LA JOLLA, Calif. -- Eddie Merrins called it David and Goliath, which is a match with which he is familiar, even beyond his 5-feet-7 frame. The Little Pro, as Merrins is called, once again was backing David, a dubious proposition when Tiger Woods represents Goliath.

Merrins, the pro emeritus at Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles, mentored Bob May, who took Woods to overtime in the 2000 PGA Championship, and now he was tutoring another underdog, Rocco Mediate, who was attempting to topple Woods.

"He is a superb driver of the ball, which you have to be in a U.S. Open," Merrins said of Mediate, before adding an important caveat. "Unless you're Tiger Woods, who always finds a way."

Woods twice found a way to deflect defeat, which eventually discovered a moderately less defiant target. Down one with one to play on Sunday, Woods birdied 18 to force a playoff. Down one with one to play on Monday, he birdied 18 to force a sudden-death playoff. He finally won the U.S. Open when Mediate bogeyed the 19th overtime hole, No. 7, at Torrey Pines South Course.

It was Woods' 14th major championship and deprived Mediate of his first, but not before golf at large got better acquainted with him. It liked what it saw.

"He's good for the game," Merrins said, "and I think that's why he caught the imagination of the media and fans. He even got more applause on the first tee than Tiger."

Mediate, 45, made Woods earn his victory, which seems the best for which anyone can hope these days. Three consecutive birdies on the back nine (Nos. 13-15) gave him a one-stroke lead that is never enough against Woods.

"He's so hard to beat," Mediate said. "He's unreal. You can't get him. He is who he is."

So is Mediate, to whom this edition of the U.S. Open owes a debt. He gave it a dose of personality that together with his own grit gave it its own place in Open history.

"If they wanted a show," Mediate said, "they got one."

--John Strege

LA JOLLA, Calif. -- The gravity of the U.S. Open is not lost on Rocco Mediate, it just sometimes takes its leave, as he demonstrated late Sunday afternoon, when he playfully needled his playoff opponent.

"You'd better watch yourself tomorrow, Tiger," he said. "See, he's a little nervous right now."

Woods could only chuckle.

"He's one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet," Woods said. "He's been a friend of mine ever since I've been out here on tour. We'll talk (tomorrow), but we'll also understand we're trying to win a U.S. Open. And we'll have our moments where we'll go our separate ways and be focused for each and every shot."

Mediate, at 45 bidding to become the oldest ever to win the U.S. Open, was ecstatic at his play on Sunday (when he shot even-par 71) and the opportunity ahead of him.

"It was the most amazing day of golf I've ever experienced," he said. "Tomorrow is going to be pretty amazing, too. The thing that's most amazing is the man I'm going to play tomorrow has won 13 of these (major championships)."

--John Strege

LA JOLLA, Calif. -- Even on a hometown course with which he is so familiar, Phil Mickelson fumbled with the combination in his bid to unlock the mystery of winning the U.S. Open.

Mickelson's score of 76 on the South Course at Torrey Pines Saturday was the highest he had ever shot in the third round in an Open. His score Sunday of 68, three under par, was the lowest he ever shot in the final round of an Open. After the 76, the 68 didn't matter. In this, his 18th Open and 16th as a professional, it added up to six-over par 290.

"Obviously I would liked to have played better," he said, "but the way the course was set up, it was the fairest, best test of golf. I'm so proud to be from San Diego and to have this Open championship here at Torrey Pines."

It was a bittersweet consolation prize. Now it's three weeks off, before heading overseas for the Scottish Open and the British Open.

"I just tried to play a good round," said Mickelson, "and use it as a stepping stone into the British."

--John Strege

LA JOLLA, Calif. -- The final round of the U.S. Open can meander in a variety of directions, none of them predictable, which makes prognostication  (other than opting for the safest bet, that Tiger Woods will win) dicey. That said, the winner is . . .

Geoff Ogilvy.

Given that he'll start the final round four shots behind Woods, that renders him a long shot, but Ogilvy makes a strong case on his own behalf, starting with precedent, his Open victory at Winged Foot in 2006.

"You don't know what's going to happen in the last round at a U.S. Open," he said, after shooting a one-over-par 72 that has him tied for fourth with D.J. Trahan. "My story proves that more than anyone's. Obviously, I'd love to be in the lead, but four shots could disappear in three holes out here. The amount of shots isn't as important as the amount of people, and there's probably one, two or three people between me and the lead, and that's similar to Winged Foot. It's nice. I'll be in the second-to-last group or third-to-last group and have every chance."

Ogilvy scrambled effectively on Saturday, which is imperative in a U.S. Open. Narrow fairways and thick rough tend to wreak havoc on greens in regulation, but he improved his chances by missing greens in the right places.

"It's always the hardest part of a U.S. Open, getting up and down when you miss the greens," he said. "You elevate your chances if you're missing it in the right spots, which I seemed to do today."

Ogilvy, too, is satisfied with the state of his game, including the fact that his best round this week might still be ahead of him.

"It's very rare you actually walk off a U.S. Open round and feel you're playing that great," he said. "But I'm definitely playing well enough. You don't play well every day in a four-round tournament, so I'm due to have a good one."

He also said his swing is close enough to where he needs it to deliver a final-round surge. "It seems to sharpen my focus, when it's almost perfect, but not quite," he said. "So if you stand on the first tee and you're 100 percent happy with your golf swing, you have something to worry about, because that's very abnormal."

--John Strege

LA JOLLA, Calif. ?- The pairing of Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson (with Adam Scott thrown in to further clog Torrey Pines' pedestrian arteries) might have seemed like a good idea in theory--the two best players in the world, bound by their talent and mutual animus, going head to head in the first two rounds of the U.S. Open, in Mickelson's hometown.

In reality, unless their cabretta leather gloves came off and a free-for-all ensued, what was the point?

There seem to be no defensible ones, while arguments in favor of retiring this experiment are as abundant as bogeys, starting with the fact that they aren't playing against one another, at least until late in the fourth round and at that only if both are in contention.

There was no discernible boon to television, so long as they weren't allowed to play defense while the other was hitting. Every shot either of them hit was going to be aired anyway, whether they were a few feet or several hours apart.

It provided no boost at the gate, inasmuch as the U.S. Open already is a sellout. Instead, it was a catalyst for gallery gridlock that impaired everyone's ability to view unimpeded more than a few shots before the show moved on.

When the Woods-Mickelson group concluded play shortly after noon on Thursday, the first round deflated. Until they teed off in the second round Friday afternoon, the other golf was just filler, or so it seemed.

Geoff Shackelford posted on his golf blog a letter from former USGA executive director Frank Hannigan, who wrote how during his reign the USGA separated the two best players, one going off in the morning, the other in the afternoon, as a means of maintaining interest throughout the day.

Hannigan further wrote that the pairing of Woods and Mickelson was akin to "putting Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand on stage together, each doing their own thing at the same time. The result would be discordant, but the advance hype would be spectacular."

It was just that, a great show that attracted an extraordinary crowd that often had no idea what was happening.

--John Strege

LA JOLLA, Calif. -- Life is good for Kevin Streelman, who was married less than three weeks ago and has extended his honeymoon to encompass a place that from his vantage point is just on this side of paradise. "I do enjoy this golf course," Streelman said of the South Course at Torrey Pines, where he opened with a three-under-par 68 Thursday afternoon that gave him a share of the first-round lead in the U.S. Open.

It was here in January that Streelman, a Duke graduate and PGA Tour rookie, was the last alternate admitted to the field at the Buick Invitational, then played his way into contention and a Saturday pairing with Tiger Woods. He eventually tied for 29th, which paid him $33,000 and dividends that he hopes to collect here.

"I was the last alternate. I got in Thursday morning and all of a sudden I was paired with Tiger Woods," he said of the Buick. "To this day it was one of the coolest days of my life. The main thing I took out of it was the necessity of rest. It's wearing on you, playing with Tiger, under scrutiny. It drains you."

Though the South Course is playing substantially different than it did in January, Streelman is comfortable with it, despite the thick kikuyu rough and fast greens that cost him a stroke on his 17th hole and kept him from leading outright.

"It's the lines off the tee," he said. "They suit my eyes well. And I drove it well today and my iron play was pretty solid."

--John Strege

LA JOLLA, Calif. -- His might not be a familiar name, but neither is it an uncommon one, apparently. Imagine, for instance, Justin Hicks' surprise Thursday when he glanced outside the ropes and saw Justin Hicks with his wife.

There are two Justin Hicks in San Diego this week and each of them is a professional golfer. One of them found himself atop the U.S. Open leader board Thursday, by virtue of a first-round score of three-under-par 68 on the South Course at Torrey Pines. The other Justin Hicks is a teaching pro at the Stadium Golf Center in San Diego. A good player in his own right, that Justin Hicks actually played in the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines in January (and missed the cut).

"That caused a lot of interesting things for both of us this year," said Hicks, the co-leader along with Kevin Streelman after the first round of the U.S. Open. "The tour got us mixed up. Companies got us mixed up. Checks were going to my place, checks were going to his place. (The tour) actually withdrew me out of a Nationwide Tour event. I called them up, and they said, 'you committed to the Buick and we figured you wouldn't want to go to Panama (Movistar Championship).' "

Hicks, the Open co-leader, invited the other Hicks out this week to pick his brain on playing Torrey Pines. He was there Thursday to watch a few holes. "I told my caddie, 'wow, that's kind of weird. The other Justin Hicks is here with my wife.' "

The Hicks leading the Open is not particularly well known beyond his namesake. He's 33, a University of Michigan graduate who lives in Palm Beach, Fla., and is a mini-tour player perpetually attempting to graduate to the next level. He has played the South Florida Golf Tour ("which collapsed," he said), the Golden Bear Tour, the Gateway Tour, the Maverick Tour ("the owner ran away with some money and never was heard from again," he said), the Montgomery Sports Tour and most recently the Nationwide Tour, on a limited basis.

Hicks has made three cuts in six Nationwide starts, earning $8,464. So how is it that a player struggling to pay his bills in the hinterlands of professional golf finds himself leading one of the game's preeminent tournaments? Seven birdies on Thursday is one explanation.

"Certainly I'm not shocked," he said. "I've always kind of felt like Opens set up best for me when it comes to major championships. I drive the ball pretty straight, typically."

--John Strege

LA JOLLA, Calif. -- The winner of the U.S. Open often limps to the finish line, which does not suggest that Tiger Woods has an advantage this week, given the experience he has gained at limping in the last few months. To the contrary, it would seem to have put him at a disadvantage.

Woods said Tuesday that he has not walked 18 holes since the final round of the Masters in April, that it was only less than two weeks ago that he determined that his surgically-repaired left knee had improved enough to allow him to play in the Open that begins here Thursday on the South Course at Torrey Pines.

So there's no chance that he could win here, in this the first tournament he has played in two months. Or so conventional wisdom says.

"I've heard that before," he said, smiling.

Smart money would resist the temptation to pile up against Woods, of course, even as he revealed bit by bit that his knee is not 100 percent and that it altered his preparation for golf's most demanding test.

"Is it fully recovered?" he said. "Probably not. It's a little sore, but not anything that I haven't dealt with before."

Woods, who underwent surgery on his left knee two days after the Masters concluded, played nine holes Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. He was asked whether that was according to plan or the result of his knee.

"Both," he said. "It's because that's the way I was feeling, that's the way I was planning."

Woods over the years often spoke about a need to get tournament tough, which he acknowledges will be his foremost obstacle in attempting to win at Torrey Pines for the second time this year and the seventh time in nine years (he has won the Buick Invitational here six times).

"I wanted to play at Memorial, just for that reason," he said, "to get back and get used to the rhythm and the flow of competitive play, how I'm feeling, the shots, how I'm hitting, the tendencies, all the things leading up to the Open. That just wasn't the case. So that reality is out. So I just had to change my training a little bit and make sure I was ready for this one."

So, is he ready?

"I'm good to go. I plan on playing competitive. Come game time on Thursday, I'll be ready."

--John Strege

LA JOLLA, Calif. -- The longest course in the history of the U.S. Open is not so long that its longest hole is necessarily a three-shotter. Dustin Johnson reached the 614-yard 13th on the South Course at Torrey Pines with a driver and 3-wood in practice Monday.

Tiger Woods presumably could have reached it, but he didn't take the opportunity Monday because he played only the front nine. He reportedly played nine holes Sunday and intends to play nine more Tuesday.

There won't be many players in the U.S. Open field that can even have a go at the 13th in two shots. Not more than a few, according to San Diego native Pat Perez, who as a former employee of the course knows it better than anyone in the field.

Johnson ranks third in driving distance on the PGA Tour (307.1 yards), but even he has to lean on two shots to get to the 13th green.

"I got it there today, but obviously you have to hit two really good shots," he said. "It played downwind today. If its downwind you've got a chance."

The course measures 7,643 yards, the longest in the history of the championship by 379 yards.

"You have to hit driver and you have to hit it straight," Johnson said.

-- John Strege

Apparently, there will be no comic relief during the U.S. Open in San Diego. A dinner show starring comedian Jay Leno, scheduled for the eve of the final round, on the dock adjacent to the retired aircraft carrier USS Midway in San Diego Harbor, was canceled.

Proceeds from the show were to have gone to the San Diego Junior Golf Association from which Phil Mickelson and Craig Stadler came. The show was canceled essentially from lack of sufficient interest to cover the cost of staging it.

Two months ago, San Diego natives Billy Casper and Gene Littler hit biodegradable golf balls off the deck of the USS Midway to promote the event.

-- John Strege

ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- The number of players who passed on the opportunity to play the Senior PGA Championship at Oak Hill CC begs the question: Why?

"Guys have to walk for four days?" Scott Simpson said, positing the most interesting theory.

Thirty-seven players from the alternate list eventually made the field at Oak Hill. The Champions Tour allows players the use of carts, but the Senior PGA Championship is conducted by the PGA of America, which does not permit carts.

"I'd love to see us get rid of carts," said Simpson, for whom the walk Saturday was rather pleasant. Simpson birdied five holes on the back nine en route to a one-under-par 69 that was one of the few sub-par rounds shot over three days. "We're trying to do it. I don't know if that had something to do with it, with the weather forecast and slogging around in it."

The scouting report on Oak Hill might have been a deterrent, too. "It's pretty much the same setup we had for the '89 U.S. Open," Simpson said. "It's tougher than we're used to. You just can't hit greens out of the rough. If it was me I'd cut the rough down a little bit.

"But I can't imagine not wanting to be here. It's a great course and this is [the Champions Tour's] original major."

-- John Strege

ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- The number of players who took a pass on the Senior PGA Championship is staggering, though the missing may have saved themselves a heap of aggravation. Those who chose to play were largely staggering, too. Score this one a knockout for Oak Hill CC.

Thirty-seven alternates made the field for a variety of reasons, not all of which were medical. Fulton Allem, for instance, decided he would rather play in the PGA Tour's Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial (he's a past champion there). On the basis of how difficult Oak Hill was playing through the first two rounds, he may have made the safer choice.

"Probably the toughest course I've played ever in my PGA Tour career," said Tim Simpson. And he's among those in contention, finishing 36 holes in four-over-par 144.

Cold and windy weather has compounded the difficulty quotient of a course that is challenging without help. Throw in rough that was 3 1/2 inches deep to begin the week and no further explanation is necessary as to why only one player bettered par in the first round and the entire field was over par by Friday afternoon after first-round leader Jay Haas made double-bogey on his sixth hole.

"Our group, 108 holes between the three of us for two days, we had six birdies," Joey Sindelar said. "That's pretty bizarre. It tells you that it's a pretty tough job out there."

Or as Simpson, one of his playing partners, said the day before, "I had two skins today. Sam Torrance got one there at the end on No. 8. And Joey Sindelar was shut out. Birdies are few and far between."

-- John Strege

ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- Handicapping golf tournaments that don't include Tiger Woods or Lorena Ochoa tend to be a fruitless endeavor given the vagaries of the game, but there is an evident favorite at the Senior PGA Championship this week. A favorite son, to be precise.

Jeff Sluman is a native of Rochester, N.Y., and is a member at Oak Hill CC there, site of the Senior PGA. Though he lives in Chicago, he still has family in Rochester, including brother Brad, who runs a restaurant, the Pittsford Pub, a short ride from Oak Hill. Sluman also has a long-time relationship with Craig Harmon, Oak Hill's head pro for 37 years.

"I've probably got about 500 rounds under my belt here," Sluman said, "but [except for] the '89 U.S. Open and the 2003 PGA and now this, you don't see the golf course in this type of condition with the speed of the greens and rough and that. But essentially I know where to go and what to stay away from. I certainly feel like I can play the golf course well."

So it was that Sluman finished round one of the Senior PGA near the top of the leader board, shooting an even-par 70 on a difficult course made harder by the cold, windy conditions.

"I think anybody teeing off at 8 o'clock like we did would have taken 70 and got a cup of coffee and stayed in the clubhouse," he said. "But that's the best I could do."

He's happy as well that he did not play himself out of contention, as he has done here in the past. You see, there is a downside to a home game, too.

"Golf's a very challenging game at best," he said, "but when you really want something and try too hard ... well, judging by my past experiences in Rochester, I haven't played very well. I finally relaxed out there and started to play some good golf.

"I'm going to go out and try and compete the next three days and if I have a chance to win on Sunday, regardless of what happens, I'll take it as a great week," said Sluman. "Just playing well in front of my family and friends means a lot to me."

-- John Strege

LA JOLLA, Calif. -- The longest Open won't be as long as advertised, the United States Golf Association revealed on Monday. For next month's national championship, the South Course at Torrey Pines will measure 7,643 yards, according to the Open scorecard, which would make it the longest in Open history by 379 yards.

But Mike Davis, the senior director of rules and competition for the USGA, said that number is deceiving. "I feel very confident saying we will not play that length one day of the championship," he said.

Davis said the USGA will utilize the variety of tee boxes available to them, resulting in a course that will play "somewhere in the neighborhood of 74 [7,400 yards] and change up to 75 [7,500 yards] and change." That's a big neighborhood, notwithstanding the USGA's benevolence in backing it down somewhat.

"We really feel mixing up teeing grounds adds another challenge to the test," Davis said. "It allows us on certain holes to propose different things that the architect was trying to do when he designed the golf course."

Under consideration is shortening a par 4 to a length that would give players the option of attempting to drive the green. Davis declined to reveal which holes are under consideration, but the par-4 second is a strong possibility. A new tee box there has extended the hole to 389 yards, but there is a forward tee that would place the distance at 319 to 329 yards.

The South Course is nearly Open ready, incidentally. The kikuyu fairways are perfect, while the rough, a mixture of kikuyu, rye and poa annua, is deep and thick and expected to get thicker as the kikuyu continues to grow as the weather warms.

"It's a warm-weather grass," Davis said. "It's definitely going to be growing in June. I think that, in and of itself, will change the golf course rather significantly, because it's such a thick, coarse-bladed grass that it's very hard to get a club through it."

-- John Strege

HUMBLE, Tex. -- Nine-hole scores of 29 tend to brighten one's outlook, and though Fred Couples isn't necessarily envisioning a second green jacket, he has expectations beyond extending his cut streak at the Masters to 24.

"If I can go putt well I can compete," Couples said Saturday, after shooting a 67 that included a seven-under-par 29 on his second nine (the front nine) at Redstone G.C. The surge moved him into the top 10 at the Shell Houston Open.

"I feel like I'm playing pretty well. I feel like I can go out and shoot under par again."

Couples, 48, spent five days last week working with Butch Harmon at his golf school in Las Vegas, and is attempting to rein in his miscreant backswing. "I get long and drop underneath and hit them high and to the right," he said.

The sessions with Harmon were designed to prepare Couples for the Masters, but the fact that he's already seen a payoff has him looking forward to a good week at Augusta National.

"My goal is to go play and do well," he said. "And if I happen to make the cut one more time, that's a nice thing." But, he cautioned, if he went there simply with a goal of making the cut, he might put himself in jeopardy of missing it.

"My goal is to go play in the tournament and do well," he said.

--John Strege

HUMBLE, Tex. -- Six Australians have won the Shell Houston Open, including the last two (Stuart Appleby in 2006 and Adam Scott last year), a run of success for which there is no plausible explanation, not even that offered up by Matt Goggin on Friday.

"It's wide open," he says of Redstone G.C., site of the tournament since 2003. "Maybe we're just better on courses you don't have to think around, the just smash-it-and-go-find-it type thing. You dumb it down for us and we do all right."

Goggin, 33, is attempting to join the Aussie litany; his second-round score of eight-under 64 at Redstone lifted him into contention, three strokes behind leader Johnson Wagner.

"Scotty and Stuey, they belt it a million miles and take advantage of the par 5s," says Goggin. "That's how they play. This a perfect golf course for them. No rough. Geoff (Ogilvy) is no slouch in that area, either. It's probably more my strength."

Goggin, who is seeking his first PGA Tour victory in this his seventh season, had a pair of eagles on his front nine on Friday, including a holed 8-iron shot from 162 yards on the fifth hole. He also holed a bunker shot on the par-5 eighth for eagle. "All of a sudden, I didn't hit a bad shot for the rest of the day," he said. "That sort of really got things going."

--John Strege

HUMBLE, Tex. -- Johnson Wagner's father, Tommy, used to teach computer sciences at the Military Academy at West Point, so when things go wrong with Johnson's computer he has someone to whom he turns to repair it. So it would seem that for those occasions when his golf game goes awry, he'd want someone on whom he could rely to fix it. So it would seem.

Instead, Wagner, a second-year PGA Tour member from Charlotte, N.C., decided during the winter that he did not need a teacher, that he would fend for himself. Four straight missed cuts early this year convinced him otherwise. "I was wrong," he said.

So Wagner went back to his former teacher, Bobby Heins, the head pro at Old Oaks C.C. in Purchase, N.Y. They began working together after the PODS Championship a month ago, and the first significant dividend was paid Thursday at Redstone C.C. in Humble, Tex.

Wagner shot a nine-under-par 63 that included an eagle-birdie finish to share the first-round lead with Adam Scott at the Shell Houston Open. To boot, Wagner regained a share of the course record that he surrendered to Scott earlier in the day. Last year, Wagner shot a 64 in the third round of the tournament to set the standard.

"I looked online this morning and saw he (Scott) was five- or six-under through eight and said, 'oh, boy, there it (the course record) goes.' Walking down our first hole I looked over at my caddie (Steve Hale), we saw the board and he was nine under with one to go. I said, 'there it goes, it's gone.' "

"Well, the day is not over yet," Hale replied presciently.

Wagner attributes the round to the work he has done with the coach he thought he no longer needed.

--John Strege

Everyone would likely agree that it is altogether a good thing that the United States Golf Association has added municipal courses to the U.S. Open mix. That said, Torrey Pines Golf Course near San Diego won't remotely resemble a municipal course when the Open is played there in June.

"I've been playing there since 1981," former Torrey Pines men's club president Art Stromberg said, "and I've never seen the condition that good. The fairways are beautiful. They're all kikuyu now. The ball sits up like it's on a tee. They even have sand in the traps."

They even have sand in the traps. That says it all, of course. Its condition is pristine, which is not how the public usually finds it.

The way they're finding it these days is long and hard. Joe DeBock, the head professional, said that rounds are taking upwards of six hours now, mostly the result of players searching for lost balls in the rough.

The Torrey Pines Municipal Golf Club, in fact, has enacted, temporarily, a local rule in the interest of speeding play in its tournaments: After a five-minute search for a lost ball, the player can drop another and take a one-stroke penalty, rather than stroke and distance.

--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. -- 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 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

LA JOLLA, Calif. -- Kevin Streelman won't win the Buick Invitational on Sunday, but he warrants your rooting interest in a high finish given his overnight climb from obscurity into a pairing with Tiger Woods on Saturday and the obvious joy with which he embraced it.

Streelman, 29, is a career mini-tour player (he played the Hooters Tour in 2007), who took the most arduous route to the PGA Tour, by surviving all three stage of tour qualifying last fall (and tieing for 14th in the final stage). He needed to birdie four of the last five holes just to make it to the second stage.

His Q-school status wasn't sufficient to ensure him a berth in the Buick; he was the third alternate. He went to Torrey Pines anyway on the chance that enough players would withdraw prior to the start of play that he would get in. On Thursday, he was sitting on the putting green, contemplating his imminent trip home to Phoenix when he learned that Matt Goggin had withdrawn, and if he could get to the tee in four minutes he was in.

"I ran to the first tee and [hit] the fairway and my putter got hot," he said. Streelman opened with a 67 on the North Course at Torrey  and followed it with a 69 on the South Course  Friday, good enough for solo second place, four strokes behind Woods heading into the third round. His reward: a Saturday pairing with Woods (and Stewart Cink).

He went into the pairing with an attitude that served him well, expecting nothing other than a learning experience.

"It's going to be very gratifying and a tremendous learning experience, to be able to walk next him, probably a little bit behind him, to just see what he does and try and compare," he said. "Obviously, it's going to be a huge ordeal out there, but it's going to be great. If I play great, great. If I don't, it's going to be a tremendous learning experience that hopefully I'll be able to build on down the road."

Streelman played admirably alongside Woods, considering his dearth of experience in front of a crowd. A double-bogey at the ninth and three back-nine bogeys cost him a final-round pairing with Woods, the inevitable winner, but a top-10 finish is within reach (he's tied for 11th through 54 holes).

The Buick is just the sixth PGA Tour event for Streelman, a Duke graduate for whom ascension to the PGA Tour has been laborious. In 2004, he Monday qualified for the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am (he missed the cut). At the time, he was sponsored by a Chicago concern, and when he went to Los Angeles the following week to attempt to qualify for the Nissan Open, he called his sponsor to request money for the entry fee. "They stopped taking my calls," he said. "To this day, I have not heard a word from this guy. So I was stranded. I was living in Chicago and stranded in Southern California, with probably $400 in my bank account."

Whatever the outcome  Sunday, he won't be stranded in Southern California because of a cash shortfall. That much is certain.

-- John Strege
(Photo: Harry How/Getty Images)

LA JOLLA, Calif.--Anthony Kim is not aging before our eyes (though it should be noted that he's no longer the youngest member of the PGA Tour), but he is determined to mature before our eyes, to wit: heretofore known more for his mouth, he's now all ears.

Kim, 22 (tour rookie Jason Day is 20), has been mentored by Mark O'Meara, with whom he partnered in the Merrill Lynch Shootout in December, and he began listening, attempting to absorb some of the wisdom that O'Meara had to impart.

"He just said, 'patience,' about 84 times," Kim said, explaining that he's attempting to take away from his budding friendship with O'Meara. "I had to get it through my head."

The payoff may already have begun. In the first start of his second season on the PGA Tour, Kim tied for third at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic last week. Then on Thursday, a cool, wet day at Torrey Pines G.C., Kim shot a four-under par 68 on the North Course, which placed him on the Buick Invitational leader board.

"I'm playing smarter," he said. "I've been trying to do that the
last six tournament rounds (five at the Hope, one at the Buick). I've been playing with guys like Mark O'Meara and Jeff Sluman and I'm playing a lot smarter than I would have.

"We made a pretty dumb par (at the Merrill Lynch Shootout), and it was like water off his (O'Meara's) back. In the past I would have been hot. Patience, he said. I had to get it through my head."

O'Meara and Kim played three rounds together at the Merrill Lynch Shootout and also had dinner together a couple of times there.

"He wants to win," O'Meara said. "He's got a little bit of an attitude, but he's grown up a lot."

O'Meara cited an interview he overhead last year, when Kim said he could not understand why he hasn't won yet. "You're not going to win every week," O'Meara told him. "If you try and force it too hard you're
always going to get in your own way. So you've got to let it come to you and be patient. Then when you win, it will build on itself. You'll learn from that."

--John Strege
(Photo: Harry How/Getty Images)

LA JOLLA, Calif.--The Buick Invitational will be played with heightened interest this week, starting with the fact that Tiger Woods will be attempting to win here for the fourth straight year. He also is seeking his third straight PGA Tour victory in this, his season debut.

There also is the fact that Phil Mickelson is making his season debut, though for a time that seemed in jeopardy as a result of a respiratory ailment that kept him in bed for a few days. After three days of antibiotics, he said he felt good enough to play in the pro-am Wednesday morning and expects to work with teacher Butch Harmon in the afternoon.

"I'm feeling much, much better," Mickelson said in a statement through his representatives, Gaylord Sports Management. "I'm happy about that and looking forward to working with Butch to make sure everything's in order for this week."

There is the site, too, Torrey Pines G.C. in La Jolla. The South Course at Torrey Pines is the 2008 U.S. Open venue, so the Buick Invitational is doubling as a homework assignment for many in the field.

The tournament marks the return of Kelly Tilghman to the Golf Channel booth, ending her two-week suspension.

Finally, there were the mandatory players' meetings on Tuesday in which the PGA Tour's new drug policy was explained in detail.

In other words, it's not just another week on the PGA Tour.

-- John Strege

HONOLULU, Hawaii -- The view from the upper reaches of the leaderboard is better for Steve Marino (right) than it is for Kevin Na, who ostensibly are the pro and con on the merits of LASIK eye surgery. Each of them had the procedure last month, yet only Marino is satisfied with the results.

"My eyes were so bad," Na said. "I got it done from, like, the world's greatest doctor. He told me, 'It might take more than one surgery because your eyes are so bad, but we can probably get 20/20.' The first week it was awesome. It wasn't perfect, but it was very good. I was excited. It just slowly got worse and worse. Right now, it's not very good. I can't see balls land."

Yet Na needed only 22 putts in his round of 64 at Waialae CC in the second round to move into second place behind K.J. Choi. "I have (my caddie) line me up, and he says, 'It looks good,' and I just pull the trigger."

Marino, conversely, is seeing everything with a clarity that is new to him.

"I wasn't even seeing close to 20/20 with my contacts," said Marino, who was in third at the halfway point. "So when I got the surgery done, the next day, I've never seen that well before in my life. It's made a big difference. I can actually see the flagstick from 150 yards away now, and I can tell whether my ball is in the fairway or in the rough off the tee. I can see the hole better, too, and I can see the grass better. It definitely helps me read the breaks. I needed the flag tended from 30 feet last year, and now I'm 60 feet away and I can see the hole fine. It's just awesome."

Tiger Woods, of course, is the most prominent member of the PGA Tour to have underdone the LASIK procedure.

-- John Strege
(Photo: Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images)

HONOLULU, Hawaii -- Few players join the PGA Tour with the fanfare that has accompanied Jason Day's ascension, but for any young player, there is a learning curve, and in his case he already has received his first lesson: Honesty is not necessarily the best policy.

At 20, Day is the youngest player on the PGA Tour, and his victory last year in the Nationwide Tour's Legend Financial Group Classic made him the youngest in history to win a PGA Tour-sanctioned event.

Late last year, the Australian prodigy told the Australian newspaper, the Herald Sun, that his goal is to be the No. 1 player in the world. "I'm sure I can take him down," he said of Tiger Woods. "I want to measure myself against Tiger Woods ? There's a lot of pressure and you try to handle it. All I want to do is work hard, win tournaments and catch up with Tiger. At 19, Tiger didn't win a tournament as a professional. Next year on the tour, I've got to win two tournaments, because that's what he won and I want to try and keep up with him. It's a big ask for a 20-year-old kid on his first year out on the PGA Tour."

Day has been stung by the predictable backlash. He has been widely criticized -- often, he said, by those citing only the phrase "I'm sure I can take him down" and ignoring the greater context of his overall remarks, that, "It's a big ask."

"I don't understand it," Day said at Waialae CC, where he was making his debut as a member of the PGA Tour, in the Sony Open. "There are so many guys who want to be number one, but I chose to be honest about it and they crucified me.

"I'm still going to be working hard to get to the number one spot, and that's Tiger Woods," said Day, who shot 73-70 and missed the cut. "I know it's not going to be given to me."

-- John Strege

HONOLULU--Spencer Levin has never lacked for confidence, which he boldly demonstrated by traveling to Honolulu to attempt to Monday qualify for the Sony Open in Hawaii. The odds of succeeding in Monday qualifiers are not especially good--here, 64 players were attempting to qualify for four spots. To travel 2,500 miles to make the attempt is a leap of faith.

Levin's belief in himself paid off; he shot 67 at Makaha Resort and G.C., to make the field, then shot a three-under-par 67 at Waialae C.C. in the first round of the Sony to put himself on the leader board.

"If I don't make it (in qualifying), I'm in Hawaii," said Levin, who by virtue of tying for 42nd at the PGA Tour Qualifying School has full Nationwide Tour status. "If I don't make it, I was going to make a vacation out of it. In the meantime, I would get a little competition in."

Levin, 23, has not played in a tournament since the Qualifying Tournament. The Nationwide Tour does not begin until Jan. 24.

Last year, Levin played on the Canadian Tour, winning twice, on consecutive weeks. He introduced himself to the golf world when, as an amateur, he shot a 69 in the first round of the 2004 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, a round that featured a hole-in-one at 17, his first swing following a rain delay. Eventually he tied for 13th and was the low amateur.

Lately, he has played well in practice at home in the Sacramento, he said, but came here expecting nothing.

"I never expect anything," says Levin. "When I play, my goal is to play my hardest on every shot."

--John Strege

HONOLULU, Hawaii -- Michelle Wie has been the headliner of the Sony Open in Hawaii since she first played in it in 2004, as a 14-year-old amateur, and nearly made the cut. This year, she was not offered a sponsor's exemption, and there is scant evidence that she ever played here.

The Honolulu Advertiser, for instance, had a 20-page special section in advance of the Sony Open, and her name appeared only twice, and both times in stories on other players. She wasn't mentioned until the 12th paragraph of a story on Tadd Fujikawa and the 15th paragraph of a story on Paul Goydos. In the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, it was the eighth paragraph of a story in Wednesday's paper before she was mentioned.

A native of Hawaii, Wie has been displaced as a teen idol by Fujikawa, a 17-year-old high school junior and a Honolulu resident who tied for 20th in the Sony last year as an amateur. Fujikawa is playing this year as a professional.

Moreover, a second 17-year-old Honolulu golfer is in the field as well, Alex Ching, a high school senior who gained a spot in amateur qualifying.

Wie, it turns out, is not only gone, but forgotten as well -- for the moment, anyway.

-- John Strege

KAPALUA, Maui -- The Pittsburgh Steelers beckoned in more ways than one for Jim Furyk, a passionate Steelers fan. When he finished his round Saturday, a 66 that thrust him into contention at the Mercedes-Benz Championship, he heard that the Steelers and Jacksonville were tied early in their AFC playoff game, 7-7, but asked that nothing more be said about it. He was taping the game and was anxious to get back to the television set.

It was a game that apparently he could have seen live, had he not won the Canadian Open last year to earn a trip to Kapalua, where he has a second home. A PGA Tour official said that someone from the office of Steelers coach Mike Tomlin phoned tour headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., to invite Furyk to the game. Furyk, a native of the Pittsburgh area, still knew nothing about the invitation other than what the tour official told him.

"It's flattering," he said. "I guess it's too bad I won last year. I would have enjoyed that immensely. Obviously I'm excited about the game, and living in Jacksonville makes it a little more interesting."

Furyk does not know Tomlin, but has gotten to know members of the Rooney family that owns the Steelers. "The Rooneys support my charity event up in the Philadelphia area," Furyk explained.

Well aware that his round of golf was interfering with his watching the Steelers, he played as though he were in a hurry to finish, which is to say that he took fewer strokes than anyone in the field  Saturday to complete his round. He vaulted from a tie for 17th to a tie for third at one point of the third round.

-- John Strege

KAPALUA, Maui -- The elevation changes on the Plantation Course at Kapalua Resort will test the stamina of the fittest of men, of which Mark Calcavecchia obviously, and by his own admission, is not one. How then to explain his overcoming the weighty burden he carries and shooting a seven-under-par 66 there in the second round of the Mercedes-Benz Championship Friday?

He trained for this event. He began climbing South Mountain in Phoenix. The first time he went up, he sent Tiger Woods a text message: "Hiking a mountain. May die."

"I got to the top of South Mountain and really thought I was going to have a heart attack," he said.

Calcavecchia, 47, climbed South Mountain three times, he said, and did some jogging as well, in preparation for the cardio test that the Plantation Course represents.

"I was trying to get my legs stronger and to get in a little bit of cardiovascular shape," he said. "Two years ago (I played) here with no preparation whatsoever, and by the time I got to the (Bob Hope Chrysler Classic), my knees and legs were killing me. Walking this course took a toll on me, so I wanted to be a little bit better prepared."

After opening with a two-over par 75 on a wet, windy and wild Thursday, Calcavecchia awoke Friday to legs that still felt fresh. He made nine birdies, and a pair of three-putt greens were his only blemishes.

"It goes to show you that even though some of these guys look fat, they're still in some kind of shape," said PGA Tour rules official Jon Brendle. "They basically walk five miles a day out there. They're more of an athlete than you think."

-- John Strege

KAPALUA, Maui -- Stephen Ames played alone in the first round of the Mercedes-Benz Championship on Thursday, the first off in a field with an odd number of players, 31. He didn't turn it into a sprint, but he did play in barely three hours and finished five holes ahead of the next pairing.

"It was fun, actually," he said. "That's the pace of play we should play every week, but that's not going to happen again."

Ames shot a one-under par 72 on the Plantation Course at Kapalua Resort, a score good enough to ensure that he wouldn't play alone again by virtue of the re-pairing done after every round here. When he came off the course, he feigned bewilderment. "I don't have a (score)card to sign," he said.

On those occasions when a player is without a partner, he has the option of employing a marker to play along. Players rarely use it, however, particularly when they have an open course ahead of them.

Enhancing Ames' enjoyment of his solo pursuit was the fact that he played well, notwithstanding a three-putt bogey at 18.

"My swing felt pretty good," said Ames, who qualified for the event by winning the Children's Miracle Network Classic last year. "I haven't played golf since the Skins Game (in November), if you call (the Skins Game) playing golf, nine holes a day (for) two days."

Ames' expectations coming into the Mercedes were "zero," he said. "It's more of a kick start than anything else. This is kind of getting the juices flowing again."

-- John Strege

KAPALUA, Hawaii--Joe Torre is a part-time resident of Kapalua, on the Hawaiian island of Maui, and has been recruited to serve as the honorary starter of the Mercedes-Benz Championship at Kapalua's Plantation Course on Thursday.

It is a harbinger for the new Dodgers manager, who won't have an A-Rod and Jeter anchoring this lineup, either. Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, who earned their annual invitations here, again sent their regrets. So did Adam Scott and reigning British Open champion Padraig Harrington.

Once known as the Tournament of Champions, the Mercedes now is a tournament of some champions. Free money (no cut and guaranteed earnings of $65,000) in and of itself is no longer an adequate inducement, particularly when travel halfway around the world only a few days after Christmas is part of the deal. For the game's elite, free money is too easy to come by elsewhere and in substantially larger sums than the $65,000 guarantee for finishing last here.

"Personally, I think we start too early," Steve Stricker said Tuesday. "I talked to Gary Planos (Kapalua Resort's senior vice president resort operations) and he kind of feels the same way. It's holiday time. Don't get me wrong. I'm excited as hell to be here, but you still have family back home. You've got to take off on the 27th or 28th, right