Talk about a costume change. A week after the grueling U.S. Open at San Francisco's Olympic Club, everything about the PGA Tour stop in Connecticut this week was startlingly different.

Players shot 61 (Hunter Mahan) and 62 (Marc Leishman) on a Sunday. The winning score was 14-under, not 1-over. Approaches to flagsticks sucked back on receptive greens instead of the fierce ricochet of a USGA-baked landing area. Even the scenery – Olympic's frame-worthy Monterey pine and cypress trees gave way to the bland background of development homes surrounding TPC River Highlands.

Yes, everything was different – oh, all except for one thing. Holding a two-shot lead late on a Sunday back nine is apparently the new whammy.

Or, as Jim Furyk could have texted to fellow Sunday-back-nine sufferer Charley Hoffman: "Feel ur pain, dude. If u want 2 agonize, here's my number. Call me maybe."

Where is golf's Mariano Rivera, its Trevor Hoffman? Unfortunately for Charley, a shared surname is all he has in

SAN FRANCISCO – Olympic Club teased us, just as it has for decades.

For three rounds of U.S. Open golf on the classic hillside golf course nestled between the Pacific Ocean and Lake Merced, the sun shone, and the cypress and pine trees contrasted prettily with the blue sky above. The scene radiated a pleasantness, and even though the golf holes were brutally difficult, there was a sense of a party, a happening, a good time.

Jim Furyk reacts to a poor shot with an angry swing at the air on No. 12. (AP)And then came Sunday.

The fog rolled in from the ocean, and rolled in hard. It wafted through the cypress and pines and hung low over the Lake Course. It snuffed out the sun. The final round of the 2012 U.S. Open would be played in a gloom, a moist overcast that foretold grim things ahead. The supernatural, historic forces that rule golf history here were in effect.

Olympic Club U.S. Opens are not joyous occasions, or coronations it turns out. History dictates that there will be blood, and in 2012, it would be that of Jim Furyk.

He needn't feel shame. This is

SAN FRANCISCO – Like a famous actor suddenly forgetting his line in front of a packed Broadway theatre or a concert pianist striking precisely the most awful note in front of a rapt Carnegie Hall audience, Tiger Woods stood over a chip shot in front of the steep, natural, densely populated amphitheatre at Olympic Club's closing hole, in the Saturday evening gloaming of the U.S. Open's third round, and absolutely flubbed a chip shot.

His golf ball nestled in a bad lie, his chip attempt went squirrelly, almost backward even. The sound of thousands of golf fans making the familiar U.S. Open "gallery gasp," as it were, was replaced by silence, and then a marveling.

Tiger Woods was demonstrative in his frustration during Round 3 of the U.S. Open. (AP)Tiger Woods, in front of their very eyes, in his cream sweater and matching slacks, on a day that started with so much major-championship promise for one of the greatest players in golf history, just played himself out of a U.S. Open.

Two putts later, Tiger's 75 was complete, and the only thing left was to assess the

SAN FRANCISCO – If you want to know how the U.S. Open is going at the halfway point, here at this taskmaster of a golf course called the Olympic Club, perhaps it's best we dust off the old joke about the young bull and the old bull.

A sanitized version of the joke goes: A young bull and an old bull are standing on a hill, gazing below at a meadow full of cows. The young bull cries out, enthusiastically: "Hey, let's run down there and make love to one of those cows!"

Tiger Woods showed his frustration but kept his patience during Round 2 at Olympic. (Getty Images)The old bull, stoic, replies: "How about we walk down, and make love to all of them?"

And there's your 2012 United States Open golf championship, sports fans: Respect the wisdom of the old bull.

This place is varsity only. If a player came to Olympic without any pelts on his wall, without the scars of experience, without years of learned patience and the ability to absorb the cruelest of blows, that player was not ready to walk with the old bulls.

In other words, the three-way tie at the 36-hole marker features

SAN FRANCISCO – Under a cool blue-gray California sky on Thursday at the U.S. Open, Tiger Woods did the darndest thing. He played like Tiger Woods used to play at a major.Tiger Woods shot a 1-under 69 in the first round of the U.S. Open on Thursday. (Getty Images)

Gone were the pained expressions after mis-hits. Gone was the clank of a golf club banging off a tee box in a disgusted follow through. Gone was the muttered profanity.

In was a calm, clinical golfer. In was a player intent on a game plan, on calling the USGA's bluff and opting for fairway-pounding tee shots. In was a player thinking his way around the grueling Olympic Club setup, cagily eyeing each hole as if it were an adversary worthy of his best chess move.

Sixty-nine golf shots later, Tiger had his best first-round score at a U.S. Open since his 67 at the 2002 Bethpage Black U.S. Open. He won that U.S. Open.

The question: Who kidnapped the Tiger Woods who hasn't won a major in four calendar years, and replaced him with Tiger Woods?

Don't think the field didn't notice. Bubba Watson, whose first-round

Naked admission: I'd completely forgotten about Dustin Johnson.

In this crowded landscape of golf parity, where the major-championship baton has been handed to 14 consecutive different winners, where one week Jason Dufner is the new Tiger, and the next week Matt Kuchar is the new Tiger, and the next week Tiger is the New Tiger, Johnson popped up over the weekend to say: Dustin Johnson shot a final round 66 to win the FedEx St. Jude Classic in Memphis on Sunday. (Getty Images)

"Yo! Remember me? I've been gone the last three months. I'm the big, athletic guy with the most powerful golf swing on Earth, pillow-soft hands around the green and a history – albeit checkered – at majors. Yeah, that guy. The bunker-at-Whistling-Straits guy. I'm back. I just shot 66 on Sunday to win the FedEx St. Jude Classic in Memphis. And I'll see you at Olympic for the U.S. Open. Boom."

Well, this complicates matters. 

Just when we'd all sorted out our Open favorites – Tiger because he's back; Luke because he's due; Phil because he's Phil – Johnson has mucked up the works.

Dustin Johnson has always had

So, we're all pretty much done trying to figure out Tiger Woods 2.0. Agreed?

Tell me you had The Red Shirt winning Jack Nicklaus' Memorial – coming off the worst three-tournament stretch of his career (tie-40th at the Masters; missed cut at Quail Hollow; tie-40th at Sawgrass) – and you are the Tiger Woods of clairvoyance.

Tiger Woods roared with gusto after chipping in for a birdie on 16. (TPX)Tell me you had El Tigre winning after his 73 on Saturday left him four strokes back of the lead. Tell me you knew it was in the bag after Tiger made bogey on Nos. 8 and 10 on Sunday, falling three shots back. I didn't. I can't figure out Tiger Woods, 2012-style, anymore.

Instead, let's settle on two things:

One, watching him birdie three of the final four holes, including the all-everything chip-in birdie from the heavy stuff to a canted green on No. 16, was a hell of a way to spend a Sunday.

And two, Tiger Woods is, incredibly, on the early short list for PGA Tour Player of the Year. After all, only he, Jason Dufner and Hunter Mahan have multiple

Memorial Day weekend is typically characterized by good vibrations – barbecues, parades, remembrances, sunshine, the feel of summer to come. So why the heck was the golf world so addled while the rest of us are relaxing so fully?

Rory McIlroy imploded again, missed a second consecutive cut and lost his No. 1 ranking. Ernie Els turned salty at course conditions in England, channeling Richard Pryor with his vocabulary of anger. Jason Dufner went from "The New Tiger" or "The New Hogan" (take your pick, golf fans) to a back-nine fader, finally running out of magic. Even this week's PGA Tour winner, Zach Johnson, fended off about 40 questions in his post-round press conference about the failure to move his ball mark on the 72nd hole, which incurred a two-stroke penalty that nearly cost him the big check. A guy in a red plaid sport coat hasn't sounded so defensive since Wimp Sanderson parried with cynical boosters at an Alabama basketball fund raiser.

Jason Dufner, left, and Zach Johnson both had a difficult end at Colonial. (AP)(And yes, I had to work hard to come