods' brilliance, the defining figure in golf over the last half-century.

Age has robbed him of his game but not of his presence. He's still the conscience of golf when he holds court.

He proved that superstars can be accessible. No one may have loved the attention any more than Palmer but he set an example every professional athlete -- regardless of the sport -- should be required to study.

Peter Jacobsen has often told the story of signing autographs alongside Palmer one day when Arnie noticed Jacobsen's scribbled signature. Palmer scolded him, telling Jacobsen that if people were willing to wait for his autograph, the golfer should be respectful enough to sign it so it could be read. You can read both of their autographs now.

I'd love to be there in the Bay Hill clubhouse when Arnie gently reminds a guest to remove their hat while indoors. Society should listen.

Arnie turned 80 today and he may have trouble shooting his age now but it's a happy day anyway. He's still around and he's still the King.

Christina Kim -- like you've never seen her

After her hard to miss performance during the Solheim Cup, there is word that the flamboyant Christina Kim will appear semi-nude in an upcoming edition of ‘ESPN, The Magazine.’

Hey, if Ian Poulter can pose on a magazine cover wearing nothing but a strategically placed golf bag, why can't Christina Kim show a little skin?

Kim is one of three LPGA players – Anna Grezbien and Sandra Gal are the others – who will be featured in the magazine, which is devoting an issue to athlete’s bodies.

The good news is the magazine considers female golfers athletes, which is a small victory for golf.

The LPGA Tour, which hasn't had its happiest season, was briefed on the photo shoot in advance and gave its blessing.

Somewhere Jan Stephenson is smiling.

Aces - times two

Holes-in-one are strange things.

That comes from a guy who's never made one -- but I've only been playing golf for 45 years.

This week, Arthur McDonald made two aces in the same round at Raintree Country Club's North Course. Now that's a good day.

McDonald has been a fixture around Charlotte golf for years, caddying at Carolina Golf Club, learning to play at Revolution and working at Raintree for years. He obviously learned something along the way.

Playing with friends this week, McDonald aced the par-3 fifth hole then, a couple of hours later, holed it on the 17th hole.

Good for him. Doubly good, in fact.

Tega Cay and the LPGA Tour? Maybe

It will be interesting to see if organizers and the LPGA Tour can complete the deal to bring a women’s professional golf tournament to Tega Cay beginning next year.

Talking to the local organizers, they’re bullish about their ability to make this happen though they admit there are still sponsorship issues to finalize. That’s a serious challenge in any business right now, doubly so for a golf tournament.

Would an LPGA Tour event work at Tega Cay in the fall? Maybe.

It would have to get most of the top players, something that didn’t always happen for the Fieldcrest Cannon Classic at the Peninsula Club in the ’90s. It would need Paula Creamer, Suzann Petterssen, Lorena Ochoa and Natalie Gulbis, among others, to play.

Getting Michelle Wie is the ticket but she’s still planning on attending college in the fall which could knock her out of playing here.

It was surprising to hear Tega Cay as the host course if only because it hadn’t been mentioned before when there has been talk of a possible LPGA Tour event coming here. Tega Cay has 27 holes and a large clubhouse facility, which helps.

If it all comes together, it would be a nice addition to the local golf calendar at an ideal time to play golf in this area. Putting it together is the hard part.

It'll be Jack and Arnie on the first tee at the Masters

It's going to be Arnie and Jack on the first tee at the Masters next April.

Jack Nicklaus has accepted Augusta National's invitation to join Arnold Palmer as the tournament's honorary starter next year. Nicklaus had initially been reluctant to become an honorary starter but he'll be there next year with Arnie for what should be a terrific scene.

Nicklaus played 45 Masters, winning six of them, including his memorable 1986 victory when he was 46 years old.

Between them, Nicklaus and Palmer won 10 Masters and defined nearly 50 years of professional golf.

“I have had such a long-standing appreciation and love affair with Augusta National and the Masters Tournament, and this honor is a wonderful way for me to say thank you to the many patrons who have supported me over the decades,” Nicklaus said in a statement released by Augusta National.

“I am also delighted to join my longtime friend Arnold on the tee. I have always had great respect for Arnold and his legacy at the Masters, and I did not, in any way, want to infringe on the opportunity for Arnold to have and enjoy this Masters tradition for himself. He is so deserving of this honor, and thus I felt it was his time, not mine.

"Recently, I was invited by both Augusta National and Arnold to join him on the first tee, and because he enthusiastically supported the invitation, it became an easy decision for me.”

Jock Hutchison and Fred McLeod began the honorary starter tradition in 1963. Later, Byron Nelson, Gene Sararzen, Ken Venutri, Sam Snead and Palmer took the role.

Nagy makes early exit at U.S. Amateur

Charlotte's Corey Nagy made an early exit from the match-play portion of the U.S. Amateur championship today in Tulsa, Okla.

Nagy, a senior at UNCC, was eliminated 5 and 4 by Canada's Christopher Ross in the first round of match play at Southern Hills Country Club.

Nagy had finished tied for 14th among 312 players in the 36-hole stroke-play qualifying portion of the U.S. Amateur.

Five questions as FedEx Cup playoffs begin

Five questions as the PGA Tour playoffs begin:

1. Will Tiger play all four playoff events?
It looks that way. The fact he's playing The Barclays this week suggests he's in for the whole thing. He'll definitely play the Deutsche Bank Championship next week (he's the unofficial host)and given his fondness for Cog Hill near Chicago, I suspect he'll play the BMW Championship.

That brings him to the Tour Championship at East Lake in another month where he can lock down a second FedEx Cup barring an upset. It won't make up for a major-less year but, hey, it's $10 million, not exactly chump change, even to Tiger.

2. If Tiger's the favorite, who's the second choice?
I'm going with Lucas Glover. He's continued to play well this summer after his victory in the U.S. Open. He was fifth in the PGA Championship and, had he been a little sharper on the slow greens at Sedgefield last week, he could have been in the fight for the Wyndham Championship.

Glover has already locked down a spot on the Presidents Cup team (Captain Couples has promised him he's on even if he doesn't qualify on points) and he's riding a nice wave of confidence.

3. Three years in, are the playoffs a hit or a miss?
More hit than miss. They've definitely helped bring some focus to the end of the summer season, which was part of the goal. Without the playoffs, the PGA Tour season would have already gone fuzzy with the approach of football season.

Tour officials keep working to tweak the format to produce a big bang finish and maybe it'll happen this year. The top five players in points entering the Tour Championship will be able to win the FedEx Cup if they win at East Lake. That means there won't be a foregone conclusion when the 30 survivors roll into Atlanta.

4. Which stars may be the first to fizzle out in the playoffs?

Obviously, Adam Scott (116th in points) is a mess right now. His game has been a wreck this year and he's taking a break from his work with instructor Butch Harmon. Scott sounds like a man who's not sure what to do next. The best idea may be to take the fall off and let his head clear out.

Sergio Garcia jumped to 89th in points after his fourth-place finish in Greensboro, a hint of encouragement entering the playoffs. But he talks like a man who doubts his ability to keep it going for any extended period of time.

5. Will anyone beat Tiger Woods for the FedEx Cup?
Doubtful. But Y.E. Yang starts the playoffs in seventh place.

Time for Wie, U.S. players to keep it going

It took three months but there was finally another American victory on the LPGA Tour.

In an otherwise miserable year for the LPGA, the U.S victory in the Solheim Cup Sunday had to feel like an early Christmas, generating some genuine interest in what was happening while remaking Michelle Wie into a star again. Now it will be interesting to see where Wie and the tour go from here.

I'm a huge fan of team golf events such as the Ryder Cup, the upcoming Presidents Cup and the Solheim Cup because they change the players and the landscape. Personally, I could do without the face-painting and tone down Christina Kim's antics but it all worked beautifully for the American team over the weekend.

For Wie, it was a potentially career-changing event. The team aspect allowed the 19-year old to be herself and, from all indications, she broke down some of the walls that have surrounded her since she hit the scene several years ago. It had to help not having her hovering parents around all the time, allowing her to immerse herself in the team.

Her game, a mess a couple of years ago, has come back and she holed some putts thanks to the wise decision to talk with Dave Stockton about her putting. Wie looks like she's regained her confidence, which is crtical. Just ask Sergio Garcia and Adam Scott, both of whom have lost theirs.

If Wie can begin to win regularly, it would help revive a tour desperately in need of a boost. Tournaments are disappearing, there's an ongoing search for a new commissioner and American-born players haven't won very often. The tour has gone flat and seems in danger of flat-lining.

This should help. With Paula Creamer, Morgan Pressel, Brittany Lincicome, Wie, Kim and others, the American team showed it has compelling characters. Sure, the European team wasn't as imposing as an international squad stocked with the top South Korean players might be but it was still an important victory for the U.S.

For Michelle Wie, it may be the most important week of her still-young career.

Golf in the Olympics -- a gold medal for the game

I must admit that I've never been taken by the notion of golf returning to the Olympics, something that is all but official now that the IOC's Executive Board has endorsed including golf in the 2016 Games.

Golf has its major championships and Olympic gold, sweet as it may be, won't suddenly leap to the top of the list of most important achievements for players. Plus, I've always thought of the Olympics as a place for other sports -- track and field and swimming, particularly -- to have their moment.

Baseball and tennis, for example, have seemed awkward fits to me. Do you know who won tennis gold last year?

Having said that, golf's return to the Olympics -- it was last part of the Games in 1904 -- comes at a critical time for the sport. It's inclusion isn't so much about whether Tiger Woods wins a gold medal -- he's already the favorite in 2016 though no one's sure where the Games or the golf will be played.

Golf is more global than it's ever been and getting a spot in the Olympics only strengthens the game. It enhances its image in places around the world where it may not be front and center and it's sure to draw more people to the game.

There's a reason all of the game's prominent organizations and many of the game's top stars made an aggressive effort to get golf back in the Games -- to grow the game. Having Jack Nicklaus and Annika Sorenstam speak on behalf of the Olympic effort was a strong endorsement and hearing Tiger say he'd represent the U.S. in the Games is huge.

Golf in the Olympics won't change what Augusta means in April or replace the British Open as the unofficial world championship. It will, however, bring the game to more people around the world.

Picking a PGA winner -- besides Tiger

As a prognosticator, I rank somewhere between 'Ishtar' and new Coke.

In the annual pick the winners golf pool in which I participate each year, I typically live near the bottom of the standings, sometimes in but always near what is called the POD -- pit of despair.

With that disclaimer, I have decided to take a swing at picking the winner of the PGA Championship, which begins Thursday at Hazeltine. And, to make it slightly more entertaining (I hope), I'm not going to count Tiger Woods.

He's the obvious choice. Beyond obvious. So, having said that to cover myself when he wins by six this weekend, I'll move on to my picks as if Tiger isn't playing.

1. Steve Stricker
Besides being a really good player with a putting stroke that's as good as that first cold beer after a good round of golf, he's due. He fits the mold this year, too. Like Lucas Glover and Stewart Cink, he's a veteran who's been good for a while but hasn't won the big one.
Stricks has to prove he can handle Sunday afternoon in a major but I like his chances.

2. Lee Westwood
He had a chance to win the 2008 U.S. Open before Tiger and Rocco Mediate did their little dance and the British Open was his to win last month but a couple of late wobbles cost him. Westwood is a very good player and has been for a long time. Maybe it's finally his time.

3. Hunter Mahan
Maybe the top pick behind Tiger right now. He plays well this time of year and he's growing into one of the top young American players. The biggest thing he has to do is prove he can win.

4. Phil Mickelson
I know, he wasn't a factor at Firestone and after all he's gone through recently, it's a stretch to think he can win this week. But he could.
He's Phil. He's long enough to handle Hazeltine's length and if he can get the ball in the fairway and start holing some putts early, it could all fall into place for him. And wouldn't that be a story.

5. Anthony Kim
He's shown signs of life after a lost first half of the season. When he's on -- and he seems to be getting there -- he's seriously dangerous.
Kim still has some growing up to do -- he says that -- but his game is man-sized when he gets it locked in.

It's a matter of time

I've long been an advocate for anything that will accelerate the often glacier-like pace of play on the PGA Tour.

Then the PGA Tour uses Tiger Woods and Padraig Harrington to make its point on Sunday afternoon, perhaps unintentionally altering the outcome of a compelling battle between the two stars.

They had, according to tour officials, fallen 18 minutes off the pace on the back nine and needed to be nudged with those nerve-rattling words "you're on the clock." There was an open hole in front of them but, as anyone who watched knows, there was no one behind the day's final pairing.

There was no real threat Woods and Harrington would be penalized for their deliberate pace -- the tour has not imposed stroke penalties on players in nearly two decades -- but it wasn't what they needed to hear at that championship in the balance moment.

The warning obviously flustered the notoriously slow Harrington, who chopped his way to an ugly triple-bogey eight at the par-5 16th while Woods was giving us another trophy-case moment with his 178-yard 8-iron that set up the clinching birdie.

Woods said afterward that the slow-play warning was a factor in his victory, a nod to his admiration for Harrington's grinding work ethic and the fact it seemed to have a direct effect on the proceedings.

It doesn't mean the tour was wrong in pushing Woods and Harrington to hurry along. There is a set time-par in every round and obviously they were taking their own sweet time on Sunday afternoon.

Under the tour guidelines, players given a "bad time" during play aren't penalized for the first violation. However, a second bad time in a round costs them $5,000 and a one-stroke penalty.

If you're going to push for a brisker pace, you have to be consistent. That's what the tour was doing. It is on the players to handle the warning and Harrington, who compounded the problem by hitting his ball into a series of bad spots, didn't do that. He admitted he lost his focus when forced out of his comfort zone.

In this case, the nudge seemed unnecessary given the way the tournament had turned into a two-player duel that had reached the last four holes.

Both sides -- the tour officials and the players -- have reasonable points in this situation.

And Tiger has another trophy.

The Greenbrier is newest kid on PGA Tour's block

As expected, the PGA Tour announced today the creation of The Greenbrier Classic, a new event beginning in 2010 that will take the place of the now-departed Buick Open.

The Greenbrier event will be played on the Old White Course, the original layout at the famous West Virginia resort, which has four golf courses. The tournament will be played July 25-Aug. 1.

The tour has a six-year agreement with The Greenbrier, which has had strong ties to professional golf through the years. It's where the 1979 Ryder Cup and 1994 Solheim Cup matches were played and the resort's two golf pros emeritus have been Sam Snead and Tom Watson.

Since native West Virginian Jim Justice purchased The Greenbrier earlier this year, efforts have been underway to land a PGA Tour event at the resort. With the departure of Buick from the PGA Tour, an opening arose allowing The Greenbrier to fill the void.

It's just one piece of a changing picture on the PGA Tour schedule. Tour officials are working with San Diego golf officials about finding a new title sponsor for what had been called the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines, a long-time fixture on the early-season schedule.

There's also on-going discussions about the future of the PGA Tour event in Milwaukee, which is seeking sponsorship, and a possible date change for the Canadian Open, which has struggled to draw a top-level field in its slot the week after the British Open championship.

For Michelle Wie, a big achievement

It may be six years since Michelle Wie has won a golf tournament but being invited to join the U.S. team for the Solheim Cup matches later this month is among her most impressive achievements.

For all Wie has -- a ton of talent, striking looks and the the potential to be an enormous star -- it hasn't been easy for her.

She brought much of it on herself, insisting on playing against the men when she hasn't been able to win on the LPGA Tour while seeming sometimes to care more about being a star than being the best player in the world. It hasn't helped that her parents have been more hands-on than they should have, particularly on the golf side of things.

Finally, though, Michelle Wie may be arriving.

She still hasn't won on the LPGA Tour and there are days when her golf game is ordinary but there seem to be more days when Wie seems on the verge of delivering on her potential. She may never be the game-changing player she imagined -- playing in the Masters, winning on the men's tour - but she's just 19.

Wie's putting has bedeviled her at times, costing her the handful of shots that make the difference in winning and finishing third. But, again, there's a tempation to fast-forward everything where Wie is concerned, in part because that's the way she's been presented to us.

When captain Beth Daniel made Wie one of her two captain's picks -- veteran Juli Inkster was the obvious other choice -- Daniel could back it up with Wie's solid resume this year. She has three top-3 finishes this year and was 13th in the points standings.

This could be a big moment off the golf course for Wie, as well. For years, she was viewed warily, a teen star jumping in and out of tour events, getting the diva treatment whether she asked for it or not. There was, it's fair to assume, some jealousy and animosity.

As a member of the American team, Wie becomes part of the circle. It will be interesting to see who Daniel pairs Wie with during the matches at Rich Harvest Farm in Illinois. Think putting Wie with Paula Creamer or Morgan Pressel would get some attention?

At a time when American women's professional golf is struggling, Michelle Wie may be just what it needs. Beth Daniel thinks so.

Moore, Florence elected to Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame

Two golfers with strong Charlotte connections -- Patty Moore and Terry Florence -- have been elected to the Carolinas Golf Hall of Fame.

Moore has been one of the area's top women's players for years, piling up victories almost routinely. In addition to dominating area tournaments, Moore has been a fine player on the national level, also.

She lives in Charlotte and plays out of Carmel Country Club but also spends a good deal of time in Pinehurst.

Florence is a Charlotte native who is among the best players the city has produced. He was instrumental in developing Wild Dunes on the Isle of Palms, S.C., into a top-level golf destination. In recent years, Florence has been director of golf at Bulls Bay in Awendaw, S.C.

Moore and Florence will be inducted during Aug. 17 ceremonies in Pinehurst.

Feherty gets it right about Tiger

Leave it to David Feherty to get it right when it comes to the ripple of controversy stirred by Tiger Woods expressing his frustrations while missing the cut at the British Open two weeks ago.

More than once, Woods was shown slamming a club or barking at himself as shots went astray at Turnberry. He was angry and it showed. It's not the first time Tiger has let his emotions show and it won't be the last.

Some critics have scolded Woods for not biting his tongue or gently putting his driver back in the bag after a lousy tee shot. They're overreacting.

In an interview this week with the Argus Leader in South Dakota, Feherty was quoted saying, "Those critical forget about what he did a couple of weeks before for the troops at the tournament he put on (the AT&T National). All the things he did at Walter Reed, all the things that tournament is about. And he bangs his club here or there?...

"I was fly fishing in Colorado - I didn't see any of it. I've read about it since then. If you play golf for a living and you don't swear or throw the occasional club, you should be disqualified.

"It's not that kind of a game - it's not meant to be played with all the hushed tones. You're supposed to show your emotions."

Tiger gets criticized for being too cold and distant by some people and flogged by others (or maybe the same ones) who prefer he channel his frustration differently. I like him the way he is.