Holed Bunker Shot Wins Stadion Classic: "I told you he'd make it."

/

Hudson Swafford used his local knowledge as a former Georgia golfer to win the Stadion Classic at UGA's home course. Bulldog Russell Henley won last year as an amateur.

Even better, Swafford holed out a bunker shot to win the title, and his caddie claims to have called the winning shot in this video caught by a tournament intern (just a reminder to the PGA Tour Video Police Department who might not have noticed the film is posted on an official account).

Rory: ''I don't think I hit it any longer, I just don't need to try and hit it."

/

Doug Ferguson files many third round Wells Fargo Championship notes including this one on the trim and more athletic looking Rory McIlroy, who has been intensely working the weights and it shows.

McIlroy hit an incredible drive on the par-4 16th, blistering one 377 yards down the right side of the fairway, leaving him with only 102 yards to the hole. But he finished with a bogey after three-putting from 15 feet.

McIlroy attributes his newfound strength to an intense weight program.

''I don't think I hit it any longer, I just don't need to try and hit it,'' McIlroy said. ''So when I hit it, it just goes. I don't have to go after it quite as much.''

Fan On Tiger's Stolen Ball: “I know for a fact that I did not see anybody who rushed away"

/

You'll be shocked...SHOCKED...to learn that a fan, Chris Kroeger talking to Steve Elling, is disputing the notion someone might have picked up Tiger's ball on Friday at the Wells Fargo Championship.

Kroeger's morning-after version is pretty convincing.

He said he was standing on the left side of the putting green on the fifth hole when Woods sent his approach from 261 yards deep into the trees.

“It came behind us, over our heads,” he said. “I heard nothing but leaves, and not any clean contact with any trees. I don't think the ball kicked out and I did not see any ball on the ground.”

He estimated that perhaps 50 people were in the area when the shot was struck, and they began searching for the ball immediately. As the rest of the Woods gallery caught up, it swelled to at least 300, Kroeger said. Marshals began moving fans back as Russell arrived and asked spectators what they had seen.

Two male fans, including one very vocal man, insisted they had seen the ball on the ground. Trouble is, Kroeger is pretty sure they were not among the original throng of fans who were greenside when the shot was hit in the first place.

“I had never even seen that guy,” Kroeger said.

Moore: “Today I got a penalty stroke for absolutely no reason."

/
Ryan Moore is three back at Quail Hollow even with a one-shot penalty that he mistakenly thought had been something addressed in this year's book when Rule 18 2-b was changed to exonerate a player whose ball moved due to an outside agency. Unfortunately, Moore remembered it as people had hoped to see the rule changed, not as it was changed.
Read More

“These are the kinds of stories you hear from the past.”

/

He trails the first round Wells Fargo Championship leaders by one but as Sean Martin explained before an opening 66, Patrick Reed is just the kind of refreshing, retro, free-market success story that the tour needs more of. But with fewer Monday qualifiers and Q-School's demise, don't count on them coming along too often.

Reed was a first-team All-American last year at two-time national champion Augusta State but is without status on any major tour. After finishing 35th at the Texas Open, he made the nine-hour drive with his fiancee, Justine Karain, to New Orleans. They arrived at 2:45 a.m., sleeping four hours before the Zurich Classic’s Monday qualifier. An 8-iron to 2 feet on the second playoff hole earned him a second consecutive start. He birdied five of his final eight holes at TPC Louisiana to tie for 24th.

The pair took a circuitous route to this week’s Tour stop in Charlotte. Their first flight went from New Orleans to Chicago’s Midway International Airport. The next one landed in Greenville, S.C., some 90 minutes from Charlotte. They arrived at the hotel around 1:15 a.m. Monday, with another Monday qualifying round awaiting. He shot 65 to advance to the Wells Fargo Championship.

Reed is accompanied by his fiancee, Justine Karain, who works as Reed's caddie.

“It’s been a very hectic couple of months, but a very happy couple of months,” Reed said. “I’m in a great state of mind and very happy. She’s keeping me calm. She’s the most positive one on the golf course. When I get down, she picks me up.”

Reed proposed to Karain, whom he met while attending high school in Baton Rouge, La., in January, shortly after returning from a victory in a professional event in Trinidad & Tobago. They also moved to Houston that month.

She does more than carry the bag. Karain, a former high-school golfer, helps read the putts.

USGA's Davis On Trump: "For all that comes with Donald as a business icon and media personality, he couldn't have been a more gracious host."

/

Translation, even though he seems like a blowhard, he actually can host a championship well enough that we'll put up with a "partner" that would have made Joe Dey jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.

At least, that's how I took USGA Executive Director Mike Davis's remarks, though a transcript from the day can't be found at the usual spot USGA transcripts appear.

This was an interesting element in the decision to take the 2017 Women's Open to Trump National.

"We really get to showcase our museum and we get to showcase where we test balls and clubs," Davis said. "Far Hills is not the easiest place to find, so to get the golf world for a week here, it's very exciting and we will expose the campus."

Brad Klein got to spend some time driving around the course with The Donald and came away swooning about the man, even dropping the "h word. (Humble...really).

Enthusiasm and attention are why he got to Trump National 90 minutes before the news conference. That gave him time to inspect work in progress on the club’s new 10,000-square-foot locker room. And it’s why he insisted on accompanying me on a drive through the back nine of the Old Course. His discourse during such a trip is filled with superlatives, about this being the largest single green in the world and the whole course being the best in all of New Jersey and worthy of a top-10 national ranking. He’s an incessant follower of course ratings and thinks that Golfweek, in rating Trump National-Old at No. 72 Modern, we’ve not shown the course (or him) enough respect.

USGA.org featured a slideshow from the media day. This one had a caption, but somehow I know you can do better:

Tucson Golf: "We've cut about as much as we can cut."

/

Thanks to reader Jim for Greg Hansen's morbidly depressing story about the state of golf and our economy in Tucson, where the golf courses are literally ghost towns. Tucson Parks and Recreation Director Fred Gray says the numbers don't lie.

Gray tells the commission that 299,583 rounds of golf were played on the city's five courses in 2001. A decade later, 2011, that total was 193,166. It is a staggering decline that reflects national golf numbers and, of course, the nation's struggling economy.

Gray and Hayes have chopped the equivalent of 81 full-time jobs from the golf payroll over the last year, from 145 to 64. That's 176,280 reduced man-hours off the books.

"We've cut about as much as we can cut," Gray says. He acknowledges that the courses will not be mowed as precisely or as often. If you desire golf instruction, you must now work through an outside contractor, not a Tucson City Golf pro. If you buy a beer from the cart lady, her paycheck is coming from an outside firm contracted to sell you that beer.

This is golf in Tucson, golf in America, 2012. If the industry worked like TV ratings, the whole sport would've been canceled.

These are the numbers that stop the audit commission and raise a collective eyebrow: In 2011, Tucson City Golf had operating revenues of $7,015,000 and operating expenses of $8,275,000.

Romans: "It's like a guy from Augusta putting on the green jacket."

/

Randy Beard on trainer Dale Romans, who I know you all revere as the Preakness-winning trainer of the great, legendary and unforgettable Shackleford, really wants to win Saturday's Kentucky Derby.

And how can you not root for a Louisville native who wheels out a golf analogy?

"It's like a guy from Augusta putting on the green jacket," said Romans, referring to The Masters golf tournament. "The (Kentucky) Derby is the dream."

Based at Churchill Downs, Romans trains Dullahan, an 8-1 deep closer in a speed-heavy race who drew the five post and who so far has largely shown himself to be a synthetic specialist. Kind of like a golfer who really only plays well on Nicklaus courses.