- Mark It With An Asterisk?:  With streaking Lorena Ochoa taking the week off, it might seem tempting to place an asterisk beside the winning name at the inaugural Stanford International Pro-Am this week in Aventura, Florida.  Of course, there are still any number of elite players present, not the least of which is Hall-of-Famer Annika Sorenstam, who has finished a combined 45 strokes behind Ochoa in the four events in which they’ve both competed, but is going for her second Ochoa-free 2008 victory.  Sorenstam currently sits alone in 2nd place at the halfway mark, one stroke behind Young Kim and four ahead of Americans Paula Creamer and Angela Stanford.  Also notable is the 7th-place standing of Grace Park, former Kraft Nabisco champion and six time LPGA winner, who has struggled with back and neck injuries for several years now.  The stylish Park made some brief noise at March’s Safeway International with a third-round 65 (her first sub-70 round of 2008) and played three solid rounds at last week’s Ginn Open (72-71-71) before a closing 77 dropped her to a tie for 61st.  This week, Park opened with 72-69 at the Turnberry Isle Resort & Club, a solid start that has her in an eight-player logjam seven strokes off the lead that includes Juli Inkster, Christina Kim, Cristie Kerr and Mi Hyun Kim, among others.  At this point, any win – Ochoa or no Ochoa – would suit Grace Park just fine.

- Golf In The Olympics:  Golf last appeared in the Olympics in 1904, and to celebrate the 104th anniversary of the occasion, the game has been invited to present its case (along with softball, baseball, rugby, squash, karate and roller sports) to be one of two sports added for the 2016 games.  The leaders of all seven candidate sports will make their arguments before the International Olympic Committee executive board in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 14 months, with the full IOC then deciding which two to admit later in Copenhagen.  Most of golf’s top worldwide organizations (e.g. the USGA, the R&A, the PGA of America and various PGA Tours) support the game’s return to the Olympics, and several high-profile players (most notably Phil Mickelson) have recently voiced their support.  So...does anyone really care?  Perhaps I’m just generally less enamoured with the Olympics than most, but with four Major championships, a Players Championship, Ryder/Presidents Cups, WGC events and numerous other prestigious tournaments being played out annually on tours around the world, will it make any difference to anyone which professionals finish 1st, 2nd and 3rd in a pseudo-exhibition match played over some generically boring course, hugely overshadowed by tradition Olympic favorites like soccer, basketball and track & field?  Further, with golf’s costs ever rising and its popularity declining (at least in America), don’t the game’s great visionaries have more important things to worry about than the Olympics?  I’m not in favor of Olympic golf, I’m not opposed to Olympic golf.  I simply couldn’t care less about Olympic golf.  Now roller derby roller sports, well, that might be intriguing...