TOUR Insider: Players face different pressure at Buick

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So, Stewart Cink, who has exhibited an impressive level of golfing proficiency all season, has stepped up and put a "W" on the board in Week One AT (Absent Tiger).

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Jim Furyk won at Warwick Hills in 2003.

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Now the PGA TOUR visits Grand Blanc, Mich., for the Buick Open, at which Woods was expected to compete before he further injured his surgically repaired left knee in winning the U.S. Open. Thus, this week's event at Warwick Hills Golf & Country Club is the first where players who normally would have had to compete against the No. 1 player in the world won't have that chance. Or chore.

Take your pick.

But as Jason Gore, runner-up last year to Brian Bateman, said, there are many other fine players on the TOUR, and they should take advantage of Woods's sabbatical.

Warwick Hills, 7,127 yards, par-72, is a splendid place for TOUR members to showcase their talents. In fact, it's paradise. It routinely ranks among the easiest courses the boys in pleats visit all season.

Last year, it ranked as the 10th easiest by allowing an average of 71.069 strokes per round. It was ninth easiest in 2006, 13th easiest in 2005 and sixth most friendly in '04.

All that said, a course that yields to well-played shots isn't necessarily one on which it's easy to win. "There's a different kind of pressure you face," Jim Furyk, who won the title in 2003 and has a superb record at Warwick Hills, said not long ago. "It's not easy to play knowing you have to make so many birdies to have a chance. You're always pushing to get lower."

Birdies become pars, psychologically, and pars are like bogeys. And bogeys, are like, well ... almost a disaster.

It's a fun tournament to play in and to watch, no matter who is in the field.

FEDEXCUP POINTERS

• Brian Bateman's winning score of 15-under 273 was the highest winning score at the Buick Open since Vijay Singh posted the same score in 1997. Bateman became the first champion to not play in the final group since Tom Pernice, Jr. came from the sixth-to-last group to win in '99. Bateman bucked on other trend, stopping a streak of six consecutive 54-hole leaders from winning.

• Former British Open champion Todd Hamilton skipped the Travelers Championship to gear up for a five-week run starting at the Buick Open and finishing at the Canadian Open. He's heading to Michigan in large part, he said, because his wife, Jacque, is dragging them to their high school reunion in Biggsville, Ill. "I didn't even know it was going on around that time. I wasn't planning to play, until my wife told me I was playing," Hamilton said with a grin.

• Texan Brandt Jobe's long road back got a bit shorter at the U.S. Open, where he tied for 18th despite a final-round 73. Jobe severed the tip of his left index finger and base of his thumb when a broom handle broke while he was sweeping the garage at his home in late 2006. He played only five events in '07 before having season-ending surgery and is playing on a major medical extension in which he needed to earn $774,164 in 23 starts to retain his card. He earned $89,889 in his first 10 starts before pocketing $87,230 at the Open. He's making just his fifth Buick Open appearance.

• Justin Leonard, who finished second at the Buick Open last year and won it in 1996, was the last holdout on the PGA TOUR using a persimmon driver, but he's gone high-tech now, and his victory at the Stanford St. Jude Championship was partly attributable to a new Nike Sumo 500 driver, which helped him average 290 yards off the tee.

• Jim Furyk, as mentioned earlier, is a scoring fiend at Warwick Hills, where he has eight top-10 finishes. The former U.S. Open champion has posted 37 consecutive rounds below par. The last, and only, time that Furyk shot over par came in the third round in 1997. He's a combined 123 under par since 1999.

• In addition to Furyk, Leonard and Bateman, eight other former champions are in this week's field dating back to Scott Verplank, the 1988 winner. That group also includes 2000 champion Rocco Mediate, the U.S. Open runner-up to Woods.