Golfer

Tiger Woods can add another item to his long list of accomplishments: He is the first person to win $100 million on the PGA Tour. Woods finished third in the Deutsche Bank Championship on Monday to earn $544,000 and push his career total to $100,350,700. “The purse increase helps,” Woods said. “I won fewer tournaments than Sam Snead has, but obviously he was in a different era. It's just that we happened to time it up right and happened to play well when the purses really had a nice spike up.” Snead, the career leader with 82 PGA Tour victories, earned just $620,126 in a career that started in 1937.

Ken Venturi, who won the 1964 U.S. Open golf championship in dramatic fashion and became a longtime television commentator, died Friday in Rancho Mirage. He was 82. Venturi, who was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame earlier this month, died at Eisenhower Medical Center after battling a spinal infection, pneumonia and an intestinal infection, his son Matt said. The U.S. Open victory was one of Venturi's 14 tournament wins as a pro. Though he suffered from a severe stutter as a youth, he worked as the lead analyst for CBS Sports from 1968 to 2002.

Roger Dunn, a onetime professional golfer who introduced the concept of discount name-brand equipment into his sport by founding a chain of golf stores that bear his name in California and Hawaii, has died. He was 81. Dunn, who spent his later years teaching golf in Studio City, died Aug. 28 at Kindred Hospital in West Covina, said his daughter, Cheryl Alderson. He had been in and out of hospitals with a heart condition since May. "He certainly changed golf retail," said John Kopacz, vice president of store operations for Worldwide Golf Enterprises Inc., which purchased Roger Dunn Golf Shops in 1993.

AUGUSTA, Ga. - The week off before the Masters didn't work, the Phrankenwood club and the jumbo grip club didn't work and, well, basically nothing worked for Phil Mickelson at the Masters. The three-time champion closed with a one-over 73 on Sunday, leaving him at nine over for the event. Mickelson didn't crack 70 in any round, and the uncertainty that worried him entering the week dogged him all weekend. "I just had an off year, I don't know what to tell you," Mickelson said.

KOLKATA, India - Fourteen-year-old Mohan Sardar lives with his sister and parents in a one-room shanty barely larger than the bed they all share, near a swamp filled with human waste, dead animals and floating plastic. When he was in the fifth grade, Mohan dropped out of school because his family couldn't afford the fees. At loose ends, he often walked two miles to the Royal Calcutta Golf Club - "the Royal" to members - scrambling atop a wall and marveling at the vast green expanse and wealthy players.

San Diego State's Scott Almquist shot a three-round total 221 to finish third at the Nor Cal Pepsi Invitational at Stockton Tuesday. The Aztecs finished sixth (915) in the 20-team tournament. Oregon won the team title with a 901 and San Jose was second (904).

Note to Mark Mihal: That's not what they mean by a hole in one. Mihal was playing golf with some friends at Annbriar Golf Course in Waterloo, Ill., on Monday. On the 14th fairway, Mihal was trying to gauge the distance from his ball to the hole when a sinkhole opened up and swallowed him. Mihal fell 18 feet, getting a few bruises and a dislocated shoulder. “I felt the ground start to collapse and it happened so fast that I couldn't do anything,” Mihal said. “I reached for the ground as I was going down and it gave way, too. It seemed like I was falling for a long time.

Tiger Woods outlasted Bo Van Pelt on the back nine at Congressional on Sunday to win the AT&T Invitational, winning for the third time in his last seven tournaments dating to late March. So does that make Woods the hottest golfer on the planet right now? A couple of years ago that would have been a silly question. He was clearly the best golfer in the world and held that status for a very long time. A couple of months ago it also would have been a silly question but for a much different reason.

According to varying opinions, guided by one's level of cynicism, Amy Alcott either created a landmark branding moment for the women's golf tour, or a silly cliche. It was back in 1988, when she decided, moments after sinking her final putt on the 72nd hole of the Dinah Shore Classic she had won, that she would take a celebratory dive into a greenside pond. That was 24 years ago. The tournament is now called the Kraft Nabisco, it is still an LPGA major, it will begin at Missions Hills Country Club on Thursday for the 41st year, and the Amy Alcott pond jump is still a big deal.

If in fact you handicapped the first three golf majors of the year and predicted Cabrera-Glover-Cink, please proceed to your tropical island of choice to live out your life unhurriedly. You're clearly a soothsayer, and you really don't need a regular job. Yet there they'll be -- Angel Cabrera, Lucas Glover and Stewart Cink -- at Hazeltine outside Minneapolis beginning Aug. 13, forming the traditional PGA Championship grouping as winners of the first three majors.

AUGUSTA, Ga. - First-round co-leader Sergio Garcia found agony Friday no matter what pains he took to avoid it. On No. 4, Garcia hemmed and hawed over the tee shot, switched from a four-iron to a three-iron and found sand and another bogey. A snap hook into the creek on No. 13 was followed by a gleaming recovery … and a missed par putt. On the 15th, Garcia's attempt to reach in two hit the bank in front of the green and ricocheted into the water. He dropped his club and then his head, then stood incredulous over the spot moments later - all en route to a 76 and a two-under total.

AUGUSTA, Ga. — In the aftermath of Friday's controversial slow-play penalty at the Masters, there were many dueling opinions. We'll go with "Bravo, John Paramor. " He is the rules official from England, affectionately (or otherwise) known as Big John. He has been at this since 1976 and is known and properly feared worldwide by pro golfers. Over the years, the Masters has had several shots heard 'round the world. When Paramor walked up to 14-year-old amateur Tianlang Guan of China on the 17th tee Friday and informed him he was being assessed a one-shot penalty for slow play, it was another one. The news skittered through the magnolias and azaleas like a candy wrapper in the wind.

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Suddenly, Tiger Woods had a second chance to do something special at the Masters. He needed to look at this as an opportunity, not a curse. Before he was scheduled to tee off in the third round of this event, which is watched and revered worldwide, we learned he had been assessed a two-stroke penalty for taking a drop farther from the proximity of his original shot that went into the water on No. 15 on Friday. That penalty came about after a TV viewer noticed what he had done and called Masters officials.

Athletes and entertainers will come together April 4-7 in Las Vegas   to swing their clubs for charity at the 12th annual Michael Jordan Celebrity Invitational . The star-studded event, in its third year in Las Vegas, will be held at the top-ranked Shadow Creek golf course. Among the celebrities participating for the first time are actor James Denton, country music star Jake Owen, actor Kevin Nealon, Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps and Pro Football Hall of Famer Jerry Rice.

Note to Mark Mihal: That's not what they mean by a hole in one. Mihal was playing golf with some friends at Annbriar Golf Course in Waterloo, Ill., on Monday. On the 14th fairway, Mihal was trying to gauge the distance from his ball to the hole when a sinkhole opened up and swallowed him. Mihal fell 18 feet, getting a few bruises and a dislocated shoulder. “I felt the ground start to collapse and it happened so fast that I couldn't do anything,” Mihal said. “I reached for the ground as I was going down and it gave way, too. It seemed like I was falling for a long time.

Tiger Woods, the former No. 1 golfer in the world, appears ready to ascend back to the top as he strolls to what looks like another victory in the Cadillac Championship at Doral Golf Resort & Spa in Florida. He had his swagger back and probably uttered the words no other golfer wants to hear Saturday after he finished off a round of 67 -- two better than Graeme McDowell, who started the third round only two shots off the lead and finds himself still in second. When asked if he thought he could return to the form of more than a decade ago when he routed opponents and seemingly rendered golf courses defenseless, Woods replied, "I want it to be better.

Former Esperanza golfer Jason Bittick shot four-under-par 68 to take a one-stroke lead Thursday after the opening round of the Top-Flite Classic in Douglas, Ga., on the Hooters-Jordan professional golf tour. Bittick, who plays out of Orlando, Fla., was the 1986 Times Orange County prep golfer of the year after leading the Aztecs to the CIF-Southern California Golf Assn. team title.

The parents of Long Beach Wilson golfer Jennifer Tangtiphaiboontana were killed in a car accident Thursday as they drove Jennifer and a teammate home from the Southern Section team championships, Wilson Coach Jim Ferguson said. Ittisak Tangtiphaiboontana, 52, and Uthaivan Tangtiphaiboontana, 50, died at the scene after the family vehicle swerved off the westbound Pomona Freeway and flipped down an embankment near Glen Avon, about five miles east of Riverside.

Caroline Wozniacki knows well the perils of dating a famous athlete. She has been the girlfriend of golfer Rory McIlroy for more than a year and the spotlight of fame isn't always a plus. For example last week, when McIlroy quit in the middle of a golf tournament in Florida, and Wozniacki was upset in the first round of a tennis tournament in Malaysia, it was decided by some that it was romantic heartache that caused the corresponding events. "We've been in the media spotlight so long that I've gotten used to that part of it," Wozniacki said Wednesday.

Keegan Bradley, who won the PGA Championship in 2011 to become the first player to win a major while using a belly putter, is tired of people calling him a cheater in the wake of the U.S. Golf Assn. calling for a ban on the putters. "It's been actually pretty difficult," Bradley told GolfDigest.com . "Especially lately. I'm being called a cheater more than ever by fans, by some writers. I can't imagine how people can say that to me or to anybody out here. It's been really difficult, and I'm sick of it to be honest.