Golf Capsules: Let the encores begin on PGA Tour
KAPALUA, Hawaii (AP) — Graeme McDowell didn't stop flying around the world until there were no tournaments left for him to play.
After seven straight weeks that took him from Spain to Shanghai to Singapore, then Hong Kong, Dubai, California and Florida, McDowell finally landed home for the holidays in Northern Ireland with snow on the ground and his golf clubs nowhere near him.
And just like that, he's back to work. The trick now is to figure out where he's going from here.
McDowell talked about wanting to take his game to the next level, forgetting for a moment that he already did that. He won his first major in the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, one of four victories on the season. He brought the Ryder Cup back to Europe by winning the final match. And he ended the year by becoming the first player to overcome a four-shot deficit in the final round against Tiger Woods. What next level?
"Yeah, good point. Next level ... it's just kind of something you say," McDowell said at Kapalua, where he'll kick off the PGA Tour season Thursday at the Tournament of Champions.
"Unlikely that I will display heroics like I did in 2010, but anything sort of within the vicinity of the year like 2010 would do quite nicely."
McDowell is happy to be in Hawaii, although he would be among the few with reason to feel melancholy about leaving the snow of Northern Ireland for the Pacific warmth and mesmerizing views of the Maui coastline.
It's a new year, and McDowell wishes the old year would have never ended.
"I'm in a period now where I want to maintain this world ranking (No. 5) and prove that I'm a world-class player," he said. "So the next level ... what I meant to say is trying to keep doing what I'm doing, really. It's going to be a pretty tough season to replicate. To win a major championship and to hold the winning putt at the Ryder Cup is dream stuff, really."
The 34-man field assembled at Kapalua at least shares one goal — they want to come back next year, too. The only way to get a tee time on the Plantation Course is to win on the PGA Tour.
Jim Furyk won a career-best three times last year, including the $10 million bonus for the FedEx Cup. Steve Stricker, Dustin Johnson, Hunter Mahan and Ernie Els each won two times. There also are newcomers, from Robert Garrigus winning the final tournament of the PGA Tour season at Disney to Tim Clark winning The Players Championship for his first victory in America.
"It's a place you always want to come," said two-time defending champion Geoff Ogilvy. "It's one of the nicest venues all year, if not the nicest. It's a nice little treat, a reward for winning a tournament the year before, and a little bit of a head start on everyone else. Nice hotel, nice place, Hawaii. Everything is good about this tournament."
As always, there are a few players missing.
Masters champion Phil Mickelson stopped coming to Kapalua in 2002, while British Open champion Louis Oosthuizen decided to stay home for the Africa Open this week. PGA champion Martin Kaymer of Germany opted not to join the PGA Tour or play in Hawaii. Two other Europeans who won on tour, Lee Westwood and Rory McIlroy, opted to stay on vacation.
Also missing is Woods, this time not by choice. He failed to win anywhere in the world, much less the PGA Tour, and failed to qualify for the event.
At least this time, his absence is not such a topic of conversation. His unfolding sex scandal and the uncertainty when he would return dominated headlines last season. Now that he's back to playing golf, the question is whether he can play like he once did.
That can wait until his return later this month at Torrey Pines.
In some respects, the Tournament of Champions might be the easiest event to win on tour. While it's the only tournament all year with only PGA Tour winners from the previous year, some of them have been in hibernation.
Steve Stricker went nearly two months without playing after the Ryder Cup, returned for a couple of weeks in December, then headed out to Phoenix to start shaking off the rust. When he realized it was not much warmer than his home in Wisconsin, he kept flying west until he landed in paradise.
Ian Poulter, whose season really only ended three weeks ago, was in the Bahamas with his family and didn't arrive until Monday night. He did not play the massive elevation changes and spacious greens on the Plantation course until his pro-am Wednesday.
Poulter could find the first tee because it's in front of the clubhouse. He knew the 18th was a par 5. And that's about it.
The advantage tends to go to the Australians, many of whom have been playing Down Under in the weeks leading to Kapalua. Ogilvy has won the last two years, and a win this week would tie him with Stuart Appleby, another Australian who won three straight years at Kapalua.
"We just play a little bit later and we are competitive more recently than they are," said Ogilvy, speaking to a 10-year drought of American players winning this event. "But you don't forget how to play golf in five weeks. I think it's more a coincidence than anything else."
Finchem supports a strong European Tour
KAPALUA, Hawaii (AP) — The European Tour is stronger than ever, and PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem says he's glad to see it.
The new golf season begins Thursday with the balance of power shifting toward Europe, which has the new world No. 1 in Lee Westwood and seven players among the top 11 in the world.
Westwood, PGA champion Martin Kaymer and Rory McIlroy have decided not to take up membership in America, and the European Tour over the last two years has increased to 13 the number of events required of its players.
All three were eligible for the Tournament of Champions at Kapalua, but chose not to attend. British Open champion Louis Oosthuizen, meanwhile, has chosen to play at home in the Africa Open.
"This recent focus on three or four players, particularly as it relates to Europe, does not cause us concern," Finchem said. "We see the need for these players to support the tour in Europe. We feel like a strong European Tour is in everybody's interests — in our interests."
The PGA Tour remains the strongest in the golf — 36 of the top 50 in the world ranking are members. Beyond Europe, it attracts the top players from South Africa, Australia and South America.
Finchem acknowledged making it tough on Europe and chief executive George O'Grady four years ago when he moved The Players Championship — the richest event in golf — to May and created the FedEx Cup with its four-event playoff system in late summer.
That meant European Tour players who also are PGA Tour members abandoned their home circuit at critical times in the May and September.
"The European Tour has been under a lot of pressure, and we didn't help their cause," Finchem said. "So the fact that they have worked hard to encourage their players to play more ... is understandable. And we don't complain about that. We think that those steps are reasonable, and we support players playing more over there, even though it might cost us some starts over here.
"We feel like we are strong enough and we like the balance of international players."
Finchem said the tour has 75 international players this year, and he likes that balance. He said it would not be good for the PGA Tour to be populated by 90 percent of players from outside America because "we need to appeal to the market in the United States."
"It's a balance that allows us to be very successful in the United States, and at the same be very successful in distributing our television product around the globe," he said. "As long as those two things are working, we don't have any concerns about this other stuff."
Finchem said there was no plan to change its rule granting international players to play more than 10 or 12 tournaments a year on the PGA Tour if they are not members.
McIlroy and Westwood, who gave up their memberships, can only play 10 events (not including The Players Championship), while Kaymer, Francesco Molinari and Ryo Ishikawa can play 12 because they have never been members.
Finchem also said the FedEx Cup points system will stay the same for 2011.
There had been several complaints that a player far down in the standings only needed one good tournament — without winning — to advance to the Tour Championship and become eligible for three of the majors.
Martin Laird started at No. 95 and Kevin Streelman was at No. 102. Laird finished second at The Barclays and Streelman tied for third, and that was enough for both to advance to the final playoff event at East Lake.
Some players complained that eight months of work leading up to the playoffs was not as important as one good week, especially without winning a tournament.
"We just felt it was a little quick to react to that. We would rather watch it another year," Finchem said. "I do think it's an issue that clearly deserves watching. And then the other side of it — a smaller reason — was that we just felt we wanted a solid continuity to get more fans involved in the process without a distraction of explaining a change."
On drug testing, Finchem said he is not ready to cut back on testing to save money, even though only one player —Doug Barron — has tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug in three years.
"The upshot of the amount of testing we have done, which is significant, is that we certainly don't have any kind of widespread problem," Finchem said. "I think that's due to the nature of the sport to some extent, but also to the diligence of the players in paying attention to the program, doing their homework, being careful, calling and asking questions."
-- Doug Ferguson
Tickets vanishing for PGA Championship in S.C.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The combination of the Ocean Course and the world's best golfers has made tickets for the 2012 PGA Championship extremely hot items.
Tournament organizers said 94 percent of budgeted tickets to the event at Kiawah Island were sold between Nov. 15 and the end of 2010. It's the biggest event at the course since Pete Dye built it to host the 1991 Ryder Cup matches.
Fewer than 1,000 tickets are available for the second round. Third-round tickets are sold out and less than 500 tickets are left for the final round. Remaining tickets won't go on sale for South Carolina's first major championship until after this year's PGA Championship at Atlanta Athletic Club.
Organizers said there are also less than 500 weeklong Wanamaker passes, which had been capped at 10,000.
"I think we had internal goals of what we thought was reasonable," said Roger Warren, Kiawah Island Golf Resort president. "We exceeded all those goals."
Because of limited access to the Ocean Course — Kiawah Island juts off the South Carolina south of Charleston — planners had to cap the number of people on the course each day. They expect to limit the course to about 27,000 people a day, including competitors, support people, volunteers, media and fans.
Warren had said attendance at the 2009 PGA Championship at Hazeltine National in Minnesota drew about 44,000 fans each round.
"That's not something we could do here," he said.
As a result, organizers encouraged interested fans to pre-register on line starting last summer and 20,000 people signed up. Those people were placed in groups based on when they registered, sort of like getting a numbered wrist band to buy concert tickets. Starting Nov. 15, they were given the chance to follow through with a purchase.
"To have sold 94 percent of available tickets at this time exceeds every expectation for an event 18 months in the future," said Brett Sterba, the championship's tournament director.
Those who want the remaining tickets will have to wait. Warren and Sterba say those tickets won't go on sale until after the 2011 PGA Championship at the Atlanta Athletic Club.
Dye was commissioned to build the course for the Ryder Cup matches 20 years ago. The Ocean Course may have been the true star of the weekend as the United States took a 14½-13½ win over Europe. The result came down to a slithery, 6-footer missed by two-time Masters champion Bernhard Langer.
He wasn't the only pro brought to his knees by the course. Mark Calcavecchia went 8-over par on the final four holes to tie his match with Colin Montgomerie. Seve Ballesteros won a hole against Wayne Levi with a 3-over 7. Raymond Floyd declared that you should never play this course with a pencil and a scorecard.
"People ask if I designed the course like that on purpose," Dye said in 2000.
The course, the backdrop for director Robert Redford's film, "The Legend of Bagger Vance," has slowly re-emerged the past 15 years. It has hosted two World Cups, the Ryder Cup-style Warburg Cup and the 2007 Senior PGA Championships.
Seems like people can't wait to see what pros like Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, Lee Westwood and Dustin Johnson can do there in 2012.
"We had unprecedented demand to see a championship event on an iconic course," said Warren, a past PGA of America president.
-- Pete Iacobelli
Ogilvy injures finger in swimming accident
KAPALUA, Hawaii (AP) — Geoff Ogilvy might not be able to defend his title in the Tournament of Champions after cutting open his finger on a coral reef at the beach and taking 12 stitches to sew it up.
Ogilvy was coming in from the surf Tuesday when he cut his right index finger on the reef.
"It's not so much a big cut, it's just in an awkward position," said Paul Galli, his manager. "It was fairly deep, and when you're on the reef, you've got to be careful with an infection. They cleaned it out and put in some stitches."
Ogilvy won't know until Thursday whether he can play in the PGA Tour's season-opener. He has won the last two times at Kapalua, and is trying to join Stuart Appleby and Gene Littler as the only players to capture the winners-only event three straight years.
The Australian is in the final group with FedEx Cup champion Jim Furyk.
Ogilvy was able to pull out of the pro-am Wednesday because of the injury, and Galli said he was resting in his room with hopes it would get better.
"He hasn't hit any shots," Galli said. "He was practicing swinging his room and it was giving him discomfort. It's not ideal."
The last time a defending champion failed to play in the Tournament of Champions was Jerry Barber in 1961.
