Freddie wants to show a little leg

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