Lee Westwood defied strong winds to mount yet another title challenge at The Belfry today - and Ryder Cup team-mate Colin Montgomerie was in the hunt as well.

While Swede Martin Erlandsson was still out in front at the Quinn Direct British Masters after his brilliant course-record 63 yesterday, Westwood moved into a share of second place only two behind by covering the back nine in 33.

Montgomerie was only one stroke further back after four birdies in his first seven holes, but did then bogey the difficult 473-yard 18th to match Westwood’s score for the half.

Westwood has finished ninth, sixth and sixth the last three weeks and was particularly disappointed not to win last week’s Mercedes-Benz Championship in Cologne after matching the lowest round of his career with an opening 61.

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Jeff Gove and Chad Campbell are tied atop the leaderboard after the opening round of the Turning Stone Resort Championship.

Both players shot seven-under-par 65s on the first day of the US$6million tournament, leaving them one stroke clear of four players at six under.

Steve Flesch, John Senden, Matthew Goggin and Brendon De Jonge each fired six-under 66s to forge a tie for second place.

Gove offset two bogeys with seven birdies over the first 13 holes at Atunyote Golf Club before punctuating his first round with an eagle on the par-five 18th hole.

The 36-year-old has never finished higher than sixth in a PGA Tour event.

He finished his round before Campbell, who played just as well, recording eight birdies and just one bogey, his closing birdie at the 18th pulling him even with Gove.

John Rollins, who won the BC Open at the same venue last year, is at five under along with John Mallinger, Robert Allenby, Tag Ridings and Matt Hendrix.

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When you talk golf these days, you talk Tiger Woods. And — like it or not — you talk money. A lot of money.

Everyone knows Woods was financially set for life before he teed it up for the first time as a pro on the PGA Tour, having already signed multimillion-dollar endorsement deals with several corporate giants, starting with Nike.

In a decade and change, those endorsement dollars have piled up enormously, in addition to the $76,579,376 US Woods has earned on the PGA Tour, where he’s at 61 victories and counting.

Financial observers have predicted that by 2012 at the latest, Woods will become the first athlete to have a net worth of $1 billion.

But that was before the FedEx Cup came along with the grand prize of a $10-million deferred annuity to go into a player’s retirement plan.

Woods, 31, clinched the inaugural FedEx Cup last weekend at the Tour Championship, and its jaw-dropping to think how much the $10 million will be worth when the world’s No. 1 player turns 60, the age he will be forced to start taking retirement payouts.

Source - www.canada .com/sports

Golf finally joined other major sports Thursday when its leading organizations announced an anti-doping policy that will begin in 2008.

PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, who also serves as chairman of the World Golf Foundation, said the policy includes a list of banned substances, and methods for each golf organization to carry them out.

The list of banned substances includes anabolic agents, hormones, stimulants, narcotics, beta blockers and masking agents. Golf did not adopt the World Anti-Doping Association list because Finchem said it would cause an additional administrative burden and “we do not consider the substances in any way impactful as a performance enhancement.”

The organizations behind the drug policy are the PGA Tour, European Tour, U.S. Golf Association, Royal & Ancient Golf Club, Augusta National Golf Club, PGA of America and the LPGA Tour.

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The $10 million had not been deposited into Tiger Woods’ retirement account when PGA Tour officials huddled at headquarters to begin an exhaustive review of the inaugural FedEx Cup.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for changes.
The big announcement coming out of Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., later this week is a drug policy that will begin in 2008, although the tour continues to move slowly and with an abundance of caution. This is something it must get right the first time.

There was always room for error with the FedEx Cup.

Even before K.J. Choi struck the first tee shot of the season at Kapalua, tour officials conceded they probably would have to make a few changes that wouldn’t be obvious until the FedEx Cup ran its course.

For the most part, they got it right.

They wanted the first eight months of the season to be significant, and one only has to look at Rich Beem for the answer. He played some of his best golf when the PGA Tour Playoffs began, but because he virtually went AWOL from January to the middle of August, he started too far down in the standings to last more than two weeks.

They wanted to define a season champion, and Woods won by a mile. Any questions?

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Tiger Woods shot a final round 66 at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia, to win The Tour Championship, presented by Coca-Cola, and the inaugural FedExCup play-off series, with a 23 under par score of 257 - the lowest of his career.

That total was two strokes better than his previous best at the 2000 WGC - NEC Invitational and the lowest score in the tournament’s history, as well as the largest winning margin, by eight shots from Masters Champion Zach Johnson.

“Winning this week is pretty special,” Woods said after claiming his 61st career victory on the US PGA Tour. “Winning the FedExCup is one thing but you always want to win the Tour Championship. There’s history involved and these are basically the hottest 30 players for the year.

”Woods, three ahead overnight, was four shots in front at the turn and the only suspense on the back nine was how much he would win by and what records he would break along the way.

Johnson (68) and Mark Calcavecchia (71) tied for second on 15 under, with Spaniard Sergio Garcia (70) a further stroke back in fourth place. Vijay Singh of Fiji was tied for seventh with England’s Justin Rose and Open Champion Padraig Harrington of Ireland sharing 11th place after final rounds of 67 and 73 respectively

The damaged greens of East Lake have improved enough to allow the 30 players at the Tour Championship to practice on all but three holes for two days before the opening round, the tour said Monday.

It was a small step toward restoring credibility to the final event of the FedEx Cup. The tour previous said players would not be allowed to hit balls on the green or even walk on them until Thursday because of severe heat that all but killed the strain of grass.

Starting Tuesday, they can play a regular practice round except on the par-3 second, the par-4 13th and par-5 15th. Those greens will remain off limits.

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Tiger Woods surpassed idle Phil Mickelson atop the FedEx Cup standings with a commanding victory at the BMW Championship on Sunday. Steve Stricker sits second at 3,133 points off the lead.

Tiger Woods 112,733
Steve Stricker 109,600
Phil Mickelson 108,613
Rory Sabbatini 103,588
K.J. Choi 103,100
Aaron Baddeley 102,800
Adam Scott 100,227
Jim Furyk 99,838
Vijay Singh 99,214
Sergio Garcia 98,277

Playing next to Tiger Woods for two days was daunting enough. It was when Steve Stricker watched him from 200 yards away on an elevated tee that he realized how tough it would be to beat him Sunday in the BMW Championship.

He arrived on the par-3 12th tee in time to see Woods, in his customary black pants and red shirt, rap a putt that traveled from one side of the green to the other until the ball disappeared after a 50-foot journey and gave Woods an unlikely birdie.

“It looked like he looked back to make sure that we were watching him make birdie,” Stricker said.

Not so, Woods replied.

“I didn’t do a Sergio,” Woods said with a smile, referring to when Sergio Garcia stared him down at nearby Medinah eight years ago in a fruitless chase at the PGA Championship.

Woods only cared about making birdies, and he got enough of them at Cog Hill to close with an 8-under 63 for a two-shot victory over Aaron Baddeley. Along the way, Woods shattered the tournament scoring record, collected his sixth victory on the PGA Tour this year and moved atop the standings in the FedEx Cup with one week remaining.

“If you wanted to win this tournament, you had to make putts,” Woods said. “And I just happened to make them today.”

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