FanHouse Lucas Glover

Angel Cabrera, Lucas Glover, Stewart Cink and Y.E. Yang got together Tuesday and Wednesday in Bermuda to play 36 holes of golf.

They did this because each year the PGA of America invites the season's four major championship winners to some exotic site, puts up a boat-load of money and calls it the Grand Slam of Golf.

In the best of years, the ones when Tiger Woods shows up, the event can be mildly interesting because there always is a chance television will show a brief glimpse of "Privacy," the 155-foot, $28 million yacht he might have anchored in the harbor.

Most of the time, however, you get what this week so whole-heartedly provided: A reminder that golf all too often is its own worst enemy.

A good rule of thumb: If the final results do not count, there's no reason to care.

In what was as close a race as Secretariat vs. field, Tiger Woods was named PGA of America Player of the Year on Wednesday for the 10th time in his career.

The award was basically a lock for Woods, who won six events this season, the FedEx Cup, the Vardon Trophy and the Bryon Nelson Award for sporting the lowest scoring average, a salty 68.05. The main reason Tiger was able to claim this award, and most likely the PGA Tour Player of the Year which will be announced at a later date, is because all the major winners didn't make much noise in the other events.

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For the last big event of the 2009 season, the Presidents Cup gave us more drama than the score might appear. A captain's pick failing to win a point (Gasp!). An 18-year-old rookie stealing the show for the losing team (Wow!). And, as you probably expected, the number one golfer in the world doing exactly what he does, week in and week out. So who left Harding Park a winner, and who will look back at this event wishing it never happened?

SAN FRANCISCO -- The greatest shots in Presidents Cup history? No, not a chance. All the same, Justin Leonard played them perfectly.

Let's talk shot making.

He drained them.

"It was knowing I needed to come out and play well today," he said.

Leonard teamed with Phil Mickelson for Friday's Presidents Cup second round and played top shelf. He birdied the first hole to get the American twosome going in the best-ball competition. He kept pounding until finally rolling in a 12-footer at No. 16 to finish off the International team of Retief Goosen and Adam Scott 3 and 2.

It was a performance instrumental in allowing the United State to lead 6½-5½ going into Saturday's third round.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Of all the various formats used during four days of this week's Presidents Cup match-play competition, alternate shot is the indisputable meat grinder.

Two golfers with a single golf ball. One player hits a shot, the other finds it and gets to take the next whack.

Rinse and repeat as necessary.

"Alternate shot -- we all know it's difficult," U.S. captain Fred Couples said. "But it's also an emotional thing."

Copy that, as Jack Bauer would say.

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SAN FRANCISCO -- The eighth Presidents Cup begins play Thursday afternoon at Harding Park Golf Club, but the action started Wednesday when team captains, American Fred Couples and International Greg Norman, matched twosomes for six first-round foursome matches.

The alternate-shot competition will begin at 12:10 p.m. PDT with the International pairing of Canadian Mike Weir and South African Tim Clark taking on Americans Anthony Kim and Phil Mickelson.

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Greg Norman will play hurt at next week's Presidents Cup.

OK, as captain of the International Team that is taking on the Americans at San Francisco's Harding Park Golf Club, Norman will not hit a shot, but no question he is ailing.

Captain Shark has his right arm in a sling, the result of arthroscopic shoulder surgery performed Wednesday.

"A bit of a surprise," Norman said Friday. "I was trying to delay it until January of next year, but the doctor said I needed to get it done now."

ATLANTA -- East Lake Golf Club has a lot going for it.

Players seem to honestly like the historic course designed by Donald Ross and, if you are looking for history, this is where Bobby Jones learned to play the game as a kid.

There is, however, the finishing hole.

It's a par 3. At 235 yards with an elevated green and front bunkers to the right and left, it's a bear of a par-3, mind you, but still a par 3 to end a golf tournament. A very important golf tournament.

Earlier this week, Sean O'Hair, who had been struggling with his putting, got a useful tip from a guy that knows a little bit about the short game. His name is Tiger Woods. And after the tip, he is trailing his short game "student" after O'Hair went out ablaze, firing a 4-under 66 to lead the Tour Championship by a shot.

Tiger, along with Stewart Cink and Padraig Harrington, are one back at 3-under, with U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover alone at 2-under. O'Hair, the three-time winner on the PGA Tour including the 2009 Quail Hollow Championship, carded six birdies in round one, more than anyone on the course. He's currently in a position to where, if everything stood the same, he'd be the FedEx Cup champion.

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The PGA Tour's best players are dog tired. They are at Chicago's Cog Hill this week for the BMW Championship feeling playoff pressure. They are running on fumes.

Do you feel their pain?

In a word: NO!

Golfers, despite all the sore backs, have never impressed anyone with their toughness. The game may have as rich a history as any sport played but rarely anywhere in its memoirs do you find Curt Schilling's bloody sock, or Willis Reed's emotional strength. (OK, Tiger at Torrey Pines in 2008. We'll give you that one, but who else?)

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