As you may well know, I was on vacation at Walt Disney World this past week.  At Disney's Hollywood Studios park (formerly MGM Studios), they had the American Idol Experience.  Basically, they corral marginal singers into an auditorium that looks like the Idol set and the audience votes the least bad singer into a daily finale that grants the winner a ticket to the front of the line of the next American Idol audition to get rejected mercilessly by the real judging panel.

That pleasant experience reminded me of Kelly Clarkson, the winner of season 1 of the show.  And, one of her hits was the song "Since U Been Gone."  With that in mind, I bring you a quick summary of links to the golf news that I didn't cover while I was gone last week.

I didn't get that Senior Writer job at Golf Channel, but Randall Mell did.  And he is one of the best in the biz.  He'll very much enhance their coverage - particularly of the LPGA Tour.

Reminds me of this portion of Clarkson's mega hit:

I'm completely kidding.

Speaking of moves, Aaron Baddeley decided to return to the instructor of his teen years, Dale Lynch.  Lynch now works at the Cliffs in North Carolina.  And you can get lessons from him at the Cliffs.  So, there's that going for your game.

If you don't like playing the real game, then the USGA and the World Golf Tour have some good news for you.  They're having a Virtual US Open around the time of the real one.  It will be a simulated Bethpage that users can play at usopen.com.  Beginning May 25 through June 21, there will be qualifying rounds.  The top 156 qualifiers plus ties will then square off for the Virtual U.S. Open title on June 22. The winner will be crowned the USGA Virtual U.S. Open Champion and will be a guest of the USGA at the 2010 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.  Pretty sweet.

I also found out that Ji Yai Shin's prize money at the Honda LPGA Thailand doesn't count toward the money list for 2009.  Why?  Because she was a sponsor's invite into a no cut event.  (Meanwhile, Geoff Shackelford shares the earnings of many golf executives.  And to think that I STILL don't even earn four figures for doing this stuff. :) )

I didn't even know they had sponsor invites to those!  It is kind of ridiculous that Shin didn't even get in there in the first place.  She won three times last year, once this year already, and finished in second to Karrie Webb in Arizona this week.  Sheesh.

The LPGA also did something very smart with their new blogger policy.  I'll talk a little more about that in a post later.

As it turns out, Michelle Wie was dumped by William Morris - not the other way around as the Wies claimed.  Also, Mike Stachura has figured out that we have maxed out on golf ball distance.  I smiled at that one.

I think that about sums it up and brings me back up to speed.  Right?