Sometimes it seems that if it weren't for bad luck, the LPGA would have no luck at all. Michelle Wie finally wins (wait, there's some good luck!), then an ankle injury forces her to withdraw from the season-ending LPGA Tour Championship. No chance to capitalize on that PR bonanza.

But at least the LPGA still had an exciting Player of the Year race to focus on at the Tour Championship! That race - between Jiyai Shin and Lorena Ochoa (with Cristie Kerr having a very remote chance) is still there. But the focus won't be.

Heavy rains in Houston have forced players off the course today for the second straight day. Only half the field has started the second round. And the LPGA has announced that the tournament is going from 72 holes to 54 holes, with a Monday finish. Tall about momentum screeching to a halt.

An LPGA official admitted there's the possibility of cutting to 36 holes, but with sunny weather finally expected on Sunday that hopefully won't be necessary.

LPGA Tour Championship on LPGA.com

It makes sense that a senior would win the Champions Tour Q-School tournament. But we're not talking any senior. We're talking Peter Senior. The three-time Order of Merit winner on the PGA Tour of Australasia was the winner of the senior circuit's Q-School finale on Friday.

Senior won 19 times on the Australasian tour, the last victory coming in 2003; plus four wins on the European Tour and three on the Japan Tour.

The Champions Tour has been called the hardest tour in the world to get onto, and it awards tour cards only to the Top 5 finishers at Q-School. Joining Senior in earning their 2010 Champions Tour cards are longtime Japan Tour star Joe Ozaki; former PGA Tour and Nationwide Tour player Ronnie Black; former Nationwide Tour player Steve Haskins (son of legendary college basketball coach Don Haskins); and Jim Roy. Roy won a playoff over Kirk Hanefeld and Bruce Vaughan to claim the final fully exempt tour card.

The golfers finishing sixth through 12th earned conditional status for 2010, and the remaining players in the Top 30 are eligible to compete in open qualifiers (a k a Monday qualifiers) on a week to week basis next year. For the identities of those players, view the full results.

There are 10 new pieces of golf equipment featured in our latest new equipment gallery, and five of them are wedges. TaylorMade, Cleveland, Callaway, Miura and Feel all have new wedges hitting the market. Also included in the roundup are Cleveland irons, Odyssey putters, Rife putters, a women's set from Callaway and a premium Japanese shaft. View the gallery to read about each.

And expect to see many more wedges hitting pro shop aisles in the coming weeks, leading up to the new groove rules for 2010. The 2010 groove specs are leading to a wedge glut for two reasons:

1. Obviously, companies are creating new wedges that conform to the new rules. All wedges manufactured must conform to the new specs after Jan. 1, 2011, and companies are rolling out those conforming wedges now with the rules set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2010.

2. But: Those new rules will affect only a tiny fraction of golfers in 2010; most recreational golfers won't be required to use post-2010 grooves for handicap rounds until 2024 at the earliest. And so manufacturers are pushing a lot of pre-2010 groove designs into the market now, too. The message to golfers: Get 'em while you can, because we can't make 'em after 2010 even though you can play them until 2024.

Many of the wedges that do conform to the 2010 rules are showing up with innovations, too, designed to minimize the loss of spin those new grooves will cause. Some companies are roughening the face of their wedges. In our latest new equipment gallery, Cleveland and Feel both take that approach. With the TaylorMade wedge featured, golfers can replace the face of the wedge without having to buy a new club. Worried about the grooves becoming worn and less effective? Remove the face and replace it with a fresh one.

View the new equipment gallery

Nickent Golf is out of business. Golfweek's Gene Yasuda reported today that Nickent laid off the last 22 of its employees this week and is preparing to liquidate.

I liked a lot of Nickent's clubs, particularly the drivers it was making in the 2003-2005 range, along with its fairways and hybrids. The Pipe putter drew some modest attention, too. The company did a lot of growing in that period and up through 2007, including hiring tour players and getting quite of a few of its hybrids into play on the Nationwide, LPGA and Champions tours.

What happened? Yasuda explains:

The equipment maker's fortunes turned in early 2008 when it made an ill-fated gamble on the nascent adjustable-driver market. Hoping to make inroads into the driver category, Nickent pushed aggressively to be among the first to unveil a conforming driver that could easily swap shafts for immediate play.

... But neither its driver, nor the product category as a whole, captured much consumer interest. Then, in the second half of 2008, the economy tanked. The combination proved fatal for Nickent.