MONTREAL -- Is a blowout beautiful?

With the Presidents Cup matches on the cusp of becoming a rout after Saturday's American whitewash in morning alternate-shot competition, U.S. captain Jack Nicklaus sees the red paint on the scoreboard as nothing less than beautiful.

Does any part of him want the matches to be a little more dramatic, perhaps, just for the sake of setting up a more compelling finish?

"Uh-uh," he said, without hesitating. "What did you expect me to say? I know what you are saying, but why would you ever want to say to one of your guys, 'I hope you lose so it's close.'

"I want a good match, but I want them to win every match that they can."

With a 12-to-5 lead, if the U.S. sweeps the five available points in Saturday's afternoon best-ball play, the team would be within a half-point of clinching heading into the 12 singles matches Sunday.

No stopping Woody

It's Woody's World, and at the moment, we're all just along for the increasingly entertaining ride.

Woody Austin and teammate Phil Mickelson won their morning match Saturday by matching the biggest rout of the week, 5-and-4, meaning Austin still hasn't lost in his matches.

"Has he been terrific?" Nicklaus gushed. "Here's a guy who's 43 years old, who didn't really play professionally until he was 30. He's so excited and never thought he'd be at something like this."

Given Austin's age and his rookie status, Nicklaus considered benching him during one of Saturday's two sessions, but Austin has been such a boost to the morale, he sent him out twice.

"Woody would be the logical guy to sit, but I can't do it," Nicklaus said.

Instead, Nicklaus sat Scott Verplank and Zach Johnson, who were a combined 5-1. Austin is 1-0-2, and in the afternoon session was paired for the third time with Mickelson.

Austin, a former bank teller who finished second at the PGA Championship last month, rather famously fell into a lake during his match on Friday, climbed out and made three crucial birdies on the closing holes to earn an important half-point to minimize an International charge.

"I've got a great partner here in aquaman, he's our team leader and it's been a lotta fun playing with him," Mickelson said after the morning session.

Said teammate Tiger Woods: "I tell you what, he birdied the last three holes (Friday) and that showed a lot of guts. But we razzed him pretty hard in the team room. That's a scene that I don't think any of us will ever forget."

Nicklaus, who has enjoyed the Austin storyline more than anyone, added yet another nickname to the list that already included Jacques Cousteau, Aquaman and Snorkel -- "Flipper."

Mahan's women 'troubles'

U.S. rookie Hunter Mahan is the lone bachelor on the American team, so the wives of other players helped hooked him up with female companionship, so to speak. They found a date for Mahan named Monique and presented her to the young American standout early in the week.

Before anybody gets carried away, Monique is a small doll. Not the inflatable kind, either. Saturday morning, as the players and wives were loading onto the American team bus for the ride to the course, Nicklaus said his wife noticed that Mahan's date was nowhere to be seen.

"Hunter, where's Monique?" Barbara Nicklaus asked, playfully.

"We had a fight last night," Mahan cracked.

MONTREAL -- You can't make this stuff up.

Here's a collection of odds and ends, quotes and anecdotes, wisecracks and backslaps, from the first day of play at the Presidents Cup matches staged before roughly 35,000 giddy Canucks on Thursday at Royal Montreal Golf Club.

• Are you a big believer in omens? Well, before the first U.S. player had left the tee box in the first match of the day, a black cat of sorts appeared. The strap on the bag of Hunter Mahan's bag snapped off and his clubs tumbled noisily onto the turf.

"That didn't look too good, did it?" Mahan said.

Yet it was hardly a harbinger of things to come, was it? The U.S. team stormed out to a fast start and won 5 1/2 of the six available points on Day One.

• Hey, this scoreboard looks familiar, right?

It's seemingly been eons since the Americans enjoyed a lopsided result in international cup competition, a fact that Tiger Woods underscored only too well.

"We've seen this at the last two Ryder Cups," he deadpanned. "Oh. For the Europeans."

• Charles Howell was picked to play alongside Woods on the first day, and even though Woods represents the enemy side this week, he was warmly embraced by the Canadians on hand, who made plenty of noise whenever he was near. As for the other Americans, not so much.

"Hell, by the 16th hole, I thought my name was Tiger," Howell said.

• No player mounted a better rally than Woody Austin, a cup rookie who was a mess on the front nine and a veritable rock on the back, rolling in a series of big putts to earn a tie in his match alongside partner Phil Mickelson.

"As tough as it is, as disappointing as it can be, playing golf for yourself, it makes it that much harder when you play poorly for your partner, not to mention the 10 other guys on your team," Austin said.

• For Mike Weir, whose pairing alongside Vijay Singh netted the Internationals their lone mild success story of the day, a halved-point result against Austin and Mickelson, the day was a wild ride for more than just the golf itself.

A Canadian icon, Weir was all but carried around the course by waves of cheering Canadians.

"I hope the other guys from other countries on my team get a chance to experience something like this someday," Weir said. "It's very special. The only adjective I can think of is special."

You think his English is limited? All day, fans were yelling encouragement at Weir in French, which begged the question of how much of that particular tongue he might actually understand.

"Virtually none of it," his wife, Bricia, said.

• The strangest crash of the day took place when Stuart Appleby's approach shot on the 18th sailed into some thick bushes well left of the green, the result of a dollop of mud on his ball. After a lengthy consultation with USGA rules official Mike Davis, partner Retief Goosen took an unplayable-lie penalty and elected to move roughly 50 yards away into an area dotted with corporate tents and beer-swilling fans to take his drop.

When Goosen hit his wedge shot, all he could see was the grandstand behind the green, not the flag or putting surface itself. The International team lost the hole and the match, 2 up.

"We couldn't see a thing," Goosen's longtime caddie, Colin Byrne said. "We were so far over there, a guy asked to see my ticket."

• The insult of the day was flung at Mickelson by a fan who undoubtedly had imbibed just a bit of the local golden nectar. After Mickelson missed a putt on the front nine, somebody bellowed of Mickelson's portly figure, "That's OK, Phil, you've still got the best rack of any player out here." In all, the fans were spectacularly sporting, however.

• It just ain't fair.

Austin was playing so poorly on the front nine that he five times deposited balls into bunkers, prompting Mickelson to work some major magic just to stay alive in the match. Worse, Mickelson's caddie, Jim Mackay, had to do all the cleanup work, raking the bunkers because of Austin's errant play.

"I'll have to call up my union rep," Mackay cracked.

• The PGA Tour, which runs the event, was forced to delay the tee times because of rain, but unquestionably whiffed when it failed to allow players to lift and clean the ball. This week's event is a glorified exhibition, and Thursday featured a funky alternate-shot format at that, so why not let the guys enjoy optimal conditions?

What reputation are we protecting here? It's goofy golf, really.

At least two balls were affected by mud that was picked up in the fairway, including an important approach shot on the 18th by Appleby that sailed sideways into some bushes and cost his team a chance at salvaging a tie in the match.

Also, Weir hit a curving shot on the third hole that sailed over the green and cost his team the hole. Weir yelped "mudball" aloud as soon as the shot left the club.

"The fairways were in pretty good shape, considering," Weir said. "But I don't see what harm would have been done [by allowing the lift-and-clean provision]."

MONTREAL -- George O'Grady on Wednesday referred to the folks at the powerful PGA Tour as his "cousins," which seems an apt comparison. If he's related to the Rockefeller clan, anyway.

O'Grady, the director of the European Tour, is in Montreal this week to take part in meetings with the increasingly active World Golf Foundation, whose members include the head honchos from the sport's most influential governing bodies. Including, of course, the PGA Tour.

The foundation last week announced its intention to present a unified global front on drug testing, though whether the programs will be entirely in sync is open to question. Frankly, the U.S. tour has pockets that are several times deeper than any other worldwide circuit.

O'Grady estimated that drug tests will cost $1,000 per player, which makes the possibility of testing an entire European Tour field all but impossible. The PGA Tour will have that luxury, conversely, if it elects to head in that direction. Many of the particulars on testing and penalties are still in flux and financials will doubtlessly play a huge role in how much urinalysis is done on the various worldwide circuits.

"So it's not so simple as pissing into a pot and moving on," O'Grady said. "We cannot write off a million pounds. We don't have that kind of money."

O'Grady's honesty, amid a sea of blue-blazer types from the PGA Tour, USGA and Augusta National among others, is refreshing. He estimated that he earns a 10th of what PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem draws. He was floored by the spectacle and breadth of the Presidents Cup, run by the PGA Tour, which served to reinforce how wide the chasm remains that separates the Euro Tour and its fat-walleted U.S. counterpart.

The Presidents Cup is an exhibition, a nice novelty act late in the year where money is a secondary issue. In Europe, the Ryder is a financial bellwether that pays the bills.

In frank terms, he said the Euro Tour would go down the tubes without its famous team affair, which his tour runs. His office is already considering sites and accepting bids for the 2018 Ryder Cup site, in fact.

"The Ryder Cup is absolutely vital to the health of the European Tour," he said. "It is crucial."

That said, O'Grady was asked if there was a danger of the Ryder matches becoming less relevant if the American side continues to lose by record margins, as has been the case the past two years. American sports fans, with college football and the NFL already geared up, will quickly flip the channel rather than watch the red, white and blue take another bloodbath.

"I think that's a big 'if,' because these things tend to run in cycles," he said. "But I think the best way to keep them at the table is to beat them. I think just the run of the ball has been in our favor lately. Last time, it was almost like there was an Irish god up there affecting where the ball rolled."

While we're being honest, O'Grady said he has a rooting interest this week even though, on the surface, he shouldn't.

"I'm biased," he said. "You want the U.S. team to win because you always want to play the winners (at the Ryder)."

Prodded by a reporter, O'Grady also unleashed a half-serious zinger with regard to the drug testing program, which is being initiated as much to protect the sport's reputation as it is to catch what's assumed to be a tiny handful of cheaters, if any.

Just test Tiger Woods and be done with it.

"From what I understand, he would be the first in line to volunteer for testing," O'Grady said. "If Tiger Woods' test comes back negative, what does it matter what the rest of them are on?

Can you imagine the notoriously cautious and professionally stiff Finchem uttering any of the above? Didn't think so.

MONTREAL -- Sometimes, it's just plain best to let the players themselves relate the anecdotes and punchlines without getting in the way.

Such was the case Tuesday at Royal Montreal Golf Club, when a handful of the American players were asked their feeling about playing for captain Jack Nicklaus, the greatest player in the history of the sport.

For the sake of maintaining the timing and context of the storyline, here is the complete text of what was said, because I would only screw it up otherwise.

Six U.S. players were asked whether the sneaky-sarcastic Nicklaus had ever given them the needle, and five sets of eyes turned immediately to Charles Howell, who was asked to provide an example of the Golden Bear's occasionally pointed tongue.

So here goes.

Charles Howell: "We're up in a player meeting in Boston, and I was at a table with David Toms, Zach Johnson, Hunter Mahan ... I think that was all of them. So he (Nicklaus) went around, and said, 'Zach, great job on winning the Masters, green jacket, that's fantastic, that's awesome.'

"'David, another solid season, you are a steady, steady player.'

"'Hunter, you've really come along here lately, this is fantastic, young guy.'

"'Charles -- you need a lesson.'"

Howell, after a brilliant start early, faded badly in the summer, but has perked up some lately. He gamely fought back after Nicklaus verbally floored him.

Interjected David Toms: "You had a great comeback, though. You said, 'I'll be on the tee at seven in the morning.'"

Howell: "Yeah, I said, 'My pro-am time is 7:00 a.m. tomorrow.' He didn't show up."

Players said the three-time Presidents Cup captain can bust chops whenever he feels in the mood, which is surely the byproduct of having four golfing sons in the Nicklaus house.

"He was as hard on himself as he was on anyone else, so you take it all in stride," Jim Furyk said. "He's good at poking fun at people. If none of us had ever played for him or never been around him, we would never know that or be able to share those thoughts. It's kind of cool."

"All the time, he reminds us to have fun," Toms said. "He says it multiple times: "'Have fun; but it's a lot more fun when you win.'"

Dresses would be a nice touch, too

As is often the case, the Americans have been peppered this week with queries about their supposed lack of team unity. One media member noted that the U.S. team showed great camaraderie two weeks ago in their victory at the Solheim Cup, the women's version of the Ryder Cup, which generated a smirk or two.

Tiger Woods, in rare comedic form for him, unloaded a tongue-in-cheek aside regarding the attire of the U.S. team at the women's event.

"I think this year we are going to put on face paint and have ribbons in our hair," Woods deadpanned. "It will be a little hard for some of us who are balding."

It was one of the most blunt self-assessments uttered in recent PGA Tour annals. At midsummer, facing yet another opportunity to win his first tournament in what must have seemed like eons, Steve Stricker knew what he had to do.

The popular Wisconsin native had booted several opportunities early in the year and admitted he somehow needed to "get tougher inside."

The throat constriction stopped four weeks ago at The Barclays, when Stricker birdied four of the last five holes to win his first stroke-play event in 11 years. It continued a run of brilliant play from the 40-year-old, who finished second in the FedEx Cup points race last weekend in Atlanta and was credited with a cool $3 million in retirement bonus money.

Most fun of all, Stricker is still failing mightily at keeping his emotions under wraps on golf's other important stages. The Big Cheese was guest of honor at a scholarship fundraiser in Franklin, Wis., on Tuesday night and was given a series of rousing ovations, all of which prompted the now-predictable Stricker reaction.

Just like when he won at The Barclays, he got so choked up, he could hardly utter a word. With a fundraiser crowd of approximately 300 on hand, Stricker was introduced by Milwaukee golf writer Gary D'Amato, who asked the guests to show their appreciation for Stricker's stirring comeback over the past two years.

That was the first standing ovation and Stricker's first esophageal shutdown. He got another standing O when D'Amato thanked him for being such a fine ambassador for Wisconsin and a third when he finally took the microphone to make a few remarks. At this rate, judging by the puddles of happy tears that Stricker is leaving in his wake, Minnesota will soon have competition as the so-called land of a thousand lakes.

True anecdote: After Stricker finished playing at the Tour Championship last Sunday, a couple of writers asked him about his career-best run this season after losing his card two years ago, figuring he'd probably get choked up about it all over again. Wrong. But they did make his caddie weep. It's been that type of emotional comeback for the Stricker team, folks.

Stricker, who quite possibly could be paired with Tiger Woods next week at the Presidents Cup matches in Montreal, earlier played a round at former Greater Milwaukee Open tournament site Tuckaway Country Club and shot 63.

Joe Stippich, a club member and a low-handicap player of local repute, played alongside Stricker and shot 74. He told D'Amato: "I just got beat by 11 strokes on my own course. I can't believe someone is walking on this planet who is a better player than Steve."

Golfers aside, there are few better people.

Former LPGA standout Dottie Pepper was hired as a broadcaster at both NBC and the Golf Channel because of her inherent ability, as the saying goes, to call a spade a spade.

She dug a nice hole for herself at the Solheim Cup last week when, thinking she was off the air as the U.S. team was imploding on the second day of play, Pepper characterized the team as "choking freaking dogs."

The Golf Channel broadcast of the event, the women's version of the Ryder Cup, was headed toward a commercial break when Pepper unleashed the brutally honest -- and not completely inaccurate -- assessment of the shaky American performance at the time.

Though she created perhaps the biggest headlines of the week with the comments, she will not face a suspension, the network said.

"Dottie's comments were not intended for general consumption, but for her colleagues in the booth," Golf Channel VP Don McGuire said. "We definitely let her down technically in allowing that feed to go out over our air.

"No one knows more and feels more passionately about the Solheim Cup than Dottie. Because of the competitor she is, that's how Dottie felt. Her job is to report for the Golf Channel and I will support what she has to say from her expert position -- whether it is on the air intentionally or accidentally.

"A technical error was made -- not by Dottie Pepper."

The strongest reaction to date was made by the European captain, Helen Alfredsson, of all people. Pepper is a former Solheim Cupper, Alfie pointed out.

"I think that is totally inappropriate no matter what," Alfredsson said. "We are all together in this. At the end of the day, it's all for women's golf, and if anybody should know how tough things are, you know.

"I just don't see the point, why you even have those thoughts in your head. You go out there and try your best, and it's always easy to sit and say that when you're not right in it."

We're not suggesting that Pepper should have been benched, either. Just blogging out loud here, but what do you suppose the public reaction would have been if a male broadcaster had made the same statement, characterizing players as mutts?

In our considerable experience, female players are more sensitive to criticism than the thick-skinned males. Which is perhaps why, when Tiger Woods heard about what Pepper said, he offered this analysis.

"I don't think she's going to get a lot of interviews from the players," he said, smirking.

ATLANTA -- Herein lies the lesson, perhaps.

Never play cat-and-mouse with a guy named Tiger.

Tiger Woods claimed the Tour Championship in record fashion on Sunday, setting a tournament record at 23 under and winning by eight whopping shots, which isn't to say that he didn't create a few ripples of anxiety along the way.

Reigning Masters champion Zach Johnson had reeled off three consecutive birdies at East Lake Golf Club on Sunday to close within three strokes of Woods as they both played the par-5 ninth hole, which measures 606 yards. Johnson, mind you, had started the day six strokes back after firing a course-record 60 in the third round, the lowest score on tour all year.

Johnson was lining up a 30-foot birdie attempt when Woods unleashed a mammoth 5-wood shot from the left rough, trying to lay up in front of the green, he said. Moments before, his tee shot had caromed off two fans -- hitting one in the leg and another in the foot -- and come to rest on a clump of grass in the light rough.

Woods' second shot took off into orbit and sailed onto the front apron of the green from 286 yards, giving Johnson and playing partner Sergio Garcia a bit of a start. Johnson's caddie, Damon Green, turned and waved at Woods after his ball rolled past them and off the back of the green.

Johnson backed off, then promptly three-jacked the green for a bogey, effectively ending his chances of catching Woods. To his credit, Woods hustled up to the green as the twosome finished putting and yelled an apology.

"Hey, guys, I'm sorry, I was trying to hit it over here or lay up," he yelled to the group, motioning toward the greenside bunker.

After Woods chipped the ball to five feet and made a birdie, he was four shots clear of Calcavecchia and five ahead of Johnson.

Afterward, Woods explained that he never intended the ball to reach the green. After all, a 5-wood doesn't usually travel 300 yards. Johnson said the shot didn't bother him in the least, and made a joke about it afterward.

"Maybe it was a sign for us to pick up the pace, I don't know," said Johnson, who tied Mark Calcavecchia for second. "It had nothing to do with (the three-putt), in my opinion." Woods fell on his sword afterward and apologized publicly, too.

"I felt bad because those guys were playing and they were focused on what they were trying to do," Woods said. "It's my responsibility not to interfere with what they were doing with a shot like that."

ATLANTA -- Wondering about the exact content of the good-natured text-message that Tiger Woods typed out to pal Mark Calcavecchia moments after both had finished the third round of the Tour Championship atop the leaderboard?

Ditto, us. While we don't know the content, we do know the color. Which might mean we are all better off not knowing.

Moments before the duo teed off for the final round on Sunday at East Lake Golf Club, Calcavecchia confirmed that he had received the dispatch from the cell phone of his longtime pal, which whom he is paired today. The two share, shall we say, an earthy sense of humor.

As Calc walked to the putting green moments before he teed off at 12:50 a.m., he laughed and described the flavor of Woods' message thusly: "Only a couple of foul words."

ATLANTA -- Is there such a thing as a cheap 59?

Odd as it sounds, it was a point of serious conversation after the third round Saturday night, when Zach Johnson came within a shot of the magical number that only thrice before has been fired in PGA Tour competition.

Pointedly, the greens this week at venerable East Lake Golf Club are in such dicey shape, pins have mostly been placed away from the sun-scorched edges, in accessible positions. They're soft and sloppy in spots, and Tiger Woods said they might be the slowest greens he has ever seen at a tour event.

Players have been fearlessly attacking flags all week, which has already produced Johnson's course-record 60, a course-record-tying 62 from Tim Clark that stood for 48 hours and a front-nine 28 from Woods, the best nine-hole score of his career. That said, while the course has been more vulnerable than ever, making that type of score on such awful putting surfaces counts for something, too.

"Even if you play your local muni at home, you shoot 59, you've had to play well," Woods said. "You can't go out there and fake a score that low. Let's say you play at a golf course where you can drive the green on two or three par 4s and all the par 5s are reachable, basically you can fake a 5- or 6-under-par round.

"But 59 is 59. It's an impressive number."

• If Woods holds on to win for the 61st time Sunday, he'll finish the season with a career-best $10,867,052, which is a paltry $38,114 shy of the tour record set by Vijay Singh in 2004. However, consider their at-bat totals. Singh played 29 times in 2004 and Woods has made 16 starts this year. If final East Lake money had been handed out after the third round, Woods would have finished his year with about twice the total of No. 2 wage earner, Phil Mickelson ($5.8 million).

ATLANTA -- Bobby Jones is buried a couple of miles away from the grounds at East Lake Golf Club, just across the Fulton County line.

Thus, all that grumbling and rumbling heard in the distance the past couple of days wasn't just thunder from the series of storms that pelted the area. It was probably Jones spinning in his grave, like he was on a lathe.

The greatest amateur in the game's history called East Lake his home course, and the ungentlemantly professionals in town this week for the Tour Championship have treated his old haunts like a municipal goat ranch.

Largely due to the massive issues surrounding the club's sun-damaged greens, the last time this part of Atlanta was torched to this degree, General Sherman was in town. Through 36 holes, 14 of the 18 holes have yielded average scores of par or better. Midway leader Tiger Woods, already 13 under, has already birdied every hole on the front nine at least once.

The tournament scoring record is 17 under and Woods is almost there with two rounds to play. In simple terms, here's why the scoring has been absurdly low on a storied course that deserves better:

• The greens, fried to a crisp by record drought this summer, have been super saturated with water to keep them alive and are so soft, approach shots are occasionally plugging when they land. Players are taking dead aim at the flagsticks. A huge storm that pelted the course after the second round concluded Friday afternoon made conditions softer and greens slower.

• Because the collars of the greens are dead in many areas, the PGA Tour hasn't been able to tuck as many flags in corners on near the edges. Usually, there are a handful of daily flag positions placed within four paces of the fringe areas. In the first round, there was one.

• Players can fire at flags risk-free. Even when "short-siding" themselves, the greens are so soft and there's so much extra green with which to work because of the pin placements, getting a chip shot close to the hole has been fairly easy.

All that said, you might think Woods would be relishing the conditions this week, since he's three shots clear of the field and threatening to set his second 72-hole tournament scoring record in as many weeks. You would be wrong. If the player picks the right club, the greens are so soft, it's like throwing darts.

The ultimate craftsman and shot-shaper said it doesn't matter whether a player controls his trajectory this week or not. Just pull the right club and hammer the ball at the flag, he said.

"There's really no creativity," he said. "As long as you land the ball on the right number [distance], you have a chance at birdie."

• Woods last week would not confirm a magazine report that he has signed a $100 million deal to serve as a product pitchman for Gatorade, but he has all but telegraphed his intentions this week. The Tour Championship is sponsored by Atlanta-based Coca-Cola, which produces a sports drink of its own that has been placed in barrels on every tee. Woods, however, has been toting Gatorade around.

According to the Golfweek report last week, one of the nuances of his impending Gatorade deal is that Woods will pitch a new product with a personal naming tie-in. Our suggestion: "Eldrink."

ATLANTA -- A matter of hours after the NFL's most prominent coach was slapped with one of the heftiest fines in sports history for cheating, Tiger Woods was floored by a showing of friendship and sportsmanship Friday morning at the Tour Championship.

With a $10 million bonus on the line, Woods' playing partner Steve Stricker committed an act of kindness that did not pass unnoticed by Woods, who is leading the FedEx Cup points race and threatening to win the tournament title as well.

As Woods waited his turn to putt, Stricker nudged his ball into the cup on the 16th green and promptly tapped down a rooster-tail-sized spike mark behind the hole. Mind you, Stricker is running second to Woods in FedEx points and stands to lose $7 million if he finishes as the runner-up in the cumulative, lucrative points chase.

According to the rulebook, players may tap down spike marks only after finishing play on a green, so Woods did not have the option of smoothing the surface himself. We'll let Woods, who was clearly impressed with the largesse of the Wisconsin native, relate the details.

"He did one of the classier things I've ever seen someone do on the 16th today," Woods said. "There was huge spike mark on the other side of the hole, and after he finished, he tapped it down.

"He just said he didn't want me to have to worry about running it a foot by the hole and face a huge spike mark. That's classy. But I was a smartass about it, and said it wasn't going to go a foot past."

Woods was making a joke, but as it turned out, he missed the 16-footer for birdie and had a putt from exactly 14 inches beyond the hole coming back.

Some sports fans roll their eyes when they hear the incessant tales about how golf demands a higher level of sportsmanship and fair play than any other game, but this is a pretty good indication that it's not just blather.

Their first-round situations made the gesture even more notable. Woods finished with a 6-under 64, while Stricker was five shots back. If Stricker doesn't win this week, the only way he can claim the $10 million is if Woods falls down dead.

"He's one of the nicest guys of all time," Woods said. "He is extremely classy."

ATLANTA -- A three-hour delay did nothing to slow down Tiger Woods' summer momentum.

Despite a lengthy weather delay caused by thunderstorms that raked East Lake Country Club on Thursday, Woods birdied the first three holes after play resumed at 5:20 p.m.

Woods has won three victories and a runner-up finish in his last four starts, including a tournament-record 22-under last week at the BMW Championship in Chicago.

Phil Mickelson, who beat Woods head-to-head two weeks ago in Boston, was another story. One of four players with a statistical chance of catching FedEx Cup points leader Woods, Mickelson double-bogeyed the fifth hole, falling to 3 over and temporarily tied for last in the 30-man field.

Woods completed 11 holes before play was suspended because of darkness. More showers are expected Friday as the tour attempts to complete the first two rounds before the weekend arrives.

ATLANTA -- Mother Nature strikes again.

Moments before Tiger Woods and Steve Stricker teed off in the last group of the finale FedEx Cup event of the year, a news circular was issued.

Because nasty inclement weather is in the forecast as remnants of Hurricane Humberto blow through the region, Friday's second-round tee times are being moved up a whopping four hours.

Tweaking Thursday would have been just as smart.

Woods and Stricker, the FedEx Cup points leaders, had each hit exactly two shots and were standing on the first green when the weather horn sounded and East Lake Golf Club was evacuated. They had walked only 450 yards from the clubhuse, so they ambled back in before the thunderstorms blew through.

The first group off the tee had completed 12 holes when play was suspended. Official word later was that play might resume at 5:20 p.m. ET.

The first group off the tee for Friday's second round is scheduled for 8 a.m., although it's unlikely first-round play will be completed based on weather projections.

Weather has been an issue in Atlanta for weeks as it relates to the Tour's big-money playoff finale. Unseasonably hot and dry weather put the zap on the East Lake greens before the event started, and the thunderstorms just made the super-soft, heat-damaged greens even more of a mess.

• How to kill time during a seemingly interminable rain delay? It’s not just the players who have to find an outlet when marooned in the clubhouse as the skies dump rain in buckets, as was the case at East Lake Golf Club when Thursday’s first round was halted because of a huge and somewhat unexpected downpour.

Caddies get skittish, too.

"There’s a huge, big-money pinball tournament going on in there right now," said Jim Mackay, Phil Mickelson’s caddie, pointing his thumb toward the clubhouse.

• Ernie Els walked off the practice green moments before his opening round at the final FedEx Cup series event Thursday afternoon and had to admit, he was pleasantly surprised.

The much-maligned putting surfaces at East Lake Golf Club have recovered nicely since last weekend's red flares first were launched, signaling that dire straits were almost certain to plague the big-money Tour Championship.

"This is not bad at all," Els said as he walked to the first tee.

Giving credit where it's due, he's exactly right.

Granted, the greens this week will be about 25 percent slower than at a traditional PGA Tour event, and they are so soft, players could attack the flags on nearly every hole. But from a playability standpoint, the visual differences are remarkable.

On the second green, one of three surfaces that was closed to players during practice rounds to allow it to recover from massive heat-related damage, looks dramatically better than it did just 48 hours earlier, when the entire upper echelon of the PGA Tour brass stopped by for a personal inspection. The large swath of new turf that was spliced into the collar area is barely noticeable thanks to massive amounts of TLC from the grounds crew. Surely, two days of intermittent rain and cooler temperatures didn't hurt, either.

Unless the thunderstorms that hammered the region at midday Thursday take a toll, perhaps the leader in the $10 million FedEx bonus chase won't win or lose the prize because of a bumpy putt after all.

• At age 21, Anthony Kim is the youngest player on tour, but like many of his more seasoned elders, he ran out of gas during the long closing stretch of the schedule.

Kim didn't make the 30-man field this week at the Tour Championship, and frankly, he wasn't broken up about it. Kim, who was in Atlanta this week to appear at a Nike outing, said he ran out of gas last week in Chicago, when he failed to earn enough FedEx Cup points to advance to this week's four-event series finale.

In fact, he was so out of gas, he couldn't initially remember where he played last week.

"I hit a shot the other day, where was it, at the event that had 70 players," Kim said earlier this week. "Yeah, it was last week in Chicago. I hit a shot last week where I didn't even care. You know when you hit shots and you don't care, you're burned out."

Kim said he didn't think he'd play again all fall, except perhaps the Valero Texas Open. Kim's more immediate concern, he said, lies elsewhere. He's about to be the richest homeless man in America. He signed a one-year lease on a home in the Dallas area after turning pro last year, and it's about to expire.

"I need to find someplace to live," he said.

Her die for another year is cast.

Now, will fans still be dying to watch her?

Asked all season what her plans entailed for the 2008 season, Michelle Wie typically scratched her head and said she wasn't sure. Outside of enrolling in freshman classes at Stanford on Sept. 24, anyway.

Her professional plans cleared up considerably this week, when she failed to submit an application to LPGA Qualifying School this fall. The deadline was Tuesday.

It's not necessarily a surprise. Whether it's a mistake, well, that's arguable.

As a player with no LPGA membership, Wie can play in the maximum of six regular tour events on sponsor exemptions next year, plus accept exemptions into the British and U.S. opens if they are extended, which is the tack she's taken her entire career. Now that she's a professional and the highest-paid female in the history of the game, some figured playing a full schedule might be a logical step since she turns 18 next month.

Logic doesn't always enter into the equation for the Wies of late. Having fallen on increasingly hard times because of injuries, poor play and some perceived breaches of decorum, it'll be interesting to see if tournaments extend exemptions as often as in the past. Like John Daly, Wie this year became a distraction, not a main attraction.

Either way, it's become clear that, unlike when she was steadily in contention at big events two or three years ago, the LPGA isn't nearly as starved for marquee players. Whereas two years ago she seemed like the white knight for the headliner-starved women's circuit, the tour is laden with young talent and poised to survive and thrive without her as a full-time member.

Wie has made two cuts in seven starts this year, including a pair of injury-related withdrawals, and earned $9,899 in official earnings. In her most recent start, Wie shot 79-75 in the Safeway Classic last month in Portland to miss the cut.

ATLANTA -- OK, allow me to vent, then explain.

Top players have used plenty of semi-valid reasons to explain why they have been unwilling and/or unable to participate in all four of the FedEx Cup playoff events, but one trite excuse is wearing a little thin.

There's no question that asking upper-tier players who are consistently in contention to tee it up in multiple weeks wears on them more than lesser players going through the motions. However, the issue of lucrative extracurricular golf continues to be trotted out as a reason for their excessive wear and tear.

Witness Phil Mickelson's explanation on Wednesday regarding why he skipped the BMW Championship last week -- which was staged in the same city where he conducted a corporate outing for Bearing Point two days before the event began.

"Challenges? Well, first of all, it's not four in a row that's a problem," he said Wednesday. "It's not the four FedExCup tournaments in a row that's an issue. For me it's 10 out of 13 weeks in a row that start back at the AT&T National in D.C. -- played AT&T, played the Scottish Open, played the British Open, I'm in Europe for a couple weeks, I come home, got to do a couple of outing days in D.C. before I have a couple days off before I start the push for the PGA Championship, go to Akron and play there, go to Tulsa and play the PGA.

"I have another couple outings, so I have four days off before I have a four-week stretch with the FedExCup, and then we have the Presidents Cup a week later."

Yeah, it's a lot. But he was paid to play in the Scottish Open, a European Tour event where appearance fees are permitted. He is paid handsomely for the corporate outings, which are part of the typical player endorsement deal. He agreed to the outing dates, and of course, nobody forced him to sign the endorsement deals.

We're not merely picking on Mickelson either. Tiger Woods skipped The Barclays event in suburban New York, then showed up a few days later in Manhattan, pimping his new video game, for which he is paid a mountain of money. The week before The Barclays, he was in the Blue Ridge mountains, unveiling a new golf-course project that should personally net him millions.

The gist of my grist is this -- Woods and Mickelson in particular whined about needing a shorter season and the Tour delivered the new FedEx plan. Then they individually committed to participate in corporate events in the middle of the busiest time of year. So forgive us if we find these excuses tough to digest.

The 2007 schedule didn't sneak up on anybody. Don't create part of the problem and then use it as an excuse.

ATLANTA -- He was the first guy off the tee Tuesday morning at East Lake Golf Club, and within minutes he had soaked through his shirt.

Veteran Mark Calcavecchia isn't fit, svelte or at all delusional about his physical conditioning, which is why he's hurting given that this week's Tour Championship marks the fourth week in a row he's played.

"I'm wrecked, I'm destroyed," he said after playing eight holes. "Like someone else said, Tiger is tired after two weeks. I've got him by 80 pounds and 17 years. How do you think I'm doing after playing eight out of nine?

"He could run from here to downtown. I couldn't run out of a burning house. Yeah, I'm tired."

Last weekend in Chicago, Calcavecchia offered another self-deprecating gem when addressing the poor greens this week at East Lake: "There's still going to be a tournament. Somebody is going to finish first and somebody is going to finish 30th, and I know who the favorite is for that."

Calcavecchia is the lone player in the field who played in the first Tour Championship in 1987 in San Antonio.

Fly on the wall

One of the most interesting sights of the FedEx Cup series took place early in the morning on the second green at East Lake, which ranks among the three most damaged putting surfarces on the heat-sapped course. Did I say surfarces? Sorry.

It's just that, with a $7 million purse and buckets of FedEx money to be formally cemented and distributed, I wasn't expecting the greens to look like grandmother's moth-eaten old quilt.

At any rate, PGA Tour officials slowly began to congregate on the green, each armed with a walkie-talkie or cell phone. It started out with tour rules officials Slugger White and Mark Russell. Then tour VP Henry Hughes showed up. A moment later, commissioner Tim Finchem tooled up in yet another cart, a golf cap perched awkwardly on top of his head. Last one out of Ponte Vedra Beach, turn off the lights and refuel the corporate jet?

The high-powered group, which eventually swelled to eight, also included various agronomists (guys who grow grass for a living). En masse, they inspected the second green, which included a noticeable patchwork splice job of turf along the otherwise brown back edge. Hughes was overheard saying something about how the green was "three different colors."

After several minutes and fraternal mumbling, they piled into their electric carts and drove off to inspect the damage on East Lake's other greens.

A handful of players said later in the day that the greens weren't as bad as the tour had first claimed, but two thunderstorms late in the afternoon were bound to make them even slower and softer. It's a shame that, with all the money on the line this week -- there's $32 million left to be decided -- conditions won't even remotely mirror the stakes.