Golf Tournaments

The floundering golf tournament that was once heaven for Hogan and sacrosanct for Snead wants to be a major player again. To get there, the Northern Trust Open has left it to the Logo. It has been a busy week for Jerry West, and it has only just begun. Monday night, Kobe Bryant put West front and center in the news by topping his Lakers all-time scoring record. It was one supernatural athlete surpassing another. The rest of this week, West will be working his miracles in another sport, along the fairways and in the hospitality tents at legendary Riviera Country Club.

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Oh, how badly I wanted to walk and see and smell and write about whatever it is that makes the Masters masterful. For we first-timers, on this first day of the tournament, it is almost mandatory. Craft an entire column that attempts to explain how there are golf tournaments, there is the Masters and never the twain shall meet. Sportswriting allows so few similar opportunities. Where else can you tell readers about a place that is color-coordinated in the greens of grass, the whites of sand and the blues of sky; where putting greens are more like green-carpeted gymnasium floors, after the water pipes below them have burst?

The Harold Pump Memorial Golf tournament, to be held Thursday at Lost Canyons Golf Club in Simi Valley, will benefit the Harold and Carole Pump Department of Radiation Oncology at Northridge Hospital Medical Center. Details: (818) 349-0935.

Whether or not Lizette Salas wins an LPGA Tour event, hers is already the American success story that so often seems part of a hazy, dreamy past. Salas, 22, of Azusa, is the first in her family to earn a college degree. She went to USC on a golf scholarship and was so inspirational that she was chosen to give a commencement address at the USC athletic department graduation celebration in May. She is also the first in her family to become a professional golfer. Last week, in her first main tour event, Salas finished tied for 22nd at the RR Donnelley LPGA Founders Cup in Phoenix.

Singer Trini Lopez, charged earlier this month with allegedly beating his girlfriend, has withdrawn as the celebrity host of a Palm Springs golf tournament, its sponsors announced Tuesday. "He does not want the tournament's charities to suffer while he attempts to clear his good name of a misdemeanor battery charge," said Tony Aguilar, chairman of what had been billed as the Trini Lopez Celebrity Golf Tournament of Palm Springs. Instead, Aguilar said, the Dec.

Golfers will tee up next week in a fund-raising tournament to benefit the Community Youth Sports and Arts Foundation, which provides educational opportunities for at-risk youngsters, officials said. The Friends of Youth tournament, scheduled for Thursday, is the 15-year-old organization's first golf-oriented fund-raiser, said program director Tom Martin. He said he hopes the tourney will gross $25,000 for the foundation and become an annual event.

Former football star Efren Herrera and teen golfing sensation Tiger Woods will be among the participants in Community Services Programs' ninth annual golf tournament to benefit the CSP Youth Shelter in Laguna Beach. The cost for the tournament, scheduled for next Monday at the Pacific Golf Club in San Clemente, is $175 and includes greens fee, cart, golf clinics and demonstrations, lunch, dinner and an auction.

Despite recent accusations that his golf swing was employed on the wrong side of the law, Oscar-winning actor Jack Nicholson is scheduled to serve as celebrity host of a police-sponsored golf tournament to raise funds for the families of slain, sick or injured officers. Nicholson, who faces criminal charges that he attacked a car with a golf club in a Studio City traffic dispute Feb.

The 1987 National Collegiate Athletic Assn. women's golf championship tournament will be held at the University of New Mexico, school officials have announced. Linda Estes, women's athletic director, said that UNM's South Course was chosen by NCAA officials. One of the reasons the NCAA committee gave for awarding UNM the tournament is that the course is recognized nationally as a competitive facility, Estes said.

Wells Fargo & Co., which received $25 billion in government aid, said Wednesday that it was cutting spending on the Wachovia Championship golf tournament in April amid criticism from U.S. lawmakers about banks' expenses. The San Francisco bank, which acquired Wachovia Corp. in December, has a sponsorship contract with the PGA Tour through 2014, spokeswoman Mary Beth Navarro said.

There's this memory of Kyle Stanley: A 24-year-old man sobbing in La Jolla, trying to explain how he had fumbled away a golf tournament that he should have won because he lost his nerve, his shot making, an eight-shot lead, and finally a playoff. And then a week later, there's Stanley in triumph, winner of the Phoenix Open, both smiling and teary-eyed, letting go of a big burden. He was a winner. The PGA Tour has a wicked sense of humor, and so on Thursday and Friday, for the first two rounds of the Northern Trust Open at Riviera Country Club, Stanley will play with Brandt Snedeker, who beat him at Torrey Pines in the playoff, and Phil Mickelson, who won his first tournament of 2012 on Sunday at Pebble Beach.

Sunday was supposed to be the day the sports potatoes got off their couches. This is the NFL's contribution to society. No games — and no, the Pro Bowl is not a game. It is an exhibition. The kids down the block playing flag football hit harder. It is a day to be devoid of five guys, sitting at a table in a TV studio, making six-figure salaries to state the obvious for an audience that will nod in deep appreciation at being told that the Patriots need to establish their running game.

From La Quinta - One of the leading stupid mantras of the Olympics is that sports and politics don't mix. Golf never even entertained that thought, and Friday at the Humana Challenge, it floated out, as proof, Exhibit A. Into a room of people with cameras, microphones and notepads walked the 42nd president of the United States. This was Bill Clinton the golfer and golf fan, the event-promoter, fundraiser and agenda-setter. The man who ran the most powerful country in the world from 1993 to 2001 was dressed in a blue windbreaker vest and salmon pants.

Reporting from La Quinta  - Bob Hope's spirit is everywhere at the Palmer Private at PGA West golf course. Photos are posted, walkways are named for him, his golf cart is exhibited as if it is a museum piece. The tournament used to be called the Bob Hope Classic. Beginning Thursday it's the Humana Challenge in partnership with the Clinton Foundation. And if Hope's aura is still felt, it is Bill Clinton's physical presence that helped save this event. As recently as two years ago, it seemed as if the tournament that had once been a calendar must for every great player might disappear.

As it turns out, the future of the Bob Hope Classic golf tournament is about as easy to figure as this year's playoff. When Jhonattan Vegas won Sunday on the second playoff hole, he did so by first hitting his tee shot into the water. PGA Tour statisticians will be digging deep this week to see how often, if ever, that has happened. This was after Vegas, who'd had no bogeys all day and had only to make par on the par-five 18th in regulation, drove the ball into a fairway bunker and missed his 7-foot 7-inch par putt.

Toward the end of a 21-minute news conference Tuesday, a reporter asked Tiger Woods, "With all the talk about this past year, are you tired of it or is it . . . " "Yes," a smiling Woods interrupted, sparking laughter in the room. "Did I answer that too fast?" Woods added. "Oh, sorry. " Woods' saga of the past year ? one that included a sex scandal, his subsequent divorce, a winless season and his fall from No. 1 in the world golf rankings ? now is an all-too-familiar story and one Woods would just as soon stop discussing publicly, judging by his answer.

Lanny Wadkins has already won two golf tournaments in California this year, and he is closing in on another. By shooting a four-under-par 68 in the second round of the MONY Tournament of Champions at the La Costa Country Club Friday, Wadkins charged within a stroke of the leader, Tom Kite, and started worrying about paying more California income taxes. "I'm paying more taxes in California than most of the residents here," he said.

President Bush made a helicopter tour of flood-soaked Polk County, Tex., Saturday, squeezing a half-hour look at the catastrophe into his schedule before 18 holes of golf. Bush, in Houston to participate in a celebrity pro-am charity golf tournament before delivering a commencement speech at the University of Texas in Austin, decided Friday evening to add the quick tour of the flood damage to his itinerary.

It's been 21 years since Jim McMahon tried playing quarterback for the Chargers, and in answer to a question about the team's failing two-minute offense, put a finger alongside his nostril and blew his nose on me. So here we were again Wednesday at the American Century Championship, punk QB and mild-mannered columnist reunited, McMahon asking a celebrity golf tournament official if he could get a waiver should he have to choke someone....

Ratings on CBS for the final round of the Masters on Sunday, when Phil Mickelson held off Lee Westwood and posted a three-stroke victory, was the third highest-rated Masters final round since ratings were kept, according to CBS and the Nielsen Ratings Service. But it fell far short of the record set by Tiger Woods' first Masters title in 1997. Sunday's final round, in which Woods made a brief run to the lead before falling away, had a 12.0 rating and a 25 share and was 36% above last year's final when Angel Cabrera won in a two-hole playoff (8.8/21)