Kraft Nabisco Championship - Rancho Mirage, CA

                        CURRENT LEADERBOAD          SATURDAY TEE TIMES

               FRIDAY INTERVIEWS:     OCHOA     SORENSTAM     YOUNG     KIM

- To Play Or Not To Play: Among a number of the modern era’s greatest players, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Tiger Woods have seldom elected to play competitively in the week before a Major championship, preferring instead to rest, practice, arrive at the Major venue early, etc.  This week, however, three of the top five players in the world (Phil Mickelson, Steve Stricker and Adam Scott) are among nine top-25s who chose to play at the Shell Houston Open rather than practice/rest for the Masters.  Smart move?  Certainly each of these players knows their own methods of preparing better than anyone else, but it is probably worth noting that of the 152 Major championships contested since 1970, only three times has a winner also won on the PGA Tour the preceding week  The first was Lee Trevino in 1971, who claimed the Canadian and British Opens in back-to-back weeks.  Of course, Trevino was also in the midst a red-hot streak; indeed, by coupling these titles with a U.S. Open victory at Merion two weeks earlier, he completed the unique feat of claiming three national championships in a four week period.  The second double winner was Sandy Lyle in 1988, who took the Greater Greensboro Open seven days prior to his memorable victory (with a 72nd-hole birdie) at the Masters.  The third was Phil Mickelson, who won the 2006 BellSouth title in Atlanta the week before a dramatic 72nd-hole Masters victory of his own.  As Mickelson has observed this week, the type of golf course being played in the warm-up week is a key to this equation; if it bears some stylistic resemblance to the upcoming Major site (as Westchester Country Club did for so many years prior to the U.S. Open), then one might be more inclined to play.  But my question is this: As much as contending and (hopefully) winning can take out of a player, is it the right thing to aim for only days before the crushing pressure of a Major?  And if you’re not going to contend, then what was the point of playing in the first place?

- Welcome To Paradise:  The main goal of resorts ponying up sponsorship money (not to mention their golf courses) for professional events is, quite obviously, to expose their properties to potential guests and generate business.  Thus I always feel a bit sorry for such places when the weather doesn’t cooperate, as it failed to do in Punta Cana yesterday for the opening round of the Champions Tour’s inaugural Cap Cana Championship. Winds widely reported at 25 mph (but which generally looked stronger on TV) blew steadily, raising scores markedly and whipping the adjacent Caribbean surf into a froth.  Now…  I hate to pick on the Golf Channel’s David Marr (because his father, the late 1965 PGA champion Dave, was tremendously nice to me when I was just starting out) but referring to yesterday’s wind-buffeted Punta Cana landscape as “paradise” just might represent taking the standard network shilling a bit too far…

- Quotable: "When you compare it to the other major events, it is the weakest field technically. There are only 90 players (at the Masters); the top 50 players in the world are guaranteed. Of those 90, there are 20 old guys still playing, past champions, who shouldn't be playing golf. So, technically, it's a field of 70." - Stephen Ames' carefully considered thoughts on the Masters.

- Yankee Go Home?:  One tends to think that when a showdown between a billionaire American blowhard (Donald Trump) and elements of the Scottish government over a planned £ 1 billion golf resort community on the Aberdeen coast actually happens, the quality of the golf course itself will never be an issue.  The discussion will surely come down to questions of economics – essentially, is it worth turning the Ugly American loose in order to pick up tourism dollars and jobs – and perhaps for area residents, these are the most important considerations.  But if Trump succeeds in bringing his Martin Hawtree-designed project to fruition, I wonder how the normally staid Scots will react to hearing him proclaim the facility “the greatest golf course in the history of the universe,” “far better than St. Andrews,” “infinitely more championship worthy than the entire Open Championship rota combined,” and so on.  And the use of such ridiculous hyperbole is not as far-fetched as some might think, for Trump used to refer to his mountainous course in Briarcliff Manor as “the best golf course in New York State” (I wonder what his fellow members at Winged Foot – or those of a good 30 more superior Empire State clubs – had to say about that).  Perhaps even more entertaining are his claims that his Los Angeles area club at Palos Verdes (“the world’s first and only Donald J. Trump signature design”) is the best layout in Southern California.  Golfweek apparently felt otherwise, recently rating it an imposing 18th in the state among public-access facilities (private clubs weren't even included).  Anyway, should the Scots let him go ahead with his plans, they cannot say they haven’t been warned.