Shag Bag

If you thought you had heard the last of Groovegate, think again. The PGA Tour Policy Board is scheduled to meet this week at Pebble Beach to address the issue and at least one of the two players who put an old Ping Eye 2 wedge into play last week (Hunter Mahan) is in the field at the “Clambake.”

Interesting then that Dustin Johnson, this week’s defending champion, spent the lion’s share of his offseason working on his wedge game, but it had nothing to do with the shape or volume of grooves.

“We hit a lot of wedges just because he was ranked outside the top 150 in every wedge category,” Johnson’s coach, Allen Terrell, said. “He was going to hit wedges regardless of grooves.”

The payoff? Three top-16 finishes in four starts and an approach shot average from 50 to 75 yards that is 127 spots better than his 2009 ranking.

Fred Funk is annoyed in his typically charming manner.

He believes he’s the forgotten man with the new Champions Tour beginning in earnest with the season-opener on the American mainland this week at the Ace Group Classic in Naples, Fla.

Funk, 53, will make his first start since undergoing right knee replacement surgery in November.

“I get a little fired up,” Funk told Mark Wood, Tim Rosaforte and myself during our Saturday morning Golf World On-Air radio program. “Whenever I hear projections of who is going to play well on the Champions Tour, I am not even mentioned. So, I have a little fight in me about that.”

Funk wanted to play the season-opening Mitsubishi Electric Championship in Hawaii, but his doctor wouldn't let him.

“Now he gave me the green light,” Funk said.

Paul Azinger is big news in Naples, where he’s making his Champions Tour debut. Fred Couples also is in the field in his second senior-circuit start. Funk is heading there intent on reminding people he can still play.

Funk says he plans to play a full schedule this season, including five or six PGA Tour events. He will play the Puerto Rico Open and the Arnold Palmer Invitational in March. He’s also in The Players Championship as a past champ and in the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach as the winner of last year’s U.S. Senior Open.

“I’m ready to go,” Funk said of his knee. “I will have a lot of good days and some bad days, but I will have more good days than bad as time goes on.”

If you’ve been watching the top of the leaderboard the last few weeks you may know the name of the rookie who has a date with the media on Wednesday morning at Pebble Beach. Twenty-five year-old Alex Prugh has been lighting it up since he hit the scene at the Sony Open in Hawaii – his first Tour event as a professional – and he’s finished in the top 10 every week since his debut with two of them top-5 finishes. He’s the only player on the PGA Tour to top-10 in all three California events this year.

Prugh is 13^th in the FedEx Cup standings and, get this, he’s 19^th in the U.S. Ryder Cup team standings. To put that in perspective, that’s seven spots ahead of Zach Johnson in line for the red, white, and blue. Prugh, a two-time All American at Washington, spent the last two years on the Nationwide Tour where he won the Michael Hill New Zealand Open at the start of last season and finished part of the top-25 on the money list to earn his Tour card.

The Spokane, Wash., native has golf in his blood. His father, Steve, who introduced him to the game played at Oregon. His brother, Corey, played for Washington as well, and his sister, Hillary, played at Montana State.

We’re still learning about this rookie who will be walking into the Pebble Beach media center on Wednesday. But as season progresses, I have a feeling we’ll know a lot more about Alex Prugh.

The LPGA Hana Bank Championship is being added to the 2010 schedule, according to an announcement on the tour’s web site.

The tournament will be played Oct. 29-31 somewhere in or around Seoul, South Korea. The venue will be announced at a later date.

It’s a limited-field event with a $1.8 million purse.

“The tournament will feature 69 players, with slots for 50 of the LPGA Tour's top players,” according to the tour’s announcement.

Hana Bank has been title sponsor to an LPGA event the last four years, but the tournament wasn’t on the 2010 schedule when it was released at the LPGA Tour Championship last November. The tour announced Monday that Hana Financial Group has signed a new three-year sponsorship deal. The event is scheduled as part of a three tournament fall swing through Asia. The LPGA China event, expected to lead off the swing Oct. 22-24, has yet to announce a title sponsor. The Mizuno Classic in Japan is scheduled Nov. 5-7.

The LPGA season begins in Asia next week with the Honda PTT LPGA Thailand event. The HSBC Women’s Champions follows the next week in Singapore.

The announcement pushes the LPGA schedule to 25 official events with 11 events outside the United States, five in Asia. The Sybase Match Play Championship in Gladstone, N.J., was added two weeks ago.

Steve Stricker slowed the winter clean up at the Edgerton Towne Country Club’s clubhouse to a crawl Sunday in his hometown in Wisconsin.

That’s the course Stricker grew up playing.

“Our board got together Sunday to start getting ready for the club’s opening in spring, but little work got done because of Steve’s victory,” Bill Morrison, the former club president, said Monday morning in a telephone interview. “We were all around the TV watching Steve win.”

With his victory at the Northern Trust Open in Los Angeles, Stricker moved to No. 2 in the world rankings, which is making this little town of 5,312 in Southern Wisconsin swell with pride over its favorite son.

“That’s No. 2 and soon to be No. 1,” said Morrison, who owns Morrison’s Auto in Edgerton. “We’re all excited about the majors this year.”

There’s a sign at the entrance to the city that proudly proclaims Edgerton as “The Home of PGA Tour Pro Steve Stricker.” There’s another sign like it at the entrance to Edgerton Towne Country Club. Stricker has displaced Sterling North as the city's most famous resident. North was an author whose most famous work was the best-seller "Rascal," a children’s book. Stricker’s parents still live in Edgerton.

“I’m sure they’re getting badgered at the grocery store,” Morrison said.

Stricker, 42, who owns eight PGA Tour titles, four in the last eight-and-a-half months, will be looking this season to win his first major. He tied for sixth in last year’s Masters, his best showing in nine starts at Augusta National. The PGA Championship will be played at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin, 130 miles northeast of Edgerton.

"I'm sure about a quarter of the town will make that trip to Whistling Straits," Morrison said.

SEA ISLAND, Ga. – Patrick Reed grew up in San Antonio, Baton Rouge and, finally, Augusta, Ga. All of which means he loves TexMex, Augusta National and the New Orleans Saints and made the prospect of a 3 ½-hour drive home Sunday from the Jones Cup Invitational a bitter/sweet endeavor.

“I’m kind of bummed,” he said as the sun set at Ocean Forest Golf Club.

Luckily for Reed, who rallied to catch Frenchman Victor Dubuisson after 54 holes and force a playoff, will have an oversized silver chalice to keep him company on the drive home and ease the pain of missing the big game.

Reed closed with a 74 to finish at 6-over 222 and had a “Big Easy” look to him when he calmly parred the first extra hole to claim his first amateur title.

“Going into 16 I knew (Dubuisson) was 4 over and heard he’d just hit it in the hazard, so I looked at my dad and said, ‘Time to finish strong,’” said Reed, a 19-year-old sophomore at Augusta State. “After that I felt like I had all the momentum.”

Now, if only he can make it home in time to watch the Saints follow his lead and complete his Super Sunday.

SEA ISLAND, Ga. – For all those who think golf is filled with bland, uninteresting robots cut from country club molds we offer the amazing adventures of Stiggy Hodgson.

Hodgson, the highlight of a Great Britain and Ireland team that didn’t have many highlights at last year’s Walker Cup, has an accent straight out of Oliver Twist, a swing that’s just twisted and, at 5-foot-6 with just a hint of a 5 o’clock shadow, the vague look of a cartoon character, which seems about right since his nickname was pinched from an old animated series.

“Stig of the dump,” Hodgson deadpans.

Sorry?

“Stig of the Dump was an old English cartoon,” he explains. “When I was 2 ½ I found my first golf club in a dumpster . . . so, Stig the Dump . . . Stiggy.”

Gotcha.

Funny then that on Saturday at the Jones Cup, the 54-hole unofficial start of the amateur season played at venerable Ocean Forest Golf Club, that Hodgson’s game looked nothing like something one would find in a dumpster.

Hodgson, whose real name is Eamonn, followed his opening 83 with a day’s best 2-under 70 that may as well have been a 60 considering Saturday’s conditions along the Georgia coast. Winds whipped to 25 mph and the three players who bettered par in Round 1 all turned in cards over 80 on Saturday.

Hodgson, 19, trails Blayne Barber, whose rounds of 73-74—147 left him one shot clear of the field, but that second-round 70 gave the Englishman encouragement.

“It was really like 6, 7 under,” Hodgson said. “We get this kind of weather back home but we don’t get this golf course back home.”