Paul Azinger was the choice earlier in the month to be the captain of the U.S. Ryder Cup team for the 2008 matches at Valhalla in Louisville, and Golf World’s John Hawkins thinks it’s a great choice:

In his prime as a player, Azinger was fiery but focused, a natural leader with the talent and disposition to excel in the Ryder Cupís high-intensity atmosphere. In his second life as a TV analyst, the 1993 PGA champion has proven to be an independent thinker whose insights and observations are accentuated with a touch of redneck bravado. Azinger has long been one of my go-to guys in my years covering the PGA Tour. He speaks from the heart, doesnít compromise his thoughts, and he shares anecdotes. Heís a fabulous source.

But Hawkins doesn’t think choosing Azinger will make much of a difference in the outcome:

Youíd have thought the í04 rout at Oakland Hills would have brought the í06 squad together, motivating them to perform at a level close to their potential. And with Lehman in charge, there was unity and camaraderie. There just wasnít any chemistryóitís a component that canít be manufactured. I hope Iím wrong, but things are likely to get worse before they get better. European squads have gotten younger and deeper, and passion has become their most valuable weapon. Azinger is the perfect man to lead the Yanks, which leads me to wonder: Are certain groups, for whatever reasons, averse to being led?

Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, it’s good to see that the Scotsman’s John Huggan is already getting the juices flowing:

Over the course of four Ryder Cups, the 46-year-old [Azinger] all but covered the playing and behavioural spectrum, from sublime to distasteful. Indeed, Azinger’s whole career has been regularly blighted by doubts over his character amid accusations that his adherence to golf’s rule-book is sometimes less than exemplary.

Hoo boy! Read the entire article. Then get ready to rumble.
Speaking of remarkable feats under intense pressure, Craig Kanada chipped in on each of the final two holes yesterday to win the Nationwide Championship held at the Houstonian Golf Club in the far southwest part of the Houston area and, in so doing, earning his PGA Tour card for 2007. Melanie Hauser provides this interesting story on Kanada’s long quest to regain his Tour card.

Houston’s Steve Elkington is not only an outstanding professional golfer, but he is witty and outspoken. So, it was no real surprise that this Age article contains the following observation by the acerbic Elk from this week’s Chrysler Championship at Florida’s venerable Innisbrook Golf Club:

“This is just a good course, one of the better ones we play,” said the battle-hardened veteran, who trailed American leader Brian Gay by three strokes at demanding Innisbrook.
“Some of the crap we play on is ridiculous. As big as the tour is, you’d think we could play some better courses.”

H’mm. I wonder if “some of the crap” he is referring to is this one?

Canadian Press golf writer Doug Ferguson sets up the Chrysler Championship that begins today at Innisbrook in Florida, a mostly forgettable affair except that it incongruously generates some of the most intense pressure of the entire PGA Tour season. It’s the final full-field PGA Tour event of the year and, thus, is the last chance for Tour players to earn enough money to achieve full exempt status for next year’s PGA Tour events:

This week is mostly about money. The Chrysler Championship is . . . a time for players to pay more attention to dollars and cents than birdies and bogeys. The bottom 120 spots on the money list will be determined, with significant stops down the ladder at No. 30 (Tour Championship), No. 40 (Masters invitation), No. 125 (full status next year) and No. 150 (conditional status).

The top 125 can participate in any PGA Tour event that they choose. Conditional status players — those Tour players who finish between No. 126 and No. 150 — comes in behind those players who earn their PGA Tour cards through the PGA Qualifying School Tournament or the Nationwide Tour. Although not as secure as fully exempt status, most conditional status players can at least get into enough events to have a shot at earning enough to get into the top 125. However, if a player finishes outside the top 150, then it’s either back to the second stage of Q-school, spend the following year playing in a lot of pro-ams and begging for sponsor exemptions into tournaments, or trying to eke out a living on the Nationwide Tour.
There is also competition this week to finish in the the top 40 (to qualify for The Masters) and the top 30 (to qualify for the season-ending Tour Championship tournament), but the competition for those spots is between successful players trying to become a bit more successful. On the other hand, the competition to land in either the top 125 or the top 150 is more compelling because it often involves players who are literally fighting for their livelihood. Ferguson passes along the experience of Tour veteran Paul Azinger from a couple of years ago:

In his 25 years on the PGA Tour, money and prestige are the only things that ever made Paul Azinger choke.[. . .]
Two years ago, he was No. 123 on the money list and seemingly in good shape until a bogey on his 17th hole and a three-putt bogey on his final hole that caused him to miss the cut by one shot. He screamed in disgust as he walked off the course, and the real agony set in two days later when he wound up at No. 126.

Zinger is on the brink again this season, just $22,000 ahead of the 125th player on the money list. Longtime Tour players John Cook and Mark Calcavecchia are two of the players just below the 125th place on the money list and will be among those grinding away at the tournament.

Yeah, I know it’s football season in Texas and no other sport really matters, but I’ve been wanting to pass along a few interesting tidbits from the golf world.
John Hawkins reports that Fred Couples, a fan favorite in Houston from his playing days at the University of Houston, has had a rough year, including enduring a potentially dangerous blood clot in his arm a month ago;
Dallas-based Hank Haney, who has the good fortune to be Tiger Woods’ current swing guru, isn’t as lucky in a real estate deal;
Those golf course designing brothers — Robert Trent Jones Jr. and Rees Jones, the latter of whom designed Houston’s Tournament Course at Redstone Golf Club — conduct most of their communications between each other through their lawyers. The article notes a comment from a reporter who has tracked the brothers’ careers:

Bradley Klein, who has tracked the brothers’ careers as Golfweek’s architecture editor, said Rees and Robert Jr., who goes by Bobby, probably began trying to one-up each other “in the crib.”
“They hate each other,” he said. “They are rivals in every way.”

By the way, did you notice who is currently 192nd on the PGA Tour money list? Oh well, he still has the best golf picture of the year; and
Finally, In more of the Ryder Cup post-mortem (earlier posts here, here and here), Jeff Rude makes the case that the top-125 all-exempt Tour has bred complacency and mediocrity among most of the young US players:

American golf has sunk to this new low: Not only can’t the country come close to winning Ryder Cups and Palmer Cups and various other containers you can drink out of, but only two U.S. players under 30 have won more than one PGA Tour title: Ben Curtis, 29, once thought of as a one-shot wonder after winning the 2003 British Open out of nowhere, has three victories, and Jonathan Byrd, 28, has two, including a B.C. Open the same week the big boys were at the British. [. . .]
Chris DiMarco has never won a tournament in golf’s prime season ñ March through August ñ but has made $18.7 million in official Tour earnings. There are plenty others besides three-time winner DiMarco who haven’t won many tournaments and yet have broken the bank. Consider that these four-time winners have all earned more than $13.6 million: Stewart Cink ($18.4M), Scott Verplank ($17.9M), Bob Estes ($15.5M) and Tim Herron ($13.6M). And you can win only twice and bag $14.3 million, as Jerry Kelly has proved.
Not to pick on these fine players, but the point is: One could wonder about the incentive to win, grind, dig deep and dig dirt if you can live like Jed Clampett without collecting many trophies.

I’ve been remiss in not mentioning Arnold Palmer‘s announcement this past Friday during a round in a Champion’s Tour event at Houston’s Augusta Pines Golf Club that the round would be his last competitive round of golf. Steve Campbell’s article is here.
That Arnie would finally call it quits at a not particularly notable Houston course in a largely-ignored Champions Tour event (it’s football season in Texas, you know) seemed somewhat out of place. Arnie has actually been saying good-bye for quite awhile, first at Augusta National (his final major appearance) and then at his tournament, the Bay Hill Invitational, which was his final PGA Tour event. Suffice it to say the Augusta Pines is not anywhere near as dramatic a venue as either of those courses for Arnie to bid farewell to his fellow senior golfers. Too bad that the tournament couldn’t have been played a few miles south at Champions Golf Club, a venerable championship layout where Ben Hogan played his last competitive round about 40 years ago.
Palmer’s impact on golf and sports is so pervasive that it is difficult to put it in perspective. Suffice to say that there would be no Tiger Woods — at least in the larger-than-life sense that we know him — had not Arnold Palmer literally pulled the PGA Tour by its bootstraps into the forefront of televised sporting events around the world. Heck, Arnie even created the modern sports promotion business by hiring his old college chum, the late Mark McCormack, as the first real sports agent back in the late 1950’s. Scott Michaux, a columnist for AugustaChronicle.com, does as good a job as I’ve seen in this article (reg. req) of conveying Palmer’s special nature. Noting that Palmer withdrew from his last tournament on the fourth hole, but continued to play the remainder of the round for the benefit of his fans, Michaux observes as follows:

That’s what made Palmer the most beloved player in the history of golf. He was not its greatest champion and didn’t possess the finest swing, but nobody before or since has ever had the charisma that Palmer holds in spades. Whether it’s on the golf course, in the clubhouse or on the dance floor, Palmer oozes with the magnetism that has drawn his Army of fans for every step of the ride.
That the ride is finally over is as traumatic to his fans as it is to him. That Palmer never won a major championship in my lifetime didn’t stop him from being as giant a figure to my generation as he was to his own. That it has been 18 years since I witnessed him win his last tournament at the senior Crestar Classic in Richmond, Va., hasn’t made every sighting since any less thrilling.[ . . .]
Now we can only wish that Palmer will take the stage that late greats Byron Nelson, San Snead and Gene Sarazen took before him on the first tee of the Augusta National Golf Club for an honorary start to the Masters. With no other places to get a glimpse of the King, it is our last hope.
Palmer understands that no matter how awkward it might be to stand up in front of the world trying to give it that good shot, just a fix of his radiance is all we want.

Three-time Masters champ and former co-lead ABC golf analyst Nick Faldo will replace Lanny Wadkins next year as the lead golf analyst on CBS (SI story here). Wadkins declined to accept a lesser role with the network and will thus play more on the Champions Tour next season, as well as see more of his family.
Peter McCleery thinks its a good move for CBS:

Faldo trades places with Lanny Wadkins, who replaced the “legendary” Ken Venturi four years ago. While I initially welcomed a change after 29 years of Kenny and his well-worn repertoire, Wadkins ultimately disappointed us. He was, quite simply, too repetitve with his own overused and unnecessary phrases, like “that is well done!” and “at this point in time,” among others, all of which he should have been told to retire before they grated on so many viewers’ nerves and ears.
When Wadkins joined CBS a well-versed TV person predicted there was little room for improvement there. What you saw is what you were gonna get. This is also, largely the fault of the producers and directors he worked with for not properly “coaching” their people on how to get better, something any armchair critic could have done with Wadkins.[. . .]
CBS’ golf became duller with [Wadkins] as its lead voice.

McCleery also notes the rather amazing transformation of Faldo from his days as a PGA Tour player:

Faldo’s hire and emergence as Mr. Golf on TV continues his amazing transformation from an aloof/loner/player who was famous for saying NOTHING to his fellow competitors before or during his rounds, making more enemies than friends along the way. Now, it’s as if a totally different person has come out–funny, likable, a little unpredictable at times but rarely dull. He seems to recognize the power and value of the ole telly as few players have. He dresses very well, too.

Following on his earlier comments about the abysmal American Ryder Cup team’s performance noted here, Golf Digest and Golf World European correspondent John Huggan is continuing to have a lot of fun at the expense of the American squad members. Among Huggan’s ten ways to give the American squad a chance in the next Ryder Cup matches are the following:

5) COMPULSORY YEAR ON THE EUROPEAN TOUR
The sea of sameness that is the PGA Tour is producing – apart from Tiger and maybe Furyk – wave after wave of players who are basically indistinguishable. Yes, they can all hit good shots. But those shots are the same good shots, time after tedious time.
And why is this? Week after week, the courses in the US are presented in the same unimaginative way, making a wide range of shot-making unnecessary and, increasingly, obsolete. A year spent experiencing a wider variety of conditions, food and travel would do the likes of Zach Johnson the world of good and, by extension, help out the Ryder Cup. He might even learn some good jokes.
Then there is the amount of money involved in the PGA Tour. The American side arrived at the K Club having picked up close to $38m among them this year. Mostly for finishing tied for seventh. No wonder they, Woods apart, can’t handle it when they are suddenly asked to beat someone. That’s a foreign concept or, in this case, a concept embraced only by foreigners.

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John Huggan is the European correspondent for both Golf Digest and Golf World magazines, and his thoughts on the just-concluded Ryder Cup matches addresses the rather embarrassing question of whether the U.S. team has fallen so far behind the European squad that the U.S. should consider making their team “the Americas” team:

[O]ne has to wonder what Jack Nicklaus was thinking as he surveyed from afar the carnage that was America’s Team. Was he musing the possibility of the hapless US side being bolstered by the likes of Canada’s Mike Weir, Angel Cabrera of Argentina and Columbian Camilio Villegas in a newly constituted ‘Americas’ team? To even suggest such a thing can no longer be dismissed as frivolous or mere mischief making. After two successive nine-point shellackings that hardly bode well for the new world’s prospects at Valhalla two years hence, it is a question that brings with it a growing legitimacy.

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Golf’s quintessential gentleman — Byron Nelson — died yesterday in his home near Dallas at the age of 94. Here are the Dallas Morning News, the NY Times, and the LA Times obituaries, along with a PGATour.com timeline of Nelson’s life, a list of his records, and a handy summary of his career.
Nelson — who was affectionately known as “Lord Byron” — was a contemporary of his fellow Texan Ben Hogan, and was more successful on the PGA Tour than Hogan during the time that Nelson played (Hogan struggled on the Tour until he perfected his swing in his mid-30’s, by which time Nelson had retired). Nelson established one of the most remarkable records in sports history when he won 11 consecutive pro golf tournaments in 1945 (Dan Jenkins contends that it was actually 13 straight), a record — similar to Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak in baseball — that will likely never be broken. Nelson won an incredible 18 tournaments that year and 52 (including five major tournaments) over his relatively short 16 year career on the Tour. He retired in 1946 from full-time competitive golf at the age of 34 after achieving his goal of earning enough money to buy a ranch in his beloved Texas.
Nelson was a kind and gentle man who remained active until his death. He set a wonderful example for all of us and represented much of what makes golf such an endearing pastime. He will be sorely missed (particularly by Dallas’ PGA Tour event) for many reasons, not the least of which was his perspective on how fortunate the modern PGA Tour players are:

“I only won $182,000 in my whole life,” said Nelson in a 1997 interview. “In 1937, I got fifth-place money at the British Open — $187 — and it cost me $3,000 to play because I had to take a one-month leave of absence from my club job to go.”