This, despite a stirring Sunday performance from emerging American stalwart Matt Kuchar.

More’s the pity.

If you had a nickel for every amateur psychiatrist who showed up on Twitter with an opinion on Na’s malady, you could have paid down the national debt and had enough left over to write the $1.71 million winner’s check to Kuchar.

Kevin Na waggling. Kevin Na twitching, fidgeting and double-clutching. Kevin Na shadow boxing with his golf ball. Kevin Na backing off. Kevin Na barking at himself in frustration. Kevin Na trying to fight his way through swing changes, apologizing over and over.

Kevin Na prompting Charles Barkley to declare, “Welcome to my world.”

And 54-hole leader Kevin Na helplessly and, yes, unfairly distracting playing competitor Zach Johnson on Saturday.

“There’s a lot going on in my head,” Na said with a smile Saturday night.

The author John Updike once wrote, “The golf swing is like a suitcase into which we are trying to pack too many items.”

Actually, Na’s swing is pretty sound. It’s the excess pre-shot baggage that gets him in trouble. You wanted to feel sorry for him. But you needed to feel more sorry for the other guy in his pairing. Imagine the distraction.

The fact that this Players Championship ended on Mother’s Day was appropriate because – thanks to controversy that swirled around Na’s pre-shot flinches – this was, for long stretches, a tournament only a mother could love.

And that was too bad. There was so much more happening of note. Prior to the start of Sunday’s final round, here are just a few things that had gotten lost in all of Na’s neurotic shuffling:

•The quality of the golf being played by Na for three days, especially with a putter in his hand.

• The joy of watching the joy with which Kuchar – one back of Na after three rounds – played terrific golf under pressure. His swing is as flat as his demeanor is effervescent. And who else, by the way, prepares for playing in Sunday’s final group by playing tennis in the morning with his wife, his father and his father-in-law?

• The overall presence of a 23-year-old starburst named Rickie Fowler, who fashioned a seven-birdie 66 Saturday to become the overnight lurker, two behind the spasmodic Na.

Fowler’s flat-brim hats and technicolor dream clothes are catching on, and not just among kids. “I feel honored,” he said, “when there are 40- and 50-year-olds cruising around in the hat and wearing orange.”

•The struggles of Tiger Woods, who shot 74 Thursday, rallied with a 68 to make the cut Friday and faded on the weekend. Process? Progress? … Caution: Objects in Jack Nicklaus’ rearview mirror are not as close as they once appeared.

“Guys, I’ve done this before,” Woods said of his latest swing overhaul. “I’ve been through this.”

Well, actually, no, he hasn’t. He has never attempted to deconstruct and reconstruct his swing at the age of 36, scarred by a long history of injuries and surgeries and a nasty and public divorce.

• Rory McIlroy missing the cut by a bundle. Why is it that the No. 1 player in the world plays the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass like it was Kryptonite National? In three tries at The Players, McIlroy has yet to make the cut.

All of this was prologue for the madhouse at the first tee Sunday when the starter introduced Na. Thankfully, Kev-insanity quickly disappeared when he needed only two waggles before striking his first drive.

The twitches returned, mostly with his putter, and when Na bogeyed four of the last six holes on his front nine he dropped, like a moon rock, from contention.

By then the damage to the competitive drama of The Players had been done. His neuroses had hijacked the Saturday broadcasts and dispatches and spilled over into Sunday morning when the head shrinking continued unabated.

Einstein defined insanity as, “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Uncle Albert isn’t around anymore to define Na’s problems. If he were, here might be the paraphraseology:

Kev-Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and having no idea who is going to win the pre-shot war in your brain between the golf gods and the golf demons.

“I’m trying to get comfortable with my waggles,” Na said, trying to explain the unexplainable. “It’s usually a little waggle, a half-waggle, little waggle, half-waggle and boom, supposed to pull the trigger. But if it doesn’t work, I’ve got to go in pairs. So, it’ll go four, and if it doesn’t work, it’ll go six, and after that … .”

After that, what?

“I don’t know,” Na said. “I mean honestly, if I knew I guess I wouldn’t be having this problem.”

And we would have been able to pay more attention to the guy who actually won this thing.

At the bitter end a group of fans began heckling Na. “To be honest,” he said. “I deserved it. But is it fair? No.”

Not your call to make, Kevin.

In addition, the Metal-X putters utilize a unique face pattern with oval depressions that are made to create a mechanical lock with the ball’s dimples at impact. That lock is intended to help the club deliver a lower launch with topspin and reduce skidding, so that the golf ball rolls straight and true.

“The texture on the face does two things,” says Austie Rollinson, principal designer for Odyssey putters. “It reduces surface contact and increases edge contact between the face and the ball. Reducing the surface contact during impact helps to create a solid, yet soft sound at impact. That sound equates to feel, so it is a great feeling insert.”

As for the oval design, Rollinson says he did that to create lots of edges to increase the friction between the face and the ball for a smoother, more consistent roll.

Metal-X putters are available in a variety of models, from #1, 2-Ball and D.A.R.T. to Belly and Long, and each comes standard with a Lamkin 3GEN Pistol Grip, which is made of that company’s softest, synthetic rubber compound and designed to reduce vibration with dulling feel. A midnight black finish is used to increase durability and reduce glare of sunny days as well as for aesthetics, so the putter boasts a sleek look.

As the class of 2012 was going through pre-induction interviews, Jenkins, the white-haired patron saint of Texas golf writers and lovers of funny golf books everywhere, kept tapping his fingers on the chair displaying a large ring.

Finally, one media member asked Jenkins, known as “His Own Self” by many of his Texas friends and sometimes in his books, if he had played in the Super Bowl or where he got such a big ring.

“Nope,” Jenkins said, “that’s a TCU Rose Bowl ring from the undefeated 2010 football season. But I was planning to take it off for the induction.”

That’s Jenkins, a dyed-in-the-(purple)-wool Texan and TCU fan who will cover his 212th major next month at the U.S. Open at The Olympic Club in San Francisco, and at least that many wearing a TCU baseball cap.

Proof again you can take the writer out of Texas, but never Texas out of the writer.

With his induction as the first living golf writer in the WGHOF, Jenkins continues the long string of Lone Star highlights at golf’s honor hall. Its greatest gentleman (Byron Nelson), fiercest competitor (Ben Hogan), most unlikely superstar (Lee Trevino) and most inspirational Ryder Cup captain (Ben Crenshaw).

Jenkins grew up in an earlier Texas era that produced dozens of Texas golf champions, including his home city golfers Hogan and Nelson, but also made golf a major sport in a still-growing state.

“When I grew up all we had was college football, (semi-pro) baseball and golf. That was the third most popular sport in the state and it was huge,” Jenkins said in recalling his Lone Star roots. “Those were our heroes.”

Despite some of the funniest books and funniest book/story titles in golf history, “The Money-Whipped Steer-Job Three-Jack Give-Up Artist,” “The Glory Game at Goat Hills,” “The Dogged Victims of Inexorable Fate” and “You Gotta Play Hurt,” Jenkins had plenty of game himself.

He was a four-year golf letterman at TCU and was the last player to defeat former college star and state amateur champion Morris Williams, Jr., in college, before Williams was killed in a military plane training accident.

Jenkins played in plenty of Texas Golf Association and other amateur golf events before he found his calling writing about the game, namely Hogan and Nelson.

Jenkins, who often would have a cigarette in his hand and sometimes a drink, could have a crusty outer exterior, much like Hogan, but a kinder side once you got to know him.

I’ll certainly never forget the first time I met him in person. My father had worked with him briefly at The Fort Worth Press and Star-Telegram in the 1960s and told me to introduce myself if I ever saw him at a tournament.

I was covering my first major championship, the 1990 PGA Championship, and there was Jenkins in the media center, typing, yes on a typewriter, crafting another soon-to-be-brilliant story, and smoking.

Sensing the moment, I hustled up to him and quickly blurted out that my dad had worked with him in Fort Worth back in the 1960s and I just wanted to say, “Hi.” He turned slowly, looking at me, blew a big cloud of smoke in my direction, and uttered a one-word response.

“So?” he said, as I slinked back to my seat in the media center.

But years later when I was writing my book on the history of golf in Texas, Jenkins took a full hour to talk with me at Mira Vista Country Club in Fort Worth about his decades in Lone Star golf, the people he knew and the many things he had seen.

So when it finally came time to be honored at the WGHOF, Jenkins, TCU Rose Bowl ring (but no Horned Frog baseball hat) on hand, came close, but failed to break one more record.

He brought 55 family members and friends with him, mainly from Fort Worth, carrying nicknames like Mongo, Moron Tom, Foot the Free, Puke and Big Jer, to celebrate. That fell just short of the HOF friends and family record of 70 set, naturally, by another Texan, Crenshaw.

So Dan, from all your Texas golf friends and many admiring Lone Star fellow writers, congratulations. You’ve always been a Hall of Famer to us.

——-

As reported earlier this spring, the first U.S. National Developmental Junior Golf Team is being formed this summer with a heavy Texas coaching influence. The first Southwest Regional tryouts were held in late April with the goal of having a final team in three skill levels by the summer.

The Texas teachers include: Southwest Region Program Director Tom Relf, Briggs Ranch Golf Club, San Antonio; Mark Steinbauer, Carlton Woods Golf Club, The Woodlands; Corey Lundberg, Carlton Woods Golf Club, The Woodlands; and Brad Lardon, Miramont Golf Club, Bryan.

——-

Several of the final spots of the 2012 British Open will be decided, not in England this summer, but in Plano, May 21 as Gleneagles Country Club hosts the North American qualifier. Now, players not exempt into this year’s field will have a chance to qualify for the Open in July without having to go to the U.K. to do it. The 36-hole qualifier will be held the Monday between the Byron Nelson and Colonial, when most PGA Tour pros are in town.

The U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur will be held at Briggs Ranch in San Antonio, Oct. 6-11, and the USGA soon will be announcing another national championship, the U.S. Junior Amateur to be held at a Houston-area course in 2014.

Start with the grips themselves. According to Wes Brasher, founder and CEO of the Scottsdale, Ariz., concern, the 100-percent rubber it uses for its six models – PURE Pro, Undersize Pro, Midsize Pro, P2 Wrap, Old School Wrap and Midsize Wrap – maximizes the inherent advantage of that material. Which means they are more resistant to rain, humidity and sweat than other brands, many of which, he says, add clay, polymers and other fillers to their grip compounds. And they dry more quickly.

Each PURE grip is made in Arizona through a unique manufacturing process that maintains a +/- 1-gram weight tolerance. That precision as well as uniformity in wall thickness is designed to provide for consistent swing weights and feel throughout a set of clubs. In addition, PURE offers a 12-month guarantee, and its grips are available in a wide range of firmness options for shock absorption and feel and come in 11 colors, from black, green and white to blue, red and hot pink.

While PURE grips may be installed using the traditional method, they also allow golf professionals and clubmakers to put them on via the tapeless method that utilizes an air gun. That saves time because there is no need to wait for glue to dry and is also less messy. In addition, it makes it easier to custom fit a golfer for grips, and if he or she doesn’t like a style or feel after testing, the grips can be easily removed and new ones installed without damaging the original or using inventory.

McIlroy, having got back to being world No. 1 a few days earlier, missed the cut at The Players as he has done on both previous occasions. He came off the Stadium course last Friday, smiled that slow smile that makes him so easy to warm to, and admitted: “Last week I shoot 14 under and I feel I hit it just the same this week and I’m going home.” If he had shrugged, he couldn’t have demonstrated his bemusement more clearly.

At times, McIlroy surprises us by his maturity and composure. The way he dealt with his last round collapse in the 2011 Masters was one of the most assured and remarkable performances ever seen in golf. Few if any of his rivals would have shown such grace under pressure. Shortly after, Chubby Chandler, then his manager, flew to meet McIlroy, expecting to have to administer tender loving care to his client. Within seconds, Chandler realised he had nothing to do. “I don’t know what all the fuss is about, Chubby,” McIlroy said. “I’m fine. I’m over it.”

At other times, however, McIlroy’s words and deeds remind us that he was seven when Tiger Woods turned professional. Even now, even when holding up the handsome U.S. Open trophy, he looks as though he needs to shave only every other day. McIlroy, who has just celebrated his 23rd birthday, looks of tender years. Increasingly, he sounds of tender years, too.

Last week he talked about missing the cut again, saying, “Off the tee I find it pretty difficult around here,” and admitting there were things he didn’t like about the golf course, explaining how he found the angles from the tees did not make him feel comfortable. He also admitted, publicly, that not winning many events early in his career had affected him, using startlingly frank language to do so. “I should have won in Switzerland. Lost in a playoff in Hong Kong. And I think I was six ahead with six to play coming down the stretch in Dubai and only won by one, so it was a relief to get over the line there.”

As he said all this, the thought occurred to this listener: why are you saying this, Rory? Why are you talking publicly about weaknesses? Don’t admit them ­– at least not in public – if you can avoid it. Would Nicklaus have talked like that? No. Would Tiger Woods? No. Would Phil Mickelson? No.

McIlroy and Westwood were both managed by Chandler until last year when McIlroy suddenly announced he was leaving. It is thought that he did not feel completely at ease at ISM where Westwood and Darren Clarke are so well embedded. There have been suggestions that McIlroy was not always comfortable with the advice he was being given, too, which might be a veiled reference to his and Westwood’s absence from The Players last year when McIlroy was No. 5 in the world and Westwood was No. 1.

This episode gave an insight into the characters of the young men once described accurately, but harshly, as a pudding-faced Northern Irishman and the straight-backed Englishman. They say that you can tell a Yale man but you can’t tell him much. You can tell McIlroy and Westwood from 500 yards, so distinctive are their walks and swings, but you can’t tell them much.

For years, Westwood ignored the trend among players to improved fitness. Westwood would turn his nose up at the idea that a more supple, stronger physique would help. “Every time I feel like going to the gym, I go and lie down,” he would joke. This was the time when he was overweight, uncomfortable in the heat and once at a tournament in the U.S. had to be put on a saline drip after he had finished his round.

Though 16 years younger than Westwood, McIlroy shares his iconoclastic streak. When Chandler said he could get a lot more money from a prospective sponsor for the words on McIlroy’s visor, McIlroy said no. Advised by Clarke, Westwood and Ernie Els, then a stablemate in Chandler’s ISM, not to go to the U.S. but to continue to ply his trade in Europe, McIlroy went west.

Even so, McIlroy’s and Westwood’s absence from the 2011 Players Championship raised a few eyebrows.

“I was a bit surprised because most of the time everyone does play,” Luke Donald said last week. “The top 50 do play. That’s the way it has been. That’s the history of this event.” It was, it now seems, an aberration. Both returned for this year’s event, McIlroy admitting that not playing last year” wasn’t one of my brightest moments. I’m glad to be back.”

On Friday, while Westwood was cruising through to the last two days after rounds of 71 and 70, McIlroy, whose rounds were 72 and 76, was asked whether he would come back. “I promise I will,” McIlroy said, laughing. “I hope I am coming back here for another 20 years, and if I don’t figure it out on my 20th go, there’s something wrong.”

There is something wrong now, Rory, a wonderfully gifted golfer, an adornment to the game. On occasions, you talk yourself down too often.

So said one of the nation’s most talented mid-amateurs this winter, a guy who still regularly tees it up across the country in elite amateur events. And it dawned on me along the trail of the recently concluded winter/spring amateur circuit that he has a point, that the golden age of the mid-amateur golf is likely over. But it also seems to me that a new era has begun.

Quietly over the past several years, the mid-ams have retreated from competing at the highest levels of the amateur game. Not all of them, to be sure. Nathan Smith still burns hot, and he won at Sunnehanna last summer. Mike McCoy chased the Walker Cup hard in 2011, mixing with the schoolboys and more than holding his own. But, for the most part, the elite mids are playing elsewhere. You won’t find many at the Jones Cup, the Northeast Amateur, the Southern Amateur or the Western Amateur.

That golden age began in 1981 when the USGA created the mid-amateur championship, won for the first time by Jim Holtgrieve. It continued for about 25 years, and what an era it was. Jay Sigel would win back-to-back U.S. Amateurs and play on nine Walker Cup teams, totaling 33 matches. Buddy Marucci went to the final of the U.S. Amateur, where he fell to a kid named Tiger Woods. Guys like Danny Green, George Zahringer, Spider Miller, Bob Lewis, Tim Jackson and John Harris could compete with any amateur of any age. As Smith remarked to me, just by showing up at an elite amateur event like the Northeast or the Southern, they could record a top-five finish. Age and guile beat youth and beauty every more often than not.

Many point to the Walker Cup as the root of the problem. From 1993 to 2003, a span that included six Walker Cup competitions, there were always at least four mid-ams on the team, and sometimes five. Then suddenly in 2005, there were none. The last three American Walker Cup teams have had one mid-am each. Somewhere along the way, winning trumped all other Walker Cup values, so the reasoning goes. The USGA decided to select our best amateurs; never mind that they have never heard of Just For Men hair color and aren’t legally old enough to drink the winning champagne. The result was a lost incentive for mids to train hard and play at the elite level.

Others believe the issue is bigger than just the Walker Cup. This school holds that the real issue is that the game has changed. Today’s youngsters – college kids and the top-of-the-rung juniors – are simply more talented than ever before. And they certainly are more talented than today’s 30- or 40-something mid-am. They may not be as smart or savvy, but they have an awe inspiring skill set. They are fit, and they have optimized their equipment. They bring the power game to the course every day, and as befits youth, they are bullet proof.

There is no par 5 they can’t hit, no flag they cannot find. As one mid-am competitor said, sometimes you just have to ask, “Why bother?” Why take on schoolboys on a difficult 7,200-plus yard track with pins tucked? Why enter when your very best, which would have contended five or more years ago, is good enough only for the middle of the pack?

But all is not lost. I think a new paradigm is emerging, one that has mid-ams facing off mostly against each other. And the debut of two new events this year gives credence to this point of view.

The Coleman Invitational and Crump Cup remain our nation’s premiere, can’t miss mid and senior amateur tournaments. The Stocker Cup, a relatively new addition to the calendar, has quickly risen to the top of the next tier of individual mid-am tournaments, as has the Carlton Woods Invitational. But it is the addition of the Crane Cup, launched this year at the Floridian, and the George Thomas Invitational at Los Angeles Country Club’s famed North Course this summer that have added heft to the schedule, as well as some badly needed geographic balance. Couple these events with the U.S. Mid-Amateur and great four-ball tournaments like the Charlie Coe Invitational, the Champions Cup, the Anderson Memorial and International Four Ball and you have a year-long, healthy mid-amateur circuit … no flatbellies welcome.

In the best of all worlds there would be a Walker Cup-style competition between our best mids, and perhaps our best seniors, against those from Great Britain and Ireland. Without evidence, I suspect that the USGA and R&A may even have discussed this once or twice, perhaps over a pint. But one clear problem is the mid-am game is weak, very weak, in the UK. So, too, is the senior amateur game; there is just no depth. While there is the occasional good player, all young amateurs turn professional, and they don’t seem to pursue reinstatement like American players when they realize that’s not their calling.

No, the mid-amateur game in America isn’t dying. It’s changing. And isn’t that part of the essence of the game of golf?

In the final match of the championship Meghan Stasi, the 2010 winner and three-time U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur champion (2006, ’07 and ’10) scored a 3-and-2 win against 2009 French Women’s Mid-Amateur champion Marie Arnoux, now of Miami Beach.

Stasi, who began the year with a win in the Ione D. Jones/Dougherty Women’s Amateur Championship, came into the final match on a roll. In her quarterfinal match, Stasi defeated good friend and fellow fierce competitor Diane Lang, the two-time defending and three-time Florida Senior Women’s Champion, 5 and 4.

“We are good friends … before and after the match,” Stasi admitted, “but during the match, we really want to win. I made a few putts and had five birdies in the match.”

In the semifinals, Stasi’s putter didn’t cool down as she recorded five more birdies on the way to defeating high school senior Samantha Marks, also by a 5-and-4 margin.

Arnoux had a bit more of a challenge in her two matches on Thursday. In the morning, she was extended to 19 holes before defeating Nancy Smith. In the afternoon, she regrouped and notched a 5 and 4 win against No. 1-seeded Kailey Walsh.

Until a recently revved up tournament schedule, Stasi pretty much was on her own to prepare for a summer tournament schedule that continues Tuesday with a one-day 36-hole qualifier for the U.S. Women’s Open.

“I try to play as much as I can to keep my swing intact,” she said. “And I try to stay mentally sharp and ready to compete, but there aren’t a lot of mid-amateur tournaments between February and May.”

As most golfers realize, match play is a different breed. Instead of spending a round trying to avoid train wrecks where a bad hole can totally ruin the day, in match play you can make a 12 on a hole and if your opponent makes a birdie, you’ve only lost one hole.

That attitude works especially if you can develop short-term amnesia. Stasi was able to both avoid the disastrous hole and immediately forget the putt that lipped out on the last green. Moreover, she avoided match-play letdown where during a series, the mind takes a break and the focus wavers.

“I know what that’s about and it never happened this week at all,” she said. “I think part of that was because I was able to stay at home this week. I even worked a couple of shifts at the restaurant (the Shuck N Dive in Fort Lauderdale, owned by her husband, Danny, where evidently they serve the dinner of champions). It kept me relaxed.”

Obviously, it worked well Friday morning when she squared off with Arnoux for the trophy.

Stasi opened with a hole-winning birdie on the par-5 first hole and led for the rest of the match. She advanced to a 2-up edge with another birdie on the eighth. Arnoux answered with a birdie on the 11th to cut her deficit to 1 down before Stasi countered with another winning birdie on the 12th and a win on 13, then kept pace with Arnoux until the match ended on the 16th.

“It was a tough match,” Stasi said. “She (Arnoux) is a solid player. I played with her in the qualifying round and she was very nice to play with. She played very well and I was lucky because she gave me a couple of openings and I was able to take advantage.”

After the qualifier on Tuesday, Stasi is off to the Women’s Southern Amateur Championship. With the momentum she has from winning this event, it could be a very interesting summer.

In the consolation flight finals, 2005 and 2008 Florida Women’s Amateur champion Gennifer Mendez defeated high school junior Carianne Wright 5 and 4.

Jacksonville’s Leslie Smith scored a 2-and-1 victory against Maria Marino, of Coral Springs, to capture First Flight honors.

In the Second Flight, Sandie St. Onge, of Jensen Beach, defeated Boca Raton’s Joyce Martin 3 and 2.

The Third Flight went to Kayla Connors, from Lakeland, when she defeated Boynton Beach’s Karen Hall by a 5-and-4 tally.

Mary Lafferty, from Boynton Beach, took home the Fourth Flight trophy after defeating Bal Harbor’s Peggy Butts 2 and 1.

The sun was shining, but mid-afternoon temperatures hovered in the low 50s, once again defying this notion of spring in Chicago. Still, there were a few hearty souls willing to subject themselves to the handicap-buster that is Medinah No. 3.

A single, carrying his own bag, winced as he missed a short birdie putt on the par-4 third. He knew he wouldn’t get many more golden opportunities on the remaining 15 holes.

All in all, it was a quiet day at the club. However, it won’t be that way for long.

“Everything changes on June 5,” said Michael Belot, tournament director for the Ryder Cup.

That’s the day Medinah will close down the back nine of course No. 1, as a massive construction project for the Ryder Cup begins in earnest. Essentially, Medinah will build a small village to accommodate the 45,000-plus spectators who will fill the place during the big event Sept. 25-30. Trucks will roll in; gravel will be poured; and hospitality tents and bleachers will rise from the ground.

“That’s when it really will kick in for the members that this thing is coming,” said Don Larson, the Ryder Cup chairman for Medinah.

It has been anything but calm for Larson, Belot, director of golf Mike Scully, superintendent Curtis Tyrell and countless others who are involved in staging this Ryder Cup. As D-Day gets closer, they’ve already been in 24/7 mode for a long time.

Prior to coming over for an afternoon meeting, Belot realized he had yet to eat lunch.

“I grabbed a granola bar,” he said. “That’s the way it’s been for us.”

Looking back, Larson admits it feels a bit surreal that the big day is just around corner. It has been 15 years since Medinah first began discussions with the PGA of America in 1997 about hosting a Ryder Cup at its club.

“When it really hit me was the year-out celebration (last September) when we had (captains) Davis Love III and Jose Olazabal here,” Larson said.

For so long, the event seemed like something that was taking place in the distant future. Well, as George Allen once said, the future is now. With it comes a sense of urgency, Belot said.

Decisions and meetings can’t be put off. Time no longer is a luxury.

“We can’t say we have time to make that decision,” Belot said. “We have to make the call on it now. It’s May, and you could say we still have plenty of time. But at the same time, it’s going to be here tomorrow.”

From a conditioning standpoint, it’s a shame the Ryder Cup isn’t tomorrow. No. 3 is in excellent shape. It has made a complete recovery from last July’s weather nightmare, when seven inches of rain, followed by a heat wave, beat up the course.

The grass, planted in 2009, now is a year older and a year stronger. It looks pristine. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a mark on the greens.

“We’re in a much better place,” Tyrell said.

The members also are experiencing a break of sorts on No. 3 because of the Ryder Cup. Love, who as home captain has a say in how the course will be set up, hasn’t decided how much rough he wants around the fairways and greens. He might keep it limited to benefit his big bombers.

As a result, Tyrell is mowing the rough low until Love makes his decision.

“It’s easier to grow the grass than to cut it down,” he said.

To which, Larson says, the members say thank you.

For now, the most tangible evidence that the Ryder Cup is coming to Medinah is in the pro shop. Scully said members and their guests are purchasing everything and anything that has a Ryder Cup logo on it.

The one thing the members can’t buy is more tickets.

“The members are feeling the pressure because all their friends want tickets,” Larson said.

Larson jokes that he is the most popular man in town these days. However, his popularity lasts only an instant until he informs the person he hasn’t seen in 15 years that, sorry, he doesn’t have any tickets.

Indeed, Ryder Cup tickets have been gone since last year, and the club has sold more than 70 hospitality tents, a record. All told, there will be 40,000-45,000 fans on the grounds each day.

All of which makes Belot feel justified in saying, “It’s going to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, sporting event in Chicago history.”

Now it is up to Belot, Larson, and everyone at Medinah, to fulfill that promise with thorough preparation. Details, details, details. Belot admits barely a second goes by when he isn’t thinking about the Cup.

“We have the ultimate deadline,” Belot said. “It’s Sept. 25. We have no choice but to be ready. And we will be ready.”

Anne-Lise Caudal, from France, and Hannah Jun, from Australia, were the early leaders and there was a countess – Italy’s Diana Luna – in the mix. Laura Davies, though her scoring was not the best, was walloping the ball vast distances with her new Cleveland driver, and Helen Alfredsson, who has spent two years out of the game with a shoulder injury, was showing signs of recapturing her old form – and voice. No one yells after a ball like she does.

As for the course, that was looking every inch at home amongst its famous neighbours – Muirfield, Gullane and North Berwick. “Every hole’s a cracker,” marvelled Davies. “It’s the best course I’ve seen outside of a major championship venue.”

In such circumstances, the Tour itself was coming across as a success story. Yet, it is an open secret that the players, when they are off-duty, have been pondering, darkly, on why so much continues to disappoint.

They have had 15 or more chief executives since 1979 where the men have had just the two in the same period in Ken Schofield and George O’Grady. Again, though Europe has won the Solheim Cup four times since the event started in 1990, none among those victories has resulted in a rush of extra prize-money.

Even now, not too many more than the top five on the LET money-list are making a good living, with sundry players having recently had to cut back on the services of a professional caddie.

Against that, the women are keen to stress that Armas has got quite a bit right. They acknowledge that she has done well to raise the number of tournaments to 25, while they also point to how she has enjoyed good relationships with the CEOs of other bodies such as the R&A and the LGU. In most eyes, the main thing missing was about 10 years of experience.

Though Armas worked for the Faldo Junior Series for a couple of years before playing the Tour from 1999, she would have benefited from time spent serving under someone more senior at the LET. Instead, she was catapulted straight into the top job.

Davies, who is in her third decade as a professional, believes that the arrangement could have succeeded had there been better back up.

“I think that Alex has done a good job with what she’s had to work with,” said this former British and US Women’s Open champion. “Where she’s been limited is in having so many ex-players around her. They simply don’t have the necessary expertise. It’s the equivalent of asking me to run things – and I wouldn’t have a clue what I was doing.”

Rightly or wrongly, Armas, who studied economics at Wake Forest, has been viewed as part of an “old girls’ network.”

Certainly, she cannot have enjoyed the kind of emails which have been going the rounds from a disillusioned player using a pseudonym.

The latter has called the women professionals to arms over the poor prize-funds, the standard of the Tour’s website, the TV coverage and a second-rate Tour management system.

No less pertinently, she has posed the question, “How many of us are working in part-time jobs at the moment?”

She has also done as Davies in highlighting the lack of business know-how among the ex-players on the board. “Why is it,” she has asked, “that we are spineless and never question this?”

Here, she has furnished the answer herself. “We all feel that if we speak out, we get bullied into a corner … And, by way of a punishment, end up with the nastiest of starting times.”

Moving on from there, the mystery golfer has noted, “If we sit back and do absolutely nothing and use the same old excuse, ‘I just want to play golf,’ then, sadly, there is a huge risk that the tour will just become insignificant. The LPGA are already sniffing around our larger events.”

So now something is happening.

Already, a handful of younger players in Becky Brewerton, Rebecca Hudson and Carin Koch have been appointed to the board, with Koch a good bet to be the next LET chairman.

As for the CEO position, a few names have been advanced, these including Ian Forsyth, the ex-head of Nike in Europe, and Warren Seville, who works with the women’s professional game in Australia.

This time around, it has to be someone from the outside. Someone who experienced the “Wow” factor at the Solheim Cup and can see how to spread a touch of that magic across the Tour’s lesser events.