Face it, Steve Stricker is a stiff and doesn't draw.

Every week shouldn't be put under a microscope, just because Tiger isn't in it.

The important fact is that this year's LA Open had about a 30% higher rating than last year's Phoenix Open - which was also on Super Bowl Sunday. . . The Super Bowl (did you notice its ratings this year?) is the ultimate 800 pound gorilla of TV ratings. . . Fans love the pregame shows too. . .

But, most important . . . I think if Dustin Johnson had been running that pass route - instead of Reggie Wayne - there never would have been that pass interception for a touchdown play.

This is a bit of a bummer, but let's face it, the Northern Trust Open, timed as it was, is going to have a hard time of breaking through to the sports consciousness of the typical football and basketball obsessed sports fans in America. It's too early in the season, well before everybody really wakes up to golf in the States, which we all know, happens when we hear that insufferable music from Augusta and hear the insufferable prose about the azaleas and dogwoods and Georgia pines. You have to be a relatively hard core golf fan to follow the events at Riviera, Torrey and Pebble, truth be told. That still doesn't excuse the horribly scant attendance at the Riv. 30K in a week? That's ridiculous, fifty bucks or thirty bucks doesn't make that much of a difference.

At its place in the schedule and given its location in one of our greatest cities where there are so many other things to do, it may well be too much to ask for people to show up and watch in person and it may be too much to expect people to watch on television in great numbers. All of which is a shame, because this event is really a terrfic Tour staple with a lot of history and a spectacular golf course which all golf fans would do well to admire and study.

Now it's on to Ray Frickin' Romano. Aaaargh!