"So maybe I was selfish; call me selfish."

Hard to say without being there, but it sounds like Ernie Els came up with a clever way to not back down from his "selfish" remarks last month at the Accenture Match Play.

You know, to come back to your remark, what I said, I said it because, you know, I just felt the Friday was not the right place for that. We had to play a tournament and I was maybe selfish from my point of view that all I wanted to do was a play golf tournament instead of talking about, you know, his personal life. That's basically what I meant by that. I felt that the Monday would have been great. Friday wasn't great for us. So maybe I was selfish; call me selfish. That's maybe where I'm coming from.

And now, again, you know, questions keep coming. We cannot give you insight because we don't know. I love everybody to stop asking questions about Tiger and his personal life. That's his life; go ask him, basically.

Bay Hill Will Be New To The Players...Again

Jeff Shain on Arnold Palmer's latest redo of Bay Hill.

"We've literally done something to every hole," said Palmer, who has made Bay Hill his winter home since 1965 and acquired the club 11 years later. "It'll be new to most all [the players]."

Bedecked with an old-school par. After three editions as a par 70, it reverts to 72 as two long par-4s are returned to their original state as par-5s. One of those comes at No. 16, which should help inject some risk/reward thrill to the closing stretch.

"I think it's going to be more fun for the players and a lot more entertaining for the fans," said rookie pro Sam Saunders, who as Palmer's grandson has more familiarity with the new look than anyone else in the field.

Like an aging house, every golf course gets to a point where it needs some maintenance and upgrade. Greens and bunkers tend to shrink as rough slowly overtakes the edges; new technology requires some modification.

Or some committee guy or benevolent dictator jacks around with it to the point that no one really likes it anymore!

Whew. Glad Bay Hill doesn't fall into that category.

On a serious note, wouldn't it have just been cheaper to mow the rough down and change 16 back to a par-5?

2010 WGC CA Championship Final Round

I'm proud sad to say I haven't watched one second of Doral this week between work duties and some Zenyatta viewing yesterday, but with Ernie Els in contention the finale should be interesting. Your comments are mostly appreciated...

Update on 2010-03-15 02:58 by Geoff

Just to show you how much of the CA Championship I took in, here are some notes on Tim-Finchem's contractually obligated sit-in with Dan Hicks.

- He referred to the recent "distractions" that the game has been experiencing. "Nice to get the distractions out of the way, we've had a few of them lately."  Oh I don't know if we've got them all out of the way just yet!

- On the possibility of CA dropping out as sponsor at Doral: "CA is repositioning some of its marketing, either way we're going to continue our relationship." He also said the Doral event "will not have any trouble bringing in a new sponsor."

- On Tiger: "Everyone's done looking back, they're focused on when he's going to play golf." More hilariously, "That means people paid attention to what he said." Right! Then, "You saw in Ponte Vedra, the extent of the media show it will be, his people recognize that, and we'll get some good notice. If he's going to play the end of March, or early April, we'll know soon." And the icing, Tiger "has  set the bar for himself and we all know what happens when he sets the bar for himself." Yes we do.