Columnist Adam Candee: Three reasons to keep watching

Adam Candee

Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2005 | 9:31 a.m.

Adam Candee covers golf for the Sun. Reach him at (702) 259-4085 or by e-mail at candee@lasvegassun.com.

If baseball teams finish racing for pennants and football teams start ironing their grids all at once, then it must be September.

And if September is here, then it must be time for the PGA tour's annual drunken bar fight to get the average sports fan to care about golf before the last nacho is dipped at Super Bowl parties from Pebble Beach to Bethpage.

Actually, I take that back -- a good drunken bar fight would draw excellent TV ratings.

The devil's advocate rightly wonders why you should care about a sport that blooms in April at Augusta, survives through the U.S. Open in June and meanders its way through baseball season until college and football dominates the national conscious.

The golfer's advocate - yeah, me - attempts to provide a trio of interesting stories to check while channel surfing between the ubiquitous morning Big Ten game and obligatory late afternoon Pac-10 contest for the next few Saturdays.

It is not, as the LPGA touts on its Web site, the "Super Bowl of women's professional golf." It is, however, the Ryder Cup of the LPGA and that counts for something. The American team is looking to avenge a dismal loss two years ago, this time on its home turf.

The Americans are headlined by 18-year-old rookie sensation Paula Creamer, who is dwarfing all comers as the story of the year on the women's circuit. She went so far as to essentially guarantee a win at a Solheim Cup news conference. The young hometown crew also features Lake Las Vegas resident Natalie Gulbis, fresh off her breakout year.

And therein lays the bonus for male viewers: Gulbis, Creamer, Cristie Kerr ... you just read over three dots and you should be able to connect them. It's worth a click.

Sure, the Michelin Championship secured sponsorship and is on as stable of footing as has been seen for a while. The PGA tour, though, is considering a number of options for its post-PGA Championship schedule come 2007 and any September or October event not named the Tour Championship has reason to sweat a bit.

Recent published reports indicate that the tour, acknowledging its fourth-class citizen status in the fall, is looking at a condensed schedule designed to build more drama and interest in a group of events that rarely draw strong fields.

How that could affect Las Vegas is still unclear and undefined. While the tour and its players love coming to town, this is still an event that had a "TBD" rudely filling its slot on the 2004 schedule for way too long. A reduced fall schedule, should it happen, could be heavy on the Florida tournaments as it builds toward the Tour Championship.

In any case, go check out the pros. Tournament organizers have all but given away tickets for the past two years, and the weather is just starting to become beautiful in the second week of October. You never know what you've got until it's gone, so don't let that be the case here.

Moore restarts his push for dough Thursday at the Canadian Open. His earnings are negligible at this point, low five-figure numbers that wouldn't register on the Nationwide Tour. While Moore's name will likely be thrown into the Q-school ring simply because applications are due today, he still hopes for three or four strong finishes that will help him avoid the gauntlet.

Moore's career is far from over if he has to go to Q-school to try for his tour card, and he would not be cooked even if he doesn't make it on his first attempt. The kid is too talented to be washed up any time soon.

His buzz, however, is in jeopardy of fading. The feel-good story of the amateur kid challenging at the Masters after his storybook amateur summer of 2004 is in need of a jolt of positive energy. The feeling here is still that Moore will provide that jolt, but sooner would be better than later.