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Here are just a few last words on the Ryder Cup, because they're from Jack Nicklaus. Why did the U.S. win? "They bought into being a team," Nicklaus said. "And that was a good thing. It took that with the Presidents Cup too, and they got pretty cohesive. " Paul [Azinger] did a pretty darned good job bringing guys together as a team and to have fun . . . you could tell." Nicklaus has been captain of the U.S. side in the Presidents Cup four times and is 2-1-1, including a 19 1/2 -14 1/2 victory over the International team last year at Royal Montreal Golf Club. The fact that Azinger managed to get the U.S. Ryder Cup team into a winning frame of mind without Tiger Woods is a credit to both the captain and his players, Nicklaus said. "In my opinion, Tiger would have been a great addition. However, they didn't have Tiger to lean on, so they had to lean on themselves and said, 'Hey, I've got to play better.' "And Anthony Kim was terrific, Boo Weekley was terrific. The young guys were terrific." The next Ryder Cup is two years off, but the speculation about the captain's job is in full swing. Nicklaus said he wouldn't be surprised if Mark O'Meara, Corey Pavin, Davis Love or Jeff Sluman were chosen.

Los Angeles Times

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As it turns out, Padraig Harrington really wasn't himself at the Ryder Cup. The two-time major winner this year, at the British Open and the PGA Championship, Harrington played over the weekend at St. Andrews in the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship and said he needed a checkup and a rest after the events of the Ryder Cup at Valhalla -- and the toll his summer took on him. "I feel fine, even though I know from different things that I am a little bit run down, so the key is obviously not to overdo things. "I wouldn't say I'm any fresher. . . . I haven't been physically up for [practice] at this stage. My gym work is slipping a little bit because I'm tired as well." Lab work on his blood showed "all of the markers were down," Harrington said. "I'm fatigued." Harrington said he peaked when he won the two majors, and so he was spent at the Ryder Cup. "My performance in the Ryder Cup is a direct result of . . . being physically tired." Harrington did not win a match at Valhalla and the U.S. won the Ryder Cup for the first time since 1999.

Los Angeles Times

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Aronimink Golf Club in the Philadelphia suburbs will be the temporary home for the AT&T National golf tournament in 2010 and 2011 if a majority of the club's membership approves a proposal to host Tiger Woods's signature event on the PGA Tour. The event will return to Congressional Country Club for at least three years starting in 2012. Congressional has hosted the tournament since its inception in 2007 and will be the venue again in 2009. But the Bethesda club will be the site for the 2011 U.S. Open and the championship Blue Course will undergo a major renovation of the green complexes in the summer of 2010 that will make it unavailable for Woods's event those two years.

Washington Post

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Is 85 percent of Tiger Woods enough to compete and win on the PGA Tour? That is apparently what the golf world will find out sometime early in 2009, when Woods returns from the knee surgery he had in June. When the surgery took place, others who had similar surgeries talked about how long and frustrating the rehabilitation process was. Now Woods himself, in comments made during a press conference for his World Challenge tournament in Thousand Oaks in December, is saying some of the same things. Woods said he's been told to expect his knee to be about 85 percent six months after the surgery. That would put Woods in January, when he says he will start hitting full shots again. An initial target date for Woods' return might be the Buick Invitational in San Diego, an event he's won six times and the site of his U.S. Open victory in June. That was the last tournament Woods played, so there would be a nice symmetry to him returning at Torrey Pines. Players like Ernie Els and Brad Faxon suffered ACL injuries and took more than a year before they felt ready to play anything close to their old form. Will we see the same thing with Woods? Will he be a good player but something less than his superhuman self when he returns to the tour? Will his unequaled will to win be betrayed by all-too-human bones and muscles and ligaments?

Desert Sun

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As George O'Grady of the European Tour and David Spencer of Leisurecorp outlined their plans for the upcoming "Race to Dubai" that will climax with the multi-multi-million dollar "Dubai World Championship" next November, even the hard of hearing could discern the distant knocking of Tim Finchem's knees. The PGA Tour's biggest cheese has surely watched with growing trepidation at the plan devised by the European Tour and its Arab partners, one with the potential to do much long-term damage to his organization???s current pre-eminence. The interest in European Tour membership already expressed by the likes of Phil Mickelson, Adam Scott, Vijay Singh, Camilo Villegas, Robert Allenby and Geoff Ogilvy is likely to be only the trickle before the deluge, the beginning of a much larger exodus of players keen to escape the sameness and tedium of typical PGA Tour courses and take part in Leisurecorp's bid for global supremacy. When money talks -- or in this case shouts - professionals listen; even very rich professionals.

golfobserver.com

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