When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
There's a lot about to admire in Henrik Stenson's Tour Championship and ResetCup wins, but mostly it's his resurgence that Doug Ferguson highlights in his game story from Atlanta. 
Including this:
Stenson, who two years ago was outside the top 200, moved to No. 4 in the world.
Bob Harig noted this about Stenson's summer and early fall.
Starting with the Scottish Open in July, Stenson's results read as follows: T-3, 2, T-2, 3, T-43, 1, T-33, 1. That's six top-three finishes, including two victories, in eight events. Stenson was runner-up at the Open Championship and WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, third at the PGA Championship, then won two of the four playoff events.
And while there is a sweet justice in Stenson replenishing bank accounts wiped out by fraudster and former PGA Tour sponsor Allen Stanford's Ponzi Scheme, John Strege puts that in perspective:
To what degree money became an issue after his losses in the Stanford Financial scandal are not known. What we do know is that he kept his pants on this week, its pockets are now flush with cash, and he again ranks with the best players in the world.
"Life is ups and downs -- stock market, golf," he said recently. "Everything kind of goes in cycles. I think when you're not getting what you want and you have to work hard for it and then you get the reward, it's going to feel better than if you get it all the time, I guess. But it's life in general. It's going to be highs, it's going to be lows, and we move on."
The final day of the Tour Championship is mercifully upon us. The points reset has done its job, preventing season-long points leader Tiger from winning the FedExCup after a lousy few days at East...wait, what?
Breaking: Steve Sands reports a scenario in which Tiger could still win if Henrik Stenson were to break all of the clubs in his bag and have to finish with his putter, posting something in the 80s. The tension is killing me already.
Good news: sources say the algorithms are well rested, so let the code do it's job and enjoy the final official PGA Tour event of 2013...until they start again in a little over two weeks.
John Paul Newport hangs out with tour wives and provides a nice picture of the behind-the-scenes life. 
He also tells us about a few wives who are multi-talented and play a role in their husbands' job.
Like many of the wives I talked to, Diane Donald can't believe she's married to a sports star, much less that she doesn't have a career of her own. She grew up in Chicago, the daughter of a working mother. "I was in day care from 3 months old, that's how much of a career woman my mom was," she said. She got a journalism degree at Northwestern (where she met Luke). After graduating she started in a job that paid $25,000. "That was for an entire year," she said. "That's less than Luke was making in a bad week." Especially once the kids came, it made no sense for her to continue.
Unlike athletes in team sports, pro golfers are independent contractors, so wives are key parts of the family business. A handful are involved directly with the golf side of things. Patrick Reed's wife, Nicki, was on the bag last month when he won his first Tour event, at the Wyndham.
Billy Horschel's wife, Brittany, serves as a kind a traveling coach. She played golf at the University of Florida (as did Billy) but had to abandon her own pro dreams after a series of wrist surgeries. She sits in on Billy's lessons with instructor Todd Anderson and helps during tournaments to keep Billy on plan. She has a sports-management degree from Florida.
"All the wives help manage their husbands in one way or another," she told me.
It was a pretty shocking admission for physical specimen Tiger Woods to say his Tour Championship second round fell apart because he "just ran out of gas" and calling the ResetCup series of events (even with a week off) "a long grind." (Mark Lamport-Stokes reports.)
And guess what? The 2013-14 season starts in three weeks and next year's playoffs do not include a week off. But there is a week after the playoffs so you can rest for the Ryder Cup in Scotland.
In 2015 the Presidents Cup, presumably soon after the FedExCup, will be in Korea on the moundiest looking course you'll ever see.
And do we even want to talk about the mess that is 2016? Ewan Murray did in assessing (and agreeing) with Woods' complaint about fatigue.
Woods was right to point to a condensed schedule from the Open Championship to this, the climax of the FedEx play-off events. He also predicted that matters will become even more hectic in 2016, when golf returns to the Olympic Games in Rio.
It's going to be fascinating to watch the stars getting older while Commissioner Blankfein's vision for non-stop golf plays out.
Jim McCabe with the story of Tour Championship 36-hole leader Henrik Stenson possibly spared a penalty for playing a broken 4-wood.
While it he (and his "physio") knew something was amiss and dealt with it before the round, Stenson was greeted by tour officials who were on the case after--you guessed it--a viewer called in.
This time, however, PGA Tour rules officials – in this case, Mark Russell and John Mutch – were there to speak with Stenson. It seems that Golf Channel showed the practice-range scene with Stenson looking at his club and a viewer called in to raise the possibility that the tournament leader had a broken club in his bag.
Doing the prudent thing, Russell approached Stenson before the Swede, who was in the final pairing with Scott, could sign his card.
“We just wanted to see (that Stenson didn’t have the club in his bag),” Russell said. When they discovered that he did not, in fact, carry the 4-wood and had but 13 clubs in his bag, it was case closed.
Stenson posted a 66 with the 13 clubs to open up a four stroke lead over Adam Scott.
Lots of interesting stuff in a National Golf Foundation survey probing deeper on the question of nine is fine, a big push by Golf Digest with some support from the litany of for-profit non-profits who gather regularly and sign off on pretty ad campaigns.
Besides the number of people who seem to think there is a stigma attached to 9-holes, the haunting number for golf has to be the majority that cites time and cost as the ultimate issue.
We found that just over half of golfers (54%) report that time constraints negatively impact their frequency of play. Coincidentally, 54% of golfers also reported that money constraints negatively impact frequency of play. When measured together, 72% of golfers play less frequently due to time constraints, money constraints, or both.Only 28% of golfers tell us their frequency of play is not affected very much by either.
We asked the 27% of golfers who don’t play 9-hole rounds why they do not. Most mentioned that they just prefer playing 18-hole rounds. Many simply see golf as an 18-hole game, and that 9holes just isn’t enough.
Henrik Stenson, scourge of cherry-wood paneled lockers across the land after going ballistic at Conway Farms on the innocent storage space rented by some member probably hoping the Swede merely left behind a sleeve of balls, turned his anger to East Lake with an opening 64.
Stenson is playing with a sore wrist--what could have caused that? Jeff Rude reports on Stenson explaining last week's tantrums.
“I’ve always been a bit of a hothead,” said the Swede, who apologized and awaits a bill for damage. “It kind of builds up and eventually goes over the limit. For me, it comes down to being tired. I played so much golf (and) haven’t been able to get rest.”
On top of that mental state, Stenson came to East Lake with a bad left wrist that he figures he inflamed by hitting balls and sleeping on it wrong last week. It was so bad that on Wednesday he hit just a “couple of shots on the range” and didn’t play a practice round – even though he had never played East Lake before, save for the front nine Tuesday.
“Wednesday morning, just holding a toothbrush was painful,” said the winner of the Deutsche Bank Championship, the second of the four FedEx Cup playoff events.
The first round video highlights courtesy of Tiger's good friends at PGA Tour Entertainment:
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
