The first thing I’ll be checking on is Pat Perez’s spot in the player parking lot. The Scottsdale resident is commuting from home and has been arriving at the TPC in some serious heavy metal.

On Friday he went vato style with a cherry low-rider with multi-colored metallic paint and blinding chrome dubs. On Saturday he roared up in a customized black-on-black Ferrari F430. Assuming neither car was acquired in the last few days, imagine how Perez might splurge now that he’s actually won a freakin’ tournament!

As for the golf at hand, I’m really looking forward to seeing how Scott Piercy plays in the final group alongside that cagey veteran, Kenny Perry. Piercy has an outrageous amount of swagger for a rookie but almost enough game to back it up. He’s spent his whole career on various mini-tours trying to claw his way out here and now he’s got the opportunity of a lifetime. I don’t think he’ll shrink from the enormity of it.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Among the chatter on the floor of the PGA Merchandise Show Friday was news that the Greg Norman collection is about to change hands. A group of investors led by Michael J. Setola, the current CEO and president of Greg Norman, is poised to buy the apparel company from MacGregor Golf. Mr. Norman, who is a stakeholder in the apparel company, has been spotted at the show. The company is said to have sales upward of $100 million. An announcement is expected shortly. "It's a better move for the company," said an executive familiar with the negotiation.

DOOM OR BOOM?

Not everyone is talking about the bleak economic landscape. While foot traffic at the convention, in which more than one thousand vendors show and tell about their wares -- from the newest clubs to novelty tees to golf carts and hats -- has been down over previous years, those who came were placing orders for merchandise. At the booth for Cleveland Golf/Srixon, Greg Hopkins, the company CEO, was positively ebullient.

"We wrote as much in orders Thursday as we did last year," Mr. Hopkins said. "It shocked me, given what everyone knows about the economy. If it had been half of last year, I would have been pleased."

At Cutter & Buck, a key golf apparel supplier, traffic to the booth has been steady and heavy, particularly Thursday night, when Annika Sorenstam, their star sponsored golfer, made a personal appearance. "It's been good for us," said Meghan Graves, a company spokeswoman. "There is an air of uncertainty, but we are still getting orders. People may be scaling back, but they are still buying."

MYSTERY SOLVED

At the "Demo Day" events on Wednesday, where clubmakers display their newest killer technologies and allow amateurs and pros to sample the goods, some over-the-top long hitters were hammering balls with the latest equipment.  On the tee outside the Callaway tent a huge fellow -- around 6' 5", maybe 270-280 pounds with biceps like Schwarzenegger's -- was sending rockets into the stratosphere. A small crowd watched the man in awe.  He seemed to be hitting balls 500 yards -- and he didn't even have that below-horizontal backswing typical of long-drive contestants.

It's not possible to hit the ball 500 yards, is it? At long drive competitions, the maximum distance is usually around 410 yards.

Later, at the convention booth for Bang Golf, a purveyor of long-distance drivers, an large poster proclaimed that its contract golfer/hitter, Scott Smith, held the record for longest ball hit, at 539 yards. Mr. Smith, who was on hand, explained that his titanic drive was accomplished in Albuquerque, NM -- in high desert conditions. In other words, he had been aided by thin air. As for the brute at Callaway earlier in the week, Mr. Smith, who is regular sized (about 6', 200 lbs.), said: "Oh, that's Mike Dobbins. He wasn't hitting it 500. We were all only hitting them 400 or so on Wednesday."

Only ...

I can’t wait to watch Kenny Perry during the FBR’s third round. On Friday he shot a smooth 63 to surge into a tie for fifth, and no one plays a more entertaining brand of smash-mouth golf than Perry when he’s on one of his trademark tears.

At this year’s Mercedes Championship he admitted to woofing to other players that he never works out yet they still can’t hit it past this 48-year old country boy with a largely homemade swing.

Last summer, for a Ryder Cup preview story, I journeyed to Perry’s tiny hometown of Franklin, Kentucky. I was happy to play a round at Country Creek, the course Perry designed and built with his own money. The man himself was too busy to show me around but I did even better, as his 84-year-old dad acted as my caddie and chauffeur.

Mr. Perry and I roared around in his pimped-out red golf cart, a Christmas present from his son, and on the couple of occasions when I made decent-length putts the old man tooted the horn and gave me a thumbs-up.

On every tee box Mr. Perry would point to a faraway tree and say, "Just hit a high draw over that tree."

Eventually I had to break the news to him that, unlike his son, I didn’t have a high draw I can carry 290 yards. There aren’t many trees on TPC Scottsdale but on Saturday I’ll be thinking of Mr. Perry every time Kenny blasts a tee shot.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Kenny Perry admitted after his second-round 63 at the FBR Open on Friday that he's sometimes taken aback by the Animal House atmosphere at TPC Scottsdale.

"Yeah, it does bother me," said the three-time winner last year. "When you've never had that in the history of your career, and now all of a sudden one week you've got to -- I've been out here 23 years. I've got a lot of skeletons up in my head, and you just -- I've experienced all the shots. I shanked a pitching wedge the first hole this year at [the Mercedes Championship at] Kapalua right out of the gate, right out of bounds. You try to fight the demons and then you get them thrown at you."

Perry, who turns 50 in a year and a half but said recently his goal is to reach 20 victories on Tour (he's at 12), nevertheless has run into no major scoring issues on the rowdy, par-3 16th hole. In fact he's thrived on it. He's gone birdie, par so far this week, and has a history of 2s here.

"I'm 12 or 13 under for 73 holes," Perry said. "I was watching the broadcast [Thursday] night and they said I've played that hole better than anybody."

One other note on Perry's mental game: He ate at P.F. Chang's on Thursday night and when he pushed away from the table he said, "That meal was so good I'll probably shoot 63 tomorrow.

"That's the exact words out of my mouth," he said Friday afternoon. "And I go shoot it. So what does that tell you? It tells you how strong the mind is."

By Alan Shipnuck

I'm not a betting man but I always enjoy a mental over/under whenever an unknown rookie takes the first round lead. What's the o/u on James Nitties for Friday? I'll say 73. 

I will also be keeping an eye on Phil Mickelson to see if he can go low enough to make the cut. Based on his deplorable first-round, I doubt it.

The person I really want to watch today is Jonathon Kaye, who shot a solid 3-under on Thursday. He's the  James Dean of the PGA Tour - brooding, charismatic and unpredictable. Injuries have wrecked a once-promising career but hopefully Kaye can re-find his old flammable form. The Tour -- and this weekend -- will be much livelier with him around.

By Alan Shipnuck

Obviously, I will be watching all the desert foxes who make the FBR such a pleasurable spectating experience. The 16th and 17th holes are also mandatory viewing - the former for the gallery hijinks, the latter because it is the archetype of the risk-reward short par 4. But most of all I will be watching Phil Mickelson.

The mercurial Lefty is making his season debut on Thursday, the start of one of his most important campaigns. Over the last two years Mickelson has won some nice tournaments, but he's been a non-factor in the majors. Closing in on 39, he's entering the final act of his career and no longer has time to squander. Phil needs a strong West Coast trip to generate momentum for the runup to Augusta. Dave Pelz told me this week that he had never seen Phil in such fine form this early in the year. The proof may come during the FBR's first round.

Get scores and tee times on the GOLF.com leaderboard.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Phil Mickelson ended a roughly two month break from the game with a recent nine-day practice bender. On Wednesday at the FBR Open, he said of his game, "It seems like it's coming."

Mickelson won twice last year and helped the U.S. win back the Ryder Cup, but he never factored in the major championships.

"A big issue for me last year was really putting," Mickelson said. "I just didn't feel comfortable on the greens and struggled and tried a lot of different things. I went to the putting studio with Callaway to get on the monitors and see what was going on. [Dave] Pelz and I went there just before the Ryder Cup to try to get this thing ironed out.

"I found that the stroke was actually how I had wanted it," Mickelson continued, "but my face angle and alignment was off almost a full degree, so I've been spending the off-season, even though I haven't been playing, using devices that train my eyes to line up properly. I feel like if I can line up properly, it will help my putting immensely. It's felt better since. I putted good at the Ryder Cup, I putted the best week of the year at the Tour Championship, and in the off-season it has felt just as good, so I feel confident this will be a good putting year because of that."

Mickelson did not elaborate on what devices he was using on his eyes.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Mark Calcavecchia gave the most entertaining press conference of the week so far after playing in the FBR Open pro-am on Wednesday.

"I'm starting to feel better every day," Calcavecchia said, alluding to an Oct. 14 operation on his knee that he characterized as minor. "Of course, it will be nice to play golf [Thursday] with two other pros for a change. Jesus. Five days in a row of chops. Four days at the Hope--mind you, they were all a bunch of nice guys, but I've seen enough bad shots in the last five rounds I've played to last me all year."

Calcavecchia said he was quickly up and walking around after his arthroscopic surgery, but that the knee led to a few swing problems that he's currently trying to fix with instructor Peter Kostis.

"I'm trying to correct those, and the knee feels pretty good," Calc said. "Not great mind you, but really from the knees down are my main problem right now, and of course from the neck up is always a problem, too. And my belly could be a little smaller, too. Other than that, I actually feel pretty decent."

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Aaron Baddeley’s loss to Tiger Woods in 20 holes in the third round of the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship last year wasn’t a life-or-death situation for Baddeley’s caddie, Pete Bender. That came later.

Bender hadn’t felt well all week, and one of his lymph nodes had swollen to the size of a golf ball. One doctor insisted he was fine, but a second opinion confirmed his worst fear. As Bender, 59, put it at the FBR Open on Wednesday, he’d “caught” cancer.

“It’s the same thing Hubert Green had,” he said as he stood on the practice putting green, where he received well-wishes and the boss practiced his stroke. “A doctor tried to tell me it was secondhand smoke. I’ve never smoked in my life.”

When Bender dropped out of sight after the Match Play, word got out that one of the Tour’s most famous caddies was in bad shape.

Bender counts two British Open victories (1986, ’90) among 28 Tour wins in his 38-year career. He’s worked for Greg Norman, Ian Baker-Finch, Ray Floyd, Jack Nicklaus, Lanny Wadkins, Hal Sutton, Rocco Mediate and now Baddeley. The caddie didn’t think he’d hit retirement age, but had to reconsider from his hospital bed.

He left the Tour, went home outside Sacramento, Calif., had his tonsils out, underwent chemotherapy and radiation, and didn’t eat for 62 days. Always skinny to begin with, he went from 178 pounds to 130. He spent two months in the hospital.

“Eventually I was so depressed I just had to get out of there,” he said. “I told them to get me out whatever it took.”

Wouldn’t you know it, the caddie strapped his salvation to his back. Doctors fit him with a backpack full of calorie-rich liquid food, a mobile soup kitchen that began to restore some of Bender’s vitality by way of his veins. He wore it for two months.

As he began to gain back weight (he’s now 150), he began to feel better. Baddeley, who played the rest of 2008 and his first two tournaments of ’09 with an old friend and longtime Tour caddie named Anthony (Ant Man) Knight, called Bender regularly, although the caddie couldn’t always talk.

In his first week back on Tour at TPC Scottsdale this week, Bender will tote a special lightweight carry bag, courtesy of his boss and Adams Golf. He walked the course without the bag Sunday and “felt great,” and went nine holes with the bag Wednesday.

“He’s skinnier,” Baddeley said, “but he’s still pretty chatty.”

Bender goes in for regular check-ups and is guarded in assessing his health, which he has continued to address with a combination of traditional and holistic treatments. He’s done with the chemo, but it’s not yet done with him.

“I can taste avocadoes and bananas but not salad dressings and certain soups,” he said. “I live on vitamins. I’m taking like 45 a day. I knew I needed help, and found a woman who has really been great. That’s how I’ve put on the 20 pounds.”

Baddeley finished up his putting and Bender followed him to the tiny carry bag, leaning on its kickstand in the fringe. Bender hoisted the clubs over his shoulders for the short walk to the range, a man trying to make the most of a mulligan.

(Photo: Stan Badz/PGA TOUR/Getty Images)

Michelle Wie’s first LPGA event as a card-carrying member will likely be a home game.

Wie told The Honolulu Advertiser that she "most probably" will play in the LPGA’s season opening SBS Open at Turtle Bay in Oahu, Hawaii, the island where Wie grew up. (She attended the same high school as President Barack Obama.) Regarding the rest of the season, the Stanford student didn’t give a number of events she’ll play, but said she’ll play a "full schedule," good news for sponsors and television advertisers who covet Wie’s star power. The article also said:

In typical Wie-speak, she will only say she wants to play "a lot" and is looking forward to the consistency full playing privileges provide. And winning, something she has not accomplished since she was 13. She views 2009 as a "clean slate."

Wie, 19, who finally passed Q-School last year after years of playing on sponsors’ exemptions, told the newspaper that her injured wrist wasn’t the only reason for her well-documented struggles. That’s obvious to anyone who’s been following her career, but it’s nice to hear her acknowledge it.

"There are so many elements in my life," Wie said. "The thing everyone knows is I broke my wrist and all that, and not performed as well as I wanted to. But during that time I've grown up a lot as a person.

"I finished at Punahou [High School], started Stanford. There was a lot of transition in my life. I was leaving home in Hawai'i. That was really big for me, really different. A lot of people don't know how truly hard it was for me.

"There are some points in my life I know I never want to go back to and I have to say I never want to go back to that dark place again. I'm glad it happened early, although now I feel like I can handle the bad places. Until I got hurt it was all going as I planned and then I hit a glitch in the road. I learned to appreciate things more and now I'm glad it happened."

(Photo: Scott Halleran/Getty Images)