FarWest

JP must have had the day off from carrying his bag to count his money. Rory confirmed in a Twitter Q&A; that he's on the full 10% cut, making $140k on Sunday. Nice money.

The problem I see most often isn't the length of time that players spend over their shots, its the fact that they are not ready to play when their turn comes around. They haven't moved to their ball, or haven't selected a club even if they are third or fourth to play. High handicappers pacing out yardages when for the most part they dont know how far they hit each club anyway, and can't hit a consistent distance often enough is another bugbear of mine, along with the mimicry of Pro's habits of taking off and putting on gloves, moving their tee around teeboxes incessantly or making multiple practise swings. Did I mention that slow plays drives me insane?

I think that McIlroy will benefit hugely from having to play so much golf last week. His schedule at this time of year over the past few years has been patchy, playing one or two tournaments then disappearing for three or four weeks. I think he benefits from having a few tournaments on the bounce as we quite often see with him later in the year, and last week was like two weeks golf squeezed into one. He' only 26, in incredible shape, so physically it shouldnt knock anything out of him, and he's shown with successive wins in the past that the pressure of winning helps rather than hinders him. His game wasn't there last week, and the matchplay format undoubtedly helped cover a few flaws, especially with his short irons, but he's got a Tiger like winners mentality and I think hell get better this week. It will be fascinating to watch him play alongside Spieth, and my spot on the sofa has been reserved for the weekend.

Most unforgiving golf course I've ever seen at a regular tour event. No rough, fairly short, but once you strayed off line you were going to pay a penalty, it was just a question of how much you had to pay. I find it quite frustrating in most events, both Euro and US, that players can miss a fairway by twenty yards and end up in trees, but regularly can still have a shot to the green. On that course you needed to have a chainsaw in the bag if you even went a yard into the jungle, so when people are talking about restrictin the bombers perhaps instead of growing up the rough and looking at 8000 yard courses they might stop manicuring the tree line.

Agree totally with this. The thing that struck me when watching Tiger hacking around was how uncommitted he was to his shots. He seemed to be decelerating into most of them, and then occasionally over compensating on the next chip, and skulling it through the green. I also agree with Mickelson that chipping technique is completely separate from golf swing, and for this reason am highly sceptical of Tigers excuse about being caught between swing patterns. It seems to me to be about loss of confidence and focus in what he's attempting to do.

I think the consistency issue has been put to bed over the past year to be honest. Go onto the OGWR site and look at his record in the past year and reassess your somewhat outdated view about Rory's streakiness. Having said that I dont think that Rory has attained the level of greatness that Tiger achieved at the same early age so any comparison is pointless at this stage. However to dismiss the possibility of him doing so in the future is equally pointless, simply because to expect that their respective careers will be linear is ridiculous. For instance, Tiger last won a Major since he was 32, an age when Mickelson, Scott and quite a few others won their first ones, so it would be reasonable to expect that Rory's window of opportunity to accumulate wins will be much longer than Tigers, and therefore he doesnt need to win them at the same pace. You also can't ignore the probability that McIlroy, through simple genetics, has matured physically more slowly than Tiger, and we've seen how he has developed physically in the past couple of years, with a consequent transformation in his consistency of excellence. Or it might all be bo****ks, and Tiger might be considered by all future generations to be 10 times the player Rory was. We might know in 15 or 20 years.

Talk about clutching at straws, reducing the assessment a 25 year old multiple major winner's career down to a single round. You couldn't make it up. Its not that long ago that some were clinging to the "fact" that he couldn't contend in tournaments unless he had his A game, and now that he has shown that he can grind out good scores despite not being anywhere near top form we now move on to the next course in a moveable feast of criteria by which he should be judged. I'm sure that if he wins today you'll have a new yardstick of greatness ready by this evening.

I'd imagine that a huge factor in Gallacher's selection, outside of the fact that he only missed out on automatic selection by a sliver, was his ability to put in a performance like last weekend when under enormous pressure. Apparently McGinley spelled out his requirements for each of the contenders a couple of weeks ago, and only Gallacher responded in the required manner. Donald was pitiful at the DB, and in the preceding weeks, and can have no complaints about being left out, while Westwood didn't even make it there, so I reckoned Molinari had a big chance to be picked, but he putted very poorly. Poulter showed some decent form last weekend, and was always going to get in the side anyway as the European talisman, so it came down to Westwood and Molinari, and it looks like McGinley went with experience and track record in the RC. He had also spoken about Westwoods influence in the team room, and his ability to pull out big performances, so its hard to argue against his selection, especially when all the other options had such big question marks over them.

Be careful what you wish for. They had Bubba miced up in the Grand Slam of Golf in 2012, and he whined his way through the round. By the end of the round it was like listening to nails being dragged across a blackboard. Even Harrington began to grate.

That's true, but I suspect that if he was throwing tantrums we might have seen more of him for entertainment value alone. I never thought I'd be a Reed apologist, but I thought his fist pump at the last was worthy of comment. He does himself no favours with his perceived arrogance, but hopefully he'll learn from his mistakes.

I have to say that I thought he handled todays disaster with more class than I thought him capable of. He had one of those days where every poor shot turned into a catastrophe, getting buried in faces of bunkers rather than falling back onto the flat. We've all had days like that, and I'm not sure that I was in the mood to fist pump anyone at the end od it, as Reed did with his caddy after bogeying 18. He has an unfortunate face, which along with his ill considered remark about being in the top 5, makes him very easy to dislike, but I thought, from the limited amount we sawof him today, that he dealt with it well.

Bernard Gallagher, another who could readily described as a journeyman pro, has been Europes geatest captain, and Nick Faldo, narguably Europes greatest player,has quite easily been Europes least competent captain, so I think you might be somewhat unaware of the qualities required to do both jobs. McGinley, despite being a journeyman pro, has been a major force in the European game over the past 15 years off the course, and has done his apprenticeship for this job over a number of years, with 3 spells of duty as vice captain at the Rc, and a couple of years as captain of the GB&I; team in the Seve trophy. He is also hugely respected by the players, and not just the Irish, as evidenced by their support when Monty made a late run for the position last year. As for having to go down the list to find a captain, you must be taking the piss. There is a queue going around the block of far better rated current and past players for the Euro captaincy in the next 10 years. He is a guy of the the highest integrity, as I experienced almost 30 years ago when I caddied for him at an amateur tournament at my club, when he called attention to a possible infringent when he was leading a very highly regarded tournament (Robert Allenby finished third that year, and past winners include, McIlroy, Harrington et al). It was a possible infringement that no one else could have been aware of as he was chipping from trees next to a green in front of maybe 20 or 30 people, in fact I was standing nearest to him and I wasn't aware of it. I've met him since, and in fact attended a corporate day late last year where he spoke, and he is one of the strongest, most confidet, andbyet likeable guys you'll ever meet in gold. Underestimate him at your peril.

I've always thought Player to be an insufferable bore and a shameless egotist. I saw him a few weeks ago chalenging a Sky contributor to try to match his sit up count, and whie its impressive that a man of his age is so fit its not unreasonable to expect that he would also have learnt some humility and graciousness. What he thinks are fortright views and bluntness are quite often boorish and offensive insults.

I'm in the group of guys who previously thought he was all about hype and gaudy clothes, but I've developed a real respect for him as a golfer and a person, to the exrent that I wouldnt have been too upset if he'd beaten McIlroy on Sunday. Believe me, as a fan who's followed Rory at amateur tournaments in Ireland since he was 14, that is a huge swing, but I do believe he is very good for golf and will only improve under Butch. Anyone who can putt so unerringly from 6-8 feet under pressure will always be a threat.

I think they're trying to sell hats rather than make him look cool. As an old fogie they look ridiculous to me, but the reality is that generation Y love that look. They dress Tiger to sell goods to people like me.