Creamer, the No. 8 seed, was beaten 2 and 1 by Jennifer Johnson, the No. 57 seed. No. 9 seed Lincicome was ousted 2 and 1 by No. 56 Ryann O’Toole. The 20th-seeded Wie was knocked out by No. 45 Mina Harigae, 3 and 2.

Yani Tseng, Na Yeon Choi and Cristie Kerr, the world’s Nos. 1, 2 and 5 players, barely advanced to the second round, while the day ended with No. 4 ranked Ai Miyazato being surprised 2-up by Mariajo Uribe in the final match at Hamilton Farm Golf Club.

Tseng escaped with a 1-up win after Jeong Jang missed a 6-foot birdie attempt to force a playoff. Choi was all square with fellow South Korean Grace Park after 16 holes, but she birdied the final two for a 2-up win. Kerr, who lost in the final to Pettersen last year, edged Belen Mozo 2 and 1.

Natalie Gulbis staged the best comeback, rallying from 4-down with eight holes to play to beat Mika Miyazato. Gulbis made a 5-foot birdie putt at No. 18 to advance.

BYRON NELSON CHAMPIONSHIP

IRVING, Texas — Ryan Palmer shot a bogey-free 6-under 64 to take the first-round lead in the Byron Nelson Championship, a year after losing a playoff to Keegan Bradley in the event.

Marc Leishman and Alex Cejka were a stroke back. Matt Kuchar, coming off a victory Sunday in The Players Championship last weekend, was two strokes back at 66 along with Scott Piercy, Charley Hoffman, Bill Lunde, Blake Adams, Dicky Pride and Andres Gonzales.

Last year, Palmer birdied the 72nd hole to force a playoff, then hit his approach on the first extra hole into the greenside water and lost to Bradley, who opened his title defense with a 67.

Phil Mickelson, back at the Nelson for the first time in five years, shot a 70.

VOLVO WORLD MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIP

CASARES, Spain — Three days after his flight to Spain made an emergency landing because a passenger had a heart attack, American Brandt Snedeker used borrowed irons and a putter from the pro shop to win his opener in the World Match Play Championship.

Because his luggage got lost, Snedeker also used a driver lent to him by Australian rival John Senden. Starting out with just 10 clubs in a replacement bag, Snedeker managed to beat Thomas Bjorn 5 and 4.

By the time his clubs arrived at the Finca Cortesin course from Malaga Airport — allowing him to fill his bag to the maximum 14 — Snedeker was 3 up after three holes. Playing well with his pro shop putter and Senden’s backup driver, he stayed with them despite having his clubs.

Ian Poulter started his title defense by beating Senden 3 and 2. Justin Rose routed Robert Rock 7 and 6 in an all-English contest. Martin Kaymer, at No 9 the highest-ranked player in the field, lost 3 and 2 to Rafael Cabrero-Bello.

After round-robin play in eight three-man groups, the top two in each group will advance to the round of 16.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Article source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/golf-capsules/2012/05/17/gIQAqxJ8WU_story.html

That was in 2008.

When he finished The Players Championship on Sunday, Woods measured progress with one word.

“Worse,” he said.

The focus last week at the TPC Sawgrass eventually returned to the guy holding the trophy, as it should. The PGA Tour had reason to celebrate for a couple of reasons. It had a worthy champion in Matt Kuchar, who won the money title two years ago and has an infectious smile that makes him a fan favorite. Also, the tournament finished on Sunday.

Kevin Na was only joking — we think — when he spoke about his battle to pull the trigger and his bizarre habit of purposely whiffing on a swing so he could start over. “But just bear with me, and hopefully we get that (Sunday) round in,” Na said.

In fact, the topic came up on the eve of The Players Championship when commissioner Tim Finchem was asked if the PGA Tour felt a sense of urgency to play faster and an obligation to set an example for golfers everywhere. His answer included this nugget that made little sense.

“I actually think we might want to experiment with penalty shots,” Finchem said. “But I don’t think penalty shots make a difference, to be honest with you.”

How would he know?

This week at the Byron Nelson Championship marks the 20-year anniversary of the last time a PGA Tour was assessed a one-shot penalty for taking too much time. That was Dillard Pruitt, now a rules official who carries a stopwatch. That one stroke wound up costing him $9,600 — when $9,600 actually meant something. He was fined $1,000, and he was relegated to play in the last group for the next two weeks.

Stewart Cink was asked about progress with the pace of play. A few years ago, he was fined $20,000 for getting put on the clock 10 times in a season, and he has worked to improve.

“Is it because of the leader?” Cink replied on Sunday as Na was headed to the practice range.

Sure, it’s easy to pick on Na. He is changing his swing and fighting some demons to get comfortable over the ball. He became a sympathetic figure to some in the media for his honesty and his pledge to try harder, though it should be pointed out that Na has been slow ever since he joined the PGA Tour. Not so sympathetic were some in the gallery who shouted out, “Pull the trigger!” and “Hit it!” to reverse effect. He had to back off shots and wound up taking even longer.

Slow play has been part of the conversation all season. If golf were a presidential campaign, slow play would be the equivalent of the economy.

Luke Donald was on holiday in Barbados when he was watching the final round of the season-opener in Hawaii, which featured Na, Jonathan Byrd, Ben Crane and Webb Simpson in the last four groups. He took to Twitter and ended one plea by saying, “Slow play is killing our sport.”

Article source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/on-the-20-year-anniversary-of-last-slow-play-penalty-golf-is-not-getting-any-faster/2012/05/15/gIQABaSnRU_story.html

On Sunday, Rickie Fowler and Rory McIlroy— fellow 23-year-olds separated at birth by five months — met up again in a playoff for the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, N.C.

• MORE: Tiger hopes to hang around this time

• SCHEDULE: This week in golf, at a glance

And just as soon as Fowler sank a short putt to win his first PGA Tour title by defeating McIlroy — and 35-year-old D.A. Points — rivalry talk erupted. Such chatter wasn’t surprising, of course, and is a welcomed conversation for the Tour heading into its flagship event this week, The Players Championship on the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass.

The prospect of a decade’s full of duels similar to the Sunday showdown at Quail Hollow is intriguing and tantalizing. Both Fowler and McIlroy are young, hip, rich and quick with a smile — or an autograph . They’ve each played in the Ryder Cup. They’re both are on the cover of the EA Sports Tiger Woods video game after winning online popularity contests. And they appeal to the younger demographic the Tour has eagerly pursued to expand its fan base beyond those who only follow Tiger Woods.

“I think you’re going to see that a lot,” CBS and Golf Channel analyst Nick Faldo says about future Fowler-McIlroy duels. “Those two guys have got good mutual respect for each other, but they are young and they recognize that it’s an era that they’re in that opens up opportunities. These guys are going to start looking at each other and think, ‘wow, who is going to start dividing up all the majors, who is going to start taking them all?’

“Phil (Mickelson) and Tiger obviously are all getting older, so these youngsters must start thinking, well, we’ve got 10 years or more, might be 15 to 20 of competitive golf against each other. … It’s a great opportunity to go and build an incredible career.”

Rivalries are no sure thing

But rivalries in golf are tough to come by, no matter how much the fans yearn for one and the media tries to hype one. The game has been without a true rivalry for some time because of Woods, whose dominating ways allowed for only brief one-on-one struggles with the likes of Mickelson, Vijay Singh, Ernie Els and David Duval.

For instance, Mickelson is this generation’s second best player, but trails Woods 4-14 in major titles and 40-72 in Tour titles.

The last 14 majors have been won by 14 different players. McIlroy and Luke Donald have traded places atop the official world golf rankings five times since March, with McIlroy currently No. 1. And this year, parity is a major player as Hunter Mahan is the only multiple winner through the Tour’s first 20 events.

McIlroy is currently the more accomplished player among the two, with six worldwide official wins, including a blowout victory in the 2011 U.S. Open, and was a serious threat to win in three other majors. Fowler had four runner-up finishes before snapping his 0-for-67 streak in Charlotte. He did beat McIlroy by six shots, however, to win the obscure Kolon Korean Open last October, a tournament on the OneAsia Tour.

Even McIlroy and Fowler think regular Sunday face-offs are not in the offing.

“Hopefully it’s not the only time we go head-to-head … but there are so many different guys winning out here now,” McIlroy says. “I still expect Tiger to come back and do some great things. I mean, he’s won this year, so he’s definitely on the right track.

“As a fan growing up watching golf, I loved that Tiger was dominant and I loved that Phil would come and challenge him for a while and then Ernie and then Vijay and then Duval. I sort of liked that as a story line.

“But I think it was great for the game of golf that Rickie won. It’s great to have characters like that that are playing well, and he engages with the fans really well, and he’s a really popular player out here.”

Fowler says the two, at the moment, have a friendly rivalry.

“I respect his game. I feel like he respects mine. We enjoy playing together and against each other,” Fowler says. “I know he wants to beat me just as bad as I want to beat him. But I think we’d have to kind of run away and play really well just for it to be a rivalry between the two of us. There are a lot of really good young players right now, and to count any of them out of a rivalry would be somewhat unfair to them.”

What about Tiger and Phil?

Then there are Mickelson and Woods. Mickelson, who won earlier this year in the ATT Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, says he thinks his best five years are ahead of him despite being inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame on Monday. And Woods, who won earlier this year in the Arnold Palmer Invitational, isn’t going away. Coming off two consecutive poor performances — a tie for 40th in the Masters and a missed cut last week — Woods says he’s been fighting old habits with his new golf swing after a third overhaul.

“I’ve done this before. I’ve been through this,” Woods says. “I’ve gone through periods where I wasn’t quite where I wanted to be. I had pretty good runs after that, and this is no different. … It takes a little bit of time, and I keep building, and things eventually come around.”

Woods, and to a lesser extent Mickelson, for years have been the only two who can reliably move the TV ratings needle. And while Woods’ likability ratings have dropped in recent years, he’s still a good bet to make final-round TV ratings pop as much as 50% — providing he’s playing well enough to be in contention and show up on TV.

PGA Tour TV carriers CBS, NBC and NBC’s Golf Channel obviously hope for now that Woods and Mickelson keep drawing viewers. But with network contracts running through the 2021 season, they need new stars in development. A rivalry between Fowler and McIlroy would seem telegenic. The drawing power of that potential rivalry was tested Sunday. Final-round coverage produced a 2.4 overnight rating, translating to 2.4% of households in the 56 urban markets measured. That’s not huge — but it was up 14% from last year’s comparable coverage.

“I don’t know if we are crazy about any particular rivalry, but we like the juxtaposition of McIlroy and Fowler against the veterans,” PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem told USA TODAY Sports. “But rivalries develop. We can’t write the script. They are two great, charismatic young players.

“As long as those two are playing well, we are in great shape.”

Article source: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/golf/pga/story/2012-05-08/rickie-fowler-rory-mcilroy-tiger-woods-players-championship/54844912/1

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The game of golf will be just fine if its young stars can produce as they did Sunday at Quail Hollow. Rickie Fowler and Rory McIlroy battling in a playoff, with journeyman D.A. Points playing the foil. Good stuff, and hard to call anybody a loser after the drama that unfolded.

Fowler emerged the winner, stiffing a 51-degree wedge shot at the first extra hole to 4 feet, then watching the more accomplished McIlroy fail to convert his birdie putt from a longer distance.

The victory was long-awaited for Fowler, 23, who emerged from Oklahoma State three years ago and almost immediately lost in a playoff, perhaps ratcheting up expectations that dogged him as he toiled in his all-orange Sunday garb as tournaments passed without victory.

“After 20 years of this, I’ve learned to stay pretty calm,” said Fowler’s mother, Lynn, referring to all the days of junior golf, amateur golf and now professional golf. “It’s easy watching normal rounds. A playoff hole is sort of like watching match play. Every stroke counts, every hole counts. You feel like you’re going to throw up every time they swing the club.”

That wasn’t the case when Fowler lofted that wedge shot onto the 18th green in the playoff. It played as the hardest hole of the day, the green was treacherous, the pin tucked near the left side where a creek came into play.

A regular pitching wedge might have been more prudent, but Fowler wasn’t going to be cautious.

“It was either going to go there or it might go in the creek,” Points said. “The shot he hit was spectacular.”

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“I definitely didn’t want to play safe,” Fowler said. “I had a good number [133 yards], and I was aiming right of the hole with the wind coming out of the right, and if I hit a perfect shot, it comes down right on the stick, and I think we came down just left of it.

“I hit the perfect shot at the right time, and I was going for it.”

Said McIlroy: “You wouldn’t have called the 18th today a birdie hole with that pin. For Rickie to go out and play that hole the way he did, he deserved to win.”

McIlroy, 23, was understandably dejected afterward. The reigning U.S. Open champion, who won the Honda Classic in March, went back to No. 1 in the world with his second-place finish, an achievement he called a small consolation. “I wanted to win,” said McIlroy, who has now finished in the top three in four of his five tournaments this year on the PGA Tour.

McIlroy finished second to Fowler by six strokes last fall at the Kolon Korean Open, a OneAsia Tour event that Fowler claimed for his first professional victory. It wasn’t given a lot of credence at the time, because the tour is well beneath the level of the PGA Tour. But Y.E. Yang was also in the field and it can’t hurt to beat McIlroy twice.

Like many, McIlroy believed it was just a matter of time for Fowler, who despite a good bit of promise, really had not been in contention this year. Although he was picked to the U.S. Ryder Cup team as a rookie in 2010, he failed to make the Presidents Cup team last year. And there was a good bit of talk that perhaps Fowler was overrated.

But he never appeared deterred. Fowler has gone it alone since his only coach, Barry McDonnel, passed away at age 75 last year. Talking about him Sunday nearly brought Fowler to tears, although it is clear he expected this day to come.

“He’s 23 years old and he knows how good he is,” said Joe Skovron, Fowler’s caddie since he turned pro.

The two have known each other since Fowler was 4, when they met at the same driving range and course in Northern California.

“He knew it was coming, just a matter of time,” Skovron said. “Maybe some frustration at times, but he always handled it great.”

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As was the case last month when Fowler was in the gallery for Bubba Watson’s victory at the Masters, several of Fowler’s tour friends, including Ben Crane, waited around Sunday and were on the 18th green to congratulate him.

Crane, along with Watson, Fowler and Hunter Mahan, make up a goofy group known as the Golf Boys that produced a You Tube video that most consider funny, if not unwatchable.

“I’m really, really excited for him. He’s a member of the band, c’mon,” Crane said. “For his sake, I’m thankful it’s sooner as opposed to later. I think it just opens the gates from here. I’m just thankful for my friend, who has done a lot of things right. His game is so good.

“To do it at such a great event like this, one of the best fields we face all year, and then to get in a playoff and play two perfect shots like that and seal it with a putt. … That’s a pretty cool way to do it.”

Aaron Baddeley, who was also in Watson’s gallery at Augusta, was there to greet Fowler as well.

“It’s kind of a burden lifted off your shoulders and also the confidence that you can win on a golf course like this beating now the best player in the world, Rory, who is going to go back to No. 1. That’s twice he’s beaten Rory head to head.”

Watson did not enter this week’s event, but he did send out two congratulatory tweets, proclaiming that “Golf is better than ever!!”

It is certainly not bad when it works out as it did Sunday. Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson were nowhere in sight, the reigning Masters champion as well as the deposed No. 1, Luke Donald, were not even in the tournament.

Rickie and Rory were left to provide the drama, and they did a terrific job.

Bob Harig covers golf for ESPN.com. He can be reached at BobHarig@gmail.com.

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Golf Writer, ESPN.com

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• Senior golf writer for ESPN.com
• Covered golf for more than 20 years
• Earned Evans Scholarship to attend Indiana University

Article source: http://espn.go.com/golf/story/_/id/7893699/will-rickie-fowler-win-wells-fargo-championship-bode-well-golf

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Wrongful Death

Workers Compensation

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