Chris O'meara / AP

Past winners of The Players Championship Tiger Woods (left) and Phil Mickelson will have to master the tricky TPC Sawgrass course to set up a weekend showdown.

UP ... (in order of confidence)
Hunter Mahan: Cashed in all 10 starts this year, including two top 10s and two top 25s over the last four. Only Charley Hoffman (10-for-10) and Geoff Ogilvy (9-for-9) are in the same ballpark. (OK, OK, Rocco Mediate, too. He's 8-for-8 but has just one Top 25.)

Davis Love III: He has a pair of top 25s entering this week but has signed for a 74 in the final round of each of his last three starts.

Bo Van Pelt: He has made seven consecutive cuts, including three top 20s immediately before a tie for 29th at Quail Hollow.

Jonathan Byrd: Byrd turned in a season-best tie for fifth at Quail Hollow following four straight paychecks, including three top 14s beginning in Puerto Rico.

Steve Marino: He enters THE PLAYERS with five consecutive cuts made, including three top 20s immediately before a tie for 38th at Quail Hollow.

Y.E. Yang: He tied for 11th at Quail Hollow and tied for 19th in New Orleans.

Bob Estes: Four straight paydays, including a pair of ties for 13th the last two times out.

Martin Laird: After seven straight missed cuts, Laird finished tied for 24th in New Orleans and tied for 47th in Charlotte.

… and DOWN
Carl Pettersson: Oh, the humanity. He has six straight missed cuts and 12 straight rounds over par.

Marc Turnesa: Turnesa ended his string of three consecutive missed cuts ... with a WD in Charlotte. For 2009, he has entered 13 events and cashed in just three with zero top 25s.

Steve Elkington: It's been a brutal year for Elkington. In nine starts he has zero top 50s and six missed cuts, including the last three.

Chez Reavie: Reavie has missed the cut five straight times and in eight of his last nine tournaments.

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Jason Bohn: Since a tie for sixth in Houston, Bohn has missed three cuts in as many starts.

K.J. Choi: Choi's only payday in his last five tournaments was a tie for 24th in New Orleans. He shot a 74-74=$0 at the Quail Hollow.

D.J. Trahan: Trahan missed three of last four cuts, including the last two. He has no top 25s in the last seven. I've learned my lesson and taken my medicine.

Final thought
It's been a week since the HSBC Champions in China was, er, blessed (?) with WGC status. The knee-jerk reaction was interesting, if not a smidge comical. All this talk about selling out and just another rich-get-richer event was as predictable as, well, the event getting WGC status.

Since the World Cup lost its WGC stamp in 2007, a void has existed in the stable of WGCs, so an announcement was due. Furthermore, the World Cup was held outside the U.S. in six of its seven years as a WGC event, so I really don't understand the outcry for branding the event in China with the WGC logo.

And that's what this is all about anyway. The World Golf Championships is a brand. That there was a rush of commotion last week over the news is the latest proof that even bad publicity is good publicity (unless you're the H1N1 virus), which is something for which the series has thirsted since the beginning.

The only point of contention I currently have is giving the WGC-HSBC winner a tee time at the Mercedes-Benz Championship, which was reserved for PGA Tour winners only. But I'll live with it, because if Tiger Woods wins in China, will it really matter? He hasn't played the Benz since 2005. The more things change ...