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Scotland's Richie Ramsay, the reigning U.S. Amateur champion, has been offered a place in the Arnold Palmer Invitational in Florida as part of his build-up to the Masters in April.

The Bay Hill event takes place on Mar. 15-18 and Ramsay will then move on to the Golf Club of Georgia in Atlanta, where he will play British Amateur champion Julien Guerrier on Mar. 28 in an exhibition known as the Georgia Cup. Ramsay then will play the Verizon Heritage at Hilton Head the week after the Masters.

Frenchman Guerrier is expected to make the Verizon Heritage his professional debut. But Ramsay is expected to remain an amateur so he could play in the British Open at Carnoustie in July and the Walker Cup at Royal County Down in Northern Ireland in September.

FOOT AND MOUTH: The caddie for Fred Couples put his foot in his mouth -- then used his foot to save face.

It started last summer when Joe LaCava was stuck watching the World Cup during a storm delay, and he saw England score only one penalty kick in a loss to Portugal.

"I said, 'This is the biggest event you have and you're deciding this in a shootout? Hockey would never do that,'" LaCava said. "I said, 'Geez, I could score a goal from there.'"

One of his friends in the clubhouse, Devon Baransky of Merrill Lynch, held him to his word.

In a gentleman's bet that took six months to unfold, Baransky arranged for LaCava to get a 15-minute soccer lesson, then booked a field near Bel-Air Country Club during the Nissan Open. He hired Ian Feuer, who had spent 10 years playing in Europe, to be the goalie.

"I had never kicked a soccer ball in my life," LaCava said.

Now, this wasn't the World Cup with 90,000 screaming fans with paint on their faces. About 40 people showed up to see LaCava, decked in soccer gear with a gold cleat. To win the bet, he had to make one kick in five tries.

He wound up with eight attempts, but all that mattered was the first one.

GOOOAAAAALLLLL!

"I hit it as hard as I could," LaCava said. "The goalie said to me, 'No disrespect, but you don't have any tendencies. I can't read you because I don't think you know what it's going to do.' And he was right. I tried to hook it and I pushed it. He went the wrong way."

DIVOTS: With his victory in at the Mayakoba Golf Classic in Mexico, Fred Funk surpassed $20 million in career earnings. Not bad for a former golf coach at University of Maryland. ... During his 11-1 record at the Accenture Match Play Championship, the highest seed Geoff Ogilvy has faced is Henrik Stenson at No. 9. ... Here's how much the golf scene has changed in nine years of the World Golf Championships. In the first year of match play, there were 39 Americans and 11 Europeans in the 64-man field. This year, there were 23 Americans and 19 Europeans.

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