If you think of the PGA Tour season like one of those dance contests from the 1960s – and yes, in my whacked-out brain, I do – then Tiger Woods just got tapped on the shoulder by the judges.

Off the dance floor, buddy. Your Mashed Potato ain't cuttin' it.

Considering we're all conditioned to seeing Tiger as the last man standing in these things – sort of the John Travolta character in "Saturday Night Fever," dominating the dance floor as it lights up in different colors, with awed observers rhythmically clapping, to continue my outdated analogies – the whole scene is nothing short of odd, weird, bizarre and final.

The Tour Championship will take place without Tiger Woods. That's like one of those philosophical queries: If a tree falls in the forest, and Tiger Woods isn't there to hear it, does it make a sound?

In many ways, it was fitting to see Dustin (Soul Patch) Johnson close it out on Sunday at Cog Hill, bagging his second win of the year and more than a little karmic redemption

Cannot wait for the Ryder Cup in four weeks, mostly to see how Tiger Woods likes life as a "scrubini."

You know the "scrubini" term, right? It's from baseball, and generally refers to the bench players, or "scrubs," or, playfully, the "scrubinis." The guys who show up to the ballpark knowing they have to surrender prime B.P. time to the starters, the guys who ride the pine and get late pinch-running duties, or the occasional spot start in a day game after a night game.

Now, now, I know U.S. team captain Corey Pavin will likely play Tiger in all five matches, and Tiger will be everybody's focus come game day, but the fact remains: The greatest player in the world had to get to the Ryder Cup on a captain's pick.

That's as close as golf comes to panhandling.

I'm not saying Tiger had a cardboard sign saying "Will Play Ryder Cup for Food," I'm just saying Tiger probably used to treat Captain's Pick Day in Ryder Cup years past by saying, "Oh, so that's who'll be bringing me my dry cleaning."

In honor of those self-congratulatory Emmys in Hollywood, how about we hand out a few statuettes of our own after a crazed week on the world's links.

Like, for example, "Most Relieved Guy Ever To Sign Divorce Papers": Come and collect, Tiger Woods, and we promise there's no subpoena in the envelope. You're free and clear now, and those bookend rounds of 65 on Thursday and 67 on Sunday indicate that, while it'll never be the same as it was in the salad days of the previous decade, something got liberated in your mechanism. With the miracles of electronic direct deposit these days, you can be spared the agony of handwriting monthly personal checks to the ex-wife, and concentrate on making a few putts. I'll make the early call and say Tiger wins a major in 2011. It proved too tough in 2010 to try and win majors while texting lawyers in between holes.

Look, here's another award, "Best Performance By a Guy With Perma-Grin." Congratulations, Matt Kuchar. It appears the unchanging nature of

KOHLER, Wis. – It was sunset on Sunday at Whistling Straits, and the serene blue-orange beauty of an August evening belied the chaos that jolted the PGA Championship only two hours earlier.

A bearded man in a blue blazer walked away from the 18th green alone, pausing only briefly. Herb Kohler, the billionaire owner of this wondrous and wacky golf course, the man who wanted fescue and dunes and yes, hundreds and hundreds of bunkers all over his faux-Irish Cheeseland jewel, pondered the fate of poor Dustin Johnson and the now-famous bunker on the hill off the 18th fairway.

"I love 'em," Kohler said of the more than 1,200 bunkers at Whistling Straits.

That one of the trampled-down bunkers could be mistaken for a waste area in the blurry rush of a 72nd major championship hole, and wound up marring a dramatic finish, how about that as his golf course's legacy?

"I'm certainly not ashamed," Kohler said.

As for Johnson grounding his club in what he thought was a waste area? "He knew the

KOHLER, Wis. – Used to be, you showed up at a major and first thing you asked was, "How's Tiger doing?" Second thing you asked, "How's Phil doing?"

Right now, in front of our very eyes and hi-definition televisions and witnessed by the birds of Lake Michigan here at Whistling Straits, the questions are beginning to change. As we barrel into the final day of major championship golf in the summer of 2010, we find ourselves at these majors beginning to ask, "How's Rory doing?" And, after that: "How's Dustin doing?"

Rory, Dustin, Nick – that's Nick Watney, your 54-hole leader at 13-under, three clear of McIlroy and Johnson – these are the new names of a new decade.

The transformation of the game is under way, construction work on the game's identity not unlike the scale of work done by Whistling Straits architect Pete Dye to build this faux Irish links in the heart of Cheeseland. Tiger Woods has a knee with surgical scars and a psyche with too many scars to count. He's 10 shots back. Phil

We should have known the World Golf Championship event at Firestone was going to be weird when Tiger Woods showed up with that “I Don’t Give a Flip” goatee. That facial hair is the golf equivalent of George Costanza “giving up” by wearing sweat pants all day.

By the time Tiger dropped his signature line of 2010 after a career-worst 18-over turn through Firestone over 72 holes – “It’s been a long year” (which would be the title of his concert tour, were he taking his act on the road: TIGER WOOODS – The “IT’S BEEN A LONG YEAR” Tour!) – we were left with Hunter Mahan quietly and artfully doing his thing again, and a vast array of big names weebling and wobbling.

Unlike those Weebles of 1970s toy fame, these guys did fall down. Where it leaves them heading to Whistling Straits this week for this week’s PGA Championship, the year’s final major, is anybody’s guess.

Well, actually, I have a guess. It’s just that they won’t like it.

Phil Mickelson, with a chance to – again! – take over the

Back in the 1990s, the PGA Tour famously fashioned a catchy ad campaign titled: "These Guys Are Good."

Now, after the latest 59 to blitz the golf landscape, they may have to roll out a new ad campaign: "Are These Guys Too Good?"

Seriously. Watching golf used to mean watching agony, pain, mishaps, missteps, chunks, blades, lip-outs and various other acid-reflux inducing occurrences that make up the royal and ancient game.

Now, it means we're watching guys armed with super-sonic golf balls, space-age equipment and friendly course layouts torch the record books.

Don't get me wrong. It's entertaining, and Stuart Appleby's eagle, nine birdies and no bogeys – including the drama of a hat trick of birdies the final three holes – vaulted an otherwise forgettable Greenbrier Classic past the Women's British Open (sorry, Yani Tseng) and past the U.S. Senior Open (when they operate on Bernhard Langer, do they find wires and microchips inside?) as the premier golf story of the weekend.

But still.

The week after a major championship, as we've noted here before, can be a combination of letdown and chaos. We're all still processing what we just saw, we're all still wondering where it fits in golf history's books, we're all still trying to learn to pronounce "Oosthuizen."

So, naturally, the week after a major we end up in a place none of us thought we'd be.

We end up in Sweden.

In a week where all sorts of stuff happened – Dean Wilson and Morgan Pressel blew 54-hole leads; Tiger Woods received yet another ding to his aura when a 14-year-old golfing infant named Jim Lou broke his record as youngest U.S. Junior Amateur winner ever – the weirdest stuff was Swedish, in the end.

For starters, Carl Pettersson won the Canadian Open, and answered questions afterward in the weirdest Swedish-North Carolina hybrid accent ever. He may be, in fact, the only man with a combination Swedish-North Carolina hybrid accent, owing to being born and raised in Scandinavia, yet attending college at North