"Ochoa should have won this major by now."

On the eve of the first women's major of the year, Doug Ferguson compares the remarkably similar starts to 2008 shared by Lorena Ochoa and Tiger Woods, but he also considers Ochoa's struggles at Mission Hills.

Two years ago, she tied an LPGA major record with a 10-under 62 in the opening round and still had a three-shot lead going into Sunday until a meltdown on the back nine. Ochoa recovered with an eagle on the final hole to get into a playoff against Karrie Webb, who won on the first extra hole.

Ochoa was tied for the lead going into the weekend last year and looked poised as ever until she missed the par-3 17th green, whiffed on a wedge, took three putts once she got on the green and took quadruple bogey that effectively knocked her out of the tournament.

Moments like that are what makes winning even harder.

The Kraft Nabisco is the only LPGA major that has been played on the same course every year, which makes it similar to the Masters in that respect - and only that respect. Augusta National does not have a Wienermobile next to the practice green.

Geoff Ogilvy spoke recently about why the Masters has such a long list of players who never won a green jacket, and he mentioned the familiarity of the course breeding so much contempt.

"There are demons that don't go away," Ogilvy said. "If you have a few close calls at the U.S. Open, you're always doing it somewhere else. If you have demons at Augusta, which everybody does, guys always remember."

Great as she is, Ochoa's biggest challenge will be to bury those memories.

"I already erased them," she insisted. "I only feel good things about this course, and good vibes and good memories. Of course, you're going to make mistakes and have a few bad holes, like what happened on 17 last year. I struggled on holes 13, 14 and 15. They were holes that I played over par, and I'm going to work on those this year and make sure I play that stretch in a positive way.

"And I think that will really help get a good result on Sunday."

"He has zero interest in building the world's largest waterfall."

Alan Shipnuck profiles Adam Scott's efforts to improve his short game and ready himself for a Masters run, and includes this anecdote about his forays into golf course design.

"When he takes on a project, he dives in," says Adam's father, Phil, a prominent course designer in Australia. "He has been candid that last year he felt a bit distracted by all the decisions he had to make off the course." Last year the Scotts collaborated on Crooked River Golf Club, which will be the first Adam Scott signature design when it opens in 2010. Located in Kimana, 90 miles south of Sydney, the enticing site features rolling heathland, winding creeks and old-growth forests. After walking the land on a half-dozen occasions, Adam has come up with an old-school design featuring narrow fairways and small greens framed by challenging runoff areas. "His tastes are from a different era," says Phil. "He has zero interest in building the world's largest waterfall."

Well the waterfall part is good, but we definitely need to have someone explain to Adam that old-school is not narrow fairways and small greens! 

"He does, though, feel he makes an important contribution around the world in promoting golf."

Norman Dabell quotes Monty's agent, who tries to soften the blow of Monday's remarks about Augusta National's exemption policy.

"Colin completely understands Augusta's right to promote themselves," his manager Guy Kinnings told Reuters. "The last thing he would want to do is show disrespect or tell them who they should or should not invite."

Well I don't know if that's the last thing he would want, but...

"He's done everything he can to be there, including changing his schedule, and he's just very disappointed because he values the tournament so highly. He does, though, feel he makes an important contribution around the world in promoting golf."

Ah yes, we know how highly he thinks of himself, but thanks for the reminder. 

"One veteran wondered aloud how a guy with 64 career starts can carry himself as a player with 15 wins or 15 years in the big leagues."

John Hawkins weighs in on the Bubba Watson outburst with a less than ringing endorsement for Bubba's ways. And not to pile on, but there was also this incident to remember back in January.

"It is a strange way to make up a field for a Major championship – television rights."

Mount Monty blows! The old bird couldn't even wait until the end of the week.

James Corrigan has the tantrum:

The Scot will miss Augusta for only the second time in 17 years after slipping down to No 75 in the world rankings when he needed to be in the top 50 before yesterday's qualification cut-off point. But while lower ranked players from China, Thailand and India have received special invitations to play the first major of the season, the 44-year-old said he will be at home "washing his car". And he revealed that that is because the Asian countries have huge television markets.

See, it's not an April Fool's Day joke. The giveaway: Monty can't wait to wash his car. Brilliant he says.

Oh here's the part that will ensure he's never invited to the Masters: 

"There has been no call from Augusta and I am not expecting one," he said in Munich at a promotional event for June's BMW International Open. "Now, if I were the only person in the country, à la China, I might get in. It is a strange way to make up a field for a Major championship – television rights. They are quite open about why. They were when I missed out last time in 2005 when they picked Shingo Katayama who was 67th in the world and I was 51st. They picked him over me for the Japanese rights. And they have done the same with Thailand and China this time.

"I am not the only one who feels that way and not just because I am not in. In or not I'd be saying the same thing. It is a strange criterion to pick a major field.

"The Masters is the only one you can get invited to. At the Open, the US Open and the USPGA you have to qualify. But the Masters have their own rules so we will leave them to it. It would be easier to swallow if no one was invited and it was done on sporting and not commercial criteria."

And in lieu of a April Fool's Day prank, I give you Mike Aitken's exclusive one-on-one with Monty about the state of his personal life, published in January. It just feels like an April Fool's prank when he writes that Monty was one of Great Britain's most eligible bachelors and that he said his fingers were cut up from moving boxes. But wait, there's the line about the car washing.

Ah just hit the link, sit back and giggle.

Update on 2008-04-01 15:01 by Geoff

Scott Michaux fires back at Monty on the Augusta Chronicle blog.

"We should have caught that for prime time and didn't."

Steve Elling, the Hogan, Snead, Nicklaus and Woods of press room cussing, a true master of the medium, says these fancy new microphones picking up saucy language may turn out to be a very, very...bad thing?

But still, there's no reason the masses in the audience must be involuntarily subjected to Watson's screed, right? Some citizens, not to mention the FCC, take a dim view of this sort of speech.

Someone has lived in Orlando way too long. This is interesting:

Oddly, the Golf Channel rightly saw fit to bleep out the objectionable language in its post-game news show, where the disagreement between Watson and Elkington was examined in detail, but let the objectionable language fly live and nationwide in the raw replay. That's irresponsible or lazy, if not a bit of both. According to Golf Channel spokesman Dan Higgins, there is no fabled seven-second delay on the broadcasts and the re-airing of the comments without editing was a mistake the network acknowledges.

"That's something we have to improve upon," Higgins said Monday. "We should have caught that for prime time and didn't."

I seem to recall the "crawl" during the rebroadcast was offering up a teaser about the incident. Hmmm...

If you didn't catch Bubba apologizing to God, country and every volunteer who has ever been subjected to an entertaining on course spat between millionaires, here it is on PGATour.com.

"Rather than becoming the hit it seemed destined to be, Sonartec – almost inconceivably – has halted operation."

Adam Schupak pens an exhaustive autopsy of Sonartek's demise.

Monty Missing Masters; Can Spend More Time Putting Finishing Touches On Pre-Nup

Lawrence Donegan notes that the world's No. 75 player will now have more time to prepare for this April 17th wedding.

Why People Hate The Rules Files: Stewart Cink DQ'd In N.O.

Jason Sobel explains what happened to Cink and John Vander Borght explains the thinking behind the rule, which makes little sense. Why can't we just play it as it lies? Sheesh.

"Oh, I puked my guts out, no doubt about it."

No matter what you think of Woody Austin, you have to love his honest take on Sunday's final hole meltdown in New Orleans where Andres Romero took the title. Photo courtesy of golf.com.

His post round comments:

Q. Woody, tough day out there today. It's tough to say, but you admitted it, you said you choked it coming in the last nine holes.

WOODY AUSTIN: Oh, I puked my guts out, no doubt about it. I didn't have control of my golf swing and I put two hands on the steering wheel and was trying to steer it around, and it caught me at the end.

Q. Talk me through 18 because we got you on our sound talking to Brent about that second shot. You wanted to go for it, and it sounded like he wanted you to lay up.

WOODY AUSTIN: Well, I mean, he was just asking if he thought I could get it out, and I could have got it out. The only reason why I topped it or whatever is because I didn't go down in and get it. Again, I flinched, like I said, and it really -- it really wasn't that hard a shot as I made it out to be. But again, like I said, I'm not afraid to admit, when I choke, I choke, and I choked.

Update on 2008-03-31 13:43 by Geoff

John Strege chimes in on Woody Austin and Sunday's final round.

Cast Your Vote...If You Don't Mind Signing Your Life Away

GolfDigest.com has posted the final five candidates for the amateur golfer spot in the pre-U.S. Open reality show.

I would vote, but I'm not really interested in sharing that much information, all so that I can cast a ballot for someone I don't know.

That said, I'm officially endorsing Santa Monica policeman Matt Rice, who gets my thumb's up despite listing Lost Canyons as his home course instead of Rustic Canyon (which, I might note Officer, is much more affordable on a cop salary). Naturally, I want to be on the record endorsing him should I ever be pulled over by Officer Rice here in my hometown.

"Mr. Thomas is convinced current regulations will keep it capped."

John Paul Newport profiled Frank Thomas and his new book in the WSJ and it's interesting to read what he thinks has slowed down distance gains.

Mr. Thomas, who in 1984 revised and strengthened a regulation specifically banning spring-like effect, believes the USGA should have stopped the new clubs with spring-like effect as soon as they were discovered, because they only created potential expense and problems for the game (such as the need for longer courses) and violated tradition. "The first paragraph of the first equipment regulation published by the USGA in 1909 prohibited clubs that 'contain any mechanical contrivance, such as a spring,' " Mr. Thomas noted. But instead, over his objections, the organization in 1998 merely set a limit on spring-like effect a little above the then-current levels. That decision, he believes, was primarily motivated by fear of lawsuits from clubmakers who were already marketing the clubs.

Combined with simultaneous advances in ball technology, swing-motion analysis, player training and agronomy, spring-like effect boosted the average drive on the PGA Tour an alarming 24 yards from 1995 to 2003. But in the last five years the distance creep has slowed (the average is actually down a bit so far this year) and Mr. Thomas is convinced current regulations will keep it capped.

Coliseum Game

I'll get back to posting about golf tomorrow. However I thought the baseball fans out there might enjoy a couple images from Saturday's Dodgers-Red Sox game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Dodgers' move to L.A. from Brooklyn.

(Click to enlarge) 
(Click to enlarge)

"But I mostly sat around talking to the guys about stuff guys talk about in locker rooms."

John Huggan talks to Geoff Ogilvy about his win at Doral on the eve of the Masters.

Rain delays during both the third and fourth rounds forced the event into a fifth day, a state of affairs that inevitably weighs heaviest on the man with most to lose, the tournament leader.

"The last thing I wanted was more time to think about what was going on," admits Ogilvy. "Everyone who plays golf knows that the more you think about something the worse it generally gets. So sitting around wasn't great. I just had to sit around and wait because we never knew exactly what was going to happen. My wife and kids came over for a bit.

"But I mostly sat around talking to the guys about stuff guys talk about in locker rooms. Sex and sports basically!

"Having said that, I enjoyed playing in the last group on Saturday, even with the delays. For me, it was an ideal pairing. I play with Adam (Scott] all the time and who doesn't want to play with Tiger in the last group? So that was perfect."

"No, guys, it's normally bigger than this, I swear!"

Connell Barrett talks to David Feherty about his bike accident. While Feherty is in top form comically, this caught my eye:

I was writhing around, unable to breathe. I said to myself, 'If I pass out, am I coming back?' I remember feeling that if this is it for me, I'm not unhappy. I've done all right. I was ready to go, if it was going to happen. I wasn't afraid. I also remember a woman stopping. She came over and held my hand, asking, "Can you hear me?" She stayed with me until the paramedics came. I couldn't talk, but I could listen, and I remember her voice. I haven't been able to find out who she is yet. If you're out there, call me. I'd love to say thank you.