Steroids in golf. Well, probably not. But in golf, the long ball has become as important as it is in baseball

An article in SI dot Com talks about the new game of golf powerball: hit the ball as far as you can, then wedge it out of the rough and one putt for bridie. 

Ok. It’s not a major, but this weekend’s Players Championship is awfully close. With every one of the top 50 players, and 82 of the top 100, it’s the best field we’re going to see until the Masters’.

Even more important: the battle for number one continues. Either Woods or Singh could take the position with a win. Els could rise to number one with a victory, assuming that Vijay or Tiger finish no better than fourth.

There’s a much more complicated explanation here.

Paul Casey won on the second hole of a sudden death playoff in the TCL Classic, with Paul McGinley placing second.

Colin Montgomerie, the winner of this event when it was last played in 2002, finished in sixth place. Montgomerie needed a top-two finish to break into the top-50 in the world and qualify for next week’s The Players Championship.

Tiger Woods has made some comments recently about how much longer he will play the game of golf (an absurd question, given that he’s only 30), saying “not as long as people think.”

But how long is that? In an interview in PGA dot Com, Jack Nicklaus says that his own desire to compete waxed and waned after age 35.

“My desire past 35 ebbed and flowed a lot. I wanted to play but I never really wanted to work that hard to achieve this or that.

“If I had a record to beat, I think I would have won more majors. But once I got past (Bobby) Jones’ record, there were no more mountains to climb. Up to that point I worked at it pretty hard,” he explained. “Tiger’s work ethic, I think, is better than mine. He’s been more single-minded; he (doesn’t) have as many distractions as I had, but I liked my distractions—that was spending time with my family.”

Nicklaus also said that he might have stopped much earlier, but for new golf technologies that kept him competitive.

That’s an interesting comment from a man who’s part of the “ball is too long” chorus.

Peter Dixon writes that Ernie Els no longer feels intimidated by Tiger Woods and is ready to take his turn at being the World’s #1. That could come as early as this Sunday, at the close of Palmer’s Bay Hill Invitational. There are enough points available at that tournament that any of the top three could end up in the first position.

One thing I found interesting in the column was the Tiger mystique was shattered when Vijay Singh was able to sieze—however briefly—the top spot. If that’s the case, then every golfer on tour owes Vijay a big thank-you for his fanatical dediction to perfection.