It was the final leg of the Texas swing, and the Colonial gave us a familiar winner and low scores. Who joined him in rips, and who tanked in shanks? Read on.

Rips

Zach Johnson: His birth certificate might say Iowa, but Johnson might as well be from Texas with how he plays in the Lone Star State. Three of his seven PGA Tour titles have come out of Texas, including Sunday’s salty win at Colonial, where Johnson closed with consecutive 64s. It was quite a different story from a week ago, where Johnson missed the cut in San Antonio after an opening 80.

Brian Davis: It was his second runner-up finish in just over a month for the 35-year-old Englishman, and signs that he may be able to win on the PGA Tour. Davis has two victories on the European Tour, but none since 2004, so the great week at Colonial just was another step in the right direction.

Geoff Ogilvy: A Sunday 64 jumped him 25 spots, and lead to his best finish since a season opening win in Hawaii. Ogilvy’s struggled at times with his game, but Sunday was something we’ve expected to see for months.

Shanks

Bryce Molder: He was in a great position on Sunday to pick up his first PGA Tour win, but a final round 70 when everyone else was going low knocked him back a few steps and showed that he still isn’t ready to land in the winner’s circle.

John Daly: You can’t fault the man for making the cut, or closing with a 67, but he once again tossed in a round that screwed up his chances at a high finish. His Saturday 75 with the fourth time this season that Daly put up a really bad score when he didn’t need one, and showed us that we still can’t expect much from Big John.

Phil Mickelson: A missed cut at Colonial might have showed us that if Tiger Woods isn’t in the field, Lefty’s interest level drops tremendously.

If you’ve followed the career of 31-year-old Bryce Molder at all, you know one thing; the man is far too talented to have not won a PGA Tour event yet.

The four-time All-American at Georgia Tech might finally erase that sentence if he can maintain the lead he shares with Brian Davis at the Colonial.

Molder is an interesting character, and one that fits the mold (sorry for the terrible pun) of a hot college player that just couldn’t carry the momentum on the PGA Tour. When he first burst on the scene in 2001, Molder did a little of what Rickie Fowler showed us in 2009. His first start was at the Reno-Tahoe Open, where Molder finished third. It was typical Bryce if you’d watched his amateur days, and what most had expected.

The road after that wasn’t nearly as easy. Molder bounced around between the Nationwide and PGA Tour for the next eight years before finally finding comfort with the big boys in 2009.

Now, he has a great chance of claiming a title if he can do a lot of what he did for 17 holes on Saturday and not so much what he did on that other hole. It was the par-4 fifth hole, where Molder had to drain an 18-footer to save double-bogey, but three birdies after that kept him atop the leaderboard.

Molder will have to beat Davis, who has only made one bogey all week at Colonial, and a cast of players furiously chasing him, including Zach Johnson, Ben Crane and Bill Haas.

Still, it is Molder who has an opportunity to do something he’s been waiting to do for years. Hopefully all the questions about him not winning will be erased on Sunday afternoon.

Six months ago, Tiger Woods turned our (golf) lives around. The flashing headlines and intense accusations made us all a lot confused and a little dirty. We’d invested so much in the superstar, and what we all knew turned out to be false.

Now, today, we know better. We have learned to take Tiger at face value and value the golfing public as a group of guys hellbent on making money, winning tournaments and gaining accolades.

And then there’s Phil Mickelson, the man that was supposed to rise from the Tiger ash a superstar. Not so much the best golfer in the world, but the man we could all stand behind, hoisting him when he won and backing him when he lost.

This week was supposed to be Phil’s shining moment. The family man at heart, Mickelson has worked his entire career to be the number one golfer in the world, and if Earl and Kultida had never conceived a child, Phil would have been there for years. But that is where the two are different.

This week was Phil standing on the final tee at Winged Foot, with a chance to finally take down those demons that have haunted him all his life. At Colonial on Friday, Phil made another very costly double-bogey.

His missed cut in Fort Worth said a lot about where Phil is with his golf game. Always scary when he enters tournaments, he will never, ever, ever be Tiger Woods. No matter the big moment, Tiger always rose to the occasion. Sure, Woods haters can quote the Y.E. Yang PGA Championship as a dropped ball by Tiger, but he still finished second to the man that played better than him.

This week, Phil had an opportunity to be the world’s best and couldn’t even make it to the weekend. Who knows what happened to Phil, who needed nearly 32 putts both Thursday and Friday, but card it under "opportunities lost" for the lefty.

He will have other chances to overtake Tiger as the top golfer in the game, but for this week, both Tiger (who didn’t enter) and Phil (who was the biggest name in the field) went home with the same amount of money. Zilch. I guarantee Lefty was looking for a number just one above zero.

Can you believe it’s been six months since The Incident? Six months since everything we knew about Tiger Woods off the course turned out to be wrong, six months since we all got ourselves wrapped up in a smug, snug blanket of self-righteousness and bitterness.

We’ve done all the "what have we learned" pieces we need to around these parts. But CNBC’s Darren Rovell brought a new angle — the economic impact of Woods’ "transgressions" — or more properly the revelation of those transgressions.

Short version? Tiger’s woes have screwed up a whole lot of people and businesses, himself most of all.

Rovell reports that Woods’ agent, Mark Steinberg, indicates that there have been many offers both "legitimate" and "not legitimate." (I’m guessing the Tiger Woods Sex Doll fits into the latter category.) But for some of the entities still in business with Tiger, business ain’t good. Nike’s sales are down 20 percent. The PGA Tour’s ratings are down 15.5 percent.

On the other hand, there are signs that not everyone is suffering along with Tiger. EA Sports has a well-trafficked online video game, and the latest version of the home game is scheduled to hit next week. And Upper Deck has been marketing some profitable memorabilia ($500 for one gen-u-wine Tiger Woods range-hit golf ball). Still, it’ll be quite some time before people can think of Tiger Woods without thinking of, well, the "transgressions."

Bottom line? In the Tiger Woods scandal, nobody really won. Well, except for us, of course. 

Business of Tiger Woods: Six months later [CNBC/Yahoo! Sports]

It’s no secret that golf tournaments that don’t feature the big names are in serious trouble. If you don’t have a Tiger, a Phil, an AK or a Sergio in the mix, you’re looking at a field that’s got about the same name recognition as your average member-guest at the local country club.

That would be the rough equivalent of, say, the teams like the Kansas City Royals and Pittsburgh Pirates never playing any talented teams at all — no Albert Pujols or Derek Jeter ever coming to town. And that is most definitely not the way to encourage long-term health of the PGA Tour.

So with that in mind, there’s a new proposal out there to get players to play more tournaments — like, say, the Anonymous Mutual Insurance Open in East Podunk. As Golfweek’s Sean Martin reports, there are several proposals afoot to get more players to more lower-tier tourneys.

Now, the problem with forcing players to play more tournaments is that the tour can only push so hard — unlike the baseball hypothetical above, players are independent contractors, as they never tire of reminding us, and thus have the option to play or not play whichever tournaments they like.

To keep their card, pros must play 15 tournaments a year, which, as Martin notes, is not a tough task when you put together the four majors, three World Golf Championship events and four playoff events. But one of the most interesting proposals is the idea of "Designated Events," where top-flight players are specifically directed to play at certain lower-level events.

Martin uses an excellent example: In 1977, both Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus, coming off their famed "Duel in the Sun" at Turnberry, played the next week at the immortal Pleasant Valley Classic. Why? Because it was a "designated event" that year. You think that an itty-bitty tournament wouldn’t love to get the biggest names in the game right after one of their major showdowns?

Naturally, there are enormous hurdles to clear. But there’s a deadline in place; both sponsorship deals and television contracts come due in the next couple years, and if the tour can’t convince its sponsors and networks that it’s not completely dependent on Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, well, we’re looking at a PGA Tour that could be dramatically different — and smaller — five years from now.

So how amazing is it that some guy shot a 25 on the back nine of a tournament this week? Pretty damn amazing, we’d say. We begin our discussion by talking of the improbability and insanity of such a round, and from there we segue into talk of Phil Mickelson and whether the No. 1 ranking, should he achieve it, would mean much. (To him, yes. To the rest of us … well, listen and see.) We also talk about the impending Champions Tour debuts of several of our older golf heroes, and discuss whether longevity in a golf career is a good thing. Finally, we conclude with a little product-placement, as we discuss the idea of whether body odor has any role in golf … and if not, why not?

As always, I’m joined by Shane Bacon of Dogs That Chase Cars. (Follow Shane on Twitter right here, and while you’re there, follow me too.)

We welcome your thoughts, ideas and recommendations on the podcast. Hit me up at jay.busbee@yahoo.com. And if you’ve got a question or comment for us to kick around, call our Skype line at 678-389-9173 and leave your message. Click the little arrow below to play the podcast or right-click it to download, and hit the iTunes site linked below to subscribe. Have at it!

Devil Ball Golfcast, Episode 39 — How can we miss you if you won’t go away?

Jerry Pate knows golf. He’s got eight wins on the PGA Tour, including the 1976 U.S. Open, and he’s an accomplished course designer. Throughout the season, he’ll be stopping by Devil Ball to offer an inside-the-ropes look at the week’s upcoming course. Today: Colonial Country Club, site of this week’s Crowne Plaza Invitational. 

Colonial Country Club opened for play in 1936 and was quickly recognized as one of the finest layouts in the nation. "Hogan’s Alley," as it was nicknamed, was the preferred practice ground for Ben Hogan, and hosted the United States Open in 1941 and the first Colonial Invitational in 1946. From its inception, the course has always had a reputation for being very tough, but very honest with its defenses. It is a good study in how a classic design can withstand the impacts of an evolving game.

The primary defenses at Colonial are the narrow, tree-lined fairways. To compound the demand for accuracy, nearly every hole is a slight dogleg turning at varying and awkward distances from the tees. For instance, the par 4 fifth hole is a dogleg right along the Trinity River. The corner on its dogleg occurs approximately 250 yards from the tee. This means that even a three-wood from today’s players must be shaped the perfect amount left to right to hit the fairway. A shot that is slightly off line or fades too much or too less will be blocked from the green by the overhanging trees. The corner at the dogleg left par 4 fourteenth occurs at only 285 yards from the tee. This requires a draw; the choice of three wood or driver will dictate the precise line of play. Length alone will not conquer Colonial.

Players may choose to lay up off the tees to the short doglegs, but they will be left with longer, more difficult approaches. Usually, this strategy does not allow players to attack the difficult tournament hole locations. To have a chance to compete for the title, players must attack the doglegs off the tee. The champion at Colonial Country Club will be most accurate off the tee and have complete command of his shot-making ability … an art all too often lost in today’s game.

Jerry Pate
has been designing golf courses for more than 30 years. His
portfolio of work includes Old Waverly Golf Club in Mississippi, site
of the 1999 United States Women’s Open; Trump National Golf
Club Colts Neck (formerly known as Shadow Isle) in New Jersey;
Kiva Dunes on the Alabama Gulf Coast; and Rancho La Quinta Country Club
in California. See more of his work at www.jerrypategolfdesign.com.  

It has been an extremely interesting year for John Daly, which is a sentence that should probably be carved into his tombstone when the big man finally leaves us.

But not like the past, where he took his shirt off to hit golf balls or beat up hotel rooms. This year has been interesting on the golf course. You see, Daly has played some great golf for most of 2010, it is just the random Daly rounds (where he posts a number that makes you do a double-take to make sure you aren’t seeing things) that has him 208th on the FedEx Cup list.

On Thursday at Colonial Daly tied his best round of the year; a 4-under 66 that had exactly as many bogeys as you have PGA Tour wins (that is, zero). It is the ninth round in the 60s this season for John, and if he could just avoid the nasty numbers (he has an 81, 74 and 77), this year would be a positive.

So, Daly is playing well. Success, right?

Well, not so fast. He’s done the exact same thing the last two tournaments, opening with a 72-71 at the Zurich Classic before withdrawing and carding a similar WD at the Valero Texas Open, where he shot second and third round scores of 67-69.

If the man with the shrinking belly wants to get serious before the British Open at a venue he once won, he’s going to have to actually complete a tournament, and after a fast start at Colonial, it might be the week for him to do it.

But, as always, you never know with John. His next round could be something similar to Thursday, or something similar to your Saturday. The beauty with Daly is nothing is ever predictable.

So Golfweek’s Jeff Rude was playing at the Dallas National Golf Club on Monday when he realized he wasn’t alone on the course. Really, really not alone. An armada of carts descended on the course, and who should be at their heart but George W. Bush, former president of these here United States. Rude got a chance to hang with the Prez, and came away with some fascinating tidbits. Here are a few things you may not know about golfing presidents:

• W has his own special cap with a number 43 stitched on it. No, it’s not because he’s a Richard Petty fan.

• The president also rocks the Fred Couples sneakers, black with red soles.

• W’s handicap? (Insert political joke here.) About 14, but he’s a fast golfer, cranking his way around a course in three to three-and-a-half hours.

• When W plays golf, he’s trailed by at least eight carts full of Secret Servicemen.

• W plays three to four days a week.

OK, so what I’m gathering is, while being president is the worst job in the world, being an ex-president is the greatest. Shame you’ve got to go through one to get to the other.

A president plays through [Golfweek]