PGA Tour Speeds Up Play and other deliberations

Remember the gently-debated status of Made Cut Did Not Finish, added quietly to the PGA Tour holsters in 2008? Believe it or not, it’s the key to eliminating slow play on tour. This week, six, count them, six players were classified as MDF…that would be two entire threesomes. If I were a CBS executive, I’d be worried about all that extra broadcast time on the back end of today’s three hours of coverage. Perhaps CBS might consider showing some footage of the six scratching their heads in bemusement.

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There’s a golfer on the Ladies European Tour named Fame More
. Cool, I think. Actually, it’s a little odd, yet cool at the same time. Naw, just odd. Why turn your kid into a metaphor? If the parents aren’t to blame, why turn yourself into a rhetorical item? That’s even odder. She’s not a bad golfer, with a t-37 finish this week in Switzerland.

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Much of the discussion on the conditions at Oak Hill this week for the Senior PGA Championship addresses the rough and the uninspired Fazio re-do of a Ross course. My initial thought always was, the PGA wants to have a cold-weather championship. If The Memorial (next week on the PGA Tour) has had snow in the past, what did they think they were going to get in upstate New York, near a great lake, in mid-May? Perhaps that’s the way to go with major events on all tours…have a sweltering major, a wind-and-rain major, and any other climatologically-influenced events you can muster.

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I think that the Colonial event is down to 4 players (Mickelson, Ames, Pampling and Clark.) Mickelson should win, with Ames in second. Pampling will make an avoidable mistake at some point while in the hunt and Clark will back-pedal from hole # 1.

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We’re going to have an unsung victor in Corning at the LPGA this weekend. Jang, Kim, Lee, Yim, Yoo, Kim 2 and Kang are the recognizable Koreans in contention while Erica Blasberg, Katherine Hull and Meredith Duncan are members of the post-Creamer generation (Is there such a thing? Aren’t generations lasting all of thirty minutes these days?) I’m not even venturing a guess as to who might win.

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Nationwide Tour…Has there ever been a back-to-back winner on the Nationwide (nee buy.com, nee Nike, nee Hogan) Tour? This might be the week, as David “Johnny” Mathis enters round four tied at the top with three crooners of lesser stature. Perhaps ready to accept the mantle of success that seemed appropriate when he won the US Amateur, Ricky Barnes lurks one shot behind (really, he’s lurking…it’s creepy. Have you ever lurked? Don’t try it if you can’t handle the lurk.) In reality, the real lurker is Hawkman, the one and only Tripp Isenhour, at -7. I’m sure that the tournament committee would love to have him as their champion for the year.

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Robert Karlsson just let a bushel of players back into the European Tour’s BMW PGA by starting bogey-par-bogey. He’s at -9, tied with Oliver Wilson, with 2 at -8, 6 at -7, and 3 at -6. Ahh, pressure…wait, it gets better. Karlsson made birdie to get to -10, then the Mechanic, Miguel Angel Jimenez, went birdie-birdie-ace to get to -11.

Adios, Fajitas.