Only a couple of days after officially divorcing his wife; having his wife quoted as saying that he ‘put her through hell’; and shockingly acting like a human being in a press conference yesterday; Tiger Woods is back.

One round into the Barclay’s and Woods has already looked more like Tiger Woods in one day than he has since he pile drove a fire hydrant,and skanks came streaming out from underneath the rock like fire ants.

Six under, 65, thanks for coming, line up the showgirls and coffee shop groupies.

Conventional wisdom was that Woods would find his game once he got his life away from the course in some sort of order. Makes sense. No more distractions, what’s done is done, move on, go to the range and re-discover what made him the world’s best golfer.

But one round? Talk about compartmentalization. Is the guy a damn cyborg? Turn off ‘marriage disaster’ program, re-install ‘hit fairways and greens and drain putts’ app? I knew that a guy who could do what he did to his family might be missing the empathy DNA chip, but damn.

Odd thing is, he looked more like a regular human being yesterday than he ever has in his entire public life. He seemed genuinely torn up about the end of his marriage. He actually said he was distracted; he admitted to a lack of preparation; and confessed to being sad. A real guy, for at least 10 minutes or so.

If he wins this week, only days after cutting his wife loose, he is officially back. Oh, and he is officially the most cold blooded human being on Earth.

Watson had a borderline, impossible shot after a bad drive on 18, and instead of laying up and then trying to hit his third shot close and make a putt, he went for it, rinsed it in the water, and essentially saw his chances of winning the tournament vanish.

"Before you ask, if I had it to do over again, I would hit it every day," Watson said. "I play to win a golf tournament. I don't play to lay up and hopefully make a par and tie or win. I went for the win and I'd do it over again, just like I did earlier in the day."

If you would hit it ‘everyday’, than you are even dumber than your white pants, belt and shoes would indicate. Why? So you could lose every time?

Kaymer made five in case you have forgotten. Five means you get to play another hole. No extra points for being ballsy. Did David Toms not really win the PGA in 2001, because he laid up to do it?

I know you hit it 900 yards off the tee, but the six inches between your ears is what is costing you majors.

I don't play to lay up and hopefully make a par and tie or win

Think about that. The whole ‘or win’ part. Isn’t that the idea? They don’t add bonus points for winning with crazy play. Win is a win is a win. We all like seeing guys take crazy chances and trying to hit the ball over water, around trees, and under branches, but you needed to chop that ball out, lay it up and win the damn event.

Because I know you want it, here is a five point plan on how you can close the deal the next time you get in contention to win a major championship.

1. No white belts.
2. No white pants.
3. Stop stealing visors from Tiger Woods’s mother.
4. Lay up on the final playoff hole of a major when your opponent is in similar trouble, and there is water in front of the green, and a four will almost certainly win, and a five will almost certainly allow you to keep playing.
5. No white belts.

You’re welcome.

Can it be both? Because that’s what I think.

First, there is no way in hell that Johnson was in a bunker on the 18th hole. Bunkers don’t have grass growing in them, people in them, or tire tracks in them. This one did. Typically, bunkers do have things like lips, rakes, and defined boundaries, this one had none of those.

I understand that not every bunker looks like the ones you see at Augusta National, but this wasn’t even a bunker by the standards at your local muni course. It was a patch of bare ground. A piece of dirt in the middle of the gallery. If drunk Cheeseheads with a pathological hatred for Brett Favre can walk in it and drink Miller Lite in it, it's not a bunker.

Johnson birdied 16 and 17, had fought back after his epic meltdown at Pebble Beach in the US Open, and was on the verge of crafting one of the great comeback stories of the year and was torpedoed because of a technicality. BRUTAL. Horrible. Devastating. Whatever you want to call it, that’s what it was. He could easily have bagged two major titles in 2010, positioned himself as the premiere American player in the game, but instead he’s a trivia answer.

Anyone with even a semblance of humanity and compassion feels terrible for the guy.

But...

But...

Uh, he should have known better. Every player was given a local rules sheet before the tournament started and on that sheet, it clearly said that there are bunkers that don’t look like bunkers. Lots of them.

From the Whistling Straights PGA Championship Local Rules Addendum:

“This happened the last time the PGA was here in 2004 so don’t be an idiot and do the same thing again. See Appleby, Stuart. Know the local rules. The whole place is one giant bunker. Don’t ground your club unless you are in the middle of the fairway, on a tee box, or on the green. Even then, it might be risky. Don’t lose a major title because you aren’t paying attention. THIS MEANS YOU DUSTIN JOHNSON!”

Maybe it didn’t say that exactly, but that’s what it meant. It’s a stupid rule, a bad rule, a rule that defies logic and common sense. But it wasn’t a secret. It was front and center, in all it's grand ridiculousness.

I feel terrible for the guy, I hope he wins many, many majors in his career and this becomes a footnote and not the first line of his obituary, but he really has no one to blame but himself.

Oh, yeah, one other thing...well done Martin Kaymer on actually, you know, winning the tournament. Good job.

Some background, in simple to use, blog form. Gray said Pavin told him that he would use a pick on recovered sex addict Tiger Woods for the Ryder Cup, assuming Tiger doesn’t make the team on points. Pavin, sans weasel mustache, responded that he never said that, that he would not disrespect the process, and that he wouldn’t commit to anyone being a captain’s pick at this time. Gray then confronted Pavin in the press room, fingers were wagged, (ooohhhhhh!) and Gray got off the always popular, “You’re going down!” Nice.

There’s a fight exactly no one wants to see, Jim Gray v. Corey Pavin. I’d rather watch Jeremy Schapp fight Tom Lehman or Tom Rinaldi curb stomp Hal Sutton. Who gives a damn?

The better question is, what the hell are they fighting over? Why would Pavin want Tiger on the team to begin with? Tiger is not one of the 12 best American players in the world right now. Tiger is not fond of the Ryder Cup. Tiger does not play well in the Ryder Cup. Team USA won two years ago without Tiger on the team. Tiger has only been a part of one winning team, back in 1999; when Justin Leonard shocked the world with that bomb at Brookline and then they held a dance party on Jose Maria Olazabal's putting line. Tiger has looked disinterested, bored, and downright put out every time he has had to play in this thing.

Tiger is the bizzaro Sergio Garcia and Colin Montgomerie. Garcia and Montgomerie couldn’t win a thing that mattered individually, but they were basically unbeatable in Ryder Cup play. Tiger wins everything that matters individually (Masters, PGA, US Open, British, Sex World Cup) and can’t even break an egg at the Ryder Cup.

Why exactly are they fighting over this guy? Tiger only plays in the Ryder Cup because he knows he would get crucified if he didn’t. Someone would throw the “Anti-American” label on the guy and it would be on. He does it to avoid a headache, not because he cares about the event.

I’m all for Pavin and the artist former known as Jim Gray continuing their ridiculous fight. Sadly, it is more interesting than the golf.

It restores my faith in the universe; that bad things can happen to bad people. This needed to happen. You can’t go on a decade long sex spree; sex every woman in Las Vegas, sex porn stars after the death of your father, and sex reality TV freaks days after your child is born ,and not have to pay some sort of penalty. That wouldn’t be right.

But one thing I can tell you I don’t like seeing, is a Tiger Woods that quits. And that is exactly what he did this weekend in Akron at Bridgestone. He quit. Playing fast, head down; just whack it, whack it again, get it in the hole and keep moving. Chips that he usually rolls up to kick-in distance are raced 20 feet past the hole. Iron shots that used to stop 10-feet from the hole are landing in people’s teeth instead of on the green.

And he just doesn’t seem to care.

After posting a career worst final round 77, Tiger talked to the press and got off such gems as ‘It’s been a long year’ and ‘No, it’s not fun.’ None of the fight, none of the bluster, none of the infuriating self-confidence that he has had for his entire career, if not his entire life.

He looked like a regular human being. A human being who had lost his confidence, lost his cloak of invincibility. He even blamed his kids for his struggles, claiming that spending time with his children prevented him from spending time working on his game. Well, maybe if you hadn’t nuked your marriage your wife could have kept an eye on the rug rats while you went and hit a bucket, but, oh well.

Drastic times call for drastic measures. It’s time. Lose the Buddha. Lose the ridiculous lie that you are trying to be patient. Be Tiger. An insatiable sexual appetite won you 14 majors and had you on the fast track to running down Jack Nickalus. Porno actresses, reality TV show contestants and ‘party planners’ helped you make every putt, hit every shot, and be completely and totally fearless. We need that guy back. Fall off the wagon, get that sex addiction going in full bloom once again and the golf shots are sure to follow.

What is THAT, exactly?

How about...all of it. The course; the weather; the competition; the star factor; the winner; all of it.

Yes, I do know the history of the course, the venue, and every other reason that people pretend to like the British Open, I just don’t buy it.

Sports, at it’s core, is about one thing, competition. This tournament was an ass kicking of the highest order. And not even a fun, record setting,' Tiger Woods-esque roll the field by 15 shots' kind of ass kicking. A 'boring, watch me get the lead early and slowly bleed any life out of this thing for three straight days', ass kicking. Louis Oosthuizen took the lead on the seventh hole on Friday, and that was that. No one challenged him, no one pushed him, and the next 47 holes were a formality. No crash and burn disasters from the leader or the field, no come-from-behind push. Nothing. A guy no one outside of the Oosthuizen living room had ever heard of, just slowly pulling away from the field. Mike Tirico and crew must have wanted to kill themselves. "Good shot, nice lag, solid par'. Repeat for 72 hours.

Look at the list of winners from this 'major'. Paul Lawrie? Ian Baker-Finch? David Duval? Todd Hamilton? Ben Curtis? Stewart Cink? Justin Leonard? Tom Lehman? Yeah, the greats of the game. All ‘one and done’ major championship winners, with only Cink a legitimate chance to grab another one at some point. No other ‘major’ has such an undistinguished list of winners to it’s credit.

Shouldn’t a major have a signature moment? The one that makes people at work say, “Did you see ______ make that ____ at ___?” Not this time. Unless watching Louis roll in a five footer for par 14 times gets your motor running, this thing sucked from tee to green. The signature moment for most came when a 60 year old man, Tom Watson, walked across an old bridge.

Even Tiger switching putters, missing everything, and looking over his shoulder like he was afraid Joslyn James was going to come running out of the gallery couldn’t save this thing.

Give me the Masters and a chance to see eagles and double bogeys on the same hole. Give me the US Open and guys grinding to make pars. At least the US Open has the possibility of disaster, if not great play. And believe it or not, give me the PGA Championship. A deep field, a reasonable set up, and a chance to see real sports drama unfold. Screw the British Open.

Not only is it the worst of the four majors, it isn’t even the Phoenix Open at this point.

1.  Why did they remove Lee Trevino's face and replace it with a dried up apple that someone left in the sun for 49 days?

2.  Why is Tiger looking at John Daly like that?  At least Daly married all of the freaks that he rolled with.

3.  I'm pretty sure Roberto de Vincenzo has no idea who these guys are.

4.  Padriag Harrington borrowed Kirk Hinrich's spoon to cut his  hair and he still has the best cut of any of the Euro entrants.

5.  Tom Watson looks wildly uncomfortable with the fact that Tiger is behind him.  Joslyn James, he isn't.

For her three-quarters of a billion dollars (maybe), all she has to do is never speak about Tiger publicly ever again. No books, no interviews, no nothing. The report speculates that Team Tiger is buying her silence out of fear that she would re-surface right as his career starts to get rolling again. He starts getting endorsements again, people start to forget the names Joslyn James, Rachel Uchitel, and the other members of his porn-laden harem, and he is on the verge of opening the Tiger mint once again. She could pop up right as people think of him as a golfer first, and ruin him all over again.

Think of it like this. Imagine people starting to forgive OJ, only Nicole crawls out of her grave to remind people of what he did. Ok, bad analogy...sort of.

All of this begs the question...what does she know? If he is going to fork over almost a billion dollars out of fear that she might talk at some point, what the hell does she know that is worth that amount of scratch? We know about the voice mails, we know about his graphic text messages, we know that he wouldn’t even fork over rent money for one of the bimbos. Again, what does she know?

Whatever it is it is worth a whole hell of a lot of money.

I hope it was worth it. I hope that the skanks and the sexing was what you wanted most. I hope it was worth more than $750 million. I hope it was worth your kids moving to Sweden. I hope it was worth destroying your reputation and your game. I hope that a porn star and many many others were worth all of it; because that is one hell of a price to pay.

--The US Open is not fun to watch. Pebble Beach is beautiful, the scenery second to none, but the golf on display is horrible. Simply put, the track is just too hard. Yes, par won. Yes, there was a low round or two each day. But when there is virtually no chance of a player making a Sunday run to catch someone from behind, (stay seated Johnny Miller), the tournament becomes stale. Seeing who can make fewer bogeys, fewer doubles, and in the case of Dustin Johnson, fewer triples, is death. The best players in the world are getting gobbled up and watching who bleeds less, sucks. It sucks very much.

--Graeme McDowell...Good guy, great accent and was already making jokes about getting hammered at the press conference. He was the one guy who kept it together, didn’t cave under the pressure and made shots. The ONLY guy. No, Gregory Havret, you don’t count. You need to be ranked in the top 390 in the world for me to take you seriously. McDowell may be a guy who wins another major at some point, but he doesn’t quite fit on the list of other major winners at Pebble Beach. Which of these is not like the others; Nicklaus, Watson, Kite, Woods, McDowell. That’s what I thought.

--Phil Mickelson...Starting to look more and more like he is never going to get the US Open trophy. He opens with a birdie, has a 12-footer for eagle of 4 and 3-stabs, nice knowing you. Talk all you want about the driving and the decision making, it is the putter that is going to keep him from lifting that hardware. It’s not that he likes to play shots off of TV cables, (he does), it’s that he struggles getting the ball in the hole from three feet on Sunday. Nice white pants.

--Tiger Woods...Can we just all come to this conclusion once and for all, and then just move on and not talk about it anymore? Tiger Woods is a bad guy. He isn’t going to change. He isn’t going to wave and shake hands. He isn’t going to be a good interview, and he is never going to be anything other than a pathological liar. He is one of the world’s worst husbands not named Scott Peterson. Let’s agree on that and talk about other things. Namely, his game is not coming around. He played well one day out of four and blamed the other three days on the greens, his caddy and other things. Give him credit for this, he has gotten one new trick, blaming others. Since when does he not own his mistakes? His act after the final round with the interviewer was classic Tiger. Combative, short, and self-serving. The good news is, at least now, everyone can root against him with unrestrained glee...or at least they should. Oh, one other thing. He’s going to win at St. Andrews in a month and then pretend to be a good guy again. Don’t buy it.

--Ernie Els...Um, nice try. The one guy in the field who had multiple chances to win the tournament and couldn’t do it. MIss at 12. Miss at 14. Miss at 18. And then he left without talking to anyone. His manager described him as ‘gutted’. Yep, pretty much. That might have been his last chance to win a major and he choked it. FACT.

--Dustin Johnson...Next. Nothing to say here. He took care of all of that on his own with his play on Sunday. Double, triple, thanks for playing. The guy had a three shot lead and was off TV coverage by the 5th hole. Not easy to do. Good luck shaking that one off.

Course...Breath-taking. Historic. Beautiful. Legendary. Classic. And any other superlative you want to throw on Pebble Beach. It is as good as advertised, and truth be told, probably even better.

Tiger Woods...He may be a punch line and a mediocre player right now, but he is still the biggest story every single time he shows up to play golf. And that sure as hell isn’t going to change with a Euro tabloid journalist  claiming that Tiger has fathered a ‘love child’. Because that’s what he needs, another trip down Skank Road. Can’t we just enjoy him not being able to play anymore, do we really have to re-live him sexing the entire planet for the last 10 years? Actually, we kind of do. He makes cut, doesn’t contend and TV types will mention his 15-shot runaway in 2000 about 4.3 trillion times. Oh, and if he thinks this is bad, wait until he goes across the pond next month and the Brit tabs get a run at him up close and personal.

Phil Mickelson...Lefty will be close, but won’t finish. Again. That’s what he does. It isn’t the driver, or even his questionable decision making, but rather his inability to consistently make short putts under extreme pressure. He may have passed Tiger in fan popularity, for good reason, but the US Open trophy will never be his. He will also be seen wearing gear that would be too small on Tim Clark, much less someone of Lefty’s considerable proportions. You are not a medium, get over it. In fact, there should probably be a second ‘X’ on all of your clothing.

Steve Stricker...Maybe one of the nicest guys on Tour and one of the most popular players among other pros, but Stricker needs to win something. This might be it. Straight driver, excellent short game, and a brilliant putter. Time to get it done.

Dustin Johnson...Yes, he has won the regular Tour event the last two years. No, it doesn’t matter. the set up for the Open is so drastically different than the set up for the stop in February that the only thing that is the same is the ocean. More narrow fairways, much faster greens, much higher rough. Johnson is a very good player, and he will not contend. Why? Because people think he will.

Lee Westwood...Has been in the mix for majors for years and closed none of them. I hope he’s back for another run, for no other reason than for more close-ups of his extraordinarily British teeth. He is going to get his major. He’s too good and been too close too many times for it not to happen. Then again, that’s what everyone said about Colin Montgomerie and well, you know.

Sergio Garcia...Let me ask you a question. Do you know anyone who doesn’t hate this guy? Media, other players, fans, anyone who has ever heard him speak? Even the other Euros barely tolerate his presence every other year during the Ryder Cup. The biggest whiner, biggest baby in not only golf, but in all of sports. Never forget he blamed a prolonged slump on breaking up with his girlfriend. Get over it. He will get heckled, he will react.

Ernie Els...Two-time US Open winner who has no chance this week, and I don’t care that he has played well this season. Ernie has lost the ability to close and this tournament takes a closer. Good guy, likes his beer, but he doesn’t win. Still the best swing to watch on TV from a guy not named Fred Couples.

Paul Casey...Despite the fact that he as an unhealthy affection for white belts, the guy can play. He is a world class player ready to break through. If he gets out fast, he will be a real player. Can he close? Not yet he hasn’t.

Lucas Glover...Will get tons of attention as defending champion. Won’t be a factor. No Curtis Strange back-to-back going to happen.

Tim Clark...Short knocker who can play his ass off. Pebble set up relatively short for US Open, a little over 7,000 yards. Always a threat in majors and recently broke through with a win on the Tour. Good pick. Plus, has cool South African accent. If his caddy had any balls at all he would break out the vuvuzelas during his shots.

Some Random Guy From Your Local Course...Someone you don’t know, who no one knows, will be on top of, or near the top of the leaderboard after Thursday’s round. By Friday afternoon, he will have shot 83, and you won’t even remember his name.