Wow, what a Masters.  Best in years, maybe since Tiger won in 1997.  A few other thoughts and observations about this week:

--Golf doesn’t get any better than that 45-minute long thrill ride during Saturday’s third round, when Phil went eagle-eagle-birdie. 

-- If this week demonstrated nothing else, it was that people are sick and tired of hearing about the Tiger Woods’ sex scandal.  For a lot of people it was TMI (too much information) from the get-go, and now they just want it to go away.  They want to get back to golf.

-- Just because people have had it up to their earlobes with details about Tiger’s infidelities doesn’t  mean they ever will forgive him.  The revelations about his infidelities – and by extension about his character – have cost Tiger a ton of fans permanently, especially among women. He can win all the golf tournaments he wants, but they will never look at him the same.

-- On Wednesday, on the eve of the Masters, I sat down to write a blog post picking Phil to win.  But the phone rang, I got distracted and I never finished it.  Seriously. I’m not kidding.  I had Phil to win.

-- There was a time when Sergio Garcia was part of any discussion of "best player who hasn’t won a major."  Not any more.  Now 30, Garcia is no longer an up-and-coming kid – in fact, he’s neither a kid nor up-and-coming.  He finished next to dead last.

-- Lee Westwood is going to win a major sooner rather than later; I’m betting on the British Open at St. Andrews in July. 

-- Anthony Kim won’t be far behind him.

-- I’m no fashion expert, but I don’t know whose hats look more ridiculous: Ryan Moore and Ricky Barnes in those goofy-looking painter’s caps or Rick Fowler with his cap pulled-down-over-his-ears.

-- As long as we are on the subject of fashion, Phil Mickelson needs a fashion intervention.  Those shirts he wears now are not only ugly, they are way too form-fitting.  They only accentuate the fact that he is a middle-aged man in a losing battle against gravity. A few days ago, he wore one that had white piping, one step removed from wearing a 1970s pastel leisure suit.  Not even Tiger could look good in Phil’s shirts.

-- What to make of the fact that when he walked off the 18^th green after winning, Phil immediately found his wife Amy and gave her a big, tearful hug, but he didn’t seem to even acknowledge his mom and dad (wearing the Sportscope cap), who were standing next to her?   But moments later, he did hug his swing coach, Butch Harmon.

-- If you thought this year’s Masters was more exciting than any in recent years  -- Phil finished at 16-under par --  credit the softening of Augusta National to allow birdie fests on Sunday.  One story called it the de-Hootification of the golf course.

-- If one shot can define a player’s career and style, for Phil it will be his second shot at 13 on Sunday: From behind a tree, on pine straw, 6-iron from 207 to four feet.

-- Despite all his smiles, swashbuckling style and stellar career, Phil Mickelson has a lot of detractors.  The most common knock on him is that he is a phony.  One major piece of evidence to the contrary is his long and lasting relationship with his caddie, Jim "Bones" Mackay. 

Come on, that new Nike commercial with Tiger staring into the camera, with straight-from-the-grave voice-over by his dad Earl is downright creepy, not to mention in poor taste.

They turned this whole tragic, humiliating, disgraceful episode into just another marketing opportunity.  It just ain’t right.

You buying the Tiger Woods Penance Tour at the Masters?

I TiVoed his press conference and I’ve watched it twice now, and I’m still not sure what to think.  Imagine what it must be like for his wife, Elin.

He’s saying all the right things, and he looks truly contrite and humbled.  But as we know now, you never really know for sure what’s going on inside Tiger Woods.

For starters, I’ve got a few questions and follow-ups I wish somebody had asked Tiger during his Monday press conference:

Q: In response to an earlier question, you said of your behavior, "I was rationalizing and denying and in total denial at times. Whatever I did, I lied to myself, I lied to others."

Was it that, or was it just that it you were having a great time running wild and you were getting away with it?

Q:  You didn’t quite answer to the previous question about who in your management team knew about your escapades, how much they knew, and whether any heads will roll.

Specifically, I’m wondering if your agent, Mark Steinberg, did in fact "handle" the problem, as Mindy Lawton claims, after you two were spotted by the National Enquirer having sex in your Escalade in a parking lot?

Q.   You are correct in saying that your car accident is a "closed case," but that still doesn’t answer the question of, "Did Ambien play a role in car crash?"   Did it?

Q. Tiger, 14, 15, 19 women -- whatever the total was -- and no condoms with any of them?  Aside from the infidelity, didn’t you worry about contracting some nasty or deadly disease or getting one of these women deliberately getting pregnant so as to extort you?

Q.  Despite all the shame and the financial cost, are you in some way glad you were finally exposed and caught?

Q. If your father were here today, what would he say to you?  And what would you say to him?

Back home from my golf trip to Scottsdale, I took a peek at GolfClubAtlas to see if there was any discussion of my public and muni Dream 18 that ran in yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer.

There was and, not surprisingly, a few posters took me to task for including holes they believed to be unworthy and excluding holes they believed belonged on the list.

One poster argued the Dream 18 was more of a Mid-Atlantic list, because I included a hole from Bulle Rock in Havre de Grace, Md., and the Architects Club in Lopatcong, N.J.

Because I deliberately made the Dream 18 a mix of upscale, mid-priced and lower-end daily fee courses, one poster suggested it would have been nice to have come up with three separate lists from the three different prices ranges.  I found that suggestion particularly amusing, considering that the single story I turned in was trimmed for space reasons.

Among the stuff that got cut was the passage about how I could have easily come up with three lists that didn’t duplicate a hole.  And the part about the story being due while there was still two feet of snow on the ground, precluding any revisits to courses I hadn’t played in years.

And don’t get me started on the holes that fell out of contention because, not only could I not revisit the courses, their websites didn’t have photos that might enable me refresh my memory. 

The Dream 18 story also generated a bunch of emails from readers, many of whom offered excellent suggestions for holes that might have been on the list.  One fellow took me to task for being "generous" in including holes from Walnut Lane and Cobbs Creek.

I offer no apology in that regard.  In my golfing travels, I have been very fortunate to play the likes of Pine Valley and Merion many times, and rub elbows with the folks who inhabit that world.

But I also have a foot firmly planted in the other end of the golfing spectrum, where avid and enthusiastic golfers are happy and appreciative playing the lowliest muni.  Those courses and those golfers are also a legitimate and integral part of the game.  I, for one, wouldn’t think of ignoring them or their corner of the game, especially not in a Dream 18 for a general circulation newspaper like the Inquirer.

So, for better or worse, I am happy with the list I compiled for the Inquirer. 

When the sun rose on me this morning, I was in Scottsdale, where I’ve come for a four-day Golfweek rater’s retreat.

If you rate golf courses for the magazine, every two or three years you are required to attend one of these gatherings – they stage several a year, in golf destinations all over the country – where you meet other raters and discuss and debate what makes a good golf course.  At least I think that’s what happens; I’ve been a rater for four or five years now, and this is my first retreat.

I picked this week’s retreat in Scottsdale because I like it out here, and because I enjoy desert golf.  Very different from the kind of courses we have in Philadelphia, or the kind of courses I grew playing in North Carolina.  I’m good for about one week of sand and cacti, however, before I develop a yearning to see green trees and green grass somewhere other than on a golf course.

Most of yesterday was spent getting here, using US Air miles to fly first to Charlotte, connecting to Phoenix.   Flying used to be fun.  Now it is awful.  Both flights were overbooked, nary a vacant seat.  I had planned to do some work on the Charlotte-to-Phoenix leg, but that idea went out the window as a soon as some guy who was about 6-foot-5 and weighed maybe 290 squeezed himself into his seat and about half of mine.

We’re scheduled to play five rounds over four days, and the selection of courses is sweet: Desert Mountain – Cochise course, Desert Highlands, Desert Mountain – Geronimo course, We Ko Pa Golf Club and Wildfire – Faldo and Palmer courses.

I’m a little antsy about today’s round.  Of the 30 raters here, more than half come from warm weather climates like Arizona, Southern California, Texas, Nevada and Florida.   Those guys (there’s one woman on the list of raters) are no doubt in mid-season form, whereas I am exactly one large bucket into my season.

So I will step onto the first tee shortly after noon today with pasty-white legs and without the foggiest clue of where my first tee shot is going.  As I was zipping up my golf travel back, it occurred to me to toss in an extra dozen golf balls.

Despite the potential for shanks, skulls, worm-burners, chili-dips and outright whiffs, I am excited.  The dawning of a new golf season is always a beautiful thing, made all the more beautiful this year by this exotic locale.

Details as they develop.

A few weeks ago, I got an email from Ryan Gingrow, teaching pro at Whitford Country Club in Exton.  In addition to his PGA pro stripes, Ryan holds a degree in journalism from Penn State, where he did a little sports writing during his student days.

That’s why he was contacting me.  He was interested in doing some writing.  We talked about him writing up a few tips, but he has done that before and, frankly, he wanted to stretch his writing muscles.  I proposed he write a series of columns, or essays, on life as a teaching pro.  He was game.

I just posted his debut effort.  Check it out.  I think you’ll enjoy it.  If you have comments or questions, let him hear them.

Welcome, Ryan.

Considering how much all of us wanted to see Tiger Woods grant his first interview, how come those two last night left me feeling so...empty?

Maybe the five minute limits made it feel so rushed and incomplete.  Maybe it was that the questions, being fairly predictable, made his answers feel so rehearsed and predictable.  Despite the best efforts of Kelly Tilghman on Golf Channel and Tom Rinaldi on ESPN, both interviews felt to me like Tiger was mouthing the words of some statement he might have been posted on his website.

On a positive note, it was nice to see Tiger back in golf attire, appearing reasonably relaxed and comfortable, smiling at times.

Thing is, after watching both interviews, I’m still not sure whether Tiger is sorry for what he did or just sorry he got caught.