Rounding up some midweek links to keep you up with what’s new in the golf world. Enjoy, and feel free to hold court in the comments section.

• This is painful to watch: golfers and their musical choices. Sure, Hunter Mahan and Rickie Fowler are reasonably up to date, but man … we’ve got some serious whitebreads in our pro ranks. [Press Tent]

• “A Walk In The Park” gives the best sportswriting award for 2011 to CBS’s Steve Elling. Well deserved. [A Walk In The Park]

• The States will be seeing a lot more of Rory McIlroy next year. He’ll be trying to juggle play in both the United States and Europe, and if anybody can do it, he’d be the dude. [Golfweek]

• For most of the golf world, the Chevron is an end-of-season quickie. For Tiger Woods, it’s a real shot at redemption. Will victory come back this week? [Local Knowledge]

• The Presidents Cup is coming back to Canada … in, uh, 2031. Which means that it’s possible some of the contenders in that particular match haven’t even been born yet. [Canada.com]

Got a link/tip for us? Hit us up at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or via Twitter at @jaybusbee. And follow us on Facebook here and Google+ here. Go!

Look, we’re not going to lie to you, friends: it’s a rather fallow time in the world of golf, so we’re bringing you stories that wouldn’t quite make the cut in, say, April. In this case, we’re talking the 2014 Ryder Cup, which is now on the schedule: September 26-28, 2014. Start storing up that vacation time now!

Thing is, September in the United States is one thing. September in Gleneagles, Scotland, which will host the event, is almost certainly going to be a dreary, drizzly affair. And, if you can cast your mind all the way back to last year, you’ll recall that there was a bit of a problem with inclement weather. (Let the photo above jog your memory.)

The Europeans won that match, 14½ to 13½. Our recommendation? The U.S. team needs to start drenching itself with garden hoses before every hole from here until 2014. Get ready!

The Omega Mission Hills World Cup has drawn plenty of notice over the last few days, not all of it favorable. But give the World Cup’s organizers credit: they’re moving fast to keep the tournament a viable biennial event.

The latest modification for the 2013 World Cup will be to make it the same kind of stroke-play format as the 2016 Olympics, moving away from the existing two-man style. Thus, players will have the opportunity to win both individual and team awards, as they will in Brazil three years later. And the tournament will count in the Official World Golf Rankings, which should help to attract even more players. The tournament will also offer an individual trophy for the first time since 1999, when Tiger Woods won it.

Kenneth Chu, chairman and CEO of Mission Hills Golf Club, noted that he met with head honchos Tim Finchem of the PGA Tour and George O’Grady of the European Tour to discuss and implement the changes.

Chu also assured the world that the World Cup would continue, despite some hints to the contrary and some dissatisfaction from its primary sponsor. “Let me tell you my father had this dream to promote golf and to showcase China golf to the rest of the world and if our partners don’t want to do it that’s their choice,” Chu said. “But I will continue for his legacy and I will say that and you can write that and record that. So I will carry forward what my father has promised to general public of China and to the rest of the world.”

Chu added that the tournament will continue to be held at roughly this time every other year.

[Via Exegolf.]

All right, this is pretty cool: the latest photos from Donald Trump’s TRUMP INTERNATIONAL GOLF LINKS (I think I’m required to capitalize that by law) in Aberdeen, Scotland. Like everything Trump does, it has a contentious history, and also like everything Trump does, it’s so magnificent that it’s an excess of luxury, like a solid gold turducken.

Check out the layout here. Let’s just say you’d better keep your balls on the fairway:

Sorry about the bagpipes. Of course, after listening to that, I’m ready to paint my face blue and take up arms against the crown, Braveheart-style. They can take our belly putters, but they can’t take our freedom!

[Via Shackelford.]

Imagine a golfer holding the U.S. Open and PGA Championship trophies and taking aim at the green jacket. Think he’d be getting a bit of love?

If Greg Chalmers had done in America what he’s in the middle of doing in Australia, he’d be getting more coverage than anybody this side of Tom Brady. But since Chalmers’ feat is happening on the other side of the world, he’s not drawing a whole lot of ink … which is a shame, because he’s putting together an impressive run.

Chalmers won the Australian Open a couple weeks ago, holding off John Senden and an American upstart by the name of Tiger Woods. Then, this past weekend, he won the Australian PGA, setting the stage for that rarest of Australian golf achievements: the Triple Crown, all three majors in one Aussie summer.

Chalmers would be only the second golfer to pull off the feat; Robert Allenby did it back in 2005. And now, with a sign-off from his family, Chalmers will be taking a run at the Australian Masters. Previously, he’d indicated he was going to take time off to spend with his family. But his family wisely told him that chances to make history like this don’t come around all that often, and so he’ll be in Melbourne to play.

Chalmers’ success has vaulted him into the British Open field for 2012, and his success has jacked his Official World Golf Ranking from 203 to 63. If he’s able to get into the top 50, all kinds of doors to the biggest tournaments in the world open wide for him. He’d be in the Masters, the British Open and the U.S. Open, and he’d also get an invite to three of the four World Golf Championship tournaments.

Chalmers has success at the Masters; two years ago, he finished second to Woods at the Australian Masters in what would end up being Woods’ final victory to date. This year, Woods won’t be in attendance, but Luke Donald, Ian Poulter and Matteo Manassero, among many others, will be. So if he wins this thing, he’ll have to earn it.

[Via The Australian]

Yes, while most of us Americans were stuffing our faces with turkey and the like, some of the world’s finest golfers were putting on a greenside clinic in China. Check out how Rory McIlroy, Gary Woodland and others at the Omega Mission Hills World Cup worked their mojo around the greens. Bunkers? Who cares about bunkers?

The first rule of professional golf: keep the sponsors happy, no matter what. And Omega, the watchmaker who sponsored the just-concluded Mission Hills World Cup? Yeah, they’re not happy.

If you didn’t realize there was a golf tournament going on this past weekend in China, you weren’t alone, and to Omega, that’s part of the problem. China, suggests Omega president Stephen Urquhart, is “too immature a market to put the World Cup where it should be. It’s too early for China to support by itself a tournament on this scale.”

Suggestion? Move the World Cup around the planet, as in soccer. China has hosted the event since 2007, and is contracted to host it through 2025. As a result, there’s a bit of complacency, Urquhart suggests: “The field is better this year, but we are not happy.”

The tournament is also battling a rather packed late-year schedule, with both the South African Open and the Australian PGA running this past weekend, as well as the divided (some would say nonexistent) attention of the American audience because of the Thanksgiving holiday. (Perhaps if China featured the Detroit Lions in the lineup … ?)

The Chinese promoters who have backed this event, Kenneth and Tenniel Chu, have spent millions to get the Mission Hills facility on Hainan Island up to tournament quality, and while they didn’t expressly address Omega’s charges, they indicated that they would be willing to serve out the contract without a sponsor, if necessary. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

[Via Waggle Room, ProGolfTalk]