Seth Davis of SI has an excellent report on his day following Tiger from start to finish. The m ost hilarious (or disturbing?) note came from his time in the press lookout tower on 18 .

“Even though I was surrounded by several dozen of the most dedicated golf writers in the world, nobody could say for sure where the playoff was going to take place. Just when I was wondering how I was going to beat the crowd to the 10th hole, I hear that the playoff will actually begin on the 18th. What luck!”

Rudy Martzke in the USA Today explains why CBS couldn’t show coverage on USA during the weekend mornings , then pretty much writes about the brilliant job the CBS announce team did. He must have flipped over to a baseball game when Verne Lundquist went on about the vibrating 6th green or when no one at CBS seemed to know what was being said between Chris DiMarco and Masters officials on the eighth hole. And then there were the times Bobby Clampett opened his mouth...still, they have Feherty and Oosterhuis to save the day.

For a superior CBS coverage review, check out Peter McCleery’s piece on GolfDigest.com . Not only does McCleery point out that NBC and the USGA added morning round completion coverage at Pebble Beach in 2000, but he also notices just how close (again) the Masters came to running out of sunlight Sunday evening.

I didn’t see the coverage on this, but last week Dan Bickley in the Arizona Republic looked at rumors of Mickelson's gambling addiction. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that “this week’s most outrageous rumor for the caddie clique," said Mickelson switched from Titleist to Callaway “because he has run up considerable gambling debts.”

Which led to this comment from radio talk show host Jim Rome : "Callaway officials angrily deny this saying they did an intensive background check on Mickelson’s gambling history. Look, the fact that Callaway felt it necessary to do an intensive background check or that Mickelson even has a gambling history to speak of, tells you something right there. Look, it’s always dicey to comment on rumor and innuendo, but where there’s smoke, there’s fire and there’s an awful lot of gambling smoke coming off of Phil Mickelson right now."

…That Bobby Clampett still calls the Hogan Bridge “Hogan’s Bridge,” like it’s an amusement park ride?

…The Golf Channel’s flashback piece with Chris DiMarco from 1997? The man had a full fledged mullet!

…According to DiMarco, Tiger had 65 yards into #1? Thank you optimization.

…That Phil Mickelson tried to make Bill Macatee out to be the bad guy along with the rest of the media for making something of spike-gate? Uh, Phil, you were the one that issued a press release, otherwise it probably wouldn’t have been a story.

Q. I don't wish to sound negative, but what on earth happened on 17 and 18?

TIGER WOODS: I hit just a block on 17. What do you call it, the second shot, I got too conservative with it and tried to putt the ball short of the green and overdid it. I just had one of the worst lies you could possibly have for that shot. My ball mark was just behind my golf ball, so I could not make contact with the golf ball flush.

I thought about, you know, could I put the ball up there and leave it short right of the green, but, you know, just try, more than likely you're probably going to fat it and put it short of the green. Just make sure you don't blink it, and that's what happened. I hit it pretty decent but it was pretty fat because of the golf mark right behind my golf ball, spun up and made my putt.

Here’s Chris DiMarco’s press conference transcript. Didn’t get enough of spike gate? Golfonline’s Cameron Morfit has more.

This Fox Sports Australia story looks at Bernhard Langer's comments on the Saturday tee-time debacle.

Not many early Sunday reads, but still a few on ball manufacturers favorite subject. Alan Blondin in the Myrtle Beach paper has plenty of fun insights and a nice overview, with quotes from Dick Rugge, Bob Combs and Larry Dorman. Does the USGA seem to be positioning themselves to do something by pointing to the near completion of their three year study? Len Ziehm in the Chicago Sun Times has some fascinating revelations about the Masters ball talk, including a tour Hootie and Jack took around the course, ending with Hootie asking, "what are we going to do about the ball?" And John Huggan writes about the Masters and talks with European Tour head George O'Grady.

Q. Could you talk about the mud ball on 10 and if that made it an easy decision?

TIGER WOODS: Oh, it was a no-brainer. It was a great break that they blew the horn and they said it was going to either blow at 7:45 or whenever the last group finished 9, whatever happened first. When we saw that down there,it was nice to know I could put the tee in the ground.

Tiger also addressed the apparent tee-time boondoggle after the completion of the second round, which had players going to the wrong tee and going out with the wrong players and CBS totally confused.

Q. There was some footage of you in between rounds lounging around. Were you getting antsy around waiting as long as you were?

TIGER WOODS: Well we didn't know what time we were going to go off. There were no tee times. They were calling guys to the tee. No one had a clue. I don't know what happened, but I guess it was computer failure or something like that or no tee times were written. So guys were on the putting green going, "What time do you play? I have no idea." So I'm standing around, putting around, so we don't have a clue. So I went on the range, warmed up, thought I had 55 minutes or so, according to the math we did if we're going eight-minute intervals because that's what it looked like starting out. All of a sudden, I had an hour and 15 minutes, so I had to shut it down and laid on the bag and rested. Thomas went over and did it and same thing with David.

…Scott Verplank taking a nice big chunk out of the 12th green as Bobby Clampett chalked it up to his competitiveness?

…Tiger driving it 375 on #2 in the afternoon? Must be all that working out, and of course, modern agronomy. That ball must have rolled 10 yards!

…The number of spikemarks in Ben Crenshaw’s line during the 1995 Masters flashback? Was Phil playing ahead of him?  

Golf World's Michael Johnson with more on spat...err...spikegate.

GolfDigest.com compiles the best lines from columnists writing about the Vijay-Phil spat.

Joe Gordon explains that the unusually late start to Friday’s play was caused by the club’s desire to mow fairways, which hadn’t been cut since Wednesday. And there’s this wacky Augusta Chronicle story about a rare piece of Sarazen memorabilia washing up in a nearby creek.

Nominations for most bizarre: A) Top 50 classics Baltimore and Wannamoisett dropping off the list, B) Flint Hills National debuting ahead of Riviera, Garden City and Kittansett (C) Rich Harvest Links making the list with some artificial turf tees, (D) Dallas National making it even though it finished 2nd in the 2003 Best New competition while #1 Black Rock and #3 Friars Head don’t cut it, (E) Mayacama (?!) over Valley Club and Pasatiempo, (F) The National Golf Links making the top 10, (G) The National Golf Links on the same list as Trump International. 

"All along, we thought the changes we made were appropriate and necessary to maintain the integrity and shot values of the golf course," Hootie said. "We wanted to adhere to the design concepts that Bobby Jones, Cliff Roberts and Alistair [sp.] Mackenzie had envisioned.”

Yep, they loved narrow fairways guarded by trees alright!

"Last year certainly was thrilling, as the best players in the world responded. The course setup for Sunday was consistent with previous years, allowing the players the opportunity to try for an eagle or birdie when necessary.”