Link: http://www.pgatour.com/2011/r/09/19/quick-18/

Quick 18: East Lake omissions, Rose's win

by Melanie Hauser, PGATOUR.COM Correspondent

1. Have to ask ... are you thinking about who made it to the TOUR Championship by Coca-Cola, or who didn't? Yes, all 30 players in the field could win, but we'll miss Jim Furyk, Ernie Els, Sergio Garcia and Rickie Fowler. All of 'em had their chances but ...
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2. One of these days, Justin Rose is going to grab our attention and hold on tight. He had two wins last year and not many noticed. Now, he puts everything together, walks off with the BMW Championship and straight into the conversation for the FedExCup title. It's been a long road since the 72nd hole at Royal Birkdale in 1998. Could this be the corner?

3. No one moved out of the respective top-10s/automatic qualifications for the U.S. or International Presidents Cup teams but ... there were a couple of very interesting battles down the stretch. At the top of the list? David Toms holding onto his spot in a head-to-head 18-hole battle with Brandt Snedeker.

4. How bad did Geoff Ogilvy want to make the Presidents Cup team? As badly as Greg Norman wanted him on it. Ogilvy turned it on at Cog Hill, made it to East Lake and Royal Melbourne with a seriously strong performance. When Ogilvy is playing like this, he's a must-have and it doesn't hurt that he has a house just 400 yards from the driving range at Royal Melbourne. As Norman told him, "Only one person knows Royal Melbourne better than you and that's me." Says it all.

5. First, we -- yes, Quick 18 included -- didn't see Webb Simpson coming and now we didn't see him hanging onto that top spot. Yet ... there he is leading a youthful Fab Five into East Lake. Yes, they have the inside track, but it's anyone's game.

6. Everyone's talking about Lexi Thompson's runaway win and ... those goofy LPGA rules. At 16, Thompson's a star in the making, an athletic player who can change the face of women's golf and the youngest player to win on the LPGA Tour (16 years, 7 months and 8 days). And she has to go to Q-School? Really? Count Quick 18 among those who think LPGA Commissioner Mike Whan might want to seriously rethink his stance. She's earned a spot on the LPGA Tour in 2012 -- period -- and should get a waiver. He gave her one into q-school and she will be 17 -- her birthday is Feb. 10 -- at the start of next season. It's dumb to force her to petition, dumber to make her play the final two legs of q-school. She won the first leg by, what, 10 shots? Expect to hear from Whan. And soon.

7. Fashionable ones were talking about ... . Simpson's plaid pants at last week's BMW Championship. Very Ralph Lauren, although Quick 18 likes it better as a home accent fabric. But the most fashion-forward trend still seems to be Fowler's flat-brims and 64-Crayola box colors. Galleries are filled with Fowler-ites.

7. The best news for Sean Foley this month had little to do with Rose, another of his pupils, winning the BMW. As Golf World/Golf Channel's Tim Rosaforte reports, it was a successful 22-minute surgery at Winnie Palmer Hospital on his newborn son Kieran. Kieran was born August 26 with a congenital diaphragmatic hernia, meaning part of his belly had pushed his heart to the right side of his chest. A blessing and a reminder that it's not always just about the golf. "I don't know if I'd call it a total medical miracle, but it was pretty close,'' Foley said.

8. Last week's Vivendi Seve Trophy -- won by the Great Britain and Ireland team by the way -- reminded us of that initial push to have Seve's British Open fist-pump likeness replace Harry Vardon's on the European Tour logo. Where does it stand with those powers that be? Good question. Re-opening the conversation certainly can't hurt, so . .

9. All in the family ... U.S. Senior Amateur champ Louis Lee was prodded into entering the event by his brother Stanford, the 2007 Senior Am champ who he had to beat in the quarterfinals.

10. A piece of mental lint for you ... This is the second straight year Bo Van Pelt has made it to East Lake on the number. Yes, he's No. 30 again.

11. Tweet of the week goes to Aaron Baddeley, who proves he can laugh at himself: @AaronBadds: Just finished doing an "improv" show at Chicago's famous "second city"! Im def no actor but was a lot of fun making a fool of myself!

12. Talk all you want about Camilo Villegas slamming his fist in frustration when he didn't make it to East Lake. The one who didn't -- at least in public -- was Fowler, who has yet to recapture what we all saw at the British Open. Still, both will be in the Presidents Cup conversations.

13. Killeen Castle is the backdrop for this week's Solheim Cup where the U.S. goes in as a favorite. But ... this affair is always rough-and-tumble, spiked with lots of chatter and face decals and this is a year when nothing is what it seems. Keep an eye on assistant captain/player Juli Inkster. And while we're at it, Rosie Jones should ask Thompson to come over to the event -- like Europe's men's teams have invited young players in-waiting -- to let her get the feel of the Cup. Just sayin'.

14. Good reason for the women to follow the men's lead and have a U.S. vs. International cup too? The last three Solheim Cups have been played without the world's No. 1 player -- Yani Tseng this year and Lorena Ochoa the two previous -- and, this year, without six of the world's top 10.

15. What did Martin Kaymer do on his week off? Test drove the new BMW5 -- -- and suited up, strapped in and had a blast in one of BMW's Formula One cars.

16. The Japanese Tour fined its superstar Ryo Ishikawa $26,000 for pulling out of two tournaments -- the Kansai Open and the Toshin Tournament -- in August and September. "Rules are rules," the tour's executive director Andy Yamanaka told Reuters. "They are put in place to protect the tournaments. They are not rules only for Ryo."

17. Just in case you missed it, Tiger Woods slipped to 49th in the Official World Golf Ranking, but that's good enough to earn a sponsor's exemption into his own event -- the Chevron World Challenge.

18. And . . bonus! Former Secretary of State Condi Rice drops by South Bend for a pep rally and a football game and leaves with an Irish win and a hole-in-one on the 14th hole at Notre Dame's Warren Golf Course.