Enjoying their vacation
Instead of heading to Hawaii for the PGA Tour's Hyundai Tournament of Champions, Luke Donald hit the beach. So did Lee Westwood. They still found time for a little banter under their beach umbrellas, however. 

Tilghman vs. Chamblee
Nick Faldo made his 2012 announcing debut at Kapalua and couldn't help noticing some of the swag that other Golf Channel personalities were getting. 

Feeling old
Paul Goydos starts his 2012 PGA Tour season this week at the Sony Open, but before he left for Hawaii he played a practice round with the LPGA's Ryann O'Toole, who was born two years before he turned pro in 1989.

Nice seats 
Justin Rose enjoyed the view from the floor of the Superdome in New Orleans before the start of the Saint-Lions game on Saturday. The Briton left happy after his adopted team, the Saints, won 45-28.

Pink overload
Paul Creamer loves pink, we get it, but does anyone really need to exercise in a room like this?

Earthquake...in New Jersey?
On Monday of the Barclays, as players casually hit balls on the range and played practice rounds at Plainfield Country Club, an earthquake centered in Virginia shook the course.

Keegan still can't believe it
Keegan Bradley, the rookie who recently won the PGA Championship, was grouped with Phil Mickelson and Luke Donald for the first two rounds of last week's Barclays. Although he was the only player among them to have won a major this season, you get the feeling that he was pinching himself before the round.

Goydos's woes
While Bradley was still basking in the glow of his recent win, veteran Paul Goydos was on the opposite side of the spectrum.

Hurricane tweets
After all the shaking was over, players at the Barclays shifted their concerns to Hurricane Irene and how they were going to get home. But one player had other thoughts on his mind.

Mr. 54
Dustin Johnson won the rain-shortened Barclays, prompting SI's Alan Shipnuck (@AlanShipnuck) to wonder about Johnson's record in weather-shortened events.

Poulter shows good taste
Clearly Ian Poulter had an incomplete childhood. What do they eat around campfires in England?

UPDATE: A previous version of this story reported that Paul Goydos cracked a rib during a minor car accident on Monday. Goydos was in an accident, but he wrote on his Twitter account Thursday that the rib injury was more likely a result of slipping in the shower at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas, two weeks ago.

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Two-time PGA Tour winner Paul Goydos was in a minor automobile accident in Florida on Monday. While driving with three friends during a buddies' golf trip, Goydos was in the front passenger seat of a sports utility vehicle when a smaller car slammed into his side of the SUV.

"I heard someone [in our car] yell, and I looked out the window and the [other] car was sideways almost like they'd locked up their brakes or something, and it was turning and coming into us," Goydos told Golf.com.

"We were in an SUV, thank God," he said. "I looked down and saw it almost looked like a toy car [because] we were so high up in the air."

Goydos said it felt like the SUV barely budged after impact and that no one in either car was seriously injured.

Goydos reported on his Twitter account Wednesday that he had cracked a rib. On Thursday, he wrote that that injury was not caused by the auto accident but more likely resulted from his slipping in the shower at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas, two weeks ago.

"Let the insults fly," he wrote.

Goydos said the injury will take four to six weeks to heal and that he has withdrawn from his next two starts, which were scheduled to be U.S. Open sectional qualifying in Memphis, Tenn., and the Fed-Ex St. Jude Classic, also in Memphis. After a slow start to the 2011 season, Goydos had been showing improved form of late, with consecutive top-10 finishes at the Players Championship and the Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial.

"Playing won't do anymore damage," Goydos wrote on Twitter, "but will be painful."

"Pretty bummed out."

(Photo: Hunter Martin/Getty Images)

Over the last couple of weeks Tiger Woods’s peers have been unabashedly candid about the state of his game, his mind and his future. Bubba Watson criticized Tiger’s swing. ("I'll just go ahead and say it: I think Tiger is going the wrong way.”) Paul Azinger said Woods would benefit from some TLC. ("Tiger needs to be able to have a shoulder to cry on...") And now Kenny Perry is questioning Tiger’s mental toughness, telling Robert Lusetich of Foxsports.com: 

“He’s mentally the toughest guy I’ve ever seen out here,” Kenny Perry said. “I don’t know what happened to that.

“He keeps saying he’s physically hurt, so I guess we’ve got to go with that.”

Perry went on to question whether Tiger’s doggedness in the gym may be accelerating the damage to his left knee:

“Tiger goes over the top when he does stuff,” Perry said. “When he works out, he works out religiously; whatever he does, he’s gung-ho. It’s amazing because that’s what made him such a great player, but maybe he’s overdone it.

“When he was playing great golf, he was wiry, thin, loose and quick; he had a lot of speed. Now he’s so thick, he looks like a defensive back in the NFL, but his legs are still little.

“So is his lower body struggling to support his heavier, muscular upper body? I don’t know, maybe it is.”

Sergio Garcia … for mayor?

Talk about a warm Texas welcome. Sergio Garcia—who hasn’t won many popularity contests on the PGA Tour—arrived at Colonial Country Club this week to find this banner planted outside the gates: 

No doubt buoyed by the support of his Fort Worth fanbase, Garcia is off to a solid start in his campaign to win for a second time at Colonial. The Spaniard posted a 66 Thursday.

Goydos still has "issues" to sort out

A trio of 69s at TPC Sawgrass last week—and a third-place check worth $646,000—wasn’t enough to convince fan favorite Paul Goydos that he has rediscovered his game. The droll 47-year-old, who has been muttering about possibly retiring, said Thursday that he needs more than one good week to turn his frown upside down:

"I bounced back, and I'm happy that I did, but I'd like to take care of the issues I've had," Goydos said. "One week to me is not a streak. Keep working and let's see what happens."

Goydos doesn't sound totally convinced that last week was a turning point, because last month he tied for ninth at The Heritage in Hilton Head, S.C.—his first top 20 finish of the year—and then missed the cut at Quail Hollow in Charlotte, N.C., by playing the final seven holes of the second round in 7-over par.

"You do crazy things like that, you have to wonder if things are coming to an end," he said. He says this season has been different from any other because of "systemic" problems on the course and physical issues off the course.

"It's been a breakdown in all facets of my game," Goydos said. "This is probably as crooked as I've driven it in my career, and this is as bad as I've putted it in my career, as far as the stats are concerned. Just horrific.”

Goydos shot an even-par 70 at Colonial on Thursday. He is eight back.

Rookie Mistakes
SI's Gary Van Sickle is originally from Wisconsin and now lives outside Pittsburgh. Having endured plenty of winters, you'd think he would have learned to always volunteer for Hawaiian duty in January!

Rain, rain go away!
While Honolulu was pelted with several inches of rain, several pros awaiting the start of the Sony Open decided to post Tweets.

On Friday morning, Troy Merritt was the first on the range, and wanted Bubba Watson to know it.

Ben Crane's Pre-Round Warm-up video
As if we need another reason to be thankful for the Internet ... it's shown us that mild-mannered Ben Crane is actually funny.

Boys will be boys
The verbal jabbing between Lee Westwood and Rory McIlroy continued this week.

It's Greensboro, it's the week after the last major championship of the year, it's a bottom-heavy field and, oh yeah, it's the last chance to qualify for the FedEx Cup series (where everyone who can play dead gets in anyway, so no suspense there). So what else would be a hot topic of conversation but the chance to see yet another 59 this week at the Wyndham Championship?

Winning is nice, but a 59 is divine
In his much-ballyhooed TV appearance last night, LeBron James spoke endlessly about the importance of his teammates and winning and championships — all the typical fodder you'd expect to hear from a professional athlete. Which is what made David Duval's comments yesterday at the John Deere Classic — where Paul Goydos shot a first-round 59 — all the more striking. Duval, whose own 59 helped him win the 1999 Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, was asked about that week and said the win itself actually took a back seat to breaking 60.

"To me, at that instant, making that putt was more important than winning the golf tournament, frankly," Duval said after a 4-under-par round of 67 Thursday afternoon at TPC Deere Run.

For his part, Goydos said the opposite: that he would trade his 59 for a W. Of course Goydos still has three rounds to play.

Duval also said he doubts 59 will remain the PGA Tour gold standard. A pair of Japanese players already have carded 58s in non-Tour competition, but he said the number to look for is 14-under par.

For Deere Run's sake, let's hope it doesn't happen in the next three days.

You go, girls! Seriously, get moving ...
Five and a half hours is the time it takes to fly from New York to Dublin; run two marathons (quickly); or watch 11 episodes of your favorite sitcom (including commercials). It's also the time it took some groups to slog through the opening round of the U.S. Women's Open Thursday, according to The AP's Alan Robinson:

Given the speed of play — or, more precisely, the lack of speedy play — during the first round ... it appeared that nearly every threesome took on Oakmont Country Club at a deliberate, take-all-precautions pace on Thursday. The mid-90s temperatures and tricky putting conditions didn't help.

One of the first golfers on the course, Mhairi McKay of Scotland, found her group warned for slow play after only four holes. The threesome finished in 5 hours, 34 minutes, or exactly one hour longer than the pace sought by the United States Golf Association.

Call it Dante's 10th circle of hell.

Mickelson's quirky quintuple
If Phil Mickelson wants to become the biggest, baddest player in the world, he'll need to avoid big, bad numbers — like the quintuple-bogey 9 he made on his ninth hole Friday at the Barclays Scottish Open at Loch Lomond. Paying attention to the rules will serve him well, too. The Guardian describes Lefty's latest snafu:

The Masters champion, who needs a top-two finish to be able to call himself the sport's best player for the first time in his career, came to the 455-yard 18th – the ninth hole of his second round – on level par.

But he left it five over, 12 shots behind the leader Darren Clarke and on course to miss the halfway cut. During a heavy downpour Mickelson blasted his drive into the water down the left and did the same with his next attempt.

The TV commentator – and former winner of the title – Wayne Riley told Mickelson that the second ball was actually playable, but the left-hander apparently had not declared the third to be a provisional and under the rules of golf had to play it.

Feds unearth $250K on Kentucky golf course
If you're the kind of golfer who generally loses money on the golf course, you might appreciate what federal authorities dug up on Summit Hills golf course in Kentucky: $250,000 in cold, hard cash. The loot apparently belonged to Bill Erpenbeck, a home builder who is serving 25 years in the big house for bilking millions of dollars from banks and home buyers, according to Jim Hannah of the Kentucky Enquirer.

Erpenbeck told an FBI agent who visited him in prison there was $250,000 cash buried between the No. 3 tee box and the No. 6 green, but it had deteriorated during the eight years it was buried in a soft-sided, blue-colored cooler.

Any money that FBI agents ultimately salvage will by applied to the $34 million Erpenbeck was ordered to forfeit as part of his 2003 bank fraud conviction, said Fred Alverson, spokesman for U.S. Attorney Carter Stewart.

"The treasure hunt will continue," Alverson said. "If there is more buried money out there, the FBI will pursue it."

Something tells me they won't be the only ones looking.

Paul Goydos might need a new nickname.

Called “Sunshine” by his friends -- an ironic reference to his often pessimistic view of his game -- Goydos is now also “Mr. 59” after shooting a sub-60 round Thursday at the John Deere Classic at TPC Deere Run in Silvis, Ill.

"Fifty-nine is a pretty iconic number," Goydos said. "Someone was smiling on me. It was a really good day. I don't want to understate [the achievement], but it's still sinking in."

Goydos, 46, is the fourth player to shoot 59 in a PGA Tour event. The others are Al Geiberger (1977), Chip Beck (1991) and David Duval (1999). He shot 12-under, with eight birdies on the back nine, including birdies on Nos. 17 and 18, to post his 59. He missed only one fairway and two greens in regulation all day.

Goydos is a two-time Tour winner who won over a legion of fans with his humor after losing the 2008 Players Championship to Sergio Garcia in a playoff.

He showed the same good humor when asked what he was thinking during his first-round 59 Thursday.

“Well, obviously I wasn't thinking,” Goydos said. “If I was thinking I think I would shoot 74 or 5.”

The historic round could not have come at a better time for Goydos, who has struggled since losing his final-round lead when he made a 9 on the 14th hole at Pebble Beach during the AT&T National Pro-Am.

"I've been very good at playing poorly now for the last 10 tournaments or so," Goydos said. "Really since the 9. There's two things that are going to stand out right now this year. That's the 9 and the 59. And really since that 9 at Pebble I have not played well.

Goydos acknowledged that he benefited from "lift, clean and place" rules, which were in effect at the John Deere Classic due to wet conditions. Goydos noted that Geiberger's 59 was also played under "lift, clean and place" rules. However, he added that he did not land in a divot or have mud on his ball at anytime during the round. He said he doubted he placed his ball more than 1 inch from where it originally landed.

The par-71 TPC Deere Run course is 7,268 yards long. Goydos took only 22 putts, including his last 7-foot putt for birdie, to become the first player to shoot 59 in more than 11 years.

"I was more nervous over that putt than any putt my whole career," Goydos said, noting that he had little more than tap-ins for his two Tour wins.

Still, Goydos said that winning the tournament is more important that posting a number in a single round, no matter how special that number is.

"I was asked would you rather shoot 59 and finish third," Goydos said. "That's not even a question. I'm here to win the golf tournament."

Goydos said he didn't know why more players don't shoot 59, except that golf is hard for everybody.

"I think there's a slight mental barrier to it --  that could be part of it -- but honestly I have no idea," Goydos said.

Golf.com readers are not surprised to see another 59, however. Earlier this week, a Golf.com poll asked if a Tour player would ever shoot 59 again. More than 95 percent of you voted “Yes.”

Looks like we've got a new leader in the clubhouse for Best PGA Tour Event of the Year. That would be the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.

While the Dustin Johnson versus Paul Goydos duel wasn't quite the final-round, David-versus-Godzilla showdown that was expected, the tournament turned out to be a pretty compelling show.

For starters, there is no better televised golf than Pebble Beach when the sun is out and the surf is up. CBS knows all the camera angles and the blimp shots of the mesmerizing surf pounding against the rocks more than covered the cost of blimp rentals for the whole year. The appropriate word for the weekend pictures is "wow!"

The finish also had a little of everything. Dustin Johnson struggled, but impressively birdied the par-5 18th hole to win with a sweet up-and-down from a greenside bunker after bombing a drive down the fairway into the wind.

Everyman hero Paul Goydos waited to play the par-5 14th hole while Bryce Molder finished off a quadruple-bogey 9, then Goydos duplicated the feat without the aid of a penalty stroke. Nobody roots against the underdog, especially one as fun as Gouydos, but many viewers like to see reminders of how vindictive the game of golf can be.

The Cinderella factor not already covered by Goydos was left to David Duval, the former No. 1 player in the world, then the former 882nd-ranked player in the world, trying to cement his comeback legacy with a victory. Duval did what he had to do, making birdie at the 17th, and waiting on the putting green tied for the lead while Johnson played up the 18th.

Lost in the mix was the early-season revival of J.B. Holmes, who also had a chance to be in a three-way playoff if Johnson hadn't birdied the last. Holmes did some off-season putting work and it appears to be paying off.

Johnson's third win and his successful defense of his Pebble Pro-Am title means the rush is on to anoint him as the next big thing. Randall Mell made that point on GolfChannel.com:

Move over Rory McIlroy, Martin Kaymer and Anthony Kim. You don’t win back-to-back at Pebble Beach without being a special talent.

You might have wondered when Johnson made his first PGA Tour title a Fall Finish event as a rookie two years ago. Who did he really beat? You might have wondered when he didn’t have to play the final round and was proclaimed the champ after 54 rain-soaked holes at Pebble Beach last year. Would he have survived the finish? There’s no wondering now, not after the way Johnson kept his composure Sunday with all hell breaking loose around him in a tumultuous finale.

Johnson’s caddie, Bobby Brown, is more impressed by Johnson’s head than he is by Johnson’s considerable skill. “I know I’m biased, but I tell you what, this kid is special,” said Brown, who has caddied for all three of Johnson’s victories. “I can’t believe it’s taken so long for people to catch onto him the way he hits the ball.”

The finish by Johnson at 18 was the talk of the final round. The 9s by Molder and Goydos at the 14th were a close second. Goydos saw Molder hit three chip shots up a steep bank roll back to his feet so Goydos intended to hit his approach shot long and over the green, then get up and down for par. Unfortunately, he pulled his approach shot into the danger zone and he, too, didn't get his first chip on the putting surface. Gary Peterson of The Contra Costa Times covered the Goydos angle, complete with Paul's sardonic quips.

"That was one tough hole," a reporter said, trying to break the ice.

"Which one might that have been?" Goydos asked. "It wasn't like I didn't try on all nine shots. Well, the ninth one I wasn't real excited about."

Goydos was classy in defeat. As Johnson lined up his tournament-winning birdie putt on 18, Goydos held up his left hand to quiet some distracting conversation in the greenside bleachers. Later he spoke glowingly of Johnson's complete game, saying it was a "disservice" to focus merely on his colossal drives.

Mainly he seemed to take the day in stride. When informed that Arnold Palmer had once taken a nine on the 14th hole while leading the tournament, he said, "Me and Arnold have a lot in common."

And when asked about the pro-am competition, Goydos suddenly recalled that he and amateur partner Robert Stuart had won. "I got something out of it," he said. "I got one win. It's a five-year exemption I hear."

None of us are truly exempt. Paul Goydos understands that better than most.

Bob Harig provided the Duval report for ESPN.com:

Duval remembers rifling drives into fairways and striking iron shots with such precision that he wondered how he ever lost. Those days seem so long ago, but they are not forgotten.

"I'm just pleased to get out of my golf game over the course of four days again what I feel like I should be getting out of it," Duval said. "I feel very comfortable in what I'm doing. And in a strange way, it makes me proud. I feel like I kind of have given the folks who have given me starts this year good firepower for what they did it. That makes me feel good, too."

Although Duval has often maintained that his results have not been justified by the way he played, the numbers speak for themselves this week. For the first time since the 2001 Buick Challenge -- a tournament that no longer exists and that Duval lost in a playoff -- he shot four rounds in the 60s.

One other thing: Even though Phil Mickelson continued his disappointing run on a West Coast swing that was filled with expectations as he was a non-factor at Pebble and tied for eighth, Cam Inman of the Bay Area News Group was impressed enough to to make a rash statement: 

A clear-cut favorite has emerged for this summer's U.S. Open at the ever-majestic Pebble Beach Golf Links. No, it isn't Dustin Johnson, who does deserve high praise for winning his second straight AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. No, we speak not of Tiger Woods. He will be too busy fending off paparazzi, if indeed he makes an encore to his 2000 U.S. Open rout here. Mark it down: Phil Mickelson will win his first U.S. Open championship June 20.

And yes, this really, really will be the year for the Chicago Cubs. All things considered, ignoring Nick Faldo's ill-fated decision to try to talk football with New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady during Saturday's telecast, Pebble Beach provided golf's best week of the year... so far.

Doug Ferguson of The Associated Press caught up with Fred Couples, who talked about why he decided to put the square-grooved, pre-1990 Ping wedge in play at Riviera. Couples said he was inspired by Phil Mickelson's example and his willingness to take criticism.

“I said, ‘I think that’s strong, and I’m going to use one next week,’” Couples said. “He said, ‘Man, I think that’s great.’ I get out here and he’s not using it.”

Ferguson also had a great nugget about leader Dustin Johnson's round of 64:

Dustin Johnson was determined to get off to a good start in the Northern Trust Open, so for the first time, he decided against trying to drive the 10th green at Riviera and instead laid up with a 4-iron. He made par, which never hurts. And then he took off. Johnson birdied three of his next four holes, one of them with a 65-foot putt, and he kept bogeys off his card during a cool, gentle morning for a 7-under 64 to build a one-shot lead Thursday over Andres Romero and Kevin Stadler.

“Had good vibes going all day, and just hit the ball really good all day long,” Johnson said.

Youth was served in the Middle East as well. In Dubai, 20-year-old Rory McIlroy shot a four-under-par 68 to share the Omega Dubai Desert Classic lead with four others, including new father Jeev Milkha Singh and South Africa's Charl Schwartzel, who had back-to-back wins last month on the European Tour.

Karl MacGinty had the story for The Irish Independent and supplied this Rory story, which proves the young Northern Irishman knows his golf history:

McIlroy's knowledge of golf is also impressive. For example, he was able to give a quick-fire biographic note yesterday on each of the four Ryder Cup vice-captains chosen by U.S. skipper Corey Pavin for Celtic Manor.

"Well, Paul Goydos was beaten by Sergio Garcia at the Players in 2008," he said. "Tom Lehman won the Open at Lytham in '96; Jeff Sluman won a few times on the PGA Tour, along with the PGA in '88; and Davis Love III was PGA champion at Winged Foot in '97-- that rainbow came out over the course, which was touching, as his father had recently died." Wow

In Australia, Jim Herman shot a course-record 10-under-par 62 at the Moonah Links to lead the Nationwide Tour's Moonah Classic. Herman's claim to fame is that he once worked for Donald Trump in New Jersey and has played with Trump, Samuel L. Jackson and Tom Brady. The 32-year-old Herman is a native of Ohio, and had been the third alternate among the Americans on the tour's two-week swing to New Zealand and Australia.

Mark Hayes had the story in The Herald Sun, although he never explained just what Herman's job was in the Trump organization.

"Sometimes it just happens," [Herman] said modestly. "You just want to get out of your own way at that point, just keep hitting fairways and greens and just get the putter in your hands and see what happens."