- Too Loose (because "Cooked Goose" was too easy):  Okay, so Retief Goosen has eaten a bit of crow after suggesting (jokingly, it seems?) that perhaps Tiger Woods’ knee injury wasn’t all that it seemed during the recent U.S. Open – and that’s fine, because regardless of actualities, someone in Goosen’s position is asking for trouble by making such comments.  Now…  I’m not for a moment suggesting that I agree with Goosen; Tiger clearly was injured, and we can only assume that any knee injury serious enough to require surgery would indeed cause significant pain.  But, as anyone who’s been following this story closely knows, there are questions here, particularly since one needn’t look too far to find doctors stating that a double fracture of the tibia is virtually unheard of in someone so young, or how unlikely it is that an in-shape athlete could rupture their ACL while simply jogging.  So what’s really going on here?  One nice thing about our media-saturated, internet-driven age: if there is any chicanery going on with regard to Woods’ knee, we will find out about it eventually.  So for now lets simply say that I’m sure Tiger was hurt, and I’m sure he was in pain.  But as an astute friend of mine observed, if the pain was great enough to make walking difficult, shouldn’t dropping to his knees in frustration at a missed putt put him in agony?  Sorry Retief.  Perhaps if I (or anyone else) had made so brash an intimation earlier, you wouldn’t have had to…
 
- Who Needs Torrey Pines?:  My records show that at the time of Bobby Jones’s victory at the 1930 U.S. Open, the Interlachen Country Club measured 6,637 yards – not terribly different from the 6,789-yard version currently in play at the U.S. Women’s Open.  Like so many of America’s great Golden Age designs, Interlachen was built in the suburbs of a big city (or, in this case, Twin Cities) at a time when such locations were still semi-remote and land was plentiful.  In most metropolitan areas, however, post-WWII development changed all of that, leaving many classic courses hemmed in by housing and commercial development, with little room to expand.  Thus as unregulated equipment advances render fewer and fewer of these, our best golf courses, usable for PGA Tour/Major championship play, they do not disqualify the less-power-oriented LPGA from making a visit.  Indeed, a brief look at the last five sites of the U.S. Women’s Open – Interlachen, Pine Needles, Newport, Cherry Hills and The Orchards – reveals a list of wonderful old courses which, with the faintly possible exception of Cherry Hills, could not hope to host a major men’s event.  What does all this add up to?  One more reason, perhaps, why women’s golf is fast becoming more appealing than men’s…
 
- Perhaps I Was Wrong…?:  I’ll stand by my post-U.S. Open column suggesting that the PGA Tour as a whole will survive the remainder of 2008 without Tiger Woods…but this week’s Buick Open in particular, I’m not so sure about.  First, this is an event pigeon-holed halfway between the U.S. and British Opens, a time of the year when most of the world’s elite generally have not shown a great interest in spending the week in Grand Blanc, MI.  Second, it is played on what may very well be the least interesting golf course on Tour; simply put, golfers who tune in annually to watch events at Pebble Beach, Riviera or Harbour Town are not especially likely to clear their schedules for the the back-and-forth drabness of Warwick Hills.  Aside from being situated close to the large Detroit market, about all the Buick really had going for it (at least relative to the Tour’s A and B-level stops) was Tiger’s undying loyalty to Buick, one of his major sponsors.  So yes, even a nice story like, say, Corey Pavin winning emerges, this is one week that will really rue Tiger’s absence.