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?

Pick 'em
With the Ryder Cup team selection only a few weeks away we're getting down to crunch time. The Euros look stronger than ever, but U.S. captain Corey Pavin is on the hot seat to make sure every one of his picks counts. As the points leaders start to sort themselves out, Bleacher Report's Kathy Bissell gives us the rundown on who's in, who's out and who's on the fence.

Right now the top eight, in order, are Phil Mickelson, Steve Stricker, Jim Furyk, Anthony Kim, Lucas Glover, Dustin Johnson, Matt Kuchar and Tiger Woods. A formidable group. If there’s any slippage by Woods or Kuchar, the next four on the list are Hunter Mahan, Jeff Overton, Ricky Barnes and Ben Crane.

Who would you pick of the next eight or so players?...

Hunter Mahan has won on the PGA Tour and has Ryder Cup experience. He went 2-0-3 in 2009 for 3 ½ points, the most of any US player. You can bet he gets picked if he doesn’t rise in the points...

Faced with a team of five lock veterans with the probable lock of Woods, Pavin definitely has three mystery picks if Woods doesn’t make it on points and four if he does. There’s no way he leaves Woods off the team unless Woods asks to be left off. As Paul Azinger said, you always want the best player in the world on your team.

For certain, Stewart Cink gets a nod, and so does Hunter Mahan. Pavin then has two remaining choices, assuming Woods makes it on points...

Does he dare go with untested Ben Crane or Jeff Overton? With his legacy riding on it, Pavin will have to know something that the rest of us don’t. In the end, it may come down to personal relationships. Who does Pavin like and believe in his heart can go the distance.

Who would I pick today: Stewart Cink, Hunter Mahan, Rickie Fowler, and I might go farther down the list to Ryan Moore who won everything in the world at match play as an amateur.

Bissell has some great insight and reasons out a lot of possible scenarios. As for her suggested captain's picks, I agree that Cink and Mahan are no-brainers, both in terms talent and team-building. Fowler's a bit of a wild card, but I think he's a great fit not just because he's one of the 10 best American players, but because he will be for the foreseeable future--and as we've seen with Sergio Garcia, starting kids in the Ryder Cup as young as possible can create longtime stalwarts for your team (no comment on what that means for actual career success).

As for the last spot, I think Moore's a decent choice (as would be Ricky Barnes for the same reasons), but I'd rather see Boo Weekley out there. This team's just too professional, too stodgy. As the 2004 Red Sox found out, it never hurts to have a character guy in the clubhouse, and there's no question that Boo Weekley is that kind of guy.

Is there a player of the year?
Speaking of tough choices, at the end of the season somebody is going to have his hands around the Jack Nicklaus Award. With Tiger not at his best, and a slew of top players hurt and/or under-preforming, it seems like the Tour is in an era of unparalleled parity, which begs the question: who's the player of the year? Don't worry, Fanhouse's Mick Elliott doesn't know either.

The PGA Tour season is steaming hard toward the home stretch and there's something noticeably missing. Namely, a player of the year.

With the majors down to only next month's PGA Championship, the 2010 season is looking very much like an interesting story with no ending.

Phil Mickelson won the Masters and has done little else.

Relatively unknown Graeme McDowell won the U.S. Open and Louis Oosthuizen was an even bigger surprise in the British, but what else have they done?

Ernie Els, Jim Furyk, Justin Rose and Steve Stricker are the season's only multiple winners, all with two titles -- but none of them majors.

Tiger Woods may be Player of the Year, but he hasn't done diddly on a golf course.

So what happens if they give an award and nobody deserves it?

Eventually, someone will break away from the pack, whether it's at Whistling Straits or in the playoffs, but the lack of even a clear favorite at this point in the year makes me wonder if this is the most (for lack of a better term) "boring" PGA Tour season in recent memory. I have nothing against the Graeme McDowells and Louis Oosthuizens of the world getting their share of wins (even major wins), but I'd like them to do it in more dramatic fashion than they've had to this year. Heck, Justin Rose may even be my pick at the moment (who would have said that at the beginning of the year), although it's hard to get excited about a guy who didn't even qualify for the U.S. Open. Regardless, I think Elliott sums it up perfectly:

Please, somebody do something.

Future's Tour blows it, won't blow it again
Under-reported story out of the Duramed Futures Tour this weekend, where rookie Sarah Brown became the first true victim of the new USGA groove change. She was pulled off the course mid-round and DQ'd after a rules official mistakenly thought her wedge did not conform. At the very least, the Tour is taking the matter seriously as Golfweek's James Achenbach reports.

Had Brown been allowed to finish her round, officials would have had more than two hours while she played to make a definitive ruling.

Brown has made four cuts in eight events this season and earned $2,921 to rank 106th.

“From a procedural perspective, we have to make sure our rules officials do not make a hasty decision,’’ Calderon said. “We need to stay in contact with LPGA rules officials or the USGA. This is something I would have liked to have happened, but it didn’t. We regret the mistake. The rules official in this case did not pursue other options available to him. It is too bad he didn’t step back and determine whether he had all the information to make that decision.

“Most of the time, rulings are black and white. These lists of conforming and nonconforming clubs are more complex. This is truly new territory.”

Dick Rugge, the USGA’s senior technical director, said then in explaining the action: “You always have to get all the facts.”

In Brown’s case, a groove testing apparatus was on site but was never used.

“I asked him (Linyard) what he would do if he was wrong,” said Keith Brown, who was caddying for his daughter. “What if he disqualified Sarah and later found out he was wrong? How would he rectify that? He refused to answer. He said: ‘The club is illegal. Sarah is disqualified.’ That was it. It was like giving someone the death penalty on hearsay.”

Linyard and Wergin are fulltime rules officials for the Duramed Futures Tour, which has been the developmental tour for the LPGA since 1999. Wergin carries the title of head rules official. 

“Our rules officials are dedicated to their jobs,” Calderon said. “Because the equipment rules are so complex, we had the USGA come to the tour and spend several days with our rules officials. We also have an LPGA rules official who oversees the Duramed Futures Tour rules officials.”

Obviously, mistakes happen, and the biggest mistake here was the rules official pulling Brown off the course rather than simply letting her finish out her round (you can always DQ someone...you can't un-DQ them). On the whole I'm impressed with how seriously the Futures Tour is taking the situation--after all, this is a rookie who's made less than $3,000 playing pro golf, so it would have been really easy to sweep this under the rug and just say "whoops, it won't happen again," but Calderon and Co. seem to realize that the official screwed up big time.

However, I'm less than impressed with the Tour's excuse that the rules are too "complex." Not only do the officials have lists telling them which clubs are conforming (Brown's wedge was on the list--the official somehow misread his), and equipment to test whether or not they are conforming (the official declined to use the one on hand), but something tells me if you took two minutes to call over the local Ping rep, he or she would have been happy to lend a hand. I don't expect to see this sort of mistake creep onto the PGA or LPGA Tours (where everyone is cautious to a fault), but it definitely doesn't instill a whole lot of confidence in the judgment of these rules officials. The real question? Will Brown be getting a check to make up for her lost weekend?

Tiger Woods took a verbal shot from the gallery on Friday at Pebble Beach, but on Sunday the insult came from above.

Similar to the planes that flew over Augusta National in April with sarcastic messages for Woods, a plane flew over Pebble Beach Golf Links  on Sunday with the banner: "Tiger: Are You My Daddy?" Ryan Ballenenge of the Waggle Room blog saw the plane as Woods played the third hole, where he had hit a terrible drive to the left on the downhill par 4.

As Woods was hitting his recovery out of deep grass with a very audible grunt, a plane passed over the third hole with a message for Tiger. It asked, "Tiger: Are You My Daddy?"

Woods shot 75 on Sunday to finish T4 at the U.S. Open, and he did not acknowledge the plane in his post-round comments. However, Friday's heckler and Sunday's plane were exceptions. The Pebble galleries were very supportive of Woods throughout all four of his rounds.

Ryan Moore calls USGA's course setup "torture"

With his slacker style and skateboard shoes, Ryan Moore looks like he thinks poa annua is a particularly strong strain of marijuana, but he had some cutting comments for the USGA after finishing T33 at the 2010 U.S. Open, according to The Boston Globe's Michael Whitmer. 

“I just like a golf course that’s set up in a way that rewards good golf shots. I don’t understand why you’d have a tournament that doesn’t reward good golf shots,’’ Moore said. “If you can’t even hit a shot that can stay on the green, where’s the skill involved?

“Half the greens are green, the other half are brown, so honestly it’s a matter of which patch you land it on. You can get a 25-foot bounce or your ball might bounce 5 feet and then spin back because it landed in a soft patch. That’s luck as far as I’m concerned, it has nothing to do with skill or landing it in the right spot.’’

Moore wasn't alone in his criticism. Phil Mickelson, who praised the USGA's course setup all week, was more circumspect in his post-round comments Sunday, according to James Raia of The Monterey Country Herald.

Mickelson was at a loss to explain the final round's high scores.

"I'm not really sure," said Mickelson, whose second-round 66 equaled the tournament's low round. "I kind of know, but I would rather not get into it. It just doesn't sound good. I mean, it was just tough. It was a tough day on the golf course."

NBC needed Vincent Price, not Johnny Miller, for Dustin Johnson horror show

USA Today's Michael McCarthy gives credit to NBC for not looking away during Dustin Johnson's painful front-nine breakdown on Sunday. (Personally, I covered my eyes more times than I did during Saw 6.)

NBC's lead analyst Johnny Miller was merciless, but spot-on, as usual. He called it a "colossal collapse" by Johnson, who'd captured the last two PGA Tour events at Pebble Beach. "I don't even think his brain is working at the moment. He's just shell-shocked," said Miller as the long-hitting Johnson sprayed balls into the Pacific Ocean, lost one shot in the woods and nearly whiffed on another.

Stray Shots

Some things we noticed while camped out at Red's Donuts in Monterey waiting for Phil Mickelson to show up.

The Onion wins headline of the tournament (again) with, Phil Mickelson Reluctantly Uses Golf Club Kids Made for Father's Day Present.

The BBC talked to Graeme McDowell's family and friends who watched his win from the clubhouse at Northern Ireland golf club.

Robert R. Hoopes Jr. of The Huffington Post sees the future of journalism at the U.S. Open media center as reporters tweeted, videoed, photographed and blogged their way through all four rounds. Golf writers have been called a lot of things, but that's a new one.

Yes, European Ryder Cup captain Colin Montgomerie watched Graeme McDowell's win and he was impressed. (Via SportingLife.com)

Tweet of the Week. The award goes to The Kansas City Star's Jason Whitlock for this 140-character gem: What was worse, Game 7 of NBA Finals or Final Round of US Open? If David Stern were commish of PGA Tour, Tiger would b named MVP of US Open.

Photo Credit: Jeff Gross/Getty Images

Conventional wisdom has it that experience trumps youth when it comes time to make up a Ryder Cup roster, but it may be time to rethink that old chestnut given recent Cup mismatches and the current streak of solid play by American 20-somethings

Ryan Moore, 25, did most everything right in losing a three-hole playoff to Adam Scott at the EDS Byron Nelson on Sunday. At 23rd on the Ryder Cup points list, Moore still has a way to go to make the team on points (top eight) or as one of captain Paul Azinger's wildcard picks, but he's got plenty of time to keep rising up the ranks. What's more, a handful of his contemporaries are also knocking on the door.

Sean O'Hair, 25, won the PODS Championship last month and is at 10th on the points list.

J.B. Holmes, who turned 26 last weekend, won the FBR Open and nearly beat Tiger Woods at the WGC-Accenture and has risen to 13th. (A Kentuckian, he's the most likely to get a captain's pick for Valhalla.)

Brandt Snedeker (above), 27, fought bravely at the Masters and is at 9th. D.J. Trahan, also 27, won the Hope and is at 14th. Hunter Mahan, 25, played well in last fall's Presidents Cup and is at 15th. Johnson Wagner, 28, nabbed his first Tour win in Houston and is at 18th.

Not long ago we were decrying the paucity of good young American golfers. There were no players in their 20s on the 2006 squad, and only one, Woods, made the 2004 lineup (with, ahem, mid-century clubbers Fred Funk and Jay Haas). Given that both of those outfits lost by the same score, 18 1/2 to 9 1/2, Azinger should take comfort in selecting from the current crop of untested, untamed youth. He can't do much worse.

(Photo: Harry How/Getty Images)

A compelling subplot of yesterday’s sudden-death playoff between Adam Scott (he of Burberry-styled perfection) and Ryan Moore (he of guerilla-militant chic) was the dichotomy of the players’ swings. Scott’s is a thing of beauty—pure, powerful, straight off the factory line. Moore’s is a thing of, well, intrigue—upright, a little jerky, the kind of move you might find at your muni, only with better results.

God bless Moore for that. He gives us all hope. I met Moore early in 2006, his rookie season, and he explained his homespun swing like this:

“I’ve talked to swing coaches, but I don’t know if working with one is something I ever want to do. I know how to fix my swing for the most part, even in the middle of a round. That’s why I think it can be so good. I can think of multiple tournaments in the last few years where in the first four or five holes, my swing just hasn’t felt right. If I had gone to an instructor and been put into all these positions and shown this or that, I don’t know if I would’ve known how to fix it after five holes.”

Moore’s take on putting was even more refreshing:

“I rarely ever crouch down and read a putt. I usually stand up and read it because I can make putts all day long on the putting green by just looking at it and hitting it. It’s just kind of my theory. I’d say 90 percent of people make more putts on the putting green than they do on the golf course. On the course, they’re out there reading it from six different directions and crouching down, but, me, I just look at it and knock it in.”

Camilo, you listening?

(Photo: Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)