- Ladies First:  I never figured I’d be one to say this (much less actually believe it) but viewing the first two rounds of the LPGA Championship, I’m finally starting to side with those who feel that watching women’s professional golf is considerably more entertaining than watching the men.  Fundamentally, I suspect this feeling comes from the fact that the men generally play a BORING game.  Oh, watching Tiger work his particular brand of magic is certainly exciting enough (and not something anyone should take for granted) but in general, the PGA Tour has, quite literally, become a repetitive storyline of driver-wedge-putter, with the only points of real interest emanating from the recovery shots required after the world’s best/longest blast it 330 yards into a forest.  The women, on the other hand, play a game far more similar to the varied, strategic, thought-provoking challenge that golf was prior to the equipment manufacturers taking over as the game’s governing body.  They occasionally hit longer irons/fairway metals into par fours, cannot automatically hit every par five under 600 yards in two and – perish the thought – actually have to think their way around from time to time.  Put them on an interesting golf course like Pete Dye’s Bulle Rock (as opposed to some of the painfully bland facilities the LPGA is frequently relegated to) and you have…  Well, lets just say that the Golf Channel’s ending their coverage to switch over to the PGA Tour’s Stanford St. Jude sleep-a-thon sent me off to watch the news.  I will, however, mark that sentence with an asterisk, because if the incomparable Tommy Armour III continues to lead at Memphis right on into the weekend (as he was at the time of the Golf Channel’s switchover) that would be another story altogether.  But it’s early…

- Quotable: "We have better balls, better drivers, better equipment. Johnny Miller talks about equipment almost as much as he talks about himself.” – Joe Ogilvie

- Home Field Advantage: Two years ago, Austria’s Markus Brier carved himself a small place in history by winning the inaugural BA-CA Open, the first official European Tour event to be played in his homeland.  Yesterday, in the rain-delayed first round of this year’s BA-CA, Brier opened with a solid 68, but was upstaged by countryman Martin Wiegele, a 29-year-old with only a single Challenge Tour victory, who rattled off seven birdies and an eagle over his first 15 holes before a pair of late bogeys saw him home in 64, good enough to join five other men sharing the early lead.  True, it’s only one round, and the field this week is not exactly of a Major championship caliber, but one still has to be impressed by the ability of these otherwise journeyman players to rise to the occasion on their home soil.