“It’s amazing. This game can tease you. You’re ready to pack it in, and then the game throws a 61 at you. And then you don’t know what the hell to do.”

Jimmy Walker posted a 62 playing "boring" golf at Sedgefield, but how about Tim Herron's 16-shot turnaround in round two, narrowly missing a course record 60?

Jeff Mills reports.

“I missed a couple on the front,” Herron said. “I missed about a 5-footer straight down the hill (on the 9th hole). I had a good chance at 59. But you didn’t know that after nine holes. I was just trying to make some putts and gain some confidence.”

“I went to the green with a long putter today, and it just didn’t feel right,” Herron said. “So I went back to the one I started with yesterday. Off the fringe I had about five three-putts yesterday. So I didn’t really have anything to lose today.”

Herron’s two-ball putter heated up on Sedgefield’s back nine Friday, when he made six birdies – including five in a row starting on the 13th hole.

Dufner Resting For Playoffs By Skipping First Week Of Playoffs

Helen Ross on the No. 3 player in the AlgorithmCup standings passing on The Barclays because it would have meant six weeks in a row. And thankfully, the playoffs in golf are optional.

Rule Violation Files: R&A's Boys Amateur Championship

There's just so much to love in this R&A press release, starting with the special notation for the Scots in the quarters, and spiraling from there!

SCOTS PAIR REACH THE QUARTER FINALS OF THE BOYS AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP

17 August 2012, Nottingham, England: Scotland’s Alasdair McDougall claimed two fine wins on his way to battling through to the quarter finals of the 86th Boys Amateur Championship at Notts (Hollinwell) Golf Club near Mansfield.

The diminutive 17 year-old international

Diminutive is so much better than the alternatives...so go on...

from Elderslie defeated leading qualifier, Romain Langasque from France, by 2 & 1 in the third round and then dispatched Italian Renato Paratore, winner of the recent European Young Masters tournament in Hungary, by one hole in an engrossing fourth round match.

McDougall, who represented Scotland in last week’s Boys’ Home Internationals at Co. Louth, will face Championship favourite, Austrian Matthias Schwab, losing finalist in this year’s Amateur Championship, in tomorrow’s first quarter final match.

The Scot will be joined in the last eight by his compatriot, Jamie Savage, who also won twice on a blustery day marred by intermittent showers. The 17 year-old from Cawder, who turns 18 next week, gave himself an early birthday present when he defeated James Rooney from West Lancs by 2 holes in the morning and then beat Liam Cox, from Burhill, by 3 & 2 in the fourth round.

Earlier in the day, Cox had been awarded his third round tie after his opponent, Adam Chapman from Windermere, was disqualified for contravening the Championship’s policy governing the use of distance measuring devices.

He contravened the championship! It sounds like he smuggled in drugs. Well, almost. And there's more...

McDougall arrived in Robin Hood country fresh from scoring 2 ½ points out of 5 for Scotland in last week’s Boys’ Home Internationals in Ireland and he was quickly in command against his impressive 17 year-old opponent from Rome.

The Scot won three out of the first four holes and was still three ahead when Paratore reduced the deficit with a birdie from 10-feet on the 414-yard par-4 10th. The Scot then lost both the 14th and the 15th to pars before sealing the match in somewhat bizarre circumstances down the last where he secured a par four after his opponent had been penalised one stroke for picking his ball up in the rough.

I'm guessing attending a rules seminar wouldn't have helped these lads much.

Bieber: I Played Music To Pay Green Fees!

There is a Justin Bieber cover story (not posted online) by Josh Eells in the July 18 Rolling Stone where the writer shadows the teen idol for various appearances and an infamous round of golf at Calabasas Country Club--when paparazzi ambushed.

Fathers whose daughters are inexplicably in love with the lad?  I envision this as a wonderful opportunity for you to use the story to point out the merits of the Royal and Ancient to daughters who are perplexed by your fascination with the game. After all, if Bieber is Bieber because of golf, well...they might be more understanding?

You might have heard the numbers for Bieber--the 375,000 copies his new album, Believe, has sold, making it the biggest debut of the year; the 25 million followers on Twitter, second only to Lady Gaga; his 45 million Facebook fans, more than Mitt Romney and Barack Obama combined. But did you know it all started with a golf game?

Back when he was growing up in Stratford, Ontario, Bieber was a regular at the local municipal course. He'd play almost every day in the summer; he says his handicap was a very respectable seven. And then one day, as he wrote in his 2010 memoir, First Step 2 Forever: My Story

Wait, he has a memoir already? With 2 instead of "To" in the title? Sorry, go on...

"I wanted to go golfing with my friends...but I didn't have any money." So he took his guitar and started busking on the steps of a town theater, hoping to make $20, enough scratch for a round. He came home with $200, as well as a new career.

There was also this, teased online:

Midway through a golf game at a private country club, Bieber and his entourage are confronted by paparazzi. Bieber responds by taking out his nine-iron and hitting a golf ball at them. He later tells an employee at the club that "we'll probably never play here again."

Coore And Crenshaw On Pinehurst A Year Later

Nice Q&A with the architects on the restoration, how it's evolved and where it's headed, including news of a new practice area on the No. 1 course's old 18th green. It will be a key practice area for players at the 2014 U.S. Opens.

Flash: Olazabal Names Clarke To Vice Cart-Driving Role After Assurances He Will Not Repeat Past Buggy Crashing Antics

Alistair Tait says the naming of Thomas Bjorn, Darren Clarke and Paul McGinley as three of four vice captains for September's Ryder Cup at Medinah will be rounded out by Miguel Angel Jimenez, assuming the Spaniard does not make it on points and the team hotel has smoking rooms.

Clarke has a bit of history behind the wheel, getting out of a speeding ticket by flashing the Claret Jug and more of a concern for potential European players, rolling a buggy at his home and sustaining minor injuries.

"You know Darren, I'll just catch a ride from Oly or Miguel or Thomas or Paul, if you don't mind," could be a popular refrain at Medinah.

American captain Davis Love recently rounded out his foursome of Senior Ego Masseurs, adding Scott Verplank and Jeff Sluman to the previously announced Mike Hulbert and Fred Couples.

"The debate about Rory and the Olympics, however, refuses to wither."

I'm already sick of this debate and I'm not Irish, British or the least bit worried that Rory McIlroy will figure it out by 2016, but Oliver Brown delves into the question that continues to hound the PGA Champion: which country's bad uniforms will he wear in 2016?

It is regrettable that McIlroy should be facing such a dilemma, when his second major title at the US PGA is a cause for jubilation on both sides of the Irish border. And yet he is under pressure to declare his hand for the Rio Olympics because he is Catholic. His great friend and compatriot, Graeme McDowell, is spared the same predicament as a Protestant, since it is widely expected that he will compete for Britain.

But Northern Irish Catholics tend, as boxing medallists Paddy Barnes and Michael Conlan showed at London 2012, to align themselves with the Republic. Representing Britain would, at one time, have been deemed perfidious, equivalent to backing a state that they perceived as oppressive.

"So if the PGA of America is considering returning to Kiawah, it should think again and just say no emphatically."

Golfweek's Jeff Rude touches on the miserable time players, media and fans had with transportation, parking and actual spectating of the 2012 PGA Championship at Kiawah and says once was enough.

Kiawah might be suited for a four-man PGA Grand Slam or Skins Game or two-man Shell’s match or maybe even another Ryder Cup, but it was overmatched when putting on the spectacle of a major championship with 156 players (and their caddies and entourages) because of the infrastructure issues.

Some veteran writers seemed to think it was the worst major ever, and that wasn’t even factoring in the 5 1/2-hour rounds.

“The only way the PGA should come back here is if they have flying buses,” one scribe said.
Couldn’t agree more.