Golf Observer analyst Keith Lowe says that there are enough points available at the Bay Hill this week that any of the world’s top three could end up as King of the Hill. (Actually, the King of the [Bay] Hill is Arnold Palmer, but we won’t go there).

A couple of articles on Padraig Harrington in the wake of his victory last weekend in the Honda:

The Independent reports that he has set his sites on the Masters. And Bob Torrance says that the Irishman is ready to wear green (jacket, that is).

Greg Stoda writes in the Palm Beach Post that the nice guy won. I’m not necessarily sure that Singh is such a bad guy, but there you have it.

And finally, an entry on how last weekend’s tournament has affected the Official Rankings. Harrington has taken the 6th position.

I’m a sports number cruncher from way back (I used to be a statistician/bookkeeper for a division I university) and so I have appreciated MJ On Golf’s analysis of the top players in golf.

MJ’s statistic—Earnings Per Start—is an interesting way of assessing a player’s skills. It’s much better than the overall money list because it compensates for the fact that some players (like Mr. Woods) play in relatively few tournaments, while others crawl up the list by nickel and dimeing it (relatively speaking) in every tournament that can get into.

Theoretically speaking, a nickel and dimer could appear near the top of the money list without ever having finished in the top ten of a tournament.

MJ says that the idea came from his father’s system of rating thoroughbreds. I get a chuckle out of thinking of the guys on the PGA tour as horses.  Think of Barbara Walters interviewing Tiger Woods: “If you were a horse, what kind of a horse would you be?”

But I digress.

Much to my delight, MJ has made his current EPS statistics available to other golf bloggers via a feed from his site. I’ve got the stats in the sidebar.

Thanks MJ.

Bob Rosberg has a good column on the lost art of shotmaking in golf. As he points out, the new balls and clubs have nearly eliminated the kind of golf we saw in the fifties, sixties and seventies.

One of the things that I think has gone away in the modern game on Tour is shotmaking, the ability to hit different shots. The main reason is that you don’t need it anymore because, with the new dimple configurations, the ball gets up in the air so much easier.

When the ball gets up in the air, it tends not to curve as much. In fact, it’s kind of hard to curve the ball when you try to do it. That’s why you see so many guys just hit it straight and high. There are no low shots. You don’t see shots like Lee Trevino used to play.

In the Miami Herald, Jeff Shain writes that:

Ten years ago, prize money on the Tour—including the four major championships—averaged $1.4 million per event. Today, the average is $5.25 million and rising. The way the purse breaks down, approximately $1 million of that $5.25 million goes to the winner.

This is true whether Tiger shows up or doesn’t—which he didn’t at this year’s Honda, the last event of the Tour’s two-week swing through South Florida. He won the first South Florida event, the Ford Championship at Doral, last week, earning $990,000.

Shain credits the incredible popularity of Tiger Woods with the increase, but also writes of the sponsors’ very high level of satisfaction with the Tour in general:

In a 2003 Sports Business Journal survey of sponsor satisfaction, the PGA Tour ranked at the top of the list, ahead of both NASCAR and the NFL.

‘’Corporate America is behind our sport and we have a good TV product,’’ said Stewart Cink, a two-time winner last year. ``Even with those kinds of purses, it makes business sense.’’