DUBLIN, Ohio -- The world rankings say that Luke Donald is the No. 1 player in the world after his playoff victory over fellow Englishman Lee Westwood Sunday in the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth. Jack Nicklaus isn't surprised that Donald has risen to the top.

"Luke's game has come a long way, but I will have to tell you that Luke is a member down at the Bear's Club down in Florida and he's there all the time, and there isn't anybody who spends more time working on his golf game than I've seen in Luke Donald," Nicklaus said Tuesday at Muirfield Village Golf Club, where he hosts the 36th edition of the Memorial Tournament. "He spends his time chipping and putting, chipping and putting, and I mean, he wears out the practice greens. And I think that the effort he has put into it has been rewarded."

Donald will be among the favorites when the Memorial begins Thursday, but were he healthy, Tiger Woods, despite his recent swing troubles, would undoubtedly be the betting man's choice, having won at Muirfield Village a record four times.

From the May 30 edition of Golf World Monday:

For those of you who don't believe in a sophomore jinx, we give you Rickie Fowler.

Last year's PGA Tour rookie of the year heads to this week's Memorial as a welcome addition to a field that once again will not feature four-time winner Tiger Woods.

Fowler is one of the game's stars and for good reason. He is charismatic, polite, great with fans and plays an exciting brand of golf with tons of birdies. He also is a steely competitor, as he proved in last year's Ryder Cup.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- There is a lot of cool stuff happening in professional golf this weekend, what with teenagers leading or contending at tour events in England and in Texas, but the final round of the 72nd Senior PGA Championship is shaping up as something special for the opposite kind of age factor.

Matteo Manassero and Jordan Spieth are five to 10 years younger than when players generally start to win regular tour events. Hale Irwin, on the other hand, is nearly 16 years older than the minimum age to play on the Champions Tour. That Irwin, who will turn 66 on June 3, is tied for the 54-hole lead at Valhalla GC with Kiyoshi Murota at nine-under 207 is a remarkable feat.

If Irwin were to pull off a victory Sunday, he would break his own record as oldest winner of a major since the Champions Tour began in 1980 - he was 58 years, 11 months, 31 days when he won the 2004 Senior PGA at Valhalla. A victory would allow him to eclipse Mike Fetchick, the oldest player to win a Champions Tour event (63 years to the day). Irwin even would supplant Jock Hutchison, who was 62 when he won the 1947 Senior PGA decades before senior golf was really on the map.

Irwin's poor finish - a sloppy double-bogey 7 on the 18th hole Saturday - eliminated what had been a two-shot lead. Tom Watson, a spry 61 years old, lurks at eight-under in third place. Nick Price and Tom Lehman, more than a decade younger than Irwin, are within four strokes.

There have been plenty of Sundays throughout golf history when a nostalgic choice felt his years when a tournament was on the line. For every older golfer who has bucked the odds, many more have faded away. Irwin hasn't had the lead going into the final round of a Champions Tour event since the 2007 Wal-Mart First Tee Open at Pebble Beach, when he finished second to Gil Morgan.

It could go either way for Irwin tomorrow, but for anybody who appreciates longevity and a successful athlete pulling out one more before time is up, the final round presents a delicious storyline. This isn't Tom Watson at Turnberry 2009, but it's certainly something rare.

-- Bill Fields

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Having only 52 putts through 36 holes explains why Hale Irwin, 65, has shot 69-68 and is challenging to win the Senior PGA Championship.

He traces his success on Valhalla GC's greens to a visit last week to TaylorMade's putting studio, where a technician helped him fix his alignment. "I felt that I had been aiming my putter blade a little bit too much to the right and obviously like most things you swing it to the left," Irwin said. "[The studio] proved that I was aiming left, the putter blade was aiming left, and then I had to open the blade to get it back on line."

It feels to Irwin now as if he is lining up with "my putter blade open, but it's really square."

Trusting the change, though difficult, has worked. "Boy, I've rolled some really nice putts," said Irwin, who has drained a few 40-footers over the first two rounds.

While his putting was a key to his domination on the Champions Tour, it has fallen off in recent years. He arrived at Valhalla GC ranked 46th in putting average per Green in Regulation, after having been ranked no better than 54th the previous three seasons.

"If I can kind of get my tee-to-green game a little bit more predictable, particularly my irons, and keep my putting touch going, I'll feel good going into the weekend," said Irwin, who would become the oldest winner in Senior PGA Championship (eclipsing Jock Hutchison, 62) and Champions Tour (Mike Fetchick, 63) history with a victory.

"Forgetting the age, just to win this championship again would be fantastic," said Irwin, who claimed his fourth Senior PGA at Valhalla seven years ago. "If I can give myself a chance in the last nine holes, then that's all I can do."

-- Bill Fields

IRVING, Texas - Looks like Jordan Spieth is going to miss his high school graduation. His classmates at Jesuit College Prep School will be picking up their diplomas about 4 p.m. Saturday at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. At about that time the 17-year-old Spieth, who will be a freshman at the University of Texas in the fall, will be on the back nine at TPC Four Seasons Resort Las Colinas playing in the third round of the HP Byron Nelson Championship.

Spieth, who finished T-16 here last year, easily made the cut again as he backed up his opening round 69 with a 68 Friday to be a three-under-par through 36 holes, just five strokes off the midway lead of Ryan Palmer going into the weekend.

The 2009 U.S. Junior Amateur Championship winner certainly has a home-course advantage. Spieth plays here often, frequently picking up a game with Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, who is a member, and once with former President George W. Bush, and is the clear crowd favorite. 'The crowds just kept growing and growing out there," Spieth said after his solid second round.

But familiarity or not, to open a PGA Tour event with consecutive rounds in the 60s on a par-70 golf course at the age of 17 is a tremendous achievement. Any nerves he felt Thursday, when he began with bogeys on two of the first three holes and made a double bogey on the back nine, were erased in a flurry of six birdies.

"I didn't have the nerves off the first tee like I did yesterday," a remarkably composed and mature Spieth said after his 68 Friday. "There were not as many people on the first tee in the morning. No one wanted to get up that early." He teed off at 9 a.m. Friday compared to 1:45 p.m. on Thursday.

On Friday, he stumbled at the end; playing his last five holes two over par after opening his back nine with three birdies in four holes. Spieth hit a lot of fairways Friday - 71 percent - and averaged 305 yards off the tee. He missed greens - hitting only 56 percent in regulation - but made up for that by using the putter only 23 times. Through two rounds, he has just 48 putts. That'll save you a lot of strokes.

"My putter has never felt better in my life," Spieth said. "The ball striking is coming." If there was a momentum-saving putt it was the 8-footer he rolled in on No. 15 for bogey. "That was a really, really big putt," Spieth said. "If I had made a double there, I would have given back all I had worked for."

As for graduation on Saturday?

"Hopefully, I'll play well enough to be in here again, but then I'll shoot right over there." With 250 in his graduating class, and being an "S" in alphabetical order, maybe he'll luck out and they won't have gotten to him yet. Then maybe he can carry that luck into the final round of the Byron Nelson on Sunday. He certainly has the skill.

-- Ron Sirak

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- If you set aside Byron Nelson's assembly line of victories in 1945 -- 11 straight and 18 overall -- of all the other records in professional golf, Hale Irwin's 45 career victories on the Champions Tour is arguably the most out of reach.

That's why Irwin, who tees off late this afternoon in the first round of the Senior PGA Championship at Valhalla GC, is, a week before his 66th birthday, still a compelling character on the senior scene.

Irwin has 16 more triumphs than the next-biggest winner in Champions Tour history, Lee Trevino. Of players who are in their 50s with a chance to add to their victory totals, Bernhard Langer (53) and Jay Haas (57) have 14 wins apiece. That's a long way from 45.

There were some things in Irwin's favor when he joined the Champions Tour in 1995, including a larger calendar of tournaments to choose from (although he never played a chock-full schedule). After he turned 50, he didn't double-dip much on the PGA Tour as golfers have in recent years. He stayed fit and healthy and hungry to win.

Fred Couples pulled out of the Senior PGA Championship on Monday with chronic back problems and skin cancer issues on both hands. Couples had 13 lesions removed in a routine visit to his doctor in New York and told Golf World he hasn't hit a shot in over a week.

"I've got six on one hand and seven on the other," Couples said. "She [the doctor] said they were cancerous. It doesn't mean I'm going to die in three weeks, but I had to get them off now." 

He expects to play in two weeks at the Memorial, following a scheduled meeting with perspective members of his Presidents Cup team. Couples also blessed the move of long-time caddie Joe LaCava to the bag of Dustin Johnson. With his back and now his hand issues, Couples is not certain who will be his full-time caddie, with quotes around "full-time."

That's one of the reasons why he encouraged LaCava to take the job with Johnson. "If I win four times on the Champions Tour, Joe would make more winning with Dustin just once," Couples said.

-- Tim Rosaforte

(Photo: David Cannon/Getty Images)

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Ken Green knows he could be in for a couple of long days at the Senior PGA Championship. "I'm thrilled to be here," Green said Wednesday at Valhalla GC, "[but] I didn't realize this course was as long as it is, and obviously with the rain, it's going to be a little tough. It's a little more hilly than I thought, so it's definitely going to be interesting."

Nothing about Green's life has been easy since June 2009, when his recreational vehicle blew a tire and crashed down an embankment in Mississippi. Green's girlfriend, Jeanne Hodgin, and his brother, Bill, were killed in the accident, along with Green's German shepherd, Nip. Green was seriously injured, and had to have his lower right leg amputated.

Coming back to competitive golf has been difficult for Green. The 52-year-old has been battling incessant pain in his leg, which affects a tiny percentage of amputees. "We're still struggling," he said. "The nerves just don't seem to want to settle down. I call it like being Tasered almost -- it's a constant lower level of Taser, and then it gets to where I basically act like I am Tasered. It's been quite a journey. I really thought I would be a lot better. Unfortunately, we're just going to have to wait it out and be patient, which as most of you know, I'm not known for."