It is very rare for someone from the New York metropolitan area to become a player – especially a successful one – on the professional golf circuit. A big reason for this is the climate, or at least the one we've had up to this point. As I write this, another day with temperatures in the 70s is expected in the Northeast.

Len Mattice. Photo by PGA Tour

People are born in this area with the potential to be talented golfers, of course. However, the ability to really develop that talent is hampered by there being three or four months out of every year when golf cannot be played out on the course. That interruption makes it tough to truly hone and maintain skills at a young age, and it isn't like a youngster can go south or west for those months, given that he or she attends school.

There have been exceptions. On the PGA Tour are Rocco Mediate and Len Mattiace, both of whom grew up on Long Island. Both of their families went to Florida when they were in high school, and when I spoken to Mattiace, he said that made a big difference in his improvement, to the point where he could get a golf scholarship to college and eventually launch a career on the PGA Tour.

Best wishes to Mattiace, by the way, who is a class act. Some readers may remember how he gave Tiger a run for his money and finished second at the Masters in 2003, and won two tournaments in 2002. However, in late 2003 he had a skiing accident in Vail that tore up all kinds of things in his knees, and he spent three months in a wheelchair. He was a bit too ambitious in his comeback, and it has cost him. Mattiace has made only 58 of 85 cuts since 2004 on the PGA Tour. He has been on the Nationwide Tour this year, and a lot of golf fans are hoping he can have a few top-10s and maybe even a victory back in the big show in 2008.

Brad Faxon and Billy Andrade both are from Rhode Island and still have close ties to that state. The CVS Charity Classic that is run in Rhode Island is one of the most fun events of the year. Unfortunately, it was dropped from the PGA Tour a few years ago, which is too bad because the tour doesn't spend as much time in the Northeast in the summer and fall as it should and thus misses out on some major media attention. Meaghan Francella just completed a successful sophomore year on the LPGA Tour, and she was born and raised in Port Chester, NY.

Rocco Mediate. Photo WireImage.com

So far, while there has been a golfer or two – such as Raymond Floyd – who have gone from elsewhere to the Hamptons, it hasn't yet been the other way around. That could change within a few years. Golf in the Hamptons is hot right now, and I'm not talking about good players at Shinnecock Hills or Maidstone, I mean at the local high schools. Again this year, East Hampton, Westhampton Beach, and Southampton High Schools are all tied at the top of League VIII.

Matt Liguori is a senior at Westhampton and you know he is going to college on a scholarship, and having grown up around tour pros he could well have the attitude and personality to compete on the pro level. East Hampton is stocked with very good players at every age level, from John McGuirk, a senior, to freshmen. In fact, last year an eighth-grader, Garner Minetree, made the varsity, and this year he is tearing up the fairways and greens. He could be playing college-level golf at only 15 years old. East Hampton doesn't just win, it wins big – a couple of weeks ago it won back-to-back matches by 9-0 scores.

That East Hampton is dominating is surprising for three reasons. One is the youngsters miss at least three months of play during the winter. Another is that with the relatively small year-round population, the talent pool isn't as large as in the rest of the New York area. And three, it is more than surviving the loss of Zach Grossman, the one most likely to go from the Hamptons to the PGA Tour.

Earlier this month Grossman, who is only 14, was named as the Metropolitan Professional Golf Association's top junior player on Long Island, and that was after spending only half the year there. He played in eight tournaments and had an average score of 72.4. During the summer he won the annual club championship at the South Fork Country Club in Amagansett, winning the 36-hole match-play finale 5 and 4 over a lifelong member of the club who is four times his age. Grossman already holds the club record of 63 at the South Fork County Club.

Grossman was born and raised in East Hampton and last year, as only an eighth-grader, he was positioned at #1 on the varsity golf team. This past summer he played in eight tournaments sponsored by the Metropolitan PGA and won six of them. Clearly, he is destined for golf glory.

Tiger Woods. Photo Getty Images

His parents believe this, and that is why Zach is no longer in East Hampton. By the end of the summer they had moved to Charleston, South Carolina and Zach is enrolled in a high school there. His 11-year-old sister is a talented tennis player, so she can benefit from the year-round sports season too. The Grossman family will still spend every August in East Hampton, so if Zach does indeed wind up on the PGA Tour, we can still say he hails from East Hampton.

I would love to see him and Len Mattiace square off in the final round of a U.S. Open!

I'm happy to mention a couple of mini-comebacks this past weekend in golf. One was by Mike Weir, who won the Masters in 2004 and was the best golfer ever produced by Canada until the wheels sort of fell off. He was able to stay on the tour but he couldn't buy a win. What a difference a few weeks make. In dramatic fashion he beat Tiger Woods 1-up before an adoring hometown crowd in the final singles match at the President's Cup in Montreal last month. This past Sunday he shot a final-round 68 to capture the Fry's Electronics Open in Scottsdale, Arizona. In addition to Canadians, lefties are his biggest fans. Speaking of "Lefty," poor Phil Mickelson, who grew up in Arizona, didn't make the cut. Ouch!

The other mini-comeback was by John Cook, a close friend and neighbor of Tiger's. Among his 11 tour victories is the PGA Championship, but the decade since has been pretty tough. Cook kept plugging away, though, and he gives back to the game by being a player representative on the PGA Tour's policy board. On Sunday, in only his second start on the Champions Tour, he scorched the course with a 65 to jump past Mark O'Meara and Tom Kite to capture at AT&T Championship in San Antonio.

With the FedEx Cup run over and Tiger staying home until mid-December, all that is left of the PGA Tour season is the drive for dough. Dozens of players have to worry about keeping the tour cards for the 2008 season, and doing that means they have to be among the top 125 players in earnings by the end of the last tournament that counts, which is the Disney Golf Classic on Nov. 4. Your faithful columnist will be there, and you'll get my report upon my return.

Get out there and play – thank you, global warming!