Ian Poulter denied Luke Donald the top spot in the world ranking

Ian Poulter denied Luke Donald the top spot in the world ranking

Ian Poulter denied Luke Donald the top spot in the world ranking, beating the fellow Englishman 2 and 1 in the final of the World Match Play Championship.The second-ranked Donald could have risen to No. 1 for the first time, supplanting compatriot Lee Westwood if he’d won the tournament, but failed to find the consistent form that swept him to the final.Poulter, who ousted Westwood in the last 16, was 1-down to his Ryder Cup teammate three times in the error-strewn Fila Korea Buys Titleist For Global Expansion match at Finca Cortesin, but won the 12th with a 45-foot putt and took Nos. 14 and 16 with birdies.In the semifinals, Poulter beat Nicolas Colsaerts in 19 holes, and Donald topped Martin Kaymer 5 and 3.David Toms threw both arms up in the air and a smile took over his face when he finally regained the lead at Colonial. This time, he didn’t let it get away.A day after blowing a seven-stroke advantage to go into the final round trailing Charlie Wi by one, Toms made an eagle with a wedge shot from 83 yards at the par-5 11th hole to take the lead for good and went on to his first PGA Tour victory since January 2006.The 44-year-old Toms closed with a 3-under 67 at Hogan’s Alley to get to 15 under. His long-elusive 13th career victory came a week after a playoff loss to K.J. Choi at The Players Championship, his sixth runner-up finish since last winning.Wi ended up a stroke back for his fourth career runner-up finish without a win.Michael Hoey won the Madeira Islands Open for his second European Tour title, closing with a 1-under 71 for a TaylorMade R9 Fairway Wood adopt Latest technology two-stroke victory. Hoey, also the 2009 Estoril Open winner, had a 10-under 278 total at Porto Santo Golf, the Seve Ballesteros-designed course that features 500-foot seaside cliffs. ... Garth Mulroy won the BMW Charity Pro-Am in Greer, S.C., for his second career Nationwide Tour title, beating Sunghoon Kang on the first hole of a playoff when the South Korean missed a 3-foot par putt.

The Wells Fargo Championship will have a new winner

The Wells Fargo Championship will have a new winner

The defending champion shot an even-par 72 on Friday at Quail Hollow and missed the even-par cut by three strokes.“Disappointed that after all that happened last year, not to be here for the weekend. But that’s golf,” said McIlroy, who shot a course-record 62 in the final round a year ago to win by four shots. “I’ll go home and do some hard practice over the next few days and try to get ready for the next event.”McIlroy, who turned 22 Wednesday, shot an 80 on the last day at Augusta to lose a four-shot lead. He struggled with his ball striking on Thursday, and a day later his putter let him down.“I gave myself a lot of opportunities,” McIlroy said, “I just wasn’t able to take them.”There were moments late in the round when it appeared McIlroy The golfing R11 Driver You Can Afford Easily might pull off a similar feat as a year ago, when he was two shots over the cut line with three holes to go. An eagle on No. 7 allowed him to make the cut on the number. Then came weekend rounds of 66 and 62.“I know better than most people that you just have to be around on the weekend and be able to make something happen,” he said. “I was just trying to get in there, trying to get to the weekend.”McIlroy got within one of the cut line with a birdie on 15 and then lipped out a 40-foot birdie putt on 16. After three-putting the 17th for bogey, he knew he had to make eagle on the final hole.“I basically needed to hole by second shot on the last to have any chance,” McIlroy said. “I went for the pin and just came up a bit short and in the creek. Obviously, not what I wanted.”“I love the way the course is set up,” Mickelson said. “I love the way there’s a first cut. There’s a lot of opportunity for recovery. When you do miss the fairway, even though you’re in trees and you have a tough shot, you still have an opportunity with a decent lie.”In seven previous appearances, Mickelson has five top-10 finishes. He finished second behind Rory McIlroy last year and is again in contention for his first win in Charlotte.

Tiger wishes he could have played with Seve

Tiger wishes he could have played with Seve

Ballesteros, who died Saturday of a cancerous brain tumor, is to be buried Wednesday in his hometown of Pedrena, Spain. Seve Ballesteros was considered a genius for inventing shots, usually after he found himself in trouble off the fairway. On the eve of the great Spaniard's funeral, he was remembered by two players who could at times relate. "You've never seen a person compete from the places he played from," Tiger Woods said Tuesday. Phil Mickelson, who also has a remarkable ability to escape from anywhere, recalled the time he played a practice round with Golf Difficulties Send Romo To Regular Job Ballesteros at Torrey Pines when Lefty was still an amateur. "I enjoyed that time with him because I saw his artistry," Mickelson said. Woods, who was born seven months before Ballesteros was the 54-hole leader at the 1976 British Open as a 19-year-old, never competed against the Spaniard during his prime. "He would have been so much fun to watch and compete against that," Woods said. He did recall a few practice rounds, none more memorable than one year at the Masters with Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal.

"Just to hear him explain how to hit shots around the Augusta ... it was just artful," Woods said. "Just the spin, and how much spin you need to put it here and where you need to land it, where it needs to kick, and the way he explained it, and Golf Star - Seve Ballesteros Died At 54 Years Old what he needs to do with the body to do that with the hands. "He looked like he didn't try and do anything mechanical, but he had a few thoughts about what he needed to do. He just understood it." Mickelson specifically remembers the way Ballesteros played the par-3 11th on the South Course at Torrey Pines, when the pin was cut back and to the right. That's typically a 5-iron or a 6-iron. "He would take a 3-iron ... a big 30- to 50-yard rounded slice that would land in the middle of the green and then side spin over to the hole," Mickelson said. "It just opened my eyes how many different ways you can get to the some of these pins. And I loved watching that because it showed me that it's possible, that it doesn't have to be this robotic way of fairways, middle of the green and so forth."

Cure for Tiger's ills is just going out and playing

Cure for Tiger's ills is just going out and playing

Tiger Woods, who seems forever to be jumping hurdles at this stage of his career rather than just playing golf. He's always hurting, despite being known as a workout nut with a body built to last. Always working on his swing, too, as if it ever really needed a major overhaul. Silly to predict great results for Woods on the TPC Stadium Phil Mickelson VS Bubba Watson Course later this week. It's been a month since he last played on the PGA Tour, and even then there was an air of mystery in his results. Left knee and Achilles' tendon injuries were given as the reason he withdrew from the Wells Fargo Championship in North Carolina, and that damage reportedly resulted from a shot hit awkwardly off a bed of pine straw near the end of Woods' third round at the Masters.

OK, but how do you explain Tiger's fourth round at Augusta National, a brilliant 67 that showed few signs of weakness? If there had been a green-jacket ceremony for Tiger that evening, he surely didn't look like a guy who would have limped to it.

The Players Championship doesn't play favorites quite so much. There's nowhere to put a bad drive, and no hope of scrambling to save par for those who miss the island green at No. 17. For all the amazing things he has accomplished, Tiger has taken home the Players trophy just once, and that was a decade ago. He withdrew from last year's tournament with a neck injury six holes into the final round and was something like 10 shots off Tim Clark's winning pace at the time. Altogether, there's been just one top-10 finish for Tiger in this event over the last 10 years. Fair to say, then, that it would be a surprise if he took a run at winning it now.

When, if ever, do we get to the point where it would rank as a surprise to see Tiger rack up the five additional major titles it will take him to pass Nicklaus' all-time record of 18? For me, that tipping point will come at the conclusion of the 2011 season, unless Tiger does one of two things in the meantime. The first is obvious enough. Win a major this summer and everything's back on track. The best chance might be Royal St. George's, where Tiger finished tied for fourth in the 2003 British Open, two shots behind Ben Curtis.

The second is much simpler but it counts for a lot. Get through the rest of the season without another injury . Do that and all the obsessive swing tweaking may finally give way to all the old aggressive moves. That would be the sign of a Tiger no longer wounded, no longer in need of a physical coach or a mental crutch.

Memories of Seve Ballesteros

Memories of Seve Ballesteros

Seve Ballesteros, the charismatic Spanish golfer who won the Masters twice and the British Open three times and helped propel Europe’s rise in the Ryder Cup competition with the United States, died early Saturday at his home in northern Spain, where his struggle with brain cancer had gained wide attention in the sports world. He was 54.

Everybody who cares a little about the great game of golf should have a first memory of Seve's arrival. For this writer, who was a 15 year-old sports mad fan in 1976, 'the brick through the window moment' was a single shot during the final round of the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, that is still burned How Can You Perfect Your Golf Swing indelibly in the memory.After Seve had given memorable chase to the eventual winner Johnny Miller, he faced a chip over bone-hard turf along a narrow ridge between two bunkers on the 72nd hole.The difficulty quotient was extreme but nevertheless he bumped and ran the ball along a razor edge to near tap-in range for a closing birdie and thereby secured a tie with Jack Nicklaus for second place which effectively launched his star into orbit. The following week he won the Dutch Open, the first of his 87 tournament victories worldwide. The rest, as they say, is history.

But for all his short game wizardry, for much of the fillet of his career, especially in the 1980's, Seve was unfairly labelled as a wayward-striking escape artist. Three years after his runner-up finish at Birkdale, he was already well established as Europe's top player when he won the Open at Royal Lytham.

Seve's extraordinary capacity to conjure up birdies and pars from positions on the course best reserved for wildlife, masked an equal and probably over-riding ability to play 'straight-down-the-middle' seamless golf when his all-round game came together which was more frequent than not during his best years in the 1980's. As he matured as a player, the dashing, slashing swing of his teens became quieter, more classic and certainly more controlled. That made him a consistent performer on the greatest stage of all, the majors, which provided the five most defining achievements of his career.In the course of his first Masters victory less than a year after his Lytham triumph, Seve's marshalling of the destiny of his golf ball was extraordinary as he built up a lead that stretched to ten strokes in the course of the final round at Augusta.In the space of a year, he had become the youngest winner of the Open in the 20th century and the youngest man to don the green jacket up to that point.Three years later he came from one shot off the lead after three rounds to win the Masters, again by four strokes, dominating the last 18 holes from tee to green and on them as well.

NCAA Regional Golf Championships Entering Final Round

NCAA Regional Golf Championships Entering Final Round

Big Ten Women's Golf Still in Hunt for NCAA Regional Championships Entering Final Round. Round 2 of the NCAA Women's Golf Regionals concluded on Friday with four Big Ten teams holding places in the top eight of their respective regionals. Three conference teams enter Saturday's final round in the top eight of the Central Regional, Rory McIlroy Said Masters Is In Past led by Minnesota in a tie for second place. Purdue leads the Big Ten contingent at the East Regional, sitting in third place through 36 holes.

The Gophers shot a 9-over 297 to jump into a tie for second place, moving their 36-hole total to a 22-over 598. Ohio State holds fifth place at 31-over, while Northwestern is tied for sixth at 32-over. Wisconsin ranks 15th after Round 2 at 43-over, followed by Illinois in 16th (+46) and Michigan in 17th (+47). Minnesota's Samantha Sommers is tied for third individually to lead all conference golfers in the regional, sitting at 2-over through the first two rounds. The Boilermakers fired a 3-under 285 in the second round to push their total to a 4-over 580 entering Round 3. Michigan State is tied for ninth at 20-over. Individually, the Spartans' Caroline Powers posted a 3-under 69 in the second round, helping her take second place entering Saturday's final round. The third and final round of the NCAA Women's Golf Regionals begins at 8 a.m. ET on Saturday, with the top eight teams and top two individuals advancing to the NCAA Championships.

Manassero eager for U.S. Open

Manassero eager for U.S. Open

The 18-year-old Italian is 33rd in the world rankings and needs to remain in the top 50 by the end of May in order to make certain of his place in the second major of the year. "I'm really looking forward to playing one of the world's most famous courses," twice European Tour winner Manassero told Reuters on the eve of the Spanish Open. "I don't know anything about the Congressional, except I know the rough will be long, Woods Will Be Ready For US Open but tough courses suit my game and I'm excited about making my debut." The June 16-19 U.S. Open will be held for the third time on the Blue course at Congressional where South African Ernie Els won the most recent edition in 1997.

Manassero became the youngest winner on the European Tour when he lifted the Castello Masters title in Spain last year, at the age of 17. Europe's 2010 Rookie of the Year then proved his maiden victory was no fluke by landing the Malaysian Open crown in Kuala Lumpur last month. While Manassero is delighted to have won twice already in his fledgling career, the teenager is also concerned about a possible backlash."There will be bad times but I'm sure I'll be able to handle it especially as I have a good team around me." Manassero, competing this week for the first time since his Malaysian triumph, is juggling the demands of the tour with trying to complete his formal education. "It's not easy to combine the two but I try," he said. "I want to finish my studies so I travel with my books and do my exams." Manassero said that qualifying for next year's Ryder Cup near Chicago was in his thoughts.