GREENSBORO — Who is Arjun Atwal?

Excellent question, and glad you
asked. Arjun Atwal is actually famous for many things. We’ll get to
those in a second — because it’s important to note that right now
he’s temporarily famous for leading the Wyndham Championship after
the third round, and if he hangs onto that lead, he will be the first
Indian to win a PGA Tour event.

As it stands, though, he’s the
first Indian to become a member of the PGA Tour. He turned pro in 1995.
He’s won 10 times (no, seriously, he has — in fact, he was the first
Indian winner in Europe) on the European Tour, the Nationwide Tour,
and the Indian Tour.

"No, they do have [an Indian Tour],"
Atwal said following Saturday’s round. "It’s actually pretty good,
like an average of $80,000 per tournament."

It’s actually called the Asian
Tour, I believe, but that’s beside the point — what you should take
from that quote is that Arjun is a pretty humorous fellow.  

He’s also a guy who has dealt with
a bit of turmoil in his professional career, most notably when he was
involved in a 2007 wreck near Orlando that killed another man. Police
at the time indicated that the wreck could have been a result of a high-speed
street race, but Atwal was eventually cleared by authorities. 

He’s now somewhat reluctant to
talk about it.

"No, I try not to bring it up or
talk about it," Atwal said during the Wyndham’s press conference.
"It was an accident, you know, it was a bad time for both the families
involved. Obviously theirs was more painful. But it was an accident.
There was no one to blame. So, you know, that’s it." 

When questioned further about whether
or not he was fearful for legal ramifications, Atwal added that he knew
that "I didn’t do anything wrong and the other person didn’t.
It was no one’s fault. It was an accident. That was it." 

Back to matters of golf (with all due
respect to the deceased), Atwal hasn’t done much right when
it comes to Sunday golf in 2010; although he finished in a tie for sixth
during the Byron Nelson, he hasn’t recorded a score below 70 on the
final day of a tournament in 2010.

"I don’t really have a number
[to shoot for on Sunday]," Atwal said in taling about his Sunday
play. "I’m going to see the leaderboard and, you know, play accordingly.
If I’m leading by a bunch, I’l keep trying to go ahead. If I’m
behind, I’ll try to be more aggressive."

There’s no Fed Ex Cup on the horizon
for Atwal, because he lost his Tour card after his medical exemption
ran out, so he almost has the freedom to play with nothing to lose,
although he doesn’t necessarily see it that way. 

"I think, you know, one the tournament
stars, no one really thinks about it like that," Atwal said. "I
mean you ask any of the guys who are even in the field who have to get
into next week or improve their position for The Playoffs, once the
bell goes off, I don’t think they think like that."

GREENSBORO — Anthony Kim‘s in
a bit of a nightmare: a poor performance at the PGA Championship actually
booted him out of the automatic berths for the Ryder Cup. 

That means he’s got just three
tournaments before Captain Corey Pavin makes his decision on September
7 as to who his four extra additions will be.

Actually, make that "had"
three tournaments — after carding a very uninspiring 72 (one that featured
three bogeys, a triple and just four birdies) during Friday’s round
at the Wyndham Championship and missing the cut, Kim’s only got the first two tournaments
of the FedEx Cup — The Barclays and the Deutsche Bank Championship
– to make up ground and convince Pavin he deserves a spot. 

"Unfortunately I didn’t play
my best this week," Kim said following Thursday’s round. "It’s
starting to come along. I know my scores aren’t very good, borderline
embarrassing scores, but I’m getting better and that’s all I can
really ask for."

Still, when asked about his chances,
he said he was optimistic.

"I am," Kim said. "I know I
put the Captain in a tough spot here falling out by one and now him
having to make the choice but, hopefully, with enough practice I’ll
start getting my game into shape the next three weeks and make it an
easy decision."

And though he hasn’t spoken with
Pavin in person, the Ryder Cup hopeful did confirm that he received
a text from the captain.

"[The text] just said, ‘Try to
play well and we’ll talk after it’s over’ and really that’s
all I can do," Kim said. "If I start focusing on making the team
and who I got to beat out, that just makes things to confusing for me.
I got to go out there and have fun."

Well then, allow us to make it easier:
a quick examination of the Ryder Cup standings show that Tiger Woods,
Lucas Glover, Zach Johnson, Bo Van Pelt and Stewart Cink seem like the
biggest challenges.

Woods, regardless of what Rory McIlroy
says regarding his beatability, will make the team. There’s no logic
behind Pavin leaving off a guy who will generate talk about the Cup. 

Glover, if he can finish the Wyndham
above or near where he started the weekend (T-3) , would almost be a
lock for inclusion. None of the other guys are playing, so it’s 
should be fairly clear to Kim who he needs to finish ahead of over
the next couple of weeks.

GREENSBORO — Even an hour before
noon, the weather wasn’t typical of Greensboro in August: 77 degrees,
a decent breeze and no humidity to speak of, really.  

That probably explains the two things
that Brandt Snedeker (whose only win as a pro came here), Arjun Atwal,
Kevin Streelman, Lucas Glover, Webb Simpson, Boo Weekley and Tim Herron
all have in common: they’re all at the top of the leaderboard at the Wyndham
Championship, and they teed off before 9 am EST.

There were exceptions to the rule,
of course — Justin Leonard (right) started his round just before 1 PM and he
tossed up a 63, the best round of the day. (Although the other two members
of his star-studded group — and arguably the tournament’s biggest
draws — didn’t fare so well: Fred Couples and Anthony Kim both missed
the cut, finishing at two-over through two rounds.) John Rollins had an afternoon tee
time as well, and he still managed to follow up Thursday’s 64 with
an equally impressive 65 on Friday.

Arguably the biggest story of the
day, though, was Drew Weaver, a High Point native who used his local fame to
"pink out" parts
of the Wyndham. Weaver went one-under on the front nine, but back-to-back
bogeys on the 12 and 13th holes threatened to send him home early. A
monster birdie on 15 brought him back to "projected last man standing"
status and a pair of pars to close out kept the former Hokie in the
running with the cutline sitting at three-under.  

(Unless, that is, you count 16-year-old
amateur Tanner Kesterson flying the green on the 9th, hitting someone
in the dome and then needing about 30 patrons to help him and staff look
for the ball. That was nearly as awesome as the ovation that the crowd
gave the youngster when he buried his long bogey putt a few minutes
later.)

Obviously, the Wyndham plays a huge
role in helping players make jumps into the FedEx Cup — last year,
Jeff Maggert, Kevin Stadler, Chris Riley, Todd Hamilton and David Mathis
all used their individual performances in Greensboro to sneak into the
playoffs.

Chris Stroud, Stadler, and David
Duval all hurt their projected FEC standings when they missed
the cut. (Tiger Woods, by the way, also fell five projected spots based
on the early action of the tournament.)

This year figures to be no different:
three names to watch heading into the weekend are Chris DiMarco, Trevor
Immelman and Jay Williamson, all of whom made the cut and figure to make
a run at the "extra" portion of the PGA’s season. 

Of course, along with the rest of
the field, they’ll have to withstand what promises to be more traditional
(and tougher) weekend weather during the final two rounds of the Wyndham.

All week, Shane Bacon will be at the Safeway Classic in Portland, Ore., writing about his experience on the bag for the LPGA’s Irene Cho. Stop by each day to read about the happenings from the day’s round. 

You all probably remember that commercial that aired some years ago with a couple of strapping young sons playing golf with their father, both hitting big drives as dad steps to the tee. As the narrator is speaking, dad cranks a drive towards the gauntlet set by his offspring, only to have it take a couple of bounces off a cart path and end up in the middle of the fairway, ahead of his two boys. Those are what you’d consider good breaks in the game of golf.

On Friday at the Safeway Classic, we got none of ‘em. Zero. So few that I made a joke on our 16th hole, after LPGA professional and poor-picker of caddies, Irene Cho, boomed a 280-yard drive down the middle of the fairway, that it surprised me the ball didn’t hit a mound in the fairway and kick it in the bunker left. It was that type of day.

It all started on our sixth hole of the day, the par-5 15th, when her drive missed the fairway by a mosquito’s eyelash, and ended up in a hole that would make drilling companies cringe. As I was stupidly stepping off yardage to get a nice lay-up distance (the hole is an unreachable par-5 for the ladies), Irene already had her rescue club out, plunking it down the fairway. It was the type of lie that close to the fairway that would have U.S. Open participants scrambling for the nearest official to yell out. The next bad break only took two holes, when Irene hit a marvelous three-wood off the tee only to find it dead center of a divot that was deep enough to turn an ankle.

Both times it was a par that we carded with the pencil, but both times it seemed birdie was inevitable.

But, as we all know, such is golf. You have days when it seems every bounce you can get you do get, and then there are days when even good putts find a spike mark to tango with.

The back nine didn’t get much better for our three-leaf clover day. Irene hit a solid hybrid on one of the par-3s only to have it take a bounce that would have knocked Tigger off his tail. Our closing stretch, that saw two birdies in the final three holes, even had a near-death experience when a second shot into one of the closing par-fives kicked left off a hill that it is absolutely impossible to get a left kick on. You’d have a better chance of hitting the Atlantic Ocean from the 7th tee at Pebble Beach.

The final score was 75, three-over par on a day that seemed about three-over.

Maybe on Saturday the bounces will decide they don’t hate us after all.

So you didn’t like the thousand-bunker Whistling Straits? How about this beast? Grip it and rip it! Over the mountain, baby!

This is the Prosper Golf Resort in Celadna, Czech Republic, and those gents are playing in the Czech Open. The mountain is presumably not part of the course, but you never know.

Thanks for hanging this week. We’ve got correspondents in place at both the PGA and LPGA events this weekend, so stop by often for updates. And hey, if you get out on the links yourself this weekend, why not drop us a line here and tell the world how you did? Hit ‘em straight, everybody!

GREENSBORO — The headline may be cliche,
but there’s nothing unoriginal about the Wyndham Championship’s
decision to create its own iPhone application for fans who are on
the course.

For those of you that missed the
news a few weeks back, Greensboro’s professional tournament is the
first in the history of the world to allow fans to carry their cell
phones and PDAs around the course.

Tournament director Mark Brazil and
his staff took the smart next step by creating "Wyndham: The App"
which allows fans to manage parking situations, buy tickets, track the
leaderboard, scope out an interactive course map (detailed hole-by-hole,
no less), watch PGA Tour video, check out event photos, and even follow
PGA players’ and the Wyndham’s tweets.

Sure, there’s a Masters application
(primary purpose: sneaking to the bathroom at work to stream video),
a U.S. Open app (primary purpose: same as the Masters), an unholy amount
of golf games and some range-finding apps, but never before has there
been an iPhone app you could actually use on the course of a PGA tournament. 

Until the Wyndham anyway — and the
tournament’s sponsor seems pretty pleased.

"The Greenbriar had an iPhone app
that the PGA tour did for them," Kevin Rinker, SVP of Sports Marketing
for Wyndham, told Yahoo! Sports. "But this is the first one where you’re
actually out there with the device and able to interact in real time
– get updates on where the players are, get scoring updates … so
it really becomes a hand-held tool for the tournament to use." (The app, available here, has already been downloaded more than 1,000 times.)

I pointed out to Rinker that it’s
a handy tool for the media too — it is! — but mainly, the device is
for fans, whether they’re on or off the course.  

"It was primarily designed to allow
people to get information about the tournament regardless of where they
are, Rinker told Yahoo! "I think the real benefit of it for consumers
not at the course is that they can access it wherever they are — people
who are driving in a car, or out at lunch and away from their access
to television or the internet, they can check it too." 

The combo of an iPhone application
and allowing cell phones on the course could be called "risky" 
by some. A better description, though, is "modern."  

"It’s very forward thinking of the
Wyndham Championship to integrate an iPhone app and social media tactics
into its overall communications strategy," said Monty Hagler, CEO
of RLF Communications, a strategic marketing and communications firm
in Greensboro, N.C. "The app should help attract more people – and
more young people – to the tournament and the traditional sport of
golf. It’s impressive to see the Wyndham is taking risks and experimenting
in order to strengthen the tournament over the long run." 

Rinker agreed with Hagler’s assessment
as well, pointing out that such forward thinking is something that the
sport of golf almost has to embrace, in order to stay on par with the
other major sports.

"There are a lot of things, text
to win, etc, — I think all of those things is the future of where golf
needs to be. Am I traditionalist? I guess not. But I don’t think that’s
a bad thing either. I think golf needs to keep moving forward in order
to keep up."

Of course, one potentially crazy member
of the volunteer staff might disagree: a scraggly, bearded fella stopped
me at a crosswalk, took down my name after and then threatened to put
a red Sharpie dot on my media pass for using my iPhone … to mess with
the Wyndham app.

Bear in mind, this fella is an exception
to the rule here; the people who give their time to help at the Wyndham
are without question some of the nicest at any golf tournament you’ll
find. But it just goes to show that the world is (and probably always
will be) filled with people who aren’t that into embracing technology.  

Thankfully, the folks who do the decision-making
at the Wyndham Championship don’t fall into that category.

Take a look at that scorecard above, the product of Houston kid Aubrey Phillips. Good but not astonishing, right? A 5-over 77 in the Greater Houston Junior Championship.

Now, look a little closer. Specifically, at holes 5 and 16.

Yep, Phillips, age 16, recorded two aces in a single round. How well did you play when you were 16, huh?

Anyway, Phillips used a 9-iron to ace the 155-yard fifth, his first-ever hole in one. Eleven holes later — using the same Slazenger ball and the same club — he found the bottom of the cup on the 160-yard 16th.

The odds of one golfer getting two aces in a single round? Only about 1 in 64 million, according to Golf Digest.

The aces proved to be the difference. He finished three shots inside the cut line, and moved on to the Houston Golf Association Junior Championship next weekend at Redstone Golf Club. And if he doesn’t card three aces there, I think we’re all going to be severely disappointed.

Steve Spurrier ain’t got nothing on Rory McIlroy.

The Ol’ Ball Coach has long been famed for his ability to get under the skin of his opponents with quotes that burn right off the bulletin board. But McIlroy took it to a whole new level this week when he indicated he’d love to go head-to-head with the still-No.-1 player in the world:

[Photos: See more of golf's rising star]

"I would love to face him," McIlroy told the BBC. "Unless his game rapidly improves … I think anyone in the European team would fancy their chances against him."

Granted, this isn’t Stephen Ames, who provoked Tiger before the World Match Play event in 2006 and then got hammered 9-and-8, or Rory Sabbatini, who said in 2007 that Woods was beatable and then proceeded to collapse over the rest of his season. The Tiger Woods of 2010 is hobbled and relatively easy prey.

You’d be hard pressed to find anybody outside of the TW acolytes who would take Woods over McIlroy right now. But Rory had better hope Mr. Woods doesn’t get his game back to pre-Escalade levels any time soon. Otherwise, there’ll be nothing left on the course but a few wispy Irish curls.  

Other popular stories on Yahoo! Sports:
• Video: Golfers aim for gong two hundred yards away, across water

• Soccer goalie dons superhero jersey for game
• NBA star has unusual plan for the end of his career

I know it’s against the spirit of genteel competition that so many golf types cling to, but I love me some trick shots. And it’s not just me — the European Tour now has an entire video channel dedicated to the spectacular trick shots of its players. Like, for instance, this competition between David Howell, Paul McGinley, Marcel Siem and Rhys Davies, all of whom are trying to skim a ball 200 yards across the pond to ding a 9-inch gong. Can they do it? Watch on …

Dinnertime! Well played, gents. Be sure to check out the European Tour’s channel for more along these lines. (Visor tip: Waggle Room)

GREENSBORO — Typically, whenever fans
get "[insert color here]‘ed out" for a sporting event, it’s pretty
black (Jacksonville football "bad black" or terrifying Virginia Tech football
fans on Thursday night in dark shirts "good black") and white (the embarrassment
that was the Miami Heat in their playoff run).

Drew Weaver wants patrons of the
Wyndham Championship in Greensboro to try a new approach during Friday’s
play: pink.

And while pink may not be the favorite
color of every fan, this is a cause absolutely worth supporting — Weaver’s
mother, Cathy, was diagnosed with breast cancer in December and went
through two surgeries and treatment for the disease. 

"I was just really honored that
Drew wanted to do this," Cathy Weaver said. "Drew’s kind of quiet
about stuff like this, but this was his idea. For him to do something
like this is just wonderful, and he’s been extremely supportive." 

Weaver, the 2007 British Amateur
champ and a sponsor’s exemption for the Wyndham, is a High Point native
(a town that also produced, ahem, yours truly)
and typically one of the biggest draws at Greensboro’s pro tournament
because of the large local following he attracts. 

"Thankfully, my mother has come through
her treatments, and she’s doing well," Weaver said after Thursday’s
round. "But I still want to raise awareness, and I hope a lot of people
will wear pink shirts to the tournament."

Golf fans may also remember that
this isn’t the first mid-tournament awareness work for Weaver, a graduate
of Virginia Tech who paid tribute to the tragic campus shooting in Blacksburg
during his run at Augusta.

This particular action, though, hits
a lot closer to home, literally. And, all hometown favoritism aside,
it’s pretty darn fantastic — given all the bad publicity that certain
members of the PGA have gotten in the last year or so — seeing a kid
Weaver’s age make such an impressive public statement for such a worthy
cause.

Weaver played Thursday’s round in a solid three-under 67, good enough for a tie for 38th place. But he’s already six shots behind leader Arjun Atwa, who shot an astonishing, record-tying 61 to lead the field by two strokes heading into Friday.