ON GOLF: Golf in the Olympics, Ochoa's dominance, Tiger's knee

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(04-23) 18:34 PDT --
On April 8, in his pre-Masters news conference, Phil Mickelson pledged his support for golf game as an Olympic sport. The adjacent day, Capital Of Maine National President Truncheon Payne made a similar pitch. Six old age later, PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem publicly endorsed the idea, a noteworthy measure given the tour's historical ambivalency to rearranging its agenda every four years.

This sequence of events caused barely a rippling on the American sporting landscape, probably because golf game have not been played in the Olympic Games since 1904 and most U.S. athletics fans get paying attending to the Games on the twenty-four hours of the Opening Ceremonies.

Here's the thing: Golf in the Olympic Games would be a immense trade elsewhere.

One illustration leapings to mind. In researching a independent narrative last twelvemonth about why Soviet Union have produced so few elite golf players - despite its rich athletics heritage, from field hockey and wrestle to basketball game and lawn tennis - I spoke to respective people involved in the game in that nation. They all pointed to the scarceness of courses of study in Soviet Union - only six or seven at the clip (with another 30 to 40 in the works), compared with nearly 17,000 in the U.S.

Then the conversation inevitably veered toward the Olympics, and the impact that position brings.

"The true mental attitude toward athletics is really Olympicized - something is only treated as a existent athletics if it's separate of the Olympic program," said Alexey Nikolov, one of the initiation members of the Russian Golf Association. "It would do a large difference if golf game became portion of the Olympics, not only to Soviet Union but to many states around the world."

That's the motive for Payne, Finchem and other industry leadership who are seeking ways to turn the game in states such as as People'S Republic Of China and India. The Olympic Games wouldn't competing the major league for prestige, but they could trip growing in topographic points where golf game stays mostly a rumor.

This volition be a lingering issue in the adjacent year, because the International Olympic Committee will ran into in 2009 to pick a host metropolis for the 2016 Games and make up one's mind whether to add any new sports.

Hall pass: Lorena Ochoa, who will seek to fit the LPGA Tour record by winning her 5th sequent start next hebdomad near Tulsa, Okla., have been even more than dominant on her circuit this twelvemonth than Tiger Forest on the PGA Tour. One quibble: Severo Ochoa makes not belong in the LPGA Hallway of Fame. Not yet, anyway.

Ochoa, 26, qualified for the hallway when she won a circuit event in United Mexican States on April 13. She must wait until 2012, when she will have got been a circuit member for 10 years, for her formal induction.

Still, the LPGA loses credibleness by allowing active participants - especially 26-year-old players - to measure up for its hall. The same is true of the PGA Tour, which voted Vijay Singh into the World Golf Hallway of Fame in 2005.

Say what you desire about Major League Baseball, but the Hallway of Fame in Cooperstown put the standard: It's difficult to gain initiation and participants are not eligible until five old age after they retire.

Tiger talk: Three ideas in the aftermath of Woods' knee joint surgery:

-- He changed his swing in 2004, mostly to cut down emphasis on his back. There's not a batch he can make to decrease the impact on his left knee, which now have required three surgeries dating to his Leland Stanford days. This up-to-the-minute operation might work out the job for the adjacent few years, but that knee joint could go Woods' greatest obstruction to staying dominant in his late 30s and early 40s.

-- He will not mind lacking the Players Championship. Forest have finished outside the top 10 at the Players in each of the past six years, since he won the tourney in 2001. But Finchem will mind Woods' absence: PGA Tour functionaries relentlessly monger the Players - they have the tournament, unlike the four major league - and this year's event obviously will lose bombilation without Woods.

-- The U.S. Open no longer looks like such as a rout. Yes, Forest have won the tour's yearly halt at Torrey Pines six times, including each of the past four years. But the last clip he was sidelined for an drawn-out time period between the Edgar Lee Masters and U.S. Open came in 2006, when his father, Earl, died. Forest did not play in the nine hebdomads preceding the Open, and he missed the cut at Winged Foot.

College scene: Cal tied for 4th and Leland Stanford finished 6th in the Pac-10 women's championships, which wrapped up Wednesday. Cal will host the Pac-10 men's championships, starting Monday at Hayfield Baseball Club in Fairfax. San Jose State will host the WAC men's tournament, also starting Monday at Cinnabar Hills. Spartans junior Erica Moston was named the WAC women's participant of the year.

E-mail Bokkos Kroichick at .