Any comment on the particulars of the EDS Byron Nelson Championship’s thrilling 3-hole playoff will have to come later in the column. This is for a few reasons, among them:

• We need to discuss Tiger’s statement on his knee injury.

• We need to discuss the quality of the field at the Nelson.

• My TiVo ran out at 3:30 p.m. Pacific time, meaning the image froze when Ryan Moore was plucking his golf ball out of the cup after the first playoff hole. This was aggravating, especially since I had been a good boy and added 30 minutes to the TiVo scheduled time to cover myself in case of a playoff. Newman! I had to get the result at sports.yahoo.com, as reliable a place as any in cyberspace.

Back to today’s talking points.

As a faithful subscriber to Tiger Woods’ newsletter, I always enjoy its monthly arrival in my Inbox. It always contains a precious tidbit or two. In fact, it was Tiger’s emailed newsletter in December in which he said the Grand Slam was “easily within reason," and then

You know the deal, sports fan. It’s all about the new, new thing.

Out with the moldy, in with the fresh. Nobody wants to be caught playing 8-tracks when your friend is burning CDs; nobody wants to ask “Beta or VHS?” when your friend is going Blu-Ray.

As a result, I am hereby petitioning the golf gods: Can I trade Tiger for Lorena in my “Best Player on the Planet” pool?

It breaks down pretty simple. Lorena: Today’s News. Tiger: Yesterday’s News.

Don’t laugh, chauvinist pig. A glance at the C.V. of each player makes a convincing case. See if you can guess which is Tiger and which is Lorena.

Player A’s 2008 season: 6 starts, 5 wins, 1 for 1 in major championships.

Player B’s 2008 season: 5 starts, 3 wins, 0 for 1 in major championships.

Oh, and did I add that Player B just had knee surgery and is out for a month?

Sorry, Tiger. It’s a cold, cruel world. You’re good, kid. It’s just that right now – Lorena is better. Maybe if Tiger is lucky, Lorena will start texting him with friendly barbs.

Masters Sunday is a day to be relived over and over around the cubicles and water coolers Monday, so let's give everybody a handy-dandy guide and break out the treasured old chestnut for sportswriters: the Running Diary Column.

After all, Masters Sunday is a holy day for sports fans, and that point was driven home by CBS' rerun of the 1978 Masters before the '08 version hit the airwaves. Hope you caught it.

You get to remember all the "nearly men" who missed key putts to miss their date with history. Rod Funseth had a grip on the lead in '78 but missed a couple of key strokes late and will now only be remembered for rocking the best hat in Masters history, a "Trucker Lacoste" model that married the iconic French alligator with the Southern truck stop look. One of the all-time greats. Funseth could go clubbing in that lid today.

Back to why it's a holy day. Television technology was in its infancy, so when Hubert Green lined up a 3-footer to force a playoff with Gary Player, CBS used a

We open Masters Week with a philosophical query:

If, as is taught throughout the world, you cannot trust a man with two first names – who knows what guys named Roger Craig or Larry David are up to, anyway? – can you implicitly trust a man with two LAST names?

Which brings us to Johnson Wagner.

Trust this: There is no happier man in the state of Georgia this morning than Johnson Wagner, unless you're counting the convenience store owner in Augusta who is currently jacking the price of a 12-pack of Keystone Light to double, the better to take advantage of thirsty sportswriters returning to rented homes at the end of a long day typing.

Not many of us knew who Johnson Wagner was when the week started. I'm not even sure close family and friends knew who Johnson Wagner was when the week started. As the winner of the Shell Houston Open at Redstone on Sunday, Wagner is now known as the winner of golf's Wonka ticket: an automatic berth in the Masters.

Which is convenient, since the Masters

For years, we got accustomed to the PGA Tour's ad slogan, "These guys are good," and we bought it, wholesale.

We'd watch even the most average PGA Tour name punch-cut a hooded 6-iron from a lie buried in pine needles through an opening the size of a dishrag, and follow his Titleist as it carved its way over a yawning greenside bunker, only to hop twice on the green, then die, as if it lost battery power, three feet from the cup.

And that was from the guy who finished t-43rd.

Yes, these guys are good.

But every now and then, it's nice to see these millionaires in tailored slacks promote another slogan: These Guys, Sometimes, Are Just Like Us.

That was the lesson of the Zurich Classic in New Orleans, where Argentinean Andres Romero notched his first PGA Tour win.

Side note: Sorry, Zurich Classic organizers and sponsors, but the Zurich Classic won't be Romero's claim to fame from here on out. He'll still always be remembered as the guy who made 10 birdies at Carnoustie in the final round

If the insane, out-of-this-universe scenario barreling into the Masters was Tiger Woods still working on his Sandy Koufax/Perfect Game routine, then at least we have the second best.

At least now we learned the other guys can fight back a little – and the other guys are a little ticked off, too.

It wasn’t just that the highly skilled and evenly tempered Geoff Ogilvy from Australia won the CA Championship at Doral to break up Tiger’s no-no. It was that another major champion like Retief Goosen finished ahead of Tiger, also – and then the duo pulled off the golf equivalent of popping their jersey for the cameras.

Trash talk in golf is a highly subtle thing, unless you’re Rory Sabbatini, and prefer to use blunt instruments and leave lots of blood at the crime scene. Most all the others like to speak softly and carry a big Roth IRA, after collecting handsome fourth-place checks. Mostly, when highly paid Tour pros use the phrase popping off”, they’re talking about popping off the cork on

This one wasn't just another epic chapter in the book of the greatest competitor any of us has ever seen. This one wasn't just about the win streak, or the putt, or even about the adrenaline-laced slam-dunk of the Nike hat greenside, a Top 10 memorable image in a life already packed with them.

This one also was about what happened afterwards.

This one was about Arnie and Tiger's hug, when I'll be damned if somebody in my living room – might have been me, might have been somebody else – had something caught in his eye and had to work out a tear or two to make things right. Must have been the allergies. Yeah. Darn allergies.

Point is, golf and baseball seem to be the two sports where history matters so much, where the lore means almost as much as the game. We all love football and basketball, and yes, sometimes debating Montana vs. Unitas vs. Brady is fun; and yes, sometimes debating Oscar vs. Michael vs. Magic is fun, too.

But they don't measure up to the layers of history we're talking

Once again, we were reminded why we're all sick in the head – those of us who play golf, love golf, watch golf, care about golf.

All it is, is one long, slow-motion, sadistic, masochistic and creepy peek into our inner beings, where if it's not us choking away a $5 Nassau on a Saturday morning with our pals, it's a highly-paid professional in tailored slacks melting down like a candle under a blow torch.

Or, to put it another way, I watched Stewart Cink play golf on Sunday.

Surely, you've noticed the trend by now. Every week Tiger does not play on Tour, we witness somebody endure terrible heartbreak at his own hand. These are truly tragic figures in the Shakespearean sense – characters whose demise is brought about by their own doing.

If it's not Justin Leonard shooting 72 in the final round of the Hope to blow the lead, it's Vijay Singh making a hat trick of bogeys at Pebble to blow his lead. If it's not Aaron Baddeley missing three chances to put away Tiger in the Match Play, it's