golf

Many of you have trouble with the unsolid shot. You know the one. The one that doesn't feel very solid and hits off the bottom of the clubhead. It goes very low with the full swing and skirts across the green with no control.

It is usually caused by hitting up on the ball so much that you are only hitting the top of the ball.

As most of you know, here in Florida the wind can sometimes play havoc with your game.

Almost never is it perfectly calm with no wind. So, therefore, you must have a shot that can stay out of the wind. I think everybody should know how to hit the low knockdown shot that penetrates through the wind. So here's how you hit that low knockdown shot.

The luckiest people in San Francisco were standing along the right edge of the 3rd-hole fairway at Harding Park on Sunday, just minding their own business, when Tiger Woods' errant drive took a couple of crazy bounces and came to rest behind their shoes.

Suddenly, these people weren't merely watching the Presidents Cup. They were in it.

I have had a few requests for some basic chipping fundamentals so here we go:

You really don't think Tiger Woods isn't the PGA Tour player of the year, do you?

Well, plenty of people may still feel that way, because he didn't win a major championship this year. But he took the BMW Championship in Lemont, Ill. Sunday by eight shots, his sixth PGA Tour win of the year.

XWe're not sure if Detroit Tigers outfielder Magglio Ordonez follows golf or even knows the Presidents Cup is coming to San Francisco. But Ordonez's rocky 2009 season seems like an apt analogy in the wake of Adam Scott's preposterous appointment to the International team.

Stick with us on this for a moment.

Some golfers often say, "I hit my driver well, but I just can't hit my irons." What could be the problem?

Well, those of you who hit your driver well can be assured that you sweep the ball with a very shallow approach angle. You probably hit your driver high as well. This is always caused by an early release of the golf club from the top of the swing.

Three years after she became a national story by playing golf on the ultimate stage, two years after her mother died from a long bout with breast cancer and 21 months after she walked away from a game she thought she might never play competitively again, Dakoda Dowd is back.

It was on the first tee at the Masters in April that it really hit Gary Player.

"I started thinking, most of my friends are dead, and the average age for an athlete to retire is 28," he said. "And here I am, at 73, getting ready to play in the Masters."

After watching the recent PGA Championship, I got a better respect for how important it is to read greens correctly.

Tiger Woods, who might have golf's best putting stroke, missed at least eight putts from short range that would have sealed the deal for him.