Thursday President Cup Pairings

They just announced the pairings for the Thursday Foursomes.

Here they are ...

International vs. American

Tim Clark and Mike Weir vs. Anthony Kim and Phil Mickelson (3:10 PM ET)

Adam Scott and Ernie Els vs. Hunter Mahan and Sean O'Hair (3:22 PM ET)

Vijay Singh and Robert Allenby vs. Lucas Glover and Stewart Cink (3:34 PM ET)

Angel Cabrera and Camilo Villegas vs. Kenny Perry and Zach Johnson (3:46 PM ET)

Geoff Ogilvy and Ryo Ishikawa vs. Tiger Woods and Steve Stricker (3:58 PM ET)

Retief Goosen and Y.E. Yang vs. Jim Furyk and Justin Leonard (4:10 PM ET)

You have to admit, the pairings of Mickelson and Kim are a carryover from the Ryder Cup, and I love Stricker playing with Woods.

It's weird to admit this, but the Goosen-Yang pairing looks like the most solid on the International squad.

Thoughts? Prayers? Hopes? Drop it.

The New FTC Regulations and You

As you have probably heard by now, the Federal Trade Commission has decided that starting December 1, bloggers are going to be forced to give information on product reviews and such, for some reason I'm not too sure about.

Here, the skinny ...

The F.T.C. said that beginning on Dec. 1, bloggers who review products must disclose any connection with advertisers, including, in most cases, the receipt of free products and whether or not they were paid in any way by advertisers, as occurs frequently.

So, I'm going to do one better for the FTC ... if I review a product on this site, I got it in the mail and was able to use it for an extended amount of time. With that said, I do get stuff in the mail that I don't like, don't enjoy and won't write about, just because I feel the negative press is more damaging to the company than nothing being said at all.

A few products I've received and loved -- The Titleist AP2 Irons with 6.5 Project X Shafts, the TaylorMade Spider putter, the new Titleist ProV1x balls, BlackWidow spikes (which, ironically enough, won their first major this PGA Championship, with Y.E. Yang sporting the suffocating spikes), anything Golf Pride, SkyCaddie SG5, Bushnell Tour V2, Puma golf clothing and basically any book that someone sends me to read and review.

So, yeah, if I'm reviewing something, it's for a purpose, as is the case with almost any website around today. Thanks, FTC! You guys are really helping the world.

Greg Norman Isn't Having the Best Couple of Weeks

First it was the break up, and now the guy is making his way around Harden Park with a damn cast on. If Adam Scott chokes, and it's Greg Norman's pick of the Australian that does him in, it will certainly seem like centuries ago when he was leading that British Open.

Getty Images

Will the Presidents Cup Always Be Ryder's Step-Sister?

Back in 2003, when the Presidents Cup was being hosted by Gary Player and the country of South Africa, the matches, as you probably know, ended in a tie after all play was complete.

So, Jack Nicklaus and Player decided to pick their best two players, Tiger Woods for America and Ernie Els for the International squad (talk about a dated pick), and the two went toe-to-toe until darkness engulfed the course and the captains decided the pressure was too much. The matches that year ended in a tie, and basically defined the Presidents Cup as we know it.

See, watching that playoff was exciting, but it wasn't "sit on the edge of your seat, scream at the top of your lungs for Justin Leonard's putt to hit the back of the hole on my god it went in HOLY SHIT THIS IS THE BEST MOMENT OF MY LIFE!" exciting. It was the Presidents Cup. It pits the United States against vanilla characters like Vijay Singh, Adam Scott, Mike Weir, K.J. Choi, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen (honest to god, when I started to type out the vanilla characters for the International team, I intended to list two or three, but they kept coming out ... that is how intimidating and interesting these guys are).

The question is, will it ever gain the steam the Ryder Cup has? The players, no matter their obvious push for payments ever year, want to beat the hell out of the other side when those matches roll around. For a week, Americans hate Sergio Garcia more than they normally do, and Europeans poke fun of Phil Mickelson. It is the international competition that makes our world so great. It has the history and the moments to go with it, and just breaths better than the Presidents.

Yep, golf fans will be huddled around their televisions this weekend, watching the top players in the world, sans Europe, try and take out the other team. It'll be fun, because watching a different type of golf is always fun (also why I think the PGA Championship should be match play). But, it will never be the Ryder Cup, and that's disappointing. No matter how hard the PGA pushes for it, we will always look at this event as something highlighted by a hat of a caddie. "Tiger Who?" If Colin Montgomerie's caddie had sported that on American soil, we might have seen our first ever golf brawl.

Stringer, AFP

Rickie Fowler Joins Puma, Is 'Edgy'

If you didn't hear by now, Ricky Fowler, the 20-year-old that can beat us all at golf, went pro and signed a deal with Puma Golf, joining a handful of pros that sport the Puma label (hey Erica!).

When he signed with Puma, they made him some monster truck golf cart, and gave it to him at the Nationwide Event he was playing that week. I heard the greenskeeper was really a fan of the cart. I think someone even overheard him saying, "Man, I hope he drives that thing on the greens!"

Wait, What Is Going On?

I've attached the following photo to this story for a multitude of reasons, most being the facial expressions of both parties.

See, Greg Norman and Chris Everet (I'll avoid the journalist gush here on combined majors, as assigned by AP Style Guide 11.0) decided to separate 15 months after getting hitched, a pretty surprising conclusion since anytime you'd see these two people they were smiling like Seal every morning when he realizes who he conned into marrying him.

In a statement, the couple said only, ``We will remain friends and supportive of one another's family.'' The statement said they requested privacy for them and their families.

I love when they release these types of statements. I really wish when normal humans broke up, they could release similar things to the public. Like, when me and my ex broke up, it would have been great to read something like, "Jane Doe says, through spokespeople, that although she once cared and loved for Shane Bacon, she hopes that he, quietly, dies and curls up into a vat of smelling worms."

I really hope Drew Carrey is the host of this show when it becomes big. "How Real Humans Break Up."

Wait, where were we? Oh, yeah, I just thought it was strange that Evert and Norman broke up. Hey, at least that's one less person Greg has to tote to the Presidents Cup this week. More wine on Norman Air!

Andrew Redington, Getty Images

This Isn't Confusing At All

As you probably know, the Presidents Cup kicks off next week at Harding Park, the municipal jewel in the middle of beautiful San Francisco. What you may not have heard of is that the greens got scorched during the summer because one of the men fertilizing isn't so good at fertilizing.

Now, this news comes out ... the course the players will face isn't really what you'd play if you went to tee it up with some buddies.

The first order of business in preparing to watch 24 of the world's finest players roam our little municipal track: Forget the customary order of holes. PGA Tour officials, in an effort to increase the odds that matches reach Harding's signature closing stretch, have rerouted the course for the Presidents Cup. So the event will feature the following sequence of holes.

Front nine: 10-11-12-13-4-5-6-2-3

Back nine: 14-8-15-16-17-18-1-7-9

Honestly, did they just toss a bunch of numbers in a hat and draw them out randomly? I think that might not be a bad move for 2010 so people can stop thinking golf isn't a sport.

I don't see why they stop here. Maybe just each hole at a different golf course. They could play Harden Park's first hole, the Olympic Club Ocean Course number two and maybe the Lakes third. Then, drive down to Pasatiempo to play the fourth and maybe the fifth could be the game I play daily, called "try and chip the ball over the couch and stop it before it goes into the kitchen." I'm not gonna lie, I'm tough to beat on that hole.