Snedeker's 36-hole total of 130 ties the tournament record of (Sir) Nick Faldo.

Tennessee native Brandt Snedeker confounded the draw to seize a commanding lead in the second round of the 141st Open Championship. (continue reading…)

Paul Casey made a hole-in-one on the par-3 15th at the Blue Monster in the final round of the WGC-Cadillac Championship. Watch the video and you’ll see Casey barely reacts and nearly looks disappointed after the ball disappears. Meanwhile, his caddie Craig Connelly goes nuts and practically mauls his boss. (continue reading…)

Tiger and Casey having a laugh, maybe sharing injury stories!

I sat down with Paul Casey, who is making his first start this season, on Tuesday for a Q&A at the tail-end of his pre-tourney media tour for the WGC-Cadillac Championship on Wednesday morning. Casey battled with turf toe last year and then this past Christmas Eve, he was snowboarding in Colorado when he fell and dislocated his shoulder. (I posted his X-rays here.) Unfortunately or frustratingly, he wasn’t doing double back flips — he was taking a lesson and wearing a helmet, elbow pads, the full deal, and he was trying to catch his fall, so he stuck his right arm out and landed on it the wrong way. (continue reading…)

Due to popular demand, “Behind the Scenes” is back — not that it really left — but it will appear on a weekly (or regular) basis going forward now…

Here now, I’m attempting the TaylorMade’s Rocketballz Launch Party Glow Ball Experience, wearing a dress and no shoes (not to mention a two glasses of wine deep). The first swing was decent and made it into the “target box,” but I should have stopped while I was ahead because it’s an understatement to say the next few attempts were embarrassing!

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Bummer

Match-play specialist Paul Casey has withdrawn from next week’s Accenture Match Play Championship in Arizona. The Englishman is still recovering from a dislocated shoulder he endured while snowboarding in Colorado last month, but he hopes to return for the WGC-Cadillac Championship at Doral in March. (continue reading…)

Ollie: wants to keep it in the fairway (for once).

It got a little bit lost in the chatter surrounding Tiger Woods’ appearance at the Abu Dhabi Championship this week, but José María Olazábal, the all-powerful European Ryder Cup captain, has confirmed a potentially significant alteration to the process [summary of the process here, courtesy of the Guardian's Lawrence Donegan] by which he’ll select the dozen players worthy of giving the U-S-A (U-S-A) a jolly good shoe-ing at Medinah later this year. (continue reading…)

Apparently golfers are prone to injury in Maui waters

Another year, another golfer forced to withdraw from the season-opening Hyundai Tournament of Champions due to a freak injury while enjoying the Pacific Ocean. Last Saturday 2009 U.S. Open champ Lucas Glover was paddleboarding when his foot caught the side of the board and caused him to sprain his right knee (MCL), according to the AP. Glover was forced to pull out, reducing the PGA Tour’s season-opener to 27 players –the smallest field in Kapalua since 1999. (continue reading…)

Luke Donald + bemusement = above expression

Luke Donald is many things– a world-class golfer, a watercolour-bothering amateur artist, a husband, a father– but an idiot is not one of them; nor, it must be said, has he somehow remained ignorant of the decade-long influence and insistent brilliance of one Tiger Woods.

While the above would be considered by the vast majority of fans to be entirely self-evident, it didn’t stop a vocal, CAPS LOCK-inclined minority from venting their frustration in the direction of the current World Number One on learning that he considered Rory McIlroy a superior natural talent to the fourteen-time major champion. (continue reading…)

Tiger in his comfort zone: sidelines at the Stanford/Colorado game

Tiger Woods is well into the final round of the Frys.com Open — you know, trying to get that W! Whoops, he really must have meant “W for weekend” in his Wednesday presser. Woods is seven shots back of leader Briny Baird.

By the way, I was cracking up at some of the comments in the last Tiger post (with all due respect to Baird): “Tiger is getting waxed by Briny Baird!” or “Forget Baird, he’s getting waxed by Roland Thatcher, too!” Yeah, I censored those a little, but you get the point. (continue reading…)

There’s about as many positive things said about the FedExCup as there are about Tiger Woods’ 2011 season. Just after we were forced to come to terms with Woods’ unrecognizable (and mediocre) play, so too did we (re)learn how significant the seemingly arbitrary (though improved) design (earn a chance to win an inordinate, ridiculous and borderline disgusting prize of $10 million) of the FedExCup were last Sunday at the Wyndham Championship. (continue reading…)