"Each week, from both sides of the Pond, the twosome of Huggan and CBSSports.com's Steve Elling will kick at corpses and hornet's nests, tip over a few sacred cows, poke and prod..."

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Great news Ty! Your two favorite writers will be gathering in the same spot every week to bicker about golf!

From the first Pond Scrum between Steve Elling and John Huggan at CBSSports.com. The topic is the Hyundai Tournament of Some Champions:

Elling: I have no problem with the notion of appearance fees. The purses in Europe are lower. They need to draw the top guns. The point being, if the PGA Tour's season opener was any more sleep-inducing, they'd need to give hammocks to the 1,000 fans that are actually in attendance. Maybe Mark Rolfing of NBC Sports has it right. Open field to guys who have won over past two years. More warm bodies that way. Then, maybe Hawaii is the right locale for the opener. It's a sleepy start. The whales are cavorting in the Pacific. Sharks like Tiger and Phil stay home. Everybody in the States gets to watch the palm trees swaying in prime time. No stress, no strain ... little drama?
 
Huggan: Open it up to European Tour winners! What a concept, eh? Cooperation between tours.

There was also this from Huggan on young players to watch:

Huggan: Matteo Manassero also springs to mind. But that is hardly an original thought. Pencil this 17-year-old Italian in for the next Ryder Cup in Chicago. Schwartzel wants it more than Oosthuizen, who already shows signs of being happy with what he has already achieved.

Ooshuizen did his best to confirm that fact with this quote about staying in South Africa to play a minor event instead of flying to Hawaii to test out that new PGA Tour card.

"I decided not to go and play the two tournaments in Hawaii because that won't leave me with enough off time before the start of the new season," Oosthuizen said in a story posted on the European Tour's website

Masters Foundation, EA Sports Partnership All About The Children

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The Twittersphere is errupting over the news of Augusta National jumping into bed an international partnership with Tiger and EA Sports to grow the game around the world. But the more interesting news for me is this new foundation and its mission to grow the game around the world even though the place growth is most needed would be here in the good ole USofA. Where, it should be noted, the tax benefits of this foundation will be most enjoyed!

From Jason Sobel's ESPN.com story:

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Something To Look Out For At Kapalua This Week...

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With the Hyundai Tournament of Some Champions set to get underway Thursday, it's always fun to see beautiful Kapalua, particuarly in High Definition. However, since Tiger and Ernie Els' epic 2000 duel (win No. 16 for Tiger!), the ground game which made that event so memorable has been sorely lacking. But courtesy of the GCSAA, it sounds like the resort has tried to address the wet approaches with a pricey new irrigation system:
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Only In LA Files: "Once we were able to get them charged up, we were able to rent them out."

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Rick Orlov, Daily News and Daily Breeze staff writer, on the less-than-seamless Jan. 1 handover of the L.A. City course cart concession that leaves the Kishi family after 40 years for an uncertain future, though likely one involving new carts at some point to replace the fleet manufactured during the formative years of the Reagan administration.
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Taylor Made's Dustin Johnson Ad...

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I'm not exactly a connoisseur of golf equipment company ads and I certainly am not counting the seconds until the January 4 Hot List release or salivating over the new Taylor Made white driver splashed on golf.com's homepage all day--finally a club designed to remind me of all my worst sky jobs and other embarrassing misshits--but you have to admire the simplicity of their latest ad featuring Dustin Johnson. Thanks to reader Sean for the link:
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Chambers Bay Up $15K On U.S. Amateur! Down $700k For First Nine Months Of '10

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Kris Sherman of Tacoma's News Tribune, the same paper that did a bang-up job covering last summer's U.S. Amateur, weighs in with an exclusive on the bleak financial state of Chambers Bay. The story would seem to indicate that any hopes of the hotel, beach house, water park and ampitheater will not be happening anytime soon and almost assuredly, not in time for the 2015 U.S. Open.
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"THIS is why the Euro tour is just cool."

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Reader Alex sent the latest Euro Tour viral video, which I had watched with amusement a few weeks and about 500,000 viewers (!?) ago.  Alex wrote, "THIS is why the Euro tour is just cool...somehow, I can't imagine Finchi and a couple of tour pros getting together for something like this."

I have to say, he has a point. Hard to imagine the PGA Tour filming a spot without a script that hasn't been vetted by the briefcase brigade.

Of course after watching it also begs the question, how many PGA Tour brats players would have the personality and disposition to spend all day filming such a spot?