"If you mention player meeting to the average tour player you will get eyes rolled and a sigh."

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John Maginnes previews this week's PGA Tour player meeting and gives us an insider's take on what these PTA-gone-bad sessions are like.

Most of the time it seems the agenda and the inevitable hypotheticals concerning it become belabored and exhaustive. However, this meeting and the meetings the rest of the year will be as important as any since the inception of the PGA Tour playoffs. The playoffs were an easy sell - and easy to explain in the beginning. The players like it when you throw money at them. When they perceive, rightly or wrongly, that there job is going to be less secure next year than it is this year even those players who have never spoken in a player meeting will stand up and be heard.

The path to the PGA Tour is changing, that seems inevitable. This week will find out just how dramatic those changes will be.

Either way, there will be a lot of resistance.

"Everyone has their price, a fact of sporting life that applies as much to Tiger Woods as it does to Hank Haney."

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Lawrence Donegan previews this week's European Tour event at Abu Dhabi and it reminds that there are two things that'll be fun about Tiger's appearance there: (A) he's playing a golf he doesn't know, which doesn't happen too often, and (B) during his Tuesday press conference, the Haney book questions are going fast, furious and fun!

Golf Channel's Morning Drive says they'll be picking up the Tiger press conference Tuesday morning, though I'm not sure yet on the exact time.

State Of The Game Podcast, Episode 1

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Introducing State Of The Game, an occasional podcast on a range of topics in the game with a revolving cast of semi-regulars, hosted by Rod Morri with Mike Clayton, John Huggan and yours truly. Opening and closing music appears courtesy of another golfing subversive, the great Lloyd Cole, who fittingly selected Writer's Retreat from his most recent release, Broken Record.
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"It has restored health to a moribund tournament that again has hope."

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"Dramatic N'wide Tour changes needed"

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As the PGA Tour's Oxford shirt set prepares to present players with their plan to save the Nationwide Tour by killing the Q-School avenue to the PGA Tour, Sean Martin suggests ways to liven up the soon-to-be-renamed minor league tour. And I couldn't help but wonder why you wouldn't take these suggestions to make it more sponsor-attractive without killing the Q-School approach?
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"The most refreshing thing was that for a change he could actually see his ball land in the fairway."

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Tom Dunne's excellent case for a shorter ball and downsized game was inspired in large part by a visit to Kingarrock, an experience he says "felt straight out of an episode of Downton Abbey." He makes a couple of key points for those who react in horror at the thought of hitting shorter drives on shorter courses...

After playing a few holes, I looked at a 300-yard par-four in exactly the same way I would a 400-yarder using all modern stuff. And on the one occasion that I outdrove my playing partner, I felt exactly the same way I would have otherwise.

And this point interested me because I was absolutely smitten with the noticeably shorter time between teeing off and reaching your drive, an element that dramatically improves the flow of a round.

Since my visit to Scotland, I've kept in touch with David Anderson, Kingarrock's proprietor. He told me a great story a couple of months ago. A South African touring pro (not one of the household names) visited and played hickory over the summer. After his round Anderson asked him if he'd enjoyed himself. The pro said yes, adding that the most refreshing thing was that for a change he could actually see his ball land in the fairway. That's the game they play. And we could play it, too, under Solheim's three-ball solution.

Here's my video diary from a day at Kingarrock: