The Clubhouse

MORE WORK TO DO: Stephen Ames says before he, and other Canadian golfers, can stop answering the question "Is this the year?" posed every time the Canadian Open comes around, more work needs to be done at the elite level of junior golf.

"The programs that are in place at this stage right now, they're good. But you get to the elite level, the 17 to 21 years, and that's where everybody kind of falls off.

"You see so many great junior players that have come out, and then all of sudden, what are they doing? They just quit playing golf. Example is James (Lett), great young player. I think he was junior player for years... he's quit golf. He's 21, 22 years old now. He's running a shoe company, his own shoe company."

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A BIT ABOUT GRUBE: My good friend Allan Grant, the squire of Skibo Castle in Dornoch, Scotland, and a member of the Royal Dornoch Golf Club, sends along the following report on Rob Grube. Grube, 26, started today's final round of the RBC Canadian Open at St. George's at six-under-par 204, well behind leader Dean Wilson but in with a chance to win a big cheque. Grube got off to a good start today with a birdie on the first hole, but has bogied the fourth, fifth and sixth holes. Grube has won on the Canadian Tour this year and is fourth on its money list with $40,000 in earnings. Grube was an All-American at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. I happened to visit the amazing practice facility there after the U.S. Open and who was there but Grube? He was headed the next day back to the Canadian Tour. Allan has been telling me about Grube for a few years. You'll notice a reference to clothes Rob will wear should he ever qualify for the Masters. Suffice it to say that Allan has unusual tastes in golf apparel. If Grube wears clothes of Allan's design, well, he'll make John Daly's outfit look ordinary. Here's Allan's report, which he sent me after Grube's second-round 66.

"Rob is a great kid, he was the number one player on the Stanford team. He is completely dedicated to golf and is , as you can see, very good at it. His father and mother, John and Anne, are Skibo members and his uncle Bill used to own the house beside the second green at Dornoch. Rob has been over a few times, last when he was heading to the British Amateur I think at Sandwich about four years ago.We played round Dornoch together where he shot a cool 66 effortlessly. We have a pact that when he plays in his first Masters He will wear clothes that I design for him and we are all going to stay at the Butler cabin. He has been doing the groundwork of his career on the Canadian Tour and has had a couple of invites to the [European] Challenge Tour and done quite well there. I would say that his greatest strength is the fact that he is an intelligent kid and has a very compact swing with few elements to go wrong. I'm delighted to see him do so well and hope that he can capitalise on the great start he has had." -- Rubenstein

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MDF, AND NO WE’RE NOT TALKING PLYWOOD: John Daly wasn’t in contention for the Canadian Open title on Sunday but he’s still a good show on the golf course. However, anyone venturing to St. George’s on Sunday to catch the former big man play will be disappointed. Daly was designated by the PGA as an “MDF” - which means he made the cut but did not finish.

Follow me here... Regular PGA Tour events, which typically start with fields of 132, 144 or 156 players, have long had a 36-hole cut with the top 70 players and ties advancing to the final two rounds. But in 2008, in an effort to keep field sizes smaller, improve the pace of play and make pairings more manageable in the event of poor weather, the PGA Tour Policy Board enacted a new rule: The top 70 and ties still make the cut. But if the cut exceeds 78 players, only the number nearest to 70 continues in the tournament. The full PGA explanation is here if you want to read it.

In other words, he - and four other players - are not playing on Sunday.

Daly said on his Twitter feed that he’s not a fan of the rule either.

“It used to be a 72-hole tournament, shouldn't they let everyone play hard right to the end? MDF, 5 guys got cut today, 5

MDF, I'm not a big fan of the 3 day cut but if I could putt I wouldn't have to worry about it

The other four who did not improve their lot after Saturday’s third round were Arjun Atwal, Paul Azinger, Lee Janzen and Steve Lowry.

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GRIP IT AND RIP IT: Still with Daly, he might not be chalking up the wins but he is still one of the longest hitters off the tee. This week at St. George's he has the longest drive off the tee, that coming back in Thursday's first round off the 480-yard, par-4 14th. Daly drove the ball 376 yards on that hole (he ended up with par on that hole). In the third round, his 359 yard drive off the 486 yard, par-4 17th was the longest of the day. Of the 13 holes for which they have kept statistics on driving this week, Daly leads on eight of them (No. 4, 7, 9, 12, 14, 17 and 18). Only Charles Howell III outdrove Daly in round two (358 yards on the 459 par-4 5th)

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TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Dean Wilson is the answer to a pretty good trivia question: Name the only PGA Tour player in history to win, but never at stroke play. That would be Wilson, who won the 2006 International, which used the Stableford scoring system. That could all change on Sunday.

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IT'S MY PARTY AND I'LL PLAY IF I WANT TO: Now that’s a guaranteed way to get into a PGA Tour field. You’ve likely never heard of Ray Halbritter - unless you read the financial pages as opposed to the sports pages. The CEO of Turning Stone Resort & Casino had a press conference recently to talk about the upcoming Turning Stone Resort Championship event in two weeks time and the fact that he’s decided to enter himself in the field.... not the pro-am but the actual PGA event itself. What credentials, you ask, does Halbritter have to do this (besides the money)... well, it seems the 60 year old has been working hard at getting his game into shape for his debut.

“Over time, I got my handicap down to a 12, then a 7 and then to about a 2,” he tells the Syracuse Post Standard . That and that fact he passed a PGA of America player ability test last year, which, after going through the proper channels, earned him one of the four sponsor exemptions that each PGA Tour event is allowed to offer.

Halbritter has also been working with Rick Smith, former teacher to Phil Mickelson, to get his game in shape for the big debut.

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BACK ON THE (CYBER)WAGON: It didn’t take long for LPGA player Christina Kim to get back on the Twitter wagon. After kicking up a kerfuffle on Friday (see here), she tweeted that she would stop posting to her Twitter account. Well that lasted all of eight hours before this comment Saturday morning:

I don't mind tweeting at this time of day. Namely when the jerkwads are still sleeping since they were tweeting til 4am. Flying to Liverpool today, where I can get me some fish n chips, mushy peas and a pint of cider!!!

Welcome back Christina, we hardly missed ya.