Good Luck: Garrigus Intends To Try A First Tee Joke On Vijay

Stephanie Wei quotes the likes of Matt Every, Jason Day, Justin Rose, David Lynn and Robert Garrigus on Vijay's situation and lawsuit and they aren't overly supportive of Singh.

Including first and second round Singh playing partner Garrigus kind of supported Singh by saying that the PGA Tour has"created a situation where one guy gets busted for recreational drugs and then one guy doesn’t get busted  for performance-enhancing drugs, which is messed up."

That probably won't make Vijay laugh--what does--but Garrigus is still going to try to deliver some humor to Thursday's 2 pm ET proceedings.

He’s focused on trying to win a golf tournament, but Garrigus, who is friendly and gregarious, said he’ll probably make a joke out of it with Singh on the first tee on Thursday to keep things light.

“I have a feeling there’s going to be a lot of security guards with our group (the next two days),” he said.

That's Our Vijay: Files Suit Against PGA Tour!

He's becoming the gift that keeps on giving!

USA Today with the first details of Vijay Singh's suit against the tour over his deer antler spray doping policy violation, which earned a "no comment" from the tour.

The Tour, the lawsuit says, could have known by conducting some basic testing and research, the product that Singh sprayed contained no active biological ingredient and could not possibly have provided any performance enhancement.

"The PGA Tour has now finally admitted that the use of deer antler spray is not prohibited," the suit claims. "Rather than performing its duties to golfers first, and then determining whether there had been any violation of the Anti-Doping Program, the PGA Tour rushed to judgment and accused one of the world's hardest working and most dedicated golfers of violating the rules of the game."

Update on 2013-05-08 16:08 by Geoff

**Vijay's full statement. The poor, poor lad...

The PDF of the complaint courtesy of Golf Channel and reader BrianS.

Update on 2013-05-09 17:34 by Geoff

**Steve Elkington weighed in with a Secrets In The Dirt cartoon.

Viewing Alert: Grey Goose 19th Hole From The Players

I'll be on this week's special Wednesday edition with John Feinstein and David Fay...for da full hour.

Should be a lively discussion covering the many interesting issues in the game, including the continuing buzz over the Tiger drop, Vijay's non-sentence, anchoring and much more.

The show airs Wednesday at 6 pm ET/3 pm PT and replays at 1 am/10 pm PT.

Getting In The Mood: Joe Daley Makes Players Debut At 52

Super story from last week by Doug Ferguson on Players Championship rookie Joe Daley.

As winner of the Senior TPC, Daley earned a spot in this week's Players.

Daley only had two full years on the PGA Tour. He spent 10 full years in the minors, long enough to play under three umbrella sponsors - Nike Tour, Buy.com Tour and Nationwide Tour. When he turned 50, he had to Monday qualify for Champions Tour events. He finally got his big break with a 66-64 weekend in the Senior PGA Championship to tie for fourth, which make him eligible for the Senior Players.
And here he is.

"It's a lot of years of hard work, man," he said. "It's pretty cool."

To put some of that into perspective, the winner of The Players Championship gets $1.71 million. That's nearly as much as Daley's earnings ($1.96 million) in two decades playing the PGA Tour, the Champions Tour and what is now called the Web.com Tour.

World Golf Hall Of Fame Up For Sweeping Review

I was listening in on Tim Finchem's press conference and was shocked when he didn't resist suggestions from questioners suggesting various elements of the World Golf Hall of Fame may be in need of review (age limit, international ballot, timing).

In fact, Finchem suggested that pretty much everything is under review.

(I'm saddened by the possibility that the Players Championship Monday ceremony may not be continuing, but the pathetic lack of turnout by current PGA Tour players and male Hall members suggests the effort, though well-intentioned, has not worked. And let's face it, their presence adds immensely to the cache of the Hall and would make it the celebration of the sport that the WGHOF should be.)

Garry Smits files an excellent summation of all the potential changes revealed in the Finchem press conference, including the potential demise of the dreaded International ballot.

Finchem said the idea of having two voting ballots, one for PGA Tour players and one for international players, might be out-dated.

“At the top of the competitive chart ... the vast majority of those players are now members of the PGA Tour,” he said. “That wasn’t the case 18 or 20 years ago when we had players coming up. Colin Montgomerie was a good example. He played an entire career and did not play much here [in the U.S.]. That really doesn’t happen much anymore. So it does raise a question about the ballot structure.”

The other bone of contention this year is that Couples and Montgomerie received 51 percent of the vote on their respective ballots, the lowest on either in the history of the current format of selecting players to the Hall of Fame. They fell under the loophole that if no one gets 65 percent of the vote, the player leading the ballot gets into the Hall of Fame as long as he gets 50 or more percent.”

Finchem said that almost everything about the Hall of Fame, its selection process and induction ceremony was on the table for change.

“We’re going to look at everything and have more to say about it probably later this year,” he said.

Romo To Spend More Time Not Golfing Publicly This Off-Season

Fresh off signing a $108 million extension, Dallas Cowboy quarterback and excellent golfer Tony Romo is giving up some tournament appearances and attempts to qualify in the name of being like Peyton. Or at least, letting Jerry Jones think he's getting his money's worth.

Calvin Watkins reports that Romo won't be trying U.S. Open or Byron Nelson qualifiers:

Romo isn't interested in those things now, but it was nice following him around in Houston a few years ago when he tried to qualify for the U.S. Open.

The public perception was that Romo cared more about golf than football. I've always thought this theory from some fans and media members was silly. Romo always cared about football.

State Of The Game Podcast 21: Tony Johnstone

I've been saving this one for a travel day, but I hear rumors that this week's stories are quite fine, with Rod Morri hosting, Mike Clayton present and six time European Tour winner and television commentator Tony Johnstone the featured guest.

As always, you can listen on iTunes or in the player below.

"If golf were invented today, it would be a nine-hole game."

Bill Pennington does a nice job in this New York Times piece explaining the nine-hole initiative launched by Golf Digest with today's release of the June issue and supported by the USGA and PGA of America.

There is no doubt that the push to promote nine-hole rounds reflects a reality that most of us now work longer hours and have more demands on our weekend recreational time. As Tarde said: “Every other recreation, it seems, takes more or less two hours: movies, dinner, cocktail parties, tennis, bowling, going to the gym. If golf were invented today, it would be a nine-hole game.”