Shag Bag

Fate remains undefeated this fall. First the old girl gave us Tiger Woods vs. Phil Mickelson at the Tour Championship and we walked away with the impossible – co-winners. Now good fortune has delivered a Tiger-Phil Part Deux at the WGC-HSBC Champions in China.

It’s the first time Nos. 1 and 2 have gone head-to-head in the final group on Sunday since that electric finale at Doral in 2005, which, for the record, was won by Woods.

It’s not that we don’t appreciate the late-season pyrotechnics, but fate may want to save some of that magic for 2010. It is something of a contract year for the Tour, sponsorship wise, and it never hurts to deliver at the deadline. Just ask Yankees slugger Hideki Matsui.

The Snedeker brothers won’t be hard to find at the Children’s Miracle Network Classic at Disney World next week.

Just look for the large group of spectators wearing the “Sned Heads” t-shirts, a play off the Grateful Dead's following.

PGA Tour pro Brandt Snedeker, 29, and his older brother, Haymes, 33, are eager to tee it up for the first time together in a PGA Tour event. Haymes, an attorney in Fairhope, Ala., who also works as a part-time municipal judge there, is playing on a sponsor’s exemption that he claimed as winner of Golf Channel’s "Big Break X: Michigan." A lifelong amateur, he turned pro after the Big Break.

Haymes’ wife, Amy, made up dozens of “Sned Heads” t-shirts with as many as 100 family and friends making the trips from Fairhope and Nashville, Tenn., where the Snedeker boys grew up. Haymes and his wife and their 3-year-old daughter, Ella Gray, have already arrived at Disney to enjoy the parks.

Haymes dreamed of a PGA Tour career as a first-team All Southeastern Conference player at Ole Miss, but he returned home after graduating to help his parents through serious health woes. His mother, Candy, was suffering through congestive heart failure that required surgery. His father, Larry, was laid up with back surgery shortly after. Haymes went to work running his mother’s pawn shop in Nashville to keep the household running with Brandt at Vanderbilt at the time.

All these years later, Haymes still dreams of a PGA Tour career. He made his first attempt at Q-School this year, making it through prequalifying before failing to advance from the first stage.

“Magic and miracles happen at Disney World,” Haymes said. “Maybe there’s one left over for me. If not, if my professional golf career ends at Disney with Brandt at my side, I will be totally satisfied.”

Sherri Steinhauer went one year without touching a golf club, but she’s making her way back to the game this fall.

Steinhauer, 46, wondered whether her LPGA career might be over after undergoing a pair of surgeries last winter and spring to repair bone spurs, labral and tendon tears and chronic pain in both hips. She’s preparing to find out just how much game she’s got left. She played in an LPGA corporate outing near her Palm Springs, Calif., home on Wednesday, her first pro-am for the tour since her surgeries. She only began playing full rounds two weeks ago.

“I felt great,” said Steinhauer, an eight-time LPGA winner with two major championships on her resume. “It seems like a miracle, but the true test is ahead, when I have to play week in and week out.”

Steinhauer had plenty of game when the hip pain became too much to handle. She won as recently as 2007 at the State Farm Classic and won the Women’s British Open in ’06. She hasn't played an LPGA event since the Canadian Women's Open almost 15 months ago.

The timing of the surgeries, Steinhauer said, was oddly a blessing. Her mother, Nancie, was diagnosed with breast cancer at the start of July. Steinhauer returned to Madison, Wis., where she grew up, to help her mother, who suffered through some difficult complications.

“I got to spend most of the summer with her,” Steinhauer.

Steinhauer reports her mother is doing “wonderfully.” Though Steinhauer isn’t sure when she’ll make her LPGA tour return next year, she will make her return to competition in two weeks at the LPGA Legends Tour Open at Innisbrook Resort & Golf Club outside Tampa.
 
"It will give me a good indication where I'm at competitively," she said.

They may call him “Rube” – a reference to the “Major League II” character Rube Baker – and he may be making his first trip to the Far East, but Nick Watney is looking every bit the international man.

Watch the WGC-HSBC Champions on Golf Channel Thurs LIVE at 11 p.m. (ET) and Fri & Sat LIVE at 10 p.m. (ET)

Watney made it look easy with an opening-round 64 at the WGC-HSBC Champions on Thursday in China, but there was nothing easy about his trip across the Pacific.

Watney, who is going to fly home to California after the HSBC for two weeks before returning to China for the World Cup, had to apply for a double-Visa for his Asian odyssey and will complete his worldly whirlwind with a tournament in South Africa to finish his season.

Not a bad lineup, for a rube.

LPGA Commissioner Michael Whan isn’t the only piece of the future leadership puzzle coming together this fall.

At the season-ending LPGA Tour Championship at Houston in just two weeks, LPGA members will decide who among them will work closest with Whan to help rebuild the tour.

What’s going to happen outside the ropes in Houston may be even more important than what happens inside.

Michelle Ellis said Wednesday that she will seek a second term as LPGA president. Seven player directors will decide her fate in a vote before the Tour Championship. First, though, the LPGA membership as a whole must choose who will serve on the board of directors. Juli Inkster and Christina Kim, two dynamic leaders with strong voices, will see their terms expire this month, though Kim is going to be presented for a new term. Once the membership votes on the board, the player directors will pick their president.

The week will also mark the first time Whan meets the membership in a players meeting. Plus, the 2010 schedule will be released. It's a big deal with so much player angst surrounding the rebuilding of the schedule. Players are especially eager to hear what the future of the LPGA Championship will hold, where it will be played next year and who's going to be the title sponsor. When acting commissioner Marty Evans took over in July, just 13 tournaments were under contract for next year. Eighteen have been announced so far with the tour projecting that 22 to 25 will be on the schedule. There were 34 events on last year's schedule, 27 on this year's.
 
“Given the circumstances, the economy, I think everyone’s happy and proud we’ve been able to pull that many tournaments together,” Ellis said. “It’s a great stepping stone for us to become bigger, better and stronger.”
 
Ellis wants to be part of that building. She presided over one of the most critical transitions in the history of the tour with a player revolt forcing out Carolyn Bivens as commissioner this summer. Ellis did so while dealing with personal heartache that tested her on mutliple levels. Ellis spent most of the summer in her native Australia helping her family tend to her ailing father, who died of cancer at the start of September. Her game suffered as she steered the tour's board through its leadership transition and her father's illness. The eight-year veteran endured her worst year on tour, failing to make a single cut in 13 LPGA starts. LPGA vice president Sherri Steinhauer termed Ellis' dedication to the tour "absolutely amazing" given the hardships she faced this past year. Steinhauer said Ellis sacrificed her game for the tour's greater good.
 
"I've learned a lot, we've all learned a lot this year," Ellis said. "It's been a bit of a roller coaster, but all we can do is take what we've learned and try to make ourselves better."

Miami’s Erik Compton was awarded the prized final sponsor’s exemption into the final PGA Tour event of the year.

Compton, who is pursuing his PGA Tour dream after two heart transplant surgeries, one 18 months ago, will play the Children’s Miracle Network Classic at Disney World next week. Compton received the news from tournament director Kevin Weickel on Tuesday afternoon.

Compton will turn 30 a day before the tournament begins. He and Rickie Fowler were among finalists for the last spot, which tournament officials planned to award last week. So was Jamie Lovemark. With the Viking Classic in danger of being canceled due to weather, Weickel and the tournament committee decided to wait before awarding their last exemption. When the Viking Classic was canceled, it allowed Fowler and Lovemark to gain access to the Disney event by virtue of their top-10 finishes at the Frys.com Open. They lost in the playoff there to Troy Matteson.

Compton's story fits what the Children's Miracle Network is all about. At 12, Compton became the youngest heart transplant recipient at that time in the history of Miami Jackson Memorial Hospital. He also played the Disney event last year on a sponsor's exemption and made the cut, tying for 60th. He made it through the first stage of PGA Tour Q-School last week.