A Look Back: Oct. 24 1904: Katherine Harley defeats T.H. Polhemus 6 and 5 to win U.S. Women's Amateur at Chevy Chase Club in Maryland. 1960: Ian Baker-Finch, 1991 British Open champion, is born in Nambour, Australia. 1982: Calvin Peete wins the Pensacola Open by seven shots over Dan Halldorson and Hal Sutton. 1993: Davis Love III wins the Las Vegas Invitational by eight strokes over Craig Stadler. 1999: Tiger Woods wins the National Car Rental Golf Classic at Disney World for his sixth PGA Tour title of the year. Woods beats Ernie Els by one stroke.

Events
The Art of Golf Festival brings almost 30 of the golf world's most talented artists, writers, sculptors and photographers together at Pinehurst Nov. 9-10. Visitors can see the work of each artist, talk with the artists and purchase select pieces as well as participate in a silent auction with proceeds benefiting the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.
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Popular LPGA Tour player Annika Sorenstam will host the finals of the 2001 Virtual Golf Association (VGA) Tour. One of the world's largest online golf tournaments, the event will be held at the World Golf Hall of Fame at World Golf Village in St. Augustine, Fla., Nov. 20, and will feature four participants competing in a computer match-play tournament with a purse of more than $50,000 in prize money.
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Associations
The main office of the Royal Canadian Golf Association remains at Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ontario, though the association and Canadian Golf Hall of Fame will temporarily relocate. The RCGA and ClubLink are working together on a new national head office at Glen Abbey, which is to open in spring 2003.
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People
Arnold Palmer becomes a spokesman for Invacare Corporation, which manufactures and distributes home medical products worldwide. The King will partipate in Invacare's "Yes, you can" campaign to encourage consumers to use the company's products for greater independence and comfort.
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Equipment company Sonartec hires sales reps Bill Blake in North Carolina, Steve Bozel in the Mid-Atlantic region and Steve Garcia in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. Also, Bob Heino will take over the New York region, Stephen Johnson will work in southern Texas and John Villano will take territory in southern California.
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Equipment
Softspikes introduces a scaled-down version of its popular Cleat Management Station, the Cleat Management Station Junior. The new center, designed for smaller golf shops, allows golfers to change their spikes easily but fits into a space 36 inches high, 15 inches wide and 18 feet deep.
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Using a Sonartec driver, Mike Wiebe hit the longest drive in qualifying rounds for the Open Division of the RE/MAX World Long Drive Championship. Canadian Wiebe uses Sonartec club heads and Penley graphite shafts during competition.
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Business
Premier Sports Media and Entertainment Group agrees to acquire the sports properties of the American Senior Golf Association. When fully executed, Premier will sponsor all ASGA tour events for 10 years with five-year renewal options and ASGA will receive minimum revenues of $2.2 million in 2002 increasing up to $9 million in the 10th year of the agreement.
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Travel
The fourth of a series of weekly studies conducted by the The Golf Digest Companies shows consumers are only slightly more confident about air travel than they were last week and that vacation travel plans are holding steady. Participants also say they plan to cut back on business travel.
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Technology
Members of golf Web site GolfServ.com enter one million rounds of golf into its online handicap and game tracking system. SirenServ, parent company of GolfServ, began the system in March 1999.
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The San Francisco Business Times singles out Corporate Golf, an online pro shop exclusively serving corporate buyers, for its "Hot Tech" or "Hottie" award. Corporate Golf offers golf event planning and management services, as well as apparel, accessories, and equipment, and received the honor for excellence in Internet technology or strategy.
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Commentary
The Serious Season

The trumped-up silly season beckons as the official golf season begins boarding up for the short winter respite. Next week's Tour Championship, followed two weeks later by the World Golf Championship's EMC World Cup, are considered the final two significant events of the 2001 campaign.

More compelling, however, are three tournaments that will likely not cause more than a ripple of interest except for hardcore golf fans -- the Buy.com Tour Championship and the PGA Tour's Southern Farm Bureau Classic and Qualifying School Tournament.

The Tour Championship and the EMC World Cup are fine events with marquee fields, but they just represent another opportunity for the rich to pad their pockets. This week's Buy.com Tour Championship and next week's Southern Farm Bureau Classic, played opposite the Tour Championship, are riveting in that they alter more than the dollar figure in the checkbook. These two events help shape futures.

At stake at the Buy.com Tour Championship are 15 PGA Tour cards for 2002. The tour's money winner receives virtually unlimited access to PGA Tour events next year. The remaining 14 players are ranked in priority along with the Qualifying School graduates.

But a card on the PGA Tour card is better than no card at all, and that's why you can bet Todd Barranger knows he has a $5,962 lead on Paul Claxton for the 15th position on the Buy.com money list. Or that Spike McRoy knows he is sitting in the precarious 125th position on the PGA Tour's money list, one notch away from losing his card for 2002.

There will be others like McRoy either hoping to hold onto their cards or seeking to vault inside the coveted 125 mark. For example, New Zealand's Craig Perks, with a sixth-place finish at the National Car Rental Golf Classic last week -- a paycheck just shy of $100,000 -- moved 23 spots from 131 to 108, and can now sleep a little easier knowing he's set for 2002. Paul Goydos, though, slipped from 125 to 128.

And in the coming weeks the PGA Tour Qualifying School Tournament will continue to unfold with more stories of failure than success.

Pressure in each of the events will grow exponentially with each drive, approach shot and putt as players assess their respective positions on the leaderboard. Whether they admit the fact or not, they know all too well that one stroke or $1 could conceivably mean teeing up each week on the world's premiere tour or bouncing around mini-tours until the opportunity presents itself again.

Sure, the headlines will feature Woods, Duval, Love, Singh and Els, but the real stories will be played out in sleepy towns like Prattville, Ala., and Madison, Miss.

Forget the silly season, this is serious business.