Related: Greg Norman's My Shot

By John Strege

Rory McIlroy has closed on his purchase of a home on the Intracoastal Waterway in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., according to realtor Jeff Lichtenstein.

The 15,286 square-foot contemporary home sold for $9.5 million and features "a center glass core and window views everywhere throughout the house," Lichtenstein's blog says. It has six bedrooms, nine baths, a private gym and a putting green, but no tennis court on which his girlfriend, tennis star Caroline Wozniacki, can practice. It comes with a dock and room to park a yacht and is one mile from the Bear's Club, a Jack Nicklaus design in Jupiter.

McIlroy, 23, has put his home in Northern Ireland for sale. He is a member of both the PGA Tour and European Tour and led both in earnings in 2012.

(Photos courtesy of Jeff Lichtenstein)

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By Derek Evers

Some trends are fleeting, like parachute pants and fanny packs, while others go on to become cultural institutions -- like anchored putting (OK, bad example). And with each one, we ride the highs and lows that accompany the graduation of fads, from passing to fixtures. 2012 was no exception. With that in mind, here are the top trends from the world of golf I hope to see stick around for at least one more year.

#5. Crying at majors

While still too early to tell if this will become a regular occurrence, Bubba Watson set the bar high with his post-Masters breakdown. Of course, not every major winner has Tim Tebow's shoulder to cry on, but it's nice to see that someone had the guts to let the waterworks flow outside of a Steve Stricker presser.

Related: Trending: Michael Phelps professional golfer?

#4. Twitter fighting

We expect reality TV stars and celebrity break-ups to be the thing Twitter dreams are made of, but golfers creating controversy? You bet, and there was no shortage of it in 2012. While most of it skewed from the right side of the aisle, there was plenty of blame to go around. Luke Donald and Gil Hanse in a cock fight? Done. Does blasting the President make you a better Ryder Cup captain? Not sure, but threatening people to fights over the social-networking platform definitely won't win you many supporters. And it wasn't just the men. Brittany Lincicome and Christina Kim started a feud that drew in boyfriends and three other LPGA colleagues. Whether for entertainment or debate fodder at the water cooler, we're all a little bit better when the golf world opens up on Twitter.

#3. Tell-all books about Tiger Woods

With three victories, including his first in over two years, 2012 will be remembered as the year Tiger came back. Unfortunately for Hank Haney, it will not be remembered as the year of the Big Miss (there's an overused golf joke in there somewhere). For all the controversy it created at the start of the season -- eventually hitting No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list -- it didn't deliver much in the way of dirt slinging, which is why I want to see more unauthorized biographies on the bookshelves in 2013. Do we really need to wait for the movie version to get the juicy story we all crave? Oh wait, that already happened.

Related: Trending: Is the 'Is Tiger Woods Back?' debate back?

#2. Tour wives/significant others tweeting/Instagramming photos of their husbands/boyfriends

They seem untouchable on the course, so it's refreshing to see tour pros in some awkward moments off of it thanks to the prying camera lenses of their significant others. Whether it's as innocuous as Hunter Mahan strolling through Penn Station with his clubs as caught by wife Kandi, or as scandalous as a topless, sleeping Rory courtesy of Caroline Wozniacki, this is a trend we hope continues well into the two-thousand-and-teens.

#1. Unconventional putting strokes

The days of the long putter being a fad are well behind us, but with the new anchor ban going into effect in a mere half-decade, we can expect to see all sorts of new putting styles come into use in 2013. You thought KJ Choi's half-Sneed or AdamScott's anchor claw was unique, wait til you see the forearm grip. And the new year hasn't even started! Just another reason to hope the Mayans were wrong.

Happy new year!

By Stephen Hennessey

This April, when the golf world's attention turns to Augusta National as it does at the start of every spring, it will mark two special 50th anniversaries.

In 1963, a then-23-year-old Jack Nicklaus, coming off his historic playoff win against Arnold Palmer at the 1962 U.S. Open, became the youngest winner in Masters history.

At the start of that tournament, Jock Hutchison and Fred McLeod hit the first ceremonial opening tee shots. Now 50 years later, Nicklaus hopes to continue the tradition started in his first win, by again joining fellow legends of the game -- Arnold Palmer and Gary Player -- at Augusta.

Nicklaus is greeted by Augusta National Chairman Billy Payne in April before hitting the ceremonial tee shot, with Palmer and Player. Photo: Andrew Redington/Getty Images

"I don't think that letter [from Augusta National Chairman Billy Payne] has come, one way or the other. But I would assume that it will," Nicklaus said Tuesday in a small teleconference with some media members ahead of the 50-year anniversary of his first green jacket. "It's not my call. but I would assume we'd probably do that. And how long we do it? I don't know. It's not my call. I mean, it's the Chairman's call. We'll just go from there, on a year-to-year basis and see what happens."

Kindred: Jack, Arnie and Player hope to continue tradition

Asked also if he'd be playing in the 2013 Masters, in honor of the special anniversary, Nicklaus was caught off guard. He had just competed with son Gary in the PNC Father/Son Challenge this past weekend, finishing T-6 and just four strokes back of winners Davis Love III and his son Dru. But Jack hasn't teed it up for real in the Masters since retiring in 2005.

Golf fans, of course, would love to see the Big Three competing for real, or at least playing a ceremonial nine holes, as Hutchison and McLeod did at the start of the tradition. Player joined Palmer and Nicklaus for the first time last year, with Jack joining Palmer at the start of Thursday in 2009.

But just to hear Nicklaus recollect on his Masters victories was a nice respite from the cold December weather.

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By Alex Myers

I'll admit, I was never much of a Colin Montgomerie fan. But that changed -- at least, briefly -- when I drew the plum assignment of following the Scot around Winged Foot in one of Sunday's final groups at the 2006 U.S. Open.

A week shy of his 43rd birthday and with his career in its twilight, Monty managed to hold things together as well as anyone that day on the treacherous A.W. Tillinghast track, and I, a young reporter rooting for a great story, believed I had lucked my way into covering this unlikely major championship win from inside the ropes. Then, Montgomerie pulled, well, a Montgomerie.

Photo by Getty Images

Pumped up from draining a 50-footer for birdie on No. 17 to take a share of the lead with Phil Mickelson, Montgomerie found the 18th fairway (something Phil famously wouldn't accomplish minutes later), but chose a 7-iron for the uphill, 172-yard shot. He didn't come close. A pitch and three putts later, Monty, like Mickelson, wound up one shot behind winner Geoff Ogilvy. Unlike Phil, Monty didn't collect his runner-up trophy at the awards ceremony, instead storming off and reportedly having an altercation with a New York state trooper.

Related: The most grueling U.S. Opens ever

Just like that, Montgomerie's final opportunity to capture a major championship was gone. One would think his chances at being inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame had vanished as well. I was wrong.

On Tuesday morning, Montgomerie was named the latest player to earn entry into the Hall (receiving just 51% of the vote on the international ballot), despite the fact he will never win one of its four biggest tournaments. Even more stunning? Montgomerie has never won a single PGA Tour event. I guess I missed the announcement that the Hall of Fame is now just the "Hall of Very Good"?

The case for Montgomerie? A sterling Ryder Cup record and 31 wins on the European PGA Tour, which he dominated during the 1990s to the tune of four Player of the Year awards and finishing first on the Order of Merit (money list) seven times, adding an eighth in 2005. Those are impressive accomplishments, but keep in mind that tour's depth wasn't nearly what it is now -- when it is still a distant No. 2 to the PGA Tour.

Meanwhile, Montgomerie played his fair share of tournaments in the States and often came close to winning, including losing playoffs at both the U.S. Open and PGA Championship. But he never got the job done. Not in a major. Not in a Honda Classic.

Related: Ryder Cup heroes & goats

Earlier this year, Fred Couples, with his 15 PGA Tour wins and one major, was also selected to the Hall. Like Monty, Freddie was no slam dunk to get the nod, especially so soon. But the pair's speedy selection, while others with similar credentials like Ken Venturi have had to wait so long, is just the latest case of Hall of Fame standards -- not just in golf, but in all sports -- being lowered.

If guys with no major titles are going to start being inducted, what's going to happen to all the one-time winners, who have become so abundant during this recent era of parity? Good thing there's plenty of space on that St. Augustine property.

Maybe it's a little harsh, but I had a front-row seat for Monty's chance at true golfing immortality. Like that ill-fated approach shot, he came up short.

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By Tim Rosaforte

Breaking the mold on American Ryder Cup captaincy, as the PGA of America did with a blockbuster announcement Thursday in New York, all began with the writings of Jim Huber. When a copy of the essayist's book, "Four Days In July," on Tom Watson's mythical run at the Open Championship in 2009, was placed in the hands of Ted Bishop at last year's PGA Grand Slam of Golf, the then-PGA vice president was moved. So was Huber when Bishop called to pitch his idea of Watson in a return engagement as captain, 21 years after leading the United States to its last Cup victory on foreign soil. "The idea is absolutely brilliant," Huber said.

The idea was not only brilliant, so was the execution. Three months after the longtime writer and broadcaster died suddenly and tragically of acute leukemia, 13 months after Bishop presented his idea, Tom Watson stood on the sidewalk outside 30 Rockefeller Center, announced to the world by Matt Lauer on the "Today" show as the next American Ryder Cup captain. Before our eyes, "Four Days in July" became "Three Days in Scotland" with a September 2014 run date.

Photo by Getty Images

At 65 and 22 days when the matches begin, Watson will be the oldest Ryder Cup captain ever, but as Luke Donald the artist painted the word picture on a tweet, we all can't wait to see the Young Tom "rocking his flat cap" once more. Something that Bishop first thought was off the wall has stuck.

Turns out, this was a conversation we'd be having even if Justin Rose didn't make his putt on the 17th green at Medinah, or if Martin Kaymer didn't bury the game winner in the 18th green for Team Europe. For Bishop, it was all about the fit of Watson and Scotland, where he is a kindred spirit, where the people call him "Our Tom." Maybe Watson, the favorite son, adopted with the four claret jugs he won on their sod, will add a Ryder Cup to his treasure chest and go off into the mist with the bagpipes playing and everybody crying with him. Maybe he won't and it will be like Turnberry, but there's not a better ambassador, a better man for the job at this point in history, than the man selected.

Related: Ron Sirak on why Watson is the right choice

Even Larry Nelson and David Toms would have to admit that. The love Watson has for Scotland shows in his eyes and the corners of his mouth simply when he hears the accent. He is a romantic when it comes to the game and the idea of him going back to the site where Walter Hagen played Ted Ray in the 1921 Ryder Cup simply turned him on. At his news conference in the Empire State Building, he quoted the history, waxed about returning to Pershire, and did everything but sing "Scotland The Brave" during his big reveal. I remembered what he said at Turnberry about the game "being a fabric of life over here."

Keep in mind this is more than a feel-good story. Bishop didn't orchestrate this simply as a nostalgia trip or to create a storyline that would keep the audience over here in America for those 4 a.m. wakeup calls to watch golf. Nor did he do it as a knee-jerk reaction to the latest loss by a PGA-generated Ryder Cup team. This had been in the pipeline 11 months before Davis Love's team couldn't hold a four-point Sunday lead in Chicago. Selling the idea to the PGA's officers and rolling it out before Christmas was a game changer without a shot being struck.

If this is anything like 1993, Watson will not lead by committee the way Love did, nor will he shut himself off to feedback and rule like Hogan did in '67. "He won't walk in the (team) room and say, 'Here's the lineup," said his caddie, Neil Oxman. "He won't be a dictator." At the same time, Watson made it clear it's his team, and that "the ultimate decision is mine."

Watson is expected to have the chops Tony Jacklin had with Seve Ballesteros and Bernhard Langer, when he had to cajole them into playing matches when they were tired, as was the case with Phil Mickelson Saturday at Medinah. It's doubtful whether he will bow to Tiger Woods' wishes about moving down on the lineup card to 12th -- as was the case in this year's singles. As Jacklin told me Thursday, "At the end of the day, the captains captain and the players play."

Related: A look back at recent U.S. Ryder Cup captains

As for being in touch with the young kids, Watson will be playing the Masters, the Open Championship, and the Greenbrier, where he will be bumping into Tiger and all the other superstars on a regular basis over the next two years. If there was a potential friction point to this announcement, it was the Watson-Woods relationship after Tom's critical comments of Tiger's on-course behavior in 2010. That was smoothed over when the Woods camp issued a statement before Watson walked into the Empire State Building. Watson said he stood by his words but that they've both moved on, which appears to be the case.

"If he's not on the team for any unforeseen reason, and I'm sure he will be, you can bet that he's going to be No. 1 on my pick list," Watson said. "I want him on my team."

Always a fan of the gentleman's game, Jim Huber was indirectly a peacemaker, too.

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By Dave Shedloski

ORLANDO - Larry Nelson is getting a lot of ink - and receiving plenty of sympathy - after getting passed over again for the job of Ryder Cup captain. But Nelson isn't the only three-time major winner to have never led a U.S. Ryder Cup team.

True, Hale Irwin did lead the first U.S. Presidents Cup team as a player-captain in 1994, which perhaps explains why he doesn't garner the same support as Nelson is getting after the PGA of America on Thursday selected Tom Watson as the 2014 U.S. captain. Nevertheless, Irwin, a three-time U.S. Open champion and five-time Ryder Cup player, admits he's disappointed to have never gotten the call.

"I would love to have been a Ryder Cup captain. It's one of those things every player who values the traditions we have in our game would want to do," Irwin, 67, said at the PNC Father-Son Challenge, where he is competing with his son, Steve. "Certainly if you're a member of the PGA Tour and have been around the game as long as some of us have and who have played in the Ryder Cup, absolutely I would have loved to have done it. It's not my choice. I never politicked for it. Would I have accepted it? With glee I would have done it.

"Anybody can make an argument for any name player to be a candidate and would think that player would be a capable captain," he added. "I have played with some of the best players in the history of the game. I have played for some of the best captains. I feel honored to have been on those teams. But I think for any of us to go wading into the quicksand of should someone be a captain and do they have the qualifications, I think produces negative results and conversation that takes away from our task of getting 12 players prepared to win back the Ryder Cup for the United States."

Irwin, who won 20 PGA Tour titles and a record 45 times on the Champions Tour (including four Senior PGA Championships), compiled a 13-5-2 record in his five Ryder Cup appearances.

He was involved in one of the most consequential and pressure-packed singles matches in Ryder Cup history when he earned a half-point against Bernhard Langer in the 1991 matches at Kiawah Island, S.C. Langer missed a six-foot putt that allowed America to escape with a 14 ¿-13 ¿ victory.

"To think that a Ryder Cup could come down to one six-foot putt on the last hole of the last match ... the last possible stroke, it doesn't get any better than that," Irwin said.

Irwin qualified for that '91 team on the strength of his third U.S. Open victory the previous summer at Medinah CC, where he beat Mike Donald in a playoff.

"In the span of 15 months, I had probably two of the biggest adrenaline rushes I could ever have," Irwin said of his playoff against Donald and his singles match against Langer. "Those were two far different events, and yet the pressure was something that, let's just say it was something I still think about. On the anxiety meter, they both were off the charts. But it was fun. Regardless of the outcome, I could say I was there. I was in the very heat of it. I could feel it.

"Even today when I look back, I get chills thinking about it. Even today, there is an element of shock that all of us felt, on both sides of just how emotionally draining it all was. And you wouldn't trade that for anything to have been there."

(Getty Images photo)

By Dave Shedloski

ORLANDO -- David Duval can't help but feel snakebit when it comes to injuries. For good reason.

Duval, a former British Open champion and No. 1 player in the world, has been dealt a series of health-related setbacks for more than a decade, starting with a bad back in 2000. His 2012 season, in which he made just three cuts in 17 starts, was plagued by chronic knee problems, and it came to an abrupt end in August after he broke his right foot in a freak home accident.

Despite walking with a noticeable limp, Duval is itching to indulge in some competitive golf, which is why he is teaming with stepson Nick Karavites this weekend in the PNC Father-Son Challenge at The Ritz-Carlton Golf Club.

"I still feel like if I ever got healthy I can be a top-20 player. The trick is to get healthy," Duval said Wednesday. "You know, I don't like to complain. You just have to deal with the challenges put in your way. I couldn't play in the Fall Series. I couldn't compete in Q-School. I basically didn't touch a club for almost three months."

Duval, 41, suffered the foot injury literally by falling out of bed. His two small children ran screaming through their Denver house while playing one morning in early September, abuptly awakening their father. "I leapt out of bed in a panic thinking something was wrong, caught my foot on the sheet and fell on my back and my head. At least the kids were OK," he said, chuckling. "At first I thought I dislocated a toe. No, it was a clean break."

After earning just $32,936, Duval has only past champions status on the PGA Tour. A winner of 13 tour titles, he has to rely on sponsor exemptions to enter tournaments. This week's 36-hole scramble format allows him to ease back into the game. His plans for 2013 are modest: get healthy and rebuild his game slowly to a level that he's accustomed.

"The goal for me this next year is to get my status back," he said. "I'm still working hard at it, and I know what I'm capable of."

(Getty Images photo)

By Sam Weinman

For those handicapping the U.S. Ryder Cup captain's selection, consider this somewhat loaded remark by PGA of America president Ted Bishop at a media luncheon Tuesday in New York:

"We've done something a little bit different this year," Bishop said.

Tom Watson in 1993 was the last Ryder Cup captain to win in Europe. Photo: Chris Cole/Getty Images

Presumably Bishop was referring to more than the decision to announce the picks on the "Today" show Thursday morning, but also the standard PGA of America practice of designated a forty-something former major champion winner as the team's next captain. That philosophy stems from the idea that such a player would be young enough to be in touch with today's tour stars, but old enough to no longer be competitive themselves. But perhaps because there's a dearth of such players available -- David Toms, 45, is the only one who jumps out (though, he reportedly has not been approached about the position) -- the PGA may be more leaning toward the likes of Larry Nelson (65) or Tom Watson (63).

Related: Reasons the U.S. lost the 2012 Ryder Cup

Watson was captain of the last U.S. team to win in Europe, at the Belfry in 1993 and said this week he'd love another chance at a captaincy. Nelson, meanwhile, is a three-time major champion with a 9-3-1 career Ryder Cup record who has famously been passed over in the past. But if Bishop's statement is an indicator, he could be getting a second look this year.

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