..is surely easier than keeping up with Darren Clarke, as this story in the Independent demonstrates.

Clark says, "'I'm working like a trouper. I'm far from done yet."

The end of the story notes Clarke's desire to captain the European Ryder Cup team one day, preferably in the U.S., where, "The American crowds have always taken to me, maybe because I smoke a cigar, have a pint..."

Or, as the writer Brian Viner notes, "A pint, in fact, for every year of his life during the two-day celebration of his 40th birthday last August."

For the mathematically challenged, that's 20 pints each day.

-- John Strege

Tiger Woods is included in Time magazine's "Time 100: The World's Most Influential People," in the category of "Heroes and Icons," in its May 4 edition. Tennis star Roger Federer, among Woods' friends, wrote about Woods:

"We are fortunate to live in the Tiger Woods era. Tiger, 33, is a model for how athletes should conduct themselves. He respects the legends who came before him, like Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. He knows the history of his sport. He handles himself with class, and he's articulate. There's no silly talk in public from Tiger. When he speaks, people listen."

-- John Strege

Tiger Woods already has more gold and silver than he'll ever need and they'll cast him in bronze when he's done playing. So why would he be interested in seeing golf join the five-ring circus known as the Olympics?

To what benefit for golf? Exposure? The game already has the most recognizable athlete in the world. If you want to grow the game, address cost and time issues.

"Should golf be in the Olympics?" avid golfer and renowned Olympian Bruce Jenner said the other day. "Of course it should be in the Olympics. It's a great sport. On the other hand, does golf need it? No. It's already got so many great events. How would they fit it in?"

Between the British Open and the PGA Championship?

Chicago is pining to host the 2016 Games, the year that golf governing bodies hope to join the Olympic movement. The last three Olympics played in North America (in Montreal in '79, Los Angeles in '84 and Atlanta in '96) began on July 17, July 28 and July 19, respectively. That would make for some tight scheduling in an already crowded summer.

"I just don't think it's important," Jenner said. "Golf does very well with its majors. I just don't see why they need it."

Woods was among 18 leading golfers from around the world to lend their support recently to bringing golf to the Olympics. Color me cynical, but taking an athlete's word at face value is not always a good idea. What else were they going to say when asked by their governing bodies to support their game's bid to join the Olympics?

Even Tiger's support seems tepid at best. At his news conference last week to promote the AT&T National there was this exchange:

Q. You're part of a group of international golfers trying go get golf accepted into the 2016 Olympics. How is that important to you, and why?

A. Well, I think that golf has become more global and has expanded. I think golf, with its rich history, it certainly would be a wonderful fit for the Olympics.

There was no elaboration.

Here's a question to ask: Would Tiger or any other golfer rather win the Masters or an Olympic gold medal in 2016?

"The Masters, by far," Jenner said, noting that athletes in most other sports would prefer Olympic gold to, say, winning their own world championship.

Each of golf's four major championships would trump Olympic golf. So would the AT&T National.

"If it's in there, great," Jenner said. "But it's not like it's going to help golf."

-- John Strege

All of this was addressed in this column by Lawrence Donegan of the Guardian on the eve of John Daly's return to competitive golf in the Spanish Open.

Donegan notes that Daly was suspended from the PGA Tour apparently for transgressions that involved alcohol, while the tour now ponders whether to accept sponsorships form companies that produce alcoholic beverages. The column's subhead: "The PGA Tour's desire to uphold itself as a bastion of decorum leaves the sport in an awkward position as it considers accepting alcohol sponsorship."

This brings to mind the time that PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem announced that Michelob and Mercedes-Benz had become presenting sponsors of the Tour Championship. When he opened his news conference to questions, Robinson Holloway, representing Reuters at the time, asked, "Was there any concern when you were making this deal that your two sponsors represent drinking and driving?"

-- John Strege

Jerry Kelly's decision to forgo the British Open in favor of playing the US Bank Championship in his hometown of Milwaukee, has produced the predictable reaction in some quarters, notably those foreign.

Scotland's Alastair Forsyth, a European PGA Tour member, wrote in Scotland's Daily Record:

"I am completely dumbfounded by Jerry Kelly's decision to snub The Open Championship place he won in New Orleans on Sunday because he would rather play an event in Milwaukee.

"I accept that any individual has the right to make his own decisions but come on! This is the greatest championship in the world we're talking about and Kelly, by virtue of his weekend victory has been given a place in it.

"I know dozens of guys - and I'm one of them - who would be doing cartwheels at the prospect of not having to qualify for Turnberry but it seems some Americans just don't want to leave the comfort zone of their own Tour."

Then there was this from Derek Lawrenson in the Daily Mail:

"American Jerry Kelly never spared the R&A after taking hundreds in the first round of last year's Open, declaring the set-up of Birkdale in the driving wind and rain as 'the worst I have ever seen.'

"On Sunday, Kelly earned himself a return trip to the Open after his first win in seven years in the New Orleans Classic. Did he mark the occasion by declaring his determination to make amends for last year's failure in the world's greatest tournament?

"Not quite. He said he wouldn't be taking up his Open spot at Turnberry this year because he'll be playing in Milwaukee instead. On hearing the news, the correspondent to the US Tour's website declared: 'Now that's a champion.'

"Funnily enough, 'champion' wasn't quite the word that immediately came to my mind."

A year ago, Kenny Perry similarly snubbed the British Open in favor of the US Bank Championship.

To each their own, of course, but isn't forgoing the British Open in favor of the US Bank Championship a bit like preferring a regular-season start at Miller Park to a World Series start at Yankee Stadium?

-- John Strege

It might be bad form, but it is not illegal to fail to yell "fore" when an errant shot endangers a fellow golfer, an appellate court in New York has ruled. The court said that getting hit by a golf ball is "an inherent risk in the game of golf."

The court's ruling was in response to an incident that occurred at Dix Hills Golf Course in Nassau County in 2002. Dr. Azad Anand was struck in the eye by a wild shot hit by his friend, Dr. Dr. Anoop Kapoor, who failed to yell, "Fore!" Anand lost his sight in the eye. Anand had filed a personal injury suit.

"While we are sympathetic to the fact that plaintiff was seriously injured as a result of this accident," the appellate court panel wrote, "to conclude that the defendant can be held 'liable' in tort for a poorly-executed golf shot because he may have negligently failed to shout 'fore' is inimical to the rationale underlying the doctrine of primary assumption of the risk, and at odds with the public policy goal for its adoption -- to encourage 'free and vigorous participation' in sports and recreational activities."

Here is Newsday's report on the ruling.

-- John Strege

Associated Press golf writer Doug Ferguson raises an interesting question regarding the HSBC Champions in Shanghai, China, having been elevated to a World Golf Championship event: If you take a World Golf Championship out of America, will the Americans go?

"Even when these WGCs were part of the PGA Tour schedule and counted as an official victory with official money, there was no guarantee the Americans would leave home," Ferguson writes. "A dozen of them, including five of the top 10 in the world ranking, skipped out on the American Express Championship at Valderrama in 2000.

"That prompted this famous line from Stuart Appleby: 'They're like a bag of prawns on a hot Sunday. They don't travel well.'"

This time it could be different. Tiger Woods already is committed and presumably Phil Mickelson will commit, too, given that the Barclays Singapore Open will be played the week before and Mickelson typically plays there (for an appearance fee). The HSBC Champions, moreover, is an IMG event, and IMG surely would have some influence over the players it represents who qualify. Anthony Kim and Steve Stricker are IMG clients, so if they've qualified presumably they would play.

The tournament also is sandwiched by a pair of Asian tournaments that offer appearance fees, the Singapore Open and the Hong Kong Open, as Ferguson notes, which might entice others to make the November journey.

There is another reason, too, represented here by Sean O'Hair, though not everyone is likely to buy into it. "It's a chance to compete against the best players in the world," O'Hair tells Ferguson. "I'll go."

-- John Strege

Mark Reason of the Telegraph sat down with Ernie Els, Fred Couples, Henrik Stenson, Paul McGinley and Graeme McDowell at the Ballantine's Championship last week and discussed a host of serious subjects and one not so serious. The following falls into the latter category.

Reason: If you were Tour Commissioner for a day, what would you change?

Couples: Shorts. I'd like to be allowed to wear shorts.

McGinley: I'd like that.

Stenson: Would that include boxers?

McDowell: His game has been red-hot ever since [Stenson stripped down to his underwear to play a shot from the water's edge in the CA Championship in March].

Stenson: I have been threatened by people that they are going to support me at tournaments by wearing a pair of jocks outside their trousers. I have had these phone calls.

Couples: I think golfers would play better in shorts when it's 100 degrees and we're sweating and you look like Hell.

Stenson: Fred, if you want to wear shorts I'd have no problem with that. It's not as if I'd three-putt just because I saw your white legs.

Couples: You'd actually get pretty excited and I think you'd putt a lot better.

-- John Strege

ARDMORE, Pa. -- When the Walker Cup, the biennial amateur match featuring the United States against Great Britain and Ireland, comes to venerable Merion Golf Club this fall, the 24 participants will traverse a quaint layout that has been "stretched" to somewhere close to 6,500 yards. That's not a typo; the current yardage from the back teeing grounds is 6,482.

But bigger plans await Merion's East Course, which has hosted 17 U.S. Golf Association events and where so much history has been made. Merion is the place where Bobby Jones completed the 1930 Grand Slam with his U.S. Amateur triumph, where Ben Hogan, a year after his near-fatal automobile accident, struck his historic 1-iron that fueled his eventual playoff victory in the 1950 U.S. Open, and where Lee Trevino pulled out a rubber snake to unnerve Jack Nicklaus before beating the Golden Bear in a playoff at the 1971 Open.

After the Walker Cup, the club will prepare for the return of the U.S. Open in 2013 -- 32 years after it last hosted the national championship. And while the land-locked layout will never approach the 7,000-yard-plus spectacles of modern designs, Merion is finding room to grow its East Course, and it could present Open contestants some killer holes.

For instance, a new sixth tee has just been installed that takes the 420-yard par-4 to more than 470 yards, and it might be used during the Walker Cup Sept. 12-13. Behind the 12th tee, which is currently 371 yards, the club recently purchased a home that it has coveted for more than a decade. That will allow them to stretch the dogleg right par-4 to more than 450 yards.

Then there is the famous 18th, where a plaque commemorating Hogan's famous 1-iron at the end of regulation, sits in the left half of the fairway. Even with a new tee in place, most of today's players easily could fly drives past the Hogan marker and down the hill, leaving a short iron into the elevated green. That's why the club is considering cutting a new tee into a hill some 30-40 yards farther back, which would make the par-4 more than 500 yards.

Walker Cup captain Buddy Marucci, the reigning U.S. Senior Amateur champion and a member at Merion, is eager to see how the old gem can hold up against top amateurs. "It will be interesting to watch them play the course with a modern game," he said.

The exercise should give club officials an idea how much their changes will affect play -- and how much more they might consider doing.

-- Dave Shedloski

The Canadian PGA Tour event this week, the San Luis Potosi Open, is scheduled to be played in San Luis Potosi, about 220 miles from Mexico City, where the Swine Flu outbreak began. It has presented a dilemma for many of those who have entered.

Here is Robert Tychkowski's lead in the Edmonton Sun: "One of golf's fundamental equations has always been risk versus reward, but the choice has never been more sobering than the one facing Canadian Tour players this week."

Tychokowski reports that at least 15 players have canceled plans to play.

As a precautionary measure, no spectators or caddies will be allowed on the course, just players and officials. They'll have doctors on site and hand sanitizer on every hole.

One players who has elected to play: Canada's Stuart Anderson. "Whoever wants to go, go," he told the Sun. "The field is going to be weakened, so if you can put an extra few bucks in your pocket."

-- John Strege