Golf Spelled Backwards

The caddie of Jose Manuel Lara performed what might be called a bush-league maneuver during the first round of the European Tour's BMW International Open, and it got his player disqualified. The caddie, Mathias Vinson, realized on the second hole that there were 15 clubs in Lara's golf bag. Whoops, that's one too many. Rule 4-4 in the Rules of Golf limits golfers to carrying 14 clubs. What Vinson should have done was notify Lara of the mistake. Lara would have notified rules officials, and the proper penalties — two strokes per hole — would have been applied. A terrible way to start a tournament, to be sure, but at least Lara would still be playing a minimum of two rounds, and he'd still have a chance to recover. But that's not what caddie Vinson did. Instead, he tried to hide the extra club in the bushes. Seriously. Lara didn't pay any attention when his caddie disappeared into thick bushes on the second hole; he assumed the caddie simply couldn't ...

Rhein Gibson — a golfer who has very modest experience on the Nationwide Tour and a few Australian pro tournaments, and is ranked 1,444th in the world rankings — has posted a score of 55. For 18 holes. On a legitimate (meaning full-sized, regulation) golf course. The golf course is River Oaks Golf Club in Edmond, Okla., and the round took place on May 12, 2012. River Oaks is an 18-hole course with a par of 71, and Gibson was playing the tips from around 6,800 yards. It's the second round of 55 known. The first was recorded by former PGA Tour and Champions Tour player Homero Blancas in the early 1960s, but that round occurred on a 9-holer with two sets of tees that was a par-70 but only a little longer than 5,000 yards. Even his home country Sydney Morning Herald described Gibson as "little known." He's 26 years old, and he must really love River Oaks because a short time before the 55 Gibson established a course record of 60. It's a pretty safe bet that hi...

The first Golf Boys video:

Here's a photo Paula Creamer posted on Twitter. Herself with Arnold Palmer, Cristie Kerr and Jerome Bettis. Hmmmm, what's Arnie looking at? Give you two guesses.

Every year the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am includes celebrities in the PGA Tour event, and every year the most popular celebrity is, by far, Bill Murray. And Murray has a lot of fun, and gets a lot of laughs (and along the way plays some pretty good golf). The fans love him, the PGA Tour pros appear to love him, the television network cameras certainly love him. James Garner hates him. Rather, Garner hates Murray's often-silly, attention-grabbing antics during the tournament. You know Garner, right? The veteran actor of many, many movies, but probably best-known as private detective Jim Rockford from the classic 1970s series The Rockford Files . Garner is (or was, until his health and advancing age got in the way) an avid golfer, and played in the PGA Tour's celebrity pro-ams for many years himself. His love of golf and experiences in the game play a big enough part in Garner's memoir, The Garner Files , that Golf Digest excerpts the book in its December 20...

Augusta National banned Gary McCord from Masters broadcasts after McCord suggested, among other things, that there might be bodies buried under the sundry humps and bumps of Augusta. Now, a Seattle-area funeral home and cemetery plans to literally bury deceased golfers under a golf course. Or a golf hole, anyway. Sunset Hills Memorial Park and Funeral Home in Bellevue, Wash., has created the Memorial Golf Park, which Sunset Hills says is "the nation's first golf-themed memorial park." If you're one of those people who is always dying to play golf, this might be for you. The Memorial Golf Park consists of one golf hole, complete with tee box, fairway, bunker and putting green. Including both full-casket burial plots and cremation placements, 1,281 golfers can be buried on the hole. Or, to put it another way, 320 fourballs plus one single. That poor single. He's always going to be waiting, and always asking to play through. (No fivesomes allowed in heaven!) ...

The U.S. Women's Open is being played at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Colo., nestled right up against the Rockies. And there are plenty of peaks right next to the golf course. And you know what they say about golf courses right next to a mountain: Putts break toward the mountain. But is it true? Well, sure, it could be true - if the contours of the part of the green your ball is rolling on take the ball toward the mountain. During ESPN2's second-round broadcast, the broadcast team of Terry Gannon, Judy Rankin and Dottie Pepper discussed the breaks-toward-the-mountain axiom, and endorsed it. Rankin even said that she's seen putts break uphill because of the "pull" of the mountain. That's 100-percent, Grade A nonsense. Putts do not break uphill, ever, mountain or no mountain. There's no mysterious or magical "pull" involved in putting - not from the Rocky Mountains, not from the city of Indio (the so-called Indio effect at the Kraf...

It was a dark and stormy night ... or maybe not. Either way, Ian Poulter was spooked by the rental house he was staying at during The Heritage in Hilton Head, S.C. Poulter wrote on Twitter: "Check this out, we have a ghost in our house this week & I'm not joking we have had some very strange goings on every night." Strange goings-on in the Poulter house? Was Ian laying out his next day's outfit? No. He quickly added: "We have a dead bolted door in the house & every morning that door is unlocked & slightly open. It's happened 7 times already." Yes, I can see how that would be disconcerting. Although my thoughts wouldn't turn to spirits, but to someone playing a trick on me. Or a squatter living in the attic. But hopefully just the former. Poulter then updated: "No joke for real, very bizarre the door is pretty solid with a dead bolt & number of times it's been unlocked & open. Calling home owner now" Alas, n...

I've been to golf courses where alligators were present in water hazards. I imagine there are lots of courses were larger crocodiles lurk. But I've never heard of a course that has sharks in its water hazards. Sharks! Until now. Carbrook Golf Club in Brisbane, Australia, has at least one (probably more) sharks in its many ponds, lakes and waterways. They've been caught on camera: They've been there since the "early '90s," according to the golf course's Web site , when "the Logan River burst its banks, resulting in large volumes of water covering the course for an extended period of time." The floodwaters eventually went away, but at least one shark (probably more) didn't. The Logan is a large river that flows into Moreton Bay (beyond which is the Coral Sea). It seems incredible to me that a shark as large as the one in the videos above could survive in a golf course lake without having frequent access to the river itself. But mayb...

So Tiger Woods' fourth-round partner at the Farmers Insurance Open, PGA Tour rookie Brendan Steele, said Tiger mailed it in on Sunday: "I don't think he gave it ­everything today," Steele told SI. "Once it started going in the wrong direction, I don't think it had his full attention." That is one accusation Tiger's ho's never made against him. Say what you want about Tiger, but when it comes ot ho's, he always gives 100 percent. Whether he's playing their front nine or back nine.