He’s Really Stretching This Vacation

He’s not at Kapalua for the season-opening Mercedes Champions and he hasn’t swung a golf club since he had knee surgery last month, but Tiger Woods always seems to make news even when he’s not playing.

This week, he was named the PGA Tour’s player of the year for the fourth consecutive year. Just goes to show what happens when you win five times -- two of them majors -- in only 18 tour events.

Right now, he’s probably resting up at his home at Isleworth, near Orlando, Fla., after a vacation in Sweden with his girlfriend, Elin Nordegren.

They spent four days at her home in Parlstrom, which is near Skelleftea, if you must know. Woods later reported it was cold in Sweden.

Woods and Nordegren also visited Stockholm, where they had dinner at Den Gyldene Freden, a restaurant that has been around for 280 years, which may also be about the same amount of time it takes to get a woman into Augusta National.

By the way, Woods has won 27 of his last 78 events in the last four years, so he averages a victory every third tournament

Program Note

The tentative plan calls for Phil Mickelson to play his first tournament at Phoenix, Jan. 23-26, before defending his title the next week at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic.

Early entries at the Hope, which has a winner’s share of $810,000, include Charles Howell III, Rich Beem, David Toms, Justin Leonard and Jerry Kelly -- all of them in the top 10 from last year’s money list.

Masters Update

From stand-up comic Will Durst, on a couple of New Year’s resolutions:

“Golfer Tiger Woods: Resolves to contract a nagging ear infection until the second weekend of April, allowing him to ignore any and all questions about Augusta National’s women’s policy.

“Augusta National Chairman Hootie Johnson: Resolves to allow women into Augusta National Golf Club under certain conditions. The conditions include a drastic drop in the temperature and an icy buildup in and around hell.”

More Augustagate

Todd Manzi, 41, is a former marketing executive from Tampa who has plunged into a new career: a four-week-old Web site called theburkstopshere.com. Manzi, who devotes 50 hours a week to the site, clearly isn’t siding with Martha Burk, chair of the National Council of Women’s Organizations, in the Masters debate. How do we know this? On Manzi’s site, you can buy golf balls with Burk’s likeness on them.

Club News

Adams Golf came up with an innovative name for its new titanium driver -- the Redline ... because it pushes the legal limits of conformity right up to the .830 COR limit. Tom Watson is using a Redline driver with a 8.5-degree loft. Adams also has a new line of Redline fairway woods and Larry Nelson is using a three-wood with a 13-degree loft.

TV Times

News item: A USA Network release calls Bill Macatee and Peter Kostis “the longest-running golf announcing team on television.”

Reaction: USA must have been holding its breath for years waiting for Ken Venturi to retire so it could finally use that sentence.

Power Up

According to Sporting News, the most powerful person in sports is New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, but the first athlete on the ranking list is Woods at 25th, one spot ahead of CBS Sports chief Sean McManus, whose network just happens to train its cameras on Woods quite a bit, and five spots ahead of PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem.

Also, in what must have been done for a laugh, Johnson and Burk are tied at 40th.