One change in the Rules of Golf came five years too late for Jeff Maggert. Golf’s governing bodies said Wednesday they have amended 28 of the 34 rules starting in 2008, with only a few significant changes. One of them is when a ball deflects off a player, which is what happened to Maggert in the final round of the 2003 Masters.
Boo Weekley was deep in the woods at dark for a quiet celebration. It was opening day of bow hunting season in Florida. “I ain’t been able to hunt on opening day of bow season in six years,” Weekley said. “I had to golf. I had to make money to keep my Nationwide Tour card or to get ready for Q-school. Dude, I was so excited.
Ernie Els could win his third Order of Merit title without even taking a swing at the season-ending Volvo Masters. Els leads last year’s winner Padraig Harrington by $313,892 in the European Tour standings, but could be surpassed this weekend as he is playing in Singapore — not Sotogrande — on the Asian Tour.
Most players used to come to Disney to play golf and enjoy the theme parks. As the final tournament of the PGA Tour season, the Children’s Miracle Network Classic has a much more serious tone this year. Most guys here are simply trying to save their jobs. No one feels it quite like Ted Purdy, who has plunged from No.
Someone once told Paul Goydos he should go into the record books for his victory at the Sony Open for becoming the first player to win a PGA Tour event against a field that included a 5-foot boy and a 6-foot girl. One was Tadd Fujikawa. The other was Michelle Wie. Both are teenagers from Oahu who turned pro before they finished 11th grade and before they had a driver’s license.
Michelle Wie will skip the Japanese tour’s Casio World Open next month as she has yet to fully recover from injuries, the tournament sponsor said Tuesday. The 18-year-old Wie went through a rough season in 2007 with injuries to both her wrists. Wie, who is in her freshman year at Stanford, had played twice in the Casio World Open, one of Japan’s men’s richest tournaments.
Daniel Chopra was born in Sweden, raised in India by grandparents and had to fly overseas just to buy golf balls. He spent time on about every pro tour imaginable, and those stops flashed through his mind as he stood over the final putt. “You never know how you’re going to react,” Chopra said. He reacted just fine — and got his first PGA Tour victory.
Jim Thorpe got the crystal and a $442,000 check. Loren Roberts got the cup and a lot more money down the road. Thorpe successfully defended his title in the Charles Schwab Championship, birdieing the final four holes Sunday to win the Champion Tour’s season-ending event for the third time in five years.
Marc Turnesa won the Miccosukee Championship for his first Nationwide Tour title, closing with a 1-under 70 on Sunday for a one-stroke victory over David Mathis and Canadian Jon Mills in the final full-field event of the year Turnesa earned $103,500 to jump from 43rd to 13th on the money list with $235,158, locking up a 2008 PGA Tour card with just the season-ending Nationwide Tour Championship…
Suzann Pettersen needed all of her seven-stroke lead — and then some — in the Honda LPGA Thailand. Tied for the lead with Laura Davies after a three-putt bogey on 17, the Norwegian star made up for all those lost strokes with an eagle on the Pattaya Old Course’s 479-yard, par-5 finishing hole. She hit a “grip-down” 3-wood from 225 yards to 15 feet, then made the dramatic putt to beat Davies by a…