The LPGA heats up for summer
Among the many reasons to prefer the LPGA to the PGA Tour is because the best women always seem to be in the mix at the most important events, as opposed to the other tour, where entire seasons can go by without a meaningful battle of the big boys. Last week's duel between would-be fifth majors was a case in point. The Players Championship offered an ugly scrum between two journeymen (Paul Goydos and Jeff Quinney) and one putative headliner who in reality hadn't won a thing in years (Sergio Garcia). At the Michelob Ultra Open -- "our Players Championship," according to Annika Sorenstam -- the LPGA served up an excess of star power, intrigue and dazzling golf.

My Shot: Taking Baby Steps, Just Like Tiger
Tiger Woods has perfected the art of saying nothing in his press conferences, but sometimes he can't help himself. He is occasionally profound and often sensible. Asked once to summarize what his father, Earl, gave him, Tiger answered in a word: love. When asked about making a swing change or his wife's goal of running a marathon or his own rehab from surgery, he often repeats the same phrase: "You have to take baby steps."

Annika Sorenstam through the years

The 10 Best Duels in U.S. Open History

Game plan: How Tiger will attack Torrey Pines
Tiger is the odds-on favorite to win the U.S. Open. We asked his swing coach Hank Haney what the keys will be for the World No. 1.

The Secrets of Tiger's Amazing Mind

Angel Cabrera remains thoughtful, fiery and blunt after his U.S. Open triumph
"Just because I won the U.S. Open doesn'tmean I'm going to change the way I live,"Angel Cabrera told Sports Illustrated last August in his native Argentina,for a profile co-written by Luis Fernando Llosa. "I'm going to do whatI've always done."

The Phil Who Could Have Been Jack
The living room of Phil Rodgers' San Diego bungalow looks like a memorabilia shop -- full of relics of a career that was and another that might have been. A large framed photo of Cypress Point adorns a wall covered in tartan wallpaper. A thigh-high winner's trophy from the 1955 International Jayvee golf tournament stands near the patio door. A plastic Masters cup rests on the coffee table. But the real conversation piece hangs above the television: a 1963 Sports Illustrated cover that features a flat-topped Rodgers flashing a toothy grin. The cover line reads: PHIL RODGERS, THE BRASHEST MAN IN GOLF.

Woods doesn't get mad, he gets 'mad decisive'
Tiger Woods is two down toJ.B. Holmes, and fuming.

Twenty years after his first of back-to-back U.S. Open wins, we reveal what made Curtis Strange tick
At the 1985 Panasoniclas Vegas Invitational, after closing the third round with a brain-cramp bogey, Curtis Strange, 30, stormed into the parking lot and made his worst swing of the day. His takeaway was perfect, but impact was a problem: flesh struck metal. "It was the darnedest thing," Strange recalls. "The hood of my car came up and hit my fist."