Ogilvy wins World Golf Championship

With Tiger Woods all but out of the picture for the first time in nine months, an all-star cast of golf's other big names had a rare opportunity Monday to grab the hardware that the game's No. 1 player has been loath to share.

Woods has so dominated the golf headlines of late that it was difficult to determine the next wave of contenders, but there were Geoff Ogilvy, Retief Goosen, Vijay Singh and Jim Furyk -- major championship winners all -- battling for a World Golf Championship title.

They didn't exactly distinguish themselves with fine play down the stretch at the Doral Golf Resort in the weather-delayed CA Championship, pointing out again the difficulty of closing out tournaments, and winning at the rate Woods does.

Ogilvy prevailed by a stroke over Goosen, Furyk and Singh, failing to birdie any of the nine holes he played Monday morning and getting the kind of good fortune that Woods believes is paramount to winning. The eventual winner chipped in for an improbable par at the par-3 13th hole from 30 feet moments after flubbing a chip shot in the rough. Had the ball not struck the flagstick and dropped, it would have gone 15 feet past the hole.

It was Ogilvy's fourth PGA Tour title, to go along with wins at the U.S. Open, Accenture Match Play and Tucson Open. "It was a pretty stellar-looking leaderboard over those last nine holes, so satisfying to beat those players and pretty satisfying winning a big one," Ogilvy said...

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World Golf Championship - Round 1 Wrap

Rain started to fall just as Tiger Woods reached the 18th green Thursday, and it soaked him pretty good on the way to the clubhouse.

But it didn't cool him off much. Woods was still steaming after three-putting the final green on the Doral Resort's Blue Monster course, leaving him with a bad bogey that has been uncharacteristic of him during his torrid stretch of late.

"Yeah, I'm pissed,'' Woods said. "You three-putt 18, you're not going to be real happy.'' It says something about the expectation level Woods is bringing to the course these days, because it was certainly no shame to shoot 5-under-par 67 during the opening round of the CA Championship at Doral. Woods has won five straight PGA Tour events and all four of the tournaments he has played this year. Going back to last year, Woods has won six straight official starts around the world and eight of his last nine.

But as he has said all along, Woods started over Thursday, when he had seven birdies and two bogeys, but three times missed putts inside of 7 feet, including two birdie tries after nearly driving a green. "I didn't really do anything all that special today,'' Woods said. "I just kind of hung in there and took care of the par-5s and made a couple of other birdies here and there. All in all, just kind of ground it out.'' Woods trails first-round leaders Geoff Ogilvy and Miguel Angel Jimenez by two strokes in the World Golf Championship event he has won three straight years. He also has three straight victories at Doral, which was a regular PGA Tour stop before becoming a WGC event last year.

Stewart Cink is a shot back of the leaders and Woods is in a five-way tie for fourth along with Phil Mickelson, Adam Scott, Nick O'Hern and Anders Hansen.

Warm up stretches for golf (video: golf erercises)

Warming up for golf is very important, but unlike the tour pros most club golfers don't have 40 minutes or more to warm up. I am no expert so I have found a great video from Ramsay McMaster that will show you a fantastic 5 minute warm up. Ramsay has trained the likes of Arron Baddeley, Henrik Stenson and Geoff Ogilvy and really knows what he is talking about.

If you can get to the course 10 mintes early and perform these exercises I believe that you will be able to knock a few shots off your early hole scores.

Australasian golf tour launches with controversy

In its prime the Australian golf tour was one of the top tours in the world. Past Australian open winners include such names as Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. This really shows that this was hardly a backwater event that it has become today.

Every year our (by our I mean Australians) tour launches with the same story. Some of our players are not coming back to play our major tournaments. This year Geoff Ogilvy and Adam Scott will be missing from this weeks Mastercard Masters. Geoff Ogilvy has sighted family reasons and early reports suggest Adam Scott just didn't want to play this week.

Even Robert Allenby has weighed into the debate suggesting that if the top Aussie players don't come back to the tour then the Australian tour will die. However he did mention the pressure put onto the Aussie players to return year after year and reminded the media to go easy of missing players or they will not want to show up next time around

Greg Norman was the perfect example of how this pressure from the media has hindered our tour. Every time he returned he had to field questions and hear scathing attacks on him for not returning for events - so he just stopped showing up.

I know these golfers have such a long season, but I also know the people of Austrlaia would love to see our top players each year. I don't know the solution, but I do know that the top 2 Aussie golfers will be missing this week and that is a real shame.

Australian golf is still producing some of the worlds top players, but our tour is a shambles. The Mastercard Masters is co-sanctioned by the European Tour (a step in the right direction), but only one European Tour player from the top 100 will be playing.

I would love to hear other opinions - feel free to leave a comment.