Rory's #1 Ranking is new...as is his Body

Rory McIlroy has the swing and the temperament of a champion.

Now he has the body to go with it.

As McIlroy rose in the past 4 years from skinny teenager (below) to U.S. Open champ to the world No. 1 ranking -- thanks to Sunday’s heart-pounding victory over Tiger Woods at the Honda Classic -- his body and bearing changed as well (right).

His secret: bringing modern science to bear on the ancient game, and working on his legs and core muscles so he wouldn’t mess too much with a classical swing that Jack Nicklaus calls “the most natural motion in the game today.”

That, plus some inspiration from his girlfriend, No. 2 ranked tennis star Caroline Wozniacki. McIlroy found the way professional tennis players practice almost humbling.

“They work so hard,” says McIlroy, who good-naturedly joined Caroline and Maria Sharapova on the court at Madison Square Garden during an exhibition match Monday night. “That sort of made me realize that I could probably work harder, and gave me a little bit more motivation to go in the gym and hit more balls. It’s definitely paid off.”

After more than 15 years of domination by the hard-sculpted, hard-swinging Woods, the golf world is accustomed to fit golfers. McIlroy, by comparison, presents a slightly more approachable image: 5-foot-10, 160 pounds -- but with muscles that only began appearing in early 2011.

His posture and physique changed under the direction of Steve McGregor, Ph.D., a British trainer who previously worked with the burly-yet-trim Lee Westwood, no. 3 in the world. 

McIlroy made it clear in an interview with Men’s Healththat his new body is the foundation for his success. 

Truth & Rumors: Schwartzel wants BBQ for Masters dinner

Reigning Masters champion Charl Schwartzel doesn’t want to just host this year’s Champions Dinner -- he wants to prepare it. The 27-year-old has visions of grilling up a braai [right] -- a sampling of traditional South African meats -- under the iconic oak tree outside the clubhouse. Call it Pit Masters: Augusta National Edition. Global Golf Post has the details:

“We’ve put in the request and are still waiting to hear from them,” Schwartzel said. “But I’d love to be able to braai there. I want to braai everything myself, but we just have to see if that will be possible with the number of people there. I could end up with a very sore hand at the end of an evening turning all that meat.”

Schwartzel has already started planning his Masters braai. “I’ll keep it very simple. Ideally I would like to have a few lamb chops, some fillets and of course some boerewors (a traditional South African sausage).”

According to Scott Michaux of the Augusta Chronicle, Schwartzel would be the first champ to trade his green jacket for a green apron:

In general, the club balks at outsiders cooking in their kitchens. Other than Vijay Singh famously bringing in a prominent Atlanta restaurateur to prepare his Thai menu in 2001, Augusta National has used its own chefs to prepare whatever the host champion desires (with the possible exception of Sandy Lyle’s haggis).

New year, same old Phil

Phil Mickelson picked up his 2012 season pretty much right where he left off his 2011 season. An eagle here, a three-putt there, tee shots everywhere. It all resulted in a two-over 74 at the Humana Challenge on Thursday, a discouraging opening round at La Quinta Country Club that included a pair of out-of-bounds tee shots. Mickleson looked at the bright side: 

"The round wasn't indicative of how I know I was playing. I've been playing really well heading in. I played well the front nine, made some good birdies."

"And then the back nine those couple out of bounds, one was a matter of two feet and a couple of inches on the other and those could have been a big difference."

Mickleson, who dabbled with a long putter toward the end of last season, has returned to an Odyssey blade, which is “very similar to the putter I grew up with as a kid just going back to that type of freer motion.”

“I feel really good with the putter. And that was the one area that I was concerned with. I spent the whole off-season working on that, deciding on the direction I was going to go, with what putter and what have you.

“I'm trying to make, I feel like I can make everything on the greens. I had a couple 3-putts ... my speed was off on a couple, but really excited with the way it was transpiring and given the way I've been hitting it the last couple years I know I'll get that fixed and I can start shooting some numbers.”

Lefty's last win came the week before the Masters, at the Shell Houston Open.

Tiger says he’s executing “all the shots”

Hank who? After 17 months under the tutelage of swing coach Sean Foley, Tiger Woods says the Tao of Foley is finally clicking in an interview with ESPN's Bob Harig.

"Last year at this time I didn't truly understand what Sean was trying to teach me," Woods said. "I was very one-dimensional in my ball striking."

One-dimensional? Where does that leave the rest of us?

“I had this baby draw, didn't have a fade, and when I got to Dubai, my second tournament, the wind was howling and I couldn't hold the ball up against the wind with a fade.”

"One of the things we had to work on through the year was hitting all the shots. It didn't really start happening until the fall. I started picking up some good, positive momentum with the exhibitions I did in Asia, Australia and then winning [the Chevron World Challenge]."

Woods also revealed the genesis of his much-ballyhooed pairing with Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo in next month's Pebble Beach pro-am.

"He called me when I was in Australia [in November] and asked me if I was playing Pebble," Woods said. "And I said yes.” He said, 'I'd like to throw my name in the hat as a possible pairing.'

“I thought about it…"

What’s to think about? Who’s a better option? Darius Rucker? Kenny G?

"…and then I called him a day later and said, 'All right, you're in if you want to be in.'"

Gee, Tiger, way to make a guy feel good about himself. Romo later admitted that he hadn’t been that nervous since he asked Betty Finkelstein to his seventh-grade dance.

Tweet of the Day

John Daly runs out of balls during tournament, walks off course after Tin Cup-esque hole

The casual golf fan absolutely loves watching John Daly when he's in the tournament field. Want to know why? It's because he's the everyman golf pro; sure, he's going to have his moments of sheer brilliance, but sooner or later you know he's going to do something that will make you say "Hey, I could do that."

Well, friends, Daly had another one of those moments on Thursday at the Australian Open. Playing in the event on a sponsor's exemption, he had the opportunity to pocket a nice check at a world-class tournament in Oz.

But in typical Daly fashion, he found a way to ruin the tournament's generosity in spectacular fashion. After knocking his ball into a bunker on the 10th hole, Daly inadvertently hit the wrong ball out of the sand -- hard as it is to believe, the ball he hit was actually one from the range -- to take a 1-stroke penalty. That's where things went horribly wrong.

Frustrated with the penalty on the 10th, Daly came unglued after hitting his first ball into the water on the par-5 10th hole. After taking a drop, Daly then hit six more balls into the water. For a brief moment, it seemed like golf fans were watching a real-life "Tin Cup" moment.

The only problem was that unlike Kevin Costner's character, Daly didn't hit his seventh, and final, ball on the green. It found the water, leaving Daly without a ball. He immediately shook the hands of playing partners Hunter Mahan and Craig Parry and stormed off the course.

"[W]hen u run out of balls u run out of balls. yes, I shook my player's partners hands & signed my card w/rules official," Daly tweeted on his Twitter account.

Things got even worse when Daly's girlfriend, Anna Cladakis, took a swipe at a television camera, leading the Golf Channel announcers to lament the entire situation, as a camera followed Daly off the course.

Of course, tournament officials were extremely unhappy with Daly's antics. Trevor Herden, the tournament director for the Australian Open, told reporters at the tournament that Daly wouldn't be coming back to Australia anytime soon.

"I would say this would be the last time we see John Daly," he said.

Taking things to an even lower low, Brian Thorburn, CEO of PGA of Australia, made it clear that Daly shouldn't even bother hanging around to play the Australian PGA Championship, on a special invitation, in two weeks.

"The PGA does not need this kind of behavior tarnishing the achievement of other players and the reputation of our tournaments. John is not welcome in Coolum," Thorburn said in a statement.

If Daly hadn't burned all of his bridges yet, he certainly burned every one of them in Australia. There used to be a time when Daly was one of the marquee names in the game, but in recent years, he's turned into nothing more than a sideshow that people come to mock.

This was another incident that made you realize he's no longer good enough to contend on a weekly basis. If anything, he's just wasting a spot in the field. Running out of golf balls in a professional tournament should tell everything you need to know about the state of Daly's game. He's turned into a complete joke

Fred Couples Grants Tiger Woods Asylum????

 Corey Pavin, wherever you are, accept this belated olive branch.
Like many, I spent the latter half of 2010 having a field day with your captaincy of the U.S. Ryder Cup team, belittling the sieves that passed as team raingear in Wales, poking fun at your colorless quotes, making cracks about your height, questioning whether your wife was actually running the show.
There's only one thing left to say after the developments of the past few hours: Bring back captain Corey, because the guy steering the Presidents Cup team is steering the team headed toward the Great Barrier Reef.
U.S. captain Fred Couples, in a remarkable admission, said Thursday night in Seattle that he has already told Tiger Woods that he's assured one of the two captain's picks, even though Woods' season has been punctuated by missteps, missed cuts and missed fairways.
Couples is having none of it. Or all of it, whichever way you hook or slice it.
"In my opinion, when you’re the best player in the world for 12 straight years and you’re not on a team, there’s something wrong," Couples said.
That's the crux of the critical blowback here. Woods was indeed the best player on the planet for 12 years. Problem is, we're in Year 14 now.
“I don’t know how you can criticize someone for choosing Tiger Woods," Couples said. "If he goes there and doesn’t play well, I would be shocked."
Hopefully, Couples doesn’t scare easily, or he could be in for some fainting spells when the matches begin in Australia, based on the way Woods has played in 2011. Perhaps Couples missed the parts at the PGA Championship where Woods missed the cut, hit balls in 22 bunkers, and hit a 20-foot putt so fat, it came up six feet short of the hole.
Woods hasn’t won in 23 months in the States and others have blown past him so fast, he has plummeted from second to 36th in the world, a spiral that will continue because he is ineligible to play for four weeks and his last PGA Tour win is about to fall off his two-year ranking period.
Couples sounds about as stable as Captain Queeg, rolling around two ball bearings in his hand and trying to figure out who swiped the strawberry ice cream.
This call is wrong for so many reasons, it's nothing short of astounding. Let's list a few.
At No. 11 in points is Jim Furyk, who has had a forgettable season on the whole. But Furyk is the reigning PGA Tour Player of the Year, a guy who won the FedEx Cup last year after finishing with three wins. Furyk, unlike Woods, has shown far more recent signs of life, including T9 last week.
Keegan Bradley not only isn’t on the team, he's 18th in points despite two victories in his rookie season. Phil Mickelson noted this week that Bradley is the perceived front-runner for tour player of the year, opined that Bradley ought to be the first player named as a captain's pick. Oops. Mickelson and Bradley are represented by the same management firm, so there's a bias here, but Mickelson's got a point. No other American won a major this year. Woods hasn’t won a major since mid-2008.
Even though Bradley, now No. 18 in points, was unable to amass a single Presidents Cup point last year, he is 10 spots ahead of Woods in the standings. Woods is 28th and sandwiched between immortals Kevin Na and D.A. Points.
Couples, a guy who will never be confused for Vijay Singh for his work ethic, is taking the easy way out. The captain's picks are not set to be finalized for four more weeks, until after the Tour Championship in Atlanta. What, he didn’t want to face questions for a month about his two at-large options?
Even for those who believe Woods deserves a pick, there is absolutely no defensible reason to announce the selection a month early. Too many other players who play well over the next month could get left at the curb as they angle for the last remaining spot.
The doltish Couples move certainly underscores the fact that the Presidents Cup is an exhibition, and not held in nearly the same esteem as the Transatlantic swordfight called the Ryder Cup. Making the pick now makes the PrezCup, a thinly veiled Ryder knockoff, look even more farcical.
Think the PGA Tour, which invented and runs the Presidents Cup, wasn't giggling in the hallways when their savant captain tabbed Tiger on Thursday? Moments after Couples told reporters in Seattle that Woods was already a lock, the tour sent out Couples' comments in a blast email, cementing the deal and trumpeting to all the world that Tiger was on the team.
Twelve years ago, after watching a couple of balls take cruel bounces at the 1999 U.S. Open, David Duval stoically answered a question about the caprices that had just cost him the title. "There is no such thing as 'deserves,'" he said. Well, looks like he was wrong. In a game known as the ultimate meritocracy, Woods was grandfathered in based on his resume from two years ago. If he handed any employer a resume with a gap that large in is performance history, the boss would say, "so, what's the deal with the last two years?"
If Woods wanted to earn a spot on the team the right way, he should have played last week in Greensboro, his last chance to qualify for the FedEx Cup playoffs, which began this week at The Barclays. He was outside the top 125 positions required to make the FedEx series, tied in with rookie Will McGirt, who not only played well enough at Greensboro to get in the series, he was an overnight co-leader at The Barclays on Thursday night. Woods didn’t play. He said he had family commitments. Then he participated in a corporate PR stunt for EA Sports last Tuesday, sending a nice message of indifference while others were trying to grind their way into the FedEx picture.
Couples is so out of touch with affairs on the tour, he was unaware that Woods had not qualified to play in the FedEx series, and told him he wants him to add another tournament before heading to Australia to play in the Aussie Open (where he will receive an appearance fee) and Presidents Cup. Couples didn’t even wait to see whether Woods followed through and signed up for a Fall Series event before picking him. The Australian Open is Nov. 10-13 outside Sydney and the cup matches follow the next week.
Couples' assistant captain is Jay Haas, whose son Bill is 10th in Presidents Cup points at the moment. Guess who gets bumped if anybody makes the slightest move over the next four weeks and displaces him from the automatic-pick perch in the top 10? Right. Haas would then need to be picked to make the team. Awkward.
Plenty have compared Couples' decision to pick the skidding Woods as comparable to International team captain Greg Norman's decision to tab Adam Scott two years ago. Scott was in a months-long slump, and Norman figured being on the team might give the young Aussie a lift. What people forget is that Scott finished 1-4, however.
Picking Woods is akin to juggling dynamite. Couples, especially has ensured that a decent faction of Americans will be pulling against the U.S. team.
Nice call, captain America.