Mick Elliott Posts

The LPGA just outsourced its season.

Twenty-four events are on next year's incredibly shrinking LPGA schedule and 11 of them will be played on foreign soil, including the season opener in Thailand.

There also are tournaments in Singapore, France, Japan, England, Canada and Mexico.

One bonus: The U.S. Women's Open stays here.

Founded in 1950, the LPGA is the longest continuous-running professional women's sports organization in American history, but its future -- obituary? -- will be written in foreign dialect. Why? Because if selling women's golf in the land of the free and home of the NFL seemed difficult before, the LPGA hasn't seen nothing yet.

Rickie Fowler's dramatic play over the final month of the PGA Tour season makes him the player most likely to be watched through the offseason's qualifying progresses.

Fowler, 20, did not turn professional until late summer, but the former top-ranked amateur out of Oklahoma State, took advantage of three sponsor's exemptions to earn $571,090 in those three tries, a number that would have placed him No. 136 on the year's money list.

After finishing seventh and runner-up in his first two events, a strong performance at the Children's Miracle Network Classic could have put Fowler into an exclusive group of past players -- Tiger Woods is one of them -- to avoid qualifying school by finishing among the top 125 money winners as a non-member.

Michelle Wie claimed her first LPGA tournament title Sunday, the Lorena Ochoa Invitational. To celebrate she did not mention a desire to be the first woman to play the Masters at Augusta National, did not unveil a plan to join the PGA Tour and did not ask for an exemption to the U.S. Open.

It's a start.

After a final-round 3-under 69 for a two-shot victory over Paula Creamer in Guadalajara, Mexico, Wie, 20, received a beer shower on the 18th green -- hey, just another college kid in Mexico. She then talked about the relief that came with the victory.

"For sure, it's definitely off my back," she said. "I think that hopefully life will be a lot better."

By all considerations, that will be entirely up to Wie.

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LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- A sure sign something outside the norm was in the works Sunday afternoon at the Children's Miracle Network Classic came when Nicholas Thompson rolled in a nine-foot bogey putt on the final hole that would leave him five shots out of a playoff eventually won by Stephen Ames and broke into a fist-pumping, arm-slinging celebration.

"It could have been a double," Thompson said. "And I knew if I missed that, I didn't have a chance and I'm going to qualifying school. I knew making it at least gave me a chance."

Sunday's big prize at Walt Disney World was not as much the tournament championship as it was a secure future. Ames shot a final-round 64 and won his fourth career title, outlasting George McNeill and Justin Leonard in two playoff holes, but on this day you didn't have to get a trophy to feel like a winner.

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LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – Just like most every PGA Tour player, Will MacKenzie is happy to pass along helpful advice to amateur pro-am partners and fans.

One MacKenzie tip you may never have heard from anyone else: "If you are being chased by a bear, you're supposed to just get down in the fetal position and let him rip -- pop you for about 300 stitches real quick and hopefully then leave and not eat you."

It is sage advice passed along by a skilled professional. While MacKenzie, fighting to save his tour card this week at the Children's Miracle Network Classic at Walt Disney World, is no Jack Nicklaus, he does know bears -- Golden or otherwise.

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- The last (honest, they really mean it this time) tournament of the PGA Tour season, the Children's Miracle Network Classic that tees off Thursday at Walt Disney World, always provides an interesting scramble as golf's working class looks for one last seat on the life raft.

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LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Kevin Streelman is 31 years old and playing his second season on the PGA Tour. After college golf at Duke, it took five years of mini-tours and other assorted minor-league labors before, in 2008, he advanced through all three levels of qualifying school to earn a place in the big leagues.

"Just four or five years ago, I didn't have much at all," he said. " About $400 in my bank account and pretty much ready to stop playing."

But on Sunday afternoon Streelman can become an instant millionaire. He'll get a freshly printed check to prove it.

"Definitely exciting," he said.

ORMOND BEACH, Fla. -- Ken Green, with the stump that used to be his lower right leg still tender and frail less than five months after the accident, eases himself out of a wheelchair and plops downward onto a mattress that lays flat on the floor. Although a stylish bedroom set fills the guest room, it has been pushed, for good reason, to the side to provide room for Green's ground-level living space.

"You have to pay attention when you get out of bed," Green says. "Because if you are not thinking and you step with the leg that's not there, it's not a good result."

Green allows himself a soft laugh. The RV crash in June took the lives of Green's older brother, Billy, long-time girlfriend, Jeannie Hodgin, and beloved German shepherd, Nip. It took his leg. It will not take his style.

Although golf season never truly sleeps, the completion of Sunday's WGC-HSBC Championship in Shanghai, China, does, for all meaningful purposes, give fans the OK to nod off until at least January when the PGA Tour starts all over again.

With the exception of this week's final tour stop at Disney World, where the story is a scramble for a spot among the season's top 125 money winners and exempt playing status for next season, nothing remains on the calendar that could significantly alter the memory of 2009.

That means two interesting and late-developing trends will carry over to 2010, providing golf an unaccustomed offseason water-cooler subject to debate.

Phil Mickelson won the World Golf Championship-HSBC Champions event Sunday in Shanghai, rallying with a spectacular finish after almost being run down from behind.

And it was not by Tiger Woods.