Monty's turn

Davis Love III continues to be the only inter-tier activity hovering between Tiers IV and V with a return to Tier IV this week. The Tiger Rule remains in effect causing Tim Clark to drop out of the tiers for the moment otherwise the list would extend to Miguel Angel Jimenez at World Number 43.

Weekend highlights:

• Colin Montgomerie made the golf portion of my weekend with that win in Hong Kong vaulting him up to 9th in the world rankings as I had hoped. Four "best golfer in GB&I" title holders in four weeks.
• The Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa did not award OWGR points this year, but they will begin doing so in 2006. I look forward to seeing the effects this has next year.
• With points not being used this year, Sergio Garcia was able to pull within one one-hundredth of a point of Ernie Els. Sergio will be losing points this week for certain, while Ernie's points are a little more complex, so I'm not going to venture a guess as to where they'll stand at the beginning of next week. Ernie did post a better finish than Sergio in Sun City although Sergio's troubles at the 17th lent to that.
• One thing about the Nedbank Golf Challenge that left me scratching my head was the stats from Sergio's scorecard. Granted every week is a new event, a new course, anything can happen from week to week, but still... This is the man who had the best record for Greens in Regulation on the PGA Tour in 2005 and a man with a notoriously bad putting record for the year. His putting was average for the week with a T5 in a field of 12 for putts per round. Of course this was only a single event, but his average of 27.5 putts per round for the week was better than the best putter on tour for 2005. Meanwhile, in GIR stats, Sergio came in at 11th out of 12 with a GIR% worse than the worst on tour as of the end of the 2005 PGA Tour season.