Goosen seeks Copperhead encore

Fourteen of the top 25 players in the world will be on hand when the Transitions Championship begins play today at the Innisbrook Resort in the Tampa suburb of Palm Harbor, Fla.

South African Retief Goosen ended a nearly four-year dry spell with his one-shot victory over Charles Howell III and Brett Quigley in the event last year. He be seeking his eighth PGA Tour title today as play unfolds on The Copperhead Course, a tree-lined, undulating course that has more of a North Carolina look than a Florida one. The course is a good tune-up for the Masters because the greens are fast and there is pine straw off the fairways. It was the ninth-most difficult course on the PGA Tour in 2009.

Goosen, a two-time U.S. Open champion, may be up for the challenge of defending his title. He already has posted three top-10 finishes this year, a fourth at the Sony Open, a tie for fifth in the Accenture Match Play Championship and a tie for sixth at the SBS Championship. He also is the only player to shoot four sub-par rounds in a Transitions Championship (69-68-69-70 in 2009) since the event moved from the fall to the spring in 2007.

Second-ranked Steve Stricker, No. 6 Ian Poulter, No. 9 Jim Furyk and No. 10. Padraig Harrington top the field along with Goosen. First- and second-round play will be telecast on the Golf Channel (3-6 p.m.) NBC will pick up the action on Saturday and Sunday (3-6 p.m.).

QUICK DIVOTS: Golf's weekend television ratings are down 18 percent from last year for the first 10 weeks of the season, according to Sports Business Journal. But don't blame that on Tiger Woods because he did not play on the weekend for the first 10 weeks last year, either. ... Derek Lamely's victory Monday in the Puerto Rico Open was the first by a rookie on the PGA Tour since Marc Turnesa won the Justin Timberlake tournament in 2008. ... John Daly, who tied for 24th at 10 under last week in Puerto Rico, is making his sixth start of the year. ... The last time the PGA Tour went this far into a season (12 events) without multiple winners was 2004, when Phil Mickelson became the first to win for the second time in the 15th week. ... Mickelson hit just 20 fairways at Doral, last in the field, and has added next week's Arnold Palmer Invitational to his schedule to try to work out issues with his game.

Information from PGA Tour.com and ESPN.com contributed to this post.