To the surprise of very few, Tiger Woods is favored to win this year’s PGA Championship, which starts today and runs through the weekend. The PGA Championship is the fourth and final major of the year.

Woods is currently a 3/2 favorite to win and although he’s coming off a victory at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, Tiger has yet to win a major in 2009. In fact, the best he’s done so far was a sixth place finish at the Masters and a sixth place finish at the U.S. Open. (He missed the cut entirely at the British Open.)

Tiger missed last year’s PGA Championship, but did win the event in 2006 and 2007. He also has some momentum heading into Hazeltine National, winning the two last consecutive tournaments (Bridgestone and the Buick Open) that he has played in, which give him a total of five wins on the year.

Tiger’s main competition this weekend, at least based on the odds, appears to be Padraig Harrington (20/1), Phil Mickelson (22/1), Lee Westwood (28/1) and Hunter Mahan (30/1).

Here’s a TV schedule for this year’s PGA Championship:

Thursday, August 13: 2PM – 8PM on TNT
Friday, August 14: 2PM – 8PM on TNT
Saturday, August 15: 11AM – 2PM on TNT
Sunday, August 16: 11AM – 2PM ET on TNT
Sunday, August 16: 2PM – 7PM on CBS

To check the 2009 PGA Championship leaderboard, click here.

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– Tiger Woods fined by PGA
– No fine for Tiger Woods

As it turns out, the report that surfaced yesterday about Tiger Woods being fined by the PGA Tour was erroneous. Tiger, although still peeved about what went down over the weekend at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, said that the PGA Tour has not fined him.

From the Washington Post:

“I’ve heard from the tour, and there’s no fine,” Woods said. “That was an erroneous report.”

Ty Votaw, a spokesman for the PGA Tour, said the original report of a fine was “inaccurate.” Votaw said Commissioner Tim Finchem had read and considered Woods’s remarks.

“There has been no process started with respect to any disciplinary action,” Votaw said by phone.

“The commissioner has reviewed the reports, and based on the reports that he read, Tiger’s comments related to the impact of the decision. He did not read them as an unreasonable attack or as being disparaging.”

We linked to a report by the Examiner yesterday about Woods being fined, although we’re not sure where the original report came from.

The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if the PGA received backlash for the supposed fine and decided to renege. But if Tiger is even saying that it was an erroneous report, then maybe there really was no fine to begin with.

Either way, it’s still a lame rule. You can’t have golfers worried about a game clock when they’re dealing with a tough shot in the rough. It takes away from the excitement of the tournament and it puts unnecessary pressure on the golfers.

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– Tiger Woods fined by PGA

With a final round of 3-under-par 67, Padraig Harrington won the 90th PGA Championship Sunday by two strokes over Sergio Garcia.

Harrington shot a 32 on the back nine, just as he did at Royal Birkdale last month, and he came up with three big putts down the stretch. He made a 12-foot par on the 16th to catch Sergio Garcia and Ben Curtis, took the lead with an 8-foot birdie on the par-3 17th, then closed out the Spaniard with an 18-foot par for a two-shot victory.

“I think I was willing them into the hole at that stage,” Harrington said. “You have to get focused and give it a go.”
The Irishman ended Europe’s 78-year drought in the PGA Championship, and he joined Tiger Woods, Nick Price and Walter Hagen as the only players to win the final two majors in the same year. Woods did it twice, in 2000 and 2006.

What a two years for Harrington. He won the 2007 U.S. Open, the 2008 U.S. Open and now the 2008 PGA Championship. Garcia was one of the early favorites to win the PGA Championship this year, but Harrington stuck around long enough and played well down the stretch to pick up his fifth career tour win.

Now if only Joey Harrington could play football as well as his cousin plays golf. Then the sports world would be taking about the Harrington’s instead of the Manning, Bonds and Andretti families. Or not…