Dustin's Dust Bin = Dumb And Dumber?

By JOHN McINTOSH
One Great Season

When Roberto De Vicenzo signed his improper score card at the 1968 Masters, I was just a kid learning to play golf. My dad and I watched it together and after that ruling he explained it to me. I thought the game was stupid and almost walked away from it. Problem was, I could hit the golf ball better than my friends and I was getting pretty good at age 12.

When Dustin Johnson screwed up late in Sunday's final round of the PGA Championship, I tried to explain the rules to my wife and felt a lot like my dad.

"That's just stupid," she said Sunday.

"That's just stupid," littly Johnny said back in 1968.

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What Tiger Could Have Said

World's Greatest Golfer Just Doesn't Get It

By JOHN McINTOSH
One Great Season

The 2010 Masters tournament is in the record books and Phil Mickelson has won his third Green Jacket.

But what inquiring minds want to know is … what kind of a jerk is Tiger Woods?

The most obvious next question is how many kinds of jerks are there, but let's not digress.

When interviewed by CBS' Peter Kostis after signing his scorecard, Tiger was asked some questions about what happened to him on the course and his emotional mindset. Tiger could have said, "Well Peter, if you haven't heard, I've had some problems at home lately and I've been away from the game for a while, so I guess it showed."

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Possibly that would have been something to endear him to his nay-sayers, but instead Tiger fumed and said, "I lost. It's that simple."

Kostis stayed with the subject and further inquired about the difference between shutting off all emotions and maybe when that didn't work, possibly channeling some of those emotions back into his golf swing.

Tiger could have replied, "Well Peter, I tried my best out there today and you know the Masters. Sometimes the more you push the harder it gets and well, I was just happy to be part of it all today. The folks here at Augusta -- the galleries and the tournament organizers -- went out of their way to make me feel welcome here this week and I thank them for their dedication to the tournament and the game itself."

Instead, he said, "Every time I tee it up I expect to win and that didn't happen. So that's about it. I'll have to go back and re-evaluate a few things."

So what Kostis could have said might have been something like, "Well Tiger I guess one of the things you'll have to re-evaluate is how to improve your immature behavior on the course. At times you looked like a 14-year-old out there, whining and complaining because things weren't going your way. But maybe you should also re-evaluate how other people such as Gary Player, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus have always spoken about how great the game has been to them and how they just hope that they have been able to give back a little." But Kostis didn't go there.

But if he did, then Tiger could have said, "Yea, I guess you're right Peter."

For Tiger to not act like some kind of jerk would have taken some class and, it's pretty obvious to those inquiring minds that well, he's no Phil Mickelson.

McIntosh is a New York-based writer and publisher of the McIntosh Golf Guides.