Welcome to Tiger & The 49ers! It may sound like a Holiday Inn lounge band, but it's Devil Ball's list of the Top 50 golfers playing in the world today. Ranked based on past performance and future potential, the list includes both American regulars and players who compete mostly on the increasingly-competitive European Tour. Of course, statistics alone can't determine greatness, which is why certain intangibles will factor into the equation. We'll count down one 49er per day until we get to the 2009 season-opener in Hawaii.

49er No. 22: Trevor Immelman

2008 PGA Wins: 1 (The Masters)
Top 5s: 2
Top 10s: 3
Top 25s: 6
Money rank: 19
Earnings: $2,566,198

2008 Recap: Dude won the Masters. What more do you want than that? Dude won the Masters. Outside of that,  it was a fairly ordinary year for Immelman. He missed the first eight weeks of the season following surgery to remove a lesion (a golf-ball-sized lesion, as the press noted with irony) from his diaphragm. But then he won the Masters, and all was right with the world. Even with a double bogey on the 70th hole, he managed to hold off Tiger Woods ... and how many people have lived to say that, huh?

2009 Outlook: Outside of that Masters win, Immelman hasn't really demonstrated anything that would set him far above the rest of the pack. Granted, it's a good pack to be in, but still -- Immelman needs to start hard and finish strong to prove that last year's win was no fluke. (As if he needs to prove anything to anybody. Dude won the Masters. Did I say that yet?)

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