Think about the ramifications of Adam Scott’s collapse at Royal Lytham and St. Anne’s:

• Four consecutive bogeys to blow a four-stroke lead with four holes could leave permanent, or at least years-lasting, psychological scars and prevent Scott from ever winning a major.

• The “Curse of the 54-Hole Lead” struck again, as it has now in all three 2012 majors – including Peter Hanson’s Saturday night lead at Augusta National, and Jim Furyk and Graeme McDowell’s Saturday night co-lead at Olympic Club. The third-round leader at next month’s PGA Championship at Kiawah Island will thrash at his bed sheets all Saturday eve.

• And perhaps most impactful, Scott’s collapse denied caddie Steve Williams the gorilla dunk of gloats, a major win in old boss Tiger Woods’ face. Rumor was, had Scott cruised home to victory, Williams planned the old Leslie Nielsen/Enrico Palazzo “Naked Gun” moonwalk-into-splits dance routine coming up the 18th fairway at Lytham.

Alas. No moonwalk-into-splits for “Stevie”.

Zach Johnson already won a red plaid jacket this year at Colonial Country Club. And, of course, he owns the green jacket from Augusta National in 2007.

So what does he get for winning the John Deere Classic near his home state of Iowa, a pair of overalls?

Better make those gold-plated overalls – do they make such a thing? – after Johnson's "Midwestern Miracle" on Sunday. That's what I'm calling his slobber-inducing 6-iron from a fairway bunker to six inches for birdie on the second playoff hole at TPC Deere Run in Silvis, Ill. Call it what you want, but it will vie for time on the PGA Tour's season-ending highlight reel next to Bubba Watson's "Hook Shot from Heaven" to win the Masters and Tiger's "This Is How Jack And I Do It" holed chip-shot at the Memorial.

Maybe the best part about Johnson's Deere-winning birdie was the fact that he didn't incur a two-stroke penalty to close matters out.

Zach Johnson won the John Deere Classic, thrilling the hometown crowd in the process. (AP)

Oh! Yes, Zach, we all still remember your failure to move your ball mark back after

Like parents away for the weekend who come back to find their house ransacked from an unauthorized party, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson missed the cut at the Greenbrier on Friday, only to let all hell break loose on Sunday. U.S. Women's Open champ Na Yeon Choi offered us all a life lesson: Forget about it. (Getty Images)

When Ted Potter Jr. is taking his lashing, left-handed swing and his 218th Official World Golf ranking into a playoff with 464th-ranked Troy Kelly, known only to close family and friends as a professional golfer, you know Tiger and Phil have left the premises.

About the only normal thing to happen over the weekend was a South Korean winning the U.S. Women's Open. Na Yeon Choi made it four Koreans in the last five years to win America's championship, and even she did it in the most unorthodox of styles – surviving a triple bogey on the back nine by talking herself into it.

Maybe that's the best lesson from a weekend of crazy happenings: That when all else around you in the wacky game of golf is crumbling, just whistle past the graveyard and it'll all be OK.

Today's topic: Tiger Woods.

Believers and cynics, start your engines.

Tiger Woods, in fact, keeps turning his own ignition key, waiting for that major motor to rev.

Tiger Woods captured his third win of 2012 with his victory at Congressional. (Reuters)He won Arnold Palmer's shindig at Bay Hill in March, his last tournament before the Masters … and then finished tie-40th at Augusta National.

He won Jack Nicklaus' event at Muirfield Village in early June, the last tournament before the U.S. Open … and then finished tie-21st at the Olympic Club.

And Sunday he won his own event at Congressional, a PGA Tour-leading third win of the year, his 74th career tour win, passing Nicklaus for second on the all-time list (he needs eight more to equal Sam Snead) and all any cynics can ask is: How's he going to do two weeks from Thursday at Royal Lytham & St. Annes at the British Open?

After all, to whom much is given – talent, hype, records, fame, riches, scrutiny – much is expected, as I was just saying to my good friend, LeBron James.

Tiger divides the room like Tom

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