plenty of apps for golf swing

Golfers who are also avid gamers may have been spoiled by games like Tiger Woods Golf, which lets gamers know the virtual course layout and exact distance to the pin before they even swing their "club." The Swing by Swing app gives real courses that same video game flavor by providing distance data for more than 34,000 courses. You can even keep track of TaylorMade RocketBallZ Driver your score and number of putts on any course in the world. While all these services are free, users can pay extra to upgrade to "Looper" status. Subscribing to this service is like having a virtual caddy (as fans of "Caddyshack" already know), with benefits that include measuring the distance of specific clubs and 3-D overlays of every shot you hit in a given round.

You might not think there's a lot to the game of golf, but you'd be very wrong. Golf^ provides a number of interesting facts about the game. Now avid players who don't know the history of the sport can catch up with this app that's full of facts. Each fact can be shared easily with friends so they can learn a thing or two as well.

Do you ever hit the links with other golfers who prefer to make up the rules as they go along? This official app from the United States Golf Association is designed to keep everyone honest with their score keeping (this includes you, too!). Professionals, amateurs and beginners alike can tap into the app at any point for guidance on what to do when a ball gets lost or lands near a hazard, like an alligator or a beehive (yikes!). Not sure if you are allowed to take a swing at a ball in play when your TaylorMade RocketBallZ fairway wood stance is out-of-bounds? Rules of Golf has the answer. For more ambiguous questions, you can email the USGA directly via the application and get a ruling. This app is all-knowing. Just don't get upset if following the letter of the law adds a few strokes to your handicap.

Fanatics of PGA and LPGA action shouldn't be without the Golf Channel app. You'll see leaderboards for each significant tournament in addition to video clips that will bring you right discount golf clubs onto the course. Golf Channel also has frequent live chats as well as columns and blogs by golf experts. You can even follow specific players to see how they're doing in the tournaments that matter most to you.

There’s no repeat champion at Senior PGA without Waston

There might have been some pre-tournament posturing going on. But there could also be carnage this week.

"My goal is to think you're never really out of it because everyone's going to make bogeys," Couples said. "I don't know if under par discount golf clubs is going to win, 10-under is going to win or if 2-over is going to win, but I know it's a very hard course."

Allen, who won at TPC Tampa Bay last month and teamed with David Frost for a victory at Savannah Harbor, will try to repeat his Senior PGA Championship win of 2009, when he was two strokes better than Larry Mize. That was the last year this tournament didn't go to a playoff. Tom Lehman took the 2010 title.

Funk is 13th on that list and seems more concerned about the course than the competition.

The 10th hole, a 539-yard par 5, includes a multitiered green. Funk, Allen and Langer will start their round there Thursday.

Harbor Shores opened two years ago for its first full season in one of Michigan's most economically distressed communities. The Jack Nicklaus-designed course was built on land that was home not long ago to abandoned factories and industrial waste.

Funk is coming off a victory this month at The Woodlands. He's in a group for the first two rounds Thursday and Friday with Michael Allen and Langer, the Champions Tour's top two money winners this year.

"I thought maybe we could reverse the order and play the greens as tees and the tees as greens and it would be easier to putt," Funk said. "Just play in reverse."

"You do have to be precise, but the Taylormade R11 irons greens, to what point?" he said. "When you see some of the greens, I don't think anyone can be precise enough to hit it in the certain spots on these greens."

"There's a lot of short irons where you've got some really small areas to hit to, but if you can hit them — and you've got backstops — if you can use the course to your advantage, I think you can score decent out here," Allen said. "I know I'm going to say that and be jinxing myself and swearing a few times at myself for a ball coming up in a place I can't play it hardly, or not feeling that I got the best out of it. But that's golf, too."

"I think the golf course is phenomenal," Langer said. "If he had done one-third of the undulations on the green — that's my personal opinion — I think it would be in the top 20 golf courses I've ever played."

The tournament will take place without its Taylormade R11 driver defending champion. Tom Watson had to withdraw because of a wrist problem. He won last year's championship at Valhalla, beating David Eger in a playoff.

The course was awarded the Senior PGA Championship in 2012 and 2014, amid hopes that it could help restore some stability and prosperity to Benton Harbor, which is under the jurisdiction of a state-appointed emergency manager.

Rory McIlroy is back to Players Championship

"It isn't a priority for them, as they would rather win a major or a World Golf Championship event."

To hear McIlroy tell it, the boycott wasn't his idea anyway. He publicly admitted that skipping The Players and giving up his PGA Tour card in 2010 were mistakes.

"Visually, it's very tough off the tee. It makes you feel uncomfortable because it looks like you've only got a little bit of fairway to hit, but actually once you get up there, it's a little bit wider. It's just very demanding visually."

"That's another example of being Mizuno MP-69 Irons involved with Chubby and ISM and maybe being led down the wrong path, or a path that I didn't want to go down. It was something I sort of felt like I had to do.

Woods has had his own struggles on the course although he did win the tournament in 2001, and he will be back this year after missing The Players last year because of left leg injuries and pulling out in the middle of his final round in 2010 because of a neck injury.

"I would think when it was played at the end of the March it was getting to be the fifth major," Chandler. "Moving it to the middle of May has made it about the 10th most important tournament in the world.

"I think just spending a little bit of time around Chubby and Lee and hearing their view of the PGA Tour, obviously they're very pro-European Tour, while I've always been one who wanted to play Titleist 910F-D Fairway Wood on the PGA Tour."

There's no question the Stadium Course is one of the most difficult — shall we say Dye-abolicial — tests the players face all year on the PGA Tour, even for Tiger Woods.

"I don't like the course," McIlroy said in 2010. "It's a Pete Dye course. It creates angles, a bit like Whistling Straits. He designed that course as well, where the tee boxes are sort of lining you up in the wrong direction.

McIlroy turned 23 Friday while he was on his way to a tie for second in the Wells Fargo Championship, losing in a playoff to Rickie Fowler. It can be difficult growing up under the constant media glare when reaching the top at such a young age.

"I don't feel that comfortable on the golf course yet," McIlroy said. "Not to say The Players isn't a great event. It's very prestigious and it would be great to win it one day.

"You know, it's a golf tournament I grew up watching on TV. It's a great place. You've seen a lot of great stories there over the years."

Fowler hasn’t contended in months

True enough, but unlike with world No. 2 Rory McIlroy, the Fowler meter is still running on empty in the United States, where the colorful 23-year-old is still trying to live up to his considerable skills, even bigger reputation and a gallery audience that tops 'em both.

Already the third-biggest fan draw on the PGA Tour behind veteran mega-stars Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, he’s been left stalled at the starting gate by McIlroy, who turns 23 on Friday and already has a major championship to his credit. McIlroy also won this week’s event, the Wells Fargo Championship, in 2010.

Fowler’s longtime swing coach in California died a year ago, and Fowler hasn’t hired a replacement. Like Watson, a frequent practice partner, he’s basically doing it as a feel player, minus a second discount golf clubs set of discerning eyeballs. His caddie Joe Skovron notwithstanding.

Although, as Fowler reminded, he did beat the Ulsterman by six shots to win the Korean Open last fall, an event that also included Korean notables Y.E. Yang, Seung-yul Noh and John Huh, all currently playing on the PGA Tour with some distinction. But since nobody in the States saw the victory on TV, it was relegated to the category of, out of sight, out of mind.

Fowler, who played on the 2010 Ryder Cup team, said he entered the season with three goals spot-welded into brain: Win his first tour event, make it to the FedEx Cup finals, and earn a spot on the Ryder team in Chicago. So far, they remain blurry spots on the horizon at best, though after an opening 6-under 66 at Quail Hollow, which left him locked in a tie for the first-round lead, he’s better positioned than at any point in months.

Watson won the Masters three weeks ago, with Fowler tagging along in the gallery for moral support in the playoff, proving that you don’t need an "entourage," as Skovron put it, to win big.

Fowler said that even though he hasn’t contended in months -- his best finish this season was T7 at the Honda Classic two months ago -- he wasn’t tempted to call Butch Harmon, Sean Foley or any Ping G20 driver of the other swing doctors many other players have on speed dial. Fowler knows his swing faults and has learned how to self-diagnose his fixes.

A victory on a stage like Quail Hollow, with players like McIlroy, Wooods, Mickelson and Lee Westwood in the field, would send his popularity up yet another notch, not to mention end some of the eyebrows that have slowly been raised as his victory drought in the States is well into a third season.

He’s actually broken out a Band-Aid of his own last week, when on the practice green at New Orleans, he switched to a left-hand-low putting grip, which he used at times as a teenager. He recalls shooting scores of 10 under on four occasions as a kid with different grips.

Fowler, whose colorful attire, new facial hair and shaggy haircut make him look a little like Capt. Jack Sparrow, played the last 12 holes in 6 under, and like his best friend on tour, Bubba Watson, he’s making his way along in the professional ranks basically flying solo.

Guys have gone cross-eyed trying to fix their strokes over the years. A few more putts toppling in the hole could make all the difference, since he had skidded from 31st in strokes-gained putting to a rather stunning 154th this year. He made four birdie putts from outside five feet Thursday.

"I feel that I'm good enough to win," he said. "I definitely feel like, with the amount of people expecting or thinking that I can win, is a compliment. You know, with it being my main goal for this year, that's my main focus."

As ever, Fowler drew a throng, regardless. He was dressed in sort of a cobalt turquoise ensemble in the first round, and while it might not work for the old guard, the young fans have embraced him as a generational idol. But it’s not just kids. You know he’s in a different ping g15 irons level of public approbation when you see adults wearing the flat-billed caps in neon orange, Fowler’s traditional Sunday attire.

The 66 was his best opening round of the season by two strokes, and was within one of his best round, period, which was recorded last week when he finished 10th at New Orleans.

"It's definitely been a slow year," said Fowler, whose new television commercials for a national hotel chain began airing last month. "It's getting there, though.

"I've felt like I've made some really good swings the past few weeks, so hopefully I'm turning a corner, can get into contention and start having some fun and start