Round Up

Sergio is playing in Japan and is 2 off the lead after the first round. It took me a while to find the leaderboard on the internet for that tournament. The first event on the 2007 European Tour season is in China and Tiger, after snubbing the Tour Championship claiming he needed one more week of rest, sucked in the first round and is even par. Serves him right. Padraig Harrington and Michael Campbell are doing well. Luke Donald is playing again this week. That means he was in Spain for the Volvo Masters, then flew to Atlanta for the Tour Championship and is now in China. If anyone is tired, it's Luke.

I saw on tv and read on google news that Tiger says they should pick all 12 participants in the Ryder Cup if they want the best players. Well, that is 180 degrees opposite of what a rankings system is used for. The rankings system is supposed to determine your best players. If you could pick all 12 of them, then you'd be picking friends, and players who played well 15 years ago. The players who are actually playing better than everyone else wouldn't get to play and you'd never get new players in the event which means when the old and tired players move on to the Senior tour, there wouldn't be any players with Ryder Cup experience to carry on.

For Tiger to say that all the players need to be picked, it sounds like he's trying to blame the newbies on the 2006 team for the loss of the cup. Also, if the players didn't have a spot to earn like they do with the current system or the former systems of top 8 or top 10, then the captain wouldn't be able to tell who fights for the spots and who wants to be on the team more. But, all that being said, and Tiger's opinions aside, the bottom line is, no matter how the players are chosen, the players have to play well with each other. None of the top players are friends, spend free time together or anything like that. You can't manufacture relationships for one week every two years. And I don't see Tiger, Furyk, Phil forming the bonds necessary to put together a winning round.