PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. -- The proposed new order of play for the Florida swing next year will benefit no tournament more than the Honda Classic. A wandering vagabond for years, the Honda seems to have found a permanent home at PGA National's Champion Course and if it's wedged between the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship and the WGC-CA Championship at Doral -- as has been suggested -- it's virtually guaranteed a superior field. And, not coincidentally, the PGA Tour can also rely on the best players in the world spending those three weeks in the United States.

"Looking at the big picture it's going to help us," says Ken Kennerly, the Honda event's executive director. "Wedged between the two World Golf Championships with Match Play being the event before us I think will help. Half the field is eliminated by Wednesday and then another 16 by Thursday. If it was a full field event prior to us and a full field event after us, that's a lot of big golf right in a row and I think that would be a little bit more concerning. But, I think with Match Play before us a lot of the international players are going to stay in America because they're going to want to play at Doral.

"We've really upgraded [the Honda Classic] substantially. It's a very similar golf course to Doral, in terms of condition. Bermuda greens, Bermuda grasses. It's a great warm up for Doral, frankly. It's like Westchester was prior to the U.S. Open."

-- Jim Moriarty

The WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship was not only a victory for Tiger
Woods, it was a win for the Golf Channel. The three days GC had exclusive
coverage of the event --  Wednesday through Friday --  the broadcast scored the
highest cumulative ratings for those days in the history of the Match Play,
and the Friday 2.0 was the best number scored by GC since it started its
15-year exclusive cable deal with the PGA Tour in 2007. The previous best
rating for GC was 1.7 for the Friday coverage of both last year’s Match Play
and the Tour Championship.

Wednesday at Dove Mountain, when Woods rallied from 3-down with five to play
against J.B. Holmes, pulled a 1.3 rating, with Thursday getting a 1.7 and
Friday, when Woods needed 20 holes to defeat Aaron Baddeley, garnering the
2.0. The numbers far exceeded the slightly more than 0.7 average rating the
network has been getting this year for PGA Tour events. The GC also scored
with its weekend lead-in coverage to the NBC broadcast, getting a 1.2 on
Saturday and a 1.7 on Sunday. The GC ratings include the audiences of both
the live coverage and the prime-time replay, but the weekend numbers were
particularly strong since they reflected only the live broadcast.

According to the Golf Channel, its previous best this season was at the
Buick Invitational, also won by Woods, which had a 1.1 on Thursday and a 1.5
on Friday. The AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am scored a 0.8 and a 0.9,
while the FBR Open had a 0.7 and a 1.0. Each Nielsen Media Ratings point
represents 750,000 million homes for the Golf Channel.

NBC's final-round coverage earned a 3.5 overnight rating, an increase of 67
percent from last year (2.1) and was the best final-round overnight for the
event since 2004, when Woods also won. Saturday's semifinal coverage on NBC
earned a 3.2, 88% higher than last year (1.7/) and also the best Saturday
overnight since 2004. Each ratings points represents 1.1 million homes for
NBC.

-- Ron Sirak

As expected, the PGA Tour named Fred Couples captain of the U.S. Presidents Cup team, but that was not the only news made by the tour Tuesday. Greg Norman will be Freddie's opposite number, assuming the captaincy of the International team for the tournament to be held at Harding Park in San Francisco in September, 2009. Couples and Norman replace Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, who have been the event's captains since 2003.

In other news, Rule 78 is no more. The PGA Tour Policy Board agreed to abandon immediately the controversial cut policy that reduced the weekend field to low 70 plus ties if more than 78 players made the cut. Under the new regulation, if more than 78 players make the cut at a regular PGA Tour event all will compete in the third round. There will be an additional cut after 54 holes to the low 70 players plus ties. Players missing this cut will receive prize money and FedEx Cup points in accordance with their finish.

The policy board agreed to revisit the rule after the Player Advisory Council suggested changes be made. The players were upset that they would not have a chance to improve their position in the standings despite making the cut. They cited players such as Brad Faxon and Jose Maria Olazabal as golfers who made the cut on the number, but played well enough on the weekend to win the tournament.

Zach Johnson, who was elected chairman of the PAC addressed the subject a week ago. "You're talking about the livelihood of the players, which is something the PAC is not taking lightly, the players are not taking lightly, and the board is not taking lightly," he said. "This issue not only encompasses cuts, money, etc., [but also] pace of play, retirement, a lot of issues."

Commissioner Tim Finchem said the tour would continue to monitor the idea of a smaller two-round cut to 65 players, plus ties.

The policy board also approved several other changes. The field at the season-ending Children's Miracle Network Classic, Nov. 6-9, has been reduced from 132 players to 128 and the field at the Memorial tournament has been increased from 105 players to 120. Also, the Fry's Electronics Open will move to The Institute, a San Jose, Calif., course in 2010. The Institute is owned by Fry's Electronics and the tournament will be renamed the Institute Championship. It will become an invitational event with a 120-player field.

Also, Bob Harig of our sister website, ESPN.com, reports that the order of the Florida Swing tournaments will switch in 2009. The Arnold Palmer Championship will get the prime final position on the four-event swing. The new order has the Honda Classic leading off, followed by the WGC-CA Championship at Doral, the PODS Championship and Palmer's event at Bay Hill.

--John Antonini

Fred Couples will replace Jack Nicklaus as captain of the U.S. team for the 2009 Presidents Cup, Golf World has learned. The United States team has defeated the international squad in the last two Presidents Cup matches and leads the overall series 5-1-1. The 2009 event will be held at Harding Park GC in San Francisco. Nicklaus had been the American captain for the last three matches, presiding over the controversial tie in South Africa in 2003 and victories at Robert Trent Jones GC in Virginia in 2005 and Royal Montreal GC in 2007. He also captained the team in 1998 at Royal Melbourne GC. Couples played on the U.S. team in 1994, 1996, 1998 and 2005, compiling a 9-5-2 overall record and a 3-0-1 mark in singles play. The official announcement will be made Tuesday.

MARANA, Ariz. -- Tiger Woods calls Stewart Cink "Kitchen" and he'll be hoping he doesn't throw it at him in the finals of the WGC-Accenture World Match Play the way he did in the semis against Justin Leonard. All Cink did was go out in a little six-under-par 29, build a huge lead and coast to a 4-and-2 win into a Sunday meeting against Woods, who beat defending champion Henrik Stenson, 2 up.

"Boy, it was a hot start," said Cink, who distinguished himself both in the most recent Presidents and Ryder Cups, beating Nick O'Hern in singles in one and Sergio Garcia in the other. "I felt like everything was going in and it was, pretty much. You know, when you get off to a start like that, sometimes you almost find yourself in a position where you don't really know what to do. I think I ran out of gas a little bit. Good thing I had a big cushion because I was leaking a little oil."

Woods' 2 up victory over Stenson, who had won 10 straight in the Accenture Match Play, was a methodical, if somewhat pedestrian match, with both players making birdies on the holes they were supposed to birdie and avoiding mistakes everywhere else. Stenson grabbed a bit of momentum on the 13th when he rescued a par after driving it left deep into the desert. He got all square in the match with a birdie on the 16th, but Woods came right back on the par-5 17th, getting up and down from the greenside bunker for a winning birdie of his own while Stenson couldn't reach the green after driving into the right rough.

"I felt like I was in control of the match all day," said Woods. "I was up early and even though we got all square, he never took the lead." Even on the 17th tee, Woods still felt in control. "We're both long hitters and I've been in that position before. I've played umpteen more matches than he has. I've seen it all and nothing really surprises me out there." Against Cink, Woods will be seeking his third straight title in '08, his sixth straight worldwide (dating back to the BMW Championship last fall) and 15th World Golf Championship title.

And, in the Gone But Not Forgotten category:

Good Monty: It was Good Monty rather than Petulant Monty on the premises all week. He was clever, witty and candid talking about his pending marriage, wanting desperately to get into the Masters and even doing a little not-so-tongue-in-cheek lobbying of European Ryder Cup captain Nick Faldo in the television booth. Warming up next to Boo Weekley before their third round matches (both of which were lost), the American had Monty laughing so hard he could barely pull a wedge back. Seems Boo got in a little fender-bender leaving the course the night before. Montgomerie was a witness to the scene but was just that morning getting the whole story, country-style. At one point he turned to his caddie and said, "Can I take him home with me?"

The Tank: On the 15th hole in their morning semifinal match, K.J. Choi stuck his approach four feet from the hole in an attempt to close in on Woods -- only to have Tiger hole out first from 31 feet. As he was walking off the green, Choi's caddie, Andy Prodger, said, "The magician has done it to us again."

The Desert: Adios. In the desert, all the plants want to hurt you. After tomorrow it's time to go east young men, which means Bermuda grass, warm weather and Augusta on the horizon.

--Jim Moriarty

MARANA, Ariz. -- Never give Tiger Woods life. Aaron Baddeley found that out the hard way Friday in a sensational battle at The Gallery in the third round of the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship.

Three times the young Australian had chances to put the top-ranked and top-seeded Woods away, but just missed putts. Finally, on the second hole of sudden death, Woods slammed the door with a 13-foot birdie putt, removing his cap just as the ball disappeared into the hole.

"It looked pretty good from where I was," a drained and relieved Woods said afterward.

The match was one for the ages, befitting of a final. Woods (12) and Baddeley (10) combined for 22 birdies. During one stretch, Baddeley birdied eight of nine holes (including a concession), to reverse a 2-down deficit into a 1-up advantage after 15 holes.

Woods responded by hitting an 8-iron to two feet at the par-3 16th for a birdie to square the match. Then Baddeley had near-miss eagle/birdie/eagle attempts at 17, 18 and 1 to win but couldn't convert.

"It was unbelievable, really," said Woods, who will face K.J. Choi in the quarterfinals  Saturday morning. "I made two bogeys and gave him two holes, but he did the same. But every other hole it seemed like we birdied."

Baddeley, still getting comfortable with a swing change, gave Woods all he could handle.

"I played really nice, especially after being 2 down after two," he said. "I was just trying to make as many birdies as I could. It was disappointing to miss those putts, but I'm encouraged with the way I played."

The last time Woods and Baddeley played together was in the final round of the 2007 U.S. Open at Oakmont. Leading by two strokes, Baddeley triple-bogeyed the first hole and shot 80.

"You have to understand he was in a major transition with his golf swing," said Woods. "It takes time. And he's won some tournaments now with his swing and has proven he can hit shots down the stretch. You can't hit the ball poorly at Oakmont and be leading after three rounds."

Woods, the only two-time winner of this event, enjoyed the birdie-fest, as did the large gallery that followed throughout.

He also overcame adversity. At the 495-yard fourth hole, Woods hooked his tee shot into the desert and had a restricted swing because of a cactus. Forced to swing left-handed, he hit a gallery stake with his second shot, barely advancing the ball. This, after a marshal asked if he wanted the stake removed.

"The thing is I was actually aiming probably 15 feet right of that," Woods said of the stake. "Club's upside down, so I hit it kind of off the bottom and it shot left. I wasn't aiming over there, trust me."

At the par-4 13th, Woods pushed his tee shot to the right and hit a marshal in the head, the ball caroming into the desert. Woods gave a glove to the man and showed genuine concern, then had to take an unplayable lie and lost the hole.

"He seemed OK," Woods said. "He was totally alert, there was blood everywhere. I didn't see any knot. He said he was fine."

Woods has now won 20 of his last 23 matches and is 28-6 overall. He is 18-4 against International players and 10-2 against Americans.

He'll be tested again against Choi, who beat him four times last year in head-to-head situations, including victories at the Memorial Tournament and inaugural AT&T National.

"K.J. is a great guy and one of the best drivers out here," said Woods. "He drives it on a string most of the time. He's been very consistent over the last few years. So I expect that will be the case tomorrow and it will be a tough match."

-- Mark Soltau              

MARANA, Ariz. -- A stomach virus is probably not the best of all possible preparations for a title defense but Henrik Stenson seems to be making the best of it anyway. "I was sick as a dog," said the defending champion at the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship of his condition the week before the event.

"The first week I had a cold so I took it fairly easy. Then, the second week when I was going start practice and we were going to travel over here, I picked up a stomach virus and was as sick as I have ever been," Stenson said. "I've been to Morocco. I've been a few places. I've had a few bugs in the past. It was pretty brutal."

Instead of getting to his Orlando digs on Wednesday the week before the Match Play, Stenson couldn't make the trip until Friday. It was on to Tucson on Sunday. The day before the matches began was his first day of practice in two weeks. "I like match play," said Stenson, which is a good thing because every match he's had so far has gone to the 18th hole or beyond. "The task at hand is very clear. You either beat or get beaten. You need to do better than the guy you're playing. It's the simplicity of it."

Stenson, who already has a pair of good finishes in the desert this year with seconds in Abu Dhabi and Qatar, nicked Robert Allenby 1 up in the first round, then went 25 holes against Trevor Immelman in his second match before beating Jonathan Byrd 1 up to reach the final eight.

"Trevor had a few 15, 20-footers yesterday to put me out of the tournament and, fortunately for me, he didn't make any of those," said the 31-year-old Swede, who finally ended the tussle when he got up and down from the greenside bunker on the drivable par four seventh. Against Allenby, Stenson had to pitch out of trouble on the last, then stiffed a 7-iron to save par and close out the match against the Australian.

Byrd had the easiest opening matches of anyone (outside of Aaron Baddeley, who was conceded his second match when David Toms pulled out with back problems) easily defeating Ernie Els and Andres Romero, neither of whom shot under par, but he had his hands full with Stenson. Byrd made four birdies on the front nine to Stenson's two birdies and eagle. On the back nine Byrd was unable to match Stenson's birdie on the 17th when the Swede reached the 601-yard uphill par 5 in two shots and two putted from 27 feet.

Stenson draws Woody Austin next. "The first time I played with him was at the Wentworth Match Play in October last year and we had a good, tight match," Stenson said. "We had to suspend due to darkness and then come back the next morning and I just managed to make a birdie on 18 to win that one, so I'm sure he wants to make it one-all rather than two-nothing. He's a tough competitor and there are not too many lakes for him to fall into here, either."

-- Jim Moriarty

TUCSON, Ariz. -- It's not at all unusual for mates to meet along the way in the WGC-Accenture Match Play, but in the case of Boo Weekley and Woody Austin, it sometimes seems more like inmates. If the field was paired by eccentricity and candor, they'd be the No. 1 and 2 seeds.

"I think Boo is awesome," said Austin. "I'd love to call him a good friend. I chide with him and he'll chide me back." Weekley got through to the Round of 16 with a 3-and-1 victory over his old scoring buddy, Sergio Garcia, when the hole got in the way of a screaming putt from off the front of the green on the 16th and Sergio couldn't get up and down out of the bunker on the 17th. Austin went 19 holes to beat Adam Scott in one of the handful of exceptionally well-played matches the second day.

Weekley knew Austin's caddie, Brent Henley, from his mini-tour days, so when Boo improbably made it to the big tour the first time in '02, Austin was one of the players who took him under his wing and they've remained friends since.

"Tomorrow is going to be fun," Austin said. "We'll probably be the most talkative of (any) two people in a match."

Though he doesn’t share Boo's passion for hunting and fishing, Austin thinks they're kindred spirits when it comes to golf. "I didn't come from any kind of (golf) background at all. I didn't play or practice in any kind of country club. I have no teacher. I have nothing that you would consider as (being) a professional golfer," he said. "Boo fits the same build. As far as golf backgrounds, I think that's why we get on because we're both not supposed to be here, basically."

And, of course, Boo is just so deliciously Boo. On the practice ground the first morning, when he was asked who he was playing (German phenom Martin Kaymer), Boo looked down the range and replied, "I don’t know. Somebody down there."

On the first hole of his match with Kaymer, he didn't know you could concede a putt. "Martin hit it up on the first hole there and he putted it first and it wasn't probably eight or nine inches from the hole and I'm putting my ball down and he's looking at me and I'm looking at him, like, you going to tap it in? Joe (Weekley's caddie Joe Pyland) said, 'Just pick it up.' I’m like, 'Pick it up?' Honestly, I didn't know. That's how it started out. I mean, it's very strange to just walk up there and just pick your ball up, you know what I mean? Especially when you ain't used to doing it."

Weekley is fighting through some shoulder issues. He fell off a ladder when he was working in his barn at home in the Florida Panhandle before he went to China at the end of last year. "I've got bursitis in my left shoulder and I think a little tear up there, too, so I'm struggling a little bit with it," he says. More than that, he's just ready to get home to Florida next week.

"That's when the season starts," he says, depositing a little tobacco juice on the practice tee.

--Jim Moriarty

TUCSON, Ariz. -- While Tiger Woods was busy dropping a dime on J.B. Holmes with five birdies and an eagle on the back nine to rally from 3 down and Phil Mickelson was trading long bombs with Pat Perez -- the marquee No. 1 seeds both surviving 1 up -- it was a case of the good, the bad and the Utley for the rest.

The Good: No match was better played than the one between Ryder Cup mates Paul Casey and Robert Karlsson, neither of whom made a bogey. Casey was nine under par to win 2 up while the Swede was seven under and X'd out. This is what's known as the "vagaries of match play" though the Swedish version of that phrase is probably unprintable at present.

Woody Austin managed to block out enough Aquaman references to shoot 30 on the outward nine and drown Toru Taniguchi, 6 and 5. Lee Westwood wasn't half bad making eight birdies to beat Brandt Snedeker, 3 and 2. And British Open champion Padraig Harrington admitted to being "a little jumpy" because his game's not on this early in the season, but he was still six under par through 12 holes to take out Jerry Kelly.

Harrington was up at precisely 4:50 a.m. for his 8:08 match. "It's all timed," said the Irishman. "It takes 40 minutes of gym work and 20 minutes to wash up. That's an hour. That's ten to five. It took 40 minutes to get here. That's 6:30. Fifteen minutes for breakfast, 20 minutes for physio. Three minutes to get out to the tee or to the practice ground. An hour to warm up. It's normally two and a half hours, plus travel. So, three hours, 10 minutes and I gave an extra eight minutes today just because it takes a few minutes to get around the place here." Obsessive much?

The Bad: With the family off visiting the Grand Canyon, last-second entry Ernie Els couldn't take as much pleasure in the view from The Gallery. In fact, Els hasn't been a very pretty sight anywhere this year. Two in the water to lose the Alfred Dunhill Championship, one in the hazard to lose to Woods in the Dubai Desert Classic, a 75 to open the Indian Masters and today a 40 on the front nine to lose his match to Jonathan Byrd 6 and 5. "To be honest with you," Els said earlier in the week, "I've taken some big blows in the last four or five years." And the pummeling doesn't seem to be easing up.

The Utley: Sergio Garcia has turned to Stan Utley, the putting and short game guru, to help him get the ball in the hole but he still wasn't comfortable enough with his new stroke to rely on it completely. Instead, Garcia took two putters out on the course with him, using the short putter for the first 14 holes against John Senden and then switching to the belly putter when the nerves frayed, eventually winning 3 and 2.

Oh, and, just one piece of advice, J.B. If all Woods has to do is two-putt from 17 and a half feet to win a hole, tell him to pick it up. Otherwise, you might just set him off.

-- Jim Moriarty

TUCSON, Ariz. -- I don't want to say the Gallery at Dove Mountain is in the middle of nowhere but if you wander very far off the sixth fairway it looks like the location for The Treasure of Sierra Madre. Forget Tiger Woods, where's Humphrey Bogart? It's so inhospitable to spectators about the only thing they can be assured of seeing is a handshake. The commute from Tucson is so long, by the time you get there you feel like you rode in on the back of a burro. The guards at the front gate should say, "Badges? Show us your badges. We need to see your stinking badges."

And was that PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem, out in the desert doing the Walter Huston shuffle? Apparently, instead of gold, he's struck Tiger -- as if there was any difference.

This is, after all, a Tiger Woods week. All is right with the world. The rattlesnakes are jangling out a calypso tune. The javelinas are the Haves. The saguaros stand a little straighter and the leaping cactus seem poised to set Olympic distance marks. The TV cables are laid with more care, the satellite dishes aimed a bit truer. The scaffolding looks to be erected in the style of I.M. Pei. The sunscreen is SPF-perfect; the quotes Churchillian; and relief is there for the asking.

Woods will be attempting to win his sixth tournament in a row. He's accompanied this week by his old instructor, Hank Haney, and his new sports drink, Tiger, which can only mean there's work to be done. He did pause to reminisce about his perfect season, the 36 in a row he bagged one year as a boy. "I peaked at 11," Woods deadpanned.

The unpredictability of match play could well make this the toughest in this latest victory streak. After all, they love the smell of match play in the morning, right up until the casualty reports start coming in.

-- Jim Moriarty

PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. -- Reverence for the Riviera CC continues to abound among PGA Tour players, a sentiment that occasionally is expressed with a caveat, that it remains a gem in spite of some of its changes.

"They've changed it a little bit, but they haven't ruined it," said Scott Verplank who, heading into the final round, stands tied for fourth in the Northern Trust Open, six shots behind leader Phil Mickelson.

"They haven't ruined it" smacks of damning it with faint praise. Several greens have been expanded by architect Tom Fazio and his design associate Tom Marzolf, though not necessarily as a counter to their tending to shrink over time. They've been expanded in places where there has never been green before, contrary to architect George Thomas' original design.

"I haven't been all that impressed with some of the changes," Verplank said, "but the golf course is so great. As long as you don't do anything too major, it's a brilliant place. They changed some of the greens a little bit, and it seemed to be a little bit out of character with Riviera, but it's still great. Every great golf course goes through stages of changing it and tinkering with it and all that. It would be pretty hard to mess this one up too much."

-- John Strege

PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. -- Fred Couples' 48-year-old back may have a tendency to stiffen up, but his locution remains as supple as ever, his sentences bending in directions that would challenge English teachers attempting to diagram them.

After his round in the Northern Trust Open on Friday, Couples was asked how much longer he'll continue to play at Riviera C.C., now that the Champions Tour is on the horizon.

"I have two more years I hope," he said, "and then next year when I'm 50, I don't know where the seniors are. If they give me a spot (in the Northern Trust), I'd rather play here than a senior event. So I'll be here a couple more years at least. It's my favorite course. I'm not going to not."

Not going to not?

"I'm not going to not play," he replied. "They are going to have to keep me from not playing."

Understood. Couples is not going to not play a golf course on which he has won twice and finished second on three occasions. Consecutive rounds of one-under-par 70 that easily advanced him to the weekend will only reinforce his affection for Riviera. Couples is tied for 23rd, eight shots behind leader Phil Mickelson.

Meanwhile, his back has been cooperating of late to a degree that has him optimistic about the future.

"I've got a heat pack on it right now, which feels good," he said. "But I think this will be a nice year. If I can get through it, I'll be very happy about that."

--John Strege

PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. -- The now-famous Rule 78 was designed to speed up pace of play on the weekend but what happens when 144 players go off in threesomes in morning and afternoon sessions on a cold, windswept February day at Riviera CC?

They don't finish the round, leaving many to wonder: Are 144 players too many for a West Coast tour stop -- or are these guys just too slow?

Rules officials will tell you it's the former. I put on three layers and went out to watch the last groups on Thursday afternoon, because I wanted to judge pace of play, but also to see this Dustin Johnson kid from Coastal Carolina who has three top-15s so far this year. It wasn't Dustin's fault that his group didn't finish.

Johnson plays fast and was three under when play was suspended, the best round of the late afternoon groups. Playing just ahead of him, perennially strong California player Kevin Sutherland was two under. As they were stuck with holes to play early Friday morning, Fred Couples finished in near dark by hitting 2-iron to 2 feet at the ninth and tapping in for a round of 70. In his group, into that same ninth hole, AT&T Pebble Beach champion Steve Lowery hit 3-wood from 212 yards.

Couples' caddy, Joe LaCava, called it the toughest scoring conditions he's seen at Riviera since carrying Couple's bag. It took their group roughly five hours to get around Hogan's Alley.

There were 17 players on the course when play was suspended at 5:41 p.m. David Duval (neck), and Nick O'Hern (flu) withdrew after teeing off, leaving first alternate Frank Lickliter III heading to the airport for a red-eye flight back to Florida. The Q School medalist might rightfully argue that 144 players weren't enough; he started the week as second alternate, was bumped down the list by four players who finished top-10 at the AT&T National Pro-Am (one of whom was Johnson), then moved back up with pre-tournament WDs. That's a by-product of an incredibly strong Northern Trust field that will be cut to the low 70 and ties on Friday evening -- unless the number exceeds 78.

-- Tim Rosaforte

KAHUKU, Hawaii -- Let's go back to Leilei's Bar. Let's go back to Tuesday night. Let's revisit the conversation Kelli Kuehne had with Beth Daniel when she told the captain of the 2009 U.S. Solheim Cup team, "I'm going to be playing for you next year." And let's listen once again to the words of Cristie Kerr that night when she said, "Kelli is going to have a big year. Trust me." The leader board after one round of the SBS Open makes those words look like more than mere barroom boasts.

Kuehne and Kerr, friends since their days in junior golf when they were 12 years old and fresh from a ski vacation along with Kerr's husband, Erik Stevens, looked like world-class seers after Kelli took advantage of a morning tee time and benign wind to post a five-under-par 67. With only 36 holes left in the three-round tournament, Kuehne has positioned herself nicely to be in the hunt for the Saturday finish on the north shore of Oahu.

For one day anyway Kuehne stole the spotlight from the glamour threesome of Annika Sorenstam, Natalie Gulbis and defending SBS Open champion Paula Creamer. Sorenstam, sabotaged by a balky putter, and Creamer finished at two-under-par 70, three strokes behind Kuehne. Gulbis struggled to a 73. All three get the advantage of playing in the morning on Friday, when the wind is usually calm, while Kuhne takes on the Palmer Course in the more blustery afternoon.

If Kuehne is to make a serious run here, and if she was near her TV set Thursday afternoon after finishing her round, she got a sense of what it is going to take. Sorenstam and Creamer both shot under par despite each making a double bogey on No. 17 to squander an opportunity after both snaked in long birdie putts on No. 16 to creep within two shots of Kuehn'e lead. Both got back one stroke when they made birdies on the final hole.

Sorenstam's round was sort of a synopsis of her injury-plagued 2007 season. Every time she got some momentum going she would make a mistake. She started her round with a birdie on No. 1 but followed that with a three-putt on the second hole for a bogey, missing from three feet. The double bogey on No. 17 was set up by a drive into the fairway bunker on the par-4 hole, and then a blunder with her wedge when she chipped from a swale to a short-side pin only to watch the ball roll back to her feet.

While Kuehne got a break Thursday with the late-round mistakes by Sorenstam and Creamer, she can pretty much count on the fact that both will make a run at her in Friday's second round. There is a real electricity when Sorenswtam and Creamer play against each other, a rivalry hatched in 2005 when Creamer, then a 19-year-old rookie, challenged the best the world's No. 1 on a rules issue. They'll play in the same threesome again on Friday.

While Sorenstam is trying to bounce back from her ruptured disc demolished 2007 season and Creamer is trying to build on a three-year career in which she has already won four LPGA events, Kuehne is looking to become relevant again. Make no mistake about it, this is an important year for her. She fought her way onto the Solheim Cup team in 2002 and 2003, but there has not been a victory carved into her resume since the 1999 LPGA Corning Classic, the only win in her 10-year career. Much, much more was expected from the Kuehne and now, still only 30 years old, it could be that she is ready to fulfill her potential.

The feisty Texan has impressive bloodlines with her brother Hank, a pro, and her other brother Trip, an amateur who could have been a pro had he chosen. And Kelli has been no slouch herself, winning the U.S. Girls Junior in 1994 and the U.S. Women's Amateur in '95 and '96. A week after winning at Corning in 1999, Kuehne made a great run at the U.S. Women's Open at Old Waverly in Mississippi, finishing third. But then she hit a brick wall.

There were top-10 finishes in the Open in '00, '01 and '02 but nothing better than T-20 since in any of the four major championships. In her last 59 LPGA tournaments has missed 35 cuts and had to go back to Q school last fall, were she finished fourth to get her playing card for this season.

The first step in the long road back was to identify the problem, and a look at the stats told Kuehne what she needed to work on. Last year she drove it long enough and straight enough to be 36th on tour in greens hit in regulation. The problem was that she was 125th in putts per GIR. She shot in the 60s only five times all year.

"It was a hard off season," she said about her intense focus on her short game, working with Tracy Phillips, her short-game coach who caddied for Kuehne when she won in 1999 and is back on the bag this week at the Turtle Bay Resort. "It was a lot of work but very rewarding." That work got her through Q school, and it has gotten her off to a good start at the SBS Open. It's a first step in a long season that could be the most important in Kuehne's career.

--Ron Sirak

PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. -- John Daly is inimitable, which, most would agree, is surely a good thing. One of him is sufficient. But whatever one feels about him, he's difficult to ignore, and not simply because of his growing girth.

After shooting 69 in the first round of the Northern Trust Open Thursday, he spoke of the flu that has bothered him the last couple of days and how he was grateful to have swapped pro-am times with Phil Mickelson the day before, "because an hour earlier for me, I could catch the Willie Nelson concert last night."

A Willie Nelson concert would seem an odd elixir for flu. But this is John Daly's world.

"Me and my caddie both got the flu," Daly said. "The last two days have been brutal."

A decent round is the kind of medicine his golf game needed. This marked only the second time in 11 rounds this year that Daly has bettered 70. "It's nice to finally get off to a decent start," he said. "I made a good putt on one and made a really good birdie on three and then [another] on five. You get off to a start like that, and you feel like you can feed off it for the rest of the day."

Daly said he put a new shaft in his putter, one a half-inch longer. "Butch [Harmon, his instructor] wants me to shorten my stroke, so I added some length. I figure it makes it a lot easier to do that."

-- John Strege

PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. -- The PGA Tour's revised cut policy for 2008 will barely make it through the West Coast swing, as the Players Advisory Council voted unanimously to alter weekend qualifications yet again during a meeting this week in Los Angeles. Full-field events will return to the low-70-and-ties stipulation used before the start of the season, with a 54-hole cut being added if the number of final-round competitors still exceeds 78.

However complicated or trivial the revision may seem, the "double cut" gives tournaments an extra chance to reduce fields to a manageable size, particularly when daylight and frost delays are significant issues early in the season. It also gives players one more chance to shoot themselves back into contention, which was the primary gripe among those who opposed the original modification when it went into effect last month.

The tour's policy board will vote on the latest proposal when it gathers at the Honda Classic in two weeks. Board member Joe Ogilvie said he saw no reason why the revision wouldn't go into effect almost immediately, which would end a brief but tumultuous issue that claimed unusually large numbers of players on two separate occasions.

At the Sony Open in Hawaii, the first full-field event of '08, low 70 plus ties meant that 87 players would have qualified for the weekend. The revision lowered the actual cut by one stroke, however, leaving 18 players out of the tournament, each of whom collected just less than $10,000 in prize money. Two weeks later in San Diego, 19 players were on the original cutline and sent home. At that point, it had become clear that the modification would soon be reconsidered.

"The tour recognized this was a very unpopular decision and has done something to rectify that," said Olin Browne, a former member of both the policy board and the PAC. "Good for them to see something that wasn't well-received by the majority of us. The board makes policy and we have to live by it, and there will always be decisions the players disagree with. The question is whether that decision in the best interests of the PGA Tour. I don't think the players saw how this benefited anyone."

-- John Hawkins

PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. -- The quality of the course and its role in history ought to have been sufficient to envelope the PGA Tour stop at the Riviera CC in prestige, but that hasn't always been the case with this event known over time as the Los Angeles Open, the Glen Campbell Los Angeles Open, the Los Angeles Open (again), the Los Angeles Open Presented by Nissan, the Nissan Los Angeles Open, the Nissan Open and now the Northern Trust Open.

Northern Trust, at least, has the right idea; it has attempted to upgrade the tournament, mostly in ways that would get the players' attention: by raising the purse by $1 million (to $6.2 million),  by reducing the number of amateurs in a pairing to three, and by giving everyone in the field a courtesy car.

"The pro-am today was great," Justin Rose said. "The first group, I think they played in just over four hours, which is kind of unheard of in a pro-am."

The course, one on which Ben Hogan won the Los Angeles Open and the U.S. Open in 1947 and the L.A. Open again in '48 (hence Riviera's nickname, "Hogan's Alley"), is an attraction, but only since the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship was scheduled for the following week at a Western location has the field helped return some of the prestige to the event.

Seventeen of the top 20 players in the World Ranking are entered (only Tiger Woods, Ernie Els and Henrik Stenson are missing) in this, a tournament that began in 1926 and has been won by Hogan, Byron Nelson, Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson, Johnny Miller, Nick Faldo and Els.

Palmer's name, incidentally, turned up on a chart last week referencing some of the highest scores made on individual holes. It showed Palmer making a 12 on one hole in the Northern Trust Open in 1961. Palmer no doubt remembers the 12 (made at Rancho Park GC in Los Angles), but surely he can't remember making it in the Northern Trust Open.

-- John Strege

KAHUKU, Hawaii -- With pitchers and catchers flinging the horsehide around in Florida and Arizona, and either Roger Clemens or Brian McNamee slinging horse feathers on Capitol Hill, the good folks of the LPGA gathered in Leilei's Bar at the Turtle Bay Resort to rekindle old friendships, retell old war stories and refocus on a new season. Like baseball, the former national pastime that has become a national nightmare, the LPGA has a real off-season. And that absence has made the heart grow way fonder.

The two-and-a-half months since Lorena Ochoa won $1 million at the ADT Championship to end a fascinating 2007 season in which the Mexican star surpassed Annika Sorenstam as No. 1 in the Rolex Rankings have only served to whet the appetite for whatever is next in women's golf. That story starts to unfold Thursday at Turtle Bay when the SBS Open kicks off the new season with a compelling field that includes Annika Sorenstam, who says she's fit and ready to reclaim the top spot.

But first things first. Before a shot was hit in anger there was the matter of good-natured reunions in which players took verbal shots at each other. A chief target was reigning U.S. Women's Open champion Cristie Kerr for the sizzling cover photo of her in the new Golf For Women magazine. "Six-pack abs, baby, six-pack abs," a beaming Kerr proclaimed as Kelli Kuehne, Beth Daniel, Meg Mallon, and Golf Channel commentator Kay Cockerill teased her about the sexy shot. There were numerous humorous responses to Kerr's line but hey, what's said in Leilei's stays in Leilei's.

Let's just say this: One of the joys about the LPGA is that it remains in touch with its roots. It's 58-year struggle for equal footing on the publicity stage with other sports has fostered an extremely healthy us-versus-them attitude around which the players unite in a sisterly effort to get the attention they deserve. Much more than any other sport -- certainly much more than the PGA Tour -- the players hang together, joke together and project a distinct air that they are all in this together. It's a fun group.

There are a lot of ways to measure the popularity of a sport. One is how much people are talking about it. And another is how much people are writing about it. Dan Jenkins, the esteemed Golf Digest columnist who has written 10 novels, several about golf including the classic "Dead Solid Perfect", has made the LPGA the setting for his newest work, "The Franchise Babe," which comes out in May. Jenkins has never obeyed the political correctness police and there will be those in Daytona Beach offended by parts of the book, but when seventy-something legends notice your product you are doing something right.

Ochoa isn't on hand for the SBS Open. She has indicated she will play fewer than the 25 events she has averaged her first five years on the LPGA and will pick up the tour in two weeks at the HSBC Champions in Singapore. Sorenstam, on the other hand, will play five of the first six tournaments as she tries to re-establish the dominance she displayed in a staggering five-season stretch from 2001-05 in which she won 43 of 104 LPGA events. She's 37, starting her 15th season on tour and thinking about a business life after golf, but she has also made it clear this year will be all about golf after an injury-plagued 2007. 

Sorenstam will have an interesting test right out of the box. How's this for an opening-round threesome Thursday: Sorenstam, defending SBS Open champion Paula Creamer and Natalie Gulbis? That's the first group of the afternoon session -- teeing off at 1:30 p.m. local time just as Golf Channel comes on the air -- and it's followed immediately by Morgan Pressel, Stacy Prammanasudh, Suzann Pettersen, 2007 Rookie of the Year Angela Park, Christina Kim, Kerr, Laura Diaz, Ai Miyazato and Carin Koch.  Not even Jenkins could have scripted that any better.

The other notable absentees besides Ochoa include Karrie Webb, Se Ri Pak and Juli Inkster -- all in the top 10 of the Rolex rankings. Also missing is Hawaii native Michelle Wie, who will return to competition next week at the Fields Open after a disappointing 2007 in which she battled injury, anxiety and her swing. By all accounts, she has found new joy in her freshman year at Stanford, where she will skip the spring quarter to try to get her competitive legs back under her on the golf course.

An interesting addition to the LPGA this year is Momoko Ueda of Japan, who earned a tour card by winning the Mizuno Classic last fall. The massive Japanese media presence that has been following Miyazato for the last two years is now focused on Ueda, which could be a blessing in disguise for Ai, who has struggled under the weight of national expectations. With the attention elsewhere, Miyazato may fulfill her considerable potential and have the kind of breakout year Pettersen had in 2007, when she won five times including a major championship.

The SBS Open is a 54-hole event ending on Saturday. Being a three-round event, getting off to a fast start is more important that usual. That will make the first round even more fun to watch. And since the final round is Saturday, that means things will be jumping Saturday night at Leilei's. Let the season begin.

-- Ron Sirak

It looks as if the Big Easy is changing his mind about skipping the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship. One source indicates Ernie Els will fly to Arizona to play the event at the Gallery at Dove Mountain in Tucson. After a pair of top-10 finishes in Dubai and India the past two week's Els wrote on his website that he would not rejoin the PGA Tour until the Honda Classic and he would stay in the U.S. until the Masters. But Els, who lost in the first round of the Match Play the last three times he has played it (2003, 2006 and 2007), has contacted tournament officials about attending. One report has it that wife Liezl convinced Els to play in Arizona and head to Florida from there.

Before he plays in Tucson, Els must find out if his new Callaway I-mix driver conforms to USGA standards. He kept the club out of play for the first two rounds of last week's Indian Masters on the European Tour, but used it on the weekend when the R&A told tour officials the driver was acceptable. However, after the tournament ended, the R&A determined it did not conform. "The [R&A] thought we were asking about adjustability, which was legal as of Jan. 1," David Garland, director of European Tour operations said in Golf World's Feb. 15 issue. "But the head--which has some cosmetic changes--had not been ruled on yet. This was not Ernie's fault, nor did the club have any performance benefits outside the rules. And since the competition had closed, there is no penalty on Ernie. But he can't use it again until it's on the conforming list."

Els entry in Tucson means that unless someone else withdraws, Anthony Kim will be bumped from the final spot in the field and J.B. Holmes will have the task of playing Tiger Woods in the first round.

--John Antonini

A shoulder injury has caused Brett Wetterich to withdraw from the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship next week and casts doubt on the long hitter's entire 2008 season. Wetterich played the 2007 season with a sore left shoulder and injured it further when he slipped on some ice in the off-season. An initial MRI showed a torn labrum. An operation could sideline him for 6-9 months, but Wetterich is seeking a second opinion.

Anthony Kim is the immediate beneficiary of Wetterich's withdrawal from the Match Play. The 66th-ranked player in the world now qualifies for the matches at The Gallery at Dove Mountain in Tucson and gets the unenviable task of playing Tiger Woods in the first round. (Ernie Els had already announced his intention to skip the event, getting 65th-ranked J.B. Holmes into the field.)

Arron Oberholser, who withdrew from the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am because of bursitis in his right shoulder, was considered a candidate to skip the Match Play, but he said Monday afternoon that he's going to play. "I'm going to play for sure," he said. "In my mind there's no doubt. Sooner or later I have to test it out in competition."

Barring more withdrawals before the championship begins Feb. 20, here's a look at first-round matchups:
Tiger Woods vs. Anthony Kim
Arron Oberholser vs. Tim Clark
K.J. Choi vs. Rod Pampling
Scott Verplank vs. Soren Hansen
Vijay Singh vs. Brad Dredge
Paul Casey vs. Nathan Green
Aaron Baddeley vs. Justin Leonard
Lee Westwood vs. David Toms
Sergio Garcia vs. Peter Hanson
Niclas Fasth vs. Boo Weekley
Justin Rose vs. Brendan Jones
Toru Taniguchi vs. Nick O’Hern
Geoff Ogilvy vs. Robert Allenby
Trevor Immelman vs. Brandt Snedeker
Steve Stricker vs. Pat Perez
Stuart Appleby vs. Andres Romero
Adam Scott vs. Daniel Chopra
Richard Sterne vs. Woody Austin
Angel Cabrera vs. John Senden
Martin Kaymer vs. Nick Dougherty
Henrik Stenson vs. Jerry Kelly
Stewart Cink vs. Shingo Katayama
Jim Furyk vs. Jonathan Byrd
Retief Goosen vs. Charles Howell III
Rory Sabbatini vs. Colin Montgomerie
Stephen Ames vs. Robert Karlsson
Padraig Harrington vs. Camilo Villegas
Iam Poulter vs. Miguel Angel Jimenez
Zach Johnson vs. Anders Hansen
Luke Donald vs. Mark Calcavecchia
Hunter Mahan vs. Mike Weir
J.B. Holmes vs. Phil Mickelson

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif.--Golf takes a backseat to no one in its love of acronyms. You can be DQed, DNSed and WDed. We've been MOIed and CORed. And, even though the season is still in its infancy, 37 innocent victims have already been MDFed (made cut, did not finish), their reputations left in tatters, except for D.J. Trahan, who got MDFed one week and won the next. But don't think the Cinderella story of one solitary player can blunt the ignominy of the masses.

M, D and F have become the scarlet letters of the PGA (there they go again) Tour. In truth, it sounds as if these poor souls have, in fact, done something just a little bit naughty, if not bordering on the morally reprehensible--and the tour wasn't supposed to test for that until July. If you prick them, do they not bleed? If you tickle them, do they not laugh?

Apparently not, because so many players are irate about MDF that the policy, in the proud and historic tradition of the FedEx Cup, is on the fast track to tweekdom at the Northern Trust Open in Los Angeles where it will likely get PACed by the Player Advisory Council.

In fact, the wicked 37 are guilty of nothing more egregious than not familiarizing themselves with something called Green Sheets, which apparently explained in language a ferret could understand that if too many of them didn't play badly enough in the first two rounds to miss the 36-hole cut on their own, the tour would courageously take matters into its own hands and lop off their hybrids, thus making network television safe for all mankind and allowing "American Gladiators," or some such thing, to begin glistening, grunting and growling on schedule.

Imagine the confusion this must have caused during a very difficult and somewhat embarrassing transition period. Like mongrel dogs, players began showing up unexpectedly at their homes Friday night. No doubt the living-room conversations went something like this: "Sit down, honey, I have something to tell you." Sniff, sniff. Sob. "I'm MDF."
"You're what?"

"MDF. It just happened. Honest, I never intended to stray to the short side. One thing led to another. It didn't mean anything to me, honey. Really, it didn't."

Of course, Rule 78 deep-sixed the disenfranchised 37 because if more than 78 players make the 36-hole cut then the number of players allowed to keep their courtesy cars for the weekend is reduced to the number closest to 60. Everyone else is dismissed with last-place money and the home version of the FedEx Cup point system as lovely parting gifts. It happened first in Hawaii and then, like flu, migrated to the mainland in San Diego. This was supposedly OK because few players ever made the cut on the number and went on to win. On the other hand, legions have made the cut on the number and gone low enough on the weekend to be able to finance a lock in the Panama Canal. So how come you get that chance one week and not the next?

"There are a lot of things we have to do for TV," says Arron Oberholser, "but this shouldn't be one of them."

The rule does bring to mind the proverbial camel--a horse designed by committee. It was meant to avoid threesomes and slow play. But there are other ways to get there. They could trim to 65 or institute an additional 54-hole cut. Of course, they could just play faster, too.

One thing is certain. This year someone will go into the record books for most Massively Dysfunctional Finishes, all-time.

--Jim Moriarty

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif.--One is dark-haired with a dark complexion and a powerful lower body that unwinds into the ball like Tiger Woods. The other is blond and lean, his skin weathered like driftwood, and he slides into the ball exactly the same way he did when he drove it better than anyone else in the world. Greg Norman has spent the past two days on the Monterey Peninsula playing golf not just with his son but, perhaps, with his heir, too.

Norman, who turns 52 on Sunday and is the oldest player in the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, can, as 20-year-old Jason Day put it to his caddie, teacher and mentor, Colin Swatton, "still mint it." Norman is partnered with Gregory, his 22-year-old son and an aspiring golfer, while fiancee, Chris Evert, has looked on from behind the gallery ropes. But it is Day whose name went up on the leader board after two rounds, and it is Day who may well be Norman's spiritual son, at least when it comes to being the next great Australian player in that seemingly endless list of Aussie talents.

Though they had played together once before the AT&T, Day and Norman don't know one another well. Not yet, anyway. They've scheduled a more relaxed practice round in Mexico at the Mayakoba Golf Classic in two weeks on a course Greg designed. So far, Norman appreciates Day's game mostly from afar and is none too solicitous.

"It's consistently solid. He doesn't make too many mistakes," says the two-time British Open champion. "Putts well. Makes a lot of good four- and five-footers when he needs to. All around good game, I would say. There are a lot of 20-year-olds out there hitting a thousand golf balls a day trying to be better. I wish him well. I just hope it works out for him."

Not exactly the wow factor. And Day has yet to avail himself of the opportunity to find out what made the Shark swim. "When I saw a Nicklaus or a Watson or Trevino or Floyd, I always picked their brain. Absolutely," said Norman, who replied, when prompted, that Day hadn't asked his advice about much of anything.

The young Aussie, who was barely alive when Norman ruled golf, instead chummed with young Gregory. "We got off pretty quick," said Day. "We were always talking about, like, riding motorbikes, snowboarding, watching cartoons, funnily enough."

After Day won the Junior World Golf Championship and turned pro, he got into seven events in '06 on the PGA Tour and made five cuts. But, he was so shy, he wouldn't associate with the other players, preferring to hang out in the caddie pens with Swatton. The backstory of Day, losing his father to cancer at 11 and then losing his way as an adolescent, is well known. Just as well known are his highly publicized comments about wanting to take down Tiger Woods, something Day regretted saying not so much because he aspired to anything less than being the World No. 1 but because he was afraid, when he finally met Woods, that the man he looks up to so much might look down on him.

"He idolizes Tiger," Swatton says. "Tiger changed his life." It was Swatton, golf and a book about Woods that ultimately turned Day's life around at 15, beginning with daily 5 a.m. practice sessions. At Spyglass Hill on Friday, on the downhill par-5 seventh hole, Day smothered a 2-iron on his second shot. It looked destined to one-hop into the water, front and left of the green. Instead, the ball plugged just outside the hazard. It wasn't exactly a miracle at soggy Spyglass, but it was a nice piece of good fortune. Day took a drop, then one-hopped a little half wedge to two feet for birdie.

Day has his teacher on his bag, a steady girl, Ellie Harvey, who he was introduced to at Mavis Winkles Irish Pub in Twinsburg, Ohio, and a healthy right wrist after a cortisone shot, therapy and three and a half months off at the end of last year. Fresh from a solid week in Scottsdale, he chose to rest rather than play practice rounds, despite having never seen any of the three AT&T courses, including the one that requires the most courting and where he'll play today, Pebble Beach. He opted to trust Swatton instead, an approach that has worked out nicely for a young man who needed some looking after.

"The thing with me," Day said of his game, not his life, "is I make a lot of mistakes and I make a lot of birdies. So, if I can minimize those mistakes, I can hopefully go out there and win." Clearly, he's learned from his. Maybe that's why he didn't need Greg's advice. Not yet, anyway.

--Jim Moriarty

(Photo: Jeff Gross/Getty Images)

HOUSTON--In an extension of what anyone who wants to see golf grow has to view as an extremely positive trend, the United States Golf Association on Friday said it awarded the 2015 U.S. Open to yet another public course--Chambers Bay, a municipal links on lower Puget Sound in Washington state.

As a prep for the big show, Chambers Bay, which is the work of Robert Trent Jones Jr. and Bruce Charleton, will also get the 2010 U.S. Amateur Championship. It will be the third municipal course to play host to the U.S. Open, following Bethpage Black in 2002 and Torrey Pines later this year. Bethpage also has the 2009 U.S. Open. The USGA also announced Friday that Erin Hills Golf Course in Wisconsin, which has this year's U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links Championship, will play host to the 2011 U.S. Amateur.

"We are excited to take the U.S. Open Championship and the U.S. Amateur to such an awesome site," says Jim Hyler, chairman of the USGA Championship Committee. "This is the first time the U.S. Open has been to Washington and we are confident that the golf course will provide a challenging test for the best players in the world, as well as a great spectator experience for those who attend the event and watch it online and on television."

Chambers Bay, opened in June 2007, is the centerpiece of a 930-acre park purchased by Pierce County, Wash., in 1992 that today features scenic trails and coastline vistas where a sand and gravel quarry once stood. Erin Hills is a links-style championship course designed by Mike Hurdzan and Dana Fry of Hurdzan-Fry Architects, and Ron Whitten, Architecture Editor for Golf Digest.

While U.S. Opens have been played at high-end resort courses such as Pebble Beach and Pinehurst No. 2, the move in 2002 to Bethpage, which is a New York state park, was the first time the national championship was taken to a truly public course. That Open was a success by every measuring stick--attendance, enthusiasm of the galleries, corporate hospitality sales, the quality of the venue and the winner, Tiger Woods.

This year the bring-golf-to-the-people trend continues at Torrey Pines, located in a public park north of San Diego. The course the players experience and the fans see at the U.S. Open will be very different than the one Woods romped across in winning the Buick Invitational by eight strokes two weeks ago.

"We are going to have a lot of fun there," says Mike Davis, the guy who sets up the courses for the USGA.  "We'll sneak tees up, move them around, make holes play differently day to day so the players have a variety of challenges. Like Pebble Beach in 2000, Torrey is a different course in June than it is in February. We will have no problem getting it firm."

Davis says the par-5 13th hole, for example, will play from three different tees and, with the prevailing wind at the back that time of the year, will still pose a risk/reward decision about going for the green in two even at 617 yards.

--Ron Sirak

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. -- Ever since the days when Jimmy Demaret could really sing and Bing Crosby could really play, celebrities and golf have gone together like Scotch and soda. There are a couple of reasons for this, not the least of which is that, in both walks of life, someone has to have big enough nerve to get up in front of a bunch of strangers and do something that has every possibility of making them look completely foolish. So it's too bad that, in the place where fame and fairways found their most perfect meeting, there is such a gnashing of teeth about B-list pros and the stars of B-list shows.

In this day and age, any tournament without He Who Is Without Peer struggles to seem even remotely relevant. It's the challenge of our time. But, if you think not having Tiger Woods in the field is a problem, try holding an AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am without Bill Murray. It leads to comments like this one, overheard in the media center: "What does Kenny G play, anyway?" Even so, the AT&T isn't exactly like the end of Doc Hollywood when Nancy Lee asks, "Is that a star?" and Hank replies, "Naw, that's Ted Danson." The same guy who couldn't summon soprano saxophone could have gone outside and seen Kevin Costner pushing his son, Cayden, around the putting green in a stroller.

And, on the competitive side of things, Jim Furyk, Vijay Singh, Padraig Harrington and Phil Mickelson make a pretty stout four-ball in any league.

It's still Pebble Beach. How bad can that be? Sure, the greens are bumpy. And, yes, the rounds take six hours, even though it might not be your partner/friend who is the root of all evil ... it's the other guy's partner/friend who insists on holing that putt for an eight.

The suggestion that comes up more often than any other (besides bribing Woods, of course) is returning Cypress Point GC to the rota and dispensing with Poppy Hills. That would be the Glamour Shot equivalent of replacing Roseanne Barr with Gisele Bunchen, though it should be pointed out the supermodel is 5-10. As stunning as Cypress Point is, it was replaced in 1990 in the wake of Shoal Creek and the controversy over minority memberships and it's still just 6,500 yards. Even assuming none of the access issues exist today, Cypress Point last hosted these guys in the antediluvian days when titanium was found only in space stations and the ProV1 was just a twinkle in an aeronautical engineer's eye. Think the members would be keen about building a bunch of new tees, if that was even possible?

Phil Mickelson played Cypress Point before the tournament started and thinks, because the ball doesn't fly very far on the Monterey Peninsula, it would still stand up. Dave Pelz walked with him and had the distinct impression Phil was hitting an awful lot of wedges into holes. Of course, the tour could always play it with hickories. Tiger might even enjoy that, though the bribery plan probably remains the best one.

This quirky old clambake unquestionably works best when the leading roles are played by people with one name: Bing, Arnie, Clint, Tiger. There's no substitute for star power in showbiz or golfbiz. Maybe, with all that's at stake inside the ropes these days, the era of celebrity golf is passé. One hopes not. The ability of golf to reach beyond itself, not to mention the quality of the scotch, would suffer. Stars and superstars come and go but Pebble Beach isn't going anywhere. In the end, you have to like its chances.

--Jim Moriarty

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif.--OK, so Bill Murray was missing and an elderly lady didn't get thrown into a bunker. Even the ice cream vendors were safe. Still, the annual 3M Celebrity Challenge on Wednesday at mostly sunny Pebble Beach Golf Links was its usual entertaining self. Six two-man teams contested for $29,000 in charity money, and the best golfer of the bunch and his partner--musician Kenny G and ESPN announcer Chris Berman, wearing a Maui Tacos hat--earned $26,000 for getting the ball up and down from behind the 18th green in the five-hole shootout.

Kenny G is a scratch player and takes his golf seriously. At least he tried to on the first tee until George Lopez cracked to the large gallery, "Any women with size-18 waist pants, please bring them up here for Kenny."

He is slender as a saxophone, but drilled his drive down the center of the fairway, drawing applause from the fans. Huey Lewis, Don Cheadle and Carson Daly also acquitted themselves well, while burly Kevin James, who is partnering in the tournament proper with even burlier John Daly, belted one long and left.

Poor Andy Garcia. A fine actor and tough 10-handicapper, he addressed his ball only to hear a voice (Lopez) shout from behind, "I love you Andy!"

Garcia backed off, identified the culprit and yelled back, "That's what you said last night."

Kevin Costner counseled first-time participant Eric Close.

"Just try to relax," he said. "Your adrenaline really gets pumping."

Then Costner sliced his tee shot into the trees.

Lewis, whose band "Huey Lewis & the News" still tours to appreciative crowds, simply loves golf. Asked to assess the state of his game, Lewis said, "You know, golf is the one thing in my life I keep getting better at." Lucky guy. He's an 11-handicapper and will team with buddy and fellow music buff Peter Jacobsen in the pro-am.

About the pro-am: For those of you sitting in the cold, looking forward to watching Saturday's featured foursomes on CBS, here's a preview of what most are predicting will be a sun-splashed day at Pebble Beach: Jason Gore-Carson Daly and Pat Perez and surfer Kelly Slater; Jacbosen-Lewis and Craig Stadler-Glenn Frey; Paul Stankowski-Garcia and Daniel Chopra-Lopez; Brandt Snedeker-Peter Ueberroth and Phil Mickeslson-Alan Mulally; D.J. Trajan-Costner and Jonathan Kaye-Thomas Gibson; Mathias Gronberg-Danny Gans and Brent Geiberger-Close; Bob Burns-Ray Romano and Daly-James; and Charley Hoffman-Kenny G and Dean Wilson-Cheadle. Don't expect to see much serious golf.

--Mark Soltau

Beginning with his first PGA Tour victory at the 1991 Northern Telecom Tucson Open as an amateur, Phil Mickelson has won 12 times at tournaments that use multiple courses. His last such victory came at last year's AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, a five-shot victory over Kevin Sutherland that proved rumors of his demise were greatly exaggerated. At the time, Mickelson hadn't won since the 2006 Masters, and presumably was still feeling the effects of his historic collapse at the U.S. Open in June 2006.

Mickelson won last year's Pebble event with uncanny accuracy. He was one of five winners in 2007 to hit more than 80 percent of his fai