Phil & Tiger Roundup: Fortune's Highest Paid List Shuffle, Pinehurst & Tiger Hitting Drivers

Landing 6th at $37.2 million on Fortune's best guess at income earned in 2013, Phil Mickelson passed Tiger Woods who fell to 7th with $35.5 million last year.

Floyd Mayweather finished atop the list with $105 million in earnings.

Speaking of Mickelson, I followed him quite a bit at Pinehurst and filed this story for Golf World suggesting that there was an odd sameness to his rounds and body language, but that his game is ultimately not that far off.

As for Tiger, he hit balls last weekend, including drivers after starting work on the range last Tuesday, first reported by Tim Rosaforte on Morning Drive and more extensively later on Golf Central. Agent Mark Steinberg confirmed but the timetable for a competitive return remains unsettled.

NBC 69 Of 69 In Martin Kaymer Shots Shown Sunday

Talk about German engineering! (Sam Weinman reviews the various references to the German engineering in the post-Kaymer U.S. Open win here).

Impressive balance by NBC as noted by Classic TV Sports, which tabulated the distribution of leader shots shown by the network during the U.S. Open final round.

All 69 of Kaymer's shots were shown, but more interesting was the balance of leaders and their place on the leaderboard.

Rally Killers Attack! Wie Grilled Over Her New Nail Polish, Her Pomeranian's Presence In Hospitality

Some pretty special stuff at Pinehurst today as Michelle Wie graciously sat down for a Q&A with the assembled scribblers and I can safely say neither of these was asked by yours truly and the identity of the questioners is unknown:

Q. You said we could ask you anything, and I notice sitting here in the front row that you have different nail polish on your fingers. Is that to help you with your grip or is there a reason for that?

MICHELLE WIE: No. It's just --

Q. Just your whim this morning?
MICHELLE WIE: Uh-huh.

And...

Q. And was that your Pomeranian I saw up on the hospitality deck there yesterday? Did you bring, is it Lola, your little doggie?

 
MICHELLE WIE: I don't know, was she out there? Yeah, I guess so. Maybe.

It's not often you get two rally killers of that quality in one session! History was made at Pinehurst today!

If you don't believe this occurred, the video of Wie's press conference can be viewed here at GolfChannel.com.

Roundup: Royal Portrush Open Championship Announcement

Brian Keogh was there for the announcement and points out that the earliest The Open will return to Royal Portrush is 2019. It sounds like it'll take longer.

Alistair Tait reports on the press conference as well and the always depressing news that the course will be getting The Treatment.

“Without going into detail, we will be spending several million pounds to bring the course and infrastructure up to where it needs to be to host Open Championship,” Dawson said.

“It’s a long time since 1951. The game has moved on. Like all of the other Open venues, we’ve had to look at the course to ensure that it provides the sort of test that an Open Championship should provide. The course can certainly do that but with some alterations, not just from a playing point of view but the also the whole infrastructure surrounding an Open Championship.”

The full R&A press release is here.

Here is R&A Chief Inspector Peter Dawson talking about the announcement:

Update on 2014-06-17 01:59 by Geoff

**Keogh files a more extensive post on the press conference and some of the interesting things said about the politics of Northern Ireland.

“As the first minister has said, the political situation here has caused some reputational damage,” Mr Dawson explained, “I think everyone knows that, but we are very happy that that is in the past… If we thought there was a security problem here we wouldn’t be making this announcement.”

The announcement was the fruit, not of months, but of years of negotiations between the three interested parties and there are still several I’s to be dotted and T’s to be crossed before a date can be set.

However, Mr Dawson admitted that two things tipped the balance in favour of returning to Royal Portrush for the first time since 1951 — the sell out 2012 Irish Open and the planned course changes.

“One was the success of the Irish Open and the evident strength of the fan base for golf in Ireland and secondly it was the day with Martin Ebert, the architect here, that we finally thought, ‘This is how we can do this’,” he said. “Those were the tipping points for me from a golf perspective and an event perspective.”