A year ago, it still looked easy for Tiger Woods.
He came to the BMW Championship at Chicago’s Cog Hill and shot a third-round 62 to build a seven-shot lead to take into the final day.
He then closed with a 3-under 68 for an eight-shot victory over Jim Furyk and Marc Leishman.
It was Woods’ sixth victory of the 2009 season, and propelled him to the FedExCup title and its $10 million bonus.
He has not won on the PGA Tour since.
“It felt like we had a tournament within a tournament,” Furyk said. “Tiger was seven ahead. He was kind of running away. It was kind of a tournament for second place.”
At least something about the week was interesting.
More than Woods’ victory, last year’s BMW is remembered for the cruelty it dispatched to Brandt Snedeker.
With 30 players advancing from Cog Hill to the season-ending Tour Championship, Snedeker, playing in the final group with Woods, walked to the 18th green needing only a bogey to assure he advanced. He then missed a 12-foot par putt followed by a shocking misfire from three feet that caught the left lip of the cup and came out. Snedeker was so stunned that he missed the next two putts and took triple bogey.
“I can’t believe I did this,” Snedeker said. “I just made a mess of it.”
That allowed John Senden to capture the 30th spot by less than a half-point over Ian Poulter, two players who were hardly clutch down the stretch. Senden had a 90-yard wedge to the green at the 15th and chunked it so badly that it traveled only 50 yards. Two holes later, he nearly hit a bunker shot over the green and into the water to make double bogey.
Senden finished with 1,532.41 points. Poulter, who hit his approach into the water on the 18th, wound up with 1,531.95 points.
But a lot has changed this year. Tiger is still looking for his first win since last year’s BMW, and now his hopes for qualifying for the Tour Championship look slim. Will the world’s No. 1 golfer finally get a win? What you need to know about Cog Hill, plus who’s hot and who’s not are all in this week’s FanHouse Roundtable.
GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) — 
GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) — 
GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) — If 
NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — The PGA Tour likes the idea of making its game more appealing on television. It should. TV money — the bulk coming from broadcast partners NBC and CBS — generate more than half of the tour’s total revenue. Estimates indicate television provided $268.1 million of the PGA Tour’s total revenue of $496.8 million last year.
The 2010 U.S. Open tees off Thursday at Pebble Beach Golf Links. The expectations are high, as the historic course prepares to host one of golf’s most anticipated events. 
Notes, quotes and a week of golf gossip. …
