That's Our Vijay: Files Suit Against PGA Tour!

He's becoming the gift that keeps on giving!

USA Today with the first details of Vijay Singh's suit against the tour over his deer antler spray doping policy violation, which earned a "no comment" from the tour.

The Tour, the lawsuit says, could have known by conducting some basic testing and research, the product that Singh sprayed contained no active biological ingredient and could not possibly have provided any performance enhancement.

"The PGA Tour has now finally admitted that the use of deer antler spray is not prohibited," the suit claims. "Rather than performing its duties to golfers first, and then determining whether there had been any violation of the Anti-Doping Program, the PGA Tour rushed to judgment and accused one of the world's hardest working and most dedicated golfers of violating the rules of the game."

Update on 2013-05-08 16:08 by Geoff

**Vijay's full statement. The poor, poor lad...

The PDF of the complaint courtesy of Golf Channel and reader BrianS.

Update on 2013-05-09 17:34 by Geoff

**Steve Elkington weighed in with a Secrets In The Dirt cartoon.

Ernst And Starting A Telecast While We're Young

Steve DiMeglio reports on 22-year-old fourth alternate Derek Ernst winning a Wells Fargo Championship playoff over Englishman David Lynn in just the UNLV rookie's eighth PGA Tour start.

The round started as early as any final round Sunday in recent memory to help get the round in before storms rendered the already dreadful greens even less playable. This put CBS in the unenviable position of showing tape-delayed golf that was widely reported on if you follow Twitter or log onto PGATour.com.

And in an era with a channel devoted to golf (showing early round coverage) and live digital streaming, John Strege took issue with CBS's choice to stick with a tape delayed telecast.

The tournament, as a result, ended more than an hour before the delayed telecast began on CBS.

We reached out to a CBS representative for an explanation. "We have the rights to the final round," she wrote in an email. "Our broadcast window is from 3:00-6:00 pm ET. Due to affiliate and/or other programming commitments, we can not move the broadcast window when tee times are moved up."

What then would compel anyone to watch had they already known that an obscure tour rookie, Derek Ernst, had won in his ninth career start? They might logically conclude that they hadn't missed anything.

The final round highlights from PGA Tour Productions:

Videos: TPC Trying To Get Out From Under Downpours

Garry Smits calls them a "strange few days" and the videos would seem to confirm freakish weather in advance of The Players where a cool spring had already been causing trouble.

Video of the 18th fairway:



Meanwhile, if the grass growing thing doesn't work out for TPC Sawgrass Agronomy team member Lucas Andrews, he's got the accent and desire to let his hair get messy in high winds to be a CNN hurricane correspondent, as evidenced by the latest post on the TPC Sawgrass Agronomy blog.

Update on 2013-05-05 05:52 by Geoff

**They're up to 9 inches through Saturday afternoon. Garry Smits with an update from superintendent Tom Vlach, including help from the Jacksonville Electric Authority who offered pumps.

Vlach said more than 9 inches had fallen on the course as of 2 p.m. Saturday. However, there had been enough breaks in the rain squalls for his staff to begin verti-cutting the greens. The greens were cut and rolled four times Saturday morning with plans to do it again four times in the afternoon.

The Precision Air pumps under the greens also were working non-stop to drain even more moisture from the putting surfaces.

Players: Quail Hollow Greens Victim Of 24/7 Media

It's the media conjuring up a story, say a few players quoted by Jason Sobel on the eve of the Wells Fargo Championship opening round.

“You know, in the age that you guys [in the media] have to talk about something 24 hours a day,” Joe Ogilvie explained, “you’ve got to come up with something.”

“Once the tournament starts, I think all of that stuff will stop and it will be about the tournament, about the shots and the scoring,” said Mickelson. “We’ll see what’s made this tournament great in the past and it won’t be an issue. But I think leading up it will be the talk, because we haven’t had the actual action to discuss yet.”

“One thing I’ve realized is that there’s always a new story,” Trevor Immelman added. “There’s a new story every week. Just when you think you’re going to be able to latch onto something and wear it out for a few months, something else happens. It’s amazing to me. I think it’s just one of those things that we work through and next week there will be another story.”

We'll see what the boys say after they've posted their first round scores!

Juding by this image from Jeff Sisner of the Charlotte Observer from his pro-am slideshow, this is more than just a story whipped up by the 24/7 press.

Quail Hollow To Feature Two One-Week-Old Resodded Greens

Even with the greens slated for conversion after the tournament, Quail Hollow has made the almost unheard of move to resod less than a week before Wells Fargo Championship play.

Ron Green Jr. with new details of the drastic efforts to make two of the worst greens at Quail Hollow playable.

“I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I’ve never done this,” said Cal Roth, senior vice president for agronomy for the PGA Tour. “We’ve had to patch parts of greens a lot of times but this is the first time we’ve done entire greens.”

On a course that is in spectacular condition otherwise, the eighth and 10th greens failed to respond to efforts to generate suitable grass cover. Several weeks ago, both greens were tented in an effort to generate growth. When it didn’t help the 10th green, it was resodded.

When the first resodding failed at No. 10, the decision was made to redo it, this time using a different cultivation approach.

Video: Guan Picks Up The Pace, Almost Makes An Ace

Ryan Lavner on 14-year-old amateur Tianlang Guan's opening 72 which included a hybrid on 17 that finished a foot from the hole.

There was also noticeably faster pace of play.

And clearly, Guan has made a concerted effort to pick up the pace, perhaps stung by the criticism.

On Thursday, he was almost always the first to walk off the tee box or approach the green.

When he used the restroom between Nos. 5 and 6, he jogged back to the tee so as not to give the appearance that he was lagging behind. Never mind that the group ahead was still in the fairway. His threesome played in 5 hours, 10 minutes.

“He’s not fast, but it was not an issue at all,” said Henrik Norlander, the third player in Guan’s group. “We couldn’t go anywhere. We waited most of the day. I’m sure he learned something at the Masters to speed up a little bit. But it’s tough for him too, because he’s hitting first into every green.”

His round highlights on YouTube.