Ever swing and miss on the golf course?  Don’t feel bad, Lee Westwood has.  Check out this video from THE PLAYERS last week.

Here was the “unique” fan reaction after Phil Mickelson made a 25-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole at the Northern Trust Open yesterday to force a playoff with eventual Champion Bill Haas.

http://www.businessinsider.com/fan-after-mickelson-putt-2012-2

With the Europeans currently holding the Ryder Cup and Internationals having a strangle-hold on the top of the Official World Golf Rankings, it appears the Americans are ready to fight back. 

With Phil Mickelson’s win at Pebble Beach, the Americans have claimed the first six events on the 2012 PGA TOUR calendar.  

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Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods together in the final round has produced the highest rating for CBS Sports at Pebble Beach in 15 years.

The network said Monday the overnight rating from final round was 5.1 with a 10 share, which was up 96 percent from last year. It was the highest rating for the final round of the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am since a 5.8 with a 13 share in 1997, when Mark O’Meara held off Woods and David Duval.

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On Monday morning at 11am ET, Tiger Woods will sit down with Kelly Tilghman to announce something. It’s not clear what it could be.

Some of the wild speculation includes:

• He’s done for 2011
• He’s going to have (or had) surgery to end his 2011 year
• He’s getting a new swing coach
• He’s taking European Tour membership in 2012
• He will comment on his relationship with Anthony Galea
• He’s getting a new caddie
• He’s going to retire

I think we’re going to get at least 2 of the above.  My guess: he’s done for 2011 and he’s dumped Sean Foley.  Stay tuned…

With Bubba Watson’s playoff victory at the Zurich Classic, there have now been seven sudden-death playoffs this year (through 5/1/11) - the same total for all of last year on the PGA Tour.

It was reported today that Lee Westwood, despite missing the last two months with a calf injury, will somehow overtake Phil Mickelson as the World’s #2 ranked player when the next Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) is released on Monday.  But wait, it get’s better: the story also indicates that it won’t be long before he moves past Tiger into the #1 spot.

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As we have mentioned before, we love the FedEx Cup Playoffs and feel very strongly that they served their purpose this year. You can’t compare the PGA TOUR playoffs to other major professional sports playoffs because golf just doesn’t set up like that.  But that doesn’t mean the TOUR shouldn’t continue to tinker with the current format to make it better and to avoid possible outcomes that should be avoided at all costs, like a player winning the FedEx Cup who hasn’t won a single tournament during the regular season and playoffs. 

In four years, the system has actually worked quite well, producing four deserving winners (Tiger, Vijay, Tiger and Furyk), but the current system certainly has the potential for a let down.  Last month we mentioned our idea to improve the FedEx Cup, and we were, and still are, pretty pleased with it but we’ve decided to come up with one more system that we think would further improve the playoffs.  This one is definitely a bit more extreme and focuses mostly on the flaw that way too many players make the playoffs.  This system would make the PGA TOUR playoffs much closer to traditional playoffs that we see in other sports.

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Interesting article from ESPN researcher Justin Ray in which he tries to quantify the POY race with a formula based on past winners.  If nothing else it makes us feel a little smarter that we listed Mickelson as the current POY favorite.