"A few sole practitioners also pursue the art."

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John Paul Newport on golf poetry's possible resurgence, and it's not called Twitter.

A few sole practitioners also pursue the art. Recently I received a self-published collection titled "The Kiss That Cured My Slice" by John Ducker. The title poem describes a round with a beautiful women, never to be seen again, who inspires him to shoot his best-ever score. In another poem the poet tees it up with Madonna, Michael Jackson and Prince, whose ball on the greens never misses the cup and is nicknamed Purple Drain.

But surely the most avid contemporary practitioner is Leon White, a retired MIT professor and health-insurance executive from Massachusetts. He culls old magazines and books for interesting poems, and adds a few he writes himself, for weekly posts on his blog at www.golfpoet.com. Recently he's been experimenting with repurposing golf poem lines as 140-character Tweets, which he calls Twines. An example: "Had Tiger come clean before being hounded, Could he have escaped without being pounded?" So maybe there's hope for golf poetry yet.

"I would say 18 is the worst on tour, except it's not the worst on this golf course, 12 is..."

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This is fun on so many levels.

First you have Phil Mickelson, who bypassed this week's mandatory players meeting in which the commissioner pleaded for no controversial comments from players, choosing to criticize a tour venue's design rather strongly.

Second, the course in question was modified by Tom Fazio's designer at the time, Beau Welling, now Tiger Woods' in-house designer.

And third, the course desperately wants to host a major and this probably isn't going to help.

Steve Elling reports:

"For as beautifully designed as this golf course is from tee to green, the greens are some of the worst designed greens that we have on tour, and 18 is one of them," he said of the final green. "I would say 18 is the worst on tour, except it's not the worst on this golf course, 12 is, and we have some ridiculous putts here that you just can't keep on."

And as Elling suggests, Mickelson made sure to make his point by risking a penalty on 18:

Theatrically, Mickelson tried to make his point clear on the 18th green when he hit his approach shot over the flagstick and had a sloping, 60-footer for birdie that he could not get anywhere near the flag. At least. not without using a pitching wedge and hitting the flagstick with the lob shot.

He ordered caddie Jim Mackay to leave the flagstick in the hole as he putted away from the hole. It was shocking to see, to be sure, and nobody could recall ever witnessing it before in a tour event. If he'd made the putt, which he insisted was an impossibility, he would have been assessed a two-shot penalty.

Tiger Misses Quail Hollow Cut; World Braces For Extensive Overreaction

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After all, this is how he should have played at the Masters, no? Or is this the beginning of a different era, the post-accident Tiger?

Bob Harig's report features Woods' post-round interview and this:

Among the issues: Woods hit just six fairways over two rounds and had back-to-back double bogeys on the 14th and 15th holes.

Now it's on to the Players Championship next week, although Woods first has a weekend off.
"I'll get to watch how it's done," he quipped. "I'll get to see how real golfers do it."

Asked if his problems were due to lack of practice, playing or mechanics, Woods said: "It is what it is. Whatever it was, it wasn't good enough."

Steve Elling writes:

At times, it looked like Icelandic volcano ash was leaking from every orifice, and Woods couldn't get off the course fast enough. For the first time, he mailed it in over the last few holes when any chance of making the cut was history. Woods has repeatedly professed to giving every shot his best effort over the years, but this time, he flat-out quit.

When he four-jacked the 14th hole, he barely waited for the ball to stop rolling before he slapped at it again. When he dunked a ball in the water hazard beside the 13th green with an awful lob shot, he hit a pair of wedge shots without bothering to take a practice swing.

“(The Ryder Cup) is the most important event of the year to him."

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That's Anthony Kim who Rex Hoggard is writing about, according to his swing coach Adam Schreiber. When was the last time you heard of an American circling the Ryder Cup on his schedule? Especially as he faces hand surgery.

The math is simple, at least to a 24-year-old with a bag full of Advil. He wants to play all four majors, secure his spot on captain Corey Pavin’s team and, when the pain becomes too unbearable, have surgery on his thumb, a procedure that will take between two and three months to recover from.

They may not have believed in excuses in the Kim childhood home, and they must not have been big on calendars, either. Not when the last putt at “Glory’s Last Shot” drops 45 days before the United States and Europe resume the Transatlantic grudge match.

Even if he skips the PGA Championship and has the surgery following July’s British Open that would leave little time to rehab his thumb and his game for what is clearly the Super Bowl of Kim’s year.

“(The Ryder Cup) is the most important event of the year to him,” Schreiber said. “So for him to find this out in a Ryder Cup year, it’s pretty challenging.”

For an entertaining look at this week's SI Golf Plus cover shoot of Kim, check out snapper Darren Carroll's blog post and gallery (embedded below) recounting how he got his shots. It's becoming clear that AK has watched one-too-many episodes of Entourage.

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Monty Identifies Vice Captains; World Can Now Go Back To Less Important Matters

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And he's only going with three (Bjorn, McGinley and Olazabal), compared to Captain Pavin's four. For now."

Europe captain Colin Montgomerie identified Thomas Bjorn, Paul McGinley and Jose Maria Olazabal as his ideal choices to be vice captains for the Ryder Cup.

That’s assuming none of them qualify to play.

Montgomerie said Wednesday that he wants Bjorn and McGinley, who have competed in a combined five Ryder Cups, to focus on perhaps making the team over the next couple of months.

“The Americans are having four vice captains. I shall have three, maybe four,” Montgomerie said at the Real Club de Golf in Seville on the eve of the Spanish Open. “But I will not be naming them until after The Open at St. Andrews in July because, with Bjorn and McGinley, I want them to have every chance to make the team as players again.