Watching Tiger Woods playing over the last 3 weeks has been truly awesome. Mixed in with some great play by Phil Mickelson, Steve Stricker (in particular), Rory Sabitini, and Steve Verplank the FedEx Cup was actually more entertaining that I first thought it would.

Saturday at East Lake was particularly inspired with the play of Geoof Olgilvy (62) and by Zach Johnson’s 60. Who says low scores aren’t fun to watch. But none of them could do much more than creep up on Tiger’s 63 for the day… and none could duplicate their scores of Saturday to make a run on Sunday.

Tiger’s 2007 season with the 7 wins could have been even more spectacular if not for putting well at the Master’s and the US Open.

And the scary part is he looks more comfortable driving the golf ball than ever. If he continues to hit 60-70% of the fairways as he has in this latest run, look out even more. Another amazing stat that came out this week: Tiger is#1 in closest to the hole from 150-175 yards and from 175-200 yards on tour. He doesn’t even need a driver, so what happens when he really gets comfortable as he is now?

Scott Bess is a long, long time friend of mine. We started playing golf together when we were about 15 or 16 years old. Scott was #1 on my Hickman High School golf team and was a big part of the team winning 3 state titles in a row. My senior year we won the title by 13 strokes, beating Tom Watson’s team by 27 strokes, they were favored to win. Yes, it was that Tom Watson. Scott finished 2nd in the state behind Tom, Jeff Smith and I finished tied for 7th and Tom Dersham, finished 12th in the state. We pretty much lapped everyone that year.

Scott was also the only golfer to beat Tom in the Missouri State Amateur tournament that Tom started winning when he was about 17 or 18 years old. Watson won 5 out of 6 years, only being beaten by Scott.

After college Scott turned pro and has been playing and working in the golf industry his whole life. And he is funny.

He sent this to me today and I couldn’t resist posting it:

“I was thinking to myself the other day that it had been so long since I had a hole-in-one, that I couldn’t remember the last one.  Somebody asked me how many I had and I said 6, then later remembered another to make 7.  To be clear, I was thinking that almost every day in the paper somebody has one at a nearby course, and I was feeling left out.

In short, I guess I need to keep my hole-in-one stories to myself, but I had to tell somebody!  S”

Can’t wait for your 9th one!

 It was great to see Anika in the mix, but what a great story it would have been if Chritina Kim had won sending the Solheim team off to Sweden not knowing if it had the best team going. Lots of fun on a real sun baked nothing looking golf course. I mean, wheat fields in the background? Couldn’t State Farm have ponied up for a better golf course, or at least make it look like it had been watered some time prior to the tournament?

Steinhauer completes State Farm victory

By JAN DENNIS Associated Press

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – Sherri Steinhauer was resigned to a playoff after her bunker shot rolled off the green on the 72nd hole of the LPGA State Farm Classic.

Instead, her 23-foot par putt from the first cut of rough fell into the cup, capping a wild finish that handed the 44-year-old Steinhauer her eighth career title and just the fifth wire-to-wire win on the LPGA Tour this year.

“I was just thinking two-putt and go for a playoff. Give it a chance, but just two-putt and go in the playoff and see what will happen. It went in. It was amazing,” Steinhauer said after her first win since the 2006 Women’s British Open.

The four-time U.S. Solheim Cup player shot a 5-under 67 to finish at 17-under 271, holding off a late charge by Christina Kim at Panther Creek Country Club.

The 23-year-old Kim closed with a 66. She tied for the lead briefly after holing the last of three closing birdies, a 28-foot putt from the fringe on the 18th.

Playing a hole behind Kim, Steinhauer answered, sinking a 25-foot birdie putt on the par-3 17th to get to 17 under.

Steinhauer needed just a par on 18 to win the $195,000 top prize, but had to scramble after her second shot found the bunker and her sand shot went long.

For the entire post, click here.

Siting needing to keep a balance in his life, Phil sticks it to the commissioner and decides not to show up at Cog Hill.

I think Phil will be roundly criticized for this decision taking some of the pressure off of Tiger’s decision the prior week for almost the same reasons.

Actually I think the competition of the FedEx has been better than I would have thought. When you get this many great players on really good and fair golf courses, the talent really gets going. Now we’ve had two great finishes in successive weeks, great TV indeed.

So maybe the commissioner got someting right after all.

I think Brandel Chamblee of the Golf Channel said it right on Monday evening (I paraphrase): “Phil has as much talent as Tiger, he just hasn’t been able to show it consistently.”

Mickelson 23 putts on Sunday. Woods was putting for eagles on 4 holes and played them 3 under. Mickelson wasn’t putting for eagle on any of them and played them 4 under. Woods shoot 4 under pa while taking 32 putts. You can argue that this is another event that Tiger should have and could have won if his putting had been sharper. but that is how good it gets at this level and how putting is what really separates the end of the day. Mickelson hit like 51 of 53 putts inside of 8 feet… give me a break.

But even more amazing is that Phil won with a triple bogie on Friday and a double bogie on Monday! I can’t even imagine making a triple bogie and still shooting under par for the day.

Now Phil is thinking about not playing at Cog Hill. Now that would be fun. I hope he plays!