JamesCatledgeBio.com

John Daly has become the fourth player to withdraw from the BMW PGA Championship, pulling out after 14 holes of the second round because of a hip injury.

The two-time major winner was 12 over par and set to miss the cut at Wentworth on Friday.

Jose Maria Olazabal (back), Paul Waring (hand) and Robert-Jan Derksen (rib) dropped out of the tournament in Thursday’s opening round.

Daly’s withdrawal leaves one American in the field — 489th-ranked Anthony Kang, who shot a 6-over 77 on Thursday and is battling to qualify for the weekend.

Daly is scheduled to play in the Wales Open next week at Celtic Manor, but it is unclear if the injury will keep him out.

Continue reading: http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/news/story?id=6598336&campaign=rss&source=GOLFHeadlines

Tags: Uncategorized by James Catledge
Comments Off

Masters champion Charl Schwartzel has become the sixth South African golfer to be given honorary life membership of the European Tour.

The seventh-ranked Schwartzel joined Gary Player, Ernie Els, Retief Goosen, Trevor Immelman and Louis Oosthuizen in receiving the award.

“It is a great privilege to honor Charl in this way with the highest award we, as a tour, can bestow,” Tour chief executive George O’Grady said.

Schwartzel birdied the last four holes at Augusta National to win the Masters by two strokes in April, ensuring European Tour members currently hold all four of the majors.

Continue reading: http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/news/story?id=6587223&campaign=rss&source=GOLFHeadlines

Tags: Uncategorized by James Catledge
Comments Off

A lawyer by training, PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem was in his fourth year on the job when Casey Martin sued the tour after it turned down his 1997 request, under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), to use a golf cart in competition. By the time the Supreme Court ruled in Martin’s favor in 2001, the tour had lost in three different courts and taken a beating in the court of public opinion.

“I don’t have any regrets,” Finchem said recently. “I think we handled it right. I think we had to make the case we made.”

The stars — namely Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer — were aligned with the tour and most of its members in opposition to granting a cart to Martin.

To a man, players and officials said their stance was not at all against Martin, but all for asserting walking as fundamental to golf at its highest level and ensuring no exceptions to tour rules for all competitors. Furthermore, they said, allowing a cart for any player would mean granting an unfair advantage and opening a Pandora’s box of potential cart requests from players with varying degrees of ailments.

“The tour didn’t do it to be difficult or obstreperous, but to demonstrate it would maintain the integrity of the sport’s competitions,” said attorney William Maledon, who represented the tour in the District Court trial and in the appeal. “As difficult as this was for everybody, this truly was a matter of principle.”

Before Martin’s attorney, William Wiswall, filed suit, he said he sent the tour a videotape and other evidence of Martin’s disability, a debilitating and incurable circulatory disease called Klippel Trenaunay Weber syndrome that made walking the golf course perilous and prohibitive.

Continue reading: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/otl/news/story?id=6561119&campaign=rss&source=GOLFHeadlines

Tags: Uncategorized by James Catledge
Comments Off

Dan from Chicago: “At what point do people really start to question whether or not Tiger was ever taking performance enhancing drugs? … Tiger got big and ripped in a hurry and with the rash of injuries recently, it has to raise an eyebrow, don’t you think?”

From a golf fan named Cameron: “His aggressive/sexual behavior and broken-down body are very typical results of PEDs. Obviously no concrete evidence, but also obviously worth discussing.”

From another golf follower named J. Stellato: “Did he use PEDs? … If we ask these questions in other sports and athletes, maybe it’s time to take a closer look at Tiger and see what his legacy was built on.”

And these are the calm, reasoned emails. You should read some from the fanatics.

Anyway, the Tiger Woods ice floe of invincibility continues to melt slowly away. Blame it on global credibility warming.

Woods has a problem and it goes way beyond whether he’ll be able to compete in next month’s U.S. Open at Congressional. (He said on Monday he intends to try.) The problem is this: People don’t know if they can believe him anymore.

Questions about the connection between his latest knee/Achilles injury and possible PED use were inevitable, even predictable. Woods is 35. His body is breaking down. It has to be the aftereffects of Vitamin S injections, right?

Actually, no, it doesn’t.

“It appears he strained his MCL [medial collateral ligament],” said Dr. Alexis Chiang Colvin, an orthopedic surgeon and assistant professor of sports medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. “That’s pretty unusual for that to be related to steroid use.”

Continue reading: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=wojciechowski_gene&page=wojciechowski/110517&sportCat=golf&campaign=rss&source=GOLFHeadlines

Tags: Uncategorized by James Catledge
Comments Off

Phil Mickelson hit a shot onto the green and it rolled into the water. Ben Crane hit a shot over an island and it wound up on dry land. Tiger Woodsplayed the shortest tournament of his career.

Even on a relatively calm day, there’s no predicting what might happen at The Players Championship.

The strangest sight of all Thursday was Woods, limping off the ninth green and heading to the parking lot, but not before making a detour to a fitness trailer with a sign painted on the side that said, “Is knee pain holding you back?”

Nine holes into this first tournament since the Masters — where Woods said he had a “minor injury” to his left knee and Achilles — he couldn’t go on. He withdrew after a 42 on the front nine, his highest 9-hole score ever at the TPC Sawgrass.

“I’m having a hard time walking,” he said.

Nick Watney and so many others made it look easy, even though it rarely is on this crazy course.

One week after he missed the cut for the first time in nearly a year, Watney opened with an 8-under 64 for a one-shot lead over Lucas Glover. Not only was it Watney’s best score at Sawgrass by four shots, he had a double bogey early in his round.

“Last week in Charlotte, I got off to a bad start and I never really righted the ship,” Watney said. “So today to have a bad hole like that and still play a good round is a rewarding feeling, just because I didn’t let it affect the rest of my day.”

Glover atop the leaderboard was not unusual, not after he won last week at the Wells Fargo Championship to end a two-year drought since his U.S. Open title. He played the par-5 16th and the par-3 17th in eight shots, but not the way he would have thought. He hit into the water on the 16th to make bogey on the easiest hole at Sawgrass, then knocked in a 20-foot birdie on the island-green 17th.

Continue reading: http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/news/story?id=6535502&campaign=rss&source=GOLFHeadlines

Tags: Uncategorized by James Catledge
Comments Off

PEDRENA, Spain — To the mournful wail of a lone bagpipe, some of Europe’s greatest golfers joined family, friends and local residents Wednesday at the funeral of Seve Ballesteros, paying an emotional final tribute to the dynamic Spaniard who revived the European game.

Ryder Cup captains Nick Faldo, Colin Montgomerie, Ian Woosnam, Sam Torrance and Jose Maria Olazabal and players including Miguel Angel Jimenez marched together in silence as part of the procession from Ballesteros’ family home to the church of San Pedro de Pedrena.

Young boys and girls wore replicas of the navy blue outfit that Ballesteros wore for his first British Open win in 1979. They each held a 3-iron, the only club Ballesteros owned when he learned to play golf.

About 400 people packed the church to provide Ballesteros with one final send-off before his ashes were spread under a magnolia tree at the family home in this tiny fishing village in northern Spain.

Ballesteros, a five-time major winner and Ryder Cup stalwart, died Saturday at age 54 from complications of a cancerous brain tumor.

“He was so young and such a great man. A great champion — the best Europe ever had,” Torrance said.

Continue Reading: http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/news/story?id=6525631&campaign=rss&source=GOLFHeadlines

Tags: Uncategorized by James Catledge
Comments Off

Seve Ballesteros’ condition has severely deteriorated more than two years after the 54-year-old former golf great had surgery to remove a cancerous brain tumor.

He is being cared for at home in the northern Spanish town of Pedrena, where he has mostly been since undergoing four operations in late 2008, his family said Friday. A statement on the golfer’s website said his “neurological condition has suffered a severe deterioration.”

“The family will inform accordingly about any change in his health condition and takes this opportunity of thanking everyone for the support that both Seve and his own family have been receiving during all this time,” the statement added

Ballesteros won three British Opens and two Masters with a game marked by spectacular improvisational play. One of the best-known personalities in Spain and the golfing world, he also won 50 times on the European Tour and is widely credited with transforming European golf.

Spanish golfers Jose Maria Olazabal and Miguel Angel Jimenez were visibly upset after finishing their second rounds at the Spanish Open in Terrassa and declined to speak to reporters.

“We tried to talk to them after their rounds but they couldn’t even speak because they were crying. They couldn’t even talk,” Spanish Open spokeswoman Maria Acacia Lopez-Bachiller told The Associated Press by telephone. “This had to be the saddest competition in terms of ambiance today. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Continue reading: http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/news/story?id=6491637&campaign=rss&source=GOLFHeadlines

Tags: Uncategorized by James Catledge
Comments Off

As he was hitting from between two cabins that nobody ever dreamed were in play or making a mess of the par-3 12th hole at Augusta National or slumping in despair after a wayward tee shot, Rory McIlroy was on his way to Masters infamy.

By squandering a four-shot, 54-hole lead last month at the Masters, the Northern Irishman suffered the biggest meltdown of a third-round leader in 15 years — since Greg Normanblew a six-shot advantage.

So who better to discuss dealing with such a calamity than the Great White Shark himself.

“I had a good chat with Greg Norman the week after, when I was in Malaysia,” McIlroy said.

His advice?

“Don’t listen to you guys.”

Ah, stay away from the media. McIlroy, 21, smirked, but went on to share Norman’s wisdom.

“He sort of just said to me, from now on, don’t read golf magazines, don’t pick up papers, don’t watch the Golf Channel,” McIlroy said. “But it’s hard not to. Obviously you want to keep up to date with what’s going on. But you can’t let other people sort of influence what you’re thinking and what you should do.

“I’ve taken my own views from what happened a few weeks ago and moved on, and that’s the most important thing.”

McIlroy is making his first U.S. appearance since the Masters at this week’s Wells Fargo Championship, where he is the defending champion at Quail Hollow Golf Club.

Continue reading: http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/columns/story?columnist=harig_bob&id=6468109&campaign=rss&source=GOLFHeadlines

Tags: Uncategorized by James Catledge
Comments Off