In the most recent odds for the 2008 PGA Championship in Oakland Hills, Michigan, it looks as though Phil Mickelson is the favorite, at 9/1. Interestingly, Sergio Garcia is the next on the list at 14/1; I wonder what he’s done to make anyone think that’s a real possibility.  Anthony Kim—the latest anointed successor to Tiger also sits at 14/1. Ernie Els, who has shown some signs of life in the last two majors, is next at 18/1.

My favorite, Kenny Perry is a long way down the list, at 33/1.

Odds are read by looking at the second number first. So, a bet of 1 on Sergio pays 9.

Read the rest of the post to see the complete odds for the PGA Championship, provided courtesy of Bodoglife.Com, the world’s largest online sports betting destination.

The PGA of America is making an effort to bring Greg Norman to the PGA Championship at Oakland Hills in suburban Detroit in August.

“I’m hoping we can get him to play here,” PGA of America CEO Joe Steranka said Monday at the club in Bloomfield Township, where he was speaking to the Detroit Economic Club. “He would be a special invitation. We’re going to talk about that this week with our executive committee that approves those invitations.”

That would go a long way toward making up for the Tiger deficit. I’ve already got my tickets, and if Norman shows, I know who I would be following.

However, Norman has made it pretty clear that he’s not going to expand his playing schedule.

This year’s PGA Championship is at Oakland Hills, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. It’s an exclusive club and the closest most of us will get is with a ticket to an event.

Fortunately, there are several other Donald Ross courses you can play in Southeastern Michigan and the Detroit Area. A major golf publication recently reported that there is just one Donald Ross course open to the public in the Detroit Area. They’re wrong. There are, in fact, four. They include:

Rackham Golf Course I played this one about ten years ago, and it was a lot of fun. Some of the holes run right next to the adjacent Detroit Zoo, and I heard the lions while playing through. It’s probably the best of the bunch (although I haven’t tried Rogell, below).

Rogell Golf Course This course recently was bought and renovated by Greater Grace Temple, making it one of the few African American - owned courses in the country. I play to play before the summer is out.

Warren ValleyI played this a couple of times (before I started GolfBlogger, so there are no photos), and it was never in great condition, but it was a decent course.

Hawthorne Valley Hawthorne Valley is but a shadow of its former self, having been cut up by developers. Only nine holes remain.

So if you’re traveling to see the PGA Championship at Oakland Hills, you can still get a taste of Donald Ross in Michigan.

A side note to major golf publications: If you’re going to write about an area’s golf courses, hire someone with local knowledge, not some stiff who gets his information from a Zagat’s guide. I’m available.

When Bobby Jones had his unparalleled year in 1930, he won the four biggest tournaments of his day: The US Amateur, the US Open, the British Amateur and the British Open Championship. It was a shocking achievement that made Jones a sports hero on a par with Babe Ruth—greater even, for the Babe never got a ticker tape parade in New York.

People struggled for words to describe the event. Atlanta Journal sports writer O.B. Keeler, Jones’ unofficial biographer and publicist, dubbed it the “Grand Slam,” borrowing not from baseball, but from a bridge term.

It must be remembered that, at that time, tournament golf was as much an amateur’s game as a pro’s. Walter Hagen may have been the only man at the time making a full time living playing tournament golf (as opposed to working as a club pro) .

So in 1960, after having won the Masters and US Open, Arnold Palmer was asked about Jones’ achievement by Pittsburgh sports writer Bob Drum on the plane flight to England where Palmer was to play in the Open Championship. Drum apparently lamented the fact that Palmer could not match Jones’ achievement because golf now was a pro’s game and not an amateur’s. No one would ever win the Amateur and Open national championships again.

Palmer then speculated that in the age of the professional, a more realistic Grand Slam would be the Masters, the US Open, the Open Championship (British Open) and the PGA Championship.

Palmer lost on the Old Course by a single stroke to Australia’s Kel Nagle.

But the dream had been indelibly etched into the mind of the golfing public.

Els and Austin teased us for a while, but the end result was exactly as expected. Tiger won the PGA and the TV commentators had a Woodsgasm.

I hate to be petty, but I’m getting tired of Tiger Woods.