Golf Capsules: Tiger hoping to make short work at Kingston Heath

They were not going to the green. They were headed for the exit.

Tiger Woods had just finished his pro-am round at the Australian Masters. And that's who they came to see.

Before sunrise, some two hours before he teed off in the first round, a line of people stretched out the gates and some 150 yards down Kingston Road. Next to the ticket window was a sign unfamiliar in these parts: "Sold Out."

As much golf as he has played around the world, even Woods has been surprised by his reception during his first trip Down Under in 11 years. It has included a $600-a-plate dinner at the Crown Casino on Tuesday night, a meeting the next night with cricket star Michael Clarke and thousands of fans at every turn.

Does anyone realize Rod Pampling is the defending champion?

"My mom and dad do," he said. "My brothers don't."

Geoff Ogilvy, who grew up in Melbourne, is the only other player among the top 50 in the world at Kingston Heath. He is a former U.S. Open champion with three World Golf Championship titles, second only to Woods. Yet even if he were to win this week, the trophy might as well say, "Best Supporting Actor."

And that's OK with Ogilvy and the rest of the Australians.

"It's exciting that golf is on the front page of the newspaper again," Ogilvy said. "The fact that Tiger is here, I'm just happy that Australians and Melbourne people get to see him play. We get spoiled. In the U.S., we get to see him play quite regularly. He gets paid a lot of money to play, but he gets offered that money anywhere in the world, and he has chosen to come here."

The hope is that Woods, who received a $3 million appearance fee — will help boost interest in a tour that has dwindled over the last decade with a drop in sponsorship support, despite Melbourne's reputation as having more championship courses than any city in the world.

The PGA Tour had 24 players from Australia with full-exempt status this year; no other country outside the United States had seven. It adds another next year with Michael Sim, who won a record $644,142 on the Nationwide Tour this year. Sim also is playing the JBWere Masters.

"This is just great golf down here," Woods said.

Whether he plays some of it himself will be determined Thursday, when Woods tees off with Pampling and Craig Parry, who won the last time Woods competed in this part of the world — the New Zealand Open in 2002.

"A good omen for me," Parry said.

Woods finishes his two-week trip overseas with a family affair as his mother is making a rare appearance at a golf tournament, along with some of Woods' closest friends. Dating to 1996 when he turned pro, Woods has gone only three years when he failed to win at least one tournament overseas.

He tied for sixth last week in Shanghai, where he started Sunday two shots behind Phil Mickelson and in the final group, only to struggle to break 40 on the front nine and finish five shots back of his top rival.

Woods played his only full round Wednesday in the pro-am, picking his spots around the shortest course he will play all year. Kingston Heath is a mere 7,059 yards and plays to a par 72, yet it is not a course that can be overpowered.

Woods realized that on one of the signature holes, the 294-yard sixth. He hit a stinger with his 3-wood, wistful when it turned to the left toward the gallery instead of going into the front bunker, which was his intention.

Why not drive the green? Woods laughed.

"I'd wind up in the bushes," he said.

In the 18 tournaments Woods has played this year, only two of the par-72 courses were under 7,200 yards — the Buick Open at Warwick Hills (7,127 yards), which he won by three shots; and the HSBC Champions last week at Sheshan International (7,143 yards), where he tied for sixth.

Bay Hill was 7,162 yards as a par 70, and Woods rallied to win that from five shots behind in the final round.

"Some local knowledge helps around here," Adam Scott said. "But if anyone can figure it out, Tiger Woods obviously can. He's the best player in the world and he's playing well. There's no question he's the man to beat this week."

He is the betting favorite at Kingston Heath, not unlike most tournaments he plays. And while the course requires more thinking than bashing the ball, Woods showed he is capable by winning majors at Royal Liverpool by hitting only one driver during the week, and at Southern Hills, where he managed to navigate its bending, tree-lined fairways.

"He's going to have to show some of his best stuff playing around a course like this," Ogilvy said. "He's going to have to play smart, play imaginative golf and stuff. That's what he has really been good at the last few years, especially shaping his ball around and playing proper golf ... old-style golf. I think it's going to be fun to watch."

There won't be a shortage of people watching.

Commentary: Lefty, rivals may regret tugging at Tiger's tail

No surprise there. As anyone who's backed him or been lucky enough to draw his name in the office calcutta can attest, that's rarely a bad bet. Yet given Woods' form in the final round of a few tournaments recently, the wager might seem a bit optimistic.

Or maybe it's based in part on who won't be there: Phil Mickelson.

Woods' reputation as a closer has been dented of late, and the left-hander has done most of the whacking. Mickelson clobbered Woods in a head-to-head matchup last week in the final round of the HSBC Champions in China, and came from off the pace in late September to steal the Tour Championship in Atlanta from Woods and final-round leader Kenny Perry.

Rather than press his luck on a third continent, though, Mickelson opted to return home and spend most of the next three months looking after his family. Both his wife, Amy, and mother, Mary, underwent treatment for breast cancer during the year, and have received favorable outlooks since.

One can only speculate what Mickelson's year would have been like without that hardship, but it's worth noting he was arguably the best player in the game both before he took time off in June to help care for Amy, and again as the season winds to a close.

Had the back-and-forth between Mickelson and Woods taken place in the middle of the season, or better yet, with something on the line in one or more of the majors, golf would have had a version of the Palmer-Nicklaus rivalry it's been clamoring for the past dozen or so years. Instead, the hope becomes they'll pick up in 2010 where they left off.

It should surprise no one that the short stick is behind both Mickelson's resurgence and Woods' late-round troubles.

A few lessons from putting guru Dave Stockton in early fall made the left-hander rock-solid from close-in, especially down the stretch. Clutch putting has been the bedrock of Woods' success; the only player who's made as many tough putts over the course of a career is the same one Tiger is most often compared to: Nicklaus.

Woods certainly made his share this year; no one wins six times on the PGA Tour and posts another 14 top-10 finishes without doing that. It's even more remarkable, considering he started the year coming off reconstructive knee surgery.

Still, in the majors — the tournaments that matter most to Woods — he was uncharacteristically shaky, and never moreso than in the final round of the PGA Championship at Hazeltine. There, Woods squandered a two-shot lead against unheralded Y.E. Yang, and lost for the first time in a major when leading going into the final round.

As much as anything, that singular defeat occasioned talk that it was possible to tug on Superman's cape and get away with it. Even Nicklaus felt compelled to weigh in recently, saying that while he expected Woods would add the five majors needed to surpass his own record of 18 sometime over the next 2-3 years, "he still has to do it, it isn't a given."

No, it's not. But as the bookmakers can vouch from experience, you almost never take the under on any bet that involves Woods. For all the talk about lean times, Woods has won four of the last 12 majors — more than Mickelson or any of his peers have won in their careers — and finished runner-up in four others. When he says, "The whole idea is to give yourself a chance in each and every one," it's far from idle talk.

We'll have to wait until next season for proof, of course, but the early signs are promising. Woods has made a habit of roaring back whenever a challenger to the throne gets hot, and he's always regarded Mickelson as a special case in the past. Plus, the majors this year feature at least two venues — Pebble Beach for the U.S. Open and St. Andrews for the British — where Woods has played some withering golf in the past.

The best rarely lack for motivation, and Woods is no doubt already taking names. During a break in a recent practice round, someone suggested to Tiger that one way to measure how dominant he'd become was that his losing the PGA Championship made more news than Yang winning.

Woods surely understood he was being paid a compliment. Competitor that he is, though, Woods couldn't resist pretending it was yet one more slight.

"So, you're writing me off, huh?" he teased.

Just the opposite. Pencil him in for at least two majors in 2010 and take it to the bank.

Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke@ap.org

Tour cards at stake in PGA finale at Disney

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — The thought of spending another year writing letters, making phone calls and doing just about anything possible to get a sponsor's exemption into PGA Tour events makes Rich Beem cringe.

Threatening to ruin the party at the Lorena Ochoa Invitational is 21-year-old South Korean Jiyai Shin. She has already won the rookie of the year award and leads Ochoa by four points in the player of the year contest.

Two tournaments remain, including next week's LPGA Tour Championship in Houston.

"It's been a year with a little bit more ups and downs," said Ochoa, the game's top-ranked player. "The great thing is that I have the opportunity to be player of the year again. It's going to be tough."

Shin has won three times this season, and she won three times last year on the LPGA Tour before she was even a member, including a victory in the 2008 Women's British Open. If she wins Ochoa's tournament on Sunday — and Ochoa finishes eighth or lower — Shin will be the player of the year.

The last player to pull off the double was Nancy Lopez in 1978.

Shin also leads the season money list with $1.7 million, ahead of Japan's Ai Miyazato with $1.5 million. Ochoa is fifth at $1.3 million.

No South Korean — not even veteran Se Ri Pak — has finished No. 1 on the money list, and no Korean has ever been player of the year. Shin is the sixth Korean to win rookie of the year.

"At the beginning of the season my goal was rookie of the year," Shin said. "But I've already made that and now I have a chance for player of the year, too. ... There's no pressure because I have already made my goal. Player of the year is a bonus thing for me."

Besides Shin and Ochoa, a few others have mathematical chances at player of the year, but they are long shots. They include: Cristie Kerr, Miyazato, Yani Tseng, Suzann Pettersen, Na Yeon Choi and Angela Stanford.

The 27-year-old Ochoa has won three times this season, but she failed to contend in any of the four majors. Of course, this season is being compared to the three previous when she won a combined 21 times, including two majors.

She's playing better after a midseason slump with top-five finishes in four of her last five tournaments, including a victory in the Navistar LPGA Classic a month ago.

But she's acknowledged that planning for her marriage next month and other off-course obligations have been a distraction.

"I'm going to try to play like it's any other week," Ochoa said. "I'll concentrate on my game and leave all the distractions outside the ropes."

The 36-player field at the Guadalajara Country Club — where Ochoa learned the game — is small but loaded with the top 31 on the LPGA money list, and five playing on sponsors exceptions. Included among the exceptions are Laura Davies, Natalie Gulbis and Juli Inkster.

"There is nothing nicer than playing at home," Ochoa said. "I'm going to do my best to enjoy the event."

And hope Shin doesn't spoil it.

-- Stephen Wade

The South Korean has already clinched the rookie award and leads Lorena Ochoa by four points in the player of the year race going into the final two tournaments of the season — this week's Lorena Ochoa Invitational in Mexico, and the LPGA Tour Championship next week in Houston.

So does that make her the best of the 47 talented South Koreans who play on the LPGA Tour?

"Well, that's a really hard question," replied the 21-year-old Shin, hedging with a large grin but hinting she's getting famous back home.

"I'm not huge yet, but I'm getting a little bit bigger."

Shin also leads the money list, which would make it a clean sweep and might signal the arrival of the next dominating player in the women's game.

No South Korean — not even veteran Se Ri Pak — has finished No. 1 on the money list, and no Korean has ever been player of the year. Shin is the sixth Korean to win rookie of the year.

"At the beginning of the season my goal was rookie of the year," Shin said. "But I've already made that and now I have a chance for player of the year, too. ... There's no pressure because I have already made my goal. Player of the year is a bonus thing for me."

Shin has won three times this season, and she won three times last year on the LPGA Tour before she was even a member, including a victory in the 2008 Women's British Open. If she wins Ochoa's tournament on Sunday — and Ochoa finishes eighth or lower — Shin will be the player of the year.

Ochoa, the game's top-ranked player, has won that award three straight times.

The last player to pull off the double was Nancy Lopez in 1978.

Besides Shin and Ochoa, a few other players have mathematical chances at player of the year, but they are long shots. They include: Cristie Kerr, Ai Miyazato, Yani Tseng, Suzann Pettersen, Na Yeon Choi and Angela Stanford.

Shin grins continually and is mastering English. Barely a year ago she needed an interpreter after winning the Women's British Open. Now she handles interviews on her own. She also loves to sing and has put out a CD, which she said Ochoa is always begging her to play.

"All the time she says she wants to hear my song — the English version," Shin said.

Her rapid success belies horrible tragedy.

She was hitting balls in 2003 on a practice range in Korea when her mother and two siblings — a younger brother and sister — were injured in a car crash. Her mother died from the injuries and her two siblings were confined to a hospital for a year. Shin said she spent many nights on a chair or a cot at the hospital.

"I had to care for my brother and sister because my mom was already gone," she said on the eve of Ochoa's tournament. "Now my feelings are fine because it was a long time ago. For a couple of years it was really hard because my heart was broken."

Last Sunday marked the sixth anniversary of her mother's death. Though her mother followed her career, she never saw her win. Shin won her first tournament four months after her mother's death in a Korean amateur event.

She turned pro after the 2005 season and hasn't stopping winning — as a pro in Korea and now with the LPGA.

"My mom always cares for me," Shin said. "My aunt dreams mom's really busy in heaven running back and forth."

-- Stephen Wade

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