Monday Qualifier

Its Olympic Games lobbying effort last year underscored the PGA Tour's commitment to further globalizing a game that already is played with an international flare, as the first two weeks of the tour schedule so vividly demonstrated.

The SBS Championship was sponsored by a Korean company and won by an Australian, Geoff Ogilvy. The Sony Open in Hawaii was sponsored by a Japanese company and won on Sunday by an American, Ryan Palmer, who held off challenges from a South African, Retief Goosen, and an Australian, Robert Allenby.

What could be better? Glad you asked. The PGA Tour should temporarily do away with conflicting events releases that grant permission to its tour members to play overseas events opposite PGA Tour events (they're allowed three releases for every 15 tour events they play).

This idea was advocated last week by Michael Milthorpe, long-time tournament director of the Bob Hope Classic. "I'd personally like to see the tour do a moratorium on them, until things pick up," Milthorpe said, citing a difficult economy. "Support our events here."

The Hope, a Southern California desert tradition since 1960, will be played in La Quinta this week sans a sponsor. The tournament is footing the bill. It also is sans a headliner. For a tournament hosted so many years by an entertainment icon, the notion that it won't have a marquee name in the field is a particular affront.

No players ranked in the top 25 in the world are entered in the Hope. Only six from the top 50 will play. The most conspicuous absentee is Anthony Kim, a La Quinta High graduate, whose address during his prep years was PGA West. The Hope even gave him a sponsor exemption his rookie year.

Kim, who also is a European Tour member, has opted to accept an appearance fee to play in the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship in the United Arab Emirates, forgoing an opportunity to play what is tantamount to a home game in La Quinta. Kim is one of 11 PGA Tour members to have been granted conflicting events releases, Milthorpe said. All are entered at Abu Dhabi.

"We wish we had a few more players," Milthorpe said. "That's why the tour should have looked at it hard and just did something for this year and said, 'We're not going to grant any conflicting events releases, stay in the states and support what we have here.' You might have a few guys buck the system, but overall the media would applaud it, the fans would applaud it and the sponsors would certainly applaud it."

Or potential sponsors. How do you convince a company to pony up several million dollars when the best player in your field is ranked 37th in the world (Mike Weir)? It isn't a problem unique to the Hope, either.

Kenny Perry, a past champion of the Hope, isn't playing there, either, or in the San Diego Open a week later. He is preparing to head to the Middle East for the Commercialbank Qatar Masters the following week.

"I used to play the Hope, but it has changed," he told the Arizona Republic last week. "Used to be, you played the desert courses like Indian Wells and Bermuda Dunes. They've completely left the desert out, and now it's all big, long, 7,600-yard courses.

"They've really changed the complexion of that tournament, which I don't like. So those (Middle East) tournaments fall in the schedule where I wasn't going to play anyway, and I want to stay sharp."

Perry also needed a conflicting event release; the San Diego Open, another tournament without a sponsor, is scheduled opposite Qatar.

Incidentally, Perry once eschewed playing the British Open, choosing to play the U.S. Bank Championship in Milwaukee instead. He got that one wrong. Now he's criticizing a PGA Tour event experiencing economic hardship and using it to defend his going to Qatar, for which, of course, he is receiving an appearance fee.

This is global golf in the 21st century.

FEELING GROOVY ... NOT

The loophole that John Daly and Dean Wilson exploited in using wedges with square grooves at the Sony Open apparently was not amusing to Dick Rugge, the USGA's senior technical director and architect of the new groove rule.

Daly and Wilson each used old Ping Eye2 wedges that have been grandfathered by virtue of a 1990 settlement of a lawsuit filed by Ping against the USGA. Rugge was asked whether he considered their using the wedges a violation of the spirit of the rule.

"Those Ping Eye2 wedges made before March of 1990 are considered conforming to rules of golf," he said brusquely. "I have no opinion on strategies tour players might be using."

Rugge declined to comment on whether the USGA had any recourse. "I'm not going to express an opinion on that," he said. "As far as the rules of golf are concerned, those are conforming clubs."

The groove issue is a touchy subject for the USGA, which is relying on the rule change to help restore the importance of accuracy from the tee by increasing the difficulty of controlling shots from the rough, particularly with wedges. In short, it is an attempt to counter distances tour players hit the ball.

Exceedingly early returns suggest that players will adjust and it won't significantly alter scoring or strategy. "I didn't see a whole lot of difference," Palmer said Sunday. "I did see a lot of shots where I hit some 70 or 80 yard wedges that took a skip and stopped, instead of skip, stop and spin back. So I felt myself controlling my wedges a little bit more that way."

As Golf World equipment editor Mike Johnson concluded (albeit with the caveat that it's early in the evaluation process) in the Bomb & Gouge blog last week, "The new grooves aren't going to make the game any more difficult. It's just going to make it different."