"We're running out of time in our allotted broadcast window."

Thanks to Mark Diver for Tweeting this fine moment in Golf Channel history as they signed off from today's European Tour's Open De Andalucia De Golf with Paul Lawrie walking up 18 attempting to clinch his first win in ages. For? The Arnold Palmer Invitational Pre-Game show!

"I'm just not going to hit 3-woods off the tee and play that course strategically the week before Augusta."

Dave Shedloski files an interesting item about Phil Mickelson and Houston next week that should be noted for you Masters pool players who look at the previous weeks play.

"Houston is not going to set up well for me," Mickelson said Saturday after a 3-under-par 69 at Bay Hill Club. "The way the course is set up, you can't hit it more than 285-290 off a lot of the tees. It's not going to be a course where I'm going to play the most strategic and expect to really score well."

The Tournament Course at Redstone is a big ballpark, 7,457 yards, par 72. It would seem a good venue for Mickelson's high-ball power game - if the wind doesn't blow. But many fairways aren't as open as he'd like at the 300-yard mark. Mickelson finished T-35 there a year ago.

"The problem for me there is there is so much water that pinches off the tee, and I'm just not going to hit 3-woods off the tee and play that course strategically the week before Augusta," Mickelson said. "And then when it gets windy and I'm trying to hit high balls for Augusta and it requires a low knock-down shot, it's not going to work.

Having not seen the course, I'm not sure this is more of a statement about the set-up or the design. Knowing Phil's love of Rees Jones' oeuvre, I'm guessing the latter.

A Fresh Perspective On Tiger's Golf Digest Masters Cover Appearance

Thanks to Steve Elling for catching the now-heavily re-Tweeted and epic newsstand placement with Tiger's much-talked about appearance on the Golf Digest Masters cover. See, all you cover haters, it really was worth it just for this. (The original Tweeter of the photo seems to be in hiding now.)

"A president's critics always go for the golf joke because it irritates people at a gut level."

Slate's John Dickerson defends Barack Obama's love for golf in light of Newt Gingrich's recent criticism. Yes, someone is defending golf!

Obama should resist—and, regardless of party, we should all want him to. The presidency is a prison. Your every move is watched and tended by the Secret Service, your opponents, and the media. Even when you're "having fun," you do so in quotation marks. At parties or a baseball game, you're watched to see if you're having a good time. If you play basketball, your on-court demeanor is analyzed for clues to your leadership style. You don't drive. You can't keep a diary (they can be subpoenaed). You can't smoke (the kids are watching). You can't take a stroll through your old neighborhood. All of this distorts the mind.

The golf course is one of the few places a president can escape the pressures and physical limitations of the office. George W. Bush was smart enough to have a ranch that allowed him to get out from under the scrutiny of the press. He was inside a perimeter, so the Secret Service could back off a little. You don't have to like golf to recognize that being able to walk in relative freedom and hang out with friends is an obvious pleasure and escape. The more tightly someone is confined, the more necessary it is to escape. One of the great problems for any president is a loss of perspective. A distraction, even for a moment, from the constant and attention-shredding duties of the day is one way to gain perspective.

"Hogan's got to be rolling over in his grave."

Former PGA Tour Commissioner Deane Beman, as told to Bill Fields in Golf World's Backspin issue (not posted):

Using today's 460cc metal-headed drivers with perimeter weighting, if you miss it a half-inch off center, you'll only lose five yards and still hit it dead straight. If you did that with persimmon, it would cost you 50 yards and you couldn't find the ball.

And...

Hogan's got to be rolling over in his grave. Take the top 20 ranked player in the world today, give them the type of clubs Jack Nicklaus used in his prime and a mid-1970s ball--the best made--and put them out on tour in January against all the other players using today's equipment. Not one of the world's current top 20 would win a tournament and, week-to-week, not half of them would make the cut.

Now before you rip Beman for stating the obvious for any generation of golfer or sounding like a cranky old man, think of his comments this way.

We hear over and over how today's fields in golf are deeper than ever before. The players are working out, the instruction is better, diets have been refined, et cetera. All true, but ultimately what his comments point to is how much equipment has equalized play and made it harder for the great ball-strikers to separate themselves.