Golf

The wait is finally over. Tiger Woods announced Thursday on his personal website that he will be in the field next week at the Accenture Match Play in Marana, Ariz., a tournament Woods won last year over Stewart Cink.

So far, 2009 has not been Phil Mickelson's year. Lefty has played in three tournaments, missing the cut in one and making just over $30,000 combined in the other two, putting him a measly 136th on the FedEx Cup points list.

What is the best way to break out of a nasty slump? Play, and play well, at a tournament you won the year before.

Right as this story goes live, Ryo Ishikawa (pronounced "Yo") will be hitting his first tee shot on the PGA Tour at this weekend's Northern Trust Open (leaderboard). Why should you care?

Because the 17-year-old Japanese phenomenon is Tiger Woods meets Michelle Wie meets Yao Ming.

Here's the deal: on Tuesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Stanford Financial with defrauding its customers out of $8 billion.

Today, CNBC.com's Darren Rovell writes that Vijay Singh, who just signed a sponsorship deal with Stanford Financial last month, will continue to endorse the company despite, you know, the possibility that they bilked their clients out of a few bucks.

It's like a game of Clue, only the players are a bunch of "friends" of a golf star that may or may not be returning to the course over the next few weeks. Like, "I'll take Tiger Woods, with a 4-iron, at Doral."

Now Tiger's caddie Steve Williams is the latest to chime in on when Mr. Woods will be gracing us with his golfing presence, telling a New Zealand television station that Woods is "a few weeks" from returning to the PGA Tour.

The PGA suffered a similarly embarrassing fate to NASCAR today, when the final round of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am was canceled to due to inclement weather conditions.

As a result, Dustin Johnson, the leader through 54 holes, was handed a big, shiny trophy, a hefty paycheck, and a free ticket to the 2009 Masters. The tournament's final round was originally postponed to Monday, but the rain picked up again this morning and forced Tour officials to cancel the final round.

Tiger Woods is coming. The when and where are still to be determined, but the propaganda machine is, with each passing day, gearing up in anticipation of the inevitable.

Usually, when athletes return from an eight-month layoff brought on by serious injury, the expectations are dampened. In Tiger's case, it's just the opposite. Part of me thinks it's all some elaborate PR plan to intimidate his opponents even before he tees it up. But there's also the very real possibility that Woods is better now than ever because that seems like something he'd do. Just to be spiteful.

The final round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am was set to begin at 7:35 AM PT, but due to inclement weather, the pros are still in the clubhouse and the ams have been, in the words of CBS golf analyst Jim Nantz, "excused." Which is a nice way of saying, "Yeah, sorry about that, but this year's event is just a three-round affair for the hackers."

UPDATE: the fourth round is now postponed until Monday. Hopefully.