Phil Mickelson is the early favorite to win the 2008 PGA Championship

The last major event of the golf season is a little over a week away. The PGA Championship, aka “Glory’s Last Shot,” takes place this year at the Oakland Hills Country Club in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. Tiger Woods won this event in 2006 and 2007; Phil Mickelson was the 2005 champ and is the early favorite at 10-1 now that Tiger is on the injured list.

Mickelson spent some quality time at Oakland Hills on Tuesday, just two days before his expected appearance at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in nearby Akron, Ohio. Adam Scott (25-1) and Geoff Ogilvy (28-1) also got in a practice round.

Scott is getting some handicapping buzz for the Championship, which used to have a reputation as a “first-time” major after the likes of John Daly, Steve Elkington and Davis Love III became champions. The golfer getting the most attention from a first-timer standpoint is Sergio Garcia, the second favorite at 14-1.

The competition for Olympic medals will be tight in Beijing. But when it comes to the gold, oddsmakers are expecting the host nation to come through in spades. China is a heavy 2-5 favorite to rake in the most gold medals this summer; the United States is a distant second at 13-8.

As the host, China gets to send a certain minimum number of qualified athletes to each event. There will be 613 Chinese athletes at the Games this year compared to 407 in Athens. They’ll do well in their traditional strongholds like diving, badminton and table tennis. But China is pulling out all the stops to bring home the most gold at Beijing.

When the Soviet Union made a similar Olympic push during the Cold War, they won the gold medal race on a regular basis, including their first attempt at the 1956 Games in Melbourne. China today has significantly more economic clout than the U.S.S.R. did back then.

Let’s hope things go right for Lefty.

Well, things certainly haven’t gone Padraig Harrington’s way since we last checked in on the reigning British Open champion. He sprained his right wrist on Saturday hitting an impact bag, and he might not even make it to this year’s Open at Royal Birkdale. Paddy’s freefall down the futures market continues; he was at 33-1 at press time.

Strangely, that leaves Phil Mickelson rising into second-favorite status at 12-1. This despite Lefty’s awful career record at the British Open, including missing the cut last year. He simply doesn’t have the experience playing the kind of courses – and in the kind of weather – you find across the pond.

Sergio Garcia does. He remains the Open favorite at 8-1, and although he’s never won a major, Garcia has finished in the Top 10 six of the last seven years, narrowly losing the 2007 Open to Harrington in a playoff. He’ll get that monkey off his back eventually, just like Mickelson did.

Bless you, college football. While pro sporting events slip further and further into the abyss of sanitized corporate “family entertainment,” the experience of going to a college game at the local stadium remains as boorishly fun as ever.

Having said that, this list of college football traditions makes no sense to me. Do opposing teams actually harbor ill will toward the legendary “dotting of the I” by The Ohio State University Marching Band sousaphonist? The author even suggests they should cross the T instead. Last time I checked, there was no T in “Ohio.”

The author even hates the Stanford Tree, and by extension assumes opposing teams do as well. Where does this hate come from? It’s a tree, for crying out loud. I’ll give you ridiculous, which is the point in the first place, but not hateful.

Unless you’re from Cal, that is. Oski vs. Tree remains one of the classic mascot fights of any college sport.

Marking the half-way mark of the baseball season, this year’s Monster MLB All-Star Game is being played on July 15 at Yankee Stadium in New York. Although it has little to do with the latest MLB power rankings, it is worth mentioning for a couple of reasons: the No. 1 team in the nation only has two players headed to the All-Star Game (the Tampa Bay Rays have won 11 of 13 games and picked up series sweeps over the Anaheim Angels, Chicago Cubs, Boston Red Sox (twice), Florida Marlins, Toronto Blue Jays, Baltimore Orioles and Kansas City Royals this season); and it’s also a good reminder of who’s leading the pack heading down the stretch.

Here are your MLB Power Rankings:

1. Tampa Bay Rays
2. Anaheim Angels
3. Chicago Cubs
4. Boston Red Sox
5. Chicago White Sox
6. St. Louis Cardinals
7. Philadelphia Phillies
8. Minnesota Twins
9. Milwaukee Brewers
10. Oakland Athletics
11. New York Yankees
12. Florida Marlins
13. Texas Rangers
14. Baltimore Orioles
15. Detroit Tigers
16. Arizona Diamondbacks
17. Los Angeles Dodgers
18. New York Mets
19. Toronto Blue Jays
20. Cincinnati Reds
21. Atlanta Braves
22. Houston Astros
23. Pittsburgh Pirates
24. San Francisco Giants
25. Kansas City Royals
26. Colorado Rockies
27. Cleveland Indians
28. Seattle Mariners
29. San Diego Padres
30. Washington Nationals

Venus Williams has the edge over little sister Serena.

It’s been five years since we last saw the Williams sisters face off in the finals of a major tennis tournament. The Wimbledon odds say it’s time for a rematch. We still have the semifinals to play, but Serena Williams is the favorite on the championship futures market at 11-10, edging out older sister Venus at 6-5.

Serena overtook Venus in the WTA pecking order starting in 2002 with a win at the French Open finals, the first of five in a row for Serena at grand slam events. These weren’t always the best displays of tennis; the two sisters were sometimes accused of fixing their own matches, but the simpler cause was a lack of killer instinct.

Now that both players have gotten on a bit in tennis terms (Venus is 28, Serena 26), I’ll go with the elder stateswoman. Her track record on grass is superb; on any other surface, Serena’s baseline game would give her the advantage.