After about three years on the Nationwide Tour and six more of middling PGA Tour play, Brandt Snedeker broke through during last year’s FedExCup Playoffs, and won the $10 million top prize. Snedeker, who won earlier in the year at Torrey Pines, beat Justin Rose by three strokes down the stretch at the Tour Championships, vaulting him ahead of Jason Dufner, Tiger Woods, and Rory McIlroy to win the Cup.

Snedeker has a few major championship close calls, and though he had yet to pull it, Sneds is a pretty solid bet to win one over the next few years. Let's jump in.

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It's political season, and if you thought you could get away from it even in the golf world, think again. There's a long history, stemming back to the early days of golf in this country, of U.S. Presidents spending their down time on the links.

As the business community has shown us, the golf course is a great way to schmooze clients and get business done on the go, and at the very worst it's five hours of walking and staring at your phone.

From President Clinton's "footwedge" to the Eisenhower Tree, let's take a look at the most notable White House golfers.

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The Boston area is not particularly known for its golf. We have one tournament in the area per year, The Deutsche Bank Championship, and Brookline’s The Country Club has hosted the occasional major (as well as the 1999 Ryder Cup and next year’s U.S. Amateur). Pleasant Valley Country Club in Sutton, MA, used to host a PGA Tour event until the tournament folded in the late-1990s. That's about it.

Thankfully, the emergence of The Deutsche Bank as an important FedExCup Playoff event (and it’s tendency to produce big-name winners) coupled with New England-native Keegan Bradley has increased the stature of professional golf in the area.

Winners tend to be well into the double-digits below par, and to pull out the Deutsche Bank you generally need to get off to a fast start on the relatively easy front nine. Here’s a description of what the world’s best are facing.

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Before this year, Jason Dufner didn't have much going for him. Sure, he had made over $7.5 million dollars in his career, but he had yet to win a PGA Tour event and he had just 16 top-10 finishes to his name. Prior to 2012, Dufner had missed the cut in over 40 percent of the events he played and his highest placing in the FedExCup was 25th (in 2011). Add to that his major-league choke in last year's PGA and his laughable last name, things weren't looking up for Jason Dufner.

But this year? His only missed cut was his first event, the Sony Open in Hawaii, and he has hardly come close since. A few weeks after a solid T24 at Augusta (his highest finish in the event) where he held the 36-hole lead, Dufner broke through at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans the last week of April, carding -19 and beating Ernie Els in a playoff while also holding off world number one Luke Donald. He's also spending time with the golf team from his alma mater, Auburn University, and quoting Kanye West on Twitter (he's actually an interesting golfer to follow on Twitter). After two wins, Dufner leads the Tour in money earned (already having surpassed his career high), ranked eighth in the world, and I think at one point he might just have cracked a smile. Maybe.

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Augusta National has a solid front nine, but it's the back nine where the course really shines. Every hole can easily lead to a bogey but each one is also birdie-able, as Charl Schwartzel and others showed us last year. Because of this, going into the back nine on Sunday everyone within shouting distance of the lead is still in the tournament.

Last year we saw Tiger destroy the front nine, then shoot a disappointing 36 on the back nine. Conversely, Charl was just two under on the front nine but he laid siege to the last four holes of the back nine, and pulled out the tournament.

A complete about-face from their earlier deadlines, Augusta National has opened up recently. No, they haven't changed their membership policy, but Augusta National now offers the most comprehensive online streaming infrastructure in golf. Augusta has also added more early-round coverage, and the addition of the course to the Tiger Woods PGA Tour video game has given us unprecedented access to one of the most interesting courses in golf.

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Every year, the players outside of the top 125 on the PGA Tour money list get kicked to the curb, forced to either retain their Tour card by other methods (prior tournament wins, all-time money list exemptions, etc.) or enter Q-School. Some of them are up-and-comers, still on the cusp of being a full-time Tour player, and some are older guys, struggling to stay relevant. Either way, here are nine (well, 11) of the guys that struggled on the PGA Tour in 2011.

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As I'm sure everyone in the golfing community has heard, Severiano Ballesteros passed early on the morning of May 7th. Seve was a larger than life figure in the world of European golf and golf around the world, and he is one of the few superstar athletes to have gained universal acclaim. Seve is widely considered to be the best European golfer of all time, and his death before his time comes to great dismay for golf fans across the globe. Ballesteros will be remembered as being one of the most exciting and creative golfers of all time, and one of the legends of the sport.

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