The Knuckleheads of the Day award

Today's winners are Gareth Utley and his employer, The Mobile Press-Register. They get the award for the following.

The Mitchell Company LPGA Tournament of Champions may need to be renamed The Mitchell Company LPGA Tournament of Koreans.

The final field list was released Tuesday evening -- the last day for players to commit to next week's $1 million tournament at Magnolia Grove's Crossings Course -- and 43 of the 51 eligible players are scheduled to compete.

Among that group are 16 South Korean-born players, including the LPGA's newest member, 23-year-old Jin Joo Hong.

Hong punched her last-minute ticket to Mobile over the weekend when she won the KOLAN-Hana Bank Championship in Gyeongbuk, South Korea, her first appearance in an LPGA tournament.

The victory came with a one-year exemption on the LPGA Tour and a berth in the TOC, so she hastily changed her schedule to add a trip to the United States.

It's the third straight year a member of the Korean tour won this tournament and made their American LPGA debut at the TOC. Shi Hyun Ahn and Jee Young Lee paved the way the past two years.

There were 43 players committed to the tournament last week. Two players (Meg Mallon and Beth Daniel) pulled out and two players (Hong and Lee) were added to keep the number at 43.

Noticeably absent from the field is Karrie Webb, the 2000 TOC winner who had played here every year since the tournament moved to Magnolia Grove in 1999. It was previously announced that Annika Sorenstam is playing in Greg Norman's Merrill Lynch Shootout next week.

The TOC is open to LPGA winners from 2003-06 plus active LPGA Hall of Fame members. The others players eligible but not competing are Rosie Jones, Betsy King, Catriona Matthew and Nicole Perrott.

The field will be headlined by Mexico's Lorena Ochoa, who is on pace to end Sorenstam's five-year run as the tour's player of the year plus win the money title and Vare Trophy for lowest scoring average.

Ochoa, a five-time winner this year, will be trying to win her third straight tournament.

"I think we have a very strong field," said tournament director Jim Johnson. "In Lorena, I think we have the best player in the world right now. She's having a phenomenal year.

"It's good to have Se Ri Pak, a two-time winner, back after she missed a couple of years with injuries. You've got some other great young players like Cristie Kerr, Paula Creamer and our defending champion Christina Kim. It's going to make for a great tournament week."

Six of the players in the field will be TOC newcomers, including LPGA rookie of the year Seon Hwa Lee. Other first-timers will be Meena Lee, Sung Ah Yim, Joo Mi Kim, Brittany Lincicome and Hong.

Mi Hyun Kim, who had played here previously, requalified for the TOC with a win this year.

Lets count the mistakes in this 500 word story.

1- Shi Hyun Ahn and Jee Young Lee didn't win back to back Korean stops on the LPGA tour. Ahn won the 2003 9 Bridges tournament while Lee won the 2005 9 Bridges. So it is three of the last four years, not four years in a row.

2- Meena Lee played in the 2005 TOC.

Another possible mistake

1- Utley notes that Jee Young Lee was 'added' to the field. Lee qualified through her win at the 2005 9 Bridges, Jin Joo Hong by winning a tournament last week. Lee's qualification is over a year old, and hardly fits the description of being 'added'.(Unless Lee said she wouldn't play the TOC and changed her mind)

Just one more example of shoddy reporting in the Golf MSM. If you want to read prior examples, click here, here, here and here. Don't get me started on Golf World magazine and their idiotic covers.

The hack work done by golf reporters with the exception of Craig Dolch at the Palm Beach Post, is just ridiculous. The worst of them all is Doug Ferguson at Associated Press who yesterday gave his latest example of not getting simple facts straight.

Azinger played Faldo four times in the Ryder Cup and had a 2-0-2 record. He played on winning teams in 1991 and 1993, and the United States lost in 1989 and
2002.

Any respectable golf fan knows the US tied the European team in the 1989 Ryder Cup. Then Ferguson reported at this year's US Open that no Australian had won a major since Norman in 1993. The correct answer was Steve Elkington in 1995.

Why does the MSM allow these mistakes to continue? I called AP with the correction last night, they never fixed it. Golf must not be an important enough topic for mistakes to be corrected in the eyes of most of the MSM. The media outlets who employ these hacks are just as responsible for this shoddy reporting in my opinion.

It really gnaws at me because I've tried getting press credentials to cover the ADT Championship here in West Palm Beach. I've been turned down two years in a row. I'm not a journalist, just a blogger. If Doug Ferguson or Gareth Utley are news reporters, I'm William Randolph Hearst!

Gareth Utley and his employer, The Mobile Press-Register, are today's Knuckleheads of t he day.

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