The PGA Tour says it expects to have formulated an anti-doping policy by the end of this year.
Tour boss Tim Finchem has previously claimed golf does not have a problem with performance-enhancing drugs but says testing for them is now a reality.
“We’re getting close to agreeing a policy. I suspect we’ll be done with that certainly this year,” he said.
“It’s unfortunate that these realities are with us, but they are. We have to deal with them.”
In the past Finchem has defended his tour’s lack of a policy, suggesting it was not worth testing without any evidence that players were doping.
The LPGA, the women’s professional tour, announced in February it planned to start drug testing players in 2008.
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All golfers know that the golf wedge is an important club in the golf bag. Majority of the golfers carry 2 wedges; namely, the pitching wedge and the sand wedge. More and more golfers carry additional wedges in their bags to help them in different situations. A popular club is the lob wedge.
The wedges can help us in our short games. If fitted properly and executed correctly, it can help lower golf scores tremendously.
Before you head out to the nearest golf shop to get your wedges, first you need to know how you want to organise your wedges in your bag. Some prefer to have one 52 deg, one 56 deg and another 60 deg with 4 degrees apart for various distances. Choosing the right loft is one factor which is quite obvious. The other is the choosing the right bounce angle for your wedges.
If you notice when you are choosing your wedges, there are various combinations of degree and bounce angles. For example, you may see a wedge the has a loft of 56 degrees and a bounce angle of 14%, and another wedge with the same loft but with an 18 degrees bounce angle.
So what does this bounce angle mean ? Simply put, the “bounce angle” determine how the clubs will react to the surface of play; or how much the club “bounce” from the surface of play, be it turf, rough or sand. If you put the club on the ground, the bounce angle is the angle formed by the leading edge of the golf club and the surface of play.
Players normally maximise the right combination of loft and bounce angle to optimise their play.
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Tiger Woods has become a father for the first time less than 24 hours after narrowly missing out on the US Open.
The world number one’s wife Elin gave birth to a baby girl, Sam Alexis Woods, early on Monday morning.
“Elin and I are delighted to announce the birth of our daughter, Sam Alexis Woods,” read a statement on Woods’ official website.
“Both Elin and Sam are doing well and resting peacefully. We want to thank our doctors and the hospital staff for all their dedicated and hard work.
“This is truly a special time in our lives and we look forward to introducing Sam to our family and friends over the next few weeks.
“We thank everyone for their well wishes and continued respect of our privacy.”
Woods had previously said he would miss a major to see the birth of his child and though that will no longer be the case, his upcoming schedule is certain to be affected.
Woods finished second in a major for the second time this year as Argentina’s Angel Cabrera captured the US Open on Sunday.
Angel Cabrera shot a one-under-par 69 to win the US Open at Oakmont.
At a five-over-par total of 285, Cabrera edged Tiger Woods and Jim Furyk, both former US Open champions, by one shot.
Cabrera was as low as three over after a birdie at 15 but he gave shots back - and handed Woods and Furyk hope of a comeback - with bogeys at 16 and 17.
A par at 18 put Cabrera in the clubhouse on five over as the American duo played the final holes.
Both Woods and Furyk tried to drive the green at the 306-yard 17th but ran into trouble.
Furyk bogeyed the hole from the rough to the left of the green and Woods was unable to get up and down for birdie from a greenside bunker.
At 18, Furyk split the fairway with his drive but his approach was long and left, leading to a par.
Woods had a 30-footer to force a play-off but left it out to the right and about a foot past the hole.
The world number one dug himself a hole he could never get out of with a double-bogey on the 428-yard, par-four third hole.
Woods had an uphill pitch shot that he tried to hit into the side of the hill to take some of the speed off, but instead it skipped across the green and into the rough on the other side.
He mis-hit the pitch coming back and took two putts to finish the hole.
Woods bounced back with his only birdie of the round at the 609-yard, par-five fourth.
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England’s Nick Dougherty fired a two under par 68 in rain-softened conditions at Oakmont Country Club to set the early pace in the US Open.
While twice champion Tiger Woods battled to a 71 on one of golf’s toughest layouts, Dougherty carded four birdies and two bogeys for his lowest score in a Major Championship.
“I’m delighted with that,” the 25 year old Englishman said. “I missed a lot of fairways today so two under is a fabulous score here.
“I didn’t play that well from tee to green but my short game was red-hot,” added Dougherty, who took just 11 putts on the back nine. “We had it as good as it can be after the rain softened the course yesterday because you can stop the ball on some of the holes.”
Dougherty, whose maiden European Tour victory came at the 2005 Caltex Singapore Masters, ended his round one clear of fellow European Tour Member Angel Cabrera of Argentina and two ahead of big-hitting American Bubba Watson and Spain’s Jose Maria Olazabal.
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Groupings and starting times for the first two rounds of the U.S. Open on Thursday (June 14) and Friday (June 15) at the par 35-35—70, 7,230-yard, Oakmont Country Club in Oakmont, Pa. (A=amateur)
Thursday (June 14), hole #1; Friday (June 15), hole #10
7:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. — Ken Duke, Palm City, Fla.; Sam Walker, England; Johnson Wagner, Charlotte, N.C.
7:11 a.m.-12:41 p.m. — Craig Kanada, The Woodlands, Texas; Jon Mills, Canada; Tom Gillis, Oxford, Mich.
7:22 a.m.-12:52 p.m. — Allen Doyle, La Grange, Ga.; Olin Browne, Tequesta, Fla.; Tom Byrum, Richmond, Texas
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Some things have remained constant for Tiger Woods since the last US Open and some things have changed but it is the latter that has the world’s best player in a winning frame of mind.
Woods is preparing for his 13th US Open and is tracking his 13th major championship at Oakmont, which by all accounts will be as much a brutal test of survival as of golfing prowess.
But Woods is not concerned about the heavy rough or church bunkers, and not even the treacherous greens have him alarmed.
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The Nike Platinum and Black balls improve on their previous versions but still fall a bit short of the other premium balls in the market.
Nike jumped into the golf ball arena a few years ago and has not looked back. The Nike Platinum has enjoyed some success on Tour, and not just by way of Tiger Woods, but other top players like Rory Sabbatini, Stewart Cink, Trevor Immelman, and Paul Casey as well. While Nike’s balls may be lagging market leaders Titleist and the Pro V1 duo, the Portland, OR based sports equipment behemoth has fully established themselves in the ball market with no intention of leaving.
With Tiger at the helm they have designed two premium balls for better players: Nike ONE Platinum and the Nike ONE Black (the ONE Gold having been ditched for 2007). Both have gone through a recent makeover to improve upon an already popular ball. I’ve been a loyal Titleist ball player for years, so I was eager to see how the Nikes would stand up. Read on to see if I’ll be playing balls with a swoosh instead of cursive this year.
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Richard Sterne put an end to a run of personal near misses but, agonisingly for the patriotic Welsh galleries, added another one to the list of their home favourite Bradley Dredge, when he triumphed in The 2007 Celtic Manor Wales Open.
The diminutive South African stood tall when all around him shrunk back from the challenge to pick up the €368,812 (£250,000) first prize to move to fourth on The European Tour Order of Merit and also gain automatic entry into next month’s Open Championship at Carnoustie through the Official World Golf Ranking.
Sterne carded a final round 65 for a 13 under par total of 263 to relegate a quartet of players, including Dredge, to a share of second on 12 under par 264. But the bare statistics do little to describe the drama and tension apparent on the Roman Road course on an incredible final afternoon.
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In his native country he is known as “The Tank.”
What K.J. Choi did to his fellow competitors Sunday at Muirfield Village Golf Club was something of a blitzkrieg. Five back at the start of a soggy day, Choi fired a closing 7-under-par 65 and steamrolled the field to win his fifth PGA TOUR title at the Memorial Tournament presented by Morgan Stanley.
“I won’t be your translator, I can tell you that,” said tournament founder and host Jack Nicklaus after Choi saved par on four of the final five holes to preserve a one-stroke victory against Ryan Moore. “You won’t know how it will come out.”
With a record-tying final-round score first established by Jim Furyk in 2002, Choi completed 72 holes at perfectly manicured and effectively defenseless Muirfield Village in 17-under 271 and delivered in plain body language a message that could not be misunderstood.
Choi cemented his reputation as a steely competitor — tank-like, matching his broad build — and as a proficient scorer all in one timely round that meant more to him that he had cared to let on until the trophy was his.
“It’s very meaningful. It’s hard to describe in words how meaningful it is,” said Choi, 37, of South Korea, who has now posted a victory for the third consecutive season. “I just feel very honored and very happy to be living in the same age, same period of time as Jack is living, and to win his tournament is so meaningful to me. I can only think this was meant to be.”
He can say that because when he was a prep school student, his physical education teacher, seeing potential in young Kyoung-Ju, presented him with a golf instruction book, “Golf My Way,” translated into Korean. The author: Jack Nicklaus.
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