- Beating A Dead Horse:  It won’t accomplish much to tee off on John Daly at this point (and besides, I was well ahead of my time in doing so two weeks ago…) but when, if ever, will his off-the-course conduct finally be deemed detrimental enough to get Tim Finchem meaningfully involved?  Getting cut loose by Butch Harmon is almost a non-story; that a relationship between a teacher demanding total focus and a student who has none didn’t work out is perhaps the most predictable piece of PGA Tour news since Seve Ballesteros shooting 86 at last year’s Masters.  Of obviously bigger concern is Daly’s spending last Saturday drinking with fans in a hospitality tent after missing yet another cut, a practice which may have been considered colorful in Walter Hagen’s day, but which is utterly anathema to today’s image-conscious PGA Tour.  So now Big (Huge?) John has no teacher, no status, no discipline and – again rather predictably – no game to boot.  What he does appear to have, however, is an endless string of sponsor’s exemptions – though it’s getting harder and harder to understand why.

- Quotable:  “I hope things get better.  I think we all do.” – Phil Mickelson, with admirable tact, on John Daly.

- Headline of the Year?:  Doug Ferguson’s AP story on the Daly situation made mention of the legendary 18 which Long John recorded on Bay Hill’s par-5 6th hole in 1998, an occasion which led Golf World to title their obligatory sidebar “Playing A Quick 18.”  This reminded me of an equally good story title which recently appeared on my friend Geoff Shackelford’s website on the occasion of the likeable Arjun Atwal – then facing potential vehicular homicide charges (since dropped) stemming from a 2007 Orlando accident – heading off to play in his home country’s first European Tour event, the Indian Masters: “Atwal Looking To Put India Golf On The Map; And Possibly Flee There Permanently”...

- The Lines of Communication:  Speaking of the Far East, I would love to have been fly on the wall when Chris DiMarco broke the news to his family that he would be journeying all the way to Jeju Island, South Korea to enter this week’s inaugural Ballantine’s Championship – as opposed to playing at Bay Hill, which is located roughly 20 minutes from his home in Orlando.

- The Next Rule 78?:  And on the subject of Bay Hill, we have the unfortunate DQs of Ryuji Imada and Nick O’Hern, which were made necessary when neither was readily available to fill in after John Daly – for once an innocent man, apparently – missed his tee time in Wednesday’s pro-am.  I fully understand the PGA Tour’s rule stipulating that players scheduled to play in Wednesday events will be declared “ineligible” (read DQ’d) should they fail to appear without a valid, documentable excuse; as few professionals really enjoy spending six hours dodging shanks and giving tips to 30 handicappers, without such a rule, the entire Tour might go missing.  But to start disqualifying the next-in-lines because they weren’t standing by, waiting patiently, just in case someone else no-shows…  Well, that seems a bit much.  Actually, if Daly’s version of things – that a volunteer mistakenly gave him his Thursday tee time when he called for his pro-am info – is correct, then I’m not sure how right it is for the Tour to declare him “ineligible” either.  Perhaps another Players Advisory Council meeting is in order to figure out a more equitable approach...