After 23 years on the PGA Tour, professional golfers rarely get to experience something for the first time.

Rocco Mediate, who turned pro back in 1985, has never played on a Ryder Cup team. But with the season's final major upon us, the 45-year-old is on the verge of making Paul Azinger's roster.

Mediate is currently 12th on the Ryder Cup points list. The top eight players automatically earn spots, and another four will be chosen in the coming weeks as captain's picks.

"It would be great," Mediate said Wednesday. "One more good shot here to get in the top eight is what we are all looking to do."

No one is going to forget his duel with Tiger Woods at the U.S. Open, but Mediate won't make the Ryder Cup team solely because of his performance at Torrey Pines.

Azinger said Wednesday, "As far as picks, personality could play a part, but I'm looking for guys that are playing really well and that have a lot of confidence." After mentioning Woody Austin, Brendt Snedeker and D.J. Trahan's accomplishments, Azinger added, "Rocco is another guy who could be very confident."

It's that confidence, along with his resurgent game, that would make him a great partner in a four-ball or foursome match. He's not long off the tee, but Rocco is a solid iron player, has an underrated short game and a knack for holing meaningful putts.

And after going toe-to-toe with Tiger for 91 holes, do you think there is anyone on the European team that is going to rattle his spikes?

The European media took notice of what Rocco could bring to the Ryder Cup party after Torrey Pines, but they were skeptical that he'd find his way onto the U.S. team. Oliver Owen wrote in The Guardian:

"Rocco Mediate will never play on a Ryder Cup team. He will never finish high enough up the money list to earn his place and has no chance of being a captain's pick. Paul Azinger will not have given Rocco Mediate a second thought as he plots how to get the cup back from the Europeans. But Rocco Mediate would be the perfect Ryder Cup player... if he was European."

So how ironic would it be if, after 23 years on Tour, Rocco Mediate were the guy to give the European Ryder Cup team a taste of its own medicine?

(Photo: Fred Vuich/SI)

BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- Anthony Kim, 23, has won twice this season. He has two other top-10s in his last three starts, including a T7 at the British Open. Yet listening to him you get the impression that he hasn't done anything in 2008.

"Well, I've come off three disappointing weeks and I'm really fired up and ready to go," Kim said at the 90th PGA Championship at Oakland Hills on Wednesday. "I feel like my game is turning around and hopefully I can go out there and have a good week."

The old Kim would have considered '08 a banner year, whatever happens here this week and at the Ryder Cup. The new Kim still sounds hungry, not content to simply make nice checks at the British and Canadian Opens.

"I put myself in some good positions and didn't pull through," he said. "I definitely learned from those mistakes."

Hitting into a stiff wind at Royal Birkdale, Kim said he pressed too early in the fourth round, then lost his composure when he failed to get up and down from in front of the 15th green. He spent much of the week on his left side, trapping the ball to keep it out of the breeze, and then overcompensated by getting too much on his right side the next week.

"In Canada I feel like I just didn't have it," he said.

Another mistake he learned from: Taking batting practice at Boston's Fenway Park for a TV segment last week. Still sore, he finished T36 at the WGC-Bridgestone, his worst result since May.

"My body just wasn't right," he said. "I guess last week the most disappointing part was not being prepared, like I wanted to be for every tournament this year."

This is going to take some getting used to. The old Kim would have laughed off his B.P. hijinks; the new one sounds miffed that it threw him off his game. He was asked about the prospect of getting a text message from friends, beckoning him to a club despite an early tee time the next day. The old Kim would have gone out and stayed out; the new Kim abstains.

"Trust me, it's a temptation," he said. "But that's not what I want to do with my life. I want to win golf tournaments and be successful and hopefully one day I can be the best player I can be and fill out my potential, wherever that may be."

(Photo: Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)

Stuck at the office with no TV? Fear not, John Garrity, senior writer for Sports Illustrated, will be here Thursday to fill you in on all the goings-on at Oakland Hills.  Stay with him from 1-4 p.m. EST as he live blogs the broadcast.  Michael Walker Jr., senior editor for GOLF Magazine,  will be here at 4 p.m. to blog the late coverage. Join the conversation by posting comments at the link below.

Lower TV ratings, smaller crowds, less excitement. You’d think the golfing world would be heartbroken during Tiger Woods’s injury-forced absence and waiting for his return like he was its Santa Claus,  Easter Bunny and Batman all in one (which he is of course). But The Irish Times’ Colin Byrne identifies a group of people who don’t miss Woods at all: his fellow Tour players.

If a hint of apathy has seeped under the door of the press room then the opposite could be said of the attitude in the locker-room. Knowing the "great one" is not playing has sharpened the competitive edge of players who had tacitly submitted to the Woods winning spell.

There is a new mindset from the early part of the week: "Tiger is not here so we have a better chance of winning."

Byrne himself admits to an appreciation of the Tiger-less Tour, where a fan is more likely to feel like Will Smith in I Am Legend than an extra in Gladiator.

Overall it is a more pleasant experience to be at an event without the uncivilized mob that usually stomp all over the course in pursuit of the world number one.

I talked to some regular spectators on tour in the States, and they agreed it was much more enjoyable to be at an event without Tiger playing.

I know what Byrne means. I live in New York City and I enjoy the summers here because with so many people on vacation and fewer tourists you can always find a parking spot or a subway seat. Still, be careful what you wish for. As the now-unemployed call-center guy once said: This would be a great job if it wasn’t for all the friggin' customers.

Members of the media are supposed to be neutral when it comes to who wins and who loses. Our job is to call it like we see it.

But Nick Faldo, Europe's Ryder Cup captain who will be sitting in the CBS tower behind the 18th green this week, will surely be pulling for the stars from across the pond.

Ten of Faldo's Ryder Cup players will be chosen automatically. The five highest-ranked players on the World Ryder Cup Points list (which is based on world ranking) make the team, along with the five highest-ranked players on the European Ryder Cup Points list (which is based on European Tour earnings) not already on the team.

On the eve of the PGA Championship, here are the players Faldo would automatically have on his roster:
1    Lee Westwood
2    Padraig Harrington
3    Henrik Stenson
4    Miguel Angel Jimenez
5    Robert Karlsson
6    Graeme McDowell
7    Oliver Wilson
8    Søren Hansen
9    Martin Kaymer
10  Justin Rose

Faldo gets two captain's picks, but he surely never imagined that he'd need to use one to get Sergio Garcia (the sixth-ranked player in the world) on the squad. Garcia is currently sixth on the World Points list. Ian Poulter, who was the runner-up at this year's British Open, is seventh.

After finishing tied for sixth at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational last week, Darren Clarke (10-7-3 in five Ryder Cups) moved up 10 spots on the European Points list to No. 23. Paul Casey (3-1-2 in two Ryder Cups) went from No. 19 to No. 15 after finishing tied for eighth in Akron, but both he and Clarke need strong showings if they want to play at Valhalla in September.

In May, Faldo said that Colin Montgomerie needed a strong finish this season to make the team. "It all depends where he is in that last six weeks," he said. "That is going to be real key for me."

Montgomerie finished tied for 58th at Royal Birkdale and is No. 16 on the European Points list, but Monty could still play his way onto his ninth Ryder Cup team with a strong showing at Oakland Hills.

No European-born player has won the PGA Championship since Tommy Armour defeated Gene Sarazen in  1930. It would be a dream come true for any European player who won, and for Faldo, sitting behind the 18th green, it could make some tough decisions a whole lot easier.

(Photo by Gary Bogdon/SI)

So, I'm trying to figure out which is the greater sin: the U.S. men's basketball team getting drubbed during international competition in recent years, or the awful showings of the U.S. Ryder Cup team in golf? Which is the larger sporting shortcoming? Some might say it's hoops because the game was invented here. Others might say it's golf since we've had that Tiger guy and that Phil guy playing for the Yanks. I wonder if the U.S. hoops team will have an easier time in Beijing than the Americans will have in Louisville?

Drew Sharp of the Detroit Free Press blames it on a lack of camaraderie: "The Americans lose the Ryder Cup because they lack the Europeans' joie de vivre. The Europeans play as though they truly enjoy being in each other's company; the Americans co-exist like somebody counting away the minutes until that houseguest who has overextended his stay finally leaves."

What do you think has been the problem for the Americans, and which is worse -- losing in Olympic basketball or the Ryder Cup?

With four victories including a U.S. Open title for the ages, can anyone catch Tiger Woods for Player of the Year?  Some say the competition is over, that winning a U.S. Open on one leg is an achievement that can't be topped.

But what if Trevor Immelman adds a PGA Championship to the green jacket he won in April? Or if Padraig Harrington, playing loose and free after winning the claret jug, nabs the Wanamaker Trophy at the PGA?

Or what if Anthony Kim, after two huge wins on the PGA Tour, breaks through for his first major and then sinks the winning putt in the Ryder Cup?

Lots of ifs, to be sure, but it will be interesting to see how Woods's peers vote if Immelman, Harrington or Kim breaks through this week.

Speaking of Kim, no golfer with two good legs has been written about more in the last few  months.

Hank Gola of the New York Daily News wrote about Kim on Saturday. "Almost no one has made the kind of transformation Kim has made in one year, from the cocky rookie who just talked a big game to the confident player who will be among this week's favorites."

Whether he hits a miracle shot through the trees to win a tournament (Colonial ‘08), bogeys three of the final four holes to lose one (WGC-Bridgestone ’08) or slaps a tee shot off a tent on the way to losing a chance at three straight major titles (U.S. Open ’06), Phil Mickelson remains the PGA Tour’s ultimate daredevil and crash dummy. Two drivers. No drivers. Five wedges. Golf scribes can’t get enough of him on the eve of the PGA Championship.

From Steve Elling of CBS Sports.com:

"Every week is an open audition of sorts for the clubs in Mickelson's bag. Phil's casting calls can be wildly unpredictable. When the curtain on the weekly show rises, this time at the 90th PGA Championship at Oakland Hills, it's often hard to predict which 14-club assortment he'll cart to the first tee.

Recall a few weeks back in June, when he showed up at Torrey Pines for the U.S. Open without a driver and got publicly egged for being a moron, or a month earlier, when he carried five wedges at Colonial and was hailed as a genius.

Two pretty fitting extremes for a guy who represents the outer reaches of radicalism as it relates to mixing and matching clubs. Mickelson, 38, has heard variations on this theme many times before and learned to shrug it off: He's so bright, he's stupid."

From John Hawkins of Golf World:

"My biggest concerns regarding the state of Mickelson's game come from two sources: this year's U.S. Open and last year's Players Championship. Torrey Pines was arguably the biggest tournament of his life: a national championship played 20 minutes from his childhood home with the only guy ahead of him in the World Ranking coming off knee surgery. It boggles the mind to think someone such as [short-game guru] Dave Pelz could convince Mickelson he would be better off playing a 7,600-yard golf course without a driver.

In the words of one highly respected observer, 'We're talking about the greatest wedge player in the world. Does he really need five of them?'"

From Tod Leonard of the San Diego Union-Tribune:

"Mickelson again got a case of the 'lefts' off the tee on Bridgestone's back nine. The shot has seemingly been his curse on the 72nd hole, with troubles on that side in losses at Winged Foot in '06, Riviera in '07 and Bridgestone last week.

But the lefty insists that if he misses the fairway, that's where he wants to be. Left.

'I'm trying to take half the trouble out of play,' Mickelson explained. 'I want to set up down the right edge of the fairway and hit a cut. If I miss it left, it doesn't bother me. What bothers me is if I hook it.'

A glass-half-full outlook, to be sure, but Mickelson is the king of turning something into nothing, and nothing into something."