Around the Links: Can the Real Player of the Year Please Step Up?

The PGA Tour season is steaming hard toward the home stretch and there's something noticeably missing. Namely, a player of the year.

With the majors down to only next month's PGA Championship, the 2010 season is looking very much like an interesting story with no ending.

Phil Mickelson won the Masters and has done little else.

Relatively unknown Graeme McDowell won the U.S. Open and Louis Oosthuizen was an even bigger surprise in the British, but what else have they done?

Ernie Els, Jim Furyk, Justin Rose and Steve Stricker are the season's only multiple winners, all with two titles -- but none of them majors.

Tiger Woods may be Player of the Year, but he hasn't done diddly on a golf course.

So what happens if they give an award and nobody deserves it?

There's still plenty of time. A win by pretty much any of the aforementioned in the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits and the inside track is claimed. If the winner is another long-shot surprise, the post-season FedEx Cup will provide a springboard for someone to distinguish himself.

But so far, no one has.



For what it's worth, Els leads in FedEx Cup points. Along with wins at Doral and Bay Hill, he had a total of six top 10s. Among the other multiple winners, Stricker has five top 10s, and Rose and Furyk have four each.

Please, somebody do something.

KIM GETTING IMPATIENT

Anthony Kim showed up at the Canadian Open -- only to watch.

One of the season's hottest players early this year -- he won in Houston, finished second at Honda and third in the Masters -- Kim has been missing from action since undergoing thumb surgery in May.

Kim says he is hoping to return to competition in time for next month's PGA Championship, but is more concerned with being ready for October's Ryder Cup matches in Wales.

"We're taking it week to week," Kim said. " Hopefully sooner than later. I'm not sure. I don't want to say I'm going to come back on a day and not show up. So we're just trying to work as hard as we can. I'm doing therapy every day and trying to hit as many balls as possible without re-injuring the thumb."

At least the August 11-15 PGA Championship provides a target date.

"I think so," he said. "I definitely want to make that Ryder Cup team. That's very important to me. It's a very special event to me, and hopefully I can get back and get some more points so I won't need to have any favors called in from Corey."

U.S. captain Corey Pavin certainly would like Kim on the team. He was a major contributor in the U.S. victory in 2008 and he also performed well last year in Presidents Cup play.

And despite the extended absence, Kim remains fourth on the U.S. team points list.

The question, however, is whether Kim can be ready to compete. He spent four weeks with the hand in a cast, followed by another three in a splint.

"It's been a tougher comeback than I thought," Kim said. "It hurts a little bit just because I haven't used it, not because of the surgery going bad or anything like that. It was immobilized for so long, and now to be able to put some pressure on it is a little painful, but that's part of the process."

WEIGHT OFF HIS MIND

Carl Pettersson, Sunday's winner of the Canadian Open, says he understands the physical fitness-workout mentality that has swept across the PGA Tour.

But it's not for everybody.

The 32-year-old Swede doesn't deny he's a hefty fellow. In fact, two years ago, after winning in Greensboro, he decided it drop weight and commit to a workout routine.

"Obviously I was a little overweight," he said. "I thought, well, I'll get fit. So I actually lost 30 pounds, and my game completely left me. I guess the timing of the swing and everything was thrown out, and I really struggled in '09."

Pettersson is back to his full size and on Sunday won for the first time since 2008.

"You know, I'd love to be fitter," he said, "but I'm not going to go down that road again."

A SENIOR MAJOR, AGAIN

In one of the quirks that is the Champions Tour, the seniors tee it up this week for their second major championship in two weeks.

After Bernhard Langer won Sunday's Senior British Open, the United States Senior Open Championship will begin play Thursday at Sahalee Country Club in Sammamish, Wash.

Fred Funk shot a record 20-under-par 268 to win last year's U.S. Senior Open by six strokes over Joey Sindelar at Crooked Stick Golf Club in Carmel, Ind. Funk was the only player in the field to card four rounds in the 60s.

He will try to become the fifth two-time winner of this event and the first repeat winner since Allen Doyle claimed his second consecutive U.S. Senior Open title at Prairie Dunes in 2006. Gary Player won back-to-back U.S. Senior Open titles in 1987-88 and Miller Barber, the event's only three-time winner, claimed back-to-back events in 1984-85.

TO WOODS, OR NOT TO WOODS

Strange comment from American Ryder Cup captain Corey Pavin.

The captain indicated he wants to talk with Tiger Woods during next month's PGA Championship to learn whether the world's No. 1 ranked player really wants to be on the U.S. team at Celtic Manor in Wales in October.

Woods is seventh in the points table that will provide eight automatic members for the United States against Europe. But he could easily drop down the standings and needs a wild card pick, which Pavin, apparently, wants to use cautiously.

MENTIONABLES

• The Masters has presented the First Tee with a $1 million donation.

• Kenny Perry, born and raised in Kentucky, would be a crowd favorite in neighbor-state West Virginia this week anyway. But there's a lot about Perry to applaud.

Perry is dedicating his play in this week's Greenbrier Classic to the 29 families affected by the April mining disaster in West Virginia. He has pledged $2,000 for every birdie he records during the tournament. In response, Greenbrier owner James Justice will match Perry's donation. Funds raised through the Greenbrier Classic will be donated to the families through the West Virginia Council of Churches.

• The British Open at St. Andrews was golf's first major to have all four rounds broadcast on cable, and the results were not pretty.

ESPN recorded the lowest rating for a final round in the event's history, and its Saturday coverage brought the lowest rating in 22 years.