Golf Capsules: Westwood leading an English charge

DORAL, Fla. — Lee Westwood is the leader of an English revolution in the world of golf as the highest-ranked player at No. 4 in the world and a two-time winner of the European Tour money list.

He has been there before, once reaching No. 4 at the turn of the last decade. Back then, he was alone.

And while it gives him pride to have so much company at the top — Ian Poulter and Paul Casey are stacked up behind him in the world ranking — Westwood is at a stage in his career where he is more interested in looking in front of him.

"I think it's good for English golf," Westwood said Wednesday on the eve of the CA Championship, the second World Golf Championship event in the last four weeks. "I don't really pay attention to what other people do too much. I'm looking at the three people in front me, rather than his is behind me, and hope to keep going."

Ahead of are three Americans — Tiger Woods, Steve Stricker and Phil Mickelson.

Westwood could take a big step forward this week at Doral, trailing Stricker by just over a point. Getting all the way to the top? That depends not only on his future, but that of Woods.

Woods remained a topic of chatter two months into the season, especially now that he his practicing at Isleworth and swing coach Hank Haney dropped in for some supervision earlier in the week.

That has ramped up speculation that Woods is close to returning from the fiasco in his personal life brought on by his extramarital affairs, although there continues to be mixed signals, an inordinate amount of gossip and no clear indication.

Westwood isn't too bothered by when Woods will return. He's not bothered by much of anything, really.

Even so, he can't deny the possibilities.

"I kind of go with the flow and do my own thing," he said. "But when you're fourth in the world, it's not that far to No. 1 in the world, and just recently that's probably come a bit more attainable with Tiger playing less. It's very close (from) fourth to second, so it's a goal.

"I think anybody that gets to a high standard — I think four in the world is a pretty high standard — if you're asked, yeah, of course you would like to be No. 1 in the world," he added. "You want to be able to say you're the best at what you do. So it is a goal. But it's not something I really think about too much."

Mickelson is the defending champion at Doral, and looking for his first victory of the year.

He was the top candidate to fill the void left by Woods, especially having won the Tour Championship and HSBC Champions in Shanghai at the end of last year. He has yet to win in four starts this year, which most likely has more to do with his struggle at home as his wife recovers from breast cancer than any technical aspect of his game. Without a pro-am this week, Mickelson was to arrive at Doral Wednesday evening, meaning he would not have a practice round.

Camilo Villegas is coming off a victory in the Honda Classic last week and might be the hottest player in golf. In five tournaments, the only time he failed to finish in the top 10 was his season debut in Abu Dhabi, where he tied for 19th.

"Obviously, I've had a good start for the year," Villegas said. "But it's not the way I think. Just try to keep going. I've had a great attitude all year, and I came pretty close in Match Play and I had a chance there at Phoenix. But tomorrow is Thursday, and trust me, every Thursday, we start from zero. It's time to forget what happened the previous week."

Ian Poulter is three weeks removed from his first victory in America at the Match Play Championship, while Geoff Ogilvy is a past WGC winner at Doral who opened the year with a victory in Kapalua.

Only two players from the top 50 are missing — Woods and Ryo Ishikawa, who stayed in Japan to graduate from high school.

Woods has dominated these World Golf Championships, winning 15 of them. Six came at Firestone, while he has one this WGC (CA Championship, formerly American Express Championship) on six courses, the last one at Doral in 2007.

His picture was on a billboard, and occasionally flashed on a video screen.

His absence is not bothering Westwood.

"If he's here and he's on form, he's the favorite," Westwood said. "But he's not here, and you don't know what kind of form Tiger is in. But if you look at the strength of the field, it's still a world-class field, and it will take a strong winner. Phil won last year and Tiger was playing right in front of me. You can't disrespect the other guys playing or discount them. You still have to be on your top game to win."

Notebook: Villegas to have a following at Doral

Villegas will be easy to find at Doral during the CA Championship, which starts Thursday. Just look for the people wearing "Colombia" across the chests of their yellow, blue and red T-shirts, carrying their country's flag, and shouting at him in Spanish after just about every shot.

He was born 1,100 miles away in Medellin, but this week, Villegas may as well be a Miami native son. Whenever he plays Doral, his countrymen come out to watch.

"It's awesome to see the Colombian flags and the guys with the shirts and all that good stuff, but you've got to be careful," Villegas said. "I mean, you've got to be careful because it can distract you a little bit. So you know they're there. You know they're supporting you. But it's one shot at a time. You've got to be focused, look forward, and just focus on playing good golf."

In other words, do what he did last week at the Honda Classic.

Villegas started last week in Colombia, helping kick off the celebration of the first Nationwide Tour event ever played there, and the overloaded schedule he had to keep meant he didn't even get to PGA National in time for a practice round. No matter — he won with ease, by five shots over Anthony Kim, shooting 68 or better in every round.

He made it through last week on adrenaline, and on Tuesday, the fatigue finally kicked in.

"Last week I felt fine," Villegas said. "I kind of had a good feeling last week. Everything seemed to be going the right way and I was excited, and I didn't really feel tired. Then Monday, I did a couple hard workouts, and then (Tuesday) I was just beat. I was like, 'Man, I need to relax.'"

He played only nine holes Tuesday, then nine more Wednesday.

"Try and recover and be fresh," Villegas said.

WATNEY WAITS: Nick Watney did everything right a year ago at Doral.

Played his way into the final group of the tournament with Phil Mickelson. Chipped in from behind the ninth green on Sunday, then eagled the next hole to pull into a tie for the lead and make Mickelson — who spent the previous night fighting off dehydration — sweat a bit more. Had a 30-footer on the 18th green to force a playoff.

It stopped one revolution short of dropping.

Watney settled for second, taking a check for $820,000 for his effort. He quickly pointed out that he beat 78 of the world's best players that week, and would like to think he can do one better when this year's CA Championship opens Thursday at Doral.

"When you win, you know, some lucky things always happen," Watney said Wednesday. "I would have liked to be sitting here and said that was the turning point for getting the victory, but as it stands, it was fun just to be able to compete and play at a high level like that when it mattered like that and I hope I get a chance to do that again soon."

Watney's off to a solid start in 2010, with two top-10s in six events (by comparison, he had only one top-10 in 27 starts in 2008), including a trip to the round of 16 at Match Play.

He tied for fifth last year at the HSBC Champions in Shanghai, another World Golf Championships event where he played with Mickelson.

Like at Doral, Mickelson won there, too.

"I think I owe him one," Watney said.

BIRDIE WATCH: Chances are, someone's going to go low to win the CA Championship.

That tends to happen at Doral.

Phil Mickelson shot 19-under 269 to prevail last year, and in the 2000s, the winning score was 271 or better every year but one. Tiger Woods shot 278 to win in 2007, a year marked by plenty of rain and wind.

And rain could be on the way this time.

Forecasters say there's a chance of thunderstorms starting around midafternoon Thursday, when every player is scheduled to be on the course. More rain is forecast for Friday.

HARRINGTON'S RANKING: Padraig Harrington knew he was slipping in the world rankings. That's why he stopped looking at the world rankings.

And when he was told how far he slipped Wednesday — he's now No. 13 — Harrington feigned outrage.

"Thirteen? Now I know why I don't look," he said.

Harrington is used to relatively slow starts, and this year isn't much of an exception. His best result in 2010 is a tie for 16th at Pebble Beach, and he tied for 40th last week at the Honda.

Plenty of time left, the Irishman said, to turn it around.

"As I said, you don't look as you are going backwards, but you generally have a feel that a couple of wins will get you back up to certainly inside top-five, and then you know, another couple of weeks on top of that, and you're challenging second place," Harrington said. "I think it's about 10 wins I need before I'll be challenging first place."

-- Tim Reynolds

LPGA

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The links course has twice hosted the Ryder Cup and staged the British Open 10 times.

The Royal & Ancient director of championships David Hill says the course will "provide a stern test befitting a contest that has come to represent the pinnacle of amateur achievement."

The biannual amateur match between the United States and a combined Britain and Ireland team is scheduled for Scotland's Royal Aberdeen in 2011 and the National Links of America in New York on 2013.

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