Things have cooled down a bit on the billeting front now, even though it did emerge recently that Woods and his entourage had booked an entire hotel in the Liverpool area for next month's British Open at Hoylake.

Anyway, the secret here was out quick enough when a 155 foot yacht called Privacy, replete with three decks and a security detail, tied up alongside a few small pleasure boats last Sunday at a small harbour on Long Island Sound just a few miles from Mamaroneck.

One of the American golf magazines is running a revealing interview with David Feherty, the former European Tour player and loquacious CBS analyst, in which he chronicles both his heavy drinking and his ongoing battle with depression.

Now off the booze, although he does make mention of the fact that hotel mini-bars continue to talk to him on occasions, Feherty recalls his anger when he was told that Tom Cruise had insisted that depression wasn't a legitimate illness. "Tom Cruise says there's no such thing as depression, that you can get better with physical exercise, " Feherty rails.

"Well, he's right. Beating the shit out of Tom Cruise would be physical all right, and it would cheer me up."

Story told about Claude Harmon, father of the renowned coach Butch Harmon, former Masters champion and professional at Winged Foot between 1945 and 1978.

A club member approaches Harmon and tells him he wants to swing like Sam Snead, so Harmon leads him to the putting green whereupon the member objects, telling Harmon he wants to swing like Snead not to putt like him.

Harmon then asks the man if he can pick a ball out of the hole without bending his knees. "No, " says the member. "Well, Sam Snead can, " replies Harmon, "so let's forget about what he does and start working on what you can do."

Read on if you're familiar with them, but a couple of golf expressions that this column had never heard of were doing the rounds at Winged Foot earlier in the week.

Firstly, what about a Captain Kirk? Fairly obvious that one, a shot which goes where no man has ever gone, but a Liz Taylor was less straightforward.

A bit fat, but beautiful nonetheless.

Even if there are other claimants on the origin of the term 'mulligan', the members at Winged Foot are adamant that the exclusive New York club was the first to coin the word.

It seems that a Canadian hotel owner by the name of David Mulligan, who joined the club in the late 1930s, had a habit of teeing up a second ball whenever he hit a wayward drive. He called it his "correction shot", however, his colleagues referred to it as a mulligan.

It seems that Steve Williams, the not so cheery face of Camp Tiger, has been spotted wheeling his oneyear old daughter around in a push chair. While the New Zealander is undoubtedly one of the game's uber caddies, he is not beloved of either the galleries or the press photographers who attempt to cover his boss's every move.

A few expensive cameras have come off worse in various scuffles with Woods's toter over the years. So, no, there have been no pictures as yet of Williams and child.

There have been countless attempts to describe the sumptuous brutality of Winged Foot this past week, but the 1996 USPGA champion, Mark Brooks, who was also beaten in a play-off for the US Open title by Retief Goosen five years ago, probably got it just about right.

"Six hard holes, six really hard holes and six impossible holes."