ORLANDO, FLORIDA | Blessedly, the LPGA these days is (start ital) not (end ital) a place where a rogue caddie feuds publicly with a controversially erstwhile megastar.

The LPGA (start ital.) is (end ital.) a place blessed to have a dominant player named Yani, whose monstrous future is now, and a budding phenom named Lexi, whose professional future has no horizon.

Fifty-nine of the best women golfers in the world convocated in Florida last week for the season-ending CME Corp Titleholders, which paid an eye-widening $500,000 to little-known winner, Hee Young Park.

That number – 59 – is never lost on anybody who pays any attention to women’s golf. It’s the watershed score Annika Sorenstam posted 10 years ago at the Standard Register Ping in Phoenix. And it is arguably the best round ever played by a female.

Annika is gone from the competitive scene now, working and raising a family. Her immediate successor, Lorena Ochoa, is radiantly pregnant in her native Mexico and also retired, for the time being, from the LPGA.

So 22-year-old Yani Tseng, of Taiwan, and 16-year-old Lexi Thompson, of Coral Springs, Fla., are currently the top hit-getters if you Google women’s golf.

That may not be fair to major championship winners Suzann Pettersen, Paula Creamer and Cristie Kerr, to name a few. But it’s the reality of the moment.

(And, by he way, I’ve got a dozen brand-new premium golf balls if you can tell me the exact date that Michelle Wie’s name dropped out of this conversation. In her defense, she did post a top 10 at CME.)

Anyway, when the LPGA bosses trotted Lexi and Yani out in front of the media early last week the contrasts and comparisons were compelling.

Lexi, recently profiled flatteringly in Sports Illustrated, said things like, “I love traveling around doing TV shows. Throughout this whole journey, it has been a blast.”

Journey?

To put the advent of Lexi Thompson in perspective: She was 2 years old when Tiger Woods won his first major championship.

Tseng, who lives in Sorenstam’s old house, just 40 minutes from the Grand Cypress venue for the Titleholders, laughed a lot and talked about hosting her mother, brother and two cousins all week at her Lake Nona home.

“It was a little too noisy in the morning,” she said with a big smile. “I woke up too early because they were running around. Everybody. It was like a party every day at my house. So it was fun.”

After a sizzling Saturday 66 that jumped Tseng back into contention, Tseng said she “enjoyed” winning a pre-round bet with her caddie that she would shoot 3 under or better in the third round.

Tseng arrived In Orlando with 11 worldwide victories this year, a number even more remarkable when you consider the economy-dented LPGA schedule contained just 13 U.S. events in 2011, down from 24 in 2008.

Proud and powerful world No. 2 Pettersen didn’t hesitate to give Tseng her props.

“You can’t do anything but applaud what she’s done,” Pettersen said of Tseng’s season. “It makes me work even harder. I don’t feel that there’s a huge gap between me and Yani.”

Women’s golf will benefit in 2012 from a challenge to Tseng’s current supremacy.

And there are people in high LPGA places rooting for that challenge to come from Thompson, who aside from being gifted at golf, is photogenic and American.

“Think about Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman in their primes, think about the young Tiger Woods; It was awe-inspiring to watch them swing the club,” respected instructor Jim McLean told SI about his star pupil. “That’s Lexi. You stand near her on the tee and you feel the power. The sound of the ball being compressed – wow!”

For her part, Thompson still hasn’t completely wised up to the fact that an LPGA career is more work than play. And that’s nice to see.

Her older brothers are both accomplished players. Nicholas is tour pro. Curtis plays on the varsity at LSU. Growing up and tagging along was, and still is a “blast” for Lexi.

“It is never a chore or a duty,” she says. “I just love going out and practicing. We live on a golf course so that helps. I started with golf because I saw my brothers play. I was always watching them. It was my life.”

At the Titleholders, Thompson tripped early with a triple-bogey seven on the third hole of the first round. But she recovered nicely for an opening 71, 1-under par. Tseng also started slowly but birdied three of her last five holes for a Thursday 70.

Thompson followed with a Friday 75 and a Saturday 76 to eventually finish outside the top 30. Chalk one up for the learning curve.

Tseng, meanwhile, tied for sixth after a Sunday 74.

The scary part for Tseng is she didn’t back away when asked if she thought she could win more than 11 events in another season.

“I want to set that for my goal for next year,” she said. “But it’s not easy.”

Especially if Lexi Thompson becomes the player that people, other than her teacher, compare to Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman.

ORLANDO, FLORIDA | Blessedly, the LPGA these days is not a place where a rogue caddie feuds publicly with a controversially erstwhile megastar.

The LPGA is a place blessed to have a dominant player named Yani, whose monstrous future is now, and a budding phenom named Lexi, whose professional future has no horizon.

Fifty-nine of the best women golfers in the world convocated in Florida last week for the season-ending CME Group
Titleholders, which paid an eye-widening $500,000 to little-known winner, Hee Young Park.

That number – 59 – is never lost on anybody who pays any attention to women’s golf. It’s the watershed score Annika Sorenstam posted 10 years ago at the Standard Register Ping in Phoenix. And it is arguably the best round ever played by a female.

Annika is gone from the competitive scene now, working and raising a family. Her immediate successor, Lorena Ochoa, is radiantly pregnant in her native Mexico and also retired, for the time being, from the LPGA.

So 22-year-old Yani Tseng, of Taiwan, and 16-year-old Lexi Thompson, of Coral Springs, Fla., are currently the top hit-getters if you Google women’s golf.

That may not be fair to major championship winners Suzann Pettersen, Paula Creamer and Cristie Kerr, to name a few. But it’s the reality of the moment.

(And, by he way, I’ve got a dozen brand-new premium golf balls if you can tell me the exact date that Michelle Wie’s name dropped out of this conversation. In her defense, she did post a top 10 at CME.)

Anyway, when the LPGA bosses trotted Lexi and Yani out in front of the media early last week the contrasts and comparisons were compelling.

Lexi, recently profiled flatteringly in Sports Illustrated, said things like, “I love traveling around doing TV shows. Throughout this whole journey, it has been a blast.”

Journey?

To put the advent of Lexi Thompson in perspective: She was 2 years old when Tiger Woods won his first major championship.

Tseng, who lives in Sorenstam’s old house, just 40 minutes from the Grand

Cypress venue for the Titleholders, laughed a lot and talked about hosting her mother, brother and two cousins all week at her Lake Nona home.

“It was a little too noisy in the morning,” she said with a big smile. “I woke up too early because they were running around. Everybody. It was like a party every day at my house. So it was fun.”

After a sizzling Saturday 66 that jumped Tseng back into contention, Tseng said she “enjoyed” winning a pre-round bet with her caddie that she would shoot 3 under or better in the third round.

Tseng arrived in Orlando with 11 worldwide victories this year, a number even more remarkable when you consider the economy-dented LPGA schedule contained just 13 U.S. events in 2011, down from 24 in 2008.

Proud and powerful world No. 2 Pettersen didn’t hesitate to give Tseng her props.

“You can’t do anything but applaud what she’s done,” Pettersen said of Tseng’s season. “It makes me work even harder. I don’t feel that there’s a huge gap between me and Yani.”

Women’s golf will benefit in 2012 from a challenge to Tseng’s current supremacy.

And there are people in high LPGA places rooting for that challenge to come from Thompson, who aside from being gifted at golf, is photogenic and American.

“Think about Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman in their primes, think about the young Tiger Woods; It was awe-inspiring to watch them swing the club,” respected instructor Jim McLean told SI about his star pupil. “That’s Lexi. You stand near her on the tee and you feel the power. The sound of the ball being compressed – wow!”

For her part, Thompson still hasn’t completely wised up to the fact that an LPGA career is more work than play. And that’s nice to see.

Her older brothers are both accomplished players. Nicholas is tour pro; Curtis plays on the varsity at LSU. Growing up and tagging along was, and still is a “blast” for Lexi.

“It is never a chore or a duty,” she says. “I just love going out and practicing. We live on a golf course so that helps. I started with golf because I saw my brothers play. I was always watching them. It was my life.”

At the Titleholders, Thompson tripped early with a triple-bogey seven on the third hole of the first round. But she recovered nicely for an opening 71, 1-under par. Tseng also started slowly but birdied three of her last five holes for a Thursday 70.

Thompson followed with a Friday 75 and a Saturday 76 to eventually finish outside the top 30. Chalk one up for the learning curve.

Tseng, meanwhile, tied for sixth after a Sunday 74.

The scary part for Tseng is she didn’t back away when asked if she thought she could win more than 11 events in another season.

“I want to set that for my goal for next year,” she said. “But it’s not easy.”

Especially if Lexi Thompson becomes the player that people, other than her teacher, compare to Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman.

For better or worse, we re-discovered last week that one of the great sports within the sport of golf is still Tiger-watching.

The return of Woods to the professional scene in Ohio – after months of rumor, mystery, innuendo and enough speculation to fill a thousand thumb drives – was at once fast-paced and a slow reveal.

Tuesday at the WGC-Bridgestone, Woods showed up in the press room and gave us a quick fix of Tiger-Speak. His ball-striking, he said, was producing nice, tight “start lines.”

What he didn’t elaborate on was the growth on his chin. As hirsute proclivities go, it wasn’t as shocking (pun intended) as Ryo Ishikawa’s new haircut. It was more like the kind of soul patch crime writer Elmore Leonard used to describe as a “little be-bop growth.” Were there unspeakable tattoos lurking under Tiger’s fancy Nike duds? Who knows, who knows?

But this much was certain: The Tiger Woods who had us at “Hello, world” 15 years ago, had our full attention once again.

On Wednesday, former Woods running mate Charles Barkley went on a New York radio show and hammered Woods, adding, “I’m confused as to where he’s going.”

The answer was Akron and Firestone Country Club, where the rubber of Tiger’s latest comeback was about to meet the road to his athletic future.

Thursday morning’s (ital) Wall Street Journal (end ital) brought a headline that proclaimed, “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.” And it was more about Woods and his erstwhile relationship with golf followers than it was about his divorce from wife Elin or his split with caddie Stevie.

Who knew that before the sun set over grueling Firestone that day the Dow would tank more than 500 points and Tiger’s stock as a player would soar like a Silicon Valley IPO?

His first full round of competitive golf since April produced a crisp 2-under 68 that included five of 14 fairways hit, 12 of 18 greens in regulation, 27 putts, three birdies, one bogey and a share of 18th place with names such as McIlroy, Fowler, Garcia, Donald and Ogilvy.

Much more interesting were the 10 times he used driver without any wild misses and the five one-putts he conjured on the six holes he needed to save par.

Then there were the soft-spike golf shoes he wore for the first time in his professional career. “The soft shoes are making (it),” said a breathless Nick Faldo on TV. “Forcing him to swing at 80 percent.”

And thereby helping to protect the ravaged left knee and damaged Achilles that many still think will prevent him from scaling Mt. Nicklaus and planting his flag atop the Golden Bear’s 18 professional majors.

“No qualms,” Woods said smugly after the round.

When Golf Channel’s Steve Sands asked a perfectly legitimate question about when Woods knew the knee was going to be okay during the round, Tiger dismissed the premise with his usual post-round, non-responsive, guarded claptrap about “birdies” and “bogeys.”

Look out, world: Tiger As Brat was still alive and well, too.

You may have lost all respect for Woods in the past two years. Or you may still be one of his unconditionally loving fans. But of this there can be no debate: The cut 3-wood second shot he carved from the right rough that rocketed miles up the long 16th fairway was glorious and painlessly obvious.

“Smoked it,” Woods said.

This was all quite delicious. There were still three more rounds to be played. And bubbling up from just beneath the surface was a sub-plot straight out of a Dan Jenkins novel:

The 18-hole leader at 8-under 62 was Aussie Adam Scott, who still swings like Woods used to and now employs the jilted and sneering Williams as his caddie.

Alas, rust, notably absent in Round One, scratched its way to the surface Friday in the form of erratic putting and dodgy distance control. Woods acknowledged both after a 71 left him well back in the pack. But what he didn’t and wouldn’t ever admit was that an experienced Williams on the bag might have talked him off of a few key wrong club selections.

By the end of Saturday, a dodgy 72 left Woods 13 shots behind leader Steve Williams … er … Adam Scott. The magic that has defined his career was missing.

“I’m not other players,” Woods had said curtly, when asked Friday if he might be better off lowering his expectations until his body completely heals the way other players do when they come back from injuries.

It turned out to be the truest thing the 35-year-old Woods said all week. And a Sunday 70 that produced a T38 bore it out: Tiger Woods isn’t “other players” anymore. At least not now. Judged by his own lofty standard, he’s not even close.

Prior to Firestone, close to 20 of the 27 players ranked ahead of Tiger in the Official World Golf Ranking were younger than Woods. There’s a whole generation of future stars un-scarred and un-scared by the Woods’ dominance that limited the major championship trophy cases of contemporaries such as Mickelson and Els.

The bright side for Woods appears to be the soundness of the knee and Achilles. But clearly he must be more patient. And that’s a quality he has never possessed in abundance.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA | All right, so it wasn’t the back nine Sunday at The Masters.

No Tiger on the grounds. No Phil in contention.

For most of the day, there was no drama, no fireworks, no energy, no “feel” of a major and no buzz.

The Players was supposed to be the fifth major. But up until the very last, this rendition was more like the fifth inning … of a Pirates-Braves game. This was not better than most. It was better than few.

Then, too briefly, it got real good, real fast. On the 72nd hole American David Toms poured a 17-foot birdie putt on what is arguably the meanest par-4 finishing hole in golf to force a playoff with Korea’s K.J. Choi.

Go ahead, wise guys, say it: The Players Championship doesn’t start until the last hole Sunday.

Usually, the best stuff happens at the dreaded island green, par-3 17th. Which, by the way, is where the sudden death playoff began and ended when Toms missed a three-and-a-half footer for par and a lot of money.

From a style standpoint, this Players ended badly. But to be sure and to be fair, Choi won’t be asking for a do-over anytime soon.

As early as Saturday we got our first clue that the players weren’t going to measure up to The Players. That’s when the pied Ian Poulter got into the act.

When last seen at TPC Sawgrass in the dying of the light, Poulter was sprinting from the 17th tee to the 17th green, two-putting and then galloping off to the 18th where he hastily golfed his ball onto the final fairway. Turns out it was a desperate, but successful, attempt to beat the klaxon that sounded the end of the day’s rain-delayed play.

It meant Poulter could finish his third round and wouldn’t have to return at 7:45 Sunday morning when play resumed. Blessedly, he said, he would be able to sleep in with the rest of the civilized world and arrive at a fashionable hour for his final tee time.

This, of course, never would have been permitted at Augusta National, where running is not allowed. Alerted, the Pinkertons at The Masters would have tossed Poulter out on his precious British arse.

The sight of Poulter dashing around the grounds at, say, St. Andrews might have confused the locals into thinking somebody was filming a re-make of “Chariots of Fire.” And an Englishman running anywhere in the August heat of Atlanta, the site of this year’s PGA Championship, would be dismissed as the delirious act of a madman from across the water. At the U.S. Open, Poulter simply would have tripped over the rough.

“Unfounded,” tweeted Paul Azinger, when the critics came out in full force to blast Poulter. “Every player on Tour would have done the same thing.”

But not at a real “major.”

None of which is to say that The Players Championship isn’t without full merit and deserved significance. And this one was no exception. The tournament has earned its chops for lots of good reasons.

To repeat: The players don’t always measure up to The Players.

With the possible exception of Seminole (an argument for another column), TPC Sawgrass is the best golf course in Florida. It’s diabolical without being stupid. And with no venue change in 30 years, the tournament’s followers have come to know the golf course, particularly the dangerous rhythm of its finishing three holes.

And if you don’t buy that last point, try this stat on for size. The last three twosomes – the leaders – played the final three holes of the third round in a combined 10-over par.

Players’ winners have come in all shapes, sizes, ages, styles and nationalities. The only common denominator for Funk, Sutton, Woods, Scott, Garcia, Perks, Pate, Nicklaus and Clark – just to name a few – is there is no common denominator. And that’s healthy.

And now there will be an Asian name on the wall of honor near the clubhouse.

Kyoung-Ju Choi took up golf at the age of 16 when he didn’t foresee a big enough future in his first sporting love – powerlifting. He could squat 350 pounds when he weighed just 95. And his friends called him “Tank.”

But he decided youth would not be wasted on Kyoung. And he switched to golf.

In his three previous events leading up to Sawgrass, Choi quietly posted three top-eight finishes. He should have been a pre-tournament favorite. He will not be overlooked again anytime soon.

“It was important to stay patient and not give up,” Choi said late Sunday through an interpreter. When David Toms made his putt on 18, it was as loud as something you’d hear at The Masters.

Through no fault of Choi’s, that’s where the similarities ended.

LUTZ, FLORIDA | The idiosyncracies of Jim Thorpe’s golf swing are almost a mirror image of his speech patterns – lots of rapid fire idiomatic movement topped with a flourish at the finish in which his left hand ends up higher on the club than his right. There is no one else quite like his fast-talking self and no other follow-through quite like his own.

“Thorpie,” said Nick Price last Thursday, “is Thorpie.”

Thorpe’s action and his words were unmistakably back on display all week on the Champions Tour at the Outback Steakhouse Pro-Am after an enforced absence of a year and a half that included a 10-month stretch in a federal prison for failing to pay $1.6 million in income taxes.

If the longest walk in golf is from the practice range to the first tee, then how do you measure the trip from jail to a golf course filled with curious spectators and a breathless national media contingent?

“Tuesday morning when I drove in I’ve never been that nervous on the golf course in my whole life,” Thorpe said. “I didn’t know what to expect.”

The time in an Alabama penitentiary, he said, had been relatively uneventful and nothing like the dangerous and desperate prison life portrayed in the movies. “I watched a lot of golf (on TV) up there and gained a few pounds,” Thorpe said. “But I don’t want to see any of you guys go there.”

Thorpe said he hated the green uniform that comprised his everyday wardrobe. And he refused to allow his family to visit because he didn’t want them to see him that way. Much of his time in stir was taken up by the business of piecing together what he calls “Team Thorpe,” a group of friends, he says, who will support him and make sure the mistakes that got him incarcerated aren’t repeated.

“I apologize to everyone for the mistakes that I’ve made,” he said. “I blame no one but me.”

Yet almost in the same breath he added, “Sometimes in life we make mistakes and trust the wrong people.”

So actually, to be tough on the likable Thorpe, he does assess at least part of the blame to someone other than himself.

None of which stopped his fellow competitors from welcoming him back with handshakes and, in some cases, hugs.

While in prison Thorpe said he received letters from several players, including one from Tom Watson. Watson, who is the same age as Thorpe, included a short-game reminder in his missive. When Thorpe saw Watson Wednesday, he couldn’t resist. “You could have given me that putting tip 30 years ago,” he said.

Thorpe won three times on the PGA Tour and has done the same 13 times on the Champions Tour. He believes he is as long off the tee as ever and that he will win again.

“I’m absolutely thrilled that he’s back,” said Tom Lehman. “It’s kind of what this country is all about, what humanity is all about. Getting yourself up off the ground and moving forward again.”

“We missed him out here,” Price said. “He’s such a character and has a great presence in the locker room. Always telling stories.”

And promising, these days, not to make up any stories when it comes to finances. It has been reported that Thorpe has agreed to repay more than $2 million to the government and serve 200 hours of community service. Golfweek magazine reported his attorney’s fees alone cost him $800,000.

“I paid my debt to society,” Thorpe said. “My life is on the right track.”

In the weeks since returning from prison to his central Florida home, Thorpe spent most of his time working out, playing golf and even giving the odd lesson. “You think my swing is funny,” he said. “You should see some of the guys I was trying to teach.”

When the competitive bell rang for Round One Friday at tough TPC Tampa, Thorpe responded with a respectable 1-over-par 72. Not bad for his first round of competitive tournament golf in close to 18 months. Thorpe compared it to playing football.

“Once you get the first hit,” said Thorpe, still powerfully built in his early 60s, “the game is on.”

And, as it happened, the first day of the rest of his professional golf life fell on April 15. Tax day.

“Yes,” Thorpe said with an arched eyebrow. “I did think about that.”

An even par round Saturday left Thorpe encouraged but in the middle of the pack. Sunday made too many demands on his lack of recent competitive play.

The resultant 77 was not a surprise. But the week was a big step back for a man who has had his share of time to think about missteps.

“I just want to play golf now,” Jim Thorpe said.

Not only was the 1986 Masters, by almost everybody’s reckoning, the “greatest” Masters. It was also the most “memorable.”

Television had a lot to do with that. Jack Nicklaus had even more.

Most of the highlights from Nicklaus’ 18th and final major championship victory are burned into the memories of those who played in it, attended it or watched it on TV. And there is very little that happened that week at Augusta National that hasn’t been hashed, re-hashed, written and re-written in the 25 years since the 46-year-old “bear came out of hibernation” at the 50th Masters.

But there are a few relevant stories, observations and recollections that have stayed mostly private. Until now.

Like, for example, Andrew Magee swearing at Nicklaus. Blasphemy, you say? Well, here’s how that one went down:

It was no secret that Nicklaus arrived at Augusta in poor form. He had missed the cuts at Pebble Beach, Honda and The Players Championship earlier in the 1986 season and had withdrawn at New Orleans. His most common complaint was that his aging eyes were starting to affect his focus.

Magee saw it differently. Paired with Nicklaus during a tournament round prior to The Masters, Magee was at once exasperated and awed when Nicklaus kept saying, “Where’d it go? Where’d it go?” after almost every shot. Finally, Magee turned to Nicklaus and answered him saltily with this observation: “Right at the bleeping hole, just like every other shot you hit.”

Magee later related this story to fellow PGA Tour pro Brandel Chamblee, who has since ascended to the top tier of televised golf analysis.

“Jack knew how well he was hitting it when he got to Augusta,” Chamblee said. “I mean who hits a 4-iron like he did on Sunday at 13? Who hits a 5-iron like Jack did at 16? … Mind boggling.”

The problem, said Chamblee, who watched the 1986 final round from a hotel room with buddies in Joplin, Mo., where he was playing in a mini-tour event, was that Jack couldn’t get the ball in the hole. Even during the Saturday 69 that brought him nearer the leaders, Nicklaus didn’t make many putts of consequence.

But by the time Nicklaus got to the par-3 16th Sunday, he knew exactly where he was (the first page of the leaderboard) and where his golf ball was going. It was his 28th Masters, and when son Jackie, on the bag, said, “Be right,” as his 5-iron was in the air, Nicklaus winked and without looking said, “It is.”

That story has since been handed down through at least one generation and into golf lore. But Chamblee didn’t hear about it until one week later when Jackie Nicklaus, still trying to make his own mark as a player, showed up at the TPA event in Arkansas. There, the younger Nicklaus was promptly and exhaustively de-briefed by his friends on that Tour.

The subsequent birdie at 16 got Nicklaus to 8-under par (he would win with a back-nine 30 for a closing 65 and a 9-under total) and it introduced much of the golf world to a young announcer named Jim Nantz, sharing that hole’s tower with Tom Weiskopf.

Nantz was on a short leash that week because he hadn’t yet earned the trust of the legendary and hard-nosed CBS golf producer Frank Chirkinian. Chirkinian recently succumbed after a long fight with cancer. And in the aftermath of his passing, Nantz shared, on Golf Channel, the intimate details of what was going on behind the camera when Nicklaus got to 16.

“It was a pretty weighty assignment and I can remember Frank whispering so gently in my ear and almost lulling me into a trance to where I felt like he was only talking to me,” Nantz said. “I had completely lost sight of the fact that millions were watching and we were sitting on one of the largest moments in the history of the sport. I would just love to be able to replay that whole interaction.”

CBS announcer Verne Lundquist’s exclamatory, “Maybe. . . . Yes, sir!” call of Nicklaus’ birdie on 17 has been replayed millions of times. Tour veteran Jason Gore had a copy made of the broadcast. And he pulls the tape out every spring.

Far fewer people remember that Greg Norman birdied 14, 15, 16 and 17 before a pushed 4-iron second on the 72d hole led to the bogey that kept him from a playoff with Nicklaus.

“No way he’s gonna birdie those holes and get back into it,” Chamblee says now. “No way Seve (Ballesteros) is going to snap hook it into the water on 15. But that’s the beauty of Augusta National: The holes are so close together that the roars affect the outcome. Jack’s birdie on 16 as Seve was playing 15 affected the tournament.”

Chamblee also took note when Norman “ran” off the green at 17. “You wondered how the guy could keep his emotions in check. Turns out he was as pumped up as the rest of us.”

And it cost him. Norman would finish in a tie for second with Tom Kite at 8 under. Almost no one remembers the gorgeous roll Kite put on his 10-foot birdie try on the 18th that would have gotten him into a playoff with Nicklaus. “He hit a great putt,” Chamblee says. “It just didn’t break. It was one of those putts nobody reads it correctly.”

Between them, Kite and Norman played in 49 Masters, posting a combined 21 top 10s and six seconds. Neither ever won at Augusta. Nicklaus played in 45 Masters, finished in the top 10 a remarkable 22 times and placed second on four occasions. He won The Masters six times.

Another occurrence lost on most observers was the Saturday 63 Nick Price signed for at the 1986 Masters. It tied the tournament record. More significantly, it showed anybody who was paying attention that a low number Sunday, when tournament officials traditionally soften the setup, was available.

Chamblee: “If you’re Jack Nicklaus and you see a number like that (63), you say, ‘Now wait a minute, I’m better than Nick Price.’ ”

Price’s 63 clearly figured into Nicklaus’ thinking during a Sunday morning conversation with son Steve when he predicted a 65 would win and a 66 would get him into a playoff.

“Just go shoot it, then,” Steve Nicklaus said.

Jack did. And won.

Doesn’t matter now that few remember the winner’s share of the purse was $144,000 or that Nicklaus complemented the victory with a subsequent T5 at his Memorial Tournament that year and a T8 at the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills.

For this one Sunday in April the sports world rejoiced unabashedly. Rick Reilly, working for Sports Illustrated at the time, called the story “too big to write.” Now, especially since the brakes got slammed on the bullet train that used to be Tiger Woods’ career, the 1986 Masters looks even bigger.

Last month, a 71-year-old Jack Nicklaus sat with a group of reporters near his Florida home. The 1986 Masters came up. Like it always does. And Nicklaus reminisced and amazed. Like he always does.

“I felt like when I birdied nine I was decent,” he said of the final day. “Birdied 10, started to feel better. I birdied 11 and I felt like I was in the golf tournament. That’s about the way I looked at it. And then I got out of the golf tournament at the next hole and bogeyed 12. And, of course, I birdied 13, and when I eagled 15, I knew I was in the middle of it.”

Could he remember what clubs he hit into the greens, somebody asked.

“Every significant club,” he said. “I mean, I don’t remember what I hit at nine but I remember the putt certainly. I don’t remember what I hit on 10 but I remember the putt. I don’t remember what I hit on 11 but I remember the putt, and I hit a 7-iron into 12 and played a 3-iron into 13. I think I played 7-iron into 14. I hit a 4-iron into 15. I hit a 5-iron on 16. I hit a pitching wedge at 17 and I hit 5-iron at 18.

“But outside of that,” Nicklaus said, “I can’t remember.”

Fair enough and no worries. The 1986 Masters remains the one no one who saw it will ever forget.

ORLANDO, FLORIDA | Whether he wants to or not, it’s getting harder for Phil Mickelson to hide behind Tiger Woods.

At the height of on-the-course TigerMania – which, by the way, recedes farther into golf’s rearview mirror by the week – Mickelson invented the ironclad alibi.

“It’s Tiger’s world,” Lefty used to repeat to anybody who would listen, “and we’re all just living in it.”

It was a cute way of dodging the fact that Mickelson’s game and record couldn’t stand up to Woods’ on a regular basis. And it worked well with that sheepish-boyish-impish grin that is as much a part of Mickelson’s persona as his impossibly deft flop shots and inplausibly wild tee balls.

Anyway, when Woods’ “world” imploded off-the-course in late 2009, the whole dynamic of professional golf underwent an overnight change nobody saw coming. Among other things, it meant Mickelson needed to find a new explanation.

With this year’s Masters just a week away we’re still waiting to grasp the reasons why defending champion Mickelson has underachieved so egregiously since last April. “What will Phil do next?” has officially been replaced by the more relevant question: “What did Phil do last?”

He hasn’t won since Augusta 2010. And his world ranking has dropped all the way down to No. 6. It’s tough to gauge how much his bout with psoriatic arthritis has affected his game. He says he has the condition under control. And it’s difficult to know if the aftershocks from his wife’s recovery from breast cancer are still reverberating.

For better or worse, Mickelson’s struggles have continued to take a back seat to the erratic results Tiger’s work with swing coach Sean Foley have produced. But much of the light, in the next 10 days, will shine on Mickelson.

“Even though I feel like my game is there, I haven’t put the numbers on the board that I need to,” Mickelson said at the Arnold Palmer Invitational last week. His plan at Bay Hill, he said Wednesday, was to work on trajectory and distance control. Positive signs arrived Saturday when Mickelson birdied four holes on the inward half and signed for a 69. Sunday brought a one-over 73 and a finish outside the top 20.

This week Mickelson will go to Augusta on Monday and Tuesday before playing the Shell Houston Open, where he tied for 35th last year.

“I feel like the year kind of starts right about now,” Mickelson said late Sunday. “It’s an exciting time.”

None other than NBC’s Johnny Miller opined publicly last week that Mickelson doesn’t really care all that much about the events leading up to The Masters. To be fair, Mickelson won’t be the only player in Houston preparing, on the range and the course, for shots more appropriate to Augusta National than Redstone Golf Club.

And to be sure, there have been Masters’ weeks when Mickelson arrived in dodgy form and played well. In 2003 he insisted he got to Augusta without a clue. “One of the worst I was ever playing going into the tournament,” he said.

He finished third. Nice “worst.”

Actually, the record book shows Mickelson had four top-10s prior to the 2003 Masters. But he did miss the cut at the BellSouth Classic the week before thanks to a Friday 79. This year he has posted just two top-10s in seven pre-Masters starts.

And the more it becomes obvious that Woods – as television analyst Brandel Chamblee put it – is no closer to finding his game “than Miami is to Portland,” the more the scrutinists will focus on Mickelson. Tiger managed just one round under par at Bay Hill.

Woods has won four Masters, same as Palmer. Nicklaus did it six times. Mickelson has “just” three green jackets. But his consistency at Augusta National is off-the-charts good. From 1999 to 2006 he never finished out of the top 10. He has placed third four times. He has come in fifth, fifth and first in the last three.

“There is no place,” Mickelson said last week, “like Augusta.”

What he did last year was pretty special: A rock-solid Sunday punctuated by golf’s shot of the year, a 6-iron off the pine straw to the 13th green Sunday. By nightfall he had won his third Masters and his immediate future swelled with promise. Then, just as quickly, the trail went cold.

Now you get the sense that if one of the game’s (ital.) arrivistes (end ital.) – a Fowler or a McIlroy or an Ishikawa or a Dustin Johnson – breaks through at Augusta, it will officially be time to turn the page.

If that happens, it will be folly to suggest Woods and Mickelson won’t win again. But the likelihood of Mickelson ever ascending to No. 1 in the world ranking looks like more of a long shot every week.

Shakespeare told us, “Time is a bloody tyrant.” And if Tiger’s time as No. 1 is done for good, Phil will no longer have a built-in excuse for why he never got to the top spot.

PALM HARBOR, FLORIDA | If the thought didn’t occur to you that Matteo Manassero – all joy and wonderment and free-flowing talent – wasn’t supposed to remind you of a certain someone, the PGA Tour slapped your memory up side the head last week when it grouped the 17-year-old Italian prodigy Thursday and Friday with Spain’s Sergio Garcia.

A decade-and-a-half ago Garcia was Manassero. He was the heir apparent, the next big Iberian in the Ballesteros and Olazabal lineage. He was a world class professional golfer in his teens. He had the shots, the looks, the energy, the cars, the endorsements, the personality, the girls, and even a dash of incipient duende – that indefinable something so difficult to describe but so easy to recognize – that certain blessed athletes possess.

Garcia, more than any other, was the one who was going to force Tiger Woods into that extra gear that Woods insisted was why he worked so hard at his game.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to greatness. Garcia’s confidence on the greens eroded. Soon enough that light in his eye dimmed. And by the time he got to the Transitions Championship near Tampa last week, he was 31 years old, majorless and ranked No. 85 in the world, a full 30 spots behind Manassero.

Garcia hadn’t lost his game so much as he had lost his way to the top. And, suddenly, he found himself looking at somebody he used to see in his own mirror.

What he saw was a teenager from the Italian province of Verona, hailed by one and all on the Continent as a fine young gentleman. Manassero was the youngest ever to win the British Amateur, the youngest ever to win a European Tour event and the youngest ever to make the cut at The Masters.

“He’s a great kid,” Garcia said of Manassero. “He doesn’t miss a lot of shots. He can do with a little bit more distance.”

And, Garcia didn’t say, I hope he doesn’t wake up 14 years from now and find himself, like I did, dragging a decade of unrealized promise like a ball and chain.

For a while last week it looked like Garcia had found a way to make all the obvious comparisons to Manassero motivate him. Garcia sailed around the tough Copperhead Course at the Innisbrook Resort in 68-66. He was the only player in the field to avoid a bogey through 36 holes and he slept one shot off the lead Friday night. He was perfectly positioned for a weekend run at his first U.S. win since the 2008 Players Championship.

For his part, Manassero hung around with a pair of 68s, just two back of Sergio. His announced goal at the beginning of the week was not to show up Garcia. It was to climb five spots in the world rankings and secure his return invitation to Augusta.

And, of course, he was eagerly awaiting his 18th birthday and the procurement of his driver’s license, which would allow him, he said, to buy the BMW that was going to serve as his training wheels for the Ferrari he would eventually own. It was all so Sergio.

“We started very young, both of us,” Manassero said. “We turned professional very young. It’s kind of similar … yeah, absolutely.”

But Manassero was careful to make one thing clear. He admired Garcia. He thanked his countrymen, the Molinari Bros. – Francesco and Eduardo – who are still showing him the professional ropes. But his idol was the great Ballesteros.

Ask a tour pro, and he will tell you one of the last things he wants to be near is another tour pro with putting issues. Which circles us back to Sergio. After birdieing his first hole Saturday, he made three bogeys in a five-hole stretch and dropped five shots back of the lead and into a tie with, yes, Manassero. Two of those five dropped shots resulted from missed short putts.

It got worse Sunday when Garcia bogeyed the fourth, fifth, sixth and eighth holes to disappear into the pack. Manassero, meanwhile, climbed all the way up into the top 15 before bogeying the last two holes for a disappointing and rankings-costly 70.

Politely, Manassero met reporters. “It was a tough final round because I made it tough,” he said. “At least I kept fighting to the end.”

When Garcia’s name came up he looked surprised. Did he think Garcia would get back to the top one day, he was asked.

“Absolutely,” Manassero said.

Privately, Manassero had to have seen, in Garcia, a bracing vision of what his future could turn out to be. But wisely he will be keeping any of those thoughts to himself.

“Sergio and I have played a lot of golf together,” Manassero said late Sunday. “You always learn something from him.”

And he left it at that.

Mike Davis doesn’t even know how a bow tie works. His predecessor, David Fay, wore one to all the proper functions.

Fay also loved the game of baseball to the point of avocation and he wasn’t afraid to tell the blue-blazered Executive Committee members at the USGA that he was a registered Democrat.

Davis, a man without pretense, officially replaced Fay as the USGA’s executive director last Wednesday. He said his first day on the job was a little overwhelming. “Almost like drinking from a fire hose,” was the way he put it.

He said he had been “apprehensive” taking the position and that he was “humbled.”

Asked about the contrast between himself and Fay, Davis said he is playing more tennis lately because that is his eighth-grade son’s sport of choice. He did not reveal his political leanings. And he said that when he wasn’t attending to family or work, what he enjoyed most was either playing golf or just walking courses and studying architects’ intentions.

“Mike Davis,” said USGA president Jim Hyler, “is the consummate golf person. It’s all about the game for him.”

If only the same could be said of the men in charge of running all the golf associations and organizations – large and small – around the world.

Mike Davis, a native Pennsylvanian, educated in Georgia and a resident of New Jersey, is the right person in the right place at the right time. Of this, there is a consensus rarely reached in any sport.

He is just the seventh executive director in the USGA’s 116 years. He was strongly influenced, he said, by a private meeting in late January at which Fay urged him to seek the job Fay had left voluntarily in December.

Fay navigated the USGA through stormy seas and safely into the 21st century and left behind a huge war chest and a fleet of initiatives. Davis made his bones in rules and competitions. And he made his USGA mark, with Fay’s blessing, by transforming the U.S. Open from a forced march into a national championship that was at once a fair test and a wild ride.

He did it without once puffing out his chest, or grabbing a microphone or passing blame if a mistake had been made on one of his watches.

The good news here for golf is that Davis will still be an integral part of the inner workings of the U.S. Open. He will still be the final say on course setup, which will mean, among other things, that we can almost always count on at least one drivable par 4, a reachable-in-two, risk-reward par 5 and a par 3 that forces the world’s best players to pull out a long iron.

“We would be idiots,” Hyler said, “if we extracted Mike Davis from U.S. Open activities.”

One other highly placed USGA source told Global Golf Post that Davis got the job because he “enjoys the respect of the players.”

“It was important that he be a golf guy as opposed to a business guy,” the source said. “It was important that he understands the core values of the USGA”

The fact is, the members of the USGA selection committee would have been idiots if they hadn’t persuaded Mike Davis to be its next steward.

Davis, 46, came to work at the USGA in 1990. He grew into that rarest of administrators, who drills down fiercely on details but isn’t opposed to leaving his office door open or returning phone calls.

I first encountered him in 2006 at the U.S. Open at Winged Foot. I had arrived determined to catch up with the guy who had replaced the controversial Tom Meeks as senior director of Rules and Competitions. I hadn’t been on site more than an hour when he found me first. Until that time, I hadn’t met Davis or spoken with him and didn’t even know what he looked like.

He said he had wanted to meet me and called me over into a conversation he was having with architect Tom Fazio. I would later learn that I wasn’t the only member of the media Davis sought out this way. If you cared about the game – not the business of the game, not the gossip of the game, not the glitz of the game – and if he believed you were responsible in your opinions on the game – even if they didn’t match his – he wanted to know you.

(Here’s a little secret about influential sources and golf writers: If you suck up to them, they will write about you but they won’t trust you. If you treat them like ink-stained wretches, they will write about you but they will resent you. If you treat them evenly, they will write about you and they will respect you.)

Davis never needed to be told this. Nor did he have to figure it out. It came naturally. The people he will lead at the USGA who don’t already know it, will find him to be this person as well.

Now that Mike Davis is running the USGA, the rest of the golf world is about to discover that the “consummate golf person” is smart, fair, honest, tireless and dedicated to the game.

They are in for a treat.