Golf

Though some duffers are content to hit the public links in their golf shoes from Big 5, others make a sport out of gearing up for the game. Here's how to turn the fairway into a runway. -- $21,000: Pimp your ride. Chino-based American Custom Golf Cars Inc. sells tricked-out GM-licensed electric buggies made to look like Hummer H3s and 2007 Cadillac Escalades. The four-seaters can be upgraded with 18-inch wheels, DVD players, satellite radio, leather interiors, tilt steering and a hard top.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- The fist pump is played out. Tiger Woods is throwing hats now. Everyone else is tipping theirs. The black Nike cap hit the ground as Woods did a Johan Santana impersonation, flexed like the champion he is and roared toward the crowd that ate it up. The endings keep getting better as Woods keeps winning. Woods captured the Arnold Palmer Invitational with a 24-foot putt during a week when he had missed 21 straight putts of 20 feet or more. But this was the 18th green on Sunday.

DORAL, Fla. -- Geoff Ogilvy joked that he and fellow Australian Adam Scott might work some Aussie voodoo in their pairing with Tiger Woods on Saturday at the CA Championship. What they did was make the world's No. 1-ranked player look ordinary in a weird and incomplete third round postponed by dangerous weather.

Last week, Mark O'Meara was picking up his father to take him out to dinner when someone mistook O'Meara for another pro golfer, Mark McCumber. All O'Meara could do was laugh. "The last time somebody thought I was Mark McCumber was in Augusta, a few days before the 1998 Masters, at the Longhorn steak house on Washington Road," O'Meara said. "You know, I may have to eat there again."

Five things to look for on the professional golf scene: 1. The most memorable accomplishment in Annika Sorenstam's career can be debated: the 72 tournament wins, 10 major titles. How about the only round of 59 ever recorded on the LPGA tour? But, for sheer guts, it will be tough to top the one-over 71 she shot in the opening round at the Colonial in 2003.

Tiger Woods, who has been out for more than five weeks after arthroscopic surgery on his left knee, did not put his name on the list to play next week's $6-million Memorial, and apparently won't return to competition until the U.S. Open, June 12-15. Woods hasn't played since finishing second at the Masters. The Memphis tournament follows the Memorial and is the week before the Open. Woods' normal routine is not to play the tournament the week before a major.

Five things to look for on the professional golf scene: 1. It's difficult to talk about the U.S. Open without talking about how the course is going to be set up, which in the case of next week's championship at Torrey Pines, may be one of the most difficult. Or maybe not. At 7,643 yards, it's going to be the longest course in U.S. Open history, and by nearly 400 yards. And the par-five 13th has a back tee available that's one of three the USGA will use, and it's 614 yards.

The instructions are straight from the book on Pebble Beach Golf Links on how to play the sixth hole: "The optimum placement for the tee shot is left center of the fairway." But that's not how Tiger Woods played it. He knocked his drive into the right rough, the ball diving into a thick patch of grass atop the lip of a fairway bunker. It was the third round of the 2000 U.S. Open, and Woods seemed to be in trouble up over his ankles.

Hit: When an insect attached itself to Adam Scott's ball in the 14th fairway, he successfully coaxed it into leaving by poking it with his tee and managed to avoid moving the ball. -- Miss: Say it ain't so, Adam. The nonchalant tap-in putt by Scott from about a foot at the 18th lipped out instead. Scott, who actually had an eagle putt on the hole, wound up four-putting for bogey. There was no insect to blame.

If there is a lesson in Tiger Woods' injuries for the millions of Americans who golf, it is that they shouldn't presume they will suffer the same fate -- at least not while on the course. People generally do not tear their anterior cruciate ligament or suffer a double stress fracture while playing golf, sports medicine experts said Wednesday, but the intense twisting action forced upon the front knee during a swing can worsen an underlying problem.