ZealousGolfer.com

Both David Duval and Bob Tway are using their one time exemption from career earnings to keep their PGA Tour Cards for 2007.

Duval is #24 on the money list. He is more than $4 million dollars ahead of 50th place. It seems certain that he will be able to use a top-50 exemption.

Tway finished this year 175th on the money list ...it was his worst finish since 1992. He did not use the exemption in 1992 because he had had a 1986 PGA victory which allowed for a ten year exemption.


Support Golf Heaven by starting your shopping sessions here.

Tiger Woods announced today that he is missing next week's PGA Tour Season Opener, the Mercedes-Benz Championship.

He cited two primary reasons:
#1 -- he wants more time with his family and
#2 -- he has spent the last twelve days skiing and relaxing with his family and isn't prepared for tournament play. He said that since winning the Target World Challenge on December 17th, he has not really played much golf.

Woods missed the tournament last year as well due to his father's diminishing health.

The event is set to be the first in the new FedEx Cup competition. It is a points race that begins with the Mercedes-Benz Championship. The 2007 winner will get $10 million in deferred compensation.

Woods is currently on a six streak PGA Tour win.

I see two interesting things here: #1 -- even on a bad day, Woods is better than most players in the world and would probably fair well at the Mercedes event. #2 -- the offer of winning $10 million at the end of the year is not enough of an incentive for Woods who is set to be the first athlete to earn a billion dollars.

While 2006 yielded few new breakout players, 2007 may have more potential. Several one and two time winners in 2006 look to charge at the top during '07. A new points system with $10 million going as a bonus will definitely attract better fields.

Adam Scott ended a long winless drought by winning the Tour Championship in 2006. Scott has been one of the most promising players from Australia since Greg Norman. Scott rarely fulfilled that potential until his win this year. As soon as Scott matures a little bit and has total control of his game, he will rock fields just like he did at East Lake.

While Tiger dominated basically every event he entered this year, LPGA star Lorena Ochoa was busy taking down a giant. Annika Sorenstam has been the LPGA's Tiger for several years now, but that all changed after the young Mexican Ochoa came to play. Ochoa won and placed second in many events to finish the LPGA season and claim the tour's player of the year honor.

Her success in 2006 was further honored when the Associated Press voted Ochoa the "female player of the year." In short, golf now has the best athlete in both the male and female sports world. It's hard to believe that golf, not considered a "major" sport, dominated the "majors" as well as great performances by its peers such as the success by Roger Federer and Maria Sharapova in tennis.


Support Golf Heaven by starting your shopping here through Golf Galaxy

Tiger Woods was named male athlete of the year by the Associated Press by narrowly defeating San Diego Chargers' running back Ladanian Tomlinson. Woods earned his fourth athlete of the year honor to tie cyclist Lance Armstrong. Armstrong, who won 7 Tour de France titles, won the award the last four years to set the bar.

Golf great Tiger Woods will turn 31 in four days (December 30th). Tiger wish list may be pretty short as he currently possesses the number one world rank, a gigantic property in Florida, a yacht with crew, and is married to a bikini model.

Only Jack Nicklaus's major championship record and a real grand slam elude Tiger. While he won't steal the Jack's record this year, the grand slam (winning all 4 majors) is in sight.

Here's an early but memorable Tiger commercial:


Make sure to check out The Golf Channel's week long special on Tiger.

Santa Claus is almost here, and hopefully is bringing a variety of golf gifts with him.

For anyone who has ever played the game, the problem of hitting the ball too long or short is a tough one. Almost all amateur golfers overestimate their distances with all clubs. Most amateur golfers look to their "career long" distance with a club (i.e. because three years ago they jacked a 7 iron 170). The best and cheapest way to find correct distances is probably going to a flat range and hitting a series of shots to find your average. The problem of hitting the ball too short is usually incorrectly credited to hitting a weak shot.

Check out this distance calculator in the works by TheDeepRough.com. Though the tool is still in testing, it gives a pretty accurate measurement based on the user's answers to several questions.

Michelle Wie has been compared to Tiger Woods in many ways, usually the huge paychecks each collect from Nike. But aside from the swooshes, both players now will have attended the prestigious Stanford University. Of course, Tiger will have attended as a dominant college player and Michelle Wie will just be a student due to her forfeiture of her amateur status. Of course, the $20 million she made in 2006 as a professional should be some consolation for not being able to play for Stanford's Women's' golf team.

On Christmas Eve, ABC star George Lopez, will host "Every Moment Counts that will air on ABC.

Produced by PGA Tour Productions, the show will feature two perspectives on PGA Tour events: What happens inside the ropes and, simultaneously, what happens at five charities that the respective tours benefits. It demonstrates that evey moment on the PGA Tour makes a difference.

One segment will focus on AstraZeneca. At 35 select PGA Tour events, the AstraZeneca Charity Challenge rewarded the player who was leading the tournament going into the final round. Each week, AstraZeneca contributed $100,000 to heath care charities in the name of the winner. In 2006, the company contributed $3.5 million dollars. Since the program began in 2004, AstraZeneca has donated $9.7 million.

One of sport's most prestigious events, the Masters, has almost finalized its field for 2007. The annual major championship invited past champions, amateur champions, and numerous professionals who qualify through the Masters' criteria. With 71 players currently eligible and expected to play, the field currently looks like this:
Past Masters Champions:
Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, Mike Weir, Vijay Singh, Jose Maria Olazabal, Mark O'Meara, Ben Crenshaw, Bernhard Langer, Fred Couples, Ian Woosnam, Sandy Lyle, Larry Mize, Craig Stadler, Tom Watson, Fuzzy Zoeller, Gary Player, Raymond Floyd.
Past Five U.S. Open Champs:
Geoff Ogilvy, Michael Campbell, Retief Goosen, Jim Furyk.
Past Five British Open Champions:
Todd Hamilton, Ben Curtis, Ernie Els.
Past Five PGA Champions:
Shaun Micheel, Rich Beem.
Past Three Players Championship Champions:
Stephen Ames, Fred Funk.
U.S. Amateur champion and runner-up:
Richie Ramsay, John Kelly.
British Amateur champion:
Julien Gerrier.
U.S. Amateur Public Links champion:
Casey Watabu.
U.S. Mid-Amateur champion:
Dave Womack.
Top 16 players and ties from 2006 Masters:
Tim Clark, Chad Campbell, Angel Cabrera, Stewart Cink, Miguel Angel Jimenez, Arron Oberholser, Billy Mayfair, Scott Verplank, Rod Pampling.
Top eight players and ties from 2006 U.S. Open:
Colin Montgomerie, Padraig Harrington, Nick O'Hern, Jeff Sluman, Steve Stricker, Kenneth Ferrie.
Top four players and ties from 2006 British Open:
Chris DiMarco.
Top four players and ties from 2006 PGA Championship:
Adam Scott, Sergio Garcia.
Top 40 in 2006's PGA TOUR Offical Money List:
Trevor Immelman, Stuart Appleby, Luke Donald, Brett Wetterich, David Toms, Rory Sabbatini, Davis Love III, Carl Pettersson, Brett Quigley, Dean Wilson, Lucas Glover, Joe Durant, Zach Johnson, K.J. Choi, J.J. Henry, Tom Pernice Jr., Vaughn Taylor, Troy Matteson, Tim Herron, Camilo Villegas, Jerry Kelly.
Top 50 players from the final 2006 world ranking: Henrik Stenson, David Howell, Paul Casey, Robert Karlsson, Shingo Katayama, Yong-Eun Yang, Ian Poulter, Darren Clarke, Jeev Milkha Singh, Ben Crane, Niclas Fasth, Thomas Bjorn, Robert Allenby, Johan Edfors, Lee Westwood, Bradley Dredge.

While the Nike's Sumo has been a news maker for several weeks now, the Callaway square driver has been fairly under the radar. With Callaway publishing little information on the new square head (...and refusing to send info to Golf Heaven) the public has little information. Callaway Golf is preparing to launch a full area on the site for the new club,but in the meantime has a flash pop-up in preparation.

The FT-i will incorporate similar MOI enhancing technology to the Nike's new, square Sumo driver. Both are geometrically square and look to increase forgiveness for all golfers. As I excited as I was about this release, experts see the new square drivers increasing the Moment of Inertia only slightly. The average golfer will not start popping it 350 yards, but the radical designs will draw in customers by standing out on the shelves.

With Callaway and Nike preparing to introduce a new generation of clubs, what will the other companies do? Titleist is preparing to release the 907 D1 and D2 drivers which will be triangular in shape opposed to square. Cleveland will continue with their "scoop-back" style Hibore driver, but this time with a much wider body.

The jury is still out on whether or not the chase for the Holy Grail of driver shapes will yield significantly better products or just create talk. While a revolution is unlikely, the new drivers will surely continue to create talk and will find their way into bags across America.

Tiger Woods annihilated the competition at the Target World Challenge and won by four shots today. He shot a six under 66 at Sherwood Country Club.

Geoff Ogilvy took second place. Chris DiMarco finished third.

Woods was the official event host. His win means an additional $1.35 million in his pocket.

Ernie Els made winning look easy with a three stroke victory over second place finisher Trevor Immelman. Els had 8 birdies in his final round.

Patrik Sjoland, the round two leader, finished third in the tournament.

Geoff Ogilvy had two reasons to be pleased today: #1 .. he finally got to escape the steady rain at the Target World Challenge and, more importantly, he heads into the final round with a one stroke lead. He shot a 5 under 67 for the best score of the day.

Tiger Woods is in second place. He was leading until the fifth hole.

The lead changed again after round three at the South African Airways Open. Trevor Immelman birdied his final four holes to finish the round at 9 under with a 63. It was a fitting way for Immelman to celebrate his 27th birthday on Saturday.

The PGA Tour's Rookie of the Year proved why he was given the title when he set the 54 hole record for the event held by Vijay Singh. He is now three shots ahead of Ernie Els heading into Sunday's final event.

Friday's leader, Patrik Sjoland, only shot a 69 and now finds himself in third place

At the South African Airways Open at Humewood Golf Club, Patrik Sjoland shot a course record, 8 under 64 to take the lead. Tied for second place is Ernie Els and Trevor Immelman.

Sjoland lost his European Tour playing card last year.

Henrik Stenson is in a familiar place -- first -- after round one at the Target World Challenge at California's Sherwood Country Club.

John Daly, however, is in an unusual place -- only three shots behind the leader. Daly is 193rd on the money list. He is in the worst position he has been in since 1991. To date, Daly hasn't earned even $100,000 in one event this year. That will change -- even the worst finisher in the Target World Challenge earns $170,000.

Stenson will be paired with Tiger Woods on Saturday.

After the first round, four golfers share the lead at the South African Airways Open: Ernie Els, Trevor Immelman, Carl Suneson and Andrew Raitt.

Talk about a shot with distance ... Richard Finch, an Englishman and a professional golfer, was playing yesterday at the South African Airways Open and hit a hole-in-one on #12 (par three). He earned one million miles on the airline as a prize. He can also use the miles to rent cars, stay at resorts and order wine.

Bernhard Langer and Marcel Siem may have entered the day trailing by five strokes, but nothing held the Germans back. After a five under round of 66 in alternate shot format, the Langer/Siem German team won the WGC Barbados World Cup after a hole of playoff by defeating the Scottish team.

Langer has just won the Del Webb Father/Son Challenge in Orlando and continued his strong play by staring down Colin Montgomerie on Sunday. Langer, who will play on the Champions Tour next season, found the hole of Montgomerie pushed a short five footer in the playoff.

Americans Stewart Cink and J.J. Henry made no challenge at the lead by finishing the day with eleven consecutive pars.

Langer and Siem will receive $700,000 each for winning the World Cup.

The race to win the 2006 World Cup has become tight after day three. Argentina appeared to be the front away winner. However, strong performances on the back nine yesterday changed the leaderboard at Sandy Lane Golf Resort.

Sweden enters the final round with a one stroke lead over Argentina. Scotland is only one stroke back. Seven teams are tied for fourth place, including the United States who made seven consecutive birdies on the final nine on day three. Stewart Cink had five of the seven birdies.

The winning team today will split the first place prize of $1.4 million.

So with another year of Tiger dominance, courses and tournament purses continue to expand. With the 2006 season all but in the books, what were the best events of 2006?

In 2007, the PGA TOUR will enter its inaugural season under the FedEx Cup format. The FedEx Cup was made to give golf a "playoff" to end the season similar to other major sports, but most similar to NASCAR's Nextel Cup. The new plan was made to give big name golfers more initiative to play in some of the season ending events while competing for a huge prize.

The FedEx Cup will host select fields in the following four events which comprise the "playoff" part of the championship:
*Barclays Classic -- 144 players
*Deutsche Bank Championship -- 120 players
*BMW Championship -- 70 players
*THE TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola -- 30 players

The winner of the FedEx Cup will receive a $10 million bonus, the largest bonus ever awarded in sports. The top five players in the race will all receive prizes of over $1 million for their efforts.

Of course, this program is not a lock to attract the big guns like Tiger and Phil. Both players skipped out of several events in the late part of the season, most notably the TOUR Championship. Another downside of the program is the select fields in several events. These events will hurt graduates from the Nationwide Tour and Qualifying School because of a smaller schedule size. Players will now have to make a move early in the season as well as some of the weaker summer events to hold onto their cards.

The season will end with seven events following the TOUR Championship in 2007. These events will make up the Fall Series and will end at the Walt Disney World Resort Classic, formerly the FUNAI Classic.

24 nations have teams competing at the Sandy Lane Course in Barbados at the Barbados World Cup. Weather conditions were horrendous. Pelting rain, fueled by 45 mph winds, made the course extremely tough.

Three teams have emerged to take the lead: Argentina, South Africa and Sweden are 7 under after one day of play. The American team is two strokes off of the lead. Considering the team is comprised of Stewart Cink (15th on the 2006 money list) and JJ Henry (29th on the 2006 money list), it is a respectable showing.

The weather is expected to continue to be rainy with strong wind gusts for the next three days.

The winners of the four majors will meet again at the Grand Slam of Golf, but in 2007, the event will move from Hawaii to Bermuda.

The Mid-Ocean Club and The Fairmont Southampton will play host to the event next October.

Tiger Woods won the event last month for the seventh time by defeating Geoff Ogilvy, Jim Furyk, and Mike Weir.

The move will help the cause of re-globalizing professional golf as World Golf Championships and other large events move closer to North America.

The World Golf Championship Barbados World Cup, likely the closest think to a war between golfing nations, rolls into Barbados this week. Twenty four nations, eighteen of those exempt alongside five qualifying nations and the host Barbados team, will fight in teams of two for world supremacy. The event is definitely not taken advantage of by the United States as Stewart Cink and J.J. Henry will be representing the red, white, and blue. Both players were members of this year's Ryder Cup team, of course that fact may not support a pick of the U.S. teammates.

Though the North American teams look to find victory, that quest will face a major road block when facing several strong European teams. At the top of the list, and Golf Heaven's pick, is team England. The English are represented by European stars Luke Donald and David Howell. Nearby Ireland is also well represented by Padraig Harrington and Paul McGinley. The Swedes also look to make a strong showing led by young players Henrik Stenson and CarlPetterson.

Trinidad and Tobago will again be represented by the Ames brothers. PGA TOUR player and PLAYERS Championship winner Stephen Ames, who just returned from a back injury, will play alongside brother and caddy Robert again. Ames was forced to withdraw from the Tour Championship because of his back problem, but always looks forward to playing with his brother Robert in this event. Robert, who may have had a professional golf career of his own, is well respected within the TOUR caddy community and is usually a member of the best caddy/golfer conversation.

Singapore, Italy, and Switzerland qualified by way of the Nations Cup qualifier. Mexico and Jamaica also qualified, but by way of the South American Nations Cup. The Mexican team will be led by Esteban Toledo, a current member of the Nationwide Tour. Toledo is one of golf's mentally strongest players having grown up in a house with dirt floors in Tijuana. The Italian team is led by Francesco Molinari, a European Tour player and brother of Eduardo Molinari.

The United States Golf Association has now signed its first corporate sponsorship deal after signing with American Express. The USGA, who oversees the national championships in the U.S., will allow American Express special privileges in addition to advertising such as corporate tents. Executive Director of the USGA said, "This is new ground for us,". This deal is the first with a corporation in the USGA's 112 year history.

American Express, who already is the title sponsor of a World Golf Championship, will air commercials with Tiger Woods and his U.S. Open trophies.

The USGA says that fans will not notice any real difference in the tournament atmosphere when the U.S. Open rolls into Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 2007. Oakmont Country Club will play host to another U.S. Open and will likely not display any major changes due to the new partnership but will include a Trophy Tent for Amex.

Spaniard Seve Ballesteros is set to play in The Masters and Open Championship next season setting up to join the Champions Tour. Ballesteros, a five time major champion, is currently 49 and will join up with the Champions Tour next season. Ballesteros did play at Hoylakest season after two years since his previous professional start.

Ballesteros is arguably the best Spanish player in history. His influence includes the Great Britain-Ireland Ryder Cup team expanding to include all Europeans so that Seve would be eligible. Seve also is the hero of such great modern players as Sergio Garcia.

American Jim Furyk soundly defeated his competitors today at Sun City's Nedbank Golf Challenge. For the first time in the tournament, he did have a bogey on the third hole. However, he was in the lead by five strokes so the effect of the shot was minimal. He was the event's defending champion and picked up $1.2 million today.

Stenson, day one's leader, had the best day on the course, shooting a 69 and came within three strokes of the leader.

American Jim Furyk continued to play consistent golf at Sun City, South Africa's Nedbank Golf Challenge. After Round Three, Furyk has yet to hit anything worse than par. He has had three sub 70 rounds, posting 68 today.

Padraig Harrington has taken over second place, shooting a tournament best of 65. However, he is still three strokes off of the lead.

Ernie Els is four strokes back to find himself in third place. Els has displayed shocking behavior, throwing a club out of frustration. This is the second time in the tournament. On the first day of play, he threw a club that nearly hit his caddie.

Other players behaving badly in this tournament include Colin Montgomery, Sergio Garcia and first day leader, Henrik Stenson, who now finds himself in fourth place.

Jim Furyk capitalized on the mistakes of first day leader, Henrik Stenson, to take a four stroke lead at Sun City, South Africa's Nedbank Golf Challenge. He finished the day with six birdies. After 36 holes of play, he has not had anything worse than a par.

Stenson struggled and finished 1-under-71, but still is holding on to second place.

In last place, 18 shots and a miracle behind Furyk, is Colin Montgomerie.