"Tiger's talk was golf's TV moment of the year, but he provided more highlights when he made his highly anticipated return to golf at the Masters."

Gary Van Sickle reviews the stories of the year and concludes item No. 1 on Tiger with this:

ESPN's first-round Masters coverage averaged 4.9 million viewers, the biggest cable audience ever for a golf telecast. Woods played with Matt Kuchar and K.J. Choi and shot a stunning 68, the best first-round Masters score of his career. Woods stayed on the fringe of contention all week, thanks to a tournament record-tying four eagles, until a careless three-putt on the 14th green on Sunday killed his chances. He finished a remarkable fourth.

I'm not sure what's more amazing, Van Sickle using that much hyperbole or Tiger's T4. In hindsight, Tiger's performance at the Masters just gets better and better considering what we know now about the state of his game and life during the remainder of 2010.

What A Difference A Half-Point Makes: BBC Names Monty "Coach Of The Year";

I see the ESPY's of the Isles gave Monty its coach of the year award. Rightly so considering all of the clever moves he and his five assistant captains made to give the Euro team that extra 1/2 point it needed to prevent what would have been deemed a humiliating home soil loss.

The victorious European Ryder Cup side won the Team of the Year award after they defeated the United States by a single point to win back the trophy after a rain-affected competition at Celtic Manor in Wales.

Rain-affected? That's putting it kindly.

"It is an honour to be here on behalf of that team," said team captain Colin Montgomerie as he accepted the award.

"We thank you for your support and votes and we want to thank every spectator that turned out to support the team in Wales."

Colin Montgomerie was named Coach of the Year but paid generous tribute to the other members of his Ryder Cup coaching team - Thomas Bjorn, Darren Clarke, Paul McGinley, Mark Roe and Sergio Garcia.

"They are unsung heroes, the guys you don't hear about but who get our team on form and prepared," said Montgomerie. "It is a fantastic year for European golf."

Yes, yes, heroes! They strapped on those walk talkies with their earbuds and drove buggies around the course despite some of the muddiest conditions known to man! Warriors I tell you!

"We want to continue to give the local folks a great golf course and also want to maintain our rating nationally."

Steve Lynn of New Mexico's The Daily Times looks at the revenue problems of the well-regarded Pinon Hills, the most blatant example yet of water costs impacting the health of a golf operation.

Meanwhile, the golf course is watering less despite spending more on the nonpotable water.

The course spent $42,000 on 134 million gallons of water in 2004.

By contrast, it spent $151,000 on 118 million gallons through October this year while spending about the same last year on $172 million gallons.

At the same time, the course has cut its budget. The city projected a $1.35 million budget that funds the city's golf courses this fiscal year, a decline of almost $90,000 from last fiscal year's budget.

The city expects higher green fees to raise revenue by $100,000, parks department director Jeff Bowman said.

"We want to continue to give the local folks a great golf course and also want to maintain our rating nationally," Bowman said.

"Golfweek" ranked Piñon Hills the No. 4 public golf course in the nation this year.

Naturally those last two sentences provide a nice reminder to those who don't think courses overspend to appease panelists.

"You may not want to hear this, but golf at every level is rife with cheating."

In light of the recently off-radar incident involving Elliot Saltman, John Huggan devotes his Scotland and On Sunday column to the oddity of non-cheaters in golf suffering penalties while elite players seem exempt from penalty for outright cheating.

You'll never read the names of those involved though. Officialdom doesn't want you to know who they are (and the legal implications of publicly exposing the culprits don't help either). Some, in fact, are really quite famous. One multiple major champion, by way of example, is a notorious cheat and the subject of any number of head-shaking locker room tales. Ryder Cup players are not immune either. At least one is tainted forever by his serial cheating. And there are others, many of whom have won events through the most dubious of methods.

Every year it goes on and on, right up to the present day. During this past season on the European Tour there was at least one instance where a pro, outraged by the behaviour of his playing companion, refused to sign that fellow competitor's card. Not that anything came of it. In such instances, tour officials invariably take it upon themselves to attest the disputed numbers.

And that's the problem. Why is it that the innocent seem to be persecuted to the nth degree by the rules while the guilty are protected?

Tiger's Half-Brother Wants To Reconnect, But He's Glad To Bad Mouth His Little Half-Bro In The Meantime

Nothing like a wonderful family story this time of year...



"I don’t want to look back knowing that I had the chance to do it and not doing it, and hating myself for it."

Doug Ferguson tells us that Brett Waldman is giving up his looping duties to play on the Nationwide Tour next year after earning his way in through a miraculous Q-school run.

The hardest part of his journey was the final decision – give up financial security by working for Villegas, or grind it out on a tour with no guaranteed pay from smaller purses.

"It’s just a dream," Waldman said. "I don’t want to look back knowing that I had the chance to do it and not doing it, and hating myself for it. I would always look back and say, ‘What if?’ There’s a reason I got to where I am. I might as well chase the dream."

Waldman, who played college golf at Kansas State and Central Florida, had not played competitively since he was eliminated from the second stage of Q-school in 2002. He went to work as a caddie for his cousin, Tom Pernice Jr., for Ben Crane and eventually Villegas.

On a whim – and with prodding from his wife, Angel – he decided to try PGA Tour qualifying this year and was one of only nine players who made it through a pre-qualifier (four rounds) and the next two stages of four-round tournaments. While trying to advance, he continued to work for Villegas as the Tour Championship and tournaments in China and Australia.

Waldman might want to think about keeping the bag (if allowed) until late February since, as Sean Martin reports, the Nationwide tour is down to 26 events from 29 and doesn't start play domestically until mid-March.