Lots of Things I Wanted to Mention Today

I found several things that, while most didn't merit a post on their own, they were all things I found interesting. So here they all are...

First, tournaments. Several players are making their 2018 debuts this week and those events will be on TV:

• Phil Mickelson makes his debut at the CareerBuilder Challenge tomorrow.
• Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose make their debuts at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship. That will be starting TONIGHT at 10:30pm ET on GC, so don't forget. (DJ's in this event also.)
• Sergio makes his debut at the SMBC Singapore Open this week as well. If I saw correctly, that event will be tape-delayed starting Thursday night. (Patrick Reed and Pat Perez are in this event, as is Kurt Kitayama, a young American player who just got his card on the Asian Tour.) [UPDATE: I put Reed in the wrong event -- he's at CareerBuilder. And the GC coverage of the Singapore Open starts Wednesday night before the HSBC. I really got these events wrong!]
• The Champions Tour itself debuts this week in Hawaii at the Mitsubishi Electric Championship. You get one guess who the defending champion is!

And the Web.com Tour's Bahamas Great Exuma Classic at Sandals Emerald Bay did get finished on time Tuesday. 19-year-old Korean rookie Sungjae Im won going away. This is noteworthy because K.J. Choi is apparently his mentor... and apparently doing a very good job of it! If Im can get a few PGA Tour exemptions and play this well, he might be on the PGA Tour sooner rather than later.

Second... "wildlife." I don't know how else to categorize this, but I saw it over at golfchannel.com and... well, it's two of my least favorite animals. Richard Nadler saw them "cuddling" while he was playing golf in Florida last Friday.



I can do without them in MY foursome, thank you very much.

Finally, Nick Faldo announced formation of the Major Champions Invitational on Tuesday. The link takes you to the video, in case my embedded video below won't play. The short version is this: The event will be held on March 12-14 (the week of Arnie's event) and will feature both male and female players in their teens from all over the world, each chosen by various major champions to be on their "teams."



In addition to Faldo, a bunch of major champions have already pledged their support. The link lists Jordan Spieth, Rory Mcllroy, Annika Sorenstam, Adam Scott, Henrik Stenson, Jerry Pate and John Daly, but Nick also mentioned Ernie Els and said that he hopes to get Jack Nicklaus and some others involved. Apparently the idea is very popular with the players Nick has talked to, so this could end up being a big junior event going forward.