Monster just a little pussy cat

Caddie's Role: The Blue Monster? Come on, it was more like the Yellow Pussy Cat at last week's Ford Championship at Doral, outside Miami.

The advertisements greeted the visitor to the Doral area all the way along North West 36th Street. Phil v the Blue Monster fluttered on one lamp-post. Tiger v the Blue Monster on the next and Vijay v the Blue Monster on another banner.

It was to be three separate heavyweight bouts, but it turned out to be three mismatches: the Blue Monster was in the wrong weight category.

It was at least out of place among such esteemed company. Tiger won with 24 under, Phil one short at minus 23.

The problem was the interior design, if you like. Doral is a very good golf course, but the course set-up for last week's event was a talking point around the clubhouse.

Miami was very welcoming to its guests. Some of them congregated on Monday last week in order to play with the "big cheeses" of Ford. The PGA Tour allows this sort of hospitality by the sponsors of chosen players as long as they entertain away from the tournament course.

They played at the exclusive Indian Creek club, a short helicopter ride away. The field this year was clearly of a better quality. Last year there was serious mutterings about the pedigree of the entrants due to it being the first event of the Southern Swing, when the tour moves for the first time after a couple of months out west.

Not so long ago 10 under par used to be considered a good score at this event; they said in the caddie shack that it used to be a racetrack. The ball ran and ran, and ran even farther on the greens unless it was struck perfectly. It was considered as long and tough a course set-up as the US Tour could throw at their best players. The scores on Sunday would seem to suggest that the course needs to be either renamed or set up a different way.

Back in the good old days there were two types of golfers who used to win around Doral. Either good ball-strikers and/or Floridians. The link between winners and this statistic is that they all understand grain in the greens. Last year we played with Phil Mickelson in the third round and he struggled on the greens. He could not see a line and therefore could not hole a putt. His long-serving caddie, Jim "Bones" Makay, reads all of Phil's putts. He could see the lines at Doral last year, but his articulation of what he saw did not translate to Phil. This is because Phil had no clue on the Bermuda greens.

He is a west coast poa annua child, not a Bermuda baby.

This event is sponsored by Ford, Mickelson's sponsor. They, naturally, want their man to do well at their event. This is what leads me to the question of how come the course was set up this year to suit a player who hits it a long way, not necessarily straight, and who likes greens with as little grain as possible.

I wonder did the people at Ford ask Phil? What can we do to make this course more playable for you? If I were Phil, I would have answered: take the grain out of the greens and keep the rough down, the way I can hit the ball anywhere and still make loads of birdies.

This is what happened at Doral. The greens were over-seeded with rye grass in preparation for the event and the result was that there was little or no grain compared to last year. The rough was minimal, which meant that with a superior short game you could go at the pins with impunity. Getting up and down was never a problem.

For a course that used to be a runway with not very low scoring, the policy of little rough and soft greens is playing into the hands of much celebrated long hitters with deadly wedge play.

So who did we get in the final twoball on Sunday last? The two boy wonders from America. Phil Mickelson hit 17 out of 42 fairways in the first three rounds, and averaged 25 putts a round. Tiger hit 19 out of 42 fairways and had an average of 26 putts per round.

Get them on a penal course and they are not going to feature as prominently with these statistics. Get them on a course that has been set up to reward swashbuckling play with little fear of punishment and you get them locked in a head-to-head battle for pole position like you did last Sunday.

Who wins? The big golf machine.

An unprecedented 35,000 people showed up to watch Mickelson versus Woods, so the tournament was a success. But they are going to have to come up with a more appropriate name for the course.

Watching a heavyweight beat up a lightweight too often becomes monotonous and gory.

Watch the Tiger maul the Pussy Cat next year may well be the advertising catch phrase for the first event of the Southern Swing.

If those responsible for setting up the course decide they want the same Sunday pairings next year, then let's get ready for the contrived championship that we are getting too used to observing in an increasingly homogenised form of professional golf.