In the Rough

The nominations have been made today by the Professional Golf Association the 2008 tour player of the year.

The five name list consists of Tiger Woods, Padraig Harrington, Vijay Singh, Camilo Villegas and Kenny Perry.

World number one Tiger Woods is on the list even though he hasn’t played for six months of 2008. In his six starts in 2008 Tiger won four events and but for his injury would of surely added to that comfortably. Tiger also won what turned out to be his final event of the 2008 season the US Open.

Ireland’s Padraig Harrington has had his best year yet with two major titles to his name. Padraig won the British Open and PGA Championship in 2008.

American Kenny Perry won three PGA tour titles in less than two months during 2008 and also helped the US to win the Ryder Cup at Valhalla with some impressive golf.

Fijian Vijay Singh who didn’t start to well in 2008 certainly made up for it during the year. Vijay won the Fed Ex Cup and also picked up $10 Million dollars prize fund for the privilege, not bad hey!

Camilo Villegas creeped into the nominations with two wins at the end of 2008. Villegas won two Fed Ex play-off events during the end of 2008.

Who will win???????? The results are expected mid December by the PGA.

The final 32 golf players to secure a European Tour card have been decided after the completion of the 108 hole Qualifying school.

Back on the tour are former Ryder Cup players Andrew Coltart and Joakin Haeggman after missing the tour last year. Winner of the qualifying school was Sweden’s Oskar Henningsson. Henningsson led for five out of the six rounds of golf and was a deserved winner after also coming through the three previous qualifying rounds before Q-school.

The full list of the 32 golf players with European Tour Cards for 2009 is -

Oskar Henningsson (Swe)

Wade Ormsby (Aus), Carlos Del Moral (Spa)

Danny Willett (Eng)

Chris Wood (Eng), Joakim Haeggman (Swe)

Eirik Tage Johansen (Nor)

Michael Hoey (NIrl)

Ake Nilsson (Swe), Bernd Wiesberger (Aut)

Gary Clark (Eng)

Chinnarat Phadungsil (Tha), Anthony Snobeck (Fra), Andrew Coltart (Sco)

Fabrizio Zanotti (Par), Chris Doak (Sco), Lorenzo Gagli (Ita), David Drysdale (Sco), Matthew Millar (Aus)

Michael Curtain (Aus), Inder Van Weerelt (Ned), Marco Ruiz (Par), Callum Macaulay (Sco)

John Mellor (Eng), Marc Cayeux (Zim), Henrik Nystrom (Swe), Stuart Manley (Wal), Branden Grace (Rsa)

Federico Colombo (Ita), Santiago Luna (Spa), Jonathan Caldwell (NIrl), Alfredo Garcia-Heredia (Spa)

Computer boffin Alan Deakins, 40 has decided to take fellow golfer Humphrey Leung Kwong-Wai to the Hong Kong High Court for 5.6 Million pounds. Mr Deakins who was employed by International Bank before the accident is taking the Chief Executive of the Microchip Company Solomon Systech to the court for loss of earnings and also for medical expenses.

The incident, which has caused all the controversy occurred on Christmas Eve 2006 at the Clearwater Bay Golf and Country Club. Mr Deakins was walking down the 13th fairway when a wayward shot from the 14th tee struck him on the forehead.

Mr Leung himself is denying the charges of negligence and will fight the battle in court with his lawyers.

Mr Deakins is very unlikely to win this court case, however a court case similar has been heard in the past.

A female caddie back in 1999 won £7,700 in damages when the gentleman who she was caddying for hit a shot that struck her in the mouth. This incident occurred at The Hong Kong Golf Club.

The body of a 45 year old man was found on a private country club in Mission, Texas on Saturday morning. Club officials reporting for work at 7am found the male body half submerged in a lake on one of the holes.

The male bodies bottom half was under water with his top half out of the water resting on some rocks. The man had a gunshot wound to his head and a mobile phone to his side. The death is being treated as suicide by Lt. Martin Garza who is leading the case from the Mission Police Department.

The club have refused to name the gentleman but have said he is a member at the golf club and a local resident.

Police officials are interviewing local neighbours to try and find out if anyone had seen anything suspicious.

After the start of the European Tour began in Singapore over the weekend the latest World Rankings have been released -

World Number One is still American Tiger Woods, who despite his injury is still comfortably holding on to his number one status from Spain’s Sergio Garcia. Currently third in golf world rankings is American left hander Phil Mickelson.

After two major wins this year Irelands Padraig Harrington is  ranked number four. Making up the top five is  Vijay Singh.

After winning the European Order Of Merit this year Sweden’s Robert Karlsson is sixth in the golf world rankings closely followed by Camilo Villegas who has a brilliant season both sides of the Atlantic. South African Ernie Els is still in the top ten at number eight with Ryder Cup hero Anthony Kim at number nine in the world rankings. Making up the top ten is Englands Lee Westwood.

You may have noticed the last couple weeks have been very quiet on www.intherough.co.uk, however I am back and I am going to be bringing you all the latest news stories from the world of golf again from new golf courses, golf players and tournament results.

The last 10 days I have been enjoying a holiday in Bulgaria, which yes i did fit a few games of golf in. This was my first visit to Bulgaria and I must admit it is a place that I will be visiting again. The country is certainly under development but is growing in popularity and I feel will become a very popular place for Britain’s moving abroad very soon as well as holidaymakers like myself.

I stayed in Varna, which is on the Black Sea coast for the majority of my stay in Bulgaria. I did though make an overnight trip to Sofia where I managed to fit in two rounds of golf at the St Sofia Golf Club and Spa.

The course itself was in very good condition and to my surprise was quite busy, for future reference booking in advance is recommended. The course itself is your standard 18 hole course where proof of handicap is required to play. The facilities include a Pro Shop, Clubhouse, Putting Green and Driving Range. The course itself is a par 72.

After completing my round I started to talk to a gentleman called Ravno, his English was brilliant and his local knowledge was fantastic, I also decided he was a very good golfer after it emerged he played off 6. Ravno was explaining Bulgaria to me and recommending areas to visit and places of interest.

During our conversation Ravno detailed to me that now was the perfect time to purchase property in Bulgaria and recommended to me plenty of Property For Sale in Bulgaria. Ravno stated that for investment terms I should look at property in Varna and Burgas (these are both resorts of the Black Sea Coast). Personally I would recommend Varna to anybody but maybe you would be best visiting in 12 Month’s time when most of the building work is completed.

A South Korean golfer known only as Jung has been fined by the South Korean Supreme High Court £911 for a shot, which left his caddy in hospital for over seven weeks.

The identity of the player is still unknown and the name issued by the Supreme High Court as a cover-up. What we do know though is what happened in this freak golf accident.

Two years ago at the Gunsan Province a Professional golfer (Jung) was playing a shot on the third hole and during his back swing lost his footing, which ended up with him hitting the ball the opposite way and hitting his caddie eight metres behind him in the stomach.

The Injury to the caddie left him with 7 weeks hospital treatment needed.

The Supreme High Court fined Jung £911 as they feel it was a violation of his duty of due care to prevent injury to others while playing sport.

The European Tour has unveiled today the 53 Events for the 2009 European Golf Tour. The Tour dubbed “the road to Dubai” because the final event is a very lucrative Dubai World Championship with a prize fund of £11.3 million / $20 million. The Dubai World Championship is to be held at the Jumeirah in November 2009.

The 2009 European tour starts in November in Shanghai with the HSBC Championship and UBS Hong Kong Open. Both of these events will also be played again at the end of the 2009 season.

The European Tour has also announced that from 2009 players will have to take part in 12 events not the current 10 to maintain their tours cards.

The new tour certainly gives a more global feel to it with a total of 26 events ranging from Wales/Scotland to Shanghai/Dubai and Hong Kong. The more lucrative events, which are now on The European Tour calendar are aimed at getting big name American players playing more events and moving away from the highly paid USPGA Tour.

South African Ernie Els has come out in support for the having golf an Olympic sport in 2016.

For the 2012 Olympics in London golf unfortunately missed out and will not feature. However for the 2016 Olympics Golf is competing against baseball, roller sports, karate, softball, squash and rugby sevens for two places.

Golf previously was at the Olympics in 1904 where only 2 Canadians and over 70 Americans competed for the Olympic Golf Gold Medal.

By October in 2009 Golf will know whether it has gained Olympic status as the International Olympic Commitee meet in Denamark in October 2009.

With Golf fast becoming one of the biggest sports in the World it is time to have a place for the golf world to post there thoughts.

The success of the recent golf in the U.S has further emphasised Golf as a massive sport.

Personally I am a 22 handicapper golfer so nothing spectacular but once you pick up a club you have the golf bug. My best round playing golf was a 88 and worst I simply can’t remember but I know it was high.

Look forward to hearing your golfing stories, favourite players, recommendations on clubs, courses, holidays and anything golf related.