Adam Scott finally topples Tiger Woods from No. 1 ranking

The Byron Nelson Championship sputtered on the weekend, but one player’s absence was enough to remove Tiger Woods from his No. 1 spot in the world golf rankings. Here’s a roundup of what happened in the golf world over the weekend.

Adam Scott will hit his first competitive tee shot as the world’s top-ranked golfer this week at the Crowne Plaza Invitational.

Scott, as we noted last week, was idle as he overtook the idle and injured Tiger Woods for the top spot in men’s golf. After adding Colonial to his pre-U.S. Open schedule, players in the field may now address Steve Williams’ employer as “No. 1.”

Scott has had numerous chances to play his way past Woods, who remains benched after back surgery, but finally reached the pinnacle with both golfers on the sidelines. The 2013 Masters champ has said often that achieving the first seed was a childhood dream, and he ousted Woods after the 14-time major winner was No. 1 for 60 consecutive weeks.

Paula Creamer was not around for the weekend during an LPGA Tour event for the first time in almost four years.

Creamer, who ended a nearly four-year losing skid in March at the HSBC Women’s Champions in Singapore, missed the cut at last week’s Kingsmill Championship. After posting rounds of 73 and 72 in the first LPGA event that Lizette Salas has won, the popular Pink Panther carded her first MC since she bombed out of the Safeway Classic in August 2010.

Creamer tweeted later about the acupuncture she enjoyed after her early ejection from Kingsmill.

As PGA.com noted, Creamer’s streak was impressive on its own but even more so when compared with Adam Scott’s longest current cuts-made streak of 33 on the PGA Tour, Jane Blalock’s all-time record of 299, and Tiger Woods’ 142 consecutive tourneys played without missing a cut.

Early on in last week’s HP Byron Nelson Championship, David Duval captured fan’s imagination as he briefly shared the first-round lead and his opening 4-under 66 put him squarely in the hunt for his first PGA Tour win since 2001. Alas, for the oft-injured Duval, a nagging elbow injury knocked him out of the proceedings, as he missed the cut with a 76 on Friday.

Picking up where Duval left off, however, was Mike Weir, another member of the “Where Are They Now” club who proved, with a runner-up finish, that the also injury-plagued former 2003 Masters winner may be on the verge of a resurgence.

Weir, you may recall, hit a tree root and partially tore a ligament in his right elbow at Hilton Head four years ago. The Canadian southpaw considered quitting golf but kept at it and on Sunday enjoyed his first top-10 finish since 2010.

“I know hard times,” Weir told reporters after posting a 2-under 67 in the finale in Irving, Texas, that Brendon Todd captured for his maiden tour victory. “I’ve had plenty of hard times in my career. It took me seven years out of college to get on the PGA Tour, missing cuts on the Asian Tour, Canadian Tour [now PGA Tour Canada], all around the world. So I knew I could rely on that and I knew I could dig deep within myself to putt myself out of things.

“This has taken a long time and it’s only one week,” Weir said, “but this week was great and very satisfying.”

The European Tour on Sunday issued an apology to the Caddies Association for its hurtful decision to continue playing the Madeira Islands Open following the sudden death of looper Iain McGregor a week ago Sunday.

The tour came under heavy fire for not halting the tournament after Alastair Forsyth’s popular caddie died of a heart attack during the competition’s final round.

“I apologized to [the Caddies Association] for the hurt and upset caused by events in Madeira,” Tour chief executive George O’Grady said in a statement on Saturday from last week’s Spanish Open, according to Reuters’ Tony Jimenez.

Steve Elkington made his first appearance on the Champions Tour since he tweeted himself into oblivion with a series of homophobic comments (since deleted, perhaps by PGA Tour edict, but available here for your perusal) back in February. Elkington, whose Twitter account went silent for almost a month after typing offensive remarks about Michael Sam, was similarly absent from competition.

While Sam has gone on to become the first openly gay football player drafted by an NFL team (the St. Louis Rams), the 10-time PGA Tour winner had gone into virtual hiding (also, perhaps by demand of commissioner Tim Finchem, who, observers have noted, may have suspended Elkington for his buffoonery) until his start last week at the Regions Tradition. Elkington, whose most recent previous event was at the Greater Gwinnett Championship in April, posted a DNS at the Insperity Invitational earlier this month and finished a respectable T9 on Sunday.