I’ve had every nickel in the Wachovia Bank since they gave me a free toaster some eleven years ago when i opened my first account, and times are looking tough. It’s not enough that their one-year stock chart resemble a ski slope. But now the world’s best golfer, and the defending champion of this week’s Wachovia Championship, isn’t in the field. Tiger is nursing his bum knee, and Wachovia is nursing a stock price barely half of what it was a year ago. Hopefully the bank and the game’s most bankable superstar will be in much better ...

The Tour has moved over to beautiful Harbour Town Golf Links on Hilton Head Island—a welcome, mellow respite after the crucible of Augusta. Pete Dye’s Lowcountry classic will test the shot-making skills of the world’s finest players this week, and serves as a prelude for other Dye designs (or Dye influences, as the case may be) that will be taking their place on the event schedule as the year progresses—The Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, TPC River Highlands near Hartford, Connecticut, and Q-School in the autumn, which will be partially contested at the Stadium Course at PGA West. ...

Spectacle though it is on television, The Masters is an event that should be experienced in person, though tickets (badges, actually) are almost as hard to come by as a date with Catherine Zeta-Jones. If you’ve never been, the wonders of Augusta National go well beyond the multitudes of flowering plants, or the “TV doesn’t do it justice” quality to the steepness of the terrain, heading down the first, up the last, etc. Here are a few other items that make the in-person experience so unique: When the gates open in the morning, hundreds of “patrons” (not customers, or ...

I admire and root for Tiger Woods as much as anybody, despite the fact he brushed off my photo request at the Golf Writer’s Annual Dinner the year after he won his first Masters. But despite his recent otherworldly play, he’s as much of a lock for this year’s green jacket as was Memphis for the NCAA hoops championship the other night, despite a nine point lead with little more than two minutes to play. Sports are all about “what have you done for me lately?” And though he’s been dominating the golf world since mid-summer of last year, here’s ...

In honor of the best week on the annual golf calendar, we’ll briefly turn the spotlight off Pete Dye, and instead focus on The Masters. Regrettably, there wasn’t a single correct answer in last week’s contest, though there were dozens of entries. Perhaps the public’s fascination with the Masters will lead to greater success, and at least one person will be able to choose the right answer in this Masters-centric trivia contest. The lucky winner will be styling in a beautiful pair of Rudy Project sunglasses, sent directly to their home. All you have to do to ...