Golf World - April 30, 2012

Just in…

�� Golf won’t be an Olympic sport until

2016, but Ernie Els has been named as an ambassador for the 2012 South Africa team. Els was one of five people appointed “to inspire and mentor” athletes by South Africa’s Olympic Committee. … Citing his golf achievements and his humanitarian work, the House of Representatives voted 373-4 to award a Congressional Gold Medal to Jack Nicklaus. The legislation will now be voted on by the Senate.

Arnold Palmer was awarded the
medal in 2009. … Nicklaus and Palmer
are among those who will take part in
an 18-hole scramble exhibition, May 5,
after the second round of the Champi-
ons Tour’s Insperity Championship at
The Woodlands (Texas) Tournament
course. Gary Player, Lee Trevino,
Don January, Miller Barber, Gene
Littler, David Grahan and Dave
Stockton also will participate in the
competition that begins after the last
tee-time of the official tournament. …
The European Tour announced the
BM W Masters, a $7-million event to
be held Oct. 25-28 at Lake Malaren GC
in Shanghai, will be added to the tour’s
2012 schedule. The tournament, won
by Rory McIlroy in 2011 when it was
unaffiliated with any tour and didn’t
get World Ranking points, will be
held the week before the WGC-HSBC
Champions, also in China, and held
opposite the PGA Tour-sanctioned
CIMB Asia Pacific Classic in Malay-
sia. … Dave Stockton, winner of the
1970 and 1976 PGA Championship
and captain of the U.S. team during
the “War by the Shore” Ryder Cup
at Kiawah Island in 1991, has won
the PGA of America’s Distinguished
Service Award for 2012. Stockton won
10 times on the PGA Tour and 14 times
on the Champions Tour, including the
1996 U.S. Senior Open. Since 2009
he has focused on teaching putting
and the short game with sons Ron
and Dave, Jr. … The Golf Coaches
Association of America has selected
the eight-man teams for this sum-
mer’s Palmer Cup, to be held at Royal
County Down in Northern Ireland
June 28-30. The American team will
include: Blayne Barber, Auburn;
Derek Ernst, UNLV; Corbin Mills,
Clemson; Patrick Rodgers,
Stanford; Justin Thomas, Ala-
bama; James White, Georgia
Tech; Chris Williams, Wash-
ington; Andrew Yun, Stanford.
Playing for the European squad
will be David Booth, Stirling;
Julien Brun, TCU; Sebastian
Cappelen, Arkansas; Daan
Huizing, Utrecht; Robert
Karlsson, Liberty; Thomas
Pieters, Illinois; Graeme
Robertson, Stirling; Pontus
Widegren, UCLA. Ernie Els

commendable citizenship along with excellence on the course and in the classroom. The Nelson Award is given by the Golf Coaches’ Association of American in conjunction with Cleveland Golf/Srixon.

Frittelli, a geography major, carries a 3. 35 GPA; White, on track to graduate with a degree in business management, has a 3.69 GPA. Frittelli, who hails from Pretoria, South Africa, and White, who is from Acworth, Ga., were selected from a group of finalists that included Iowa’s Chris Brant, Baylor’s Joakim Mikkelsen and Dartmouth’s Peter Williamson.

Will Darren Clarke be able to shake his slump coming off a honeymoon? That question will be answered quickly as the British Open champion returns to competitive golf at the Ballantine’s Championship in South Korea. Clarke remarried April 11 in a quiet ceremony on a beach in the Bahamas. Wearing all white, the 43-year-old exchanged vows with Alison Campbell, a former Miss Northern Ireland who owns a modeling agency. Just 18 people attended, the only golfer being countryman Graeme McDowell, who introduced the couple in 2009. Also in attendance were Clarke’s two sons, Tyrone and Conor. Clarke lost his first wife, Heather, to cancer in 2006.

Off to a rough start on the European Tour, a well-traveled Peter Uihlein hit the reset button by spending more than a week working with Butch Harmon in Las Vegas. After a T- 12 in his first event on the Challenge Tour, Uihlein had back-to-back missed cuts in the Commercialbank Qatar Masters and the Dubai Desert Classic. He traveled to India for a T-57 in the Avantha Masters, then to the PGA Tour for a missed cut at the Puerto Rico Open. In his most recent start he withdrew from the Trophee Hassan II in Morocco after an opening-round 83. “He had some confidence issues and some mechanical issues,” Harmon said. “He’ll be all right.” Next up, a shorter trip, to Fort Worth for the Colonial.

richard heathcote/Getty imaGes

With a first and a second-place finish as a 21-year-old rookie, New York City-born Korean-American John Huh has captured the attention of U.S. Ryder Cup captain Davis Love III. “I will put him on my dot.com scoring favorites!” Love texted Sunday night, adding, “Put Bud Cauley on, too.”