Needless to say, it's been a good year for golf in Northern Ireland. Between Graeme McDowell winning the US Open and securing the Ryder Cup, and Rory McIlroy winning in the United States for the first time, the nation is as strong of a golf country as it ever has been. With strength comes clout, and that may manifest itself in the form of a European Tour event.

Graeme McDowell and Darren Clarke are looking to put their energies into attracting an event to Northern Ireland, if not for 2011, in time for 2012.

GMac is pushing for an event at Portrush. (Yes!)

"It would be amazing and it's always been a dream of mine to play a big event at Portrush."

Darren Clarke concurs. "It's got everything. Links is the purest form of golf and this is the best links course in the world," said Clarke to the BBC.

Can a man dream that a Links Swing could start on the European Tour? The Ulster Open, Scottish Open, and Open Championship in a month?!

As football soldiers on, bolstering a slate of mediocre teams, and the World Series drags into November, the PGA Tour season is finishing with its Fall Series. The last two events have finished in very dramatic fashion, with hole-outs more or less deciding the fate of the event.

Rocco Mediate's win in California was one of the feel good stories of the year. Jonathan Byrd's walk-off ace in the Vegas darkness was one of the cooler moments in Tour history. 

These great finishes, though, are anomalies. It's great luck for the Tour to have such drama to close out the Fall Series, but even still, the events were seen by small audiences on television and in person. The series boasts just five events this year because of the difficult economy and a lack of new (or prior) sponsors willing to pay the Tour's sticker price for title sponsorship. 

The questions are being asked, as they should be, about the viability of the series in the next several years - either in this country or staged abroad. With a new television deal coming forth soon for the networks, will the PGA Tour alter its schedule in the late stages of the year, too? If it does, there is a good chance the Fall Series could go away with it.

There is some value in the Fall Series remaining in some capacity, though. Many ideas have been bantered about a morphing of the fall schedule, including some I've proposed. I'd like to rehash one I've thrown out there in the past.

The Fall Series would be a great dual end-beginning for the Nationwide and PGA Tours. Have the Nationwide Tour season end sooner, closer to the FedExCup. Mint a couple of dozen new PGA Tour members from the developmental circuit, then turn them loose for a handful of events with PGA Tour guys seeking to keep their cards. It's a subtle change, but co-mingling fields in that way would allow fans to get a glimpse at the new guys they'll be seeing early on in the next year. Rather than having to keep a Tour program on the couch to look at names, they can become a little more household in the prior fall. 

The events can be more local - which runs contrary to my original argument that they should be bigger. Smaller is alright for the PGA Tour. In the same way that the LPGA Tour once embraced a mix of bigger and smaller venues, the PGA Tour's bookend could benefit. There are many fans around the country who are very unlikely to see PGA Tour-caliber golf in their town because the big boys are often in major metropolitan markets. Change that to cater to Middle America, so to speak, and the Tour could reap in new fans.

Consider me officially confused by both sets of official golf rankings. By virtue of not winning, or even really coming all that close despite a nice Sunday comeback, at the LPGA's Malaysian tour stop on Sunday, Cristie Kerr became number one in the Rolex Rankings for the second time this season. She overtook Ai Miyazato, who has five wins this season on Tour.

It makes sense that five players are all basically within a half ranking point of first place. Each of the top five has some merit to claim they are the best.

It's good for the game, too. All five are from different countries. Each of the players has a legit chance to win the money, scoring, and Player of the Year honors. 

At a certain point, though, who is number one becomes a moot point when faced with comparable resumes like these ladies have. Jack Nicklaus diminished the meaning of the Official World Golf Rankings last week, and he's got a point that applies here, too. Being named number one is great, but proving it every week is the more telling sign of excellence. 

All five of these women are great, but I'm not sure one owns the top spot over the others.

As the darkness was setting in during the three man playoff to determine the winner of the Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, the combatants came to the fourth playoff hole looking to quickly get in what they could before it became too dark to play.

Jonathan Byrd was first to play at the par 3. He grabbed a club quickly from his caddy. He took one forceful practice swing, then stepped up and struck the ball.

It looked good all the way, on line with the pin. Byrd's ball hit to the right of the hole, took a little hop to the left, and a couple of bounces later the ball landed in the hole. Fellow playoff competitors Cameron Percy and defending champion Martin Laird tried their best to match the ace, but were unable to do so.

Jonathan Byrd's ace gave him his fourth PGA Tour win. He got into the playoff with three birdies in the final four holes to match Laird on -21. For his part, Percy made birdie at the last to do the same.

This win by Byrd is the second time in two months that Martin Laird lost in a playoff to an excellent shot. Laird lost The Barclays in September when Matt Kuchar hit an incredible shot from the rough at Ridgewood Country Club to pick up the title in New Jersey.

It was a battle early in the round for the young Italian phenom, but Matteo Manassero made winning on the European Tour look easy on the back nine in Castello Masters. Winning clear by four shots, Manassero easily becomes the youngest player to win in the history of the European Tour at 17 years, 188 days. He takes over the distinction from Danny Lee, the Kiwi who won as an amateur last year.

The 17-year-old trailed Gary Boyd by two strokes through 54 holes. Through the opening nine holes, Manassero gained a stroke on Boyd with two birdies against a bogey. Boyd went out in even par.

On the back nine, though, Manassero put on his rally cap in the middle of the nine to take control of the tournament. With consecutive birdies at 13, 14, and 15, the Italian gained a share of the lead. He then took it outright when Boyd bogeyed the 15th.

Pressing the issue, Boyd put his ball in the water at the 16th, leading to a double bogey sandwich. Manassero was four clear at that point, needing only pars to finish off his first professional win. He had a look at birdie on 17 to extend the lead further, but was unable to make the seven footer.

No matter. Manassero was cruising to a win. Since turning pro after being low amateur and youngest ever to make the 36 hole cut at the Masters, Manassero has had modest success. Several finishes in the twenties buoyed a decent year for the young player, but a third place finish at the Omega European Masters - won by Miguel Angel Jimenez - gave him a taste of the professional chase.

Curiously enough, a countryman of Jimenez - Pablo Martin - turned heads in neighboring Portugal just three years ago when he became the first amateur to win on the European Tour. 

The geopolitical part of my brain always felt a little uneasy when referring to the Open Championship as the British Open. Yeah, sure, Scotland and England (and Wales, and Northern Ireland) are all in the United Kingdom - thus, British - but the ramifications of those distinctions are changing. The most troubling part to me was when the Open was contested on Scottish links, knowing full well that the Scottish Open was contested on a parkland golf course.

Finally, that may change.

Barclays, the title sponsor of the Scottish Open, is insisting the national tournament move to a links course if they are to return in their sponsorship role. It would be an even better primer for the Open Championship, as players in that field already come to Loch Lomond - current home - to adjust to the British weather. 

It would be a ploy directed at Tiger Woods and Paddy Harrington, two players who like to practice on links courses before the Open, but don't presently have a tournament venue on the European Tour in which to do so prior to the Open.

It's been an odd year or so for the LPGA Tour. There has been a big transition from dominating players - Annika Sorenstam, followed by the now-retired Lorena Ochoa - to a level of parity that could be very good for the tour. The schedule is leaner, filled with limited-field events that are a problem for the rank-and-file.

The combination has made it more difficult to earn and maintain a LPGA Tour card from year to year. It may also lead to drastically shorter careers which mirror that of Lorena Ochoa than of Juli Inkster. LPGA Player Executive Committee President Michelle Ellis, 34, spoke of what she sees as smaller career windows for the ladies.

“We’re certainly not going to see the Juli Inksters or Meg Mallons,” she says. “The competition is getting so tough and the endurance it takes to play at that level is a lot tougher."

“You’re going to have shorter careers. You’re going to have more of the Annikas, the Lorenas bowing out a little earlier. The money is bigger, one, but two, just to keep up that competitiveness, more that amount of years, is a little more straining. It’s sad that we’re not going to have those long careers."

That can make some sense, sure. Frankly, though, typically less than 15 ladies on Tour make into the seven figures each year. To do that over a ten or fifteen year career sounds nice - and very profitable - but there are scores of athletes who have made tons more in other sports and wind up bankrupt because of their fiscal irresponsibility. It doesn't sound all that assuring, really.

Another question I have is if this phenomenon would happen in women's golf - where the money is one-sixth that of their male counterparts on the PGA Tour - why hasn't it happened in men's golf? Tiger's not going away after this year. Even pre-divorce Tiger wasn't. (Not just for the money, but primarily Jack's record.) Even on a different level, Phil Mickelson isn't closing up shop to repair broken golf clubs in Callaway commercials. So why the women? Presumably, it would be to raise a family, but many women have played at the highest level, gotten pregnant, had kids, and come back to resume their careers successfully. 

It doesn't strike me that there appears to be a real answer here, or that Ochoa and Sorenstam are not isolated cases. But, indulge me for a second and think about the impact the Champions Tour has on male players. If they play well, get into the top 70 in career PGA Tour earnings, and make it to 50, they're on that Tour for a nearly guaranteed fifteen years of no cut golfing action. The lure of free money - and the absolutely killer PGA Tour pension plan - could be enough to sustain PGA Tour players' desires to play much longer than they might otherwise have.