Talk about your shootouts. Forty-four players, more than half the field of 83, bettered 70 in the third round of the Jamie Farr Owens Corning Classic outside Toledo, Ohio, on Saturday.

Eunjung Yi, a 21-year-old South Korean, shot 10-under par 61. Mikaela Parmlid had 62, Song-Hee Kim 64. Five players shot 65s, seven had 66s, nine had 67s, nine had 68s and 11 had 69s.

Michelle Wie shot 70, which explains how she fell from the top 10 into a tie for 22nd, nine strokes off the lead. The scoring average at Highland Meadows Golf Club was 69.

-- John Strege

Reigning British Open and PGA Championship champion Padraig Harrington has missed three cuts in a row on the PGA Tour and two in a row on the European Tour, including the French Open this week. His round of 75 on Friday included a drive out of bounds on the 14th hole.

“My driver is an office club at the moment. It works nine to five and never at weekends,” he said according to this report in the Times Online.

The British Open begins in less than two weeks, and at this point, a credible defense of his crown seems wholly unlikely.

-- John Strege

* Tiger Woods has opened a one-shot lead at the halfway point of the AT&T National, which doesn't bode well for those in pursuit. Of the 37 previous times that Woods has held or shared a 36-hole lead, he's won 31 of them. That's a pretty good batting average (.816, to be precise).

Woods' two victories this year, at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Memorial, each came in his final tuneup for a major championship. In each of the ensuing majors, the Masters and the U.S. Open, he tied for sixth. Should he win the AT&T, should we assume then that he'll tie for sixth in the British Open?

* Michelle Wie's play has begun hinting at a player ready to begin cashing in on her still enormous potential. She enters weekend play at the Jamie Farr Owens Corning Classic tied for seventh, three shots in arrears of the leaders. In 10 previous starts this year, Wie has had four top-10 finishes, including a tie for 10th at the Wegmans LPGA last week.

Wie will break through with a victory eventually. This weekend, perhaps?

* Danny Lee, who last year at 18 years, one month broke Woods' record as the youngest ever to win the U.S. Amateur, is facing the most important weekend of his young professional career. Lee, now 19, turned pro after the Masters and is attempting to avoid Q-School by playing his way into PGA Tour membership.

Lee stands tied for eighth at the AT&T and desperately needs a big check and a top-10 finish, the latter good for a start in the John Deere Classic next week without having to burn a sponsor exemption.

He has already used five of the seven sponsor exemptions to which he's entitled in an attempt to earn in the neighborhood of $860,000 (enough to equal or better what the player who finishes 125th on the money list will earn this year) to earn his card for 2010, and to date he's earned only $169,304. The other pertinent number: $537,958. That's the sum earned by No. 150 on the money list last year. Can Lee reach that number, he'll be entitled to accept an unlimited number of sponsor exemptions the rest of the year.

-- John Strege

Given Tiger Woods' knowledge of and respect for golf history, this was a rather surprising revelation from his post-round news conference at the AT&T National on Friday:

"I've never played Pine Valley, never played Seminole, Merion. I don't play golf on my vacations. I get away from it and I'm at home. I'd never, ever have a golfing vacation, because it's not interesting for me to go out there and do that."

-- John Strege

Tiger Woods was eight strokes behind before he'd even struck a shot in the first round of the AT&T National, the result of Anthony Kim having posted an eight-under par 62 in the morning. This prompted a question as to what Woods thought about having to start in what seemed a prohibitive hole.

"You get used to it," he said diplomatically. "You know you have to shoot something in the 60s obviously. But then again, you're going to have the same conditions they had the very next day -- calm in the morning, good greens, and even if you don't get it the first day, you can always get it the second day."

The exchange recalls Woods' first tournament as a professional, the Greater Milwaukee Open in 1996. After shooting 67-69 in his first two professional rounds, Woods came off the course only to discover that he still trailed by eight.

"I'll bet he wasn't too happy a camper when he saw 14-under was leading," fellow pro Kelly Gibson said then. "Welcome to the real world of golf."

Welcome, indeed.

-- John Strege

Here's the latest from John Feistein's blog regarding his heart bypass surgery:

"This morning, we talked to John from his hospital bed at the Washington (DC) Hospital Center. It was our first conversation with him since Sunday. His voice sounds stronger than we anticipated and he says, other than some chest soreness, he feels pretty good; though he does tire easily. The end result was open heart surgery and there were seven blockages they had to address."

Feinstein, a Golf Digest contributing editor, possibly could be released from the hospital Thursday night, the blog said.

-- John Strege

The caddie profession these days can be a lucrative one for those employed by the right players, to wit Mike Cowan, Jim Furyk's caddie, who is better known as Fluff.

Dan Steinberg of the Washington Post reveals in his D.C. Sports Bog (yes, Bog) that Fluff is a Maryland resident who has a membership at Congressional Country Club, site of the AT&T National this week. One report places the initiation fee at $100,000.

A check of the Maryland State Golf Association's Handicap Program Verification page reveals that Cowan has a handicap index of 6.7 and a home handicap of 8.0. His index was as low as 4.7 in April of 2008. He last posted a score on Sunday.

He isn't the only caddie with a membership at a high-end country club. Phil Mickelson's caddie Jim Mackay is a member at Whisper Rock in Scottsdale, Ariz.

-- John Strege

Ron Sirak, who covers the LPGA for Golf World, is enjoying some down time in advance of the U.S. Women's Open next week, but that did not prevent him from laying out the LPGA's grim story via Twitter. Here are some of his posts in the aftermath of the news that Kapalua has canceled the Kapalua LPGA Classic this year:

* Kapalua is 3rd LPGA event skedded for this year not to occur, joining Ginn Open and Bell Micro, which LPGA says will be held in the spring.

* Cornjng is out for 2010, Michelob, Wegmans and Owens Corning, do not have contracts for next year. China tourney looks iffy for this year.

* Recession a huge factor is demise of these events. But so are increased fees LPGA has put on tourney owners, including TV and sanction fees.

* October cud be off month for LPGA. Bell Micro pushed back to 2010, Kapalua out and China iffy. They are on consecutive weeks in October.

* My count has 10 full-field domestic LPGA events, as of now, for 2010, and that is generous since two of those do not have sponsors.

* Question is: Will significant number of LPGA members play more on JLPGA and LET next year if tournament schedule continues to shrink.

* Should LPGA merge with JLPGA and LET to form a world tour? Should PGA Tour take over LPGA? Should someone with deep pockets like IMG buy it?

Sirak also calls this "the most important year in the 59-year history of the LPGA." The recession has pushed the tour to a crossroads, but it hasn't helped itself with "increased fees LPGA has put on tourney owners, including TV and sanction fees."

-- John Strege

A finely-crafted short game is Tiger Woods' only nod to anything diminutive. Woods doesn't do small. Hence, when he stepped forward to host a PGA Tour event the results were predictable.

Today, in only its third year of existence, the AT&T National ranks as one of the more important tournaments on the PGA Tour schedule, even if the field does not reflect it.

It begins with the host, a melting pot unto himself -- a Cablinasian, to borrow the word he once created to define his heritage: A mix of caucasian, black, American Indian and Asian. E pluribus unum.

The son of a military man, Woods has put his considerable stature behind a PGA Tour event in the nation's capital, coinciding with the Fourth of July, and prominently tethered to America's armed forces.

This from the Army News Service:

"Several wounded warriors will join Woods on the first tee at 11 a.m. (on Wednesday) to watch members of the 101st Airborne Division Parachute Demonstration Team skydive onto the fairway with golf balls for the tournament's ceremonial first shots.

"Maj. Ken Dwyer of the 3rd Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, N.C., and Staff Sgt. Ramon Padilla of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington will join Woods to officially launch the tournament.

"'Hopefully people come out, not only to watch the players, but also to say thank you to all of the servicemen and women who are coming out here,' Woods said. 'If it wasn't for them, what they are doing overseas, things might be different here.'"

The Tiger Woods Foundation has donated 30,000 tickets to military personnel. The pro-am is named in memory of Earl Woods and pays homage to the military. Congressman John Boehner (R-Ohio), the House minoritiy leader, is part of Woods' group for the pro-am.

Woods' foundation is the beneficiary of the tournament and is in the process of building a second Tiger Woods Learning Center, this one in the D.C. area.

The sum is a special week culminating in an important tournament that deserves a better field. Only four of the top-10 ranked players in the world (Woods, Paul Casey, Jim Furyk and Vijay Singh) are entered, and only eight of the top 25, 14 of the top 50, and 33 of the top 100.

Woods has helped enrich every PGA Tour player fortunate enough to have come along in the Tiger Era, so out of deference to Woods alone, his tournament merits a stronger field. Toss in a world-class golf course (Congressional Country Club), the military link, Washington, D.C., and the Fourth of July, and it warrants a command performance.

-- John Strege