And the tournament is underway: here’s the leaderboard. And here is Amen corner live!

“I’m probably not playing well enough to win, but I’m probably good enough to win if someone else doesn’t want to,” said Montgomerie.

“Have you seen how long that thing is? I don’t know where I would ever hit a sand wedge there” Phil Mickelson on Augusta

The pairings and tee times for thursday and friday are out.

Tiger Woods will begin his campaign for a fifth Masters title alongside Australia’s Robert Allenby and 2005 US amateur champion Edoardo Molinari.

Two times Masters champion Bernhard Langer will join up with Zach Johnson and Bart Bryant, both qualifying as top 40 players from the 2005 USPGA Tour money list.

XtremeCruiser posted some nice pictures of the Masters Practice Rounds over at golfdiscussions.com. Go check them out!

Update: more pics over at BBC.

At the Portuguese Open the play was interrupted not by bad weather or a streaker or an invasion of gophers but… skydivers:

Play had to be halted earlier in the day when a five-man team of parachutists came down on the course near to where British trio Scott Drummond, David Park and Robert Coles were playing.

One of the skydivers jettisoned a chute which floated down to the fifth fairway and his colleagues then dropped down on to the course to retrieve it.

Tournament official Paul Cargill said: “The players were just taken a bit by surprise but then got on with play. The skydivers were extremely apologetic.” (via)

Nonetheless, Paul Broadhurst equalled the course record with a 64.

Now heres a cool service: the live@17-cam from the TPC at sawgrass, showing live coverage from hole #17 only.

I kind of missed out on the coverage of the last events, but here I am back with a preview of this weeks tournaments:

The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass (satellite view) takes place at Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. One of the strongest fields this year will battle it out for a total purse of $8 million.

The Stadium Course’s signature hole #17 is subject of discussion over at ESPN’s alternate shot. Follow the tournament coverage over at ESPN or on the PGA tour website.
Update: here are the pairings and tee times for thursday and friday!

The European Tour heads home from their asian trip and plays the Madeira Island Open at Santo da Serra Golf Club. The Madeira Island Open has prize money of Euros 600.000, don’t you feel a little bit sad for the european tour players, when you compare that to the purse mentioned above?
I just discovered that FAZ.net features a live-ticker (in german). Let’s check that for a change.