When the news first trickled out about Michelle Wie withdrawing from the Ginn Tribute after going a stupefying 14 over through 16 holes, the natural reaction was to feel sorry for her. Even Wie realists who never bought the marketer’s script couldn’t help but hurt for her. It appeared that she’d been pushed to play before she could, that the pressure of keeping up the illusion of the Michelle Wie hype machine put her in an impossible position. Only it turns out, this isn’t the case. It turns out that Wie is already talking about playing in the LPGA Championship, which ... full post »

Despite my moral objections, I’ve taken a number of golf lessons. Which means I have the hack’s version of Phil Mickelson’s short game around the green and well … still my version of a putrid Pee Wee Herman drive. This is because golf instructors are terrified to teach any shots beyond 120 yards. They’ll tell you that the short game will transfer over onto the tee or - and this is my favorite - that 75 percent, or 85 percent or 92.1 percent (the figure changes with every instructor in this so scientific field) of the scoring is determined by pitches ... full post »

When the proposed penalties for the LPGA Tour’s new drug testing plan came out over the long holiday weekend, a number of players certainly did a double gulp. After all, 25 tournaments (practically an entire season) for a first positive, 50 tournaments for a second failed test and a lifetime ban for urine issue No. 3 is no joke. In other words, it’s nothing like most of the steroids plans in pro sports - especially Major League Baseball’s and the NFL’s. Still even as LPGA veterans like Meg Mallon moaned, you can bet the it was nothing compared to the groaning coming ... full post »

Hank Kuehne’s missed the cut in the last two PGA Tour events he’s played. He hasn’t finished above 135th this season and his highest finish last year was a tie for 49th. Think Kuehne cares? Think again. This is unremarkable pro golfer is a remarkable dater. His latest celebrity girlfriend is tennis star Venus Williams. Kuehne has even gotten Venus to come to the golf course to watch him miss cuts. Now, that’s skill. Kuehne has been bringing it for years too. He dated American Idol judge Paula Abdul in 2000, back when she was a little hotter and a lot less crazy. (Though ... full post »

David Leadbetter clearly didn’t want Michelle Wie to play in the John Deere. “The thing I’ve tried to explain to (Wie) is that you have to work your way up the ladder,” Leadbetter told the AFP on May 4 before Team Wie told him to pipe down. “It’s all well and good to play a couple of men’s events as a novelty, now let’s look at a long-term plan.” Wie presumably hired Leadbetter to help her make decisions on her game. So there’s only a few ways you can take her decision - and calling it “her” decision may be a stretch, ... full post »

Whenever Zach Johnson wins a tournament, the guy who loses it becomes a bigger story. This is understandable when it’s Tiger Woods at the Masters. But Ryuji Imada at the second-thought, secondary-field AT&T Classic? Please. Who cares what Imada did or didn’t do? (Even if our own waffle wizard Tim McDonald is at it again, having mocked Tiger Woods for laying up (and winning) at Doral and now derided Imada for not laying up, calling it “a dumb play.” McDonald is of two cloudy minds on most subjects though - he’s older than The Queen what do you expect?) The rest of ... full post »

Major league baseball and golf go together like Jessica Alba and bikinis. Go to spring training and it seems like half the fans are working some golf into their baseball vacation. And the other half are catching the odd baseball game between days of 36 holes. The golf baseball fixation doesn’t have to end with spring training though. If you’re on one of those see-a-game-at-as-many-major-league-baseball-stadiums-as-you-can trips, you’ll want to make it to San Diego. This is the home of PETCO Park of course, one of the newest and most fawned over ballparks in the bigs. PETCO isn’t nearly as great as some San ... full post »

In the more things change, the more they stay the same department or Chapter 55 in Why Winning Doesn’t Matter to Wie, there’s this …. The organizers of the Samsung World Championship are giving Michelle Wie a sponsors exemption to the hardest tournament to qualify for in women’s pro golf. This despite the fact that Wie never broke par in any of her four rounds when she played in the World Championship on an exemption last year, finishing 17th out of 20 golfers. Proving yourself is so overrated these days. Maybe Samsung should simply hand Michelle the trophy before anyone tees off ... full post »

We have a writer who works at WorldGolf.com who foolishly tries to deny that Paris Hilton is the center of the golf universe. This writer is our version of Inside The Actor’s Studio host James Lipton - a pretentious windbag who tries to show everyone how smart he is by signing his initials to every one of his blabberings. Well, Paris Hilton is once again throwing it back into his face. Georgia women’s golf coach Todd McCorkle resigned after an investigation revealed that he had his team of college women watch Paris’ sex video over the Internet (along with other things). Paris 69, ... full post »

If you stumble upon Pasquale On Prospect - which is actually on the main drag of La Jolla, the main place you want to be on a San Diego golf trip - you’ll assume it’s a typical tourist trap. It looks like a tourist trap. It has the overeager host of a tourist trap. It even has the live old corny music of a tourist trap. Place this restaurant in Times Square and the locals would be avoiding it like a Cuba Gooding Jr. movie, while people from Kansas got pulled in. Only Pasquale’s isn’t one of those places that serves microwave ... full post »

The Players Championship is as much the “fifth major” as cupcakes are the fifth food group. In fact, the only people even still wondering about the Players at all are our own Tim McDonald - who rarely moves past 1967 - and Sports Illustrated, which inexplicably decided The Players deserved its own special preview issue this year like the other actual four majors (wonder how big the ad buy was for Tim Finchem). With that said, Phil Mickelson’s entire 2007 season depends on him pulling it together to win the Players today. Not because the Players Championship itself means anything (there ... full post »

Roger Clemens is the most manipulative money-grubbing mercenary in the history of sports. If the Tampa Devil Rays had offered him $1 more than the Yankees’ $18.5 million for four months, the Rocket Wallet would have managed to squeeze another $10 million out of a feeble George Steinbrenner’s bottomless pockets. If Barry Bonds offends you more than Roger Clemens, you’re either delusional or willfully ignorant. Still, you have to admire how Clemens celebrates another windfall in which he used spending more time with his kids as a ploy. What did Clemens do the day after he made that theatrical (and self serving) seventh-inning ... full post »

If Michelle Wie ever stood up and took responsibility for her own actions in defeat like Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki did, she’d be a whole lot easier to root for. The NBA MVP To Be suffered one of the most crushing defeats in sports history, helping his 67-win Mavericks get knocked out of the first round of the playoffs by the eighth-seeded Golden State Warriors. And not just knocked out - completely humiliated in every possible sense. David didn’t just hit Goliath with a slingshot. He pulled the giant’s pants down too. So what does Nowitzki do in the moments after ... full post »

Want to land your own Elin? Or at least another slightly less smoking hot blonde nanny? Head to Palm Springs. That’s right, Palm Springs - most commonly known as the West Coast’s answer to Florida, a land where right-turn blinkers flash nonstop and the dinner rush starts about 3:30 p.m. You’ll find plenty of guys almost as old as our own Tim McDonald filling the fairways. I just golfed with the nicest 75-year-old. What they don’t tell you about the Coachella Valley in any tourist book or travel show though is how now’s hot nanny season. With well-off couples coming in for a little ... full post »