This Week in Golf

PGA Tour – The Tour travels to Connecticut this week for the Travelers Championship at TPC River Highlands. Most every PGA Tour event deserves a good spot on the schedule, and the Travelers is one of them. Unfortunately, they have been stuck with the week following a U.S. Open on the other coast. Therefore, the field is not particularly stellar despite a golf course with a fabulous finishing stretch of holes. The Travelers Championship has provided exciting drama on Sunday from Kenny Perry’s final 63 to win last year to Hunter Mahan and Jay Williamson’s dual three years ago. The big names that showed up in Hartford this week include Padraig Harrington, Retief Goosen, Adam Scott, Perry, Hunter Mahan, Rickie Fowler, John Daly, Justin Rose, and Vijay Singh. Stewart Cink is my pick to win this week. As a two-time champion (1997, 2008) in Connecticut, I don’t think I can go wrong with Cink, who also got into a playoff here in ‘98. He obviously likes the course, and he had a recent top ten finish at the Memorial. Hunter Mahan is another horse for this course, and he will serve as my sleeper pick. He has not played extremely well since his victory at the Phoenix Open in February, but he finished in first or second at River Highlands each year from 2006-2008. So watch for him too. The boys at CBS will deliver the coverage from Hartford over the weekend.