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 Alliss honoured by Hall of Fame BBC Sport's Peter Alliss will be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame, along with Sandy Lyle and Phil Mickelson. Publ.Date : Mon, 07 May 2012 06:40:12 GMT VIDEO: Westwood admits putting 'weakness' Lee Westwood admits his putting "weakness" is to blame for failing to win this year's Masters, after a final round of 68 leaves him tied for third. Publ.Date : Mon, 09 Apr 2012 00:16:06 GMT Bradley enters Irish Open field The Irish Open field now boasts three of the four current major champions after Keegan Bradley signs up to play. Publ.Date : Tue, 08 May 2012 10:03:19 GMT VIDEO: Rugby fan Rory drops in at Ravenhill World number one golfer Rory McIlroy supports Ulster in their match against Leinster. Publ.Date : Sat, 21 Apr 2012 10:00:28 GMT AUDIO: US fans less knowledgeable - Montgomerie Colin Montgomerie tells BBC Radio 5 live Breakfast why he thinks American golf fans are less knowledgeable than UK ones. Publ.Date : Thu, 17 May 2012 15:28:23 GMT VIDEO: McIlroy philosophical about Masters display Rory McIlroy is philosophical about his failure to challenge for the Masters title at Augusta. Publ.Date : Mon, 09 Apr 2012 09:52:34 GMT |
| About Golf Updated : This Week: Nelson and Match Play This week in golf features the HP Byron Nelson Championship on the PGA Tour, plus match play tournaments on both the European and LPGA tours. On the LPGA Tour, it's the Sybase Match Play Championship, where the defending champion is Suzann Pettersen. On the Euro Tour, it's the Volvo World Match Play Championship, a tournament that started as a showcase for golfers represented by a single agent. Luckily for fans, that agent represented the likes of Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. The defending champ is Ian Poulter, and others in the 24-man field include Sergio Garcia, Martin Kaymer, Graeme McDowell, Justin Rose and Charl Schwartzel. The format groups those players into threes, and each group plays round-robin. The top two in each group advance to the round of 16, where 18-hole knockout matches continue until a winner is crowned. And on the PGA Tour, it's a quick turnaround for Players Championship winner Matt Kuchar, who headlines the Nelson field. If you want to have another look at Kevin Na's unusual waggling routine, you'll have to wait: he's not here. (But, then, we're used to waiting on Na.) The defending champ is Keegan Bradley, and others in the field include Jason Day, Jason Dufner, Ernie Els, Padraig Harrington, Phil Mickelson, Louis Oosthuizen, Adam Scott and Vijay Singh. This Week: Nelson and Match Play originally appeared on About.com Golf on Monday, May 14th, 2012 at 09:20:23. Permalink | Comment | Email this Fowler Scores His First PGA Tour Victory Rickie Fowler is a winner on the PGA Tour for the first time. But it's the second time Rory McIlroy has finished as runner-up to Fowler in a pro event. Fowler won the 2012 Wells Fargo Championship on Sunday with a birdie on the first playoff hole, beating McIlroy and D.A. Points in the playoff. Fowler finished regulation play first at 14-under. Points could have won it on the last hole with a par, but bogied; McIlroy could have won it with a birdie, but parred. Then, on the first playoff hole, Fowler stuck a wedge shot close to the hole. And when Points and McIlroy missed their birdie putts, Fowler made his. Fowler did have one professional win prior, at the 2011 Korea Open on the OneAsia Tour. Who was the runner-up to Fowler there? McIlroy. It's the second straight year the Wells Fargo Championship ended in a playoff (Lucas Glover won in 2011). And it's the third time in five years that a young hotshot scored his first PGA Tour win at Quail Hollow. Anthony Kim did it in 2008, McIlroy did it in 2010, and now Fowler. Fowler has been on the short list of brightest young players since he left Oklahoma State University following two years of college golf. And he had come close to his first PGA Tour win a couple times before, including before he even joined the tour. At the 2009 Frys.Com Open, Fowler lost in a playoff. The following year, 2010, was his first year as a PGA Tour member, and Fowler had another near-miss with a runner-up finish at the 2010 Waste Management Phoenix Open. There was no near-miss at the 2012 Wells Fargo. This time, there was a win. Photos of Rickie Fowler's first PGA Tour win See also: On the Web: 2012 Wells Fargo Championship final scores Fowler Scores His First PGA Tour Victory originally appeared on About.com Golf on Sunday, May 6th, 2012 at 18:42:40. Permalink | Comment | Email this New Equipment: Odyssey and Nike Putters, Plus Accessories Our latest roundup of new golf equipment arriving in pro shops leads off with a pair of putters: the Odyssey Flip Face and Nike Method Midnight. The Flip Face is as it sounds - the golfer can rotate the putter face end-over-end to switch to a different face insert material. The gallery also includes irons, a remote-control cart for walkers, outerwear and apparel, plus a golf rules app based on some of the best "plain English" books about the golf rules. View the gallery See also: TaylorMade RocketBallz 3-wood review New Equipment: Odyssey and Nike Putters, Plus Accessories originally appeared on About.com Golf on Wednesday, May 16th, 2012 at 08:59:28. Permalink | Comment | Email this Why Kevin Na Doesn't Have to Count Those 'Whiffs' Kevin Na is driving the TV announcers and possibly his playing partners to distraction during the 2012 Players Championship with his very unusual start-and-stop-and-back-away-and-repeat pre-swing waggling. Sometimes, that waggling results in Na swinging through the ball, but lifting the clubhead up in order to miss the ball. Then he re-sets and starts (and sometimes stops) the process again. It's generating quite a bit of discussion, especially given the fact that Na has been at or near the top of the leaderboard all week. Should Na be counting those "whiffs" - the occasions he swings over the ball - as strokes? If not, why not? That's a question we've addressed before in one of our Rules FAQs. Check out "Does a whiff count as a stroke?" for the explanation of why Na hasn't been charged with strokes on those swing-overs. See also: More Rules FAQ Why Kevin Na Doesn't Have to Count Those 'Whiffs' originally appeared on About.com Golf on Sunday, May 13th, 2012 at 17:34:28. Permalink | Comment | Email this Does PGA Tour Need to Crack Down On Slow Play? The tour has slow play rules in place already that would probably speed up play if they were simply enforced - because enforcing them would lead to penalty strokes. As it stands, the PGA Tour hasn't assessed a penalty stroke to a player because of slow play in 20 years. Is an individual golfer's pace of play even the main issue in overlong rounds? In comments made prior to The Players Championship, PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said no. Finchem said the issue is one of logistics: With 150-plus player fields, there are inevitable bottleneck areas on every golf course where play is going to back up. We see that on the courses we play on busy days. Those par-5s where players wait to have a go at the green in two. On particularly busy days, just about any par-3. Those are places where recreational golfers on the local course will have to wait on a busy day, and they are places where the pros in a large field are going to wait, too. Finchem claimed that reducing field size to, say, 120 players, would solve the issue. But we all know there's zero chance of that happening (and Finchem wasn't proposing it, merely claiming field size and course logistics play a larger role in long tour rounds than the pace of individual golfers). But we've also all seen very long rounds in short-field pro tournaments, and "bottlenecking" can't explain 6-hour matches at the Ryder Cup. In my opinion, absolutely nothing will be done about slow play on the PGA Tour until or unless one thing happens: until or unless the television networks state, or the tour comes to believe, that PGA Tour telecasts will be worth less money unless pace of play improves. Otherwise, there are too many players - probably a majority - who think, "I'm playing for millions of dollars, I'll take as long on a shot as I need." Unless it starts to hit players and the tour in the pocketbook, slow play in tour events will be around forever. And so will complaining about slow play in tour events. See also: PGA Tour slow play policy How recreational golfers can avoid slow play Does PGA Tour Need to Crack Down On Slow Play? originally appeared on About.com Golf on Monday, May 14th, 2012 at 16:38:25. Permalink | Comment | Email this Pressel Hit with Slow Play Penalty, Loses Match at LPGA Sybase You want to see tour players penalized for slow play? You got it. Only on the LPGA Tour, not the PGA Tour. Morgan Pressel was hit with a slow play penalty in the semifinals of the Sybase Match Play Championship on Sunday, and she wound up losing the match. Pressel was playing Azahara Munoz in one semifinal, and the two players had fallen off the pace. They received a warning earlier in the match, then were put "on the clock" at the 11th hole. Which meant that going forward both players were being timed. At that point, Pressel was 2-up in the match. But on the 12th hole - a hole Pressel otherwise would have won - she was hit with a slow play penalty after taking too long on her tee shot and also too long collectively for the hole. Boom. Penalty. Loss of hole. Pressel would have gone 3-up without the penalty; instead, Munoz won the hole and Pressel's lead was cut to 1-up. Then, on the 15th hole, Pressel thought that Munoz had touched the line of her putt with the putter. Munoz denied the accusation, a rules official was summoned, and that official ultimately sided with Munoz, avoiding another penalty. Munoz won the hole to even the match, then won the next two holes to close it out, 2 and 1. (You can find a fuller account of the incidents in the Associated Press article.) For about the last half-dozen years, maybe more, the LPGA has been much more aggressive than the PGA Tour in trying to address slow play. The PGA Tour hasn't handed out a penalty stroke for slow play in 20 years. On the LPGA Tour, slow play penalties are rare, but they do occur multiple times every year. If you want the PGA Tour to start dishing out penalties for slow play, this is what that would look like. Some of those penalties would inevitably occur at key moments, or become turning points, or cost a popular player a win or badly needed dollars. Then again, the LPGA's policy is stricter than the PGA Tour's, with LPGA players having less time than PGA Tour players are given. Under the PGA Tour's rules, Pressel wouldn't have been penalized. But Pressel doesn't play on the PGA Tour, she plays on the LPGA Tour, and the LPGA's rules are known by all the players. (In fairness to Pressel, although she's the one who got penalized on Sunday, of the two players it is Munoz who has the greater reputation for slow play.) Munoz advanced to the finals at the Sybase to face Candie Kung for the championship. Pressel plays Vicky Hurst in the consolation match. Pressel Hit with Slow Play Penalty, Loses Match at LPGA Sybase originally appeared on About.com Golf on Sunday, May 20th, 2012 at 14:21:43. Permalink | Comment | Email this Looking at TPC Sawgrass TPC Sawgrass has become one of the most famous courses in the world of golf, because of its position as the permanent host site of The Players Championship, and also because of that infamous "island green" at No. 17. The TPC Sawgrass facility includes two courses: the Stadium Course (home of the Players) and the Dye's Valley course. We took at look at the history of TPC Sawgrass and the details of both its courses, and included a little trivia, in this course profile of TPC Sawgrass. See also: TPC Sawgrass pictures Looking at TPC Sawgrass originally appeared on About.com Golf on Thursday, May 10th, 2012 at 11:30:21. Permalink | Comment | Email this |