From Operation Homefront and Jim Beam:

Military charity Operation Homefront (http://www.OperationHomefront.net) and Jim Beam recently launched “Salute Soldiers with the Spirit of America,” a program/contest designed to support troops both at home and abroad, and provide friends with opportunities to salute their military pals throughout
2010. As part of the program, now through April 12, anyone can nominate their soldier friends to win a VIP experience to the final two days of a
major golf championship at Pebble Beach on June 19 and 20, 2010. Other contest prizes will be awarded throughout the year, including:

• A home game for a professional baseball team on Chicago’s South Side on July 10, 2010.
• A Kid Rock concert and the opportunity to meet Kid Rock in 2010.

To nominate a service member, soldier’s friends can visit Jim Beam’s Facebook page and/or http://www.JimBeam.com.

Sounds like a worthy cause. I’m a big supporter of our men and women in uniform. Mrs. GolfBlogger is a veteran of Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm, and I grew up next door to a military base, where most of my friends’ dads were in the Air Force or Navy; my father was an Army veteran. My scout troop was chartered by a Navy base, and I always wanted to join, but my “profound” hearing loss precluded that. I do, howeve,  know first hand the sacrifices these people make for the rest of us, and they deserve our thanks.

From the BBC:

Scottish golfing prospects are to benefit from a £1m funding package to help them make the transition from amateur to professional.

The money from sportscotland covers a five year period and will provide coaching, training and sports science.

There will also be opportunities to attend warm weather training camps in the off-season and, in some cases, meet the underwriting of playing costs.

A further £1m will be ploughed into the strategic development of Scottish golf.

Currently, Scotland has just one professional player in the men’s world top 100 - with US-based Martin Laird at 95th.

At first, this sounded pretty desperate, but when I thought about it, I realized that we have the same thing here in the United States for our own national sports through the Little League, Pop Warner, Junior and High School sports programs, Colleges and the Minor Leagues. Golf is in that mix, too, with USGA Junior Championships, various state associations, as well as high school and college programs. In the United States, we spend hundreds of millions of public money through our public schools developing talent for the professional sports.

As a teacher, I’m not often sure that money is well spent, however ...

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), following their strategy of gaining attention by causing controversy, says it plans to put up the above billboard in a location near Tiger Woods house. That is, if they can find a billboard company that’s willing to do it.

They needn’t bother. The image and story is now all over the internet, and on the national news, as thousands of gullible writers (myself included), get sucked into the joke.

I think the PETA people are insane, but this is funny.

Update:

Steve Elling reports that PETA has abandoned its plans after talking to Tiger’s lawyers. As I said. The needn’t bother. The publicity surrounding the non-story has made their point.

David Feherty, the sometimes incomprehensible Irish golfer and television color analyst, became a US Citizen on Tuesday.

From the Dallas Morning News:

What pushed the outspoken Irishman to finally become a citizen? A visit to Baghdad to visit U.S. troops two years ago.

The 51-year-old former touring pro had a flashback to his childhood in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where bombings and barricades were common as the Catholic minority fought British rule. Baghdad became an epiphany for Feherty, who witnessed compassion and restraint there.

“I wanted to be able to call them my soldiers, my pilots, my sailors,” said the Dallas resident, a former citizen of the United Kingdom. “I have the benefit of living in this country and it is maintained by them. ... Thomas Jefferson said we need soldiers and teachers, and it is as true now as it was then.”

Welcome, David.

A Judge has ruled that a jury must take into account whether a golfer was negligent when his ball hit a woman in her course-side yard.

The woman is suing the golfer for failing to aim properly, failing to execute his swing, and failing to warn her. I can buy the last—many don’t yell Fore soon enough—but if failing to execute a swing constitutes legal negligence, the entire sport would close down. Even PGA Tour professionals fail to execute their swings on occasion.

She may not like the consequences of living next to a course—like occasionally coming under golf ball fire—but you can bet she’d scream bloody murder if the course were to close. I have no idea how they’d prove negligence, though. Everyone hits had shots, and sometimes they go unexpected places.