On Tuesday I travelled back up to St Andrews.

Sometimes I drive and sometimes I fly but a few days ago I chose the train from London Kings Cross.

Infact I was an hour early and so I wandered over to St Pancras International station next door as I wanted to see the redevelopment in the flesh.

Why I love rail travel.

Quite simply rail travel means I don’t lose a day of work. The East Coast trains comes with WiFi allowing me to work throughout my journey. I also have a Vodafone datacard as backup.

I do marvel at how easy internet access is becoming, soon everywhere will be one massive hotspot!

Only today I was reading that Alaska Airlines will be offering WiFi on all their flights. You may have already experienced this whilst flying on American, United, Delta, and AirTran.

So there I was … checking the time on my phone … 10:29

My train was due to leave at 10:30

A second later it eased out of the platform and I wondered if I’m the only one that gets a pleasant buzz whenever a train leaves on time.

I know there are no guarantees but somehow you are optimistic that all being well you will arrive on time.

I was due to arrive at 16:00 in Leuchars.

Up until the early 1960s St Andrews had its own railway station, but the government’s Beeching report put paid to that.

If you are ever in the Dunvegan Hotel and Restaurant, a 9 iron from the 18th green on the Old Course, you can see some great photos of how the line used to run adjacent to the 16th fairway.

Leuchars (pronounced more like “lookers”) is a 10 minute bus ride from St Andrews and so the remainder of the jorney has to be by bus or taxi.

It’s always so cool to look up from my laptop and take in the breathtaking scenery as the train travels from England to Scotland through Berwick-upon-Tweed.

At points you are so close to the waves you can imagine you are riding them – or maybe that’s just me!

As my own journey came to its end, it was a pleasure to reflect back on the fact that during the five and half hours of my journey I had completed the new renovation of GolfInsideCircle.com

Now it might not be on a par of the fine work at St Pancras International station but nevertheless I’m proud there is now one place to listen to all the great guests we have had since September last year.

I’m also very pleased to introduce this month’s guest, she is Jennifer Scott a certified clinical hypnotherapist who has appeared with Kelly Tilghman on The Golf Channel and gives 2-hour seminars on how to play in the zone at The San Diego Golf Academy.

In fact Golf Magazine rated Jennifer’s audio 2 CD Program, “Own The Zone(TM)” with its highest rating. The program includes specific methods to improve your focus and ease any anger or frustration you may feel on the course. Additionally golfers are taught proven techniques to develop a pre-shot bubble where nothing can distract you.

Please head over to GolfInsideCircle.com to hear Jennifer speak and learn more about how her work can help your game.

Alternatively you can listen to her by clicking on the orange button below:

Jennifer teaches golfers to be free of confusing extraneous thoughts by using the power of the subconscious mind to relax and focus. These teachings put an end to your confusion and allow you to play “in the zone” for longer and longer periods of time. When you are in hypnosis you are in the zone and Jennifer teaches golfers how to get into this state effortlessly.

Discover more by visiting OwnTheZoneGolf.com

Tiger Woods has just about done it all in the game of golf: 14 major championships, 69 career wins on tour, a record stay at world number one, NCAA, U.S Amateur and Junior titles, Fed-Ex, Ryder, and Presidents Cups. There’s not much else to conquer really. Over the weekend at the Buick Open Sir Nick Faldo noted that one day Tiger is going to save the world a lot of paper because when he gets done with his career the record books are just going to read “Tiger” and nothing else. But there is one thing Tiger’s good buddy Roger Federer still has a lot over him- a gold medal.

That all might change on August 13 when the International Olympic Executive Committee meets to announce the results of its vote on the inclusion of golf into the Olympic rotation for 2016. On that day the IOC will announce which two of the seven sports under consideration to be considered for final admition into the 2016 summer games. The other six other sports under consideration for the bid are baseball, karate, roller sports, rugby, softball and squash. The two sports nominated will then be discussed before the entire International Olympic Committee at a panel in Copenhagen, Denmark and the announcement with come on October 9, the same day as the announcement of the 2016 host city.

Golf has been a conspicuous absentee from the Olympic rotation since 1912 and its nomination for the 2016 games has divided the world golfing community.

The main argument against golf being included in the Olympics is that golf is already a global game, one too entrenched in the professional side of the sport to do the Olympic experience justice. With major world tours, on both the men’s and women’s side, ranging from the powerful PGA and LPGA tours of America and Europe to tours in Japan, Korea, Australasia, South America and South Africa to name but a few, the sport already has a wide global reach, touching down on almost every part of every continent on the planet.

Add to that international competitions like the Ryder Cup (now considered only behind the soccer World Cup and Summer Olympics in terms of popularity), Presidents’, Walker, Solheim and Curtis cups, WGC championships and the four major championships, it remains to be seen how an Olympic gold medal could top any of that.

The only other sport that has been in a similar situation recently to golf is tennis, which was re-introduced to the Olympic rotation at the 1988 Olympics Games in Seoul after a 62 year absence. It was in Seoul that Steffi Graff famously won the “Golden Slam”, all four majors plus the Olympic gold in one calendar year (she is still the only person to do this). Since ’88 many of the games’ top players have skipped the Olympics, deciding instead to concentrate on a hefty summer schedule of major championships. Many fear that golf will follow the same trend. Many of the top-ranked players, including Tiger Woods, have, so far, shown a luke-warm support for golf in the Olympics.

“It would be great to have an Olympic gold medal,” Woods recently said, “but if you asked any player, ‘Would you rather have an Olympic gold medal or green jacket or Claret Jug?’ more players would say the majors.”

It’s pretty clear which one he would rather win.

Woods’ comments about the validity of golf as an Olympic competition appears to be one of the major arguments against the inclusion of golf in any future Olympics, just like there is currently in tennis. Even if you are a follower of tennis, it is much easier to name the winners of each of the years’ majors than it is to note who won Olympic gold, even though it only happens once every four years. Experts and former tour players alike believe the same thing is sure to happen with golf should it make it to 2016.

“Who wants to run the 100-meter dash, and not have the world’s fastest runner show up?” said Olin Browne, a tour player and member of the PGA Tour’s Policy Board. “What’s the point?”

Former tour player and Australasian PGA Tour board member Mike Clayton agrees.

“One wonders why there is this seemingly never-ending quest to include golf in the Olympics,” Clayton said last year. “Presumably it would qualify the game for extra government funding but . . . an Olympic tournament could never approach the importance of the game’s grand slam championships.”

One man who knows an awful lot about both the running both professional golf event and the Olympics is current Augusta National chairman Billy Payne. Payne served as the CEO of the Atlanta Olympic Committee and is considered the driving force in Atlanta’s surprise winning bid for the 1996 games. Since then Payne has taken over the reigns at Augusta National from Hootie Johnson and run the Masters tournament. While many have speculated that some of the world’s top players will be absent from the Olympic experience should golf be included in 2016, Payne has a different opinion entirely.

“Once players are asked to represent their country, they will play,” he says. “You’d be surprised by the power of the Olympics to move people.”

Indeed, international stars like Ernie Els, Padraig Harrington, Sergio Garcia, Lorena Ochoa and Suzanne Petterson have all expressed interest in playing for their respective countries in 2016.

Another who has ties to both parties and is a strong advocate of golf in the Olympics is former LPGA Commissioner and current Executive Director of the International Golf Federation’s Olympic Committee, Ty Votaw. Votaw points to the growth of other Olympic sports as the main arguement for golf becoming an Olympic sport.

“There are 300 million people now playing basketball in China,” Votaw said. “There wasn’t anywhere near that number before the (U.S.) Dream Team played in Barcelona (in 1992). I’ll take 10 percent of that. The estimated number of golfers in the world is around 60 million, so if we get another 30 million then we’ve grown the game by 50 percent. Even if it’s 1 percent, 3 million, then we’ve still grown the game.”

Even though Votaw has neglected to take into account the fact that Chinese and NBA superstar Yao Ming has accounted for a great deal of the recent basketball growth in China (not to mention a relaxing of communism in the country in general), Votaw still has a point. He goes so far as to sight tennis as a perfect example of how the game can be advanced in counties just based on the far-reaching influence of the Olympic experience.

“Look at how women’s tennis in Russia has grown since tennis became an Olympic sport,” Votaw said. “I don’t think there would be so many world-class Russian tennis players if tennis didn’t have Olympic status.”

Again Ty, the end of the Cold War around that time may have had a lot to do with the growth of sports in general in that area of the world.

Greg Norman, a long-time proponent of spreading golf as a global game, sides with Votaw and Payne as well.

“Golf is one of the most global games out there, among the top five in the world,” Norman said. “So why not include it?”

Why not indeed?

Many aspects of Olympic golf have yet to be determined, and one of the main focal points is the inclusion of professionals, as well as the actual format for the event. In 1992 the IOC allowed professional basketball players to represent their country for the first time in Olympic history, and out of that decision sprang the aforementioned “Dream Team” which went onto win the gold medal by an average of over 40 points a game. Heck, head coach Chuck Daly didn’t call a single time out the entire tournament. Opposing teams were seen asking members of “The Dream Team” to pose for photos and autographs before they played.

Since 1992 however, the rest of the world has caught up with USA basketball, and subsequent team USA’s have not always taken the gold. In fact, in 2004 in Athens Team USA failed to even make the gold medal match. An argument could be made that the rest of the world has caught up to the Americans because of The Dream Team and the way they spread the popularity of the game globaly. Their popularity spawned a world-wide basketball epidemic and today more players from overseas play in the NBA than at any other time in its history.

Olympic golf has the potential to do the same thing that professional basketballers in the 1992 Olympics did. Imagine a player from a lesser known golf nation, one with a huge population such as India or China, playing along side the likes of Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson. This would be the dream scenario for the IOC and the main reason behind the Olympic golf push. The potential for growth in countries like China in this scenario could be exponential. However the chances that something like this would occur all depends on the format that the IOC decides on (should golf make the cut).

Many are calling for the absence of professionals should golf be awarded a spot on the roster for the 2016 Olympics. One proposal suggests a format that would essentially be a re-hashing of the Eisenhower Trophy, the event currently known as the World Amateur Championship. It is currently contested by 3 players from the participating countries in a stroke play format. Some are calling for a similar event where 2 professionals from each country, based on world rankings, would compete in a four round event to decide the medal winners (WGC World Cup anyone?).

In a discussion appearing on The Golf Channel recently, world no. 3 Paul Casey of England favoured a format along the lines of the Alfred Dunhill Cup which was contested by 3 players from each country in a combined stroke play and match-play format. That event was discontinued in 2000.

Clearly much as still to be discussed, including of course, if golf deserves to bask in the Olympic flame.

Regardless of the outcome of the IOC meeting later this month, golf will continue to come up on the Olympic radar and be a hot-button talking point in the future. Whether, in 20 or 50 years’ time an Olympic Gold medal becomes as prestigious as a major trophy or a Ryder Cup is unsure, but Ty Votaw makes a good point about golf and its history.

“If Jack Nicklaus had won three Olympic gold medals, then you can bet Tiger Woods would have had that target on his chart on his bedroom wall when he was a kid.”

Tiger Woods winning Olympic gold? That would certainly be one for the record books.　

Mutinies are historically associated with pirates and sea-faring ships. They are not, usually, associated with putters and professional sports. However, that’s exactly what has transpired this week as a number of LPGA players have called for, and possibly received, the resignation of LPGA commissioner Carolyn Bivens.

In the same week as the biggest event event on the women’s golf calender, the U.S Women’s Open, several of the game’s biggest names, led by Suzanne Pettersen, have gone out of their way to call for Biven’s resignation, sending an open letter to the LPGA board asking for a change in personnel at the very top of their organization. It was reported earlier in the week by Golfweek that a meeting of several high profile players, including world number one Lorena Ochoa, Natalie Gulbis, Paula Creamer and Cristie Kerr met for dinner earlier in the week to discuss the current state of the tour. Out of that dinner came the letter signed by 13 players asking for Biven’s resignation. Creamer is so far the only other to admit signing the letter.

“All we are doing is standing up for our tour,” Pettersen said July 7 from Saucon Valley Country Club, site of the 2009 U.S Women’s Open. “Now it’s up to our leadership and our board to find a solution.”

Bivens, and the tour board itself, have been under fire in recent months, as the tour struggles to secure sponsorship and events for 2010. At the present time the LPGA Tour has only ten events on its schedule for next season. Since 2007 the tour has lost seven events, three of which were held at the beginning of the season in Hawaii. Six other events are currently without a sponsor including one of the tour’s biggest events in China.

Bivens, who took over as LPGA Tour commissioner in 2005, now has her future as head of the tour in question, and it is still unclear as to her fate. Yesterday Golfweek reported that sources close to the Tour have confirmed that Bivens will not have her contract honoured for her final two years in office. The article went onto report that the LPGA board of directors has been meeting “behind closed doors” all week to discuss the future of the Tour and the (reportedly) vacant commissioner position. Bivens has not commented on the alleged ousting and the Tour itself has been reluctant to comment as well. No official announcement has been made and Bivens herself has yet to comment.

“Carolyn has not resigned,’’ David Higdon, the LPGA’s chief of communications said in a short email to Golfweek earlier in the week.

However, Sporting Business Daily, working with anonymous sources, has learned that Bivens has agreed to a buyout on her contract to the tune of $500,000 per year for the two years she has left on her contract. The article went onto say that the board as already organized a golf industry insider to interview potential replacements for Bivens.

“(Bivens) stepped on some toes and hurt some feelings…there were a lot of things for her to overcome.” Golf Channel’s Charlie Rymer said yesterday in a report on Bivens.  ”The LPGA needs to get on the same page because being fractured in today’s business society is too much of a challenge. Whoever comes into this position, they have to get moving and get things done quickly.”

While the biggest event of the year continues today in Pennsylvania, the headlines continue to be dominated by the fate of the Tour’s leadership.

“Patience is the No. 1 thing you have to have this week,” Ochoa said of the U.S Women’s Open. She could just have easily been talking about the Tour itself.

The WGC Accenture Matchplay is being played this week and justifiably it is receiving a lot of air time on the Golf Channel here in the United States. This abundance of TV golf may appear to be a god send for the average golf fan, but in reality so much TV golf can be a double-edged sword.

The reason I say this is because plenty of time in front of the box watching the best in the world go at it on the greens also means putting up with an extraordinary amount of bad commercials. And you don’t have to be a regular watcher of TV golf to know how painful that can be.

It seems you can’t sit through a commercial break on the Golf Channel these days without being bombarded with commercials plugging financial companies (new advice: bury your money in the backyard) and erectile dysfunction pills. But scattered amongst these below average plugs there are some real gems of commercials, you just might have to sit there a while to find them.

Ping have a collection of ads right now that are very humorous with not a star golfer in sight. The basic premise of these ads sees a regular club golf become oblivious to their lack of ability because they are wielding one of Pings’ new drivers or putters. The best of this lot sees average Joe club player smacking a drive down the middle of the fairway, his playing partner offering an obligatory, “Good shot”. The player then goes into a rant about how well he is playing with his new Ping driver and is thus thinking about turning pro, getting is card and playing in all the majors. His partner, trying to add a dash of reality, asks what he is going to do about his job, his 401K, his kids’ college tuition etc. Average Joe replies deadpan, “Exactly. One good year and that’s all taken care of.” The voice over then comes on abruptly and implores Average Joe to not give up his day job. “Those guys will eat your lunch.” he says.

This commercial is great for a couple of reasons. The delivery of both actors is sensational for one, but it’s the small details of the ad that make it truly excellent. Average Joe is dressed head-to-toe in black for one, sporting a Ping baseball cap and mock turtleneck. In contrast, his partner has on a nondescript polo shirt and kakis with no cap. But the icing on the cake is the partners’ moustache. It is a solid handlebar, worn without a hint of irony, both serious and hilarious at the same time. It is a gem of a commercial, funny on all levels while still pushing the product.

Nike has long been the standard bearer for great golf commercials and with the greatest player in the game as their muse, it’s hard for them not to be. Who could forget Tiger juggling a ball on his club for 30 seconds, moving it around his body and between his legs before smashing it baseball-style down the driving range a good 200 yards away?

And Tiger has many great commercials in his back catalogue, both for Nike and his other companies. Tiger moonlighting as Carl from Caddyshack for American Express is one of his better ones. While his acting chops might not earn him a SAG award, he does a pretty good Bill Murray impression and the set design is a dead on in spoofing the greatest golf movie of all time. Even Tigers’ outtakes are good. A quick youtube search will also show a Buick ad with an over enthusiastic fan running onto the practice range, loading his arms with Tiger’s range balls and golf bag and making a break for it. In the commercial Tiger was supposed to simply yell at his assailant as he runs away, but Tiger instead improvises the scene, chases the fan down and crash tackles him bag and all. The commercial has become a viral hit with over 2 million hits on youtube.

But the best of Tiger’s current commercials captures the feeling surrounding his comeback perfectly. It’s a Nike ad depicting Nike’s other poster boys, Justin Leonard, Stewart Cink, Anthony Kim and Trevor Immelman living it up on the tour in Tiger’s absence. They smile as they dominate the tour, going from stop to stop, grabbing headlines and collecting trophies along the way. The four of them are hanging around the locker room, laughing hysterically at their good fortune when the great man himself walks in the room for the first time. Their smiles quickly turn to serious frowns. The message is simple- the party’s over. He’s back.

This is one of my current favorites but I’m sure you have a few of your own. It surely must be difficult to make a commercial that is both funny and informative, especially in a game like golf that can be so serious at times. I, for one, am just going to have to accept that there are going to be many more boring commercials than there are good ones. As long as Tiger is around, there will be something worth watching between the action. Let’s just hope he doesn’t start plugging Cialis any time soon.

One of the more fun nights (and there were a lot) from my years of college was fantasy football draft night. Not that I ever really participated, being Australian I had about as much knowledge of the NFL as your average Under-12 Indian cricket team. But once a year all the guys from the golf course where our team practiced came over to our house and brought with them Fantasy draft guides, flip sheets, stat charts and booze – but not necessarily in that order of course.

These nights would inevitably dissolve into drunken arguments, taunts and rants on the upcoming fantasy football season, everybody deciding one way or another that they were the John Madden, the alpha-drafter, of this particular competition. Nowadays it seems every time I log onto golfweek.com, pgatour.com or one of the other major golf sights there is a new fantasy in the golfing world. Surprisingly, this golf fantasy does not involve Natalie Gulbis.

Fantasy golf has taken off over the last few years, growing in leaps and bounds to where it has now established itself alongside football and basketball as a legitimate fantasy sport. Golfweek features a “Fantasy Aces” article early every week with several writers providing their “expert” picks for the week. PGATour.com features a similar segment every week, as does Golf Channel on their “Inside the PGA Tour” show, while yahoo.com’s Fantasy League is one of the largest in the fantasy sports.

Like football and basketball, there are several ways these competitions can be run. The way that PGATour.com and yahoo.com run there competitions is thus – each week the individual picks one or more players (depending on the format) from the A, B or C player categories. For example, this week at the Northern Trust Open I might select Phil Mickelson in the A player category, Charlie Hoffman from the B player category, and Charles Howell III from the C player category. The players can move up or down in categories depending on their current money list and world ranking, or they can just remain in those categories for the entire year depending on how the contest is run. Most fantasy leagues have limits to how many times a player can be selected per season, and the contestants earn points depending on how their selection/s perform during that particular tournament.

Another way to run a fantasy league is the way we do it at my home course in Australia. My father sends out an email to all the “tippers” each week with a list of all the competitors on the PGA Tour in whatever tournament is being played that week. Each competitor can pick one player every week from the field, however that player may not be chosen again for the rest of the year. This format poses a particular challenge in that you can’t continually pick the same player every week when they appear to be in form. After running the competition for three or four years, our tippers have learned to “save” players like Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson or Padraig Harrington for the big money events like the majors or WGC Championships. About half the field missed out on picking Tiger last year when he only played 6 events before his season ending knee surgery.

This local competition has just about overtaken the club’s rugby tipping competition for fun as well as entrants. We now have guys competing via the magic of the Internet from the United States, Australia, the UK and India. There are several wives and girlfriends competing, and the camaraderie and trash talk is now coming thick and fast via email to each and every tipper. One of the locals, who shall remain nameless, has even gone so far as to bring spreadsheets to the club every Saturday morning with each competitor’s pick highlighted for all to follow.

In the first year for the competition I selected Camilo Villegas early in his rookie season. He performed well and he got me a tie for 3rd. One of the tippers wrote me an email, “Who the HELL is Camilo Villegas!” is all it said. I thought I was pretty smart back then. Unfortunately, after a few years the competition has caught up to me, in fact, it has blown by me withincreasing speed each year. With a vast amount of research going into the selections from almost all of the tippers I managed to finish 57th in a 60 person competition last season. At one stage in the season Kenny Perry went 1st, T24, T6, 1st, 1st, 6th, T66. I decided to wait until the T66 to pick him because it was a big-money event. Smart huh?

But my favourite fantasy golf story involves a well known pro – Englishman Luke Donald. One of the guys I play with on The Hooters Tour went to Northwestern with Luke and is a good friend of his. It turns out they had their own fantasy golf league going and Luke was a part of it. Their competition stipulated a player could only be chosen four times in the season. Luke managed to pick himself the first four weeks of the year. His reasoning? “I thought I was going to win every week.” Is Luke Donald in your tipping competition? It might not be Natalie Gulbis, but that’s some pretty cool fantasy golf.