Stuart Appleby News

Stuart Appleby and Scott Hend each shot 6-under 66 Thursday to share the lead at the Australian Open.

TRYING to ascertain from Stuart Appleby yesterday just what status he intends to carry onto next year's US PGA Tour was like trying to extract a wisdom tooth.

HAD yesterday been the opening round of the $1.5 million Australian Open at NSW Golf Club, the golf sadists would have loved it.

Robert Allenby and Stuart Appleby will represent Australia in this week's Omega Mission Hills World Cup in Southern China, Australia still seeking its first win since the format for the event was revised in 1999.

As many as seven players could be taking an exemption from the career money list to keep their PGA Tour cards.

AUSTRALIA'S World Cup team of Stuart Appleby and Robert Allenby is well off the pace after the first day of competition in China, as Ireland grabbed an early lead overnight.

Rory McIlroy will look to put last week's disappointment in Dubai firmly in the past with a victory in the star-studded Omega Mission Hills World Cup, where he is representing Ireland alongside Ryder Cup star Graeme McDowell.

Tiger Woods feels the heat during his first round yesterday. Photo: Sebastian Costanzo Australian golfer Ashley Hall has grabbed a share of the lead in the second round of the JBWere Australian Masters at Kingston Heath.

Chalmers, who finished runner-up to Woods at the Buick Open on the PGA Tour last August, briefly held the lead with a run of four birdies on the outward nine, but has not won at home since the 1998 Australian Open.

MARYSVILLE Golf Course is no Kingston Heath but it does offer challenges. A lighthearted Stuart Appleby said it was a ''tough test'': bumpy in places with small greens, narrow fairways and diabolical dog-legs. ''Tight? My goodness I can't hit the fairways I don't know how you can shoot under par around here!'' he said.

Blasting into the week ahead, from Australia to Mexico and beyond ... Woods looks for his mojo Down Under Here we go again.

Stuart Appleby, who lives in Orlando, Fla., is No. 134 on the money list and could have kept his card by finishing at least 15th at Disney this week in the final PGA Tour event of the year.

Six months after the PGA Tour officially got involved in the HSBC Champions, commissioner Tim Finchem was front and center at a news conference and later at the TV trophy presentation to Phil Mickelson .

STUART APPLEBY had not seen as big a media scrum all year as the pack that descended upon him around the 18th green after his practice round at Kingston Heath yesterday.

The Tiger has landed Tiger Woods steps from his private jet at Essendon Airport yesterday.

The field for a World Golf Championship is never as strong when Americans require a passport.

STUART Appleby is to forgo a last-ditch bid to secure his full American tour card so that he can be in Melbourne for next week's Australian Masters at Kingston Heath.

Aaron Baddeley during the first round of the Frys.com Open at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Arizona, last week.

STUART Appleby made the cut in Las Vegas but actually dropped two places on the PGA Tour money list at the weekend, leaving his battle to secure a tour card running.

THERE is no sugar-coating it. Stuart Appleby is just having a shocker. In his own words, it's ''like fumbling around in a dark room trying to find the door''. Mind you, a few golfers would be happy to have a bad year and earn more than $500,000, but by Appleby's high standards it is a major funk, his worst year on the United States PGA Tour since ...